Chapter 7
The view was incredible. I could see for miles on the nearly flat plain even when I knew it wasn’t. The crevasses and moraines were invisible to my eyes and in the moon light, the ice took on a bluish-green glow that was eerie, magnificent and imaginative. Shifting shadows raced the thin mare’s tails above and the stars harried the black moleskin of the night’s bowl. The moon looked as large as the sun and I saw the craters on its surface with perfect clarity. I laughed remembering as a child thinking that they were the giant fingerprints of the gods as they threw the moon into the heavens.
The wind was blowing at a gentle zephyr yet it carried a bite that snaked into my clothing with sly insistence. Chilled but not as badly as I should have been, I looked down to the ground from this observation deck and judged the distance to be thirty feet but in the moon light and the shadow I could have been off by twice that. Before he could stop me, I leaped over the waist-high rail and spread my arms. I fell, not caring one way or the other if I survived or died.
To my surprise, I floated down as if I weighed next to nothing and landed with only a slight tingle. I did leave a deep impression nearly to my knees in the snowbank from my landing. When I looked up, I saw Cabor leaning over the railing from at least fifty feet up. He did not look surprised to see me upright and unhurt. I waved at him and set off at a sharp walk following not any path for there were none but following my nose which told me that there was a source of blood directly in front of me.
When I looked back, Cabor was descending the tower by a metal staircase that circled it and was rapidly catching up to me. I ignored him and kept my concentration on the way in front of me. I had no desire to fall into a crevasse, freeze to death if such was even possible for me, or crushed between two moving rivers of ice.
“Frostbite,” Cabor said and attempted to grab my arm. He could not hold me and stepped back in surprise as I peeled his fingers off my sleeve. “You will be frostbitten, perhaps suffer the loss of fingers, nose or toes if you don’t cover up,” he warned.
“I’m not cold,” I said. “Not as cold as a real human would be.” I exposed my hands and he touched them. Cold but not frozen as they should have been.
“Your skin temperature is the same as it was in the lab. 89°. Normal is 98.6° give or take a degree. I thought it was because I found you in the snow and you were hypothermic.”
I shook my head. “It’s part of this curse. I can feel cold but not like it used to bother me. Nor heat. Fire doesn’t warm me either. I think because this body died when he cursed me and I went over the Border wall. Even on the other side, I’m still like this. Only less so, I can eat food there and not throw it back up.”
“We were feeding you artificial blood and minerals with iron supplements once we realized your makeup. We tried fluids orally but you did void them,” he grimaced. “Nearly aspirated on me. Once Anye removed the silver arrow, you healed quickly.”
“Speaking of which,” I opened my jacket, pulled apart the front of the jumpsuit to show him the smooth surface of my chest. Even the scar was gone.
“The tissue regenerator works well,” he agreed. “But this is not possible. There should be a surgical scar where the incision was.” He made me turn around and checked my back. The sensation of his hand beneath my shoulder blades was odd---he had no warmth to his skin at all. I put my fingers on his throat and felt nothing. No pulse, no body temperature, nothing but rubbery skin and muscles beneath my fingertips.
“We are created to appear human in every way,” he said.
“Except that you don’t breathe, sweat or produce heat,” I returned.
“I do produce heat,” he said. “The servo-motors in my skeletal structure produces heat that I discharge as warmth from my mouth.”
“So don’t breathe on me.”
“Where are you going? Are you escaping? There is nothing this way for seventy-five miles. How are you are not injured? You survived a fall of fifty-two feet.”
I kept walking, my jacket open and his snugly closed. “If you’re not a real human, how come you’re dressed like the cold can bother you?”
“I am real,” he protested. “The cold can damage my circuitry should it access the chips that lie under my dermal layers. Besides, if I did not wear appropriate attire, any survivors would ask too many questions about me.”
“That’s interesting. How many other people have you picked up?”
“You were the first one I have found alive in 60 years,” he said soberly. “All the others had succumbed to hypothermia.”
“I’m heading for the scent of blood,” I answered bending into the wind, which had now picked up to a stiff breeze. I could hear the sounds of ice crystals grating as they rolled along the broken surface of the ice.
"You can smell it?" His strides were effortless as he paralleled me.
"Yes. There are humans somewhere out there." I pointed to the plain in front of me yet saw nothing. Nothing moved, and nothing broke the sameness of ice and shadow. We walked for a half hour and the distance seemed the same no matter how long we walked yet the smell of blood became stronger.
We came upon footprints in the snow. I ran my fingers over the four-toed holes and broad dip of the central pad recognizing that this was a bear’s print. "Arctic bear," he said. "White, camouflaged and very dangerous."
"These are fresh, too." I stood up and scanned 360° but saw nothing. "I can't see him. I can't see anything, yet I can smell them." We topped a small rise and to the right hidden behind a low wall of mist, I saw an army of domelike tents and an army of men.