She was annoyed and frustrated at their indifference, but the reason for their casual attitude soon became apparent. As they rounded a bend, she saw that the low cliffs were composed almost entirely of bones of every size and species cemented together by the permafrost. She quickly identified pygmy horse and ancient reindeer fossils, ribs and femurs, along with massive mammoth bones and tusks. The graveyard went on for at least two hundred yards.

With great fanfare, Sergei announced that they had reached their destination. He dropped his rucksack on the ground next to the blackened ashes of a fire. “This is our base camp,” he said.

The others left their bags as well, and continued along the ravine carrying only camera equipment and a few hand tools. As they trekked along, Karla thought about the baby mammoth back at the base camp. She was dying to test it. From its tissue and cartilage, they could perform radiocarbon tests to determine when it lived and died. The tusks would provide growth lines, like those in a tree, that would reveal seasonal differences and metabolic rate and migratory patterns. Seeds and pollen in the stomach contents would tell much about the biological world that existed thousands of years ago.

After hiking along the ravine for another ten minutes, they came to a section where there was a shallow cave in the wall of the gorge.

“This is where we found our little baby,” Sergei said.

The ragged cavity was several feet across and about a yard deep.

“How did you get it out of the permafrost?” Karla said.

“Unfortunately, we had no water hose to melt the permafrost,” Maria said. “We relied on hammer and chisel to extract the specimen.”

“Then it was partly exposed?”

“Yes,” Maria said. “We had to chop a little around the edge of the carcass before we could pry it out.” She explained that they had rigged up a crude travois from mammoth tusks and dragged the frozen specimen to the river. It was floated back to the base camp and moved into the shed, where the temperature was below freezing even in the daytime.

Karla examined the hole. “There's something strange here,” she said.

The other scientists clustered around her.

“I don't see anything,” Sergei said.

“Look. There are other bones much deeper in the permafrost. They are evidently thousands of years old.” She reached into the hole and scraped out some decayed vegetation and showed it to her colleagues. “This stuff is not very old. Your little elephant came into the hole more recently.”

“Perhaps it is my poor English, but I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying,” Sato said politely.

“Yes, what are you saying?” Sergei said with no attempt to hide his impatience. “That the mammoth is not part of its surroundings?”

“I don't know what I'm saying. Only that it is odd that the flesh is not rotting.”