I could feel my jaw getting tense, but managed to shrug. "It's okay, Ida. I've been getting this same question from my research associates for the past three years." Reclaiming dead animals for use as surrogate mothers had brought back most of the great endangered mammals. The procedure had been accepted, acclaimed even. But I proposed even more. I proposed the reanimation of the needed worker animals. Necrozoologists like Reuben and Peterson insisted the plan was impractical. It was a small victory that I had this one beta site to test an animal in the field. This was my chance. My one chance.

"The elephants are crucial to being able to do your work here," I said. "Yet India's ban on capturing and exporting their wild elephants has been in place since the 1980's. And even the calves we place from the surrogate programs take at least twenty years to mature. The need is there, and I can fulfill it. I say..." Though Ida was nodding, Chandra stayed impassive. Some of the fervor went out of my voice. "I say there is more we can reclaim from the animals lost to us."

"Ah, but a comatose elephant gestating an implanted fetus is quite a different thing from an active, functioning animal." Chandra's elegant voice was slightly scolding. He looked significantly at the back of the truck.

"Your cue, Hank!" Ida put on her glasses. "If this works, it could make things so much easier here. We've been up the Rapti without a paddle more times than I like to count. C'mon, c'mon. No more dawdling!"

I suddenly realized that most of my sweat had nothing to do the heat. Moments of high stress always make me silly. I out my arms and cocked my head. "It's showtime!"

"Where's the remote control?" Ida said, laughing.

"Don't have one. Subject Seventeen works on vocal commands." I pulled the bolt on the bed of the truck. The ten-foot doors swung open. From the dark, orange sonar eyes glittered. "Okay. Now understand, we've got only the gross programming done. The refining process will have to be done on-site." I bolted the truck doors back. "Seventeen, walk forward." The truck started to creak as the huge grey animal began to move. First into the light was its high knobby forehead. The dark skin of Subject Seventeen was unusual for an elephant. Very dark, except for where it showed pink with age at the edges of its ears. The trunk was curled under its chin in a rigid spiral. The massive forequarters followed, then the great horny feet.

In three steps, the elephant was to the doors. Everyone gasped and stepped back, except for me. I knew its sonar would tell it to stop before it fell off the truck. Sure enough, Subject Seventeen halted with one foot raised and froze in place.

"The ramp," I said to the truckdriver. He looked at me, then at the elephant. He knew something was odd, but he couldn't figure out what. Finally, he threw down the tej leaf cigarette he'd been smoking and sidled toward the switch as if a cobra lurked inside the truck. He tripped the lever for the motorized ramp, and then stomped back to the cab of the truck without a word.

"Subject Seventeen, come down the ramp." The elephant moved down the ramp in a careful, though jerky, walk. It was propelled by a flat metal galvanic unit that rode its tailbone like a miniature howdah. One precisely placed foot, then another, settled on the damp ground.

I looked over and saw the lips of the Nepalese were trembling. One man shuddered visibly, and I heard him intone, "Shmashana Kali, Shmashana Kali..."

"...Sh--shana Kali?" I asked. Kali, the Hindu goddess, I had heard of before. I didn't know this other name.

"Kali, The Black Goddess," said Chandra, his tone perfunctory. "She is the Terrible One of many names whose stomach is a void that can never be filled, whose womb is giving birth forever to all things. Shmashana Kali is her aspect that lives in the cremation grounds surrounded by corpses and terrible demons." He cut his eyes toward the shaken Nepalese and seemed to smile. "Did you not think of the effect these reanimated creatures would have on the cultures to which they're introduced?"

"Well, yes, I--I--" My stuttering was interrupted by a heavy thump. I turned around to see the electronic proprioceptors inside Subject Seventeen had given out just as she'd come off the ramp. She lay in the mud like a huge grey bag.

Later that day, I came into the main room to find Dr. Chandra and two other student researchers staring at a map on the computer screen that completely covered one wall. Across the map, which I now saw was a 3-D aerial view of Chatwain, hundreds of bright yellow lights flickered. Ida talked rapidly into the mike of a shortwave. Tension fairly crackled across the air in the room.

"What's wrong?" I asked Chandra, who was focused on one of the dots of light and pulling at his beard.

He didn't take his eyes off the screen. "One of the tigers," he said shortly. "A female. She took refuge from the rain on the west bank of the Rapti and now the river's come up and surrounded her."

"This is her signal?" I pointed to the light that absorbed Chandra's attention so. Chandra nodded.

"--number 44344," Ida barked into the microphone. "Doesn't it show up on your laptop? Right, right. Just due south of where you are now the river is low enough to cross. It's Mamie! If someone can't get to her soon--"

"Send Chanchal!" said one of the students. "She's closest--"

Ida put her hand over the receiver. "I'm sending Chanchal," she snapped. "But no elephant can make it through two miles of that dense grass in any less than--"

"It is too late," said Chandra, his voice quiet. I saw the yellow dot on the Screen had turned a muted shade of blue. "The tigress is dead."

"Damn it," said the first student. "Damn it. She was the best breeder, the best foster mom. One of the last seventy Bengal tigers left alive. If we'd had the elephants placed better..."

Ida had turned back to the radio and was muttering into it in a defeated tone. Chandra put the tips of his fingers to his closed eyes and rubbed.

"There is too much to do, too much," he said. "Five elephants are not enough." He took his hands away and looked at me. His eyes were red. "You see our need, Hank Goldman. Do you have our salvation?"