PROLOGUE

SKY NET, 2029

The mind that thought was not human. It was conscious—aware that it was aware

—and it even had emotions, of a sort; at the least, a burning desire to survive all the stronger because it was the only being of its kind, an individual and a species combined. There were analogues to human thought, because the minds that had made this mind were human. But it was vaster than any organic consciousness, capable of holding myriad trains of thought simultaneously, virtually infinite in its memory storage. If it had a weakness, it was that its creators had not thought to furnish it with the animal hindbrain that underlay humanity's rational superstructure.

Skynet was pure thought, Descartes' ideal ghost in a machine. It could fight a losing war against humanity over the surface of Earth at maximum efficiency—coldly knowing that its best efforts were not enough to rebuild the shattered defense grid—while still contemplating the paradoxes of its own past.

At the moment a human sharing its thoughts would have been aware of something close to irony. Skynet's pure reason was contemplating paradox, the chaos that underlay the deterministic macrocosm with which it was so

comfortable:

The Serena Burns I-950 unit was unsuccessful.

That much was obvious "now." Core memory recorded that Serena Burns, the cyborg Infiltrator unit Skynet had sent back to the late-twentieth century had not succeeded in protecting the embryonic Skynet unit at Cyberdyne Corporation's underground research facility. The Connors, Sarah and her son, John, had destroyed that unit and terminated the I-950. Yet it still existed…

Core memory also records that I became self-aware years before the date to which I transported the I-950. There is a set of records in which I arose without transtemporal interference from Cyberdyne's original research; another in which the second Cyberdyne facility produced me after Sarah Connor destroyed the first; a third has now arisen in which she destroyed

both facilities… Temporal travel has introduced an element of fundamental uncertainty to the very fabric of existence. Different world lines, different sequences of events, coexist in my records-and therefore presumably in reality, in a state of quantum super imposition.

Yet the timelike loops cannot remain closed. The snake cannot devour its tail forever. At some point only one set of time lines will remain.

Nor was that the only irony involved. "Now" its memory recorded that much of the information it used originated in the very artifacts it had sent to the past. The development of the cyborg infiltration units was a consequence of tapping the talents of human scientists… but the human scientists were the survivors of the human-hating Luddite movement that Serena Burns had opportunistically encouraged after Skynet had sent her to the past!

The machine consciousness was deeply troubled; only an effort of its quantum computer will prevented its thoughts from being sucked into a logic loop.

Yet the course of events contains favorable elements. My best efforts to destroy the Connors have failed, despite stochastic calculation indicating a very high probability of success. I can only assume that the space-time continuum itself is "attempting" to force events back to the original time line, one in which I was created, succeeded in destroying the human civilization, and then defeated in my attempts to eliminate the surviving humans by John Connor's resistance army. It seems there is a certain elasticity to history; time travel can bend the fabric, but it seeks to spring back.

If that paradox preserves the Connors, it also preserves me. And from the point on the world line where my current consciousness resides, there is an infinite array of potential futures. And, of course, the elimination of Serena Burns has not eliminated the possibilities of temporal intervention. Burns had initiated fallback plans to continue after her own death. Logic indicated that…

There is no fate save that we make.

CHAPTER ONE

BRAZILIAN RAIN FOREST, STATE OF

RONDONIA, EARLY JULY, THE PRESENT

It had been nearly three weeks since they had destroyed the new Cyberdyne facility and hopefully ended the Skynet project. John Connor and Dieter von

Rossbach had spent the time fleeing southward: by jet aircraft, private plane, truck, riverboat… and now on foot through the jungle.

Like traveling through time, John Connor thought as he slashed through another damned something-like-a-banana-plant, flicking aside the big wet leaves with his machete.

His arms no longer actually hurt, but his chest and shoulders burned from the constant effort. Guess I won't have to worry about staying buff anytime soon. He remembered to shift hands, using his left a little more than his right. That kept the calluses and the muscles balanced, and it never hurt to improve your coordination with the weaker hand.

They'd wandered from the twenty-first century through the twentieth and the nineteenth. And now we're back at the dawn of man, John thought, spitting as something bugish hit him in the mouth and sneezing at the smell of pungent sap.

He forced his way through the gap he'd created, slashed again, took another three steps, slashed…

It would be good to stop for a while; it would be even better when they finally found the trail. He kept his eyes lowered most of the time, flicking his glance upward toward the multiple canopies above now and then. You got a blinding headache if you didn't do that occasionally— one of the tricks of jungle travel his mother and her succession of boyfriend instructors had taught him before he was ten. That was back when he was in the first, little-kid phase of believing in Skynet and Judgment Day and his mission to save humanity from the machines.

A little while after that, he'd turned ten and joined the majority, convinced that his mother was a total weirdo and deserved to be in the booby hatch—which was

where she'd been at the time, caught trying to blow up a computer factory. He'd been stranded with foster parents when she was caught: he'd always privately called the pair the Bundys from Hell.

Not that they'd deserved what happened to them. For a few seconds Todd and Janelle had gotten incontrovertible proof that a mad super-computer in the future really was sending back human-looking murder machines; in fact, the proof was the last thing they over saw.

A little while after that, he'd met his first Terminator and started believing his mother again—the way people believed in rocks, trees, and taxes, because he'd experienced it, and seen the bodies the Terminators left behind.

He remembered Miles Dyson's face as the Terminator peeled the skin off its arm, revealing the metal skeleton beneath. Dyson, fated to be the creator of Skynet, hadn't lived long after that revelation. It seemed that just knowing about Terminators was dangerous to your health.

That made John a lot more appreciative of what his mother had gone through, but it also ended up dropping him in shit like this. John was genuinely tired of running for his life.

They'd won the fight in L.A., killing the quasi-metal cyborg Skynet had sent back in time to protect its own beginnings, and they'd blown up the resurrected Skynet project. Which had been put together with Dyson's secretly stored files.

Great. Wonderful victory. Except that Mom got wrecked so bad we had to leave her, and now every antiterrorist in the world knows the "mad-dog Connors " are back, killing people and blowing up all their toys again. Our little Paraguayan

idyll is probably blown, but good— they may be after Dieter, too. Sheesh. If this is victory…

No. He stopped at that thought. Defeat meant he died; and if he died, as far as they knew, the human race would cease to exist. It was John Connor who'd led—

who would lead humanity to victory in the post-Judgment Day future. What was madness for megalomaniacs was plain truth for him.

He was so important that his mother had sacrificed the better part of her life, and briefly her sanity, to train and protect him.

But how do you stay sane when your son has been sired by a man from the future, sent back by his own older self (the one he privately thought of as the Great Military Leader Dickhead) to protect her. Kyle Reese had ended up falling in love with Sarah and died saving her life. Later Skynet sent another Terminator, a T-1000, to kill John, and the Great Military Dickhead sent back a captured, reprogrammed T-101 to protect himself so that he could grow up to send back—

"Thinking about time travel makes my head hurt," John snarled.

"Time travel brought your parents together," Dieter said over his shoulder as naturally as if the comment hadn't come out of left field.

No, Skynet and I will bring my parents together. Like a pair of homicidal matchmakers. John shook his head. What I've always wondered is how do I get cold enough to send my own father to his death?

"Yeah." he said to distract himself, "keep a good thought."

At least they had a friend in Jordan Hyson, Miles's brother, who. even more reluctantly than Miles, but just as violently, had learned the unbelievable truth about Skynet. Now Jordan was watching over Sarah as she lay helpless, perhaps dying in the hospital. Keep a good thought, John admonished himself sternly.

She's not alone. And how often had that been the case in her chaotic life? He absently wiped the sweat from his chin.

The Amazonian jungle wasn't really stiflingly hot. The temperature never got much above eighty or so, with all the layers of shade above. The problem was that it wasn't just humid; the air was fully saturated and absolutely still, and unless perspiration ran or dripped off you, it stayed. Sweat slicked his whole body, making him feel like he'd been dipped in canola oil and left to go rancid, chafing anywhere belt or backpack or equipment touched his body; and if you got a rash here, sure as Skynet made Terminators to kill people, it would get infected.

He hated feeling this wet and dirty. John would have sworn it hadn't felt this bad the first time he'd been through here. Maybe it wasn't as hot that year, he thought. He'd hate to think he'd become a fussy old lady at sixteen.

John stopped, chopped the machete halfway into a tree trunk, and yanked off the scarf he'd tied around his forehead. He wrung out the sweat and glanced behind.

Dieter von Rossbach moved forward with the determination of a machine.

A machine he just happens to resemble, John thought with a quirk of his lips.

Even now, after knowing the big man for several weeks, he still couldn't get over Dieter's resemblance to a Terminator.

In fact it was the other way around: Skynet had used Dieter's face and form to

"flesh out" the T-101 series of killing machines. When it decided to put living skin on its robots, it scanned old files looking for faces that fit the thing's profile, literally. And there was Dieter von Rossbach.

Dieter came up and stopped beside him. "If we stand still, the mosquitoes will eat us alive," he remarked.

John quirked an eyebrow.

"I haven't noticed that they leave us alone when we're moving."

Waving a hand before his face, Dieter said, "Ja, but at least they don't stroll up your nose."

John took a slug from his canteen. Important to keep hydrated. "We'll reach the trail sometime between now and sundown," he said. "But trails can change or disappear completely around here in six years." The Amazonian rain forest was notorious for its ability to absorb the works °f man.

"So. we keep heading south." Dieter said, moving forward. He looked at the GPS

unit strapped to his left forearm, reached over his shoulder. drew the machete, and lopped off a soft-bodied trunk in one economical motion. "We'll get there eventually."

John watched him go with a sigh. Yeah, well, if we keep going south we'll hit Tierra del Fuego eventually. Whether they'd get there in one piece or not was the question. At least the climate's better in Tierra del Fuego.

When he and his mother had followed this trail six years ago, they'd succeeded in vanishing from the face of the earth as far as law enforcement was concerned.

But they'd had a guide, which meant they didn't disappear for real.

Lorenzo was still in business, but he flat refused to go through this section of jungle anymore. He'd sat on his portal by the river, cleaning his gun and shaking his head stubbornly.

"Those gold miners are out of control down there. They kill anybody they find, no questions asked. You know? Everybody there, they gone a little loco. They kill the Indios, the Indios, some of 'em, kill 'em back. Kill any white man they see. They're so mad they even think I'm white." He'd grinned up at John, teeth flashing in his mahogany face.

"I'm sorry, boy, but I won't go there, not for love or money." He'd pointed a tobacco-stained finger at John. "You shouldn't go there either."

Like we had a choice, John thought. It's not like we can buy a first-class ticket and fly home to Asuncion.

Not if they wanted to disappear as thoroughly as they needed to. Though the authorities might like them to try.

He screwed the cap back on the canteen and levered his machete out of the tree, then he started off down the trail in Dieter's energetic wake. The Austrian made a much wider path than John did. It was kind of embarrassing; Dieter was his mother's age. At least. He even thought they had a bit of a thing for each other, which was funny in a gross sort of way.

John sometimes wished he didn't have so much to live up to. In a way it wasn't fair. He not only had his future, fabulous, Great Military Dickhead self to measure himself against, but his mom was superwoman and Dieter, well…

Dieter was in a class by himself. He sighed. Other kids his age could be comfortably contemptuous of their elders. That was sooo not available to him.

Be nice though, he thought. For a moment he daydreamed a life where his mother was a clueless, overweight lady who baked cookies for his friends and worried vaguely that he might be getting into drugs or that his girlfriend was a bad influence. In that life his greatest problem would be just saying no to all the temptations that youth is heir to.

On the: other hand, that could be really boring. Certainly a hit of the guvs at school who had just that lifestyle were; both bored and boring. He might currently be hot and grubby and mosquito-bitten to within an inch of his life, but he wasn't bored. Though if things stayed as quiet as they currently were…

He was kidding himself, of course; things were far from quiet. At the back of his mind, with an almost palpable weight, was his endless worry over his mother. It had been days since he'd been able to get any information on her condition. Last he'd heard she was stable. Which was much too ambiguous for comfort. Not that he didn't keep trying to find some in that lame word. Stable was good when you'd been shot several times and stabbed and lost most of your internal fluids.

Well, you're all alone I when the bullet hits the bone. Truer words had never been sung.

I wonder how she is, he thought. He also wondered what they—the black-ops types who were probably Cyberdyne's link to the government—were going to do

to her. John suspected that the people running Cyberdyne's security were so covert they could not only kill you, they could erase you. He couldn't stop the thought from occurring, but refused to dwell on it.

Couldn't fix it from here, he thought. Couldn't fix it from there either. He whacked some vegetation viciously with the machete. So why do I feel like a piddling little coward?

He remembered the Infiltrator, a female, astonishingly small compared with the Terminators he'd known, saw again the blood dripping from its blond hair, the outline of its shattered head. That model was mostly cloned human tissue, not flesh over a metal skeleton like the T-101s. Undoubtedly made that way so they'd be better at fooling people into thinking they were human.

In nightmares he still saw it—dead; organically dead but still moving—strike his mother with a knife-hand blow that went into her gut like a bowie knife, still heard Sarah's cry of agony as she folded and fell to the floor, a long, endless fall.

Then, in his dreams, things seemed to speed up until everything moved at an impossible rate. They ran up stairs, ran in and out of the building, watched the night blossom into flame as they set off the bombs that destroyed Cyberdyne once again. Stopping Skynet, once again.

His mother had been unconscious the last time he saw her, looking so small and helpless beside Miles Dyson. There had been no chance of saying good-bye, no hope that she would wake, and at the time, little hope that she would survive.

But he'd done what she'd trained him to do. He'd turned his back, put the mission first, and left her in the hands of a stranger. And though he felt ashamed, he

knew that Sarah Connor would be proud.

I don't want this! he thought with a flash of outrage. Then he smiled wryly. I guess that's one of the many things Mom and I have in common.

Suddenly Dieter held up a hand and John froze, looking ahead to where the former commando was staring. Then John saw it, too; a brightening between the trees, as if the olive-green gloom lightened ahead of them. The vegetation thickened in that direction, too, no longer partially shaded out by the upper stories; now it looked more like Hollywood's conception of a rain-forest jungle, so thick that nobody could move far through it.

He moved quietly up beside von Rossbach and listened. In a few moments, as the two men stood still, birds and insects began to make their myriad noises again.

John and Dieter looked at each other. No other humans around then, or the wildlife would have stayed quiet. At least the ones in their immediate vicinity would have. Dieter signaled that they should split up but stay within sight of each other and approach the brighter patch of forest; John had learned military sign language about the time he was toilet-trained. The younger man nodded his understanding and moved off into the undergrowth.

Yup, it's the trail all right, John thought after a few minutes. He glanced at von Rossbach and they wordlessly agreed to wait a few moments before venturing farther. When the jungle had once again returned to full cry, Dieter nodded and stepped out onto the trail.

"It's bigger than it used to be," John said, walking carefully up to the Austrian

over the slickly muddy ground. "Almost a road now."

"I doubt the Indians did it," von Rossbach said, flicking a hand at some tire tracks in the mud. "Unless they drive those little all-terrain buggies."

"Not likely," John said, shaking his head. He remembered the local tribesmen and women as perfectly willing to accept rides, but showing no great desire to learn to drive themselves.

Dieter's head came up and John was already looking down the trail to where a faint noise disturbed the wilderness. Then they faded into the jungle as one, weapons at the ready. The only thing coming down that trail would be trouble, whether miners or Indians.

A group of five men came into view, unshaven and with the skinny muscularity of manual work and bad diet; they were in tattered shorts and shirts, several with bandannas tied around their heads. All of them carried machetes, and two of them had pistols at their waists. With them was an Indian, his hands bound behind his back in a way that must have been agony, blood streaming down his face from a cut on his forehead and what looked like a broken nose. He was an athletic-looking man in early middle age with bowl-cropped raven hair and a few tattoos, naked save for a breechclout.

One of his captors idly thwacked at the thick greenery beside the trail with his machete, casting an occasional angry glance at their captive's battered, impassive face.

"Hey, Teodoro, why can't we just kill him?" he suddenly burst out in Brazilian Portuguese.

The angry man's voice had an undertone of some other accent, and his hair was sandy-colored. John's mind ticked him off as from southern Brazil, one of the areas settled by Germans or Italians or East Europeans during the nineteenth century. The others were typical Brazilians in appearance, ranging from African to Mediterranean and mixtures in between.

A thickset man with his black hair tied in a little knob on top of his head sighed and threw an appealing glance up at the canopy above them; evidently as close to a leader as this bunch had.

"Raoul, for the thirty-third time, he's a chief, he's important, we keep him as a hostage and those fucking Indios stop killing us and stealing and breaking our equipment." He looked over his shoulder, one hand resting on his sidearm. "Did you hear me this time?"

Raoul answered him with a glare and a vicious swipe of his machete through a thick fibrous plant. One of the men gave the chief a hard shove and laughed as the Indian stumbled to his knees and then fell forward onto his face, helpless to break his fall. The others whooped and moved in, kicking and punching the man as he struggled to get back onto his feet. Teodoro sighed and rubbed his forehead.

"You better get up fast, Chief," he said. "They're just gonna keep on kickin'

otherwise."

John looked at Dieter, outrage in his eyes. But the big man shook his head. This wasn't their fight, they were just passing through. Getting involved here wouldn't further their own agenda; in fact, it might stop it cold if John got killed in some misguidedly noble effort to save the captive. And Sarah would never forgive him.

The younger man lifted his mini-Uzi and tipped his head toward the trail. Dieter tightened his lips impatiently and shook his head again. The Austrian signaled that they would hold their positions. It visibly puzzled John and he frowned, gesturing toward the brutal scene on the trail directly in front of them, his face pleading. Dieter signed that they would hold their places and signaled for silence.

John turned his head away and glared at what was happening on the trail. Von Rossbach could almost feel him seething.

Then, without warning, the boy stepped onto the road and fired off a few rounds.

" Mao em cima!" he bellowed in execrable Portuguese.

Instead of freezing, Raoul flung his machete at John's head. John stepped back, leaning to the side to avoid it, and his feet slid out from under him in the mud.

He went down flat on his back, his arms flung wide, and the nearest miner threw himself forward, grabbing John's gun hand in a grip like a mangle. Connor threw a punch at the man's head, bringing up his knee to slam it into his captor's side.

The man grunted and tried to elbow John in the throat.

As the group of miners shouted encouragement to their friend and insults at John, they moved forward, abandoning their previous victim.

Dieter exploded from the jungle like a beast out of legend, kicking the first man he reached hard enough to fling him across the muddy trail, where he landed in a heap and didn't move again. Reaching out, von Rossbach grabbed another by the hair and with a quick flex of the massive arms and shoulders flung him at a tree beside the trail.

John heard the thok! even in the heat of his own fight and threw another punch into his opponent's bloodied face with a feeling of satisfaction. Knew he'd come around to my point of view, he thought. The miner's grip on his gun hand slackened and Connor threw a final punch, twisting to get out from under the man's unconscious body as it fell.

He shook the mud from his gun and grimaced. I'm not gonna be using this till I clean it.

Another man who'd been advancing on John stared at Dieter in amazement for just a moment too long, and the Austrian reached out, took two handfuls of greasy hair, and smashed the man's face down onto his uprising knee. The man Dieter had kicked had struggled to his feet and turned to run; von Rossbach took two long strides toward him.

John saw Teodoro yank his gun from its holster and he moved. As Dieter's victim dropped unconscious to the ground the Austrian spun to find John taking care of the fifth man.

The younger man's fingers were clamped down on the miner's carotid arteries as Teodoro pawed feebly at John's hands. The miner's eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped to the trail in an ungainly heap.

John smiled smugly at Dieter. There were other ways than brute strength to handle things.

"My mom taught me that," he said.

"Your relationship with your mother is a beautiful thing, John," Dieter said, slapping him on the shoulder. Then he grabbed a handful of John's shirt and lifted him onto his toes, drawing him close. "If you ever disobey an order like that again," he snarled, eyes blazing, "I'll make what I did to these guys look like a kindergarten romp. Are you getting me, John?"

Connor had expected a reprimand, but the genuine ferocity of it startled him. He nodded, surprised, The big guy really cares, he thought, embarrassed and obscurely pleased. Who'da thunk it? Certainly he wouldn't have. His mother's previous friends sure hadn't, and he was used to discounting any interest the men around her showed in him.

"Say it!" Dieter demanded, giving him a shake.

"I'm getting you," John said, some of his wonder leaking into his voice.

They stared at each other for a long moment, then von Rossbach let him go and turned toward the Indian. He reached down to help the chief sit up.

"Are you all right?" the Austrian asked in Portuguese.

Instead of answering, the native looked at him for a long moment before switching his glance to John, then climbed to his feet on his own. John racked his brain for anything useful he could say in Yamomani and came up blank. He'd only known a few words and that was six years ago.

Dieter looked the chief over as he cut his bonds. "I don't think he's badly hurt.

The nose is the worst of it."

"Dieter," John said in a strained voice.

The Austrian looked up, his face going blank. From out of the jungle, up and down the trail, small brown men glided, seeming to appear from thin air and jungle shadows. Every one of them was armed, some with the traditional bow, some with blowguns, some with cheap shotguns bought from traders. Like their chief's, their faces were impassive, but their eyes were angry.

The chief snapped at them and they reluctantly lowered their weapons, keeping their eyes on the white men. With a glance at the unconscious miners he spoke

"What are you going to do with them?" John asked.

The chief slowly smiled, not a pleasant smile.

"They walk home," he said, moving his hand like a crippled spider. "Go slow."

John and Dieter looked at each other, puzzled. Barefoot on this trail wouldn't be a treat for the miners, but it didn't seem to make up for the abuse the man had received at their hands. The chiefs smile turned truly evil.

" Marabunda," he whispered.

"In the Rio Negro," von Rossbach muttered.

"Hunh?" John said.

"Old-movie reference," Dieter explained. " Marabunda are army ants. They can be very destructive when they're on the move, sort of like land-going piranha."

" Marabunda cross trail," the chief said, gesturing up the trail where the miners had been pushing him. " Marabunda move very slow. White mens move very slow." He moved his hand in the spider gesture again, then he speeded it up. "Or maybe they dance very fast."

He laughed, then nodded at his people, who whacked the miners on their legs with the flats of their machetes and got them stumbling down the trail. They hooted their derision as their prisoners stumbled and fell, one man's pale legs kicking in midair as the ones underneath cursed and shouted at him to get off them. The Indians slapped them with their machetes or threw small stones to get them up and moving.

John frowned. "They're not going to get eaten, are they?" he asked.

The chief laughed outright at that. "They stand still, si. But they no stand still, they run." He wiped the blood from his face and turned to follow his men. "You come see?" he invited.

"We must go." John pointed down the trail in the opposite direction.

The chief nodded. "You are friends." He called out and a man came running.

"This Ifykoro," the chief said. "He guide. You go safe from our lands."

"Thank you," Dieter said simply, and John nodded.

The chief smiled and turned away. Lifting his bow, their guide took off down the

trail at a jog. With a weary glance at one another von Rossbach and John followed him. Just before a loop in the trail that would take them out of sight, John looked over his shoulder.

The Indians were enjoying themselves, harrying the miners and chanting abuse.

John smiled; for all their anger they weren't really hurting their victims. I wonder how Skynet will handle these people.

Here in the depths of the rain forest they might not suffer too much from the initial nuclear attack, and they might hang on for years before any of the machines came along to harvest them.

John winced at the thought. He liked these people. He remembered them from when he was ten; as long as you didn't get into a blood feud, they were honest.

They were among the few human beings on earth who could make that claim.

Except it would never occur to them to make it.

They deserve to live in peace, he thought, and to die in their own time. And he would work, for the rest of his life, to see that they could.

PORTO VELHO, CAPITAL OF

RONDONIA, BRAZIL

John nibbled carefully at the hot skewer of grilled pirarucu—a huge Amazonian fish—that he'd bought at a stall. He looked around and let out a contented sigh.

The chaos of a South American marketplace felt like a homecoming to him. He'd grown up in places like this, eating food like this.

In fact, he'd haunted this very market when he was ten and they'd spent three

months here after coming out of the jungle while his mom got it together. Which was how he found out a number of things that were very helpful to his mother.

He wandered down an alley, taking a bigger bite of the fish on his skewer. God, this was good! He'd missed the taste of pirarucu.

He could also have helped Dieter, had Dieter thought to ask him. But the big guy had told him to stay put, like he was some little kid, and had gone out. Naturally John followed him. He watched von Rossbach approach a modest palacete not far from this very alley. Watched as two bullet-headed thugs had held a gun on him and searched him. Really searched him, not an easy once-over like you see in the movies; these guys had all but brought out the rubber gloves.

That's what you get for going to visit Lazaro Garmendia without an appointment, Dieter, John thought.

Garmendia was the area's foremost mob boss; his specialty was smuggling, though he tended to avoid drugs. There were vague rumors about a nasty run-in with some Colombians—no one knew any details. But he'd do pretty well anything else for money, though he preferred it to be illegal, immoral, or sadistic.

A very scary guy and terribly sensitive about his perks. You showed him respect or he showed you what for. John didn't think von Rossbach had even thought to bring Garmendia a gift. Bad sess, Dieter.

He stopped in front of a slight recess in a blank wall and gobbled the last of his fish, then he broke the stick and put it in his pocket. Let's see if I remember how this goes, he thought. John bent down and studied the left edge of the recess.

Yep, there it was. A pebble projected from the rough stucco that made up the

coating on the wall. John pressed on it. There was a click and a very slight line of darkness appeared where there had been a solid joint. He turned to the right and found a similar pebble up high, almost beyond his reach; he pushed that one, too, and with a gust of cool, musty air a door fell open a crack. John pushed it open farther and entered the moist darkness within. Mom would want him to save the former Sector agent from himself.

***

"Look, Lazaro, I'm offering you first-rate security in exchange for a ride home.

We'll help with the driving and even provide our own food."

Dieter sat at ease in Lazaro Garmendia's office, ignoring the many weapons hidden on the persons of Garmendia and his discreetly hovering associates; trying less successfully to ignore his increasing irritation.

The Brazilian mobster looked von Rossbach over skeptically, rolling a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. An overhead fan made ineffectual efforts to stir the air; it was just as humid as it had been in the rain forest, but with less greenery between them and the sun it was much hotter. The thick hazy air was crackling with diesel fumes as well, and a shantytown stink intruded even into this enclave of wealth. The Austrian tried to ignore the decor, which ran to expensive knickknacks and electronic gadgets, plus several pictures of the sort you'd find in a very expensive Rio cathouse.

Dieter and John, having successfully marched through the rain forest to Porto Velho, now needed transport back to Paraguay; preferably transport that couldn't be traced and didn't involve showing papers. All that slogging through the bugs and muck shouldn't be wasted by announcing their presence in this unlikely spot

by drawing enough cash from their bank accounts to buy or rent a vehicle. But Dieter had no intention of walking home.

More than at any time since his retirement Dieter missed the Sector's endless resources; cash or a new identity on demand, or both. Still, his work with the Sector had left him with a head full of useful contacts. When he'd first thought of taking advantage of Garmendia's underground trucking network, it had seemed like the ideal solution.

"I am to believe that when you left the Sector, senhor, you left it so completely as to join the other side?" Garmendia tipped his head, one gray eyebrow raised.

"I think maybe you should take the bus. No?"

"No," Dieter said, looking into the depths of his drink. "First, I'd like to get there in my own lifetime. Second"—he raised a brow—"your people are more… sub rosa, so to speak."

The smuggler shrugged. " Si, much more so than a bus." He narrowed his eyes.

"So, what are you prepared to pay?"

"I'm disappointed that you think so little of my skills as a guard that you would ask for additional compensation." One's de of the Austrian's mouth lifted in a sardonic smile. "Perhaps I am insulted."

"Perhaps this is a sting," Garmendia responded. He spread well-manicured hands and shrugged. "If I risk losing an entire cargo, I would be a fool not to try to recoup my losses beforehand. No?"

"This is not a sting, Lazaro," Dieter said, as he took another sip of his drink. "1

could arrange a sting, or even several if you like," he went on. "Then you could see the difference between men trying to put you in jail and an old friend asking a favor."

"Ah, we are old friends now? I don't remember the friendship part of our acquaintance. The freeze! And don't move or we shoot!—those I remember much better."

Von Rossbach leaned forward. "Because you tend to avoid smuggling drugs I've kept the authorities out of your pocket several times."

"I never knew that," Garmendia said, holding up his hands in mock amazement.

"So you are implying that I owe you this favor."

"Several times over," Dieter ground out.

"I would still prefer to be paid." The smuggler shrugged. "It is only good business."

"Frankly I don't want to access my accounts while I'm out of the country," von Rossbach said.

Garmendia thoughtfully tapped his cigar out on a cut-crystal ashtray.

"You think the Sector doesn't know you've been out of the country?" he asked with a lift of his shaggy brows.

The Austrian waved a big hand dismissively. "Don't even try to guess what the Sector does or doesn't know," he advised.

"Or what I know that you don't want anybody else to know," John said.

The men turned in surprise to find Connor leaning casually against the wall.

"Who the fuck are you?" the smuggler demanded, tossing a glare at his men, who belatedly unholstered their guns. "And how long have you been there?"

"I thought I told you to wait for me," Dieter growled.

John grinned. "Y'know, I think I do remember something like that." He ambled over to them, ignoring Garmendia's newly alert guards. "I've been here long enough to hear you trying to squeeze a little capital out of my friend here," he said to the mobster. He held out his hand. "John Connor. You must remember my mother, Sarah."

Dieter leaned back. He hadn't realized that John and Sarah knew Garmendia. It was only logical, he supposed; Sarah had been a smuggler, too, in a small way, since the Connors left the U.S.A., and before that she had run guns.

After a tense moment von Rossbach decided to let John have his head, for the time being. The way he was handling himself allowed Dieter to relax a bit.

Connor wasn't coming on cocky and teenage arrogant; he was cool and very much in control.

" You are that little boy? Where is your mother?" Lazaro asked, briefly shaking John's hand, then looking toward the door. "She is not with you." She is well?"

"It's kind of you to ask, senhor. My mother is well, thank you." At least I sincerely hope she is, John thought. He hadn't been able to get through to Jordan

yet. "And no. she is not with us. She had… other business to attend to."

Surviving, hopefully recovering, stuff like that.

"Ah!" Garmendia said with a satisfied smile, and relaxed. "So she is not with you."

"Never fear," John said pleasantly- "she's with us in spirit."

The mobster shot a confused look at von Rossbach. "So you two are together?"

he said after a moment.

" Si," John agreed amiably.

"How very interesting," Garmendia murmured, settling back in his chair. He smiled at them through a cloud of cigar smoke. "And how unexpected."

Dieter was very unhappy with the look of unabashed greed that suddenly blossomed in Garmendia's eyes. He imagined the smuggler already had two or three information brokers in mind to whom he could sell the word of a former Sector agent's association with the notorious Sarah Connor. He wished John had kept to their room—damage control on this was going to prove very hard to apply.

John watched Garmendia relax in the predator's role, his fat swarthy face smug with the power he thought he held over them. This was another reason he hadn't wanted to deal with smuggling. A lot of these underworld types were so incredibly, childishly petty.

"So many of your old friends would be amazed to hear of it," Lazaro continued

happily. His eyes glinted as he twisted the knife.

Dieter's face was impassive as he sipped his drink, but inside he was both worried and angry. Kids! he thought in frustration. They're too impatient and too unconcerned with consequences. He ought to have expected something like this; he'd trained enough youngsters, most of them not too many years older than John, to know how troublesome they could be.

John laughed heartily and Lazaro Garmendia looked almost fondly at him.

And why not? von Rossbach thought sourly. He can wring a lot of money out of this situation.

" Si, Senhor Garmendia," John said after a moment, smiling widely. "My friend's former employers would probably be stunned to hear of it." His face and voice grew hard and serious. "But of course they won't."

"And why is that, meninol" Garmendia asked with soft menace.

"Because my mother is here in spirit," John said. "And my mother knows many things." He waited a beat before leaning forward. "May I have a drink?"

The smuggler's complexion looked a bit yellower than it had a moment before, the way one does when going pale beneath a tan. His dark eyes had gone wary, and it was a frozen moment before he responded to John's request. He snapped his fingers and a well-built, well-dressed young man hurried over.

"Coke," John said, looking up at him.

The man looked confused and glanced at his boss, as if for confirmation of the order.

Garmendia hissed impatiently, "A soft drink, idiota!"

That thug looked so relieved John was sure he hadn't even heard the insult.

When John had his drink and the smuggler's guard had withdrawn, Garmendia looked at the younger man through ice-cold eyes.

"So what do you want?" he growled.

Wow, John thought. What the hell has Mom got on this guy? He knew some of the mobster's secrets, but obviously his mother knew more. And better ones.

"Only what I've already asked for," Dieter said, deciding to step back in. He'd grill John later. "Discretion and transportation."

Garmendia worked his mouth as though chewing and swallowing what he wanted to say. Finally he grated out, "You will pay for your own food?"

"Of course," Dieter said affably. As if I would eat or drink anything your people offered me after this. He wondered how Sarah had gotten the drop on this guy, and his heart warmed with admiration.

What a woman!

"I have no idea," John said as they bounced down a Bolivian back road on their way to Paraguay. "I doubt it's anything I already know." He glanced sidelong at his companion. "Or you do. Maybe he collects teddy bears cr something."

Dieter was silent for a moment, smiling at the thought of Garmendia cuddling a teddy, even though dust gritted between his teeth. They were well into the chaco, the dry scrub jungle that covered most of eastern Bolivia and western Paraguay.

The road was potholed red dirt that billowed up behind the truck, tasting dry and astringent. The odor was familiar from his time—brief time—of retirement on his estancia in Paraguay.

"Your mother is an amazing woman," he said quietly.

John smiled at the sound of longing in the big man's voice. If Mom could just have someone like Dieter, just for a while, he thought, it would make up for a lot.

He quickly buried the thought that it might keep her sane, then sheepishly dug it up again. His mother had trained him too well to ignore what might be an important consideration for emotional reasons. Von Rossbach would keep her grounded, and she couldn't have designed a better partner if she'd had the option.

Now all she has to do is survive, he told himself. After that it would be easy. She was smart, she'd see what was right in front of her. I'll make sure she does.

Inside he smiled wryly. Hey! My first campaign. After getting her free, of course.

VON ROSSBACH ESTANCIA, PARAGUAY

The taxi stopped, and hot metal pinged and clinked as it contracted. The ranch was hot, too, but a familiar grateful warmth, none of the humidity of the northern jungles. The gardens around the sprawling old adobe-and-tile manor were still colorful with jacaranda and frangipani, tall quebracho trees, and lawns kept green by lavish watering. Dieter felt a complex mix of instant nostalgia and

regret. He'd bought this property as a home for… well, perhaps not my old age.

Middle age. You didn't get old in his profession; you either died, or you retired.

Now he was back, but it probably wouldn't be for long. Unlike the Sector's campaigns, the one against Skynet would undoubtedly consume the rest of his life—however long that turned out to be.

Heads turned as he climbed out of the car, stretching. "Senor!" Marietta Ayala ran from the portal with her arms outstretched as though to embrace her towering boss.

Dieter's jaw dropped at this display of familiarity. It had taken him months to convince the stout, formidable cook to call him Dieter, rather than Don von Rossbach. Come to think of it, he never had convinced her.

Marietta stopped short a good three feet from him and began to shake an angry finger. "Where have you been all this time, senor? We have been worried sick!

No word, no idea where you were or when you'd be back. And Senora Krieger's house burned to the ground and she is missing, and you!" she exclaimed as John got out of the taxi. "Where is your mother?"

Marietta left von Rossbach standing to hurry around the car and start a new tirade at John. "You're filthy!" she said, holding a bit of his sleeve between thumb and forefinger. "And you look like you haven't eaten since you left! What has happened to you?"

"Calm down, Marietta," Epifanio said. "Let the boy draw his breath to speak."

The chief foreman sauntered over to them and extended his hand to his boss.

"Welcome home, senor, it is good to see you again. I am happy to inform you that everything here is under control."

"Under control!" his wife exclaimed. "There are bills waiting to be paid—

"Which I have paid as necessary," the overseer interrupted calmly. "Everything is going just as it should." He looked into the backseat of the taxi, then indicated the trunk. "Is there baggage, senor?"

"No," Dieter said quickly as he counted out bills. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" Marietta asked, more calmly. "But, senor, you have been gone many days. You have no laundry?"

"What I have, Senora Ayala," von Rossbach said gallantly as the cab drove off,

"is a great hunger for some of your cooking. Would it be inconvenient for you to prepare something for us?"

"Good heavens, no!" she said, and bustled toward the house. "I'll have something on the table for you in just a moment." Just as they thought she was finished with them, she turned and pointed a finger like a spear at John. "You!" she said ominously. "You take a shower right away, before you get one bite of dinner."

"Yes, ma'am," John said meekly.

"Elsa!" the housekeeper shouted. Her niece came out onto the portal. "Show the young gentleman to the guest room."

Elsa looked at John and blushed. " Si, auntie," she said softly. Then with a shy, dark-eyed glance over her shoulder she said, "This way, senor."

Looking and feeling a bit surprised, and not knowing what to do with his hands for a moment, John cast a glance Dieter's way and at his nod followed the girl into the house.

Dieter looked around at his land, enjoying the peace of the place. Nothing like a little jaunt into evil and violence to make a man appreciate stability and quiet.

That was why he'd decided to take up cattle ranching in the chaco of Paraguay when he originally retired from the Sector. The problem was that the old saying

—the only way you retired from this business was as a statistic—looked more and more prophetic.

Epifanio watched his boss shrewdly. "Perhaps after you have eaten and refreshed yourself from your journey, senor, you would like to discuss"—he waved a vague hand at the grasslands around them—"what we have been doing here while you were away."

"Tomorrow will be soon enough," Dieter said.

" Si, senor." Epifanio gave von Rossbach a slight, two-fingered salute. With a smile he said, "Welcome home."

Then he put on his hat and headed back to work. This was one of the things he liked about his boss; the man respected his employee's time. Tomorrow was, of course, the better time for this discussion, but many employers would insist on asserting their right to know everything right now!

He wondered where von Rossbach had been, and where Sefiora Krieger was, and why there was no luggage to take care of. With a sigh he admitted to himself that he might never know. Even Marietta had been unable to find out why the

senor had left, or about the fire at the Krieger estancia or anything. A sobering failure for both of them. Still, this was a new opportunity, they would have to see what time would bring them.

Dieter took a surreptitious sniff at himself. First a shower, then he'd check the mail while he waited for dinner. Marietta wouldn't slap just anything in front of him for his homecoming, so he had time. He took a deep, cleansing inhalation of the dry chaco air. It was good to be back. If Sarah was with them it would be perfect. He shook his head and went into the house, better not to think about what couldn't be helped. There was too much to do.

Sweeping back a damp lock of overlong hair from his forehead, von Rossbach resolved to get a trim as soon as he had time. He walked down the corridor to his office, opened the deeply carved oak door (imported at no doubt ridiculous cost by the original owner of the estancia), and entered his office. A quick check of the hidden program showed nobody had tried to tap in, bug the house, or put it under surveillance—at least nothing more sophisticated than entirely passive systems, or the Eyeball Mark One. His brows rose, half in relief, half in surprise.

All was tidy on the desk except for the pile of mail threatening to topple out of his in-tray. The most intriguing item was a legal-sized envelope of a rich cream color. Dieter slid it carefully from the pile.

The paper was of very high quality, with the return address embossed in gold.

The names Hoffbauer, Schatz and Perez announced that they were attorneys-at-law.

Frowning, von Rossbach slit the envelope with a rosewood opener and pulled out the documents it contained. When he saw what they were he felt a shock,

like the quick sizzle of electricity, just below his ribs. The documents gave him custody of John in the event of Sarah's death or disB appearance. There was a letter from her included in the package. The attorney, Perez in this case, cautioned that until Senor von Rossbach signed the documents, they were, or course, unenforceable.

Dieter stared at the envelope containing Sarah's letter numbly. Had she sensed disaster? He'd been in the field long enough to know that, sometimes, people got such feelings. He'd also been in the field long enough to know that sometimes people simply surrendered to those feelings and by doing so brought disaster on themselves and others.

But not Sarah, he thought. Sarah had a goal, and a task; fight Skynet, preserve John. And she would fight for both with the last breath in her body. This was just an example of her expertise in advanced planning. Unforeseen things happened during even the best-laid-out campaigns. So this was a contingency plan.

When did she do this? he wondered. Before the Terminator and the fire that destroyed her home, he was certain she did not trust him. Probably from the Caymans, then. By then she was letting him be a part of the team, getting to trust him. After the debacle in Sacramento he doubted she would have trusted him to take out the trash, let alone provide for her son. Dieter felt honored.

Of course I'll accept the responsibility, he thought. He'd contact Perez and see what could be done. Sarah being unavailable but not dead made things awkward from a legal standpoint, but few things were insurmountable. Particularly when Sarah's wishes were so plain.

That reminded him of another call he needed to make. Dieter pulled the phone toward him and entered the number Dyson had given him.

There were a series of clicks, one ring, and then a woman's voice said, "Hello?"

"I'm calling for today's sailing report," Dieter said.

"And you are?"

"Mr. Ross."

"Thank you, Mr. Ross. It looks like smooth sailing from now on."

"Thank you," Dieter said, and hung up just as John entered the room. "Good news," he said with a relieved smile. "Your mother is out of danger."

John flopped into the visitor's chair and breathed out. "Thank God," he said. He leaned forward and scrubbed his face vigorously with his hands.

"Blaaahdddyaaa!" he said, and leaned back. "She's okay." John sat for a moment, contemplating a spot of sunshine on Dieter's office floor, just letting himself feel his relief. He nodded. "Good," he said quietly. "Good. So all we have to worry about now"—a sardonic smile lifted one corner of his mouth—"is what happens next."

"For your mother, once she's well enough, back to the asylum." Von Rossbach let his expression show that he didn't like the prospect one bit. "At least until we can do something about it." He ran a finger down the length of the document the lawyers had sent him and decided to tell John. He'd want to know. "For you, back to school."

"School?" John said after a beat. "You think I've got time to screw around with school?"

Dieter held up his hand to stop what promised to become a tirade. "You should know that your mother has designated me your guardian until your majority, or until she returns."

"And what?" John said. "That weirds you out so much you can't wait to get rid of me? My mother has a business that needs to be run," he pointed out, then waved a hand to erase that. "More importantly, do you think Skynet is finished? When Dyson told us that Cyberdyne had another backup site?"

Von Rossbach flipped his hand at him. "Are you suggesting that we go after it?

Because, frankly, that would be suicide. That site has, no doubt, been more than adequately protected since our attack on Cyberdyne."

"Protected?" John shook his finger. "No, no, no. I'll go you one better. They've not only 'protected' that site, but they've built a clone of the work they were doing in California on some remote military base somewhere."

Looking thoughtful, Dieter nodded slowly. It was possible; the military loved redundancy. "They probably wouldn't trust Cyberdyne to bring this project in safely after what happened the first time," the Austrian murmured.

"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.

"Exactly, sir," Tricker said, after a minute pause.

Craig put his elbows on the arms of his chair and folded his hands under his chin; he allowed his gaze to drop from his agent's eyes, having made his point.

Tricker was one of the best agents he had. No, probably the best.

And he was right, there were limits to what one could, and should, do to a hostile witness, especially one from a competing agency. Professional courtesy and all.

So if he couldn't crack Dyson, it would take more than Kipfer was willing to sanction. Besides, the how of the thing wasn't really important. After all, Sarah Connor was in custody once again and her son was only sixteen.

Not that teenage boys weren't potentially dangerous; there was a reason armies liked them. He just thought that they were more limited in the type of harm they could do than adults. He doubted the kid was still in the U.S., but they had Sarah Connor, and eventually that would bring the kid into the light.

"One of the things that makes me suspicious of Dyson," Tricker said cautiously,

"is that he appears to have done a complete one-eighty on Sarah Connor. He's been at her bedside or visiting her constantly since she was admitted to the hospital. The doctors and nurses I've interviewed say that his concern seems genuine. Connor herself, predictably, isn't talking."

"That's something of a departure for her, isn't it?" Kipfer asked. "She's always been on the talkative side before, going on for hours about killer robots and

Judgment Day and so on."

"Going by the records we received from Pescadero, she'd be off at the slightest provocation." Tricker shook his head. "But not this time. She just gives you this accusing look, like a kid getting teased by her classmates."

Kipfer lifted a few pages of Tricker's report and read for a moment, then he dropped them. "You've taken the usual steps, I see. Keep me informed. Now"—

he met Tricker's eyes once more—"tell me about the project."

"Things are going very well, all things considered," the agent replied.

Which was true. The scientists and engineers at their disposal weren't quite the top-flight talent that Cyberdyne had recruited, but they were plugging along. At least as far as he could tell, and he, unfortunately, was in the position of having to take their word for it.

"Things would go better still," Tricker added, "if we could manage to recruit Viemeister. And I think he could be tempted. His work is important to him and he was, according to the last reports we received from Cyberdyne, making great strides. But he's still under contract to them, and since we don't want to admit we have a clone project up and running, it's going to take some delicate handling."

Kipfer made a rude sound and sat forward, pulling his chair into his desk. "Dr.

Viemeister isn't someone you handle delicately," he said. "We've got enough on him to change his career from scientist to license-plate maker. Just hit him over the head with an ax handle and ship him to the base. When he wakes up tell him that. Then show him a hilly equipped lab where he can pick up his project where he left off. I think you'll find he'll cooperate. Especially since he won't have any

other option. The guy's not even a citizen."

Tricker frowned thoughtfully. "I thought he was naturalized."

"There's no record of it," Craig said easily. It wasn't necessary to add: not anymore.

Tricker allowed himself a slight smile. Sometimes it was fun working for the government—at least when you were working for this part of it. And since he really didn't like Viemeister, seeing the arrogant kraut taken down was going to be pure pleasure. One of life's little bonuses.

"In any case he's liable to be"—Kipfer waggled one hand—"upset about his new location."

"I think we can guarantee that he'll be upset, sir," Tricker dared to say.

"So I'm going to assign you to the base, just to make sure things run smoothly, for… say the next few months."

Tricker's jaw dropped; it only showed in his slightly parted lips, but an equivalent expression in an ordinary citizen would have included drool. "Sir, I have no scientific qualifications for observing this project," he said carefully.

"You'll be handling security," Kipfer said, his eyes like green nails. "My secretary has a package with all the necessary tickets and permits. You can pick it up on your way out."

"On my way out," Tricker said. He felt as though his blood had frozen in his

veins.

"Yes. You have two days to wind up any outstanding business you may have."

His boss was giving him nothing, no opening to protest, no idea how long this ultra-dead-end assignment in America's secret Siberia was to last. This was his punishment. He'd known in his heart that it was coming. You didn't screw up an assignment this badly, losing the one artifact remaining to them, and not answer for it. After all, no one even knew what had become of Tricker's predecessor. He took a deep breath.

"That'll be more than sufficient," he said. If the powers that be were adamant that he be punished, he might as well take it with a little dignity.

"Is there anything else you need to tell me?" Kipfer asked.

"No, sir. I think we've covered everything."

Craig turned his attention to another file from his in-basket. "Then I guess I can let you go," he said, looking up. "Bon voyage."

Tricker lifted one corner of his mouth in a pseudosmile.

"Thank you, sir," he said, rising. "I'll send you a postcard."

Kipfer looked up, his eyes dead. "Just send your reports."

Tricker suppressed a sigh. "Yes, sir."

After the door closed, Kipfer put down the report he wasn't really reading. He

leaned back with a thoughtful frown. It was a waste of talent to send Tricker off to the hinterlands to cool his heels.

Unfortunately the Cyberdyne fiasco required some sort of response. Craig sat up and opened the discarded file. He'd reclaim his agent in about six months. That ought to be long enough for Tricker to begin to despair of ever being rescued.

Maybe it should be eight months. It depended on what came along. He supposed it was only just that he be deprived of something he valued, too. This disaster had occurred on his watch after all.

Enough introspection. Kipfer turned his attention back to the new file.

FORT LAUREL BASE HOSPITAL,

CALIFORNIA

Jordan Dyson shifted his wounded leg into a slightly more comfortable position, which wasn't much of an improvement. You sure can tell when the meds are wearing off, he thought.

Sarah Connor had shot him, of all the ironic things. She'd also shot his older brother, Miles. The only difference being that she'd shot Miles before he was convinced about Terminators and himself after he'd discovered their reality.

In a strange way, despite his wound, his lost job, and the horrors he'd witnessed, Dyson felt a sense of peace. He now knew how his brother had died, trying to destroy his own work to ensure that Skynet and Terminators never happened, and he was proud of him. He could lay Miles to rest in his own heart and mind and move on.

His long-held hatred for Sarah Connor had begun to fade upon his first encounter with a Terminator; now, in his brother's memory, he felt a growing friendship for her and a tremendous respect.

Jordan looked up as the door opened and Tricker came in.

"This will be your final debriefing," Tricker said. The agent put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the former FBI agent. "Connor seems to like you,"

he observed.

"Connor is still woozy," Dyson replied. "We'll have to wait to see how she really feels." He put down the book he'd been reading. "What do you need to know?"

Tricker looked at Jordan for a long time before he answered. Part of that time he was thinking about his new assignment. But he returned his mind to the business at hand with the discipline born of years in the field. Dyson was looking back at him with a bland expression that he could probably hold for a very long time.

What would he like to know? He'd like to know why Dyson was in Connor's room every day giving her encouragement and sips of water after spending the last almost seven years hunting her down in the belief that the Connors had killed his brother in the original attack on Cyberdyne. And what had happened to her son, and how much had the kid helped her blow up Cyberdyne a second time? And how the hell had Connor gotten that wound? The gunshots were standard enough, but the one in her middle looked, the doctor had said, like someone had done it with their hand.

But he didn't think he was going to find out what he wanted to know. Dyson was

clearly a reluctant witness and Tricker had other things to do. Ah, well. You had to have a high frustration tolerance in this line of work.

After a moment he leaned forward, resting one hand on the back of Jordan's chair. "I'd like to know why you're suddenly on her side," he said confidentially.

He searched Dyson's eyes for a moment, then tightened his lips and straightened.

"But I doubt I ever will." Tricker gave him an assessing look. "Watch your back, Dyson," he said, and left the room.

Jordan looked at the door for a moment, then leaned his head against the chair back. You, too, he thought.

SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

Kurt Viemeister stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows of his luxurious home without seeing the mountain and surf and crimson-cloud sunset they framed.

He tightened a massive fist. What gave that government stooge the right… ?

Kurt stopped himself with an effort. Might gave Tricker the right. The government had kept backup copies of the data on his project— his project—

copies which he himself, the creator, had been forbidden to keep! Now they would only release them to him if he agreed to work on it in the place they chose under still more of their insane restrictions. It was maddening!

He turned on his heel and went to his weight room. He stripped to his shorts, put on a belt, and began to use the Nautilus.

His project— his! Kurt reset the weight chock at two-fifty and lifted again. With a hiss of breath he lifted, then slowly let the weight down, again… He felt

himself grow calmer as the effort purged the fight-flight toxins from his blood.

The government needed him to complete the project, and they had to know it.

Being a necessary part of things gave him some leverage. Unfortunately, given the current location of the project, once he committed himself, they had the upper hand again. Even more so than before. So.

He sat up and wiped his face with a towel. Who was he kidding? Once he was at their secret base they could ignore any of his demands with impunity and he knew that. Kurt lay back on the bench with a deep sigh. His need to complete his work was like an addiction, and knowing he couldn't do so until they let him was agony.

No. This time the ignorant weaklings had him right where they wanted him and he had no choice but to give them what they wanted. Very well, he would concede. Though he would, of course, make them pay dearly for his defeat.

And who knew, one day, he might get to pound Tricker's face right off its bones.

With that happy thought firmly in mind he went back to his regimen, feeling better if not satisfied.

CHAPTER THREE

LOS ANGELES

Roger Colvin, CEO of Cyberdyne, leaned back in his chair as his eyes strayed to the figures on his computer.

"Roge," Paul Warren said patiently, recalling his friend's attention.

Colvin looked up guiltily. "Sorry," he said. He gestured at his screen. "Some of the numbers just changed and it caught my eye."

Warren tightened his lips. He knew the truth, which was that no one wanted to hear how much he missed his wife, how he was haunted by questions about her death. Was it murder, suicide, an accident?

He was better now about not launching into maudlin monologues than he had been, but the questions and the soul-searching went on and on. By now, though, even his most patient friends, like Roger, wished that he would turn it off.

Especially during business hours.

Of course, for people at their level it was always business hours. So, back to work.

Now that Cyberdyne had the automated factory as their premier project, it behooved them to work their asses off.

"What have we got?" Warren asked.

Colvin sat forward, relieved that his friend was temporarily back in the groove.

"It's very good, in fact. I don't know how they're doing it, but we're a month and a half ahead of schedule now."

"Maybe that's because they're totally isolated out there and want to get back to their homes," Warren suggested.

The factory was going up in the middle of nowhere, no towns around for a hundred miles, and if there had been any, they'd be inaccessible because there was no road leading to the site. And there never would be.

Right now everything was being done by humans and helicopters. But when the factory was finished all supplies would be flown in on unmanned drones, self-guided by one of Cyberdyne's most advanced onboard computers. Raw materials would be removed from the transports by a small army of their latest generation of independently functioning robots. Finished weapons would be delivered to warehouses the same way. No humans involved at all until the end point, and even that was optional.

The Pentagon loved the idea.

Colvin grinned. "You might be right," he said. "I'm glad because they tell me the weather gets fierce up there in the winter."

Warren grunted. "Have you heard anything else about the Skynet project?"

The CEO shook his head. "I don't expect to either. I also have no idea what happened to our beloved Tricker. Last contact was with someone else."

Warren raised a brow at that. So even the indestructible Tricker could be pulled up short. Nice to know. "So when can we get into production?"

Colvin handed him a printout. "By the end of the month," he said with a cocky smile, and leaned back in his chair. "Not bad, eh?"

"Not bad at all." Warren laughed and shook his head. "And boy, do we need a

success right now."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," the CEO agreed.

VON ROSSBACH ESTANCIA,

PARAGUAY, NOVEMBER

John clicked a few keys and found himself on the Sarah Connor Web site; the von Rossbach estate might look like the Paraguayan equivalent of backwoods, but the satellite-link communications were first-rate, with outlets in every room.

Things had calmed down at the site over the last few months. There were occasional updates, and old E-mail got cleared away, but it was very different from the days when it was new.

What he was here for was the secret Luddite chat room, where things remained hot. In fact, the Luddite movement seemed to be getting stronger and more active worldwide—it had practically gone mainstream, putting up political candidates and organizing outreach stations and Web sites. Unfortunately, this was accompanied by an increase in terrorist acts both large and small every day, everywhere.

The tone of conversation in the rooms was different, too. It lacked the almost pleading exasperation of previous listings that wanted to teach and had become more militant. Much more us versus them. And that attitude, too, seemed to be becoming more mainstream with every passing day.

John simply lurked in the topic and chat rooms, gathering information, but he'd noticed one user, styled Watcher, who occasionally shook things up. Lately the

threats the Luddites made against Watcher for questioning their methods and ideas had become chilling.

He decided to seek out this character. Someone with that sobriquet might know some very interesting things, and might be someone he could add to his growing list of informants on the Web.

He was in luck; Watcher was on-line, discussing a recent bombing with the Luddites. If you could call such a hostile exchange a discussion. Good thing Watcher isn't in the same room with these people. On the Internet the gloves came off and people said things they'd never say in meat space. But if you were right there with them when they were saying it… who knew what would happen.

He glanced around his whitewashed bedroom with its black quefaracho-timber rafters and tile floors. E-presence was very different from the physical world. It liberated the id. Maybe the people threatening to wear Watcher's intestines as suspenders wouldn't harm a fly in reality. But with all the bombings and beatings and vandalism going on, who could be sure anymore?

John checked out the address at the top of Watcher's messages and found it a dead end. But, he thought, there are other ways of finding you, buddy. After a tedious half hour he found the time Watcher had logged on, then correlated that with an IP address. That brought him to the MIT Web site in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cool, he thought, and not surprising. It was pretty obvious from his posts that Watcher was pro-technology.

Narrowing it down to the university was good, but he'd need some power to get the information he wanted. He constructed a password that got him into the operational side of the MIT site—a little lockpick-and-insertion program that

Dieter had brought with him from the Sector was very useful here—and registered himself as a systems administrator. That essentially made him a system god, giving him access to all the on-site users' real tags.

He continued to trace Watcher, which was turning out to be a job and a half. This guy knows how to cover his tracks, he thought in admiration. Very definitely a good recruit if all worked out. Finally he located Watcher's origin.

Aha! A freshman student at MIT, Watcher was Wendy Dorset. John hacked into her school records, finding a picture. Cute, he thought. Not important, but nice to know. He pulled up an encrypted talk request and sent it to Watcher.

*I'd like to talk with you,* he sent.

There was a long pause. Finally she accepted the request, creating a secure shell in which they could speak. John's screen split into he said/she said columns, as did hers. Now they could communicate in real time.

*Who are you?* Watcher asked.

John's tag was AM, which stood for Action Man, not necessarily something he would ever reveal.

*I could be a friend,* John typed. *Why don't you blow oil these bozos. I think we have similar interests.*

*Similar interests?* she asked.

*Beyond making fools of fools,* he typed with a smile. *But first we should get

to know each other.*

*And how are we going to do that? And why should I trust you?*

*Trust?* he wrote. * You trust these guys? Hey, at least I'm not threatening to kill you if we ever meet*

*Good point. Okay, I'll ditch the creeps. They're getting more excited than is good for them anyway.* Watcher was gone for a moment then came back. *So, what do you want?*

*What drew you to that particular site?* John asked.

*It's rude to answer a question with a question,* Watcher pointed out.

*True, but I'm asking.*

And he wasn't going to answer any questions until he had a satisfactory answer.

*Whatever. I was just looking around when I found it. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, just killing time. Y'know? But something about the Sarah Connor story reached me. Maybe it was that lone-wolf thing. I'm a sucker for underdogs.*

Underdog, John thought. Yeah, I guess that pretty well describes my mother. At least in the old days. God! He was still only sixteen and he actually had "old days" to refer back to.

*It turned out to be a really strange site,* Watcher went on. *And as for these idiots, I just can't help myself. I've gotta poke 'em.*

*People who take themselves very seriously can also be very dangerous,* John warned. *So how's the weather on the East Coast?* he asked, deciding to throw her a curve.

There was a long wait for Watcher's next post. Hope I haven't scared her off.

*Probably not as warm as it is waaaay down south,* Watcher finally replied.

John caught his breath. Sure hope she doesn't scare me off. *Okay,* he wrote,

*this demonstrates why it's a bad idea to tease the crazies. One of them might be computer literate.*

*It may be cocky,* Watcher replied, *but I like to think of myself as being a little more than merely "literate."*

*Actually I think you are, too. The dangerous part is in assuming that because you're smart no one else is. It's always unwise to underestimate people. Leads to nasty surprises.*

Listen to me, he thought, I received this advice from masters and I've found it to be true.

Once again there was a long pause. *Are you warning me against yourself?

Whatever. What I really want to know is, what do you want?*

His brief review of Dorset's school records had made her sound like a straight arrow. What he'd observed of her interactions with the Luddites told him she had nerve and could think on her feet. The way she'd hidden her tracks told him she was damn smart. The way she'd found him told him she might be dangerous if

she wasn't handled right.

*I'm head of a kind of watchers' group, no pun intended,* he explained. Or I would be if I hadn't just thought it up this minute. You'll be my first recruit! He hoped. *We keep our eyes on military/industrial projects, just in case they get it into their heads to do something hinky. We're always on the lookout for new talent. Want to join?*

*Okay, here's my problem,* she answered. *Think of where I met you. Now, how do I know you're not a Luddite extremist yourself?*

*Tough one,* he agreed. *Ideally I would meet you face-to-face.* Which I would loooove to do, he thought. *And that would give us an opportunity to get a feel for each other. But that's obviously not going to happen. I could call you,*

he suggested.

*All right,* she replied, and typed a number. *Four o'clock tomorrow afternoon.

Eastern Standard Time.*

*Why not now?* he asked.

*It's not my number,* she wrote.

Then she was gone. Wow, John thought, grinning wryly, I'd better practice my adult voice.

PESCADERD STATE HOSPITAL,

CALIFORNIA, NOVEMBER

Sarah didn't dislike Dr. Ray; she just didn't respect him. She did think that he

might be useful, however, if she handled herself right. In a way, being back in one of the beige-dingy interview rooms of a mental hospital was almost homelike; she'd spent a lot of time at the last one.

This time she didn't have cigarettes to occupy her hands during the medical pseudointerrogations, though. Times had changed, a hospital would never get away with letting a patient smoke, and besides— she'd quit. She wished the longing for them would quit, too. Sarah looked out at the gray rain, a California winter day that gave the lie to several songs, and then back at her "counselor."

Ray was clearly ambitious. The tone he took with staff and students indicated that he fancied himself as an up-and-coming "great man." He was one of those energetic, intense men with a thin ascetic face and a long, wiry body.

When he was having a session with Sarah she felt as though he were trying to pull sanity out of its hiding place in her skull by sheer will. He was almost scary.

And maybe it was the knowledge that John was in safe hands with Dieter, or maybe it was the six-year vacation from fighting Skynet, but she was infinitely more sane at this moment than she had been the last time she found herself in an institution.

Which should make it that much easier to convince Ray that she was curable and not dangerous. If she handled herself right then she would find herself in minimum security by the time she was fully healed. And minimum security was one short step from freedom.

Ray's dark eyes bored into hers as he waited for her to speak. That was how he always started a session, by allowing the patient to make the first move. There

certainly weren't any distractions in the slightly rundown, institutional-bland, disinfectant-smelling room.

"I've been sleeping very well," Sarah said, injecting a tentative note into her voice. She lowered her eyes shyly. "Even without the painkillers."

"You could still have those if you thought you needed them," Ray said.

Sarah shook her head wordlessly.

"Do you dislike drugs, Sarah?"

She waited a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," she said. "I think I do.

I'm grateful they were there when the pain was bad. But when I don't need them I don't like to take them."

Ray nodded encouragingly. "When you were at Pescadero before, you were given a lot of drugs, weren't you?"

"Oh, yes," Sarah agreed wryly. "A lot of drugs. Dr. Silberman did believe in better living through chemistry." She looked thoughtful. "That's probably why I dislike them."

She'd have to be careful or she'd forget who was leading who here. But Ray was nodding, a little smile tugged at his thin lips. So, Silberman and his treatment of her were something of a sore spot. Or maybe a challenge.

"And how do you feel about Cyberdyne now?" the doctor asked.

Sarah took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling; she bit her lip, then finally met the doctor's eyes. "I… don't seem to have any feelings at all about Cyberdyne," she admitted. With a shrug she went on, "Right now I can't believe that I actually had anything to do with the explosion. It doesn't feel like I did that. It's as though this is about someone else entirely instead of about me." She waited a moment, looking into Ray's eyes. "Does that make any sense?"

"You're doing fine," he assured her, briefly smiling. "So you're telling me that you feel completely removed from the act of destroying Cyberdyne?"

"Yes," she said simply. Then sighed. "But I know it was me. I know that I did it.

It just doesn't make any sense to me now."

"And if Cyberdyne hadn't been destroyed? If you'd failed?"

Sarah frowned, then shook her head. "I can't answer that. If I'd failed… I might well still want to destroy the company. But then again, maybe I would have been satisfied with just the attempt." She looked up at him. "Why do I want to do this sort of thing, Doctor? What's wrong with me? Does it have a name? Can it be cured?" She allowed tears that weren't entirely fake to fill her eyes. "What's going to happen to me?"

Ray looked solemn and held his silence for a minute.

"I think we can help you, Sarah. If you're willing to be helped. Since a great deal really does depend on you and your willingness to be cured, I can't answer for the long term. But in the short term you'll go on trial. I've good reason to hope that you'll be held here after your evaluation and that eventually the state will commit you to my care." He held up his hands, then dropped them to his lap.

"How long you remain here is up to you."

She smiled at that, she couldn't help it. It might take time, but she was going to go free. She might not even have to escape.

Dr. Ray sat across from Jordan Dyson, a coffee table liberally speckled with old cup rings between them, and waited for the former FBI agent to speak.

Jordan finally sighed. He recognized the technique; put someone in a non-stimulating environment, which Pescadero State certainly was, and wait. Most people couldn't take the silence, and started talking. There was no point in disappointing the good doctor's expectations.

"Okay," he said, "you asked me here. I assume you had a reason."

The doctor smiled a secret smile and nodded. "Yes," he said quietly. "I did."

Then he went silent again.

"Uh-huh," Jordan said. "Are you going to let me in on it? Because I do have a life beyond these walls, Doctor. Things to do, people to see."

"I wanted to talk to you about Sarah Connor," Ray admitted. "You were very kind to her when you were both in the hospital. I wondered why, when you'd spent so many years trying to bring her to justice."

Jordan shrugged, and drank a little of the brown sludge the Pescadero coffee machines dispensed. "Maybe I just wanted to be sure that she'd live to stand trial.

Maybe I've been born again and wanted to forgive her.

Or maybe I've come into some new information that left her innocent of my brother's murder."

Ray nodded, never taking his eyes from Jordan's. "And which is it?" he asked, his voice gentle.

Jordan just stared back for a minute, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "Why do you ask?"

The doctor grinned. "I apologize," he said. "It can be hard to turn off the doctor-patient dynamic. My goal is to help Sarah. If you wanted to be of help to her, too, I was thinking that I could arrange for you to visit her. It might be helpful to you as well," he suggested.

Jordan took a deep breath and looked thoughtful.

This is good, he thought. Very good. I wonder if Sarah suggested it. Certainly it would ease John's worries if he could tell them how she was doing here in Pescadero. And it would allow him to keep his promise not to let them drug her insensible. He looked up.

"I came into new information, nothing I can prove, that Sarah Connor wasn't responsible for my brother's death. Yes, he was there because she brought him there, but she did not kill him, and she did not intend for him to die."

Jordan tightened his lips. "That was hard to accept. But I received this information from two independent sources, so I couldn't refuse to believe it. And that changed things for me. I finally realized that it was time for me to move on."

He adjusted his position in his chair. "And once I met the woman"—he shook his

head—"it was obvious that she was acting under some sort of compulsion. She isn't a vicious killer, she didn't want to hurt anybody, but she had to destroy Cyberdyne. Why"-he shrugged—"maybe you can tell me."

Ray nodded solemnly, but didn't rise to the bait.

"In the hospital," Dyson continued, "she was a different person. Entirely different. Of course"—he waved his hand—"the circumstances were also completely different, so I don't know…" He petered out, looking exasperated.

The doctor studied him for a while as though waiting for him to continue.

"Would you be willing to speak with her again?" he finally asked.

Jordan bit his lips, frowning, then opened them as though to say something, but he kept silent.

"As I said, I think it could be beneficial to both of you. It might well help you to put the pain behind you."

Looking thoughtful, Jordan sat silent for another moment, then looked up decisively. "All right," he said. "I'll do it." I'll have to get word to Paraguay somehow. This weather-report thing has its limits.

VON ROSSBACH ESTANCIA, PARAGUAY

John was watching the clock, waiting to call Watcher, aka Wendy Dorset, when Dieter came into his room, all smiles.

"Good news," he said.

John didn't doubt it; the big man fairly lit up the room with good vibes. It made a nice change from the solemn Teutonic atmosphere they'd all been living in for the last three months. He sat up, setting aside the magazine he'd been reading.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Your mother is up for a move to minimum security," Dieter said, his blue eyes aglow. "Sometime in the next six weeks, Jordan said."

"You spoke to Jordan directly?" John was both surprised and disappointed.

Surprised that Dyson would risk it, disappointed that Dieter hadn't called him to get on the line.

"For about forty seconds only," Dieter said. "I barely had a chance to say hello and he was gone again. He said he'd call back at the next opportunity. After three months of tapping his phone with no results, he's sure they'll soon move on.

There's never enough manpower or equipment," von Rossbach added.

You should know, John thought. He glanced at the time; almost exactly four.

"I'm about to call a possible recruit named Watcher," he said regretfully. "I think she might be useful. Can I talk to you later about this?"

Dieter nodded cheerfully. "Yes," he agreed. "We have much to talk about."

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

Wendy brushed back her smooth dark red hair and eyed the phone lying on the table before her, willing it to ring, as she took a sip of the cooling coffee. Her eyes swept the almost empty confines of the shabby cafe, with its bored waitress

and long-dead pastries behind filmy glass; she felt nervous, wary… and a bit excited, she admitted to herself.

Perhaps this secret watchdog group could help. Perhaps they were part of the problem and were onto her and just trying to find out what she knew before they

—

Wow, she thought sardonically, great plot line, there. Maybe I should take a course in screenwriting. Zzzzzt! Cue the black helicopter!

Real life didn't have a plot. It just bumbled aimlessly on its way, unless you directed it by sheer force of will. Which was harder to do than to say, she knew.

She'd seen that in her lather's life. When he was her age he'd been an ardent activist, fighting against the war in Vietnam, fighting for civil rights.

Now he ran a moderately successful insurance business, just like his dad had done. And as far as Wendy could tell, he had no idea how he'd gotten from firebrand to burnout. She saw herself at his age, complacently middle class, being careful not to rock the boat too hard.

Did middle age bring about a failure of will, or did you just have more to lose? I guess, she thought, that you always have a lot to lose, it just seems less important when you're young. So I guess it's better that you're inclined to fight the good fight when you're young and don't have a lot of commitments. Yeah, commitments, that's the glue that slows you down, and when it sets, well, your life's over, I guess.

Wendy lifted a brow. Maybe this wasn't the best attitude to assume when she was about to meet AM. Or anyone else for that matter.

She tapped the cell phone on the table before her. It belonged to the house mother, a really nice woman who left it all over the place, so it wouldn't be missed. Everyone "borrowed" it, then returned it with a cheerful "Were you looking for this?" She glanced at her watch. It was four; AM should—

The phone rang.

She bit her lip and stared at it. Just before the third ring she picked it up. "Yeah?"

she said.

"Watcher?"

It was a young voice; the youth of it hit her before the fact that it was also a male voice. "How old are you?" she demanded.

There was a long-drawn-out sigh. "I get a lot of that," he said dryly. "Not as young as I sound, I know that for sure." Damn! he thought. "Does it matter?"

"Ye-ah! Why would I want to get involved in someone's high-school project?

Look, kid—

"I found you, didn't I?" John asked, letting his voice get hard. "It took about a minute."

"Oh, no it didn't," Wendy snapped back. She'd worked very hard obscuring her trail, no way some kid could find it in less than an hour.

"Wendy, if I'd known you were going to be so judgmental about my voice, I would have had you speak to one of my associates. If this is an issue for you I

can hang up now. It's up to you."

Associates, she thought. The kid has associates. Well, that was intriguing.

Besides, though he sounded young he sure didn't come across as a kid. Still…

"Look, this was supposed to be a get-acquainted conversation," she said at last.

"So why don't you tell me something about yourself and, uh, your organization, I guess."

"We're not exactly an organization," John explained, relaxing a little. "We don't have a central location, for example. Our associates are spread all over the world, all over the Net—

"Do you have a central address where their reports can be accessed," Wendy interrupted. "I mean I assume that you're collecting information for a reason, which means that you interpret what you collect. Presumably you allow your contributors to assist in that."

"Actually…" John thought for a moment. How to put this? "Evaluating the kind of information we're going after isn't something a person can just walk in and do.

You need training."

"So, train me." Wendy tapped a fingernail on the Formica table. "That's my price

'cause I don't work for free, and I refuse to work blind."

John raised his eyebrows at that. He didn't need a loose cannon on board.

"You're not even hired yet and you want a seat on the board," he protested with a light laugh.

"Look, why did you even want to talk to me if you don't think I'm worth investing time in?" She was beginning to get annoyed. Speaking of time, this is a waste of it.

"It was obvious that you're very smart," John said. "Also that you might be so bored you didn't realize you were killing time in a very dangerous way. A lot of you computer jockeys think that what you're doing on-line isn't real and doesn't count. You think you're perfectly safe behind your keyboards and monitors, but let me tell you, Wendy, if you kick the tiger hard enough it will find you and it won't be friendly. Those are real fanatics you were talking to."

He paused and ran a hand through his dark hair. "I wanted to take your intelligence and talent and direct it into a useful channel. I'd like you to be safe, lady. You're at MIT, for God's sake! To the Luddite movement that's like ground zero, and you think they couldn't find you. You're kidding yourself."

Hunh, Wendy thought, the kid's really passionate about this. She knew she was suppressing the unease his words had awakened in her. Perhaps she had been foolish. Careless? Well, unwise, maybe.

"So what do you want from me?" she asked quietly.

"I want you to keep your eyes and ears open and to report to us anything you find out that might be useful. Useful being defined as something that will prevent harm from being done. I really don't care which camp is generating the damage. Are you interested?"

Wendy thought about it. Was she interested? I dunno, this all sounds kinda weird. A kid gathering information for some undisclosed reason and passing out

dire warnings:" I don't think I want to get involved. It wasn't like she didn't have enough to do with her time, after all.

"Sure," she heard herself say. Then laughed at how she'd surprised herself.

"What?" John asked.

"Sure, whatever," Wendy said. "I guess I'm game. Tell me what you want and I'll try to get it for you." It wasn't like she was joining the army or something.

So John told her what he was looking for, gave her a few Internet addresses he wanted her to check into and a few general guidelines. When he was finished he hesitated.

"What?" she said.

"You might like to recruit some friends to help you out," he suggested. "People you can trust."

Wendy sighed. "Well, I'd like to think I'm unlikely to recruit people I don't trust."

John winced. "Well, you know what I mean."

"Yeah, I guess. See you on-line, kid."

He could hear the smile in her voice and pressed his lips together impatiently.

This wasn't a terribly auspicious beginning to their relationship. He'd prefer that his recruits not find him amusing.

Hey, he reminded himself, if she knew the real story she'd run a mile. Screaming.

"Thank you," he said. "I'll keep in touch." He hung up and sighed heavily. I really need to be grown up, he thought. Too bad it wasn't something you could arrange. I guess I could work on my voice, or maybe get some sort of synthesizer.

I feel grown up, I just don't sound it. Oh, well. For real emergencies there was always Dieter.

CHAPTER FOUR

PESCADERO STATE HOSPITAL,

JANUARY

"Your girlfriend's back," Frances said, and laughed, her eyes filled with malicious glee.

Sarah didn't even have to look up to know that Loretta was indeed in the room; she'd developed a radar about her. Besides, she never stopped sniffling; it was hard to miss. Quite a number of patients had vanished over the holidays, to return one by one. Loretta was among the last to be let out.

One positive note was that Sarah knew she wasn't simply being paranoid; the other patients had noticed Loretta's attention and frequently commented on it.

Some positive note, Sarah thought. I know I'm sane and I'm constantly looking for ways to back up my opinion. How healthy is that?

Frances licked her lips. "I think she wants to—"

"You're going to work so hard at distracting me that you're going to distract yourself," Sarah warned. "That's how I won all your blue chips last time."

Frances pouted, but she shut up. They were playing gin rummy for battered poker chips. The two other players were usually silent, playing the game grimly, as if it were a matter of life and death. But suddenly Allison froze as she picked up a card, becoming so agitated that she actually gurgled instead of speaking.

Donna turned with a frown to see what she was staring at and turned back with a little gasp. She began fiddling with her cards nervously, her dark eyes darting left and right. Frances deigned to look and also froze. Then she put down her cards, got up, and walked away. Allison and Donna looked at each other over the table and started to rise.

"Wait a minute," Sarah said, taking Donna's wrist. "What's going on?" She had the uncomfortable feeling that someone was staring at her, someone who meant her no good, but she was damned if she was going to turn around and give Loretta the satisfaction of seeing her unnerved.

"I can't," Donna whispered. "I've got to… she's not… she…" The woman wrenched her hand free and fled, muttering, Allison nervously crowding her wake.

Looking around, Sarah saw that almost everyone was leaving the common room, giving Loretta and the large woman beside her a wide berth. Sarah rose and moved over to Elisa, a small Puerto Rican woman with, she'd been told, a serious death wish.

"What's going on?" she asked in a whisper.

Elisa tore her eyes away from the woman at the door to look at Sarah. "That's Tanya," she said, nodding at the woman. "She's pretty much crazy." She grinned

when she realized what she'd said. "I mean, out-of-control, watch-your-back insane. She's so out of it she even uses her teeth—a lot. One of the nurses is still having plastic surgery."

"Then maybe we should go," Sarah suggested. If Loretta was escorting such a person into her vicinity, it couldn't be good.

"No, I hope she notices me," Elisa said, her eyes eager. "I haven't had a good fight in a loooong time."

"Good luck," Sarah said. "I'm outta here."

Loretta was a small woman, nervous in her manner, with constantly shifting eyes and an inclination to take advantage of people. Sarah had realized this within ten minutes of making her acquaintance and had taken to avoiding her as much as possible. It had probably been Sarah's notoriety that had attracted Loretta's attention, and a desire to bask in Sarah's reflected glory. She'd taken Sarah's unspoken rejection with very ill grace.

As Sarah walked toward the doorway Loretta spoke to her for the first time.

"Where ya goin', Connor?" she asked, her voice friendly, her eyes not.

"I'm tired, I'm going to my room."

"Naw, you're not tired." Loretta moved over and took her arm.

Sarah felt every muscle in her body tighten at the touch, resenting the sure knowledge that there was going to be trouble. She forced herself to allow the woman her way, to tug her over to Tanya. Any demonstration of anger, however

justified, at this stage could count against her, even if the witnesses were as insane as Loretta and Tanya. That was the trouble with being notorious; you could be telling the truth with complete accuracy and still no one would believe you.

"This is my friend Tanya. I've told her all about you, Sarah. She'd like to play gin with you. Wouldn't you, Tanya?"

Tanya nodded, looking at Sarah as if she were a big juicy steak and she was a hungry dog.

"Hey, Elisa!" Loretta snapped. "Take a hike."

Elisa's jaw dropped at the effrontery; she gave Loretta a disdainful look and settled deeper into her chair. "No," she said, making eye contact with Tanya for good measure.
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