The Terror

by Dan Simmons

He sets the lantern down, fumbles in his pocket, pulls the pistol out, tugs off his mitten with his teeth, and, with just a thin woolen glove between his flesh and the metal trigger, holds the useless weapon in front of him. “Come on, God-damn your eyes!” Crozier screams. “Come out and try me instead of a boy, you hairy arse-licking rat-fucking piss-drinking spawn of a poxy Highgate whore!” There is no answer except the howl of the wind.

“Look at this,” called Charles Best. Goodsir and the others gathered near the sledge. The tins of food and other matériel had been unpacked and stacked near the cooking area before their aborted supper, and somehow the lightning had contrived to strike the low pyramid of stacked cans while missing the sledge itself. All of Goldner’s canned food had been blasted apart as surely as if a cannonball had struck the stack—a perfect roll in a game of cosmic ninepins.

The monster on the ice was just another manifestation of a Devil that wanted them dead. And that wanted them to suffer.

Third Lieutenant John Irving, although appearing younger than his years because of his boyish blond looks and quick blush, was not in love with the Esquimaux woman because he was a lovesick virgin. Actually, Irving had had more experience with the fairer sex than many of those braggarts on the ship who filled the fo’c’sle with tales of their sexual conquests. Irving’s uncle had brought him down to the Bristol docks when the boy turned fourteen, introduced him to a clean and pleasant dockside whore named Mol, and paid for the experience—not merely a quick back-alley knee-wobbler, but a proper evening and night and morning in a clean room under the eaves of an old inn overlooking the quay. It had given young John Irving a taste for the physical which he had indulged many times since. Nor had Irving had less luck with the ladies in polite society. He had courted the youngest daughter of Bristol’s third most important family, the Dunwitt-Harrisons, and that lass, Emily, had allowed, even initiated, personal intimacies most young men would have sold their left bollock to have experienced at such an age. Upon arriving in London to complete his Naval education in artillery on the gunnery training vessel HMS Excellent, Irving had spent his weekends meeting, courting, and enjoying the company of several attractive upper-class young ladies, including the obliging Miss Sarah, the shy but ultimately surprising Miss Linda, and the truly shocking—in private—Miss Abigail Elisabeth Lindst...

But not today. Crozier reached to the shelf under the pulpit and pulled out a heavy leather-bound book. He set it down with a reassuring thud of authority. “Today,” he intoned, “I shall read from the Book of Leviathan, Part One, Chapter Twelve.” There was a murmuring in the crowd of seamen. Crozier heard a toothless Erebus in the third row mutter, “I know the fucking Bible, and there ain’t no fucking Book of Leviathan.” Crozier waited for silence and began. “ ‘And for that part of Religion, which consisteth in opinions concerning the nature of Powers Invisible,…” Crozier’s voice and Old Testament cadence left no doubt as to which words were celebrated with capital letters.

“Toodaloo,” he said—three syllables he would agonize over for weeks to come, cringing in his bunk out of embarrassment even though she could not have understood the inanity and absurdity and inappropriateness of it. But still… Irving touched his cap, wrapped his comforter around his face and head, tugged on his gloves and mittens, clutched his valise to his chest, and dove for the exit passageway. He did not whistle during his walk back to the ship, but he was tempted to. He had all but forgotten about the possibility of some huge man-eater lurking in the moon shadows of the seracs out here so far from the ship, but if there was such a thing watching and listening that night, it would have heard Third Lieutenant John Irving talking to himself and occasionally slapping himself on the head with his mitten.

The thought of even one of the two ships being able to float and sail raised morale. It felt to Crozier as if the temperature in the Great Cabin had actually risen—and perhaps it had, since many of the men seemed to be exhaling again.

But in recent weeks, Crozier slept less and less each night, until he’d fallen into the habit of only half dozing for an hour or two in the middle of the night, perhaps catching a nap of thirty minutes or less during the day. He told himself it was just the result of so many details to watch over and commands to give in the last days and weeks before taking to the ice, but in truth it was melancholia trying to destroy him again. His mind was sodden much of the time. He was a smart man whose mind was stupid with the chemical by-products of constant fatigue.

Every time I believe I Know one of these men or Officers, I find that I am wrong. A Million years of Man’s Medicinal Progress will never reveal the secret Condition and sealed Compartments of the Human Soul.

When the fog did lift a bit, they were less than a hundred feet from the inlet. “I see the pike,” Mr. Reid said tonelessly. “A bit to starboard and you have it lined up nicely, Harry.” “Something’s wrong,” said Peglar. “What do you mean?” called back the lieutenant. Some of the seamen looked up from their oars and frowned at Peglar. With their backs to the bow, they could not see ahead. “Do you see that serac or big ice boulder near the pike I left at the mouth of the lead?” said Harry. “Yes,” said Lieutenant Little. “So?” “It wasn’t there when we came out,” said Peglar. “Back oars!” ordered Little, uselessly since the men had already ceased their rowing and were backstroking briskly, but the heavy whaleboat’s momentum continued carrying it toward the ice. The ice boulder turned.

“All this natural misery,” Dr. Goodsir said suddenly. “Why do you men have to add to it? Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse? Can you answer me that, Mr. Hickey?”

Perhaps that’s why the bastard is leaving me to die. Jopson forced his eyes open and tried to roll over in his sodden sleeping bag. It was very difficult. The weakness radiating out from his center consumed him. His head threatened to burst with pain every time he opened his eyes. The earth pitched against him as fiercely as any ship he’d ever ridden around the Horn in high seas. His bones ached.

My Initial Diagnosis of the twin Gunshot Wounds was a Lie. The Bullets were small of caliber, it is True, but the Tiny Pistol must have packed a Great Charge of Powder, for both Projectiles had—it was Obvious from my first Inspection—penetrated the Idiot Giant’s skin, flesh, muscle layer, and stomach lining. From my first Consultation, I had known that the Bullets were in Mr. Manson’s Belly, Spleen, Liver, or some other Vital Organ, and that his Survival Depended upon Exploratory and then Removal Surgery. I Lied. If there is a Hell—in which I no longer Believe, since this Earth and some of the People in it are Hell enough for any Universe—I would be and should be Cast Down to the Worst Bolgia of the Lowest Circle. I Don’t Care.

His upper back hurts even more than his lacerated chest and Crozier remembers the torture as Silence dug there with her knife blade. He also remembers the slight squelching sound after Hickey pulled the trigger but before the shotgun cartridges fired—the powder had been wet and old and both shots had probably ignited with far less than full explosive force—but he can also recall the impact of the outer part of the widening pellet cloud hurling him around and then down onto the ice. He had been shot once from the back with the shotgun at extreme range and once from the front.

Or rather, if he believes in anything, it is in Hobbes’s Leviathan. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Francis Crozier believes in nothing. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It has no plan, no point, no hidden mysteries that make up for the oh-so-obvious miseries and banalities. Nothing he has learned in the last six months has persuaded him otherwise.