Rising Storm

boat off and turned it in a sway and flurry of foam.

As he headed back to the yacht he waved and shouted, 'Good luck!'

Wendy waved back while John and Dieter strapped the duffels to the pile of supplies on the sledge. Two of them would ride the Sno-Cat while an unlucky third took a more precarious ride atop the supplies. They'd fashioned a sort of seat out of the softer goods they carried, but it was still going to be tricky.

'There's sure a lot of wildlife around here,' Wendy commented.

John had to agree. He'd known the animals were there but somehow it hadn't registered. Off to the right, far enough away to mute both their sound and smell was a huge… herd, he supposed… of penguins. To the left a small pod of seals lounged.

Dieter looked back and forth between them. 'It's unusual for that many leopard seals to get together,' he said quietly. 'They're usually solitary creatures. I don't see any pups, so that can't be it…'

'I think the penguins are watching them,' Wendy commented.

'Leopard seals eat penguins,' Dieter said. He looked at them for a few moments, unable to shake the feeling that while the penguins were watching the seals, the seals were watching the humans. He shook off the feeling and went back to work.

'Would you hold on to this for me, hon?' John called out.

Wendy turned away from the penguins and headed toward the sledge. Suddenly something hit her in the head with enough violence to knock her down.

'Wendy!' John shouted, and rushed over to her. 'Are you okay?'

She rolled over, one hand holding the back of her head, tears in her eyes.

'Yeah,' she said. 'I guess so. What the hell hit me?'

John looked up in astonishment at the bird that had struck her. It looked like a huge brown pigeon wearing an unpleasant expression on its avian face. He

pointed and she looked up.

'That was a bird' ? It felt like a rock. A big rock. Was I near its nest or something?' she asked, looking around.

'That's a skua gull,' Dieter said. 'They do that. No one knows why.'

'Bastard,' Wendy muttered, getting to her feet. She kept a weather eye on the sky, though the bird only dive-bombed them one more time.

Finally everything was secure. 'So,' Dieter said, 'do we draw straws or what?'

Suddenly Wendy rushed past him, climbing up the pile of supplies as agilely as a monkey to plop down among the duffels, her legs stretched out before her.

'C'mon, guys,' she said cheerfully, 'let's go! Maybe the damn birds won't follow us inland.'

'Good enough for me,' John muttered.

Dieter grinned and took his place on the seat of the snow mobile. 'Then by all means,' he said, starting it up, 'let's go.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

RED SEAL BASE, ANTARCTICA

'Useless!' Clea shouted, and swept the desk clear of printouts pens and calculators. 'Useless!' She kicked her chair and sent it rolling into the wall hard enough to dent the plaster. The action wasn't even satisfying; the huge weight of rock and ice above her seemed to swallow her anger, and the antiseptic air of the

base to muffle even the sound of a scream.

Inside her brain her computer governors worked to calm her. But Clea resisted, unleashing a seemingly bottomless well of fight-or-flight chemicals into her bloodstream.

Useless, stupid machine! she thought at her own computer. Why didn't it have the information that she needed? Where was the program that would turn Skynet from a sophisticated toy into a sentient being? Why hadn't it been included? She had useless information to burn, but the one tiny clue she so desperately needed was missing. A murmur of quantum formula ran through the mechanical part of her brain, and she dismissed it with fury.

We're so dose! she thought, feeling herself calm as her computer succeeded in getting her brain chemistry under control… But diminishing the strength of her frustration didn't erase it. She stood with her hands on her hips glaring at the computer screen and its offending lines of text. Then she began to pace like a caged tigress.

'Your lack of self-control does you no credit,' Kurt Viemeister said coldly. He hadn't looked up when she'd swept her desktop clear and he didn't look up as he spoke, but his posture and his fixed expression revealed his disapproval as loudly as any words.

You idiot human, Clea thought bitterly, turning her glare on him. I thought you were the one that made Skynet live. Unfortunately the work he'd been producing proved that he wasn't, and even more unfortunately neither was she. She shook her head in disgust and turned away.

'Where the hell are you going?' Viemeister shouted at her back.

She turned at the door of the lab to snap, 'Your lack of self-control does you no credit, Kurt.' Then, with a look of profound contempt, she turned away. Petty, perhaps, but satisfying—unlike anything else in her life right now.

Clea went directly to her room; she needed desperately to get away from humans or she might just have to kill one. 7 should not terminate any humans at this point. It would be non-mission-optimal. But what if I simply must kill someone?

She slammed the door behind her, then paced the small space for half an hour, burning off the rest of the bad chemistry—the hormones had sunk into muscle tissue as well as her brain.

Finally she threw herself down on the bed, covering her eyes with her forearm. It was time to calm down and start thinking. She decided to take a few moments to check on her seals.

Seal vision was not the best and she regretted that she hadn't made some provision to enhance what they saw. But if they saw anything really interesting her internal computer could sharpen the images for her. What she saw through their eyes might be almost as boring as the base, but it was a change of scenery.

Which, after far too many weeks in this lockbox, she needed now and again.

While she watched, courtesy of her implants, the vague shapes of penguins toddling about in the distance, Clea idly wished that she could talk to Alissa. But the Terminator she had managed to contact while out on the ice had informed her that her sibling was undergoing the growth process and was unavailable.

Alissa would probably remain unavailable for at least another week, depending

on how hard she was pushing herself.

The I-950 sighed and changed her input to another seal for more blurred views of rock, ice, water, and penguins… then sat bolt upright in surprise. What she was looking at was a small group of humans loading up a sledge. Making the seal look around she caught sight of a Zodiac plying its way to a dimly perceived ship of some kind in the distance.

Well, well, she thought. Who is this? New arrivals for the base? Why not helicopter them in the way they did everything else from supplies to scientists?

Maybe they're not coming to the base. But what else was out there?

A skua, going by the general size and shape, knocked the smallest human down and Clea laughed aloud. She'd had that happen to her once; thereafter she'd amused herself by knocking the skuas out of the air. It was a pity she hadn't been able to catch one to implant with her little chips, but they'd all been dead when she retrieved them. Besides, the chips were designed for mammalian nervous systems, and an avian one might not be able to support the machinery—avians were literally birdbrains. Still, she longed for the kind of clear vision a flying predator might provide.

The humans finished their packing and headed inland. Clea watched them go, chewing her lower lip indecisively. Then on impulse she sent four of her seven seals after them: at the very least they'd he something different to watch.

Besides, she suspected that at this moment she knew more about the situation than Tricker did, for there had been no incoming communique warning of new arrivals. Perhaps it's a surprise