"Yes. Let's try it. It isn't like bombing the place isn't taking a risk, too. And this way they won't feel the need to start all over again. And"—she glanced at her son
—"John can stay here."
John simply stared at her in shock and Wendy caught her breath in a gasp.
"You've got to be kidding," he said.
Sarah shook her head. "Completely serious. The mission doesn't need you and I don't think that with this new plan there's any excuse for putting you at risk like that."
"Mom, you're asking me to send my girlfriend in my place! Do you think I'm going to just stand by and let you do that?"
"I expect you to weigh the risks against the benefits and to come up with the
same results that I have." Sarah met his eyes with a hard look.
"I can't believe this," John said, turning his back on her. Then he swung around again. "Wendy hasn't had the training to take on something like this."
"You haven't been around snow since you were four, kiddo," Sarah reminded him. "And Dieter can take very good care of her. I was trusting him to take care of you, so now he can do the same thing for her." Slowly she realized that he was more angry than she'd ever seen him; the skin around his nostrils was actually white. "Besides, you don't have enough supplies for three people."
"Those could be acquired." Dieter shrugged in the face of her glare, his face unreadable.
"I'm going, Mom." John was breathing hard, but his voice was calm and his eyes were cool. "That's the end of it." Then he turned and started to walk out of the room.
Sarah sprang to her feet, hiding a wince. "John! It's an unacceptable risk!"
"Mom, I ask you, what good will I ever be if I stay here safe and warm while sending someone I love out to maybe get killed. How would I ever be able to call myself a man?" He glared at her from the doorway.
Wendy had been watching them wide-eyed; now she spoke up, her voice shaking. "I won't go without him."
Sarah's eyes widened and her head snapped around to face the girl. She could feel the blood draining from her face. Then she looked at Dieter. The big
Austrian stood like an oak, his arms folded, his eyes downcast.
"Sarah, you have not healed completely. You would be a liability. You know it, we all know it. Why not admit it?"
"If you'd all already decided this was what you were going to do, then why in hell did you interrupt my work?" she demanded fiercely. "Get lost, I've got things to do." She sat down and began typing.
John looked at von Rossbach, who tossed his head in the direction of the door.
Wendy scuttled out first, followed by John. Dieter gave Sarah's back a long, last look.
"You're right," she said, in an almost whisper.
"What was that?" he replied politely.
"I said, you're right. I'm not fit to go into the field right now. I'll be more useful here." A pause. "Harder to wait than to do."
Dieter smiled and pulled the door gently to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
LOVE'S THRUST, VERA PHILMORE'S
YACHT, THE RAGING FIFTIES
"John stood alone on the deck, so deep in his own thoughts he barely noticed the driving rain that competed with the seawater blasting under his oilskins. The sky above was steel gray, the same color as the rough-sided mountains of moving
water before and behind, topped with frothing white where the keening wind slashed their tops into foam. It was a storm fifty million years old, here where wind and water circled eternally from east to west about the Antarctic coasts.
The young man ignored it, save for the tight grip on the railing and eyes slitted against the spray.
He had been brooding ever since the stiff leave-taking with his mother. He'd been busy breaking down the moments before good-bye into smaller and smaller pieces.
From the time when she'd first sent him to the academy, his mother had insisted on carrying his bag out to the car for him, no matter how heavy it got. As he grew and realized that despite his mental image of her, Sarah Connor was not a towering Amazon, he'd tried to take over that task; but she wouldn't allow it. It became a kind of good-natured contest between them. A contest he'd never won until that morning.
He'd dragged his duffel downstairs to find her already on the portal, looking out into the yard, unsmiling, arms crossed, her back military straight, the fingers of her hands digging into her arms. The bag was a little thing—really an unimportant thing—but it signaled her displeasure to him vividly and he regretted the rift between them.
"Did you forget anything?" she'd asked, obviously unable to break old habits completely.
"Nope," he'd said, just as he always did. "Got my toothbrush, my comb, and an extra pair of shoelaces."
That had earned him only a slight, distant smile.
Wendy, in her eagerness to avoid contact with his mother, was already in the car, in the backseat—crowding the far door in an effort to escape Sarah's gimlet eye.
Knowing Wendy might be watching them made him feel even more awkward.
John was disappointed that the women in his life hadn't taken to each other, but under the circumstances he had decided to just let it ride.
Sometimes you could put off trouble.
***
Through the windows of the lounge Dieter watched the young man automatically adjust his stance to the rolling of the big yacht, ignoring the V-plumes of spray that erupted skyward every time it dug its bows into the cold gray water.
"It's freezing out there," Vera observed. She shivered dramatically, causing the ice cubes in her Scotch to clink. "But it is fantastic." Her eyes glowed as she watched the steel-colored sea heave itself into mountains of water. "I love the sheer power of it! I'm so glad you convinced me to come down here, darling."
She wrapped her arms around one of his and grinned up at him mischievously.
Dieter knew she was well aware that he got nervous when she did that and he smiled down at her in a carefully pleasant but not encouraging way.
She indicated the direction of Wendy's cabin with a tip of her well-coiffed head.
"That nice little girl has been pretty broody, too."
"No"—Dieter patted Vera's hand—"not brooding. She's working on something.
It has to be done by the time we reach our landing point, so she's just concentrating."
With a very unladylike snort, Vera said, "Yeah, right. And Johnny?"
Dieter shook his head. "He's eighteen."
"Ah," Vera said wisely. "That explains a lot."
John blinked and studied the waves as they roared toward the yacht, broke at the bows, and cataracted down the sides, doing his best to empty his mind and simply feel. He was out here to acclimate himself to the cold, and the mealy scent of the everlasting ice was strong. He kept telling himself that this was a useful exercise that would test his endurance. I'll build confidence knowing I can keep going through the discomfort. Jungles I'm used to, and mountains, but not ice.
Unfortunately he suspected that in reality he was enduring the discomfort because he felt guilty about leaving his mom behind and didn't want to discuss his feelings with Dieter and Wendy.
Not that Wendy seemed to be on the same planet with the rest of them at the moment. Sometimes she looked right through him, her head moving in little jerks as her eyes roved the room and her fingers tapped in a keyboard rhythm on the tablecloth. What she was like the rest of the time he didn't know since he only saw her at meals.
My girlfriend, the zombie, he thought bitterly, knowing he was being unfair. He paused in his thinking. I'm whining! I'm actually whining— and to myself! Did