"It's Me-tu and U-tu!" Dwight shouted, and Matt realized that superstar Fuzzy had at least some competition in the hearts of the world's children. He knew that many if not most of the kids here could name all twelve of these animals.
Matt found himself on the edge of his seat, almost as agog as the children all around him, as the moment arrived for Fuzzy's appearance. The music swelled and quickened and reached a volume that was almost stunning, but was not loud enough to drown out the shriek from Brittney that almost broke Matt's eardrum.
Fuzzy entered in a typical elephantine lumbering gait, not as fast as he could go but fast enough so that Susan had to trot at a pretty good pace to stay beside him. Matt remembered Susan telling him that elephants—and now mammoths—were the only mammals that could neither run nor jump. Susan's limp was barely perceptible; if you weren't looking for it you'd never notice.
Fuzzy got to the center of the arena and stopped, turning in a circle to acknowledge the thunderous applause. He seemed absolutely calm, totally unimpressed by all the lights and noise. And why shouldn't he be? He was a veteran of show business; he had been performing since his first birthday in the previous incarnation of this big, permanent home: the Ringling Brothers traveling show, booked into the biggest stadiums and indoors arenas throughout the United States.
He towered over his retinue of youngsters. Susan had told Matt that Fuzzy had recently passed the two-ton mark, and was seven feet tall.
The producers of the show had rejected the glitter and glitz of the elephant corps for Fuzzy and the baby mammoths. There were no jeweled and feathered crowns, no spangled blankets, no howdahs or ankle bracelets or painted toenails for the mammoths. This was better, Matt decided. These creatures from the distant past would have been diminished by circus trappings. The mammoths were as nature had created them... albeit a lot cleaner than they would have been in the wild. These were undoubtedly some of the most pampered animals in the world. Their coats were shampooed daily and combed out and conditioned for hours. Their diets were monitored with the care usually reserved for a rocket launch, and they got thorough veterinary exams every week. Circuses in Japan and China and Russia had standing offers of twenty million dollars for any one of them. Howard had told Susan he would have sneered at fifty million. He intended to keep a total monopoly on live mammoths for the foreseeable future.
The Columbian babies were all as cute as could be, with their short yellow-gold fur. But Fuzzy wore a coat that would have made an Italian movie starlet proud. Glossy black with copper highlights, with a gentle wave that Matt supposed was natural—he had a vision of Fuzzy being done up every night with hair curlers the size of oil drums, and had to laugh—it ranged from only four or five inches on his trunk and around his face to a full three feet long on his sides and belly. The whole glorious pelt waved as he walked, and it was hard to imagine a more appealing animal. Elephants, with their thick, wrinkled, dusky hides inspired awe but Matt had never been inspired to reach out and stroke the skin of any of Susan's elephants. Fuzzy, even at this distance, just made you ache to get close to him and run your fingers through all that fur. He was like a two-ton puppy.
Nobody seemed to care. It was enough to see Fuzzy. Matt figured the crowd would go wild if he just stood there and ate hay. When one of the youngsters lifted his tail and unceremoniously dropped a steaming load of dung near the center of the ring, the audience, and especially the children, went wild with delight. They liked it even more when a troop of incompetent clowns scurried out and made a hilarious botch of cleaning up the mess. There must be something universal about toilet humor, Matt decided, because he was laughing, too.
When Fuzzy and his entourage finally left the arena the show was essentially over, but nobody moved. The final attraction was about to unfold, the nightly Super Lottery, and Matt realized, with a bit of a shock, that this was the part of the show he was really here for.
Compared to the Super Lottery, a private papal audience was no big deal.
There were certainly a few people sitting around Matt who would be indifferent to the chance to enter Fuzzy's private quarters, get the chance to stroke his big furry flanks, maybe feed him a handful of his specially formulated mammoth treats. But even they wouldn't miss the opportunity to brag to their friends about how they got to hobnob for thirty minutes with the world's most famous animal celebrity.
Obviously the whole throng couldn't pet the animal, all those reaching hands would eventually wear him down like a pencil eraser. Howard had wanted Fuzzy installed in a glass environment so that the entire departing crowd could at least file by and see him on their way out, but Susan had vetoed that. To Matt's considerable surprise, Susan had vetoed a lot of Howard's more intrusive ideas, and he still wasn't sure how she got away with that. But she had given in to the idea of letting a small group—families with children only, she had insisted—spend a short time with Fuzzy after the shows. She had suggested a lottery and the show's producers had eagerly agreed, as just one more way to heighten the excitement.
So now the ringmaster announced the Super Lottery, and asked everyone to get out their tickets. Matt took his from his pocket with a hand that was suddenly moist and shaky. Everything depended on this.
The ticket wasn't a little stub of cardboard, but a souvenir in itself. It was plastic, three by four inches. There was a screen that showed a picture of Fuzzy striding across a grassy plain, and some buttons beneath the screen. After the lottery it became a handheld game, but right now it was a magic talisman. Searchlights began crisscrossing the crowd at random as the music built once again.
Even before the names were announced Matt heard loud shouting far above him, and he turned around to see a man and woman and two boys standing and holding their tickets triumphantly above their heads. The tickets were flashing red. The spotlights converged on them and the rest of the audience applauded. The Williamsons were met by uniformed ushers at the aisle, and led to an exit, still followed by spotlights.
Three more families were announced, one with just a single child, another with six children, the last a family from Japan with three kids who were so astonished Matt wondered if they might pass out. Matt began to worry. They must be reaching capacity now, there could only be one more family chosen.
Matt knew something nobody else in the audience knew, though some suspected, which was that the lottery could be fixed.
It was openly announced that only families with children were eligible, of course. Naturally most people suspected that the families of the rich and powerful had a big edge, but no one had been able to prove it, and Susan had told Matt that it wasn't true.
No, the cheating was only applied in favor of guests of organizations like the Make-A-Wish Foundation, kids with terminal diseases or terrible injuries. This had been Andrea de la Terre's idea, and it had been noticed, but who was going to complain? There had never been an outraged editorial or expose, and there never would be.
But the fact that the lottery could be fixed meant that it could be fixed for anyone. It was all up to whoever controlled the lottery computer.
"And the last family of the night..."
It seemed the air pressure dropped a bit from all the people inhaling at once.