Chapter 6
Cabor woke me in the afternoon by shaking my shoulder. I didn’t want to wake up and even pulled the covers over my head but he was persistent and finally tugged the whole mess down to my feet. The cold air didn’t wake me but the feeling of being exposed and naked in front of stranger’s eyes made me sit upright in a flash.
“I thought you might like to attend a meal and perhaps tour the upper levels of the city complex. Where there are viewing stations on the ice.”
“Viewing stations?” I asked as I slipped out of the bed and onto my feet. Cabor handed me a new set of clothes and closed-toed boots. A heavy parka with fur around the hood and cuffs was the last thing he held out.
“You change your clothes every day?” I asked in disbelief. His answer was equally disbelieving when I told him I had owned one good suit and three everyday changes for the rest of the year. He asked how often I bathed and was astonished at my answer of ‘whenever I can or when I can find hot water’. He asked if I could swim and I asked him how often he took a bath.
“I don’t,” he shrugged. “I do not sweat so I do not acquire an unpleasant odor.”
“Hmm. Do you ever need oiling?” I asked as I pulled on wool socks, long underwear and held the jacket over my arm.
“No. I am a sealed unit that requires servicing every 75 years,” he replied. I stopped and stared at his eyes; they were a clear brown and lacked the depth of a human’s.
“How old are you?”
“I am a series 2200. Head Council and Science Master Technician Teslin activated me 152 years ago in the year 2502. That would be your year 1154 EA.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t conceive of any machine let alone a human living that long but I remembered that my great-grandfather Lyr Averon had claimed to be over 2000 years old.
He opened my door and I followed him out to the elevators at the far end of the observation room. He had explained that my room was one of hundreds in the medical wing and the center desk was where all the nurses, med-techs and doctors watched over the patients from the central desk that monitored every patient. Each nurse was assigned to five patients, responsible for blood pressure, pulse, temperature, respirations, dispensing of medicines, wound changes, surgeries and general care such as feeding, turning and bathing.
“You mean someone did all that for me when I was unconscious?”
He nodded. “Myself and Anye, and Raylen. We three were your med-techs until I established that you were not contagious or ill with some dangerous viruses. We kept you in an induced coma until I was sure that you would not feel any pain and your lungs could recover. I have not treated an arrow wound in many years.”
“I hope you never have to do so again,” I said grimly. I didn’t like the box, the elevator. I hated when it closed on me and even though I couldn’t feel it going up or down, I knew it was, just as I knew I didn’t like heights or closed-in places.
We were inside the lift longer this time and I could feel a difference in the temperature of the air, which prompted me to ask more questions. “How do you provide fresh air for this facility? I’ve been inside the salt mines and they were ventilated by air shafts the mining engineers dug.”
“Same principle here except that we force the air through with giant fans and recycle it through the hydroponic rooms.”
“Hydro-?” I was cold so pulled on the fur-trimmed parka.
“Mass production of organic plants grown in nutrient solutions. They produce food, oxygen and recycle carbon dioxide. Besides the forests and parks, of course. They are a major source of our breathing environment. We actually import very little outside air.”
The doors opened on a circular room that was dark, surrounded on all sides with glass and looked out over the vast expanse of a flat icy plain. Or so it seemed until my eyes picked out crevasses and cracks in the surface of the ice. Giant hummocks that appeared suddenly and just as suddenly disappeared as the dim moonlight hid them.
In the distance, I could see the tops of the mountains from which the Caladienne glacier grew. I put my face and hands on the glass, felt the bone chilling cold through the thick plate and saw the billions of stars burning down on the blue gray ice. I could almost hear its groaning, crackling heartbeat as it oozed ponderously down towards the loess of the valleys.
“How cold out there is it?” I asked.
“-45°. Below zero. The glacier moves through this valley at about a quarter inch a year. We are standing on a spur of rock that makes the glacier deviate around it or otherwise, this tower and the observation window would be crushed beneath the weight of the ice.”
“And the rovers haven’t found this place?”
“When we descend, the tower lowers into the ground leaving only the flat rooftop that they cannot penetrate. Many have stumbled upon us but you are the only one the Council has allowed to enter.”
“So what do you do up here?” I looked around but all I saw were a few machines, monitors and ice-climbing gear.
“I record the temperature. Wind gusts and direction. Barometric readings and distortions. Annual snowfall and the movement of the ice. The stars progressions, latitude and longitude. Their brightness and planetary rotations. Sometimes, I am asked to go outside and take samples.”
I heard his ear-mic beep and slowed, expecting him to tell me that we were going back in but he asked me instead if I wanted to go out on the ice. “The light?” I questioned not wanting to risk burning by sunlight or moonlight.
“I gave you medication that will protect you from the sun’s more powerful rays but in any case, we are only in moonlight which reflects more of the UV than is absorbed. You will be fine. You said that your great-grandfather is the King of the Elassai and that he cursed you. He did not use a virus or medical protocol to change your metabolism?”
“No. I was fine, normal until I crossed the Border. Even in the Mist. Nothing changed until I was back on the Newlander side.”
“I will study on this. Perhaps our gene-techs can find a reversal or solution.” He spoke and the solid walls turned around and opened to the night sky with a dramatic whoosh and blast of frigid air. I pulled my hood up.