The Icarus Project (15 page)

“Yeah, me too,” Kyle said.

Ivan reached over and pulled on one of my braids that hung down outside of my hat. “White hair. It’s not normal in someone so young.”

I snatched my hair out of his hands. “Hey, no touching.”

“Ivan, leave the children alone,” Randal said.

“It must have fallen from the sky.” It took me a second to realize Ivan wasn’t talking about me but about the discovery.

“I need to know what’s happened in the cave,” Randal said to Kyle and me. “You two wait here.”

Fat chance of that happening. I wasn’t about to stay out here in the tent with Ivan acting so strange. I was eager to see what had happened. I waited at the tent flap for Randal to make his way into the cave before motioning for Kyle to follow me. “Let’s go. I’m not staying here.”

“Right behind you,” Kyle said.

After making our way to the cave entrance, we passed through the narrow crevice. My gloves scratched against the rough surface. The walls felt like they were closing in on me, and then suddenly they opened up and we were in the cave area where the excavation had been established. I found a spot in the corner of the site, which provided Kyle and me with a perfect view. Excitement buzzed around us. Randal was talking to Dad in hushed tones. Jake was milling about with his camera propped on his right shoulder like an extra appendage.

“Let’s see this discovery, shall we?” Randal announced, rubbing his gloved hands together.

“This way.” Dad directed Randal toward the rough block that they’d been working on earlier.

“I see that I have chosen the right man for the job,” Randal said. “You have done exemplary work over the past few days.”

Kyle and I followed a few steps behind. The buzz of the generator grew. A flicker of light from a solar lamp cast an eerie glow on the cave walls. My heart raced as my eyes scanned the icy surface.

I couldn’t believe what I saw.

There was a big hole in the ice wall where the shadow had been the day before. It looked like some giant monster had taken a bite out of it. A huge chunk of ice rested on the cave floor. The block was crude: rough and cracked. They must have freed the shadow from the rocky ice wall, and now it sat like a giant glass coffin with a figure sealed inside.

“What is it?” I whispered to Kyle, mesmerized by the flickering shadows playing on the ice.

“I think it’s … I think it’s really a person.” Kyle nudged me with his shoulder.

I couldn’t deny it now. Through a spiderweb of cracks on the icy surface, the figure looked like a person trapped in a giant ice cube. It had a face. More important, it had flesh. I had seen enough dug-up mummies and ancient bodies to know that this was no mummy. The flesh is the first thing to go, since flesh is mostly made of water, and once a person dies, the body pretty much dries up the same way a grape shrivels up into a raisin. This person was no raisin.

“It looks almost alive,” I said. A pang filled my stomach.

Kyle furrowed his brow. “Almost. But it’s been buried in the ice for who knows how long.”

“Look at the skin. It doesn’t look dead.”

“I know. But it’s been encased in solid ice.”

“It’s not all shriveled up and decayed. How can the skin live?” I asked.

“The ice is somehow preserving it.”

I couldn’t hold my question in a second longer. I stepped forward so that the scientists saw me. Kyle followed behind me. My dad frowned, but I knew he was too busy to give me a lecture. “Will someone please tell us what it is?” I asked. “You must have some idea.”

Jake and Dad exchanged a look. Randal stood marveling at the block of ice, and for once he was speechless.

“Well, you have to tell us now. We’ve all seen it.” I stared at Dad.

“We’re not sure,” Dad responded.

“It’s a breakthrough. That’s what it is,” Randal said.

“It’s a lot to take in, Randal.” Dad patted him on the back of his puffy brown snowsuit. “The point is we have potentially made what could be a groundbreaking discovery. We need to eliminate all possibilities before we get too excited.”

“It’s beautiful. It’s the most magnificent specimen I’ve ever seen.” Randal looked over his shoulder at Dad. “I had no idea … No idea.” He gave a half-choked laugh, and
glanced at Jake. “It’s better than we imagined. And now it is ours.”

“But what is it?” Kyle asked.

“Tests will have to be run … scans. An MRI will need to be done.” Dad looked at the ice. “It appears to be humanoid. A young humanoid male.”

“A boy,” I said.

“If that’s a person, then what are those?” Kyle pointed to the back of the form. Two huge arched objects filled the icy slab behind the figure. The frozen boy had two massive wings attached to his back, covered with hundreds of creamy, parchment-colored feathers.

“They look like wings,” I said, stating the obvious. That was when I realized it hadn’t been the boy who had startled Ivan—it had been his
wings.

“What kind of a person has wings?” Kyle asked.

No one answered, but we all had an idea.

Randal stepped forward. “We must begin to study him.”

“We will, but we must be cautious. The body might be a real specimen, or it might be another imitation,” Dad said, lowering his voice.

“Can’t be. Look at the wings,” Jake said.

“Wings can be faked,” Dad said. “Like tusks.”

“I wouldn’t fake this,” Randal said. “I couldn’t even dream of finding something like this.” His voice drifted off as he stared.

Karen shifted. “Many tribal communities used feathers
as decorations for ceremonial garb. Feather headdresses and costumes are not uncommon throughout history. We don’t even know how old the find is, let alone if the wings are a part of his musculature. We’ll need carbon dating.”

“Tribal is a good hypothesis for the wings.” Dad paused and scratched his chin. “They could be just for decoration.”

“They look too real,” Jake countered. “And if they are for decoration, then why are they white and not colorful?”

“We won’t know until we investigate further,” Dad said.

“The wings could be mechanical!” Kyle blurted out. “Maybe they’re man-made, out of metal or something, and they work like a hang glider.”

“Whatever it is, it will be investigated to the fullest. It could be a modern-day missing person. Someone’s family could be looking for him. Wings or no wings.”

“No way,” Jake said. “First, any lost kid in this area would have sent out a major search party and made all the papers, even if the kid went missing decades ago.”

“You confirmed?” Karen asked. “It’s not a lost child?”

Jake set his camera on the table. “Yesterday, after we saw that the shape looked human, I did some research. A lost person was the first thing I checked for. Last thing we needed was to discover a poor kid in a costume. I even contacted the nearest paper and the police.”

Karen frowned, unconvinced, and Jake rolled his eyes,
obviously highly annoyed with all the questions. But Karen didn’t back down. “This is important. We aren’t filmmakers. We’re scientists. We must research every possibility.”

Jake sighed. “I researched thoroughly. I could ask some more, if that will make you feel better.”

Karen eased up on Jake. “No, I should do it. It’s my responsibility. You’re the filmmaker. I’m the anthropologist. I’ll start researching and questioning the locals to make sure it isn’t someone’s missing child or a cultural icon. It could be a statue—a mannequin made for a celebration.” Karen began to gather up her gear and walked over to Kyle and me. “Are you two ready to go back to the dome?”

“Can I stay, please?” Kyle said.

Karen pulled Kyle’s neck muffler up high around his face. “You’ll have plenty of time to see the discovery later.”

Dad turned to me. “Karen’s right. Time to get you two settled in for the night.”

As we were walking out, we met up with Justice, who had come to take Ivan back to the station. Dad paused at the mouth of the tent. “I forgot my pack,” he said.

“I’ll go get it,” I said. “It’ll just take me a second.”

Once through the crevice again, I saw my dad’s pack on the ground. Randal and Jake were over by the discovery. Jake was talking a mile a minute. “Think about it, Uncle Randal! Think about the prestige, the notoriety. You’ll be famous. Famous!”

“Famous…” Randal’s gaze drifted as if he were focusing on something far away.

“It’s a game changer,” Jake said.

“The project has all been worth it,” Randal said. “Years of work for this one moment.”

“I never doubted you, Uncle Randal,” Jake said with pride.

“We’ve finally found our Icarus,” Randal said.

I grabbed the pack and snuck back down the tight, icy chamber. It was clear that the boy in the ice,
their Icarus,
was not as big a surprise to Randal as it was to the rest of us.

I was glad to be back at the station the next day.
Spending time at the dig site felt like being on an island in the middle of a sea of snow. It was fun, but the place was too cut off from the rest of the world. I didn’t know how Randal lived up here all year round without the rest of us around. The snow and cold were starting to get to me. I was always bundled up, wearing three pairs of socks and big boots, and Karen had lent me a pair of her fingerless gloves to wear when I was inside. It was a bad sign when you needed to wear gloves indoors.

The following morning, Randal decided that the discovery should be moved back to the station. It took the guys all day to move the block of ice back to the lab. They built a sled that could distribute and carry the ice slab’s weight and then pulled it with snowmobiles across the snow. Kyle said they had to go really slow, so as not to tip over or drive the nose of the sled into the ground.

Back at the lab, we decided to call the winged boy Charlie, instead of referring to him as “the ancient thing” or “the ice angel” or “the humanoid being with prehistoric
avian-like appendages.” (That’s what Dad kept calling it, and it didn’t exactly roll off the tongue.) Kyle wanted to call the creature Thor, but that idea got voted down. Somehow no one was buying that the creature was a Viking.

One of the labs had a walk-in freezer, and Charlie was kept inside like a slab of frozen meat. I had my hat, gloves, and coat on with the hood up as I peered into the ice block, trying to get a good look at Charlie in his lozenge of ice. I couldn’t wait for them to thaw him out so that we would know for sure what he really was.

Karen thought Charlie was an ancient life-form, so old that no one knew it ever existed, like a first-generation Inuit, or even more ancient, due to the wings. She was even willing to admit that it might be a cross-species.

Dad thought Charlie was some kind of hybrid human-bird creature, a missing link, similar to how the birds descended from dinosaurs. Why not have a half-man, half-bird creature?

Kyle was going with alien. Maybe he was right and Charlie was shrink-wrapped in starlight, and had been left behind by his mother ship or fallen from the sky.

Ivan was convinced Charlie was an angel, an icon that should be left untouched. Katsu, on the other hand, was just glad to have a specimen to study.

I wasn’t sure what Charlie was, but I knew there was something very special about him, and it wasn’t just the wings. He shouldn’t look as good as he did.

While everyone had a different opinion about what it was that lay frozen in the ice, no one could deny that we were on the verge of making an amazing discovery.

Over the next few days, the scientists conducted endless tests on Charlie—at least the tests that could be done through the block of ice. Katsu wanted to drill down through the ice and take samples from Charlie’s skin, but Dad was adamant about not thawing him out until he could be moved to a proper facility that could handle the body once it hit the air. Remains were fragile. But I think Dad was just trying to hold on to the moment. For now, Charlie was perfect, lying in his cold glass coffin like a prince. He was what we imagined and had hoped for, and if we breached the ice, we might lose him forever.

Sometimes when no one was around, I would brave the freezer and talk to Charlie like he could hear me. It was hard to explain the feeling I got, standing next to the ice. The only way I could describe it was warmth, which sounded crazy. How could something so cold and frozen make me feel warm inside? All I knew was that my heart welled up when I was around him.