c.11

The Scalpers gathered at the main entrance, huddled together by their dune buggies, away from the entrance guards and the vehicle mechanics, who spoke in hushed tones about the day’s events.

To Sato, the situation seemed a little tense and emotional, but did not speak to him of danger. No one was shooting angry stares their way. There was curiosity, there was finger-pointing … there was no desire for vengeance that he could see. On the other side of the chamber, Murphy stood in a gathering of subordinates, issuing orders to each in turn, dispatching them on various errands. He was inarguably in charge now.

Sato shook his head. It was one of the advantages of dealing with control freaks like Mears, he decided. They did run tight organizations and left behind very clear lines of control.

“How’s your head?” he asked Jenna.

She shook her head, a vigorous gesture. “Hard Mediterranean skull, like they’ve been making for millions of years.”

“Too sturdy for anything to penetrate,” Nix said.

She gave him a half-amused look that promised payback. “J. L. needs to say goodbye to Lana.”

“I did,” J. L. said. “I told her she ought to put in for a transfer to Home Plate or somewhere. I keep thinking they may give her trouble here because she was the boss’s woman, a nonworker.”

“Did you apologize to her?” Jenna asked.

J. L. looked offended. “What for?”

“For saying that she was dumb as a box of hair.”

“I didn’t say it to her.”

“Yeah, but you were thinking it every moment you were with her. Up until the point that she was smart enough to save our butts in the mess hall.”

His sigh signaled defeat. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“You won’t have the opportunity this time,” Sato said. “Just as soon as we’ve had our first meeting with the she-toaster from hell, we jump in the buggies and clear out. We can’t let her be here long enough to pick up the news about Mears’s death or anything else.”

Jenna turned her attention to the far side of the chamber, to the huge concrete door that remained resolutely shut. “Are they going to bring her in here?”

“Uh-huh.” Sato checked his watch. Arrival could be in two minutes or twenty. “And remember, we’re the only ones here, Murphy included, who know what she is. Anyone not up to the task of driving hundreds of miles with a Terminator in your backseat?”

Jenna the Greek offered a little shudder, but no one spoke up.

“Okay,” Sato said. “Just remember, this is a life-or-death deception. And remember that we have no idea of the extent of her sensors and that she might be able to plant remotes, microphones, something like that, to spy on us even when she’s off at a distance.

“What this means is that, starting the first moment we meet the girl, we’re doing live theater. And we have to remain in character from that point until the team down south bags her. No private communications by whispered word, written note, or glance. If she’s in one buggy and you’re in the other, don’t talk about her being a T-X. We have to assume that she’s listening to us at every point and that Skynet has a spy satellite trained on us for every mile. Is anyone not up to the job?”

No one spoke. Everyone looked as though he wanted to.

“Good.” He clapped his sniper on the back. “Smart, I have a special assignment for you. For the next couple of days, at least until she makes it clear she wants you to quit, I want you to flirt with Gwendolyn.”

Smart blinked at him. “Sir, I mean this with all respect. Are you out of your mind?”

“Nope. Think about it. Four red-blooded Resistance men traveling in the company of a good-looking young woman who hasn’t already told them all to go to hell. Somebody would hit on her. Correct?”

Smart looked more than a little uncomfortable. “Correct. But not me.”

“Yes, you. I’m the team leader and authority figure, I can’t do it. J. L. is dreamy-eyed over another girl right now; I doubt he could pull it off.”

The youngest member of the team looked offended. “Hey.”

“And Nix, well, being Nix, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, even from a Terminator. I need someone who’s going to be stiff, self-conscious, and easily put off—and that’s you.”

Smart sighed. “Is this the kind of praise you put in our performance reviews?” Then a new thought crossed his mind. “Oh, my God. What if I make a pass at her and she accepts?”

Sato considered it, then laughed. “Improvise.”

Jenna frowned. “Lieutenant, wait; this thing is going to fall apart at the start. They’ll bring her in here, the dogs will go crazy, she’ll know her cover is blown, and there’ll be bodies everywhere. How do we keep that from happening?”

“We don’t,” Sato said. “We don’t have to. Skynet would never have sent her to be picked up and brought in to a compound for this deception if it weren’t sure she could pass for human … even to the dogs. If that were going to be a problem, she would have found some other way to hook up with the Resistance, such as meeting us out on the road. Of course, the idea that she could fool dogs is bad news in and of itself. Good thing Skynet can’t manufacture T-Xs at any sort of quick rate.”

There was a flurry of motion among workers in the entry chamber. Two security men trotted to their station against one wall to pick up their assault rifles, to reassure the dogs waiting there. A woman in the same uniform ducked into a side door, beyond which, Sato now knew, was installed the equipment that allowed monitoring of exterior cameras, opening and closing of the armored main door. Murphy issued final orders and waved goodbye to Sato, then departed with his final group of subordinates. Now the chamber was empty of people except the Scalpers and essential security personnel.

Moments later, the far wall swung open, almost silent, on its pivot. A group of three people entered on foot. Two, a man and a woman, were in the dark blue uniforms of Clover Compound and carrying full outdoor kit and rifles. The third, wrapped in a blanket that concealed everything but her face and the shapeless dark green pants she wore, was Gwendolyn Drew.

Sato concentrated on keeping his face still, his emotions buried well below the surface, but reality itself felt as though it were slipping away from him. He knew the woman was fiction, but here she was in the flesh. Well, in the artificial, made-of-liquid-metal flesh.

The woman looked uncertain, confused, and raised a hand against the blare of lights from the chamber’s ceiling. The security men approached with the dogs, and Sato could hear them tell her to extend her hands. She did.

Both dogs sniffed at her. One stepped back and wagged its tail. The other looked up at its handler and whined uncertainly. Neither barked. That was the acid test.

The security men relaxed, leading the dogs back to their ready position, and Sato approached. “Gwendolyn?”

Her attention snapped to him. She continued to look uncertain and gathered the blanket more tightly around her. “Uh-huh,” she said.

“I’m Christopher Sato, Lieutenant, Resistance 1st Security Regiment. You probably don’t remember me, but we met once when you were a little girl.”

She shook her head. “I don’t—Lieutenant, I don’t really remember much of anything.” Her voice was mellow, mature for her apparent years, a little subdued. Sato would have bet his left arm that it was based on existing recordings of Sarah Connor, perhaps from the years she was incarcerated in a California mental institution.

“How’s that?”

“I remember falling. When I woke up, there was blood all over a rock, and the creek I was next to had washed away most of my gear.” She touched her left temple. “Beyond that, I don’t remember much, except my name, and the fact that I needed to get to Home Plate.”

Sato nodded. It was a good cover story. Amnesia was never as commonplace as the twentieth-century entertainment media had suggested, but it did happen, and Sato himself had known people who’d had short-term or long-term memory loss, particularly related to injury or other battle trauma. And this story would keep the woman from making potentially deadly errors of fact during the trip to come.

He reached for her. “May I?”

“Sure.”

He touched her head where she had indicated, carefully running his fingers along her temple and in widening circles around it. Her skin moved in a natural way under his touch, and he could feel a bony ridge where one shouldn’t be beneath her skin.

At this distance, he could smell her. She smelled like snow and wool blanket, and beneath those odors was a faint but distinct taint of human sweat.

Amazing what they can do these days, he thought.

He stepped back. “You’ve taken quite a hit. I suspect there’s a little calcium buildup against your skull. Are you having any trouble with blurred vision, dizziness, ringing sounds?”

She shook her head. “Not after the first few days. I feel good. I just wish I could remember things.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what. My job is to deliver you right into the hands of your uncle John. I suspect that seeing him will jar those memories right back into your head.”

“That would be wonderful. I hate, I really hate not remembering.”

Sato smiled to cover the sudden revulsion he felt. “We were actually ready to leave when we got the word that you’d been found. So we’re set to go. Do you want to see a medic? Need anything to eat?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m fine. I don’t even have any belongings to get together. I can leave any time.”

Are you feeling the machine equivalent of excitement? Sato wondered. Hydraulic fluids coursing through your tubes a little faster than normal, now that you’re really on the track of John Connor? Her face didn’t give away any such emotion.

“All right. Gwendolyn, this is Sergeant Vandis, Sergeant Smart, Corporal Friedman, Corporal Larson. We’ve already got a standard-issue field pack for you in the dune buggy.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s great to be in friendly hands again.”

Sangre de Cristo Mountains, New Mexico

Paul turned the key in the ignition and the dirt bike roared into life. The high-pitched roar of the 292cc engine echoed up and down the concrete ramps that made up what the workers were now calling Mechanics’ Alley, drowning out the sounds of socket wrenches, welding torches, and mechanics’ curses. Paul twisted the throttle, causing the roar to swell and diminish in an archaic machine song of the open road.

He killed the engine. He could hear workers up and down Mechanics’ Alley applaud, which they did for every vehicle brought back to life, even when Paul Keeley was the resurrector. He offered a little wave of acknowledgment in each direction, like the Queen of England receiving the accolades of her subjects with dignity or disinterest, then turned to wiping his oil-stained hands on the rag hanging out of his back pocket.

“Pretty good,” someone said. “Reminds me of the old days.”

Paul turned. The speaker, leaning against the nearest wall, was John Connor.

Paul wondered for a moment how people were supposed to react when the leader of the Resistance, the modern equivalent of the President of the United States, just popped up out of nowhere for idle chit-chat. He decided to ignore the man’s rank. It was an easy and natural decision, despite the fact that conversational choices had never been easy or natural for him before his capture. “You ride?”

“Oh, yeah. Since I was a kid. When I was a teenager, I did a lot of riding with Crazy Pete.” The former head of the Scalpers had been a onetime bike gang member, small-time criminal, and government-hating rebel.

“You knew him that long ago?”

“Uh-huh. He and I killed the last dinosaur together.”

Paul stared, confused, then realized he was being kidded. He snorted.

John continued, “I was riding the day before Judgment Day, in fact. A beat-up old Triumph Bonneville. I loved that bike. It was like home. Now it’s rust or slag somewhere, I suppose. Anyway, I’m thinking that if you bring the other bike to life, I’ll take one and you can have the other one.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, when I kid, it’s usually like ‘He and I killed the last dinosaur together.’”

“Which one do you want?”

“The one that’s in better shape.”

“And what if I put them in identically good shape?”

John raised a finger in an “Aha!” gesture. “Now you’ve stumbled across my motivational tactic.”

There was a tap-tap-tap of hard soles on concrete flooring, and Kate Brewster, her daughter Kyla and dogs in tow, came trotting down the ramp. When she was close enough not to shout, Kate said, “The Scalpers radioed in short code. They’re on the road. And they’ve got ‘Gwendolyn Drew’ with them.”

John straightened away from the wall, his expression changing. Paul saw him alter, like a T-1000 transforming from one person into another, from a motorcycle enthusiast to the Resistance leader he normally was in public. “With the route they’re supposed to take, it’ll be a minimum of four days until they reach Santa Fe,” he said. “We need to issue orders that there not be any vehicle departures from this site after two more days—other than my group heading to Santa Fe. Skynet’s going to be concentrating its attention on the zone immediately around the T-X, fifty or a hundred miles in diameter from her.”

Kyla waved a hand to be noticed. “As the one bodyguard you have present, I have to point out that you don’t need to be there. Even if the T-X doesn’t know that Santa Fe is going to be the final stop, Skynet’s sure to be able to bring in some additional forces when she sends out the alert that you’ve been spotted. It’d be kind of a damned shame if we captured her and lost you. Not an equal trade.”

John shook his head. “I do have to be there. So she’ll open up, display her weaponry. If we want to capture her instead of destroy her, I have to show my face.”

Kyla sighed. “You are so stubborn.”

Kate smiled at her daughter. It was almost a smirk. “Guess what, baby? You inherited those genes.”

Kyla turned away. “Then I’m never having kids. I don’t want to pass that curse along.” She headed back up the ramp.

John put his hand around his wife’s waist and led her the other way, into the depths of the complex. “We’ve got the site?” he asked.

“We’ve got the site. A small community center.”

“The cables are in place, and the capacitors?”

“What do you think?”

“I think yes.”

“Good for you.”

They descended out of Paul’s sight. He stood, aware that he’d been privy to intimate family moments he had no right to witness. He just didn’t know whether he’d seen them because the Connors were comfortable with his presence or knew he’d be dying soon and wasn’t worth worrying about.

But the evidence was leaning toward the suggestion Kyla had offered. Why would John Connor offer him the motorcycle if he were scheduled for elimination?

It was hard not to believe Connor. He knew the Resistance leader could be ruthless and dangerous. But, at an emotional level, he didn’t want to believe that the man could be so duplicitous with a human in his employ.

So Paul, slow and deliberate, allowed himself to move from resignation to hope.

It was time to get to work on the other dirt bike.

Rocky Mountains, Colorado and New Mexico

Buckled into his seat, Sato sat atop a folded-up blanket for extra cushioning, but it wasn’t enough. The road they traveled on was beating his internal organs into mush.

After all, it wasn’t really a road. It was a railway track, and the Scalpers’ two dune buggies cruised along it as quickly as they could while retaining control. It wasn’t easy; though the railway ties were in many places decayed to wood flakes by decades of weather, along many places they were surprisingly intact. The dune buggies’ suspension, though improved for the rough terrain the Scalpers often had to cross, wasn’t up to dealing with mile after mile of ties.

Jenna the Greek, driving, shot him a dirty look. He ignored her.

Now they were cruising along a raised train route, paralleling a mountain road that was about a hundred yards away. Farther ahead, the road would turn away, following the curve of the mountain, while the train route would plow straight into the mountainside.

From the backseat, Gwendolyn leaned forward between them. Her cheeks were flushed, an artful simulation of what the combination of excitement and cold air would do to a young woman’s face. “I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, but—”

“But why the rough road?” Sato asked.

“Right.”

“We figure that Skynet calculates that most human traffic will be along the paths of least resistance. That by machine standards, we’re frail, so we have to take the most comfortable path. So we do just the reverse. Plus, all the tunnels break up any continuity of infrared trace that we might be leaving, making it harder for Skynet to assemble them into a clear picture of a caravan on a specific route.” This was a complete lie, a fabrication. But part of Sato’s job on this mission, as outlined by Kate Brewster, was to provide disinformation to the T-X. If she transmitted it back to Skynet and the machine intelligence believed, there could be a slight shift in the allocation of machine resources, another tiny, incremental advantage for the Resistance.

“Oh.”

“Standard operating procedure. But it’s kind of hard on the kidneys, isn’t it?”

“It sure is.” Gwendolyn leaned back, apparently satisfied with the answer.

They entered the tunnel and Jenna the Greek turned on the buggy’s headlights. Behind them, the buggy carrying Smart, Nix, and J. L. did likewise.

It was also strange doing so much travel in daylight. Normally a unit like the Scalpers traveled some by day, some by night, choosing different travel hours in each twenty-four-hour span, but on this trip they simply traveled by day. It was faster because they could travel for longer uninterrupted blocks of time, could see obstacles at a greater average distance. But, again, it was a matter of disinformation. Any little bit might help.

Plus, Sato knew that he was safer now than he had ever been when traveling in the open. Skynet was not going to “detect” them. There would be no assaults on this caravan. Skynet would keep its distance, constantly updating its information, trying to guess at their destination. It would have forces ready all along their path, but would want to concentrate them at the site that was its best guess as to where John Connor would be. Sato had arranged for the caravan to pack enough food and water and had dropped a few hints in conversation to suggest that this trip would be much longer than it was actually going to be, perhaps ending in the vicinity of San Antonio, Texas, rather than Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Disinformation.

Three spine-hammering stretches of road and three more tunnel passages later, the sun began to disappear behind mountain peaks. At the next point a paved road crossed their path, Sato directed Jenna off the train tracks.

They set up camp a mile from there, beneath a roadway bridge that spanned a rocky V-shaped gorge. It was a cold camp, with canned fruit, canned meat, and hard bread for the campers.

Sato watched Gwendolyn eat. She seemed completely natural, completely human.

Before darkness fell fully across them, Sato saw Smart sidle up alongside Gwendolyn, whisper in her ear.

She turned a little smile on the sniper, offered a slight shake of the head. She spoke in tones too low for Sato to hear, but he could read a few of the words from her lips: “just be friends.”

Smart made a good show of a disappointed retreat. Jenna the Greek held her hand before her, moving it this way and that to simulate the movement of an aircraft, and then mimed it veering into the bridge’s support column, exploding. Smart glared at her.

Sato nodded to himself, still on edge, but satisfied. This is going to work.