Mammoth

30

THE place was called Kangiqiniq, formerly Rankin Inlet, and it was located about three-quarters of the way up the western shore of Hudson Bay, which put it in the balmy, sun-kissed southern regions of Nunavut.

Matt had never felt so cold.

It began as soon as he stepped off the small plane from Winnipeg, which had been cold enough. It got worse as he moved around the streets of town. Kangiqiniq was a bustling metropolis, for Nunavut. Population almost five thousand, very few of whom seemed to spend any time on the streets. It made sense. The wind howled down the arrow-straight streets between the mostly modular buildings, direct from the North Pole—which was actually the northernmost point in the territory.

There were a lot of parked snowmobiles. Most of the town was not fancy, but in addition to traditional native ways of making a living there was a thriving tourist industry catering to hunters, fishermen, and eco-touring. People who could afford to indulge in things like that usually didn't like to stay in tarpaper shacks, so there were half a dozen fancy resorts built from imported stone and timber, pretending to be Swiss ski lodges or Colorado vacation mansions. They all had indoor pools and gyms, plush rooms, good restaurants. There was actually a golf course, possibly the northernmost one in the world.

He started down his list alphabetically, with a guy named Charlie Charttinirpaaq.

Charlie had an address in Kangiqiniq. Matt took a taxi there and knocked on the door of a modular home with a lot of junk scattered around it. It looked like Charlie was something of a packrat. There was a Mercedes SUV that had been very fancy when new, about five years ago, sitting on four flat tires, and three snowmobiles parked in the yard amid all the clutter.

There was no answer at the door, so Matt went to a neighbor and was greeted by a short, brown woman with narrow eyes and very little expression on her face. Her yard was very clean, and the room behind her was spotless. She wasn't eager to give out information to this red-nosed, sniffling white man, but Matt said he had some money for Charlie—which was true, he was prepared to pay for his story—and a possible job. The woman looked dubious, but told Matt he could probably find Charlie in a bar called the Blind Walrus.

The Walrus wasn't located in any of the fancy hotels. Matt was the only white face when he came through the door. Everybody looked up and gave him the once-over, but he didn't sense any hostility. There were two guys playing pool, half a dozen sitting around watching a hockey match on an old television, and two men at the bar. The only thing of interest in the room was a stuffed polar bear, rearing almost up to the ceiling. Matt went to the bar and ordered a beer. He considered his approach. Just ask the bartender and patrons if any of them were Charlie Charttinirpaaq? The neighbor lady had showed a trace of a smile when he said the name so he was fairly sure he was mangling the pronunciation.

Later, with all the things to think about concerning fate and free will and time paradoxes and such, he had to wonder at his good luck at finding Charlie so easily. Because after a moment he was pretty sure the guy sitting one stool down from him was the man he was looking for. He took the photo he had printed from the one on file at the Nunavut Department of Motor Vehicles website out of his pocket and compared it to the face he saw in the bar mirror, and it looked pretty close.

And the man was wearing a watch just like the one on Matt's wrist.

Matt wasn't much of a drinking man, but for once in his life he felt he needed a stiff one. He ordered a shot of Canadian Club and choked it down, chased it with the rest of his beer, and turned to the Inuit man and smiled at him.

"I couldn't help noticing, you've got a watch just like mine."

The man frowned, and just for a moment he looked frightened. Matt could understand the initial hostility—he was Inuit, Matt was a stranger—but why would he be frightened? The man—Matt was sure it was Charlie now—looked around as if he expected someone to come crashing through the door.

Charlie relaxed a little, shrugged, and grinned, showing widely spaced, tobacco-stained teeth.

"Not mine," Charlie said. "Mine don't work. Never has."

Not surprising, Matt thought, since it's twelve thousand years old.

"Let me buy you a drink," Matt said.

"CHARLIE said he found the watch," Matt told Susan. "Five years ago. Said he thought it would bring him good luck, and it did for a while, but not so much lately."

"You're saying he got the watch off the man beside the frozen mammoth."

"Yes."

"And Howard didn't tell you about it."

"You know Howard. He hates to lose, and he's secretive as hell. He didn't tell me about the watch because Charlie stole it before he got there. He didn't tell me about the second person frozen with the mammoth because it had nothing to do with building a time machine. I didn't need to know. Howard and his damn secrets."

"I'm starting to see where this is going," she said.

"Yes. Susan... from the very first I considered the possibility that the dead man beside the mammoth was... me. There was one thing that argued strongly against it. I simply cannot imagine that I would be able to survive in the Stone Age long enough to be as old as this man was. But I guess anything's possible. Then, when we went back, I was pretty damn sure it had been me. I figured I'd explain it to you later, after we had settled in a bit."

"Break it to me slowly. Because there was just you and the frozen mammoth. I wasn't there. Which meant I must have died before you did."

"I'm sorry. I just couldn't figure out—"

"It's okay, Matt. I had enough to adjust to as it was."

"Okay. Then we came back... and it no longer made sense that the frozen man had been me. Then I found Charlie, and the watch. "I came to your house to tell you that I was now sure I was not only the 'inventor' of the time machine, I was the time traveler. I had figured out that, one way or another, the roller-coaster ride wasn't over yet, for me, anyway. I was trying to figure out how to say good-bye to you for good. Then Howard dropped his bombshell—accidentally, the bastard—and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I've been trying to decide which ever since, and how to tell you.

"The dead mammoth was a hybrid? Fuzzy is a hybrid," Susan said.

"Yes."

"Oh my god."

THEY went into the bedroom, got undressed and into bed, and just held each other for a while as Susan absorbed it.

"What if you just tossed it into the sound?" she said after a while.

"I'll do it if you want me to."

"And then what?"

"And then we see, I guess. The reason I'm afraid to is, like I said, if we don't go back in time, live out our lives, and die up north... then I don't see how we will ever meet."

"But we have met. We're here. Together. What happens to this, to all that's happened between us?"

"What happens when we die? I have no answers to those questions. Can we alter reality? If we try, then the universe might simply rearrange itself and make it so that none of this ever happened. You'll live your life in Florida, in the circus, and I'll live my life in Oregon. And I have to say, from my perspective in the here and now, whatever that means in this context, it wouldn't be a life worth living. But then... would I know? I don't think so."

She kissed him.

"I feel the same way. I guess we don't dare mess with it." She drew her head back and looked at him. "But you must have a theory. About what would happen if we tried to get rid of the time machine."

Matt sighed. "I think one of two things would happen. If I threw it over the side right here, this RV, the ferry dock, and maybe all of Port Townsend would be hurled backward into the Stone Age. Remember, the warehouse and all the elephants went back with us the first time."

"And the other thing?" "I think a big fish would swallow it, get netted, cut up, the time machine would get thrown in the trash, fall off the trunk on the way to the landfill, get picked up by a scavenger, sold to an antique shop, and one day we'd walk into that antique shop with Fuzzy on a leash..."

He laughed and kissed her nose. "I hadn't thought of that. Let's make a vow. When we buy furniture for our home together, we buy strictly new stuff."

"Our home together?"

"I hope so."

"Me, too." She sighed, and snuggled closer. "I don't much fancy a cave as a first home, though. The Stone Age... life wasn't easy back then, Matt. I wasn't even a very good Girl Scout. I don't know how I'll be at picking roots and berries."

"I couldn't catch a trout, the one time I tried. I guess we'd better start studying survival manuals, that sort of thing. How are your teeth?"

"Good. Oh, lord, no medical and dental benefits where we're going."

"Not even any Novocain. But we'll have each other, and we'll have a tame mammoth. Fuzzy will be back in his world."

"I guess that's something. No, I mean, that's everything, being with you—"

"I know what you meant."

"I had no idea, when I took Fuzzy, just how far we'd be taking him." She was silent for a while. Matt felt himself begin to stir, wondered if she still felt like sleeping. He touched her, and she proved she wasn't sleepy at all. But first she drew back one more time and looked at him.

"So when does this happen, do you think?"

"When it's time."