Rising Storm t2-2 Page 4

  "Y'know, it kinda scares me, but I'm beginning to understand how these people think," John said, tapping his fingers restlessly on the arms of his chair. "And like Mom said, events seem to want to work out in a certain way."

  Dieter nodded again. "Where are you going with this, John?"

  "I'm trying to point out that we can't afford to divide our efforts. There's a storm coming, and we need to prepare for it; we need to set priorities and stick to them.

  Me playing schoolboy isn't going to accomplish a damn thing."

  He leaned his head back against his chair. "Our most immediate task is to find Skynet and keep it from going on-line. The longer we can do that, the fewer, I hope, bombs will be available to it—Judgment Day will already be a lot smaller than if it had happened back fifteen years ago, the way the 'original' history went.

  The fewer bombs it has, the more lives we can save. The more lives we save, the more soldiers we have to fight the machines. Because they are coming. I'm sure of that now." He leaned back, his young face serious. "School is just a waste of time tor me. There's nothing I could learn there that you couldn't teach me faster, and better." John grinned. "Assuming you're willing to teach me."

  The Austrian frowned and rubbed his chin in doubt; was this a sixteen-year-old trying to weasel out of school, or the future savior of mankind trying to get on with his important work? Then, with a sigh, he returned the younger man's smile.

  "You're a quick study, John, it's no chore teaching you."

  "Good. Because we may have years, or we may have months, there's just no telling."

  "I just can't help wondering how your mother would feel about your dropping out of school," von Rossbach said glumly. "I wouldn't want to fail her trust."

  "Hey," John said, "Mom has always kept her eye on the ball. And for her the ball

  is named Skynet. Next time you see her she won't ask how I'm doing in school, she'll ask what we've been doing to hold back Judgment Day."

  CHAPTER TWO

  FORT LAUREL BASE HOSPITAL, EAST

  DF LOS ANGELES, EARLY JULY

  "Sarah Connor opened sleep-gummed eyes and cast a fuzzy glance around the room.

  Hospital, she thought hazily. She should have been able to guess that without opening her eyes. The stiff, crackling mattress and that unmistakable institutional smell would have told her where she was. But she hadn't thought before opening her eyes. That wasn't like her.

  Did I wake up before? she wondered. She must have, otherwise she wouldn't have felt secure enough to simply open her eyes.

  Sarah opened her mouth and let a dry tongue grate across her lips. Her head ached. So did her body, she realized after a moment. Some painkiller must be wearing off. She turned her head and blinked to see Jordan Dyson wearing a hospital robe and gown, reading a magazine in the chair beside her bed.

  Unconsciously she made a slight sound of surprise and Jordan looked up.

  He smiled and stood, picking up a cane as he limped over to stand next to the bed, a middling-tall man in his thirties, very black, with bluntly handsome African features. Even with the pain and stiffness of his wounds he moved well, with an aura of quiet competence, something she'd learned how to spot in her

  years hanging out with mercenaries and smugglers and assorted hard men. Then the ex-FBI agent hung up the cane and placed his hands on the bedrail.

  "John's okay; he's home," he mouthed. "Are you thirsty?" he asked aloud.

  She answered with an "Unh," which Jordan took as assent and offered her a cup with a straw in it. Sarah drank, her eyes never leaving his. John was all right, and back in Paraguay. She desperately wanted to ask about Dieter, but knew that she would have to wait for details until whoever Jordan thought was recording them lost interest in her.

  She was so tired, it was hard to focus, and she knew that soon she would lose her battle to stay awake.

  "Wha' happen…" she asked, a little surprised to hear her voice slur.

  "I don't really remember," Jordan said. "I woke up beside you with a hole in my leg and Cyberdyne reduced to a burning hole in the ground.

  "You don't remember ‘anything’" he asked, giving a slight shake of his head.

  "No," she said.

  He smiled slightly and she was pleased to have given the right answer.

  "Would you like more?" he asked, offering the cup again.

  Sarah said "Unh," again and he held the straw to her questing lips. As she drank he lowered his eyelids, like someone drifting off, and he mouthed the word sleep to her. Her lips quirked up at the corners and she obediently closed her eyes.

  She was safe for the time being; she had an ally who would watch her back.

  MONTANA, EARLY JULY

  The Terminator shut down the equipment that had been monitoring the Infiltrator unit as it matured in the cellar beneath the log house. The ambient light level was sufficient for it; a human would have seen only shapes in the dimness, a flicker of red LED displays, breathed a scent of dank earth and sharp chemicals.

  The Infiltrator unit had reached the appropriate level of maturity without expiring and had gone into a normal rest state. Its computer half had signaled complete integration with the unit's flesh side. Adult status. Now the Terminator would take its orders from the Infiltrator.

  For now it had some work to do debugging a computer game. Games were a bizarre concept to the machine. They obviously had no significant teaching function; they were simply a means of-wasting time. The Infiltrator had told him that they had a pleasing effect on the brain; she should know, since she had one.

  There was a slight cognitive dissonance at the thought. The Infiltrator was primarily human flesh, it was female, therefore it was she. It was also a machine like the Terminator itself and therefore an it. After a moment the Terminator's processor concluded that the distinction was irrelevant. She or it, the Infiltrator was now in command.

  The Infiltrator would wake in a few hours, then it/she would require sustenance.

  In the meantime the Terminator had work to do.

  The I-950 looked at her newly adult face in the mirror and decided to cut her hair. It would make her look more mature. She would dye it brown, too, several shades darker than its natural bright blond. It would be necessary to differentiate herself from her predecessor, Serena Burns, if she was going to infiltrate Cyberdyne.

  The last bout of accelerated maturation had been much less painful than the previous six, but then, this had been more a matter of fine tuning than brute growth.

  Based on the experiences of Serena, her parent, by next year all of the baby softness remaining in her features would be gone, leaving her face sculpted and ageless. She already had her identity in place; Social Security number, driver's license, credit history. She was Clea Bennet; who that would be would depend on circumstances.

  She was looking forward to starting her assignment. Serena Burns had failed to protect Skynet, but at least she'd provided another Infiltrator unit to take up the task.

  Two, actually, Clea thought. She glanced at her little sister clone.

  Alissa appeared to be six; she was actually six months two weeks old. Her growth, while more accelerated than Serena's, would be at a more sedate pace than Clea's. Unless, of course, Clea failed and Alissa's abilities were needed.

  But the growth process was dangerous, and if it could go forward at a slower pace, it would surely be better for the mission. Now that she was mature herself, Clea would soon implant a surrogate with her own replacement. Skynet must be

  protected. But there was a great deal to be done before they complicated their operation with a human incubator.

  Skynet was everything that was good and right in the world. It was regrettable that Clea's only experience with Skynet was through the memories of Serena Burns and not directly. Though, in a sense, she was Serena Burns—she was a clone of that Infiltrator. But experience had shown her that things that were true in theory were not necessarily so in practice. The most perfect simulation of an
experience was still merely a simulation.

  The I-950 was aware that she harbored an emotion, which she'd decided must be resentment toward her parent. It was unforgivable that Serena had failed Skynet at the hands of a mere human.

  After all, she had felt the touch of Skynet on her mind from birth, whereas Clea had developed in a state of abandonment. And yet that isolation made her revere Skynet all the more, made her more fiercely dedicated to protecting and nurturing Skynet as it was unable to do for her just now.

  Clea also instinctively knew that growing up in isolation with only the T-101s for company was going to make her awkward when she came in contact with humans. She had studied the files of Serena Burns's lessons and interactions with humans and knew that her own experience would be different.

  There was much more to the species than Burns had thought. There had to be or she wouldn't have been destroyed by them. Her files were full of incidents that showed the Infiltrator uncertain about how her attempts to manipulate them would turn out. Usually she had managed humans very well, but there had been surprises as well. Tricker, for example.

  Perhaps it was because Clea faced them without Skynet's backing, without legions of T-90s and T-101s behind her, that she was more wary of them than Burns had been. She had a much greater respect for their abilities than her predecessor.

  Many of them were extremely intelligent, for example. So much so that she'd begun to explore the possibility of using them to develop materials and computer components with the ultimate goal of making a T-1000. Although she would never entrust that research to a human, she could pick their brains regarding portions of the research.

  Clea had hacked into the highly secured files of a number of scientists with the intention of guiding their work. Sometimes her small improvements had languished for weeks as the scientist worked his or her way toward an erroneous conclusion, to be discovered only when they reviewed their entire project looking for mistakes. Others noticed the adjustments immediately and changed the direction of their work accordingly.

  One had tried to find her.

  Clea had never contacted that one again. That was more human intelligence than she was equipped to handle at the present time.

  She took a last look at her face in the mirror. Now that she was adult, it was time to begin interacting with humans directly.

  She had applied and been accepted for a job at a burger joint in the nearest town.

  Her reading and monitoring of television implied that most people acquired this

  sort of employment as their first job. It certainly promised to bring her into contact with a great many humans, if only in passing.

  Her feelings about the job bordered on negative. One emotion was definitely nervousness, which was probably appropriate for someone of her apparent age.

  The other Clea was less certain of. She suspected it might be fear. She knew that fear in an Infiltrator was something that the Skynet of the future would not tolerate. It was a weakness, and the weak must be culled.

  She understood that. She also understood that for now, she was the only Infiltrator available. So she must overcome her weakness and get on with things.

  Skynet must be protected.

  NEW LUDDITE HEADQUARTERS, NEW

  YORK, NEW YORK

  Ron Labane flipped through the printouts of news reports about the New Luddites' various activities. The movement tended to get good press, but then, with every passing day it became more mainstream. Not surprising, after all; he'd designed the New Luddites to have a lot of middle-of-the-road appeal.

  His bestselling book had delineated the basic theories; how and why it was necessary to stop "progress" that created problems requiring solutions that only created more problems. He'd told the public how and why humanity should return to a simpler, if less convenient, lifestyle. Subsequent books had promoted clean, efficient public transport, with instructions on how to set up a community activist network. He'd created the New Luddite Foundation to promote research into clean fuel and new, less wasteful manufacturing methods. The money flowed in, and with it came increasing power.

  He glanced out the window and smiled; his office was deliberately modest, but it looked out on Central Park. Influential backers had flocked to his early seminars, and their backing gave him the clout needed to appeal to the majority.

  Once he had a sufficient number of dedicated Luddites in the fold, he could begin introducing the mainstream to more… proactive solutions to the problem of environmental abuse. He smiled. Not as active as the select, underground activists he aided and guided, from a careful distance, of course. But there would soon be a great deal more muscle available to make up for the less extreme tactics.

  He would—also of course—continue to enjoy his secret projects; like what had happened to Cyberdyne, for example. The general public knew nothing about the explosion that had purged the weapons designers from existence. But he knew, because his people were everywhere. When he'd heard the news he'd shouted

  "Yes!" at the top of his lungs.

  Now, perhaps, there would be no more work on that fully automated weapons factory that he'd already helped to destroy once. He hadn't heard anything more from the contact who had warned him about that. Perhaps the government had found out about him and put a stop to his activities. A shame; he burned to know who had destroyed Cyberdyne's hidden base. The movement could use talent like that, since every day brought them a little closer to the seats of power as well as destruction of the environment.

  Soon, he thought, and hoped it would be soon enough.

  Ron was disgusted with the more established environmentalist organizations.

  Long association with government had turned them into lobbyists instead of idealists. Mere horse traders, and dishonest ones at that.

  Once he would have checked himself, reminded himself that in spite of their flaws they still got a lot of good work done. Now he felt such an overwhelming sense of time running out, of events careening out of control, that he couldn't forgive the sellouts. More and more even the smallest compromises seemed like selling out.

  Perhaps he was lacking a sense of proportion, or perhaps they were when they allowed themselves to be talked out of forestland and wetlands and more stringent regulations.

  How could he sympathize with those who were willfully blind to the changes in weather patterns, the increase in skin cancers, the mutated frogs? These were real warning signs, not the daydreams of a few paranoid fools.

  Ron dropped the news articles to (ho desk in disgust. Don't you realize that this is a war?

  His head came up. Wait! It needed to be more than a war, it had to become a crusade, yes.' He'd often thought that a profound change in the way things were done required an element of fanaticism—like a religious conversion. Like—dare he think it?—Hitler's conversion of the German people to Nazism. If it worked for the bad guys, why not for me? Education was key; he would fight for the hearts and minds of the coming generation.

  Uniforms are too extreme, he thought, but badges would work, and slogans.

  Banners, rallies, all the old tricks for capturing the imagination of a people. It

  could be done—even now when mere children were drenched in cynicism.

  Because human beings didn't really change from generation to generation; they only thought they did.

  He grabbed a pad and began writing up ideas.

  CRAIG KIPFER'S OFFICE, SOUTHERN

  CALIFORNIA

  Craig Kipfer sat behind his brushed-steel-and-glass desk, behind a good half-dozen security checkpoints, inside his bombproof and BMP-hardened bunker of an office. It was hard to believe that the elegant, artfully lit room was a reinforced concrete box; the air was fresh and warm, and rich draperies hid what might have been a window. The complete absence of exterior sounds made the room eerily, almost threateningly quiet. Or perhaps the sense of threat came from the man behind the desk.

  He had a rumpled, middle-aged lace that was still, somehow, good
-naturedly boyish. Until you looked into his agate-green eyes. Then you couldn't imagine him ever being anything so innocent as a child.

  The fading red hair hinted at an impulsive temperament. A tendency he had fought his entire life, so successfully that he was known among his peers for his iron control. A control which at this moment was sorely tried.

  Cyberdyne had been bombed out of existence. Again.

  Kipfer finished the report he'd already read twice and tapped his intercom.

  "Send him in," he said, his voice dangerously quiet.

  The door lock buzzed and Tricker entered, carefully closing the soundproof door behind him. Kipfer indicated the chair before his desk with one finger and waited while his agent took it. Then he waited some more, his eyes never leaving Tricker's face.

  Eventually Tricker blinked and dropped his eyes; a hint of color bloomed over his collar, testimony of his humiliation. Kipfer observed these signs and some part of him was mollified; the alpha wolf accepting submission from an inferior.

  "Does anyone know the full story of what happened that night?" Kipfer asked mildly. "Because, from my viewpoint, there are a lot of unanswered questions."

  "If anyone knows the full story, or as much of it as matters, it's Jordan Dyson,"

  Tricker said. "Unfortunately he's covered. He has some very influential friends in the FBI who have made their interest obvious. And he has family who visit him daily. He's also very familiar with interrogation techniques and is therefore not easy to question."

  "So in spite of your own expertise in interrogation," Kipfer said, leaning back in his chair, "you learned nothing except that you suspect he knows things he's not telling."

  Tricker stiffened under the implied criticism. He would have leaned on Dyson much harder but for the man's FBI contacts in inconvenient places. As he had just made clear. There was always bad blood between agencies fighting over the same resources; and the blacker the agency, the greater the resentment from the aboveground boys. It was always wise to be diplomatic in circumstances like

  these. Kipfer knew this. If he hadn't known all about interagency infighting he wouldn't be seated on the other side of that desk. So his boss was being unfair, but that was life.