“Wonderful,” Mac said, rolling his eyes. Wouldn’t dream of it.”
As spring became early summer, Yanni’s indoor forest became filled with what were at first the discordant sounds of a novice saxophone player. But as the weeks passed, her proto-beatnik neighbors, some of whom had become her teachers, were pleasantly surprised at her progress.
Meanwhile, MacCready was working with the renowned natural history artist Charles Knight, to perfect Knight’s sketches comparing the anatomy of a trio of prehistoric horses. Knight was intrigued at MacCready’s insistence that the artist’s prior reconstructions were “a bit off.”
“Anatomically, your little hunch makes sense,” Knight said. “But what I’d love to know is how you’re so certain about it?”
And I’d love to show you, one day, Mac thought, just as the phone rang.
“Seven fifteen A.M., this can’t be good, Charles. Would you excuse me?”
“Army business, I suppose?”
“’fraid so,” Mac replied, watching as the older man exited, grumbling.
“MacCready here.”
“Mac, it’s Jerry.” His friend from the mayor’s office sounded edgy.
“Hey, Jerry, everything all right?”
“Not really, Mac. It’s Yanni.”
Mac felt his heart jump. “Is she . . . hurt?”
“No,” Jerry replied, quickly. “It’s nothing like that.”
MacCready let out the breath he’d been holding. “So what’s going on?”
“I’m catching major shit, Mac. The brass at the zoo think Yanni’s slipped off the track.”
“Look, I told you from the start, Yanni’s a little . . . different. And that was before I asked you for a favor.”
“Yeah, I know you did. But there’s still a problem.”
Several years earlier, MacCready had mentored the young polymath. Nowadays he was as comfortable cutting diamonds as he was designing lenses for spy plane cameras and flight-testing helicopters. Mac’s favorite of Jerry’s traits was his talent in the kitchen and the fact that he seemed to know every top chef in New York City. Unlike MacCready, though, Jerry was also quite adept at politics, and had become, at a very young age, a “higher-up” in the mayor’s office. Shortly after Yanni’s arrival, he’d asked Jerry for a favor—his first, and within hours, the Central Park Menagerie had a new (and exotic) assistant animal keeper.
“So what did she do?” MacCready asked.
“Listen, Mac, I feel bad enough about this. Why not just head over there and see for yourself.”
“All right, Jerry. Thanks for the heads-up.” MacCready placed the phone’s headset on the receiver. Leaving the fossils on the lab bench, he made sure to lock the office door as he exited.
The zoo had not yet opened to the public when MacCready arrived at the large C-shaped building that was the Elephant House. Even before he entered, he could hear Yanni’s saxophone, but it was like no music he’d ever heard: a series of jarring, low-frequency blats that never quite came together into a tune. As Mac opened the outer door, a zookeeper brushed past, shooting him a dirty look as he exited.
MacCready followed the atonal auditory assault and was soon standing behind a set of three-inch-wide bars separating the elephants from the curved walk-through that served as the building’s public space. On the other side of the bars stood Yanni and the ancient elephant he’d seen during the “jazz experiment.”
Taking a deep breath, Yanni blew another series of notes that only the merciful might refer to as music. The elephant responded by caressing the end of the saxophone with the delicate, fingerlike structures at the end of its trunk. When Yanni stopped, the animal paused for a moment, then flattened the tip of its trunk on the sawdust-covered ground.
Yanni smiled at the ancient pachyderm, and Mac could feel a strange vibration running through his body—immediately unnerving him, like another personal message from the dark. He also realized that the scientists had done their experiment wrong. Evidently Yanni had made considerable progress since then, although Mac had no idea just how much.
He cleared his throat.
Simultaneously, Yanni and the elephant turned toward the sound of the intruder. MacCready gave a shy wave, feeling as if he’d interrupted a very private conversation.
“Less than good timing, Mac. I’ll be right there,” Yanni said, sounding annoyed, before exiting through an inner door.
Moments later they stood watching the zoo’s largest inhabitant, as it stood watching them.
Mac nodded toward the animal. “So Jumbo here—”
“Her name is Jewel,” Yanni corrected him.
“I’m guessing Jewel’s preference for music has nothing to do with following a circus band around.”
Yanni shook her head. “Nuttin’.”
“And you think elephants can talk to each other?”
“It’s a bet, Mac. But they’re using the opposite end of the . . . what da ya call it?”
“Spectrum?”
“Yeah, spectrum.”
“That’s why you wanted a baritone sax? Because it produced low-frequency sounds?”
“Bingo!”