c.5

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Ten asked.

Mark shrugged. “I figured if Castillo was mad enough at me, he’d be diverted from his very sensible desire to murder Paul Keeley.”

They moved along the concrete-lined corridor that linked John’s conference room to other portions of his command center. They lagged behind the others who’d been in that conference. A few steps ahead, Mike glanced back to give her son a “What the hell did you think you were doing?” scowl.

“Is Keeley your friend?”

Mark shook his head. “No. Once upon a time, we had a few good discussions about pop culture. But he’s kind of hard to like—or even to get to know. Still, I hate seeing a useful resource get thrown away because someone in charge isn’t thinking clearly. Plus, the whole firing-squad aspect of Castillo’s outlook doesn’t appeal to me.”

“Speaking of that, you need to report to the kitchen. Tell them you’re there for six hours of KP duty. While you’re doing that, you can reflect on the notion of ‘thinking clearly.’”

Mark winced and did not reply, but offered a salute and turned off into the first side corridor.

*   *   *

Paul woke, unhappily aware that he was facing another day of entering actuarial tables into a computer spreadsheet. He hated his job.

Then he opened his eyes and saw the ceiling. It had once been an indifferent tan in color, but in the first few months after Judgment Day, survivors hunkering down in this bunker had used this small room for cooking fires, trusting its ventilation shaft to carry hot air and smoke away. The shaft had done so with only partial success, and smoke had stained the ceiling in irregular patches. Now it was a dark tan at some points, a dirt-brown in others, and peeling in most places.

The sight jolted Paul. Suddenly the temp job and its concerns were gone. That was all a lie. He was back at Home Plate, where his job used to be to evaluate garbage to see whether it could be restored to functionality for the Resistance.

But now he had no job, and there was a thing in his head, a mechanical cancer placed there by Skynet. He didn’t know what it was for or what it could do to him. For now, it simply meant that he was no longer what he used to be, no longer completely human, and in a civilization where machines were used but not to be trusted, Paul Keeley had himself apparently entered the category of “machine.”

He rose and looked around. They hadn’t put him back in his original quarters, of course. Those had been reassigned for a year. Now he was in a small room that was all his, at least for the time being. His meager store of possessions—the clothes he’d brought from the medical center, his belt pouch—fit easily within an ancient, crumbling plastic storage box somebody had apparently donated to him.

All his possessions from before were gone. His computer, scratch-built from the few undamaged components found in literally dozens of prewar machines. His videotape player, found intact in the back room of a plundered supermarket. Books. Audiotapes. Videotapes. Videodiscs. Posters. Clothes. Knives. He supposed his main weapon, a .30–06 hunting rifle he’d carried on his few field missions, had been destroyed when he was captured.

Paul’s last remaining relative, his father Will, had died when Paul was eleven. A mechanic who had scrupulously trained Paul in his profession, the man had been killed during an assault robot attack on a Sacramento garage where the Resistance was attempting to restore vehicles for their own use. Neither he nor anyone else remained to inherit Paul’s possessions, so they had had doubtless been distributed among the population of Home Plate. It was all irretrievable. All he had was a few changes of clothes, most of them unsuited to the demanding life of a Resistance fighter and made in the first place for a man who really didn’t exist.

He dressed in the least out-of-place of the garments, jeans and a short-sleeved blue shirt with snap closures, and left his room to report for work.

That meant navigating along corridors—some of them converted from drainage systems, some bored crudely through the earth by the Resistance engineers after J-Day. Many of these corridors were piled so high with stacks of equipment or supplies that passage through them meant squeezing through gaps as small as eighteen inches wide, or cluttered with the bedrolls and personal possessions of inhabitants. Eventually he reached the civilian operations center, a corridor intersection that had been crudely widened out into a sort of lobby, its ceiling propped up by concrete pillars. It had not changed much in the last year; dominating it was the oversized desk he remembered. Once an information kiosk from a shopping center, it had been laboriously dragged down to this place by someone with a sense of humor. Behind the desk was Harve Pogue, Director of Labor.

Pogue was a large white man, over six and a half feet in height, with a lean body that seemed knobby at the joints and a bald head that was the result of pragmatism and shaving rather than male pattern baldness. An Iowa farmer, he’d been vacationing in Los Angeles when the bombs fell and had been one of the lucky few to find his way into a shelter. His wife and one of his daughters had also survived. It was said that he’d been tremendously overweight at the time, more than 150 kilos, but the subsequent decades had melted the extra weight from his frame. Also as a gesture to practicality, he seldom wore anything but overalls.

He had two on-duty expressions, which the labor force of Home Plate referred to as Get to Work and Stop Wasting My Time. Now, as Paul approached, he looked up from the forty-year-old news magazine he delicately held in his oversized hands and put on his Stop Wasting My Time face.

Paul cleared his throat. “Keeley, reporting for work.”

“You’re not in my department.” Harve returned his attention to the magazine. Paul glanced at the cover. Its cover story was a retrospective of the life of ex-President Richard Nixon.

“Uh, well, technically, I am,” Paul said. “My old post was terminated when they concluded I was dead. That puts me back in the common labor pool until I’m reassigned by R&D.”

Harve looked up again and the Stop Wasting My Time expression hardened into something worse, something like Take A Big Step Back Before I Come Over This Desktop At You. “Did you say ‘common labor’?”

Paul felt desperation rise inside him. It was the same desperation he normally felt when confronted with any social situation he wasn’t prepared for. Fortunately, those situations, in a society as regimented as that of the Resistance, tended to be rare. “I meant ‘common’ in the sense of ‘widespread.’”

“Oh. You didn’t mean ‘unskilled.’ You didn’t mean ‘beneath me, except when I have nothing else to do.’”

At a loss for words, Paul shook his head. This was wrong. There was always work to be done at Home Plate.

“Well, good.” Harve seemed to relax just a little and returned his attention to the magazine. “I’ve got nothing for you. I think you’re on sick leave.”

“I’m not sick.”

Harve didn’t reply.

I’m not sick. I just have a potential monster installed in my head.

Paul stood there an awkward few moments, then turned and headed back the way he’d come. At his first opportunity, once he’d rounded a corner and was out of sight of Harve, he put his back to the wall and slid to sit down on the concrete floor. He was in plain sight of the workers manning tables along this corridor—though they were engaged in the maintenance of handguns and submachine guns, cleaning and repairing the weapons, he could feel their eyes on him. But he didn’t care.

He felt sick to his stomach. He was shaking and could not stop.

They didn’t want him. He was tainted by his association with Skynet, with the T-X. Tainted by the unknown quantity that the device implanted in his skull represented.

Dr. Lake, the woman who’d given him the bad news about the implant, who’d clipped the antenna portion of the device and withdrawn it, a yard of hair-thin metal, from his skin yesterday afternoon, had hinted that something like this might happen. “They’re going to call you the T-X’s ‘boy-toy,’” she’d said, her tone friendly but mocking. “Be ready for it. So, did you ever sleep with her?”

“No,” he’d answered, appalled. But he’d been more appalled by the realization that he wouldn’t necessarily have remembered if he had. He had no idea whether the T-X was equipped for such an act.

He remained leaning back against the wall, his eyes closed, until he got his stomach under control, until the shakes subsided. Then he rose.

It was time to go back to his room. He’d just wait there until they called him to duty. He’d come out for meals and to go to the bathroom. That was it.

He took two steps back toward his room and froze in place. No, it’s not right. What happened to him wasn’t his fault, and the brass agreed that he hadn’t betrayed the Resistance.

They didn’t have the right to exile him.

He turned and walked along the corridor where he’d taken momentary refuge until he reached the table where the section boss worked. He recognized her from his life before. Her name was Janet, she was about forty, and she’d always responded with unsmiling thanks when he’d provided her with information about a prewar weapon she hadn’t seen before. “Hi,” he said. “I’m the T-X’s boy-toy. Got any work for me?” He noticed there was an edge of bitterness to his voice.

Silent, Janet shook her head.

“Thanks.” He continued down the hall.

His heart was pounding. He knew why. He had no context for that sort of encounter. He was doing something outside his place.

But he had no place anymore. So everything he did would probably feel the same way.

He peered into the first door beyond the weapon maintenance crew. Inside that room were home computers, eight or more, many of them cabled together in a network. Paul recognized the setup; he’d help put it together. It was a representative sampling of pre-J-Day machines with a broad range of operating systems and was set up to do initial testing on data storage, such as discs and CDs, found in the field.

Paul turned to the two men huddled behind the monitor of a tower-configuration machine. “Hi,” he said. “I’m the T-X’s boy-toy.” This time he managed to keep bitterness from his tone. “Need any help?”

The two computer operators, dark-haired men barely out of their teens, looked at one another and then at him. The first of them kept his expression professionally neutral; the second actually looked worried, perhaps even frightened.

The first operator shook his head. “Thanks anyway.”

“Sure.” Paul continued onward. He was actually feeling a little better.

He stuck his head in the next door. Within that room, a young woman, at least seven months pregnant, her short curly hair a dirty blonde, sat in an ancient school-style chair facing toward Paul’s right.

“Hi,” Paul said. “I’m—”

Then he saw what the woman faced. There were a dozen or so children in the room, some seated on old chairs, the others on newer, cruder benches. The oldest of them looked to be about seven years of age.

“Paul,” he finished. “Need any help?”

The woman looked him over, uncertain. She appeared to be even more weary than the average Home Plate worker—no surprise, at her stage of pregnancy. Finally she said, “Do you know how to read?”

“I am a spectacular reader. I can read while walking, while chewing gum, even while humming.” His answer was oddly glib, even to his own ears. Paul wondered if all those months talking to the Terminatrix had taught him something about conversation.

“We’re doing alphabet drills and then story time,” the woman said. She rose unsteadily to her feet. Her face paled just a bit as she did so. “I need to…”

Paul suspected that she intended to say “take a nap” or “go throw up,” but as she paused to sort out her words, he said, “Take a break. Sure. I’ll see if I can keep ’em busy until you get back.”

She drifted out past him, as unsteady as an airship caught in wind gusts. “Thanks. I’m Doreen.”

“Nice to meet you, Doreen.” He moved into the woman’s chair, but did not sit; built for teenagers at best, and barely large enough for the woman, it would make him look ridiculous if he sat. “Okay,” he said as the first panicked thought touched him: Oh, my God, I’m teaching school “Who knows his ABCs?”

*   *   *

“Ginger and Ripper were dogs,” Paul said. “Ginger was orange, and Ripper was black, and they went with their mistress on all her adventures, and they protected her from all harm.”

“I know them,” Adrienne squealed. She was five, with long blonde hair and brown eyes, and in the last couple of days Paul had learned that she was Doreen’s oldest child. She was also the best reader of the class. “I’ve petted them.”

“Me too,” Paul said. “Shhh. They would sometimes go out in the ruins and look for things, and sometimes they’d go farther away, to where the mountains rose up and there were long stands of trees. Anyone know what long stands of trees are called?”

Several hands rose, but Brandon, the dark-haired seven-year-old, jumped the gun: “Forests.”

“Forests is right. Or woods. But next time, wait until I call on you. So when they weren’t protecting their mistress, Ginger and Ripper sometimes got to play, running among the trees and nipping at one another. But they never barked. Anyone know why?”

This time twelve sets of hands stayed down; some of the children held their hands rigidly in place or tucked them under their thighs, making sure it was absolutely obvious that they wouldn’t be raising their hands.

Finally one did, Adrienne again. “Because they were taught not to?”

“Very good! But that’s only part of the answer. They were taught not to because barking could give away their location when they’re Above. Only the dogs smart enough to learn this get to be Above dogs. And when they do bark, they have different barks for different things. So on this day, as they were playing away from camp, they stopped and listened because they heard something, a ching-ching-ching noise coming their way…”

The children froze, some of them wide-eyed. Even at their age, they knew the ching-ching-ching sound had to be a robot or Terminator. But Brandon looked over at the doorway and several of the others followed suit.

Paul did, too. And in the doorway were Ginger and Ripper, the real ones. Ripper sat, yawning, while Ginger stood there, slowly wagging her tail. And beside them, leaning against the door jamb, was Kyla. Her expression was dubious.

“Boys and girls, let me introduce you to the real Ginger and Ripper. And this is their mistress, Kyla Connor. Kyla, you make a great show-and-tell.”

“Hi,” Brandon said.

Kyla gave him a smile. “Hi.” Then she turned her attention to Paul. “A word with you?”

He rose and moved to her. “I’m in trouble now,” he stage-whispered to the kids, offering them a caricatured expression of fear, and several of them laughed.

And the clowning successfully covered for the unease he felt. If his superiors were going to assign him work, they wouldn’t send someone as important—someone who had very specialized security functions—as Kyla to bring him the news.

At the door, Kyla lowered her voice so the kids would not hear. “You’re needed in the inner council’s vehicle depot for a conference. Right now.”

“I don’t even know where that is. It’s topside, right?”

“Nearly. I’ll show you.”

“I shouldn’t leave the kids alone—”

“The other teacher, what’s-her-name, the very pregnant one, told me where you were. She’s wrapping up what she’s doing and will be here to take over in a minute.”

“Right.” Paul stuck his head back in the door. “Kids, I have to go. Don’t anyone leave the room. Mrs. Edwards will be back in a minute.”

A barrage of “Awww” protests, from those who wanted to hear the rest of his story, followed them as they headed down the corridor.

Kyla shook her head. “Ginger and Ripper stories, huh?”

“Well, today’s lesson was supposed to be about the use of dogs. What they do for us, the kind of training they get, all that sort of stuff.” Paul shrugged. “I just sort of thought I’d personalize it a little.”

“Not a bad idea, I guess. How does the story end?”

“Happily. They knock a beat-up old T-600 into a river. It gets swept over the falls, is smashed to pieces on the rocks below, and rusts.”

Kyla snorted, then leaned over to scratch the ruff of Ginger’s neck. “Smart doggie.”

Ginger cocked an eyebrow at her.

*   *   *

The Los Angeles River had long been anything but. It was an endless stretch of parched concrete, a broad incision across the old city. In the months after Judgment Day, as the Resistance truly began to coalesce, a far-sighted civil engineer named Shawna Norris had led crews that caused authentic-looking landfalls at strategic locations along the storm-drain system, had opened up sections that had been blocked off by genuine collapses, and had gradually transformed dozens of portions of the old system into widely separated, well-hidden hiding-holes. Bone cancer had claimed Shawna Norris’s life only a few years after Judgment Day, as it did with so many people who worked in the radiation-drenched blast zones of Los Angeles, but she was memorialized in the storm-drain habitat that bore her name.

And it was in Norris Compound that the vehicle depot used by John Connor’s advisory staff was located. The depot had once been a convergence of several storm drains, each large enough to accommodate an Army truck. Now it held two such trucks, John Connor’s personal Humvee, a tanker truck painted to look from a sufficient distance like a wreck, a dune buggy, two Jeeps nearly a century old, various pickup trucks and SUVs, and a pair of motorcycles.

Arriving with the escort of two dogs and a teenage sniper, Paul looked wistfully at the motorcycles. He’d had one, up until his capture and presumed death. He’d meticulously built it over a span of years, from parts scavenged under dangerous circumstances from junkyards and ruined repair shops, and had converted it to run on methane, which he could trade for far more easily than he could for rare and precious gasoline or for a precious fuel-cell engine that would better serve elsewhere. He suspected that his cycle had been destroyed by the missile attack that was supposed to have claimed his life.

The depot was also occupied by people—two dozen at least. Some were mechanics, doing hurried maintenance on the Humvee, both of the dune buggies, one of the SUVs, and one of the two-and-a-half-ton trucks. The Hell-Hounds were among those in the chamber, Glitch standing with them, apparently fully repaired and restored. Nearby were several of the senior advisers and members of the Scalpers, another unit in charge of protecting John Connor and carrying out special missions. The concrete walls echoed hollowly with conversation.

Paul whistled. Whatever was going on here, it was a major operation—the senior staff didn’t commit so many precious vehicular resources to scouting operations.

As Paul and Kyla reached the Hell-Hounds, Ten Zimmerman whistled. A few yards away, John Connor straightened from under the hood of the Humvee. “Is that everyone?” John asked.

Ten nodded. “Everyone’s here.”

“Good.” John stepped back from the vehicle’s engine compartment and wiped his hands on a grease-streaked blue rag. “All right, before we get started, I have some good news. Guitar Compound’s factory is coming on-line. We’ve received an initial shipment of plasma rifle battery packs, and they’ve tested fine. That’s why I’ve asked you to bring your full spread of weapons—we’ve got enough juice again to fry some machines.”

That yielded shouts of approval and applause. Even Paul joined in. As the Resistance’s supply of rifle batteries had dwindled over the last several months, front-line fighters and special operatives had been forced to rely increasingly on older technologies. Most slug-throwers, Kyla’s rifle excepted, were insufficient to do real damage to assault robots, and man-pack missiles such as rocket-propelled grenades were too bulky for anyone to carry a good supply. This news promised a return to more aggressive field operations, more successful confrontations with the machines.

“When we’re done here, talk to our quartermaster to get your share,” John said. “Now, some of you know what’s going on here. You can take a nap or do one more obsessive-compulsive weapons check. The rest of you, listen up. Or, rather, listen to Kate, since this operation is her plan.”

Leaning against the Army truck, Kate offered her husband a mock scowl. “Only the good parts. The really foolish parts are your contribution.”

Paul tried to keep from gaping. Under every other circumstance in which he’d had the opportunity to see John Connor and Kate Brewster, they’d been focused, steely-eyed leaders brimming with confidence. Here, in the presence of their bodyguard details and other special operatives, they seemed looser, more humorous, less fiery. It was a strange change.

John didn’t reply to his wife’s dig. He just gestured for her to continue.

With a sigh, Kate straightened and began. “There’s a T-X Terminator out there. Very few of us have seen one. Everyone who has done so and lived is now in this chamber, in fact. The T-X has some of the chameleon abilities of the T-1000—as far as simulating human beings is concerned, it has all the disguise potential of the T-1000—and it’s a lot more destructive.

“We think it’s been prepared for a time jump to eliminate John in the past. Unlike our previous experiences with Skynet’s time-related operations, we don’t think we can head it off when it gets there. This means we can’t counter its plans. So we’re going to have to force Skynet’s hand and convince Skynet to send it after John in the here and now.”

That caused some muttering.

“This operation is in two parts,” Kate continued. “The bait portion and the hook portion. The bait portion is to be conducted by the Scalpers. They’ll be traveling to Clover Compound in Colorado.”

Someone whistled. Clover Compound was a tough place. It was the Resistance habitat situated closest to the Navajo Mountain Strategic Region. At the heart of the region, built deep beneath the earth, was Navajo Mountain, the center of Skynet activities. The mortality rate among the inhabitants of Clover Compound, even among couriers and supply-runners visiting the region, was high.

“The reason,” John said, “is because we think Clover has been compromised. We recently did some looking for any compound or habitat that had a higher-than-statistically-likely failure rate, and Clover was at the very top at the list, even allowing for its proximity to Skynet. We have no reason to suspect incompetence or deliberate collaboration with the enemy. To us, this means there’s a security leak.”

“And before we close that leak,” Kate continued, “we’re going to use it. At Clover the Scalpers will let it be known that John is looking for a specific woman and that this woman is going to be brought into John’s presence the instant she’s found. Our belief is that Skynet can’t pass up this opportunity to kill John, that it will dispatch the T-X to impersonate the woman. The Scalpers will have to conduct her into John’s presence.”

Paul saw a small group of the soldiers, standing together, exchange unhappy glances. A woman with long hair put two fingers to her temple, as though they were the barrel of a handgun, and mimed pulling the trigger. Paul supposed they were the Scalpers. He wondered what had happened to Crazy Pete and Warthog, the senior members of the Scalpers, the only ones whose faces he knew.

“In the meantime,” John said, “Kate and I are going to be accompanying the Hell-Hounds and a technical crew to a National Guard armory abandoned on Judgment Day. We have reason to believe that this armory is a front for a materiel cache not listed with the pre-J-Day military records, that its complement of vehicles and weapons may be intact. The tech crew will get as many of the vehicles working as is feasible and set them and the arms and munitions stores up for transport … and help rig the armory, or some site near it, as a trap to capture the T-X.”

Silence fell on his last words. Paul looked among the faces present. Some of the technicians and most of the Scalpers were registering surprise. The advisers and Hell-Hounds were not.

“Excuse me, sir.” That was the Asian-American man standing with the Scalpers. “You did say capture.”

John nodded. “That’s the ‘hook’ portion of the mission. We capture the T-X. We need this Terminator, people. If we can capture it intact, reprogram it as we have with the few Terminators we have serving the Resistance, we could achieve a quantum jump in our understanding of Skynet technology, particularly its high-end weapons systems, nanotechnological control systems, and liquid-metal manipulation. Don’t forget that a single infiltration of a T-800 manufacturing plant gave us the information we need to begin cloning animal tissues, as Skynet does to create T-800 skin, and that’s responsible for the increased amount of meat we’ve been receiving in our diets for the last few months. Things we learn from the T-X could be just as important—or more important. It’s an opportunity we can’t let slip by.” He cleared his throat. “If I didn’t think it was that critical, Kate and I wouldn’t be accompanying the Hell-Hounds to act as bait.”

“We begin to stage our exit in ten minutes,” Kate said. “That’s when the advance vehicles depart. Ten minutes later, the remaining vehicles leave. So make your final checks, get your gear loaded on your assigned vehicles.” She turned away from those she addressed, clear sign that the briefing was done, and marched over to John’s side.

A suspicion began to whirl around in Paul’s mind, but he decided to keep it to himself, at least until he could better make out what it meant. He turned to Ten. “Uh, I don’t have any gear to load.”

“Sure you do.” Ten glanced over at the unit’s T-850. “Glitch.”

The Terminator shucked a backpack and shoved it to Paul. It connected with Paul’s torso with enough force to send him staggering back a step. “Clothes,” Glitch said, in the approximately German accent that seemed to come standard with the programming of all the old T-801s. “Minimal camping gear. Cold weather gear. Preserved food supplies. First-aid gear.”

Paul took the pack and swung its straps over one shoulder. “Weapons?”

“Camp knife,” the Terminator said.

“No firearms to spare, sorry,” Ten said. “You’re in the back of the big truck.”

“Thanks.” Paul lugged his pack to the rear of the truck and clambered up. The forward portion of the bed was heavily packed with crates, all of them lashed down with old dubious-looking hemp ropes. Paul sat down on the left side, adjacent to the crates, and set his pack down beside him, between him and anyone who might sit nearby.

Ten’s words had transformed his suspicion from mere paranoia to a real likelihood.

They were going to kill him.

His few days back in Home Plate had made it clear to him just how much things had changed. He’d always known that he wasn’t well liked, and as word of the circumstances of his incarceration in San Diego had spread, someone had even nicknamed him Sleeps-With-Toasters.

But to send him into the field without a firearm, without an RPG? It meant that he wasn’t being allowed to contribute to the survival of the people he accompanied. He wasn’t trusted. He wasn’t liked well enough for anyone to vouch for him.

He wondered if he ever had been. Making friends had always seemed next to impossible, a mysterious art whose practitioners were never willing to let him in on the secret.

He thought he’d had something those few days he was teaching the children. But that seemed somehow easy. Maybe it was because they weren’t his social equals. He wasn’t facing his peers, so that part of him that clamped up tight whenever he tried to talk to another adult didn’t constrain him.

The bed of the truck creaked and rocked slightly as more people boarded. Glitch sat directly opposite Paul, staring at him. Technicians boarded next, one of them sitting next to Paul; Paul didn’t glance up. Last aboard were Earl and Mark of the Hell-Hounds; they hauled the tailgate up and dogged it in place.

“How’s it going, Keeley?” That was the man who’d sat next to Paul.

Paul finally glanced up. His next-seat neighbor was Tom Carter, a lean, aging Resistance technician. Though only a lieutenant in the armed forces, Tom possessed influence disproportionate to his rank; he did much of the restoration, upgrading, and reprogramming of Terminators captured by the Resistance and would probably land on John Connor’s advisory board the instant he decided he didn’t want to do fieldwork anymore. Paul had reported to him on a weekly basis for the two years before Paul’s capture. But Tom had never stopped in to see how Paul was faring after his return from the San Diego hospital.

How’s it going? Once, Paul would have said, “Fine, just fine.” It’s what he always said. It was an answer that discouraged further questions, further conversation. It was—and had always been—a convenient lie.

Well, he had no interest in conveniencing other people, especially if they were going to kill him soon.

“Not so good,” he said and turned away.

The truck’s engine whined for several long moments, then caught and held with a not-too-unhealthy rattle. Moments later, they were in motion.