Mammoth

11

HOWARD Christian held up the shrink-wrapped box and regarded the toy robot inside. It was a rare Bandai X-56 MechaMan, one of the earliest plastic toy robots to become really expensive, mainly because of the extremely limited production run. Howard wasn't a big fan of plastic. Like most serious robot collectors he went for the older tin models most of the time. But he liked the X-56, and he didn't have one.

This was the best-known example, and naturally it was sitting on the table of the unquestioned mogul of collectible toys, a man who called himself Radicon.

The table was near the door to a small side room off the main floor of the Anaheim Convention Center that housed the several dozen most exclusive dealers attending the annual National Toy Collectors Convention—the Nat-Toy—a gathering Howard had not missed in fifteen years. To get into this room you had to know someone, or someone had to know your net worth and credit rating. Toys had changed hands in this room for well over one million dollars.

He turned the box over in his hand. One of several problems with plastic toys was that they had started showing up at the same time manufacturers began packaging most of their wares in boxes with clear plastic windows so you could actually see the toy inside. Typically, the box would then be either wrapped in cellophane or shrink-wrapped in a more flexible plastic.

This X-56 was NRFB, and bagged in Radicon's own protective wrapper as well, so no fingerprints could mar the original material. Because, though "never removed from box" was not the only criterion for collectability, it was incredibly important. Early in Howard's collecting career he had paid thirty thousand dollars for a 1950s tin toy, took it home, unwrapped it, and threw away the box. He was stunned to learn, a few weeks later, that the value of the item was now about four thousand dollars. Which meant he could now never show it. Not that he minded losing the twenty-six thousand so much... but if he showed it without the box, people would realize he no longer had the box—it was the only possible explanation. And he didn't want to look like a sap.

Most collectors would not view the presence of original wrapping as a drawback to a toy. They would happily put it on their shelf, or more likely in their climate-controlled sealed exhibition case with the laser alarm system, and smugly check the catalogs every few months to see how it was appreciating.

But when a toy is encased in shrink-wrap you can't get it out without ruining the seal, and if you can't get it out of the box, you can't... well, you can't play with it.

Not actually play, Howard thought. Not like children play. There would be no bashing and tossing and stomping, no battles staged, no leaving it out in the rain in the sandbox. It's just that, when he got something like a toy robot, he wanted to put a battery in it, turn it on, and watch it do its thing. Otherwise, why collect? Investment, so important to the majority of his fellow fanatics, was low on Howard's list of priorities.

He did have a curator on his staff who was very clever with these things. When the man was done repackaging an item, very few experts could tell it had ever been tampered with.

But a few could, and many of them were in this room.

It was a pretty problem.

Howard noticed Warburton had approached him as he examined the X-56. He glanced at him, then put down the robot and picked up a Pez dispenser in a clear baggie. It was the 1960's "Psychedelic Eye," one of the more valuable ones. Naturally it was in mint condition, and Radicon wanted $1,500 for it.

"Why do you figure he'd do that?"

"Beats me. He knows the penalties."

The "gadget" was what they were calling the presumed time machine, for security purposes.

They got it from the Manhattan Project.

Howard pulled out a Justice League comic and examined it critically through the clear plastic sleeve. He got out his digital assistant and punched in the volume and issue numbers. A picture of the comic appeared on the screen, with the notation that it was an issue he had in medium to fine condition. The one in his hand was marked very fine to mint, and cost $150.

"I don't see this as mint," Howard told the dealer. "There's a chip right here on the fold. See?

And isn't that a repaired crease in the corner?" To Warburton he said, "Do we have it on tape?"

"That hardly qualifies as a chip."

"Of course, we tape everything. There's a camera right over the door."

"A chip's a chip. I'll give you a hundred for it. File the tape away. If we ever need to take him to

court, it could be valuable."

"I already ordered it."

"One hundred twenty-five."

Howard took a roll from the light trench coat he always wore to sales like this and peeled off a

hundred and a twenty, laid them on the table. The man scowled, but scooped them up.

"And you pay the tax," Howard said, strolling back to Radicon's table. He put the comic into one of the coat's big pockets. The Pez dispenser had vanished. He took another long look at the

X-56 in the sealed box, then shook his head and walked away.

Warburton hurried over.

"Must have slipped his mind," he said. "He's very busy."

"Sure," said Radicon, solemnly, crossing his arms. They'd played this game before, and would

probably play it again. "How much was that dingus, now...?" "Twenty-five hundred," Radicon said, with a look that dared Warburton to haggle. He needn't have bothered; Warburton would have gone twice that without a peep. But he couldn't help thinking, Fifteen hundred for a lousy little plastic pillbox with a hand holding an eyeball on top. If he worked for men like Howard Christian all the rest of his life—and he knew he probably would—he would never understand them.

FROM "LITTLE FUZZY, A CHILD OF THE ICE AGE"

At first little Fuzzy stayed close to his mother, like all mammoth babies.

He was the smallest member of the herd... but that didn't mean he was small! He got his long reddish-black hair from his father's side of the family, but his size he got from his mother.

Like most little mammal children, Fuzzy loved to play. Two calves had been born the summer before, a male and a female, and they had been slightly smaller than Fuzzy when they were born, but now weighed almost a thousand pounds! Fuzzy played with these two calves, and when another calf was born a few weeks after his birthday, he played with her, too.

Mammoths were great swimmers. They loved to romp and splash in the water. It was Fuzzy's favorite thing, and whenever the herd went to a watering hole he and the other calves joyously slid down the muddy banks and down into the muddy water, where he would churn around with only the tip of his little trunk showing.

Other creatures came to the watering holes. It was there that Fuzzy first saw the great saber-toothed cats that lived in California at that time. These cats had great fangs that they used to rip and tear at their prey and they were bigger than Fuzzy. They could have killed him easily, but when the big cats were near the rest of the herd bellowed and snorted and stamped at the ground and waved their big flat ears, and the saber-tooths went away. They knew better than to challenge Big Mama and her herd!

Fuzzy was half woolly mammoth and half Columbian mammoth, and this is what scientists call a hybrid. That means he was a cross between two species.

Though animals stick to their own kind, sometimes two species are enough alike that they can breed.

When horses breed with donkeys the baby is called a mule or a hinny.

When a lion breeds with a tiger the baby is called a liger or a tigon! Ligers are bigger than either lions or tigers. They have stripes only on their hindquarters!

Horses and zebras can breed, and so can cattle and buffalo. Nature is full of examples of

hybridization.

Usually, the offspring of these matings are sterile. That means they can't have any babies. But not always.

Life was good!