Free The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan Page B

frozen man’s boot did to me.
    I discussed it with Billings. We’d begun having lunch together every Monday to review findings and generally gossip. “My advice, lovely, is to be careful,” he said. “We serve at the king’s pleasure, and all he sees in that block of ice is Subject One.”
    â€œThat’s my whole point. We’re dealing with a person in that ice.”
    â€œThere are about three thousand assays we might conduct with materials at hand, none of them possible without Carthage’s goodwill. And, lovely, I needn’t tell you that our man is more intent on fame and glory than on ethical particulars.”
    â€œThat’s why I think my job is to raise these questions.”
    â€œThus do I repeat: careful.”
    Good advice that I was unable to follow. Instead I found myself daydreaming in the control room, imagining the frozen man’s former life when I ought to have been watching the monitors. During my tasks in the sterile, chilly observation chamber, I found myself pausing to study his whiskered face through the blur of ice. Hello in there.
    Later, Carthage told the press he thought in those weeks that I’d gone soft, lost sight of the goal, that sort of thing. Actually, after the boots, I felt the goals becoming clearer. They just weren’t the same as his.
    Carthage treated the frozen man like a diamond. He had the doors at the Lazarus Project’s Boston office, now our headquarters, changed to bulletproof glass. Guards stood at both entries, and it took the swipe of a security badge to get into the control room, onto the elevators, even into the bathrooms. It made me nervous. I often checked my bag multiple times on the way to work to make sure I hadn’t left my badge at home.
    The walk each morning crossed the park where sometimes as many as twenty people gathered to condemn us. Carthage won a court order to keep them from the front door, but truthfully the security goons scared me more than any protesters did. One Friday, back in March, it was chilly and raining, so I brought down an urn of coffee. The guards turned away, didn’t even take their shades off. The chanters thanked me, however. One even God-blessed me. An old man offered me cookies. I took one, too. Why not?
    Not all were so pleasant. One tired-looking woman was there with her kids every day, a permanent sneer on her face. Was this vigil a part of some kind of homeschooling? If so, it was hard to say what the children were learning. She was the one who snarled at me the day before Halloween, when I brought over some candy corn.
    â€œKeep your poisons, you sick monster.”
    Trick or treat to you, too, sister.
    That was six months ago. Yesterday the protesters lost their final court challenge, which sought to prevent us from attempting to reanimate the frozen man. I was relieved, but the ruling had troubling aspects. The judge agreed to let the project continue, fine. But in his decision he called the frozen man “salvage goods,” meaning that he was our property, and no protester could determine how we treated our property. Not so fine.
    Though I knew we’d have a crowd later, that morning only the woman with her kids was there. She looked haggard, like that photo of a migrant worker in dust bowl days. As I approached, her kids seemed happy enough. The boy drove a toy truck along the sidewalk’s edge, making engine noises. The girl sat on the bench reading, her feet swinging.
    Still I was anxious walking past. The girl didn’t look up but the boy noisily reversed his truck so I could pass without stepping over him. I gave them all a smile. The mother caught my eye and it was like being slapped. No words were necessary. Her look was pure, cold hate.
    I hurried over the crosswalk to the front doors. A guard looked at me with as much expression as a mannequin. He wore a flak vest and rested his right hand on a gun.
    â€œGood morning,” I chirped,