c.18

October 2029
Home Plate

The powers that be still chose not to assign Paul to a specific work group. He interpreted that as meaning they were holding him in reserve for the mission he’d proposed.

Over the next several days, he spent his time preparing for that mission. It wasn’t training, exactly; the role he imagined for himself didn’t call for training. Instead, he imagined himself in conversation with Eliza, how he’d respond to her questions, how he might persuade her to do as the Resistance needed her to.

He also spent time at Kyla’s shooting range, becoming more proficient at handling pop-up targets and maintaining a calm sense of detachment while peering through his scope at a target for minute after uneventful minute.

He visited Doreen’s class and told the children the rest of the Ginger and Ripper story.

He wrote a will. He tacked it above his cot for people to find if he didn’t come home. He left his dirt bike and sniper rifle to Kyla, assuming that she’d enjoy the one and properly dispose of the second.

And for the first time in his life, he attended a Friday night social.

With Judgment Day, the concept of the Monday-to-Friday work week had vanished, but the coordinators of larger human habitats still made some effort to observe the old calendar, and one of the most persistent customs in such places was that of Friday night unwindings. Some took place in mess halls, some in conference or gathering rooms, others in otherwise unused back passages. Some were oriented to members of specific trades, others toward age groups. Ancient CD players or record players would be plugged in, recently distilled home brew would be distributed, people would unwind. It was a fair simulation of late-twentieth-century office parties—assuming one could squint enough to miss the lack of windows, the presence of so many uniforms and weapons, the pallor of faces that seldom saw the sun.

Uninvited, Paul moved into the chamber where many of Home Plate’s junior-level technicians and intelligence workers had their regular gathering. It was a large bunkroom for most of the week, but by common assent of its residents, one night per week it was transformed into a gathering place. Bunks and footlockers became seating, paperwork was swept off tables and replaced by food and drink.

The evening was still early, and Paul saw that the chamber was only half-filled with people. He didn’t recognize anyone. He nodded to those who noticed him, moved to one of the tables, and deposited his contribution—a bowl full of spicy pico de gallo he’d made himself from fresh hydroponic vegetables gathered from the mess hall over the last few days.

Then he stood, wondering what to do.

What would Paul Keeley, temp worker with no future, do? He shook his head at that. What would Paul Keeley, Resistance fighter with a weird reputation and no fear of social settings, do? He looked across the chamber, listening to what he could of the conversations floating out of the various groups, and eventually gravitated toward one of them.

He sat on a cot on the edge of one of the groups. “Sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t help overhearing. You’re having trouble getting people to send you music?”

The person he addressed, a twenty-something woman propped up by pillows at one end of another cot, nodded, nodded, sending her short black curls swaying. “I’m trying to put together a project. A master index and repository of all recorded music now held at all the human compounds.”

“Sounds like a great idea.”

The bony man seated at the foot of the young woman’s cot said, “Sure, it’s a great idea. But the trouble is in getting anyone to cooperate. People in general aren’t willing to send their precious recordings on a trip that means they’ll be gone for months at the least.”

“On top of the fact,” the young woman said, “that getting people just to transmit me a list of what they have is extra work. Nobody much wants to do extra work, not when more vital compound duties come first, improving their quarters comes second, trade work that will get them extra food or goods or services comes third, and so on.”

Paul considered. “Do you have enough recording media to handle all that stuff if people start sending it in?”

She nodded. “Uh-huh. We’ve got one facility putting out recordable CDs at a rate almost like before J-Day, and I can get authorization to utilize a fair amount of that … but only if I can demonstrate that the project will work. That people will cooperate. Which a few people in a few habitats have, but not many. Not enough to convince my superiors. By the way, I’m Chelsea.”

“Paul.” He leaned forward to shake her hand, then did the same with the others gathered around her: Strick, the bony man, David, Jose, Rina, Jackie, Tablesaw.

“You might want to rethink the way you promote your project,” Paul said.

“How so?”

“Like you said. If they cooperate, they’re contributing to mankind’s store of information. Keeping our arts from being lost. Which is a good long-term goal. But almost nobody thinks long-term. They let their leaders do that. Instead, what if you said this: ‘Here’s the list of what we already have in our depository. Send us a list of what you have that’s not already on this list. We’ll give you the go-ahead for you to send us some or all of your recordings. You pick an equal number of recordings you want, and when we return your stuff, we’ll send you the ones you ask for.’ So not only does your project get something out of it—”

“They get something, too,” Chelsea said. “Whoa.”

“And every compound that participates builds up a better library of music,” Strick said.

Paul nodded. “You got it. It’ll cost you twice as much recording media, of course. But an active project at twice the cost is better than a dead project. And you can extend the same model to other recorded entertainments. Movies. News recordings. You could even think about setting up a video-letters service between compounds.”

“Slow down, slow down.” Chelsea waved at one of the others. “David, get me some paper, quick.”

Tablesaw, the bearded man, had been quiet through the entire conversation, but finally spoke. “You Paul Keeley?”

“That’s right.”

Some of the others looked at Paul with more curious eyes. Obviously his fame had spread.

“Chelsea, you sure you want to be taking advice from a man who sets Terminators loose and gets soldiers in the field killed?”

That was Paul’s cue to leave. He thought about it for a fraction of a second and decided not to. Better, he decided, to be the sort of man who got the crap kicked out of him by an ugly crowd than one who’d flee from a confrontation and sit alone in his room.

“Um,” Chelsea said, momentarily off-guard. “The idea’s good—wherever it comes from.”

Not put off, Tablesaw looked hard at Paul. “Maybe you’d better leave.”

Paul pretended to be considering it. “Nope.”

“Maybe you and I had better step outside.”

“Okay. You go first. I’ll be along in an hour or two.”

Rina, the black girl with the mass of knitting in her lap, laughed. Tablesaw glowered at her, then returned his attention to Paul. “This isn’t a joke.”

“Then I’ll tell you what the joke is,” Paul said. “Like everybody here, I’ve lost family to the machines. The last time was a little over ten years ago, when my father went down with the top of his head missing. I got to see that. Since then, I was captured by the machines, conditioned and programmed by them, and it did cause me to make a mistake—once—and that got people killed. And that’s something I get to deal with for the rest of my life.

“Here’s where the joke comes in. Let’s say I let you drive me off. Let’s say I listen to everybody who hates my guts and I go out into the wilderness to die. Now there’s nobody to come up with an idea like the one I gave Chelsea. There’s nobody who has my exact mix of skills. Nobody to replace me. Like me, you’ve just gotten a useful asset killed. But unlike me, a whole bunch of people who think the same way are clapping you on the back. All because you’re Tablesaw instead of Sleeps-With-Toasters. Don’t you find that funny?”

“I said it was time for you to leave.”

“And you said it very plainly, too. No unnecessary use of big words.”

Rina laughed again. Tablesaw ignored her. He stood. “All right, guys. Let’s toss this machine-loving bastard into the water treatment in-tank.”

No one else rose. Jackie, her voice mild, said, “The way I heard it—did you actually face down a T-X?”

Paul shrugged. “I got in her way, slowed her down, sure. I can’t say that I faced her down, since she didn’t back off. But Kyla Connor shot her and gave me a few seconds to run, so I did.”

Tablesaw turned an unbelieving expression between the others. “I said…”

“Man, maybe you ought to go cool down,” Strick said.

Tablesaw looked between them, baffled and confused, and gave Paul one last ugly glare. Then he turned and marched out of the bunkroom.

Paul watched him go, then sat, staring, in something like a state of shock. Someone sided with me. Someone who knew the facts actually sided with me. It was like suddenly learning that the Easter Bunny was real after all.

Someone was speaking. “… beautiful?”

“Huh?” He looked around, realized that Rina was speaking. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“I asked, so, is the T-X really beautiful?”

“Well, Skynet makes them that way.” Paul considered. “Yes, she’s beautiful. Like a painting—or a statue. But not like a real woman. A real woman’s got her beat every time.”

Rina smiled at him.

*   *   *

Three hours later, Paul walked back to his room. He didn’t walk very well. He was dizzy.

It wasn’t just the alcohol, though he’d ended up having plenty of that. It was the change. People he barely knew sticking up for him. And, as far as he could tell, liking him. Rina had even suggested that she’d be interested in accompanying him back to his quarters for the evening.

“I am,” he’d told her, “unbelievably flattered. But I can’t. There’s somebody else.” Which was partly true.

“Someone who’s not a toaster,” Rina had said, amused.

“Not a toaster,” he’d assured her.

So now he walked back to his quarters, alone but not lonely, drunk but alert—because he knew, deep in his heart, that at some intersection or shadowy stretch of hall, Tablesaw would come leaping out and beat him senseless.

It wouldn’t necessarily be that easy. All the martial-arts training Paul had recalled when he was experiencing his false set of memories was real—just not from dojos in some nameless California town. From the time he began going on field missions to evaluate machinery out in the ruins, he’d undertaken hand-to-hand training from a variety of teachers. He probably wasn’t as good as John Connor’s bodyguards or a bunkroom brawler with years of experience, but he’d be willing to stack his skill up against anyone who wasn’t in constant practice.

Except, maybe, when he was drunk.

But he made it back to his room unassaulted. There was a surprise waiting for him inside, but it was a note left on his pillow:

Be ready 08:00.

Pack for a trip.

Your operation is a go.

—Kyla

Paul decided that he was already sick of caravans, but hangovers definitely made them worse.

And the specific route didn’t help, either. This was the notorious Home Plate–Stinger Compound run. It ran from Los Angeles up to Barstow, a town that had at one time survived mainly as a filling station stop for travelers on the Los Angeles/Las Vegas drive, then across the desert to Las Vegas. And though there was some agreeable rough terrain along this route, there were also mile upon mile of open desert—the perfect environment in which to be detected and attacked by Skynet units.

Which was why the caravan was so much more spread out than usual. John Connor’s Humvee and the Hell-Hounds’ SUV, running almost bumper to bumper, were in the center of the caravan. Dozens of miles back was a heavy truck carrying technicians and soldiers. And the vanguard of the caravan, the surviving dune buggy of the Scalpers, was at the head of the procession, many miles in front of the Humvee and SUV.

And that was the last detail to contribute to Paul’s less than exhilarated state. He sat in the front passenger seat of the dune buggy. Beside him, silent for the last several hours, was Jenna the Greek. In the backseat lay Lieutenant Sato, and Paul decided that it was unfair that people like him could sleep anywhere, anytime, including in the back of an uncomfortable, open-topped recreational vehicle speeding through wide-open territory under a glaring sun.

“I’m sorry,” Jenna said.

Paul thought it was a trick of the wind. He stared at her, uncertain. “I don’t think—what?”

“I said I’m sorry. For jumping on you the other day.” She shrugged. “I’ve spent some time trying to figure out what I’d have been able to do better if I’d been in your place.”

“How long before you ruled out suicide as my first, best choice?”

She grinned. It was a wicked expression. “Okay, a few days.” Then she sobered. “But I talked to a bunch of the others, got more of the story. I think you did okay. You did good in keeping J. L. from getting killed.”

“Thanks.”

“You know Kyla’s rifle?”

“Yeah.”

“The guy who left it to her, she had his name engraved on it. To remember him.”

“Huh.” Paul thought about it, about the rifle now resting on the floorboards in front of the backseat. “I wonder if I could trade for some engraving when we get to Stinger Compound.”

“I think that’d be a good idea. So this operation we’re going on, it was your idea?”

“Yep.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Can’t. Besides, they tell me that they’ve changed some key elements, so what I know may not be correct anyway.”

She snorted. “Welcome to the Army.”