He looked at her in astonishment. "Honey, there's unmelted snow all over him.
He's… dead." He'd forced himself to say the word, then swallowed hard, as sick as if he'd spoken a toad.
"John," she said firmly, "he's been lying out there for an hour. And in a blizzard, that's more than time enough for snow to get on him and stay there. Especially in temperatures like these. But he might not be dead." She turned away. "Those animals might have kept him warm and he's out of the wind, that'll make a big difference. There's no snow on them. He might just be unconscious. We have to check! We're going to check!" She looked at him one last time. "I'll be right back; don't move."
John nodded and she turned to go. I'm not sure I could move if I wanted to, he
thought. He was proud of her; that was the kind of thing his mother would say.
It's the kind of thing I should have said. John cut the self-pity off short. He hadn't said it because he thought Dieter was dead. The longer he looked at the big man lying there crushed beneath the body of the seal, the more certain he became.
What the hell is a seal doing out here? he wondered with the vagueness of incipient shock. They were a long way from the ocean here. Not that he cared really if every seal in Antarctica decided to do some reverse lemming thing and run inland. Except that they seem to have killed…
Shut up, John, he told himself. He stood up, slapping the snow from his clothes.
The sound of the snowmobile came to him and he suddenly understood Wendy's delicacy in leaving him alone out here for these few minutes, and he was grateful to her. He'd needed the time to get himself together. Which I guess I am. Barely.
He waved his arms to warn her where the lip of the crevasse was and she pulled up, then turned the machine around and backed it up to where he was standing.
He could feel the vibrations from the motor through his boots. The snow had dropped to flurries and the wind had almost completely died. The daylight had become stronger as the clouds thinned. As ever, he couldn't help but notice such little things when someone he cared about died.
He walked over to Wendy and held her tightly, then pulled back. "Thank you,"
he said. He wished he could see her face, but he was glad she couldn't see his.
She had only him to rely on now; it wouldn't give her much confidence to see the tears in his eyes.
He wrapped the climbing rope around his loins to make a harness, then stepped
over the edge, rappelling his way down. John quickly discovered that Dieter had fallen farther than he'd thought. That deceptive Antarctic light, he thought.
About halfway down he felt the surface beneath his feet begin to shift. As he looked up, his eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat like a solid thing.
It looked like the entire wall of ice and snow above him was leaning out in one huge collapsing piece. He kicked off as hard as he could, hoping to avoid it.
Above him he heard the snowmobile rev into high gear and with a jerk he found himself being dragged back toward the falling cliff face.
Ice struck his forehead like a rock, and before the pain hit he felt sick to his stomach. The world went gray and he would have fallen if he hadn't wound the rope around his hands securely. Somehow he held on and Wendy pulled him up while he swung out again from the glancing impact of the falling wall. He slammed full body against the side of the crevasse on the return swing and grunted, gritting his teeth on the pain and the nausea and the iron-salt-copper taste of blood where his teeth had cut the inside of his mouth.
His upward motion slowed and he held on for dear life, afraid to look down.
Afraid of what he might find and afraid it might make him sick to shift his aching head. Slowly, slowly, she drew him even with the lip of the small gorge.
Once his head emerged, he flung out one arm to full length on the snow. He hung there panting for a second, then raised his arm to gesture Wendy forward.
No way could he climb out of this hole by himself.
The hump of snow in front of him suddenly opened big brown eyes. John stared into them stupidly as the beast lifted its head slowly, snow trickling off its sinuous neck like sugar. It whimpered slightly, then he watched a kind of
madness coalesce in its liquid eyes.
The seal sprang forward, roaring, its fanged mouth wide open. Frantically John tried to push himself back, but the rope wound tightly around his hands that had saved him from falling now refused him any slack, holding him in place. He closed his eyes and tried to turn away, but the animal's teeth raked his face. John cried out in agony and Wendy floored the snowmobile, dragging him forward with a brutal yank. The big animal barked and tried to turn to sink its teeth into him again. The move thrust too much of its big body over the edge and it overbalanced, sliding helplessly downward, silent until its big body hit the ice below with a meaty crack.
Wendy pulled John well away from the crevasse before she flung herself off the machine and ran back to him. "My God, John!" she cried, throwing herself to her knees beside him.
She reached a trembling hand toward him, horrified by the sight of blood pouring through the tear in his face covering. Steeling herself, she thrust back his hood and gently pried the goggles off, noticing with a sick feeling the path of the seal's teeth gouged in the sturdy surface. Then she tugged off the balaclava.
A lump was rising fast on his forehead, but there the skin wasn't broken. His face was torn across the bridge of his nose, then in a double furrow down his check, bleeding freely. Wendy took a handful of snow and pressed it against the cut, hoping to stop the bleeding.
John nodded, and taking more snow in one of his hands, he pressed it to the throbbing lump. "Go see," he told her. "I don't trust my balance."
She nodded and headed carefully for the suddenly more open crevasse. It was wider by a good five feet, but much less deep. Huge slabs of snow buried the place where Dieter had been lying. With a sob Wendy put her hand to her mouth.
It did her no good to think that he was probably already dead—the horror of it still shook her. The broken, bloody body of the seal that had attached John lay at the bottom of the pit, unmoving save for a reflexive twitch that brought its flippers together once, twice, then dribbled off into twitching. She shook her head in shocked disbelief.
Then she turned away; she had to get John inside the tent and bandaged. Then they had to get moving again. Time was running out.
"SHIT!" Clea screamed. She flung herself out of her chair and picked it up; spinning like an Olympic hammer thrower, she flung it into the wall. Shards of plaster exploded into the room, revealing the dented wire mesh beneath. "Shit!
Fuck! Damn!"
It had taken her forever to coax that damned animal awake, and when it opened its eyes there was John Connor staring back at it. How could she have him that close and not kill him? That stupid, fat, maggot-animal! That slug with fur!
That… that mammal!
She'd killed von Rossbach at least, and had been pleased about it despite the cost. But this! Her real quarry had once again escaped. How do they do that? she asked herself. She picked up one of Viemeister's many trophies and prepared to dash it against the wall.
"Hey! Whatcha doin'?"
She spun around, hissing like an angry tigress. Some part of her will held her motionless as she fought the almost overwhelming urge to kill. Clea chanted Skynet to herself like a mantra, to remind herself that she hadn't been designed to kill but to manipulate these creatures.
"What does it look like… Tricker?" she snapped. She forced herself calm; the governors weren't able to do much in the face of such rage. She'd almost said stupid human. Not something Tricker would be likely to forget. The I-950 glared at him, breathing hard and wanting to tear out his throat.