Free Mammoth by John Varley

celebrity. All he has to do is let Dr. Rostov publish his findings. This frozen mammoth isn’t like any that’s ever been found before.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    She hesitated, then stood and finished her Coke.
    “Come on. I’ll show you.”

FROM “LITTLE FUZZY, A CHILD OF THE ICE AGE”
    Temba had grown and grown all the last year. In California she ate even more, and grew even more. When the time of the year we would later call June arrived, she was so big that walking was awkward. She could feel stirrings inside her as the baby kicked and twisted, wanting to get out into the wide world.
    And one day she felt a pain like she had never felt before, and she knew it was her time.
    The rest of the herd knew it, too. They gathered around her. They pressed against her sides. They stroked her with their trunks and made reassuring sounds. All day and into the night they stayed near, and then the baby’s hind legs appeared.
    A few minutes later the little mammoth was born.
    He was a boy!
    But he was not so little! If there had been scales to weigh him, he would have tipped them at about three hundred pounds!
    Temba was very busy for a while then. Mammoths were born wrapped up in something called an amniotic sac , like dogs and cats and horses. Temba used her trunk to pull this away from her baby, there in the dark night.
    Then she lifted the baby to his feet. He tottered for a moment, then fell onto his side. Temba lifted him again, and again he fell. But the third time she set him on his feet he stayed there, swaying and blinking.
    The herd gathered around him and his mother and touched him with their trunks. Some of them flapped their ears nervously and shuffled their big, flat feet.
    Something was wrong with the baby.
    It smelled funny.
    It felt funny. The trunks of the herd explored the tiny little ears and gathered clumps of hair that was still wet and smelled of blood from the womb.
    And then Big Mama came over. The others made way for her, respectfully.
    For a time Big Mama explored the baby. We can’t know exactly what she was thinking that day, so long ago, but if we guess it might be something like this:
    (He is a male baby. He is a very hairy male baby. And what about those ears? What is the deal with those ears?)
    Animals cling to their own kind, just like people do. And animals can be very harsh with those who are not of their own kind. Big Mama’s mighty nose and long memory were puzzling over the odd smell of the newcomer. Big Mama was the ruler of the herd, nobody had even tried to challenge her in many years, and nobody had any plans to anytime soon. If she decided the new baby was not right, it was all over, there would be no argument.
    Big Mama kept exploring, and kept up her big, slow thoughts. Finally, she wrapped her trunk around the new baby and stroked him.
    Well! Did the other mammoths feel relieved that the baby was accepted?
    Probably not. Mammoths and other animals don’t think like people do. A lot of what they do is governed by instinct . And though mammoths and elephants are much smarter than most other animals, they do not think ahead like we do, and they do not worry about the same things we do. They deal with things as they come up, and since Big Mama did not decide to drive the new baby from the herd, no one ever had to deal with it, and so they didn’t worry about it. Temba never knew her baby’s fate was being decided by Big Mama. Probably Big Mama didn’t even know it. She just sniffed the baby, decided it was odd but okay, and then forgot all about it.
    The baby himself had no idea what was going on, either. He simply knew he was hungry. His instincts drove him to where he could smell his mother’s milk, and he pressed his face into the space behind her front leg and began to nurse.
    Temba was content.
    And the baby’s name?
    Well, mammoths did not give each other names like we do, though they could easily recognize one another.
    But we can call the baby Fuzzy.

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    HOWARD