Rising Storm

John found the car with little problem. Unfortunately there was a veritable crowd

of thugs around it. One sat on the trunk with his feet on the back bumper while two of his friends leaned against it laughing at his jokes. One of them was big enough to make John blink, wondering if he was an optical illusion. They all had slight suspicious bulges under loose guayabera shirts.

John considered a couple of ideas about creating a distraction, then rejected them. There were two more under a nearby tree. These five were the only ones visible from where he crouched in the bushes, but he was willing to bet that there were more nearby. Plus there were passersby, some of whom might call the police… and many of the local police were friends of Garmendia's. Good friends; affluent friends.

It would have to be one hell of a distraction, he thought. Like maybe holding a gun to Garmendia's head. If he had a gun, which he didn't.

The point became moot as the smuggler came out and signaled that he wanted them to start up the car.

Guess Lazaro changed his mind about eating breakfast. Or he's on a diet. He eyed the sweaty jowls, already blue with beard stubble. Probably just in a hurry.

Unless he'd been in that damned tunnel even longer than he'd thought. His best bet now was to try to follow them, or failing that, to get to the river and hope to catch up with them there. John sprinted for the wall, hoping that most of the goons were fighting for a place in the limo and so wouldn't notice him; he felt a cold stab of anxiety. This was not going well. Why couldn't Dieter listen to him for a change?

Using the branches of a bush that had begun to turn tree, Connor was able to get

high enough to stretch his hands onto the top of the wall, then he pulled himself over and dropped down the other side.

His heart almost stopped when the limo drove right by him. Miraculously he went unnoticed. Garmendia must have been very distracted by his plans for von Rossbach. His bodyguards wouldn't have noticed who John was, but only that he was unarmed.

John stood and watched them go, then started to jog down the street, planning the quickest way to the river. As he ran he noticed a woman on a moped speeding toward him and decided that she was about to find herself on foot.

The woman wasn't young, but she didn't seem elderly either. She wore a pale blue shirt and beige skirt and a big straw hat tied to her head with a gauzy scarf.

Huge sunglasses made her look like a bug.

John dashed in front of her and the woman brought the bike to a skidding stop.

"I'm sorry, senhora…" Connor started to say, reaching out for her.

" John?" she said, whipping off her sunglasses. "I've been looking all over—"

" Mom?" The relief he felt almost made him weak in the knees. "No time," he said brusquely, and got behind her on the moped. "Dieter's in trouble. Follow that car."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "And here I'd hoped there'd come a day when I neither heard nor used that phrase ever again," she said as she revved up the little machine and started down the road.

"So what's your story?" she asked, pleased by the feel of his arms around her.

She'd missed him so much.

"Dieter went to Garmendia to get help in getting back to Paraguay," John explained.

Sarah frowned. "He went to Garmendia for something like that?" That was like using an ax to swat a fly.

John shrugged. "He thinks of Lazaro as a smuggler and doesn't seem to think he's dangerous. Anyway, uh…"

Uh-oh, Sarah thought. When John's voice petered out like that he was usually going to say something she didn't like. "What?" she demanded.

He pursed his lips for moment, then plunged ahead. "Garmendia thinks that you've told us some big, dark secret of his, so he cooperated with us the first time we came through here and asked for his help."

"Shit!" Sarah muttered. "That was an incredibly stupid thing to do, John!"

"But this time he took exception." John winced. That was putting it mildly considering that Garmendia was going to throw Dieter to the crocodiles.

Shaking her head, Sarah said, "If you only knew. I'm surprised you lived long enough for there to be a this time."

Up ahead she caught sight of the big limo. She took stock of what they knew.

Well, we know who's in the car, we know where they're going and why. Now

what do we do about it?

"Mom, are you carrying?"

"Don't you know me any better than that?" she asked. "Check the side saddle."

John opened one of the straw baskets attached to the side of the bike. There, wrapped in a red-and-white-checked napkin, he found a micro-Uzi and three spare magazines, plus a stun grenade.

"What about you?" he asked, flicking the napkin back over the gun.

"I'm covered," she said grimly.

They rode on in silence for a while as they'd come to a more populated area and the traffic was thick and deadly; you got a license here by paying the jefe a small bribe, if you bothered to get a license at all. Fortunately the limo had to slow down as much, if not more, than their little moped; there were trucks, gaudily painted and often crammed with crates of poultry.

Once Sarah had to stop lest she risk coming up right behind them.

"Mom," John suddenly said. "I've been thinking, and we need to stop them before they get to Garmendia's yacht."

Sarah said nothing as she concentrated on the traffic but turned her head slightly to show she was listening.

"If we could take out a tire they'd have to stop."

"Yes," she agreed. "But we'd still be five to two with Dieter in their hands."

John blew out his breath. "Yeah, anyway your micro-Uzi wouldn't do it." Sarah was silent a little longer, then John felt her relax..

"It's not the best idea in the world," she said, "but it's the best we've got. Look in my other saddlebag."

Leaning back, John rummaged in the basket for a moment.

"Cool!" he said, "One of those collapsible shotguns." He hugged her one-armed as he examined it. "I might have known you'd have one of these. And explosive shells! Neat!"

Sarah smiled. "Yeah, I'm always on the lookout for something practical that will fit in my purse."

She sped up as they came into the riverside area of town, deserted this time of the year, drawing even with the limo's back end. Sarah felt like she had a target painted on her chest, even though the limo's blacked-out windows made it impossible to tell if they'd even spotted her yet. She felt John adjusting his weight as he prepared to bring the shotgun up from the side away from the limo.

Suddenly the huge black car sped up.

"They've seen us," she muttered.

"C'mon, Mom, we're losing "em," John said.

Sarah gunned the throttle; unfortunately, that didn't mean much on a moped.

"Mo-om!"

"This is our top speed, John! We're on a moped, for God's sake, not a chopped Harley!"

He let out an impatient breath. "Gee, this situation seems weirdly familiar."

"No. That would be them trying to run us down while we're in a vehicle that seems to be standing still." She grimaced; her life was probably going out of control again if she was measuring positive and negative by such bizarro standards.

John kept his gaze focused on the limo as though he could slow it by sheer will.

Up ahead the road curved sharply and the limo slowed. Sarah maintained her speed, leaning into the curve like a racer, and they quickly gained back lost ground. Buildings reared on either side, huge decrepit warehouses—from the rubber boom, or perhaps one of the seventies megaprojects gone bust.

"Go, go, go," John urged, barely above a whisper. He automatically shifted his weight to balance his mother's and his eyes sought out his target.

"Now, John," his mother said. "This is as good as it's gonna get."

He brought up the shotgun, aimed, and fired. A brief spurt of fire from the dusty, potholed street; a miss. The limo slammed on the brakes, fishtailing slightly, and the moped shot ahead of them, turning down an alley.

"MOM!" John shouted in protest. "What the hell are you doing?"

Sarah didn't answer; she was too busy trying to get them away from potential disaster. What was I thinking? she berated herself. This is John I've got riding behind me! Riding behind her pitting a shotgun against a carload of demented goons. Nothing was more important than John. Nothing! Not even Dieter von Rossbach, who should have known better than to pit himself against a rottweiler like Garmendia. Especially armed with nothing better than a secret he didn't even know.

How could she forget that even for a second?

"Mom," John said, leaning close. "You remember how a minute ago we were talking about them chasing us? Well, they're doing it!"

Shit! she thought.

Up ahead there was a burst of debris from a wall.

"And they're firing at us," John added.

No kidding.

"They've got automatic weapons," he went on, as something—somethings—

went whackwhackwhack through the air far too close. She began to sway the moped back and forth. That's not going to help for long, she thought. The limo was already gaining.

John risked a glance behind them. There were gunmen leaning out of the car windows, all of them firing. "Mom?" he said, his voice quavering a little. Bullets whizzed by, spanging up dirt and bits of building around them.

Sarah saw a dark space up ahead that warned of an alley between the tightly packed buildings and she turned into it. Unfortunately it was wide enough for the limo and she knew they'd follow. It wound on and she looked desperately for side alleys, finding none, as they came around a curve only to find a dead end.

The moped fishtailed and almost went over, but she managed to bring it to a skidding halt, sideways to the main road. The limo came on and Sarah gasped in horror.

The gunmen, intent now on capturing their targets, ceased firing, but leaned farther out, shouting insults and threats. They came on fast and Sarah wondered if the goons intended to smash them into the wall.

"John!" she said, and hopped off the moped, readying herself to jump onto the limo's hood. In a second her son stood beside her.

The alley narrowed almost imperceptibly just beyond the deceiving curve.

Before the driver could stop, the momentum of the car forced it tightly into the alley; the gunmen disappeared and the glossy sides of the vehicle screeched as they were crushed against the stone walls of the surrounding houses.

"Whoa!" John said, wincing. "That's gotta hurt!"

Blowing out her breath, Sarah let her head hang for a moment. Then there was a tapping sound from the limo. They, whoever had survived, were trying to break through the windshield. Thank God for bulletproof, shatterproof glass, she thought.

"C'mon," she said to her son. "Let's get out of here before they manage to break

out."

John snorted in amusement and took hold of the bike. Together they lifted it up onto the hood and rolled it onto the roof. Within the car they could hear them screaming and pounding on the windshield and roof. When John and Sarah stepped up onto the roof shots rang out, followed by screams and curses as the bullets ricocheted around the armored interior.

It's like they're the Keystone Kops, Sarah thought, shaking her head in disbelief. I know Garmendia's men aren't the brightest tools in the shed, but John knew better than that when he was seven!

They got down off the back as silence fell within the limo. Sarah glanced at the blank glass and opened her belt pouch. She pulled out a set of lock picks and got to work on the trunk lock.

There was a sudden series of blows on the back windshield.

"I'd just like to remind you, Lazaro," Sarah said, her voice mild in spite of her having to speak loudly enough to be heard in the backseat, "that that glass is the only thing between you and me." She looked up at the window. "And you've been shooting at my son."

There was silence for a moment, then the dim imprint of a face as Garmendia got as close as he could to the rear windshield. "You lied to me, Connor! Your brat there, he threatened to tell!"

"I haven't broken my word," Sarah said, her voice hard. "The kid was bluffing, Lazaro. I swore that I would never tell and I never will, not even to him." Her

eyes narrowed. "I don't give my word often, Garmendia, and I don't break it when I do. But I'll break you if you DON'T BACK DOWN!"

The smuggler's face disappeared from the window and there was silence in the limo. Sarah went back to work on the lock. In less than thirty seconds she had it open.

"You're out of practice, Mom," John said as the lid came up.

"Everybody's a critic," Sarah groused. Then she sucked in her breath through her teeth at the sight of von Rossbach. "Eeee-ee," she said.

The big man lay on his side, his hands tied behind his back, his blond hair soaked in blood. As was the side of his face, and his nose and eye had begun to swell.

I could sure use a drink, Sarah suddenly thought. A chaotic snarl of emotion was erupting within her, horror at her friend's condition mixed with compassion, as well as rage at Garmendia for doing this to him. Not to mention the stiff anger she felt toward Dieter for being so foolish, and John for risking himself, and herself for risking John. It was almost overwhelming. She licked her lips.

A nice drink would sure… Do no good whatsoever. A smoke would be nice, too, but that wouldn't help either. She took a deep breath and pushed the insidious cravings aside. "You awake?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Barely," he said. Dieter turned his head and looked at her. His eyes were mere slits in the bruised flesh. He tried to smile.

"Uh, Dieter," she said, her heart sinking.

Reaching in, she checked his bonds. John tapped her on the shoulder, flicking his right hand to set the blade of his balisong. She took the wickedly sharp little knife and cut the sisal twine, unwound the ropes from where they were digging into his wrists. Shaking her head, she stood back to look at him.

"C'mon," she said, "let's get you out of there."

"You sound like a nurse," he quipped.

Sarah didn't answer but held on to his shoulder to keep him from falling over.

John hastened to lend a hand, supporting him from the other side.

Glancing at the moped, John said, "Mom, we can't get him away on that. We'll look like a team of Chinese acrobats."

Putting a hand to her forehead, Sarah tightened her lips as she thought. "You have a place to stay?" she asked quietly.

John nodded.

"Okay," she said. "Go steal a car. I'll follow you back on the moped. Once we've got him inside, you can return it to the same neighborhood."

Without another word John jogged off.

"You've got him well trained," Dieter said, impressed as always at the way John and his mother worked together.

"Shut up," she said, offhandedly. Then she frowned at him. "You can lie down until he gets back."

"I don't think so, if you don't mind," the Austrian said. He gripped the edge of the trunk and began to climb out. Sarah steadied him. "Is there a point to this?"

"Yeah." Dieter worked his sore jaw. "I'm afraid I'll go unconscious again." He sat on the back bumper.

"CONNOR!" Garmendia shouted from within the limo.

Actually she was surprised he'd been this patient.

"Yeah?" she answered.

"Get me out of here!"

Given the company he was keeping, she could well understand his desperation.

"Hang on," she called back. "Don't worry," she said to Dieter. "I have no intention of doing anything until you two are well out of here. Even then I might only give him advice." She smiled slightly and shook her head. "You're an idiot.

You know that?"

"John advised me against it," he admitted.

"I figured that," she said.

He frowned slightly, then winced as the movement hurt. "How did you know?"

"You were alone in the trunk," she said.

John and Dieter had been gone about ten minutes, and it had taken both of them to walk him back down the alley to the car John had boosted. Sarah shook her head as she remembered how weak he'd been. Ideally they'd be out of town before Garmendia made it out of this alley, but von Rossbach's condition made that chancy.

She let out a deep breath and slammed the trunk lid. "Okay," she said. "What have you been doing in there?"

"Smothering and waiting for you to get us out," Garmendia snapped.

Sarah grinned. "Well, I guess I could shoot a few holes in the window and you can kick it out. But if I were you I wouldn't be too comfortable with that idea."

"What do you suggest, Senhora?" Lazaro sneered.

"Haven't you got a cell phone? Why don't you just call your garage?" she said.

"You're going to need a tow anyway. I'm not your mommy, Lazaro; this isn't up to me. You wouldn't be in this fix in the first place if you weren't doing something damned stupid."

Not to mention if I hadn't been doing something damn stupid. She'd been a lot more focused when she was crazy. Now that I know they're still out there maybe I should let myself go crazy again. Lazaro banged on the glass. Speaking of crazy.

"I don't have my phone with me."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Okay," she said. "Who do you want me to call?"

Twenty-four hours later they were on the road to Asuncion in an old wreck of a car that she had gotten by calling in an old debt. Garmendia had agreed to leave them alone on the condition that they left town immediately and never contacted him again. This came about because Lazaro was totally thrown by the new, sane Sarah.

Enjoy it while you can, Sarah thought at him. Who knows how long it will last.

"Mom?" John said. "Are you all right?"

She put a hand on her hip, feeling the lumpy crumpled bulk of the bandage under the cloth; the wound wasn't bleeding much, but it needed a doctor to take out the slug, and there hadn't been time.

"I've been better, but it'll heal. Another of my patchwork of scars," she went on, smiling at Dieter's lumpy, bruised face; it was going to turn every color of the rainbow soon.

"I shouldn't have left you with Garmendia," he fretted.

"It wasn't him. It was the bodyguard, the freak," she repeated patiently. "And Garmendia shot him, right afterward. If you'd been there, you might have caught this—and between your eyes, possibly."

"Garmendia shot him?" Dieter asked. "The one who looked like a giant Neanderthal in a guayabera?"

"In the back," Sarah said.

Dieter touched the side of his face, wincing. "It's an unfamiliar sensation."

"A bruise?"

"No, feeling envious of Garmendia," the Austrian said. "I wanted to be the one who shot that guy, very much."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

LOS ANGELES

Clea did her best to project untutored country girl at the CEO and president of Cyberdyne. In an effort to aid that effect she'd worn a denim skirt and jacket with a red plaid Western shirt, her tooled leather belt had a big silver buckle, and on her feet were a pair of well-broken-in cowboy boots. The rustic costume, with the glasses and attitude, she hoped, would eliminate any resemblance to Serena's slick corporate look and, therefore, to Serena.

As long as he doesn't focus on my tits, some sardonic corner of her mind thought.

They're just like Serena's. Clea scowled at the inner voice; it was far too much like the recorded memories of her clone sister/mother. Eventually they would notice; it was inevitable. But by that time they would be used to her and might comment on the resemblance, but they wouldn't be suspicious. Merely curious.

That's one of the things I actually like about humans— their willingness to explain away anything strange. From what she'd observed, on her own and through Serena's memories, they'd perform some unbelievably convoluted feats of logic to return to their everyday frame of reference. At times she found it incredible that these people had conceived and built Skynet.

The I-950 set her battered briefcase on the conference-room table and extracted a portable computer, smiling nervously at the two men as she set it up. The new corporate HQ was nothing like Serena's memories of the underground center the Connors had destroyed; it was pure minimalist functionality, the sort of

"nothing" that cost a great deal of money, and left you wondering if anything as vulgar as paper ever crossed anyone's desk. Some of the people in the cubicles outside weren't even using thin-screen monitors; they were peering into the telltale blackness of vision goggles, miniature lasers painting text and diagrams directly on their retinas.

"Would you like some coffee?" the president of Cyberdyne offered. Paul Warren hefted a carafe with his own hands, considerable condescension from an executive at his level.

She shook her head and gave him a shy smile. He smiled back warmly and she knew she'd taken the right tack with him. Serena had considered initiating a romantic affair with him, but she'd miscalculated his affection for his wife. This was one instance in which Serena's mistake really didn't matter, though. The woman had had to die, even if it did turn out to be a setback in other areas.

By now, though, he must be lonely and his distress over his wife's death should be fading. Perhaps she should co-opt Serena's plan for herself. Although the very thought of intimate relations with a human revolted her.

"Welcome to Cyberdyne," Roger Colvin said. "I think, based on what I saw at the unveiling the other night, that we've got a lot to offer each other."

Clea squirmed as though pleased and allowed her face to flush as though she was

embarrassed. Don't overdo it, she warned herself. "Thank you," she said aloud, allowing just a touch of Montana into her voice.

"I was just wondering," Warren said, "what have you named your product and have you got a copyright on it."

"I, uh, sent in the paperwork, but I hadn't heard back before I left home." She shrugged. "It may be that it hasn't caught up with me yet."

"We'll check on that for you," Colvin said. "What name have you registered it under?"

"Intellimetal," Clea said. She smiled ruefully. "That's more for what it will be one day than for what it can do now. What Mr. Hill was working with was my earliest successful prototype."

"Really," Colvin said, his voice dripping with interest.

"Uh-huh," she said, smiling. "But"—she twisted her fingers together—"I'd rather not go into detail until we've come to some sort of agreement." Clea shrugged prettily. "My uncle was a stickler for getting things in writing. Never agree to anything until you see it written down, he'd say. It always looks different then."

Warren and Colvin exchanged a glance that said, "This little lady might be inexperienced, but she's nobody's fool."

They set to work, and work it was. Clea knew exactly what she wanted, how much she wanted, and what terms she'd accept. As far as she was concerned, almost nothing was negotiable, however hard the two humans tried. Two hours

later Clea typed in the last word of her "rough notes," as she called them, on her portable and handed the CEO a disk.

"There ya go," she said cheerfully. "Now I'll need to see this all written up formally before I can even begin to decide for sure what I want to do."

"Thank you," Colvin said palely.

"You're welcome." She met his eyes and leaned forward confidentially. "I would like to leave you contemplating this one little idea I had. Now, I haven't done any real special work on it, but I've been thinking about it real hard." Watch the Montana effect, she warned herself. She was in serious danger of enjoying her role too much.

"We'd love to hear about it," Warren said, leaning forward himself.

"Well. You know the F-101, that flying-wing stealth plane?"

The two men nodded.

"The only reason something like that can keep from crashing is because it has an onboard computer that makes thousands of adjustments a minute." Her listeners nodded again. "So I was thinking, what we need is a machine that can do that and know it's doing it. You know what I mean?"

Colvin and Warren exchanged nervous glances.

"A machine like that could control thousands of planes, thousands of miles apart.

And not just planes, either, but tanks and gun emplacements and even battle

robots." Clea sat back, having noticed long since the subtly appalled expressions on their faces. "Not detailed control—it would be a distributed system—but a strategic artificial intelligence… Is something wrong?"

"No, no. It sounds fascinating," Warren reassured her. "But… well, perhaps at some future date we could look into something like that. But right now you've put so much into developing Intellimetal that we'd like to help you with that project."

She was silent for a moment, her glance roving from one to the other. "Really?"

Clea tapped her fingertips on the arms of her chair. "Because I've always thought of Cyberdyne as one of the foremost robotics specialists in the field. I had the impression that artificial intelligence was sort of your bailiwick."

"You have to understand, Ms. Bennet"—Colvin spread his hands helplessly

—"that in some instances our hands are tied."

Her eyes widened. "Oh!" she said, looking from one to the other. "I see." Then she shrugged, and allowed another blush. "And here I thought I was being original."

"I'm sure that anything that comes out of that brain of yours is original, Ms.

Bennet," Colvin said.

"Absolutely," Warren agreed eagerly.

Clea smiled at them. "Well then," she said, rising. "I'm sure you gentlemen have a great deal to do and I've already taken up an amazing amount of your time."

"Not at all." Colvin rose with her and extended his hand.

She shook it, smiling, and turned to Warren, who had offered his hand as well.

"I'll look forward to hearing from you, then."

With a nod the I-950 preceded them out of the room and without another word or backward glance marched down the corridor toward the elevator.

Warren looked askance at the CEO and gestured toward the young woman. "Is she annoyed, or something?" he asked.

Colvin shook his head. "No, I don't think so. She may be a little socially backward. Apparently she was raised by an eccentric uncle in the wilds of Montana and they didn't get out much. Home schooling, the whole nine yards.

She's never even been to a university."

"You're kidding!" Warren said, appalled.

Colvin held up his hand. "I know what you're going to say."

"Yeah, and I'm going to say it, too. Why would we want to hire some kid who's never even graduated from college, especially at the price and on the terms she's demanding? That's crazy."

"We're trying to hire her so that we can exploit this metal she's invented. You have to see this statue to believe it, Paul. It's the most amazing thing I've ever laid eyes on."

"Why don't I just hop on a plane to New York, then, and go take a peek?"

Warren asked.

"Why don't you just trust me, buddy?" Colvin said, putting an arm around the president's shoulders. "I know what I'm doing here. Believe me, if we don't snap her up now somebody else will. Look, we're going to put in an escape clause, right? So we can both walk away if it doesn't work out and nobody's a loser.

Right?"

"If she walks she'll take that Intellimetal with her," the president warned.

"You've gotta trust our lawyers to write a better contract than that," Colvin said with a smile.

Clea was pleased. They'd accepted her without question. For the first time in ages she felt that she'd performed well. The only downside was that they hadn't risen to the bait she'd dangled in the way she'd expected. Could it be that they really weren't involved in the Skynet project any longer?

Cyberdyne had provided a limo and driver for her and the car was waiting out front when she exited the building. She didn't even acknowledge the driver when he opened the door for her, but stepped in and settled herself for the ride back to the hotel, lost in her own thoughts.

Clea woke up lying on a sofa, its firm cushions upholstered in blue-green tweed.

The room she was in appeared to be a cheaply paneled conference room, with, unusually, a large mirror in the wall opposite the couch. No. That is one-way glass. The room is institutional; government, not corporate.

Her eyes searched the mirror for hints of movement from a possible hidden room

as she sharpened her hearing and listened.

"… took enough hypno to knock out an elephant! I thought she'd never go down," a male voice was saying.

"Maybe there's a flaw in the delivery system," another man answered, "because she just woke up. If she'd absorbed as much of the drug as you say you gave her, she'd sleep until tomorrow night."

Clea detected movement in the mirror, as though one of the speakers had leaned forward for a better look.

Well, well. I've been kidnapped! One of Cyberdyne's more aggressive competitors, perhaps? Or Cyberdyne itself? She considered the idea. It would be strange if it was them. For one thing, nothing in their dossier indicated that they played such games. For another, it seemed a criminal waste of their president and CEO's time if they had intended to negotiate by force all along.

Now who else might have an interest in my little inventions? And who else could or would employ such an extreme technique as drugging and kidnapping her?

Organized crime came briefly to mind, but she dismissed the idea. They were hardly into research and development.

It's much more likely to be Tricker or one of his friends, she thought. Excellent.

She'd been wondering where the agent had got himself to; it looked like she might be about to find out.

Clea sat up, faking a wobbliness that she in no way felt, one hand to her brow as

though her head ached. Which it should, but for the computer and nanites that had worked so hard to cleanse her blood. She blinked, and narrowed her eyes as though the fluorescent light bothered her.

"Hello?" she said, sounding shaky.

"That's my cue," said one of the men.

She heard a door open and close and there was a flash of light in the mirror.

Then the door to the room she was in opened and she got up from the couch quickly. The I-950 immediately sat down again, resting her head against the back of the couch, her hand over her eyes as though dizzy.

"Take it easy, miss," the man said soothingly. "Are you okay?"

"Dizzy," she murmured.

She dropped her hand as though exhausted, keeping her eyes closed for effect.

But her nose and ears told her where he was, even what he'd last eaten—

hamburger with some sort of hot sauce. The glimpse she'd had of him when he walked in confirmed her suspicion. He worked for the government. His clothing and appearance were so artfully average that in a crowd he would be effectively invisible. It wasn't Tricker, but he might have been a close relative.

"That will pass," the man said gently.

She heard water pouring and then felt the touch of his hand. Opening her eyes, she saw that he was offering her a glass of water; when she took it he held out two aspirin.

"For the headache I'm sure you have," he said with a sympathetic smile.

Clea accepted the pills and took them with a sip of water, studying him over the rim of the glass. He was tall and slender, with muddy hazel eyes and a narrow face; his silvering blond hair was beginning to recede and there was an element of grayness about him somehow. But his voice was pleasant, as was his manner, both conveying trustworthiness.

Which was actually quite different from Tricker, who seemed to go out of his way to be abrasive. And yet this man reminded her of no one so much as of Serena's old nemesis.

He could be dangerous if he needed to be, she thought. Or if he wanted to be.

There was the essential resemblance; like Tricker, this man was competently ruthless. Not unlike myself, she thought. They probably work for the same agency.

Clea swallowed. "Where am I?" she asked.

He didn't answer, but sat looking at her.

"And who are you?" She pulled herself up until she was sitting straight.

"Aren't you going to ask why you're here?" he prompted.

"Well, I assume you're going to tell me," she snapped. "Or are we just going to sit and stare at each other until we starve to death? But I've got to tell you, mister, if you're looking for a ransom you've got the wrong girl! My only relative is dead and all I've got in the world is a few thousand dollars in the bank. So what's going on here?"

"That's not entirely true, Ms. Bennet, now is it?" the gray man said. "You have the house and land in Montana, don't you?"

The I-950's eyes widened quite involuntarily as her mind flashed to that empty grave in the modest country cemetery. Should she have replaced the Terminator with a human corpse? Surely they wouldn't check her background that thoroughly?

"Oh yes," the man continued complacently, "we know everything there is to know about you. Certainly everything that is a matter of public record." He gave her a tight little smile. "And we've come to the conclusion that only we can offer you the resources to allow your inventiveness full scope."

"Who are you?" she almost shouted. All the time thinking, Ah, so I was right.

Tricker's gang.

"My name is Pool," he said.

"Just Pool?" Clea demanded sarcastically, remembering Tricker's insistence on being called a simple, unadorned "Tricker."

"Yes," he agreed with a slightly deprecatory smile. "Just Pool."

Clea drew in a deep breath. "And who is we, Pool?"

The smile broadened. " We are your tax dollars at work, Ms. Bennet."

Setting her jaw, Clea tilted her head at a defiant angle. Actually she was delighted; the government had to have taken over the Skynet project when

Cyberdyne's second facility was destroyed… by the Connors, again. But a human would object to this sort of treatment…

"And if I don't want to work for the government?" she asked.

Pool shrugged. "Then we would have to tell Vladimir Hill that the wonderful new material you've been letting him play with as though it was clay is one of the most carcinogenic materials ever devised." He paused as if to gauge her reaction.

Clea gave him one. "Nonsense!" she snapped, sitting forward. Then she looked queasy and leaned back again. "What are you talking about?"

"He'll probably be dead by next year," Pool said. "But that would allow him plenty of time to sue you. And, of course, there would probably be charges of criminal negligence. You'd probably do jail time." His eyes cooled. "In fact, you can count on that. And afterward, well, Cyberdyne wouldn't touch you or Intellimetal with a ten-foot pole, and neither would anyone else." He spread his hands. "Which would leave you with us. But not before we both lost a lot of time and effort and money. So why not just cooperate and we'll all be happy?"

Clea allowed herself to look shaken; her computer dropped her circulation slightly so that her face would go pale.

"Does Vladimir have… cancer?" Her eyes widened. "Do I?" she asked, her voice quavering.

"We don't know, actually, your tests aren't back. But the odds are good. As for Hill, in good conscience, of course, we can't let him remain at risk. We'll warn

him quite soon, and if it's caught early enough there's always a chance that he might survive. You, too, of course. But we think you'd be better off if you suddenly became unavailable. Don't you?"

She nodded, looking shell-shocked, or so the mirror told her.

He smiled, an avuncular smile this time; Pool seemed to have quite a repertoire.

"Very wise," he murmured. "You won't regret it, I'm sure. Our terms won't be quite as generous as Cyberdyne's, but our facilities are the best and our research budget is virtually unlimited." He stood, smiling down at her. "Why don't you lie back down and get some rest," he advised. "That drug can pack quite a punch.

Later on someone will come and take you to your room, where you can have something to eat and relax. Then tomorrow we'll outfit you for your new job and by evening you'll be on your way."

"On my way where?" she asked, trying to sound crushed. Instead, her computer component was suppressing glee; this was turning out exactly as planned. And if it hadn't been sixty-seven percent probability of terminating all units here and escaping without irreparable damage, she calculated automatically.

His lips jerked into a mirthless smile, and he turned to the door. "I'd rather not say," he told her. Then he walked out the door.

She heard the click of a lock and then his receding footsteps. Clea covered her mouth as though feeling sick and leaned over, hanging her head. Then she lay down and, turning her back to the mirror, began to sob quietly for the benefit of whoever still lurked in the room behind the mirror.

It was too late now to do anything about her missing "uncle," she decided.

Agents might still be loitering around asking questions, making it very risky to fill the empty hole.

I'll just have to take a chance on it, she thought. But even if they do open the grave to find it empty, that proves nothing. At least, nothing against her. Even so, it bothered her.

It was very hard, she reflected, to know when to stop refining a plan. I should inform Alissa of the latest developments…

CRAIG KIPFER'S OFFICE, SOUTHERN

CALIFORNIA

ALTERNATE USES FOR INTELLIMETAL

· Bullets: Intellimetal, once fired, will expand with the heat of the explosion, mushrooming into the most effective shape possible. On striking the target, it will break apart into smaller pieces, each piece seeking the primary electrical source in the body: the brain. Once there, each individual piece of Intellimetal will respond to the brain's electrical patterns by oscillating at a very fast rate as it seeks to rebond with other pieces of Intellimetal. This will effectively liquefy the brain.

· Mineworms: These antipersonnel devices will be planted like seeds in rows, while the "farmer" is protected by special gloves and boots, possibly special coveralls as well. When stepped on, the rods of Intellimetal will activate and burrow upward through boot, flesh, and bone, again in search of the body's primary electrical source. As an additional advantage, when anyone subsequently touches the body the activated mineworms will try to

burrow into this subject as well.

Craig Kipfer sat back, his lips pursed as though to whistle but emitting no sound.

There was some additional stuff in the girl's notes about possible security uses for her invention, but it was her ideas for weapons that both fascinated and chilled him.

He'd been around long enough to know that women could outdo men in viciousness; even so, he found it hard to associate these ideas with that young woman's lovely face. It proved once again the truth of an adage he'd been taught when he first started in this service. Beauty is a weapon. Feel free to use it, never let it use you.

From the moment he heard about that statue in New York, he'd been interested in Clea Bennet. And when she began throwing out ideas that paralleled the Skynet project during her meeting with Colvin and Warren, he knew that he wanted her to work for him, else he'd never have ordered her picked up. But this!

Talk about a bonus, he thought.

Kipfer sat forward in his chair and pulled out his keyboard. He'd been of two minds about the woman; keep or kill. Pool was waiting for his orders.

*Send her to Antarctica,* he typed, then sent the message. After this, he'd hear about her in progress reports or not at all. Until, that is, such time as he had to review his decision to let her live.

RED SEAL BASE, ANTARCTICA

They arrived at night, delivered by an Osprey tilt rotor with no markings and no

way to see out from the passenger compartment; Clea and two rather groggy-looking men—or perhaps they were just sullen. She decided to imitate their look and manner, adding a bit of frightened little girl to her demeanor.

They were hustled through the freezing darkness to a building like a shed. Clea had the impression of a vast reflective whiteness as they rushed through the dark, as though the surface of the moon were under their feet.

Once inside the shed, they were made to go down a flight of stairs into a small, unfurnished room. Two of the men from the plane were with them, silent, their eyes always moving among the three of them, as though they expected something to happen, both holding Ingram machine pistols.

The room began to move and Clea gasped. The men glanced at her apathetically, the guards sharply. She looked at them as though she wanted to say something, but then changed her mind.

Serena had definitely had the easier part to play, she decided. All she'd had to do was portray a ruthlessly efficient human. Whereas Clea was trying to convey inexperience, naivete, brilliance, and humanity. She'd have to work at simplifying her portrayal as she went along. This was tedious.

She didn't know a great deal about Antarctica, but she rather thought that digging this deeply into it was something forbidden. She did know that according to international treaty, it was supposed to be free of military influence. This installation would seem to put the lie to that pretty notion.

It suddenly occurred to her that the more she interacted with humans, the more her thoughts became like Serena's. Either my brain is overcoming any damage

done by my accelerated growth, or I'm doomed to fail, she thought sourly. Or both.

She wanted to contact Alissa but hadn't because her captors might be able to detect such communication. Better to wait until she knew more. But she resented the break in contact.

The elevator finally stopped and they were led out into a corridor lined with doors that had numbers and message pockets on them. The floor tiles and walls were beige and the ceiling had acoustic tiles and fluorescent lights. They could be anywhere on earth rather than literally at the end of the earth.

The three of them were marched down the corridor until they came to a door like all the others. One of the guards knocked, then opened the door, motioning them inside.

It looked like a small meeting room; a chalkboard and desk were placed at one end of the room with several rows of chairs in front of them. A middle-aged man in good physical shape sat on the edge of the desk; he raised his head to look them over.

Tricker! Clea thought, almost delighted to see him. It was like unexpectedly finding an old friend. Then, He'll recognize me! she thought. But he didn't seem to at the moment. He appeared bored, so much so that even though he was looking at them, he wasn't really seeing them. I suppose I can keep out of his way. Time would tell if he was going to be a problem. I'll think of it as a challenge, she decided.

Somehow he seemed to wear his tan chinos and plain gray flannel shirt as

though they were a uniform. Casting a brief look at the guards, he nodded and the two men went out, closing the door behind them.

"Welcome to Red Seal Base," he said. "My name is Tricker. I'm the chief of security and I'll be your supervisor here. If you have any problems, or needs that we aren't meeting—and I mean anything—come and see me."

He looked them over as though trying to ascertain if they'd understood him, then he continued. "You're probably tired, so I won't keep you tonight. Tomorrow morning at 0800 hours I'll take you to the cafeteria and introduce you around.

After breakfast, we'll take a brief tour of the base. It will be a brief tour, as you aren't allowed into most sectors. Then I'll show you to your own labs and you can get settled. After dinner, we'll have another meeting and you can tell me about anything that you need that we haven't yet supplied."

Tricker paused, assessing each of them with cool blue eyes. " 'It's important that you understand from the outset that you are not to discuss anyone's work with them, or to discuss your own work with anyone else."

Clea saw the two men glance at each other.

"Obviously," Tricker said, not even trying to hide his exasperation, "if you're working together, that doesn't apply as far as your own work goes. If you find this too confining come and speak to me and we'll see what we can set up. Do not"—he held up a warning finger—"simply decide to break this rule. You would regret that, I promise you." He looked at them; they looked at him. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," they mumbled.

"There are sandwiches and coffee in your rooms for tonight," Tricker told them,

"but generally you'll eat in the cafeteria with everyone else. We'll do our best to make you comfortable here, folks. How comfortable is up to you."

Maybe he's asleep, the I-950 thought, surprised that he hadn't responded to her appearance. He certainly sounded it.

"The people outside will escort you to your rooms," Tricker said, rising. "You'll receive a wake-up call at 0700. Be ready for me to pick you up an hour later.

Good night."

The two men and Clea looked at one another, then turned and toddled to the door, somewhat awkward in their heavy clothing. Outside two men and a woman were waiting for them, smiling for all they were worth.

"Welcome to Red Seal Base," they said cheerfully and more or less in unison.

"You must be Clea Bennet." The woman stepped forward offering her hand. "I'm Josephine Lowe, your buddy."

The I-950 just stared at her. This was almost unbelievably presumptuous, beyond anything she'd yet experienced from humans.

"You know, like in swimming class or fire drill," Josephine continued. "We're in a dangerous place, you know, and so they feel we should all have someone looking out for us; that way, if we have to evacuate in a hurry no one will get left behind. Unless"—she chuckled—"both buddies are together."

Lowe was plump, and crammed into a belted gray jumpsuit with sneakers on her feet. She was about forty-five with short blond hair brushed back from her rather ordinary face. She wore no makeup.

"I'm right next door to you," Josephine was saying.

Somehow Clea didn't find this reassuring in the least. She looked around and saw the two men going off with their buddies.

"You look exhausted, you poor thing," Clea's buddy said. She lifted her arm as though she was going to put it around the I-950's shoulders but didn't actually touch her. "Let me show you to your room. A little supper and a good night's sleep will do wonders for you."

Ah, Clea thought, I look exhausted. That's why Tricker didn't recognize me.

Well, she'd have to see what she could do to continue looking mousy and uninteresting. Meanwhile she'd have to see what she could learn from this source. "Have you been here long?" she asked Josephine, smiling tentatively.

"Oh! Just ages, honey! At first I thought I'd go stir-crazy, but then I really got to like it here. We've got a pretty good mix of people. You'll see…" A hopeful note. "Do you like bridge?"

Clea followed her down the hallway listening to her nonstop chatter and wondering if, in fact, poor Josephine had gone stir-crazy and just didn't know it.

The cafeteria was the single largest room on the base, Tricker told them. With the exception of the warehouse, naturally.

Clea found it almost excessively institutional, with its rows of long, Formica-topped tables on either side of a wide central aisle. There were the same beige floor tiles and walls with the inevitable bulletin board for decoration. At the head of the room one picked up a tray and utensils and dragged it along to the place where food was dispensed. It was rather noisy, and smelled like a medium-priced chain restaurant; Applebee's, say.

The ceiling lights mimicked natural daylight, as did most of the lights on the base, so Tricker had told them. It didn't surprise her that the humans needed to be indulged this way. They were animals, after all, and six months of night or day was not a natural part of their cycle.

The people in the big room seemed to take a polite interest in the three new arrivals, watching them surreptitiously as they got their food and found seats. As Clea moved to join her fellow newcomers she found herself greeted with friendly smiles and nods. The I-950 found them rather… what was the word?

Ah. Creepy.

She joined the conversation already in progress at the table Tricker had chosen.

He glanced at her as she set down her tray and continued to watch her as she pretended not to notice. When she looked up she smiled at him, then let her face drop as he continued to stare at her.

"What?" she asked defensively.

He spooned up some oatmeal before answering her. "You look familiar," he said.

Clea looked at him askance. "Is that a line?"

He swallowed the oatmeal and took a sip of coffee before he answered her, his gaze never wavering. "No. I've met you. I'm sure of it."

Shaking her head, Clea told him, "I don't think so, Mr. Tricker."

"Just Tricker," he said.

"Uh-huh. Well, Tricker," she said, leaning forward, "have you ever been to Montana?"

He shook his head, spooning up more oatmeal.

"Well, except for one trip to New York and one trip to L.A., both in the last month, I've never been anywhere else. So I don't know how you could have met me. Do you?" She widened her eyes at him and took a sip of coffee.

The two men who'd arrived with her turned their heads back and forth between them. "Is this important?" one of them asked tentatively.

Clea thought that the fact he asked at all hinted at a habitual arrogance that circumstances had temporarily muted.

"No," Tricker answered. "Not at all." With a last, indecipherable look at Clea, he returned to his lecture about the base's rules.

"Ah, I see we have some new prisoners, Tricker."

The man's voice had a thick German accent and came from behind the I-950.

South German, her computer half supplied helpfully. Within fifty kilometers of

Vienna, but not actually in Vienna. Originally middle-class. She turned to look and found a tall, muscular blond man looking down at them.

Kurt Viemeister! she thought, and her heart leapt, like a human girl meeting her favorite musician.

Serena had decided that Viemeister was insane because of his extreme hatred for certain classes of human being and had stopped associating with him. But Clea had always felt her parent/sister was wrong.

If the scientist hated humans, well, so did Skynet, and so did the Infiltrators, for that matter. Of course, they hated all humans, and wanted to exterminate them, but why was that reason to judge Dr. Viemeister for only hating some?

Though she was painfully aware that Serena entertained almost fond feelings for humans.

Subversive, misguided, and a failure, Clea thought dismissively. She intended to encourage Viemeister's efforts for Skynet. It didn't matter if he hated humans, but making Skynet sentient did.

Viemeister put his tray down beside Clea, giving her a pleasant smile. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"

Tricker took a sip of coffee and looked thoughtfully into the distance while the three newcomers watched him. Viemeister buttered his toast and salted his omelet as though he'd never said a word.

Clea rolled her eyes and gave a crisp "tsk!" Then she turned to Viemeister. "I'm

Clea Bennet," she said, offering her hand. "From Montana."

"Charmed," he said, taking her hand gently and giving her a warm smile. He looked at the two men opposite them.

"Joel Gibson," a heavyset middle-aged man said.

"Maxwell Massey," his friend said. Maxwell had the dark looks of an East Indian.

"So what have they got on you folks?" Kurt said cheerfully.

Clea blinked as she realized his accent was much less thick than it had been.

Serena had always suspected that he affected it. What he'd said was as interesting as how he'd said it, too. She glanced at the two men.

"See, now this is where you have to watch out," Tricker interrupted. "If any of you answer that question, you may find yourselves segueing into a conversation about your work. Now, what did I say about discussing your work?"

"But I already know something about Mr. Viemeister's specialty," Clea said eagerly. She turned to the scientist. "My uncle was a great admirer of yours and I've read all of your published work." Obviously gushing was the right tack to take with him; he fairly glowed in her infrared vision. "Your ideas on—"

"Hey!" Tricker interrupted. He pointed his spoon at her. "That's something you and I will have to discuss in private. Do you know why?" He drew out the last word.

Clea rolled her eyes again. "Because otherwise we'll be discussing Mr.

Viemeister's work and we're not supposed to discuss one another's work." She raised her brows at him. "Did I get it right, teacher?"

"Yup," he said. Tricker scraped his bowl and ate the last spoonful.

"If you're granted permission to talk about your work to one another, you can yak about it all you want in private." He rotated his spoon, indicating the room around them. "Never in here. In here, none of us have jobs. Comprende?"

"Yeah," she said, letting a little insolence seep into her voice. Beside her Viemeister seemed amused.

"Great! If you folks are ready we should get started. I know you all have a lot to do today." Tricker rose and looked at them expectantly.

"I haven't finished my coffee," the I-950 hazarded.

"Well, too bad. Chop-chop, Ms. Bennet." He gave Viemeister an artificial smile.

"Nice seeing you, Kurt." Then he turned on his heel and walked away.

Gibson and Massey scrambled to follow him, but Clea lingered, taking a last sip of her coffee. Then she gave Viemeister a conspiratorial smile, rose, folded her napkin, and slowly sauntered after the men.

Her walk gave the scientist something to watch if he was so inclined.

Kurt watched the young woman walk away. It looked as though the long dry spell was about to end. And to end very pleasantly indeed. As the girl followed

Tricker and his chumps out the door, she glanced at him over her shoulder and gave him a delightful little smile. If only she were a blonde, she'd be a perfect Aryan.

Yes, definitely, things were looking up.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CYBERDYNE, LOS ANGELES

Meg Horton, secretary to Roger Colvin, CEO of Cyberdyne, sighed as she looked at the tower of mail on her desk. It seemed the stack got bigger every day.

Taking her seat, she began sorting the mail into separate piles. Most of it was junk, and could be disposed of without opening. But one large envelope had a note written on the front.

Here’s the material you requested. Thank you for your interest Jesse Hooper

Inside was a stack of brochures from the Utah Tourist Bureau. Meg frowned, checking the address o>n the envelope. It was indeed addressed to Roger Colvin.

The boss must be thinking of going skiing. Or turning Mormon. She added the material to the personal pile to go directly to his office and discarded the envelope.

Inside the envelope were several insectlike machines. As soon as the envelope hit the wastebasket they emerged and climbed out, dropping to the floor and scurrying to the nearest dark corner as they'd been programmed to do.

In Utah, the Terminator that had been assigned to monitor the bugs' progress took over their function, ordering one to remain below the secretary's desk while directing the others to various positions around the perimeter of the room to give the Terminator a broad view of the office.

It saw that the gap between the door to the CEO's office and the thick carpet inside was too small for the bug to slip through; the T-101 continued searching.

In the ceiling there appeared to be a ventilator cover. That would be optimal placement. Once they were in the ventilation system, the bugs would have access to the whole building.

Soon it had one of the bugs stationed in Colvin's office and had sent the others off to explore and map the whole facility. Then it alerted the I-950 that the bugs were safely implanted. It arranged for their input to be recorded, then turned to other tasks.

Paul Warren looked up from the screen at his friend—the CEO of Cyberdyne—

his face split by a delighted grin.

"I can't believe these numbers!" he said.

Roger Colvin grinned back at him. "Neither can I."

Their automated factories were a complete success, not one breakdown in their pilot plant in over a year. Production clicked along 24/7 at a fraction of the cost of a human-run production line. Granted, it would take a while to amortize the capital costs, but with a guaranteed market like the Pentagon, that was a sucker bet. Best of all: No employees equaled no unions and no support infrastructure

for people, and all this minimized environmental impact—not that the environmentalists appreciated that.

The intercom on Colvin's desk gave a warning chirp.

"Mr. Colvin," Roger's secretary said, "there's a Mr. Pool here to see you."

"Just Pool," a voice said.

"Sir!" they heard the secretary snap.

The office door opened and a tall, rather nondescript man of middle age entered.

Behind him Colvin's secretary hovered, looking outraged.

"It's all right, Meg," Roger told her; he looked at Warren, then back at the intruder. "You must be the new guy," he said wearily.

"Pool," the man said, nodding in agreement.

"Just Pool?" Warren asked with more than a touch of sarcasm.

"Yes." Pool sat down without waiting for an invitation and opened his briefcase.

"You might like to take a look at this," he said, handing Colvin a CD.

The CEO took it, his eyes never leaving Pool's. The government liaison nodded once. "Sure," Colvin said, and replaced the one he'd been running. When he accessed the disc it showed a recording, obviously made with a high-end video camera, of what at first appeared to be one of their automated factories.

"Wait a minute," he said, leaning forward. He tapped a few keys and the picture

froze. "Paul, take a look at this." He swung the monitor around.

"Hey!" the president said after a moment's study. "What's going on here? That isn't ours!"

"You guys building your own now?" Colvin asked coldly.

Pool looked back at him for a moment, then switched his glance to the president.

"No," he said. "But unfortunately the situation is out of control. Factories like these are sprouting up all over, especially in the third world. Many of them,"

Pool continued with careful emphasis, "are making munitions."

"NATO. They're like… spy central. What are you doing about it?"

"Unfortunately there's very little we can do at this point." Pool closed his briefcase. "We know you're not involved," he continued, "because we've investigated. Thus far we haven't been able to pin it down, but you're right, unfortunately—it's more likely to be one of our 'friends' at NATO than anyone else."

"We're losing money here…" Warren began.

"You could always try suing," Pool suggested. "France is always a nice place to visit, though it would be a pity to spend your time there in a courtroom or locked up in a lawyer's office." He shrugged. "And I understand they're open to fiscal persuasion in the Balkan countries. But the problem is a little too universal for you to expect much success, I'm afraid."

Colvin sat back in his chair, genuinely shocked. They'd lost their exclusive

contract. All their research and development, all their expansion plans, were just so much wasted time and money. They'd borne the start-up costs and someone else was walking off with the profit.

"How?" Warren demanded. "How did this happen? And how long has it been going on?"

"Almost from the beginning," Pool said. "That's why we assumed you two had something to do with it. Or at least someone in your organization. But we've found no corroborating evidence of that." He sounded regretful.

Colvin grunted like a man kicked in the stomach. The only thing they had going for them now was their contract with the government. He covered his eyes with one hand. "Where the hell is Sarah Connor?" he suddenly blurted. "This is certainly a Connor-sized disaster."

If he hadn't been looking directly at Pool he would have missed the moment when the agent froze.

"What?" the CEO snapped.

"Mr. Colvin?" Pool asked politely.

Colvin glanced at Warren, then back at Pool. He sat up straight, almost certain he could feel himself going pale. "Well?" he asked, his voice hoarse. "Where is she?"

Pool sat still for a moment, then he said, "We don't know, actually."

The announcement threw both executives into motion. Warren flung himself up and walked to the window, his back to the room. Colvin rose and, placing his hands on his desk, leaned forward slowly. "You what?" he asked quietly, one eyebrow raised.

Warren turned back to them. "Could she… ?" He waved a hand helplessly.

"Have leaked the information?" Pool asked. "No. Definitely not. We knew where she was when the problem began."

Colvin dropped back into his chair. "Could she have… associates?" he asked.

Pool shook his head. "Unlikely. Connor has always been a lone wolf. The degree and speed of this proliferation argue for some sort of organization. Frankly, gentlemen, we're completely out of ideas, which is why we decided to consult you."

"Oh, that's flattering." Colvin sneered. "The question is who benefits, and how?"

"Yeah," Warren said. He shrugged, then sat down himself. "If someone was blowing the factories up, I'd blame the Luddites. But I don't see how making this technology universally available fits in with their obsession."

"Well"—Pool rose—"keep thinking about it, gentlemen. If you have any ideas please feel free to contact me." He placed a plain business card on the CEO's desk. Like Tricker's, it bore only an E-mail address. Pool glanced from one man to the other, nodded once, and left without another word.

The two men were silent for forty-five seconds; then Warren spoke.

"We are fucked," he said quietly.

UTAH

Alissa frowned. Some part of her had expected Tricker; had hoped for Tricker might be more accurate. Apparently this Pool was Tricker's replacement. He certainly seemed to be the same sort of human. It also seemed that the government's interest in Cyberdyne was limited to projects other than Skynet.

Both she and Clea had estimated a high probability that Intellimetal would prove a strong lure to Cyberdyne, which more or less ensured government interest. Her sister's casual mention of a Skynet-like entity was intended to prove irresistible to whoever had taken over the project, a doubly baited hook.

What they hadn't expected was that Clea would disappear so suddenly and so thoroughly. When she had vanished after her interview with Colvin and Warren, the little I-950 had naturally assumed that the government had intervened. But she had no idea of exactly where or from whom that intervention had come. The mysterious Tricker, she'd supposed. But he proved impossible to locate.

Now, with this Pool, Alissa hoped she finally had a lead.

She'd had some of her bugs hack into Cyberdyne's security system and through the company's cameras she watched the agent's progress through the building and out into the parking lot.

As he drove off she took note of the car's license-plate number and started a search. The address that came up wasn't very informative, a U.S. government motor pool, but it was a place to start.

She'd assign one of the T-101s. They were good at worming their way through bureaucratic baffle gab.

Swinging her legs and putting a finger to her chin, Alissa considered her sister's possible fate. It seemed unlikely she'd been murdered. Unless they'd completely destroyed her head, the computer part of her would have made contact. Unless they'd buried her in the equivalent of a Faraday cage, which was astronomically unlikely, it should have been possible to locate her.

No, a living Clea was somewhere shielded, or somewhere she feared that any attempt to communicate would reveal her true nature. This silence was more likely an act of will than a sign of misfortune.

In other words, things were probably going as planned. Except for the uncertainty and the Connors still being alive and on the loose. Alissa's lips thinned in displeasure. She needed to enter her next phase so that she'd be in a position to take care of them.

There would be no better time than the present.

RED SEAL BASE, ANTARCTICA

Clea was enjoying her new lab; it had all the equipment she could ever use, and any materials she wanted, however exotic, toxic, or illegal, were provided within forty-eight hours. She'd tested this and didn't even try to hide her glee when she was presented with some obscure and costly element.

Tricker had cautioned her that she couldn't continue to make such requests without producing tangible results. Clea had countered by giving him an

extremely long and involved lecture on the advantages of pure science. He'd come as close to running away as she'd ever seen him.

The lab itself was small, but its efficient design made up for the lack of space. Its white walls and gleaming metal surfaces somehow gave it the illusion of size, though its dimensions were more those of a large walk-in closet. The overhead lights were the kind that mimicked natural light, making it more comfortable still. It suited her.

Meanwhile, her research into the T-1000 matrix was going very well and she was able to keep most of the work she was doing secret from the humans while seeming to produce a lot of new data. Their expectations, naturally, were based on what they thought a human could accomplish, so that, all in all, they were thrilled with her.

All of the scientists were watched all of the time. So the first thing she'd done was to spend long periods just sitting and thinking, or staring into a microscope.

Once she knew they had a fair-sized archive of such activity, she became more active.

Her first real effort was to create some bugs, fiddling with the components so that no one thing seemed connected to another, then put them together as she walked from her lab to the cafeteria, or to her room; looking for all the world as though she was picking at her fingernails. When they were complete she set them loose in the ventilation system. One of her bugs was programmed to lurk in the tape banks and at her signal to run archival footage of her doing nothing at all.

They'd already collected some fascinating information for her, both about the

other scientists and the base staff, as well as confirming her suspicions about being under observation. The entertainment value of spying on everyone else didn't make up for the lack of communication with the outside world, but she was working on that.

As part of her plan to keep the humans off balance regarding her real work…

She had a dozen projects going forward more or less simultaneously. She destroyed a great deal of what she accomplished without storing the information on their computers. She had her own, after all.

But she had to be careful. They sorted trash here with obsessive-compulsive thoroughness. Therefore they knew to the ounce what materials had been used and how. So she used only minute bits of things, working at speeds no human could duplicate on things the human eye could barely see. So far they suspected nothing.

One of her side projects was the creation of what she hoped would one day be a nano-machine. Right now it was huge, easily visible with the naked eye if you knew where to look. And, unfortunately, its range of functioning was extremely simple, requiring several to actually accomplish a task of any significance.

About a dozen together were not much smaller than the bugs she and Alissa had created for surveillance. But they were much more complex and with time she was certain she'd find ways to diminish their size without losing utility.

Clea was gearing them toward affecting biological processes because she had a plan. But the one thing that was difficult to get here were animal test subjects.

When she'd submitted that request Tricker showed up to suggest that she

concentrate on Intellimetal.

Clea had carefully explained about how carcinogenic the stuff was and how, though she was trying hard to make it less dangerous, there was only so much a computer simulation could do. He'd stared at her for a long time, then said he'd see what he could do.

She could see why Serena had liked Tricker. The I-950 found it amusing to manipulate him, and moving him to sarcastic exasperation was actually pleasurable. In this she knew she was definitely becoming more like Serena; she found that reassuring and disquieting.

Checking a gauge, she made a note, solely to satisfy the watchers.

The I-950 had to admit that though she liked her lab she was feeling slightly claustrophobic. It wasn't being underground so much as it was the lack of information. The base was completely cut off from the rest of the world; no TV

or radio, no telephone calls, and no Internet. This despite the very reasonable argument that cutting them off from observing the progress in their individual fields might slow their work, or even render it useless.

She'd been told that those who complained to Tricker had been given his look and told that they'd better hope not.

That Tricker, she thought with a secretive smile, always trying to intimidate.

Everyone treated the agent as though he was a power in the community, but the I-950 knew that the agent was in no way involved in decisions regarding the fate of the imprisoned scientists. Well, perhaps as an end point, she conceded.

Though she had no evidence of that. But otherwise he had only a little more freedom than they did.

Kurt Viemeister had told her that Tricker was being punished for something and that was why he was here. The idea that the abrasive agent was subject to someone else's whim tickled her.

But she didn't actually know whether to be pleased or distressed that the agent was nearby. On the plus side, she knew where he was and what he was doing.

On the negative, he was much too close to Skynet.

Clea glanced at her watch. It was almost time for her to meet Kurt for dinner.

The I-950 was working covertly with Viemeister on his project and had put in a request to make it official. She had every expectation that it would be approved.

Hadn't she laid the groundwork for this long ago?

Her relationship with the human was surprisingly satisfying. He was a brilliant conversationalist and hearing his ideas about how he was planning to create the intelligence that would be Skynet was deliciously exciting. Her computer could barely restrain her emotional responses to him.

Instinctively the I-950 had been reluctant to try sex so far. Though she was mostly meat herself, the act itself had seemed a little too animal. However, Viemeister had taught Skynet to talk and to think, and so he was like the creator of her god, a hero to all her kind. In other words, more than merely human—an opinion which precisely corresponded with his own outlook. Moreover, something about him strongly appealed to her and she found herself slowly succumbing to his persuasion.

Of course he'd assumed her reluctance was due to her being a virgin. A quaint notion that she'd allowed him to keep. He'd asked her for the information and she'd provided it, finding it somewhat amusing that while it made him no less determined to have his way, it caused his manner to change entirely. Clea had decided it was probably best to let him think of her as young and naive.

It didn't hurt to have Tricker thinking of her that way, too. Especially since he continued to look at her suspiciously when he met her. He had told the I-950 that she resembled someone he'd known, but she sensed that he hadn't yet connected her to Serena.

But she'd been careful to keep her manner and her voice as different from her parent as she could. Still, she watched him carefully. After all, even Serena had been wary of his intelligence.

She hopped from her stool and headed toward the door. So far there was no need for her to do anything about him. When there was a need, she'd find a way. Clea snapped off the lights.

She found Kurt in the cafeteria. Seated alone, as usual. He'd once told her that he'd discouraged the other scientists from socializing with him.

When she'd asked him why, he said, "Because they're not very bright outside their own little field, and as people they're not interesting."

So she'd asked him, "Should I be flattered because you think I'm both intelligent and interesting? Or should I just assume you want to jump my bones?"

He'd laughed and assured her it was the former. She didn't believe him naturally, but took note that he could be diplomatic when he wanted to be.

Now she watched him watching her approach, and something in his eyes evoked a sensation of warmth below her waistband. The scrubbers stopped it, of course, but it had been very pleasant while it lasted. She gave him a smile, bold and shy at once, and kept walking, though with slightly more swing to her hips.

This was going to be an interesting evening. And… well, Viemeister was Skynet's creator, not Skynet… so it wouldn't be quite like incest.

***

Clea was feeling oddly pleased with herself as she went to confront Tricker.

Every now and again a sense of well-being would sneak up on her. She knew that her processors were scrubbing endorphins by the bucket out of her system.

If she'd known sex was so pleasant she'd have tried it much sooner. Though she suspected that the right partner was important.

The I-950 knocked on the agent's door and opened it without waiting for an invitation.

Tricker looked up, his blue eyes unwelcoming. "Yeah?" he snarled.

Clea gave him a dazzling smile and entered his office, leaving the door open behind her. "I was wondering if you'd heard anything about my request?" she chirped.

"Which request was that? You're pretty much a never-ending fountain of gimmees."

She pouted, then smiled at him. "My request to work with Kurt Viemeister," she said. "Has it been approved?"

"You really ought to stay away from that guy," Tricker said. "You're kinda young for him, for one thing."

"We've gotten very… close," Clea told him, and blushed, smiling at him.

Tricker held up a hand. "I don't want to know." He pulled forward a set of papers. "Your request has been approved. But you'll need to sign these waivers."

"Really?" she said, taking them and looking them over. "What's the point of that?"

"So that you'll know how serious what you're dealing with is." He stared at her, his gaze impossible to interpret.

Clea laughed. "What are you going to do to me if I tell someone about what I'm doing?" she asked. "Send me to Antarctica?"

"You never know." He sat forward in his chair, picking up a pen and offering it to her.

Clea rolled her eyes and took it. She signed the papers and handed them back to him. "I have another request to make."

"Surprise, surprise," he muttered.

"I'm finding it harder and harder to endure being indoors all the time," she said.

"It's like the walls and ceiling are closing in on me."

"Hey, baby, it's cold outside," Tricker quipped.

Clea waved that aside. "I'm from Montana. Cold doesn't frighten me. But being closed up like this does. I need to get outside. I'd like to combine my time outdoors with a project I've thought up. I want to study some of the seals that live nearby."

Tricker sighed. He had a steady stream ot scientists wanting to get away from the base. But not one of them had suggested simply going out for a nature walk.

"There are plenty of scientists on this continent studying seals," he began.

"And it wouldn't hurt anything to have one more." She looked him in the eye.

"Please," she said quietly. "I wouldn't have come to you about this except that it's really becoming a problem for me. I'm just not used to being indoors all the time like this. These other people have probably never been on a hike in their lives. I grew up in the mountains, and they don't call Montana the Big Sky Country for nothing." She let a few tears wet her eyelashes and swallowed hard. "I need to get outside," she whispered.

And she did. Not for the reasons she was alluding to, but to further her plans, to test her new micromachines on a living subject. And hopefully to send messages to her sister through a specially designed radio collar she intended to put on some lucky seal.

Tricker rolled his eyes. "So submit a request," he said. "I'll send it up the pipe."

"Thank you," she said, endeavoring to look more misty-eyed than ever.

"Hey, I'm not promising you anything."

"I know. But if you put your recommendation on it they'll take that into consideration, won't they?"

He just looked at her. She smiled slightly, and lifting her hand slightly, she turned and walked away.

Had she overplayed it? Time would tell. She thought she would get her way in this. If for no other reason than that he'd want to know what she was up to.

CHAPTER TWENTY

VON ROSSBACH ESTANCIA, PARAGUAY

"Dieter entered the living room, where John half lay on the couch, reading a manual on source codes, a beam of bright sunlight spearing through one of the high clerestory windows to bring out the slight reddish hints in his dark hair. The Austrian dropped a package into the young man's lap.

John started as though he'd been asleep and looked from the package to von Rossbach. "What's this?" he asked.

"A package," Dieter said, with a slight edge of sarcasm.

John snorted. "Thanks!" he said, and rose. "I'll be in my room if you want me."

Sarah came in just as he was leaving and he leaned over on his way out to kiss her cheek. Her eyes widened and she turned to watch him go, then turned back to

von Rossbach, her eyebrows raised in inquiry.

"Something came in the mail from that girl in Boston," he explained, sitting down in one of the leather chairs, the rest of the mail in his lap.

"Ahhhh," Sarah said thoughtfully. She moved slowly into the room. "What girl?"

This time Dieter's brows rose. "He didn't tell you about her?"

Trying to keep the hurt out of her expression, Sarah sat next to the big Austrian.

"Uh, no." Her mouth twisted ruefully. "He's seventeen, and this is a girl and I am his mother…" She sighed. "I guess it's only natural he'd want to keep her to himself."

Dieter looked at her sympathetically. "But you're hurt anyway." As far as he could tell, they were unusually close. It was probable that until now they'd shared everything.

Sarah was quiet for a moment, then she wrinkled her nose at him. "A little.

Maybe." Then she sighed. "It annoys me that I am, though, because, really, I'm pleased that he has someone. It would be nice if she were nearby…" She leaned toward him. "Tell me about her."

He shrugged his massive shoulders. "There's not much I can tell you," he said.

"She's somebody he recruited on-line to keep an eye out for mysterious doings.

Then, when we went to the U.S., he took her and her team the Terminator's CPU.

She's a student at MIT," he added. "And clearly, something clicked between them."

"Hmmph," she said. "I guess I'll have to go to the source."

John closed the door to his room, tore open the box that Wendy had sent him, and pulled out her letter.

Hi, Sweetie, she'd written.

Well, that's flattering, he thought. One kiss… On the other hand, we felt close right off. Evidently three months' separation hadn't altered her feelings—and that was extremely reassuring. He read on:

Some of us went to New York this week to attend the New Day show. That’s the show that Ron Labane of the Luddites hosts. It wonderful! I can’t begin to tell you how inspiring I find him. I wish you could have been with us. About a hundred of us from MIT went down in buses.

A hundred? John reread that, shocked. A hundred MIT students went to the New Luddite show? Those people must be more powerful than he'd thought.

The idea shook him. He'd assumed the group would be just another flash in the pan, a this-year's-cause sort of thing. Certainly not the kind of thing that would appeal to really intelligent people. Like Wendy, he thought, troubled. He straightened the folds of her letter and continued reading.

I’m more convinced than ever that his brand of intelligent Luddism is the answer to so many of our problems: pollution, poverty, overpopulation. I have to confess to you right now that I took the pledge.

John looked up from her letter, frowning. She took "the pledge"? What the hell

did that mean? He didn't think she drank.

In case you’re wondering just what I’ve pledged, I feel a little aawkward about telling you. I know I should have discussed it with you, though that might be presumptuous of me. And maybe you’ll say I was swept away by the enthusiam of the crowd. But I did take it, and I mean to keep my word.

In case you haven’t heard of the pledge, it’s a promise to have no more than two children. If I divorce and remarry and my second husband hasn’t any children, then I’m allowed to have one with him. Though ideally I would have had my tubes tied after I had my second child.

The hard truth is, the only way we’re going to reduce our population is by making sacrifices like that. And reducing population is step one; everything follows from that.

Wincing, John lowered the letter and rubbed his brow with his free hand. Oh, Wendy, if you only knew, he thought sadly. Overpopulation was not likely to be a problem in a few years.

Anyway, I hope you won’t be angry with me for going ahead on my own. But I know you’re a sensible person and so I’m trusting you’ll understand.

On a completely different subject, we also saw some the sights while we were there and I got this for you at Lincoln Center. This is the most amazing sculpture; I’d love for you to see it for yourself. But the video is very good and has a “making of” section at the end that you’ll probably find interesting.

Hope to hear from you soon. Love and kisses…

John pulled the video out of the mailing box and looked at it. On the cover was a photo of a weird-looking modern sculpture. He wasn't impressed, but then he wasn't a big fan of modern art. The back of the box was filled with not very informative blurbs from other artists and bits culled from critical reviews.

But, hey, if Wendy was impressed it must be really something.

He was trying, and he knew that he was trying, to suppress thoughts of Judgment Day. If there was a Judgment Day. Well, if there was, it would make Wendy's idealistic pledge seem rather foolish.

And yet, that she had made it moved him; still more, that she'd written to him about it. He felt toward her a tenderness more profound and respectful than he had yet experienced. He wanted to protect her, to shelter her from all harm. At the same time he admired her faith in the future. He smiled and shook his head.

Then he took the tape and inserted it into the VCR and sat back to watch.

There was a little explanation at first on how Lincoln Center had decided to erect a statue, and had commissioned the late Vladimir Hill to create it. Then there was a segment of film, greatly speeded up, that showed the thing actually moving. Its name was Venus Dancing and John's jaw dropped as he watched it doing just that.

The glittering column seemed to swoop and bend, stretching high and then stooping, the holes in its surface growing and shrinking as it moved. The whole thing seemed alive and its motion was graceful and very beautiful. Although, despite the pleasure of watching the lovely thing, something niggled.

Then the dancing segment ended and the "making of section began. The sculptor, emaciated from his bout with cancer, described the process of creation.

He told the interviewer that if he must die young, he had at least created the most unique sculpture in the world before he left.

Then there were scenes from the unveiling, where an almost unrecognizably healthy Vladimir was shown with a beautiful young woman who was the creator of Hill's new sculpting material, a substance she called Intellimetal.

It took a moment as he watched the smiling, blushing brunette, nervously adjusting her glasses. But it was that movement that attracted his attention to her eyes. The shock of recognition took his breath away.

"MO-OM!" he shouted, not moving from where he sat on the bed but only bellowing louder, "MOM! DIETER! COME HERE! NOW!"

Down in the living room the two adults looked at each other, then scrambled for the stairs, pulling weapons out of hiding places.

"What?" Sarah said, bursting into his room.

John pointed at his TV, unable to say anything. He didn't even make his usual crack about mothers who burst into their sons' rooms carrying guns.

Dieter and Sarah moved to where they could see what he was pointing at. Sarah sat down hard on the floor, pressing both hands against her mouth. Frozen on the screen was a face she wasn't likely to forget. How? she thought in horror. She's dead! She's dead. She has to be dead! No one could have survived that explosion, even if they hadn't blown away half her head first. She couldn't have

escaped either; it was impossible.

And yet. This was Serena Burns. Jordan's former boss, the head of security for Cyberdyne. A new breed of Terminator—call it an Infiltrator—sent by Skynet.

"My God," she said. Then she took a deep breath and looked up at John.

"I'm not wrong!" he said, sounding shaky.

"I wish." she answered.

Dieter offered his hand and she took it. He pulled her to her feet easily. "So there was another one," he said grimly.

"Isn't there always?" John asked.

"So far," Sarah agreed. She brushed her hands over her hips. "Now we need to find out where she— it—is and what it's up to."

"I'll get in touch with Wendy." John said. "She might know something."

Wendy answered on tin; third ring.

"Bob's Brickyard, we lay anything." she said cheerfully. In the background there was raucous laughter.

"Wendy!" John said incredulously.

He was calling from his room, lying back on his bed propped up on some pillows; it was kind of late and he'd been afraid of waking her. Guess I had that

wrong, he thought.

"Oops!" she said. Then he heard her talking to whoever was with her. "Hey, guys? I need a little privacy here."

There was a chorus of protest at that; it sounded like Snog and the gang. He smiled, remembering them. It took a few minutes, but she finally managed to get them to leave.

"I'm sorry it took so long," she said breathlessly when she came back.

"Good thing this isn't a pay phone," he said, letting her hear his smile.

They were silent for a while. John couldn't seem to wipe the smile from his face.

Even though they didn't speak, he found intense joy just being in contact with her. Listening to her breath—in a sense being with her for the first time in months.

"I've missed you," she said at last.

"I've missed you, too."

They fell silent again until Wendy said, "Why did you call? Did you get it?"

"Your package? Yeah. Actually that's what I'm calling about. Uh… there's something on it that might relate to Skynet," he said quickly, wincing slightly.

This was a hell of a way to say thank you.

There was a pause, then she said, "Oh."

"Yeah. In the 'making of part of the video they show this woman who invented the material the statue is made from. We need to find out about her. Where she is, for example."

There was silence again and John frowned; this time the silence had a very different quality. "Wendy?"

"Yeah. I just… I thought you might be calling about the pledge," she said, sounding disappointed.

John almost laughed. He'd forgotten about that. But he sensed that it was important to her, even if it was absurd to him. "I will always respect your decision on that. I know it's not something you did lightly. So if you thought I'd be mad or something, I'm not." He waited for her response.

"You just don't care," she said at last, sounding disappointed.

"That's not true," he assured her. "You care, and I care about what you… care about," he finished lamely. He hoped that would settle her down. They needed to get onto a more important subject.

She blew out a breath that whistled across the phone lines. "Okay," she said, her voice slightly flat. "What's up with this woman you want to know about?"

"Well," he said, "she should be dead."

" Uh-huh." She went silent, apparently waiting for more.

"We don't think she's entirely human," John ventured.

"Aaaaand what makes you think that?" Wendy asked.

"She almost killed my mother, but we killed her instead, and now she's attending parties. You can see why we're concerned."

"Yeah, that attending-parties thing, that's a real bitch." Her voice still had that flat quality, almost uninterested, and John didn't quite know what to make of it.

"You don't sound like you believe me," he ventured.

"Well. John. I've seen this woman's face and you're telling me you killed her.

Which is freaky enough, by the way. Until you top it by telling me she's this inventor from the unveiling but she was dead before the unveiling. What am I supposed to think?"

"You're supposed to think this is more proof that Skynet is real," he snapped.

Now you doubt me? he thought. Now, after all these months? "Are you guys still working on the CPU?" he asked, playing his ace.

She took a deep breath and let it out in a huff. "Yeah," she admitted. "We're making some progress, too. But this, John! This is like something out of a movie! And real life doesn't have a plot."

Oh yeah? Mine does. John held on to his temper; he needed her help and blowing his stack wasn't going to do him any good.

"Look," he said firmly, "I'd like your help on this. Can I count on you?"

Wendy was quiet for a while. "You really think this woman is from Skynet?" she

asked, her voice sounding small.

"I'm convinced of it." John waited, holding his breath.

"I may know something," she said at last. "Give me a few minutes to get my notes together, then get on-line. I'll e-mail you what I have."

"Thank you," he said, his voice ardent with relief. He listened to the silence on her end and asked tentatively, "You're not mad, are you?"

"No. Just kind of creeped out. I'll see you on-line."

"Okay… Wendy?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you, you know." Somehow he sensed a smile, then he heard it in her voice.

"I love you, too," she said. Then, briskly, "Give me ten minutes."

"You got it."

They said affectionate good-byes and he hung up. For a few minutes he just lay back on his bed smiling. She loved him.

True, it wasn't 100 percent perfect; she also doubted his sanity. But she's coming through for me anyway. He kept on smiling. Love was really strange. But it was also the best feeling he'd ever had.

*Okay,* Wendy said, *I don't know how useful this will be, but to me it seems to tie in with what you want to know. *

*Shoot,* John told her.

*You remember when I told you that Craig Kipfer guy said something that sounded like an order to kill someone?*

* Vaguely.*

*Well, I kept checking into this guy and finally broke through some kind of wall.

About the same time he said "Send her to Antarctica," he was getting reports on someone from Montana. They were more detailed than you'd expect; there was a lot of material about her uncle, for instance. It looked for all the world like they were investigating her for a high-level, top-secret government job.*

John took her at her word. He'd figured that since Wendy probably saw herself in a top-secret government job one day, she'd look into this sort of thing.

*And this was about Clea Bennet?* he asked.

*No names were mentioned,* Wendy wrote. *But Clea Bennet is from Montana, where she was raised by an eccentric uncle, recently deceased. All the particulars match, even if they didn't call her by name. So what do you think?*

*I think I'd better look this stuff over. Thanks, Wendy.*

*No prob. I really do want to help, you know.*

*I know. Thanks. I'd better get to work on this.*

*Yeah,* she said. *See you soon.* I wish, John thought. *Love you.* *Love you,

* she wrote, then she was gone.

He began reading the reports she'd sent, finding them dry but very interesting.

They did seem to match the few facts offered on the video. Antarctica? he thought. What are we supposed to do now?

They'd gathered in Dieter's study to discuss Wendy's information. The comfortable room was lit by a single lamp and the light was dim, making the space feel more intimate. The French doors were open, letting in soft bree/es laden with the scent of the garden.

Dieter was in the big chair behind his desk, feet propped up on a low filing cabinet. John and his mother were in the smaller, more formal chairs in front of him.

"You're kidding, right?" Sarah said. His mother wasn't so much frowning as looking puzzled. "I mean, it's not much to go on. Or I should say not much to go to Antarctica on."

John smiled at that. "No, but it's the best lead we've got." He tilted his head toward her. "So if you were looking for someone and you dug this up, what would you do?"

Sarah looked down, twisting her mouth wryly. After a beat she raised her hands in surrender. "I'd go to Antarctica."

Dieter hadn't said anything when John had presented Wendy's information. John

looked over at him and found the Austrian apparently deep in thought.

"Hey," John said quietly. "Big guy."

Von Rossbach's narrowed gaze slid toward him.

"What do you think?" John asked.

"I think I remember hearing, just before I retired, the vaguest of hints about the possibility of someone creating a super-secret laboratory 'on ice.' At the time I thought it was a metaphor," Dieter said. "But maybe not." He took his feet off the cabinet. "Let me make a few calls, find out what I can about this."

"Meanwhile, John and I can do some research on what sort of equipment we'll need." Sarah turned to her son and smiled.

John glanced at Dieter, who looked away quickly.

"What?" Sarah asked, looking between them.

John hesitated. "Well…" He looked to Dieter for support, but the big man was looking out into the garden. John turned back to his mother and took her hand.

Raising her brows at the sentimental gesture, she looked at Dieter, too, frowned as he continued to stare out the door, and, her expression turning suspicious, turned back to John.

"You're still not a hundred percent, Mom." He took a deep breath. "Not enough to go hiking around Antarctica." He nodded once, looking deeply into her eyes.

Sarah frowned, then she let out an exasperated breath and looked away. To find herself confronting Dieter's concerned eyes. "Okay!" she said, throwing up her hands. "You're right. I'm not a hundred percent. But"—she pointed at John

—"you're too valuable to risk. So where does that leave us?"

They both looked at Dieter.

He laughed and held up his hands. "Before we decide who is going, let's make sure of our destination."

"Sounds reasonable." Sarah rose and crooked her finger at John. "Let's leave our host to it, shall we?" With that, she walked from the room.

John followed her out, saying, "You're not mad, are you, Mom?"

"No, John, I'm not mad."

He was quiet a moment. "You sound mad."

"I'm not mad!"

Dieter smiled. She might not be mad, but she wasn't happy, either.

While they'd been thrashing out whether Sarah was to go or not, he'd been wondering if he dared call his old friend Jeff Goldberg, his former partner in the Sector.

I suppose I might as well, he thought. Sully must have made a report by now, and even if he hadn't, they already knew about my association with the notorious Sarah Connor. Which means that [eff knows, too.

He went to the wall and took down a heavily .framed painting, setting it to lean against the file cabinet. Then he worked the combination of the safe it had hidden. Removing the valuable papers and other odds and ends inside the surprisingly deep little safe, he opened a tiny secret compartment with a few deft touches. Inside was a cell phone.

In Vienna, Jeff had one just like it.

When Dieter had retired they'd decided to arrange a private means of communication in the event that either ever had need of the other's aid. At the time von Rossbach had been thinking that his partner, still active in a very dangerous profession, might need his help. It just went to show you; a backup plan was always a good idea.

He placed the phone on his desk and booted up his computer. Once on the Internet he sent off the coded message that would bounce through a few different addresses before it reached Jeff. Then he sat back to wait. It could be a while.

An hour and a half later the phone rang. Dieter snatched it up. "Yes?" he said.

"I don't even know why I'm talking to you."

"It's because in spite of everything you've heard, you know you can trust me,"

Dieter said.

"If I can trust you then why does it look like you've gone over to the other side?"

Jeff's voice was stressed, not usual.

Dieter wondered if, in spite of their precautions, this call was being monitored—

if Jeff was letting this call be monitored.

"You know me better than that," von Rossbach said dismissively. "What's the gossip about me?"

" Gossip? If it was gossip I could doubt it. I'm talking about official reports, Dieter."

"And what am I supposed to have done in these reports?"

"For starters, harboring a wanted fugitive!" Goldberg snapped.

"When was this?" Careful, Dieter thought. You don't want to antagonize him any further.

"You know goddamn well when. You were the one who sent me those sketches of her. Then you said the description didn't match. And of course I believed you because my good buddy wouldn't lie to me! Next thing I know, you're running around California recruiting for her army!"

Dieter was silent for a while as he gathered his thoughts. He'd thought he knew what he was going to say, thought he knew how to counter any arguments Jeff might throw at him. But now that the moment was here he found he couldn't use any of those glib explanations, because most of them were lies. He couldn't do that to a man who had been at his back through most of his dangerous career.

He'd already done it too often.

Dieter took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I owe you an apology," he said.

"I did know it was probably her, but I was intrigued and wanted to investigate her by myself. Especially when you sent me that recording of a man with my face killing police by the dozen. I was bored here and feeling useless." He shrugged, though his former partner couldn't see it. "Then you sent Griego and I felt like I had to defend my turf. It wasn't sensible, and I know it wasn't professional, but I'd gotten to know her a little by then and I wanted to know more."

Goldberg was silent for a long time. "Go on," he said at last, his voice giving nothing away.

Dieter felt relieved. At least he was being given a chance to explain. "One night I went over to her house." He frowned at the memory. "I was bringing a dog for her son, more of a puppy, really." He took a deep breath and forced himself to continue. "Before I knew it we were under attack. By a heavily armed man with my face."

"Bullshit!" Goldberg snapped.

"I wish. God, do I wish you were right." Until this moment he hadn't realized how much he would give for all that had happened to have been a dream. "But you're not. The face was mine, but this man was no more human than that cell phone you're holding. I saw the body. It had no internal organs—just metal, wire, motherboards, stuff like that. There were sparks flying out of it and it took an incredible amount of ammunition to stop the damn thing."

"Do you think I'm an idiot!" Goldberg shouted. "What the hell is the matter with you?"

Dieter kept silent for a moment; he tightened his mouth and closed his eyes as if in pain. "Jeff," he said quietly, "I had a whole bunch of lies made up to tell you. I was going to be investigating this thing on my own, trying to find out how far Connor's influence extended. You know me. I'm good at being convincing when I need to be. You'd have believed me before I was finished with you. But you deserved the truth, so I took a chance and told it to you."

Jeff was breathing hard, his breath whistling though the phone. "Shit!" he muttered.

"Believe it or not, I know how you feel," Dieter commiserated. "Why would I tell you a story like this if it wasn't true? Don't you think I know how all this sounds? Why would I even try if it wasn't true?"

He stopped talking, waiting for his old partner to work it through.

"She could have talked you 'round," Jeff said at last. "Connor was a damned attractive woman." His voice was wary, but much less hostile.

"Yeah, and I'm really susceptible to wild stories and sexy women. That's why I was such a rotten agent." Von Rossbach sneered.

Jeff gave a short laugh. "Nooo, you were pretty good."

"I still am."

"Yeah, well. This is a pretty crazy story, buddy. You know that."

"Have you seen Sully's report?"

"Sully is, uh, undergoing psychiatric evaluation. You know he's one of ours?"

"Would I ask about his report if I didn't?"

"Good point."

"Jeff, Sarah Connor is crazy, her son is crazy, Sully's crazy. Now I'm crazy?

Maybe instead they've been telling the truth all along?"

Goldberg gave a kind of hiss. "I can't go there, buddy. I just can't."

"Are you at least willing to think about it?"

After a rather painful silence Goldberg said, "Yeah. I could do that."

"Good. I need your help."

Jeff barked a laugh. "You cocky bastard! You sure you don't want to give me two more seconds to mull this over?"

"Yes."

"Well, what the hell. I figured you wanted something, otherwise we wouldn't be talking on these phones. Right?"

"You got it, buddy." Von Rossbach waited, wanting his friend to ask.

"So what do you want?" Jeff said.

"I'm trying to trace a possible kidnap victim."

"Whoa! If you're talking about Sarah Connor, she took off on her own. If you're talking about Dr. Silberman, how do you think we know that she took off on her own?"

Dieter winced. He wanted to tell the truth. But I think I've tried Jeff's patience enough for one evening. "What are you talking about?"

There was a pregnant pause from Vienna. Then Goldberg asked cautiously,

"You don't know?"

"Sarah Connor is missing again?" Dieter asked. "Last I heard she was in an institution."

"If you don't know where she is and what she's doing, then why are you rounding up recruits for her cause?" Jeff challenged.

"Because I promised her I would before she disappeared from here. I don't know how much good I've done her. Being chased all over California by the Sector didn't help my efforts. But in any case, she's not the person I'm talking about."

"Oh." Jeff was silent a moment. "So, what? Are you a PI now or something?"

"No, just letting my curiosity get the better of me. This woman is named Clea Bennet, she's the inventor of something called Intellimetal. They made this sculpture in New York out of it."

"Yeah. Venus Dancing, it's called. It's all the rage, everyone's pretty excited about it. Nancy wants us to go see it for ourselves," Goldberg said.

"Clea Bennet has been missing for a little while now," Dieter explained. "I have some suspicion that it might have been the U.S. government that snatched her."

"You sure that suspicion isn't an effect of the people you've been hanging out with?"

Dieter let out an exasperated sigh. "This guy named Craig Kipler's been getting reports on a woman from Montana. The reports read like Bennet's biography.

Kipfer passed along an order, I quote, 'send her to Antarctica,' that jogged a memory for me. Just before I left the Sector there were hints of someone building an important and very secret research facility 'on the ice.' Do you know anything about that?"

Jeff was absolutely silent.

"Hello?" Dieter prompted.

"Kipfer isn't someone you should have heard about," Goldberg said at last. "He is like, ultra-black ops. As for the research facility…"

There was more contemplative silence, but Dieter waited it out this time.

"I can't believe I'm telling you this, but… yeah. It's there. We know where it's located, but aside from that we know very little. The only thing we can be sure of is that they're not doing nuclear testing. For once the Americans are playing their cards close to their chests. Though to be fair, it's not the kind of place that's easily infiltrated."

"So who have you got there?" Dieter said blandly.

Jeff laughed. "None of your business. Even if we did have somebody there you probably wouldn't know them."

"So where is this base?"

Dieter waited; would his friend come through for him? Jeff had no particular reason to cover for the U.S. government, but at the moment neither did he have a particular reason to help his old partner.

"You're not going to blow it up are you?" Jeff asked sourly.

Von Rossbach laughed in surprise. "No! That's not the plan anyway. I might try to rescue this young woman. Assuming she's there under duress, of course."

"Tsk!" Jeff said. "I thought you were out of the hero business."

"You going to tell me or not?" Dieter asked.

"Don't make me regret this," Goldberg warned.

"I won't. I swear," Dieter said, fingers crossed. After all, who knew?

"It's in west Antarctica." Jeff gave him the coordinates. "The base itself is slightly inland." He gave a brief physical description of the place. "You could hike there from the coast in three days."

"Thanks, Jeff."

"Dress warm."

"Yes, Dad. Give my best to Nancy."

"You bet." Goldberg paused. "God, Dieter, don't make me regret this, please."

"Don't worry."

"Just don't. Okay?"

"You'll get old and gray worrying like that," Dieter teased. "I'm just curious, is all. I like a good puzzle."

"If you hear from Connor—"

"I won't."

"Yeah, right. Don't blow anything up," Jeff warned.

"But that's the fun part!"

Jeff hissed in exasperation, then laughed. "Y'know, you're right."

Dieter laughed, too. "Bye, buddy. Thanks."

"I am so going to regret this," Jeff said, sounding more amused than worried.

"No comment. Bye." Dieter hung up.

This American base must be one of Jeff's projects, otherwise he wouldn't have the information at his fingertips like that. A lucky break, Dieter thought.

He'd check with Sarah and John to see how their research on supplies was going.

Then he'd see about arranging transportation.

Sarah looked up as Dieter appeared in John's doorway. "It's amazing how many Web sites there are dealing with tourism in Antarctica," she said by way of greeting. "Apparently going there is really popular. Who knew?"

"Give me Paris any day," John muttered, typing rapidly.

"Ah, yes," said Dieter, "we'll always have Paris."

Sarah smiled. "I've always wanted to go there," she said. "My father said there was something special in the air of Paris. But, we could hardly expect them to put Skynet someplace so accessible."

"Or so pleasant," Dieter agreed.

"They could have at least put it someplace temperate," John complained.

"That's right," his mother said. "You've never lived anywhere cold, have you, hon? We'll have to put some antifreeze in your blood."

John gave her a look. "Thanks, Mom. I knew I could rely on you."

"What are mothers for?" she asked brightly.

"To justify Mother's Day?" John asked. He tapped a final key and the printer began to hum.

Sarah punched his arm lightly and turned to von Rossbach. "Did you find out

anything?"

"There is a top-secret American scientific installation in west Antarctica," he said. "About three days in from the coast. It's a mostly underground facility with some sham huts on top."

***

John took some papers from the printer and handed them to Dieter. Who took them and looked them over.

"A lot of stuff," he said.

"I pared it down to the essentials," John said. "We're not there for the scenery, after all. It's the food that concerns me. We'll need a ton of it. I get the impression you're supposed to eat a pound of butter a day."

"Cold burns calories," von Rossbach said. He became quiet for a moment.

"What?" Sarah asked, coming into the room and sitting on John's bed. Dieter looked up, his eyes meeting hers. John turned to look at him and von Rossbach glanced his way.

"Why are we doing this?" he asked. "We don't know for sure that this woman is there, or that Skynet is there. We could be running off half-cocked here. And to do what, exactly?"

Sarah and John stared at him as if he'd suddenly broken out into a Broadway show tune, then glanced at each other and away. After a moment of chewing her lips Sarah looked at von Rossbach.

"If that thing is there, and we have good reason to think it is, then it's there for Skynet. That's what all of these things are for—the Terminators, whatever Serena Burns was, whatever this thing is. They exist to protect Skynet, and/or to kill us. It's just a question of who strikes first."

"What about the rest of the facility?" Dieter asked.

"Our one goal is to destroy this thing and Skynet," she answered. "Nothing else."

"So you're talking surgical strike?" Dieter said.

"By preference," Sarah said. "But what I'm talking is whatever we have to do."

"Same as ever, big guy," John said. "The goal is always the same, however many times it takes." He sighed and lifted his arms, then dropped them in a full body shrug. "Hey, at least we get to travel."

Dieter was silent a long time. Abruptly he rose.

"All right," he said. "I'll arrange travel." As he walked toward his study he thought, Jeff's going to kill me.

"Yes?" The woman's voice was sultry and inviting, a voice designed to tickle and suggest.

"I would love to take you out to dinner."

"Dieter!" Vera Philmore exclaimed in delight. "How marvelous to hear from you! Where are you, darling?"

"I'd rather not say," he answered carefully. "But as I said, I'd love to take you to dinner."

"When and where?" she purred.

"Tierra del Fuego."

Vera laughed out loud. "Do they even have restaurants there?"

"Some very good ones." He picked up a pen and tapped it on the desk. "But I must confess, I need a favor."

"Oooh. I knew there'd be a catch," she said, putting a mock pout in her voice.

"Maybe I should put in a catch of my own."

"Careful, you'll frighten me away."

Vera gave a throaty laugh. "What do you want, sweetheart? Not more money. I hope."

"No," he assured her. "I'd prefer to explain to you face-to-face."

Suddenly the banter was gone from her voice. "So this is a serious thing?"

"Yes," he agreed. "But—always excepting the seas and the weather down there—

what I'm asking shouldn't put you, or your crew, in any personal danger."

"I see."

Dieter waited, letting her think it over. "Have you ever been to Tierra del Fuego?"

"Of course not, darling!" she said, and laughed. "It's not exactly a spa, is it?"

"There's nowhere else on earth quite like it," von Rossbach assured her.

"Sweetie, there's a whole lot of pissholes on this planet that could make the same claim. That doesn't mean I want to visit them." She gave a deep sigh. "All right.

Where and when?"

"Ushuaia," he said, "it's the capital. Two weeks from today?"

"I'll be there," she said. "This had better be one very good dinner, baby."

"I'll make sure of it," he promised. "Will you be staying at a hotel, or…?"

"I'll be on the yacht, of course, dear. That's what it's for, to protect me from bad hotels. See you then." She made the smacking sound of a big kiss and hung up.

Dieter depressed the receiver button and began dialing the restaurant that the travel agency had recommended. I hope this place lives up to its reputation, he thought. He didn't want to have to make up for bad food.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT

Ron Labane entered Hartford feeling good. Not even the general atmosphere of industrial decay—the abandoned mills, some converted to glitzy malls, and the

tract housing from the vanished heyday of the textile factories—could depress him. He'd turned the radio to a classic-rock station, and tapped out the rhythm of

"Dreamboat Annie" as he drove.

Things were moving along better and faster than he'd ever anticipated. There were now two Eco Party U.S. senators and eight congressmen in Washington and a lot more who were state representatives, five Eco Party governors: two on the West Coast, three on the East.

Ten years ago they were nothing.

It was a thrill to realize that the United States at last had a three-party system and that, in large part, it was due to his influence. The New Day show, the books, the clubs, the new magazine, all of these had changed the attitudes of millions of Americans. All because of his grand vision.

Ron grinned. He felt better than good; he felt invincible. Just before heading out for his speaking engagement at II. Mass, he'd gotten a surprise visit from Eco Party chairman Sebastion MacMillan and his closest associates. He felt a surge of pure pleasure as he remembered the meeting.

NEW YORK

"Mr. Labane," MacMillan said, "I realize that this is short notice, but I hope you can spare us a few moments of your time."

Ron looked at the professorial gentleman at his door in surprise, and at his three associates. Then he smiled.

"Come in," he said, stepping aside and gesturing into his austere yet elegant

apartment with its handcrafted third-world textiles and slight odor of organic sachet. "Can I take your coats?"

"No, no, we won't be staying that long." The chairman took note of Ron's small suitcase. "And you're going somewhere, I see."

"Yes, Amherst, up in Massachusetts. I'm speaking at the university there." He chuckled deprecatingly. "I don't want to get the reputation of only speaking to the Ivy League."

The three men and one woman looked at him as though he'd said something profound. "Your egalitarianism is one of the reasons we want to speak to you,"

MacMillan said.

"Sit down, please," Ron invited, and led them into the living room.

He looked them over as they took their seats. The rumor was that the chairman had sent around copies of Dress for Success as soon as he'd taken over and had demanded that everyone in any position of authority make it their bible.

Undoubtedly it had helped. These people had always looked intelligent; now they also looked professional and therefore trustworthy. Ron looked over and met MacMillan's eye.

This is someone I could work with, he thought. He made a mental note to invite him onto the show.

"I'll get right to the point," the chairman said. "In ten months one of New York's senators will be leaving Washington for good. We'd like you to be our candidate for that office."

Ron was genuinely stunned. He'd assumed that they wanted him to do something for them. It seemed it was the other way around.

MacMillan smiled warmly at him. "I've studied your career, Mr. Labane. It seems to me that the logical next step for you is public office. Your genuine dedication to ecological causes is both unselfish and unquestionable. To the general public you're a hero; to those of us involved with the cause you're a leader. We'd like to take that a step further and make you a leader with power."

The chairman pulled his briefcase onto his lap and extracted a slim file. "The party ran a straw poll to see how the idea of you as our candidate struck people."

He held out the file and Labane took it. Ron glanced at the other party members, who all nodded, smiling; then he opened the file. After a moment he looked up at the chairman, astounded.

MacMillan smiled comfortably. "We've never had a result like that when we've floated a name." He shook his head. "As you can see we didn't restrict the poll to party members either. If you ran on our ticket today you'd be elected. In a landslide."

Ron smiled and shook his head, then he blew his breath out in a whistle. He laughed, he couldn't help it. "This is very flattering."

"Don't answer tonight." The chairman held up his hand. "We know you'll want to think about it. After all, this would be a big step."

He rose and the others followed suit. Taking a step forward, MacMillan held out

his hand. Belatedly Ron rose to take it.

"All we ask is that you consider it seriously. I honestly think that now is the time."

Ron shook the chairman's hand. "I'll certainly give it some thought," he said.

"I'm caught completely flat-footed here, I"—He shook his head helplessly

—"honestly don't know what to say."

"I'm hoping you'll say yes," MacMillan said, smiling. He started slowly for the door. "In a few years I think this country will be ready for a presidential candidate from our party." He put his hand on Labane's shoulder. "We need to do everything that we can to make that day a reality."

He stopped and smiled at Ron.

"That would certainly be a wonderful day for this country," Ron said, his head whirling. I'm already sounding like a politician, he thought.

The chairman grinned as though he shared the thought. "Our contact information is in the file." MacMillan held out his hand again and Ron shook it. "Good night."

"Good night," Ron said.

The other three party members filed out behind the chairman, each offering his or her hand for a firm handshake, making eye contact and saying a polite good-bye that implied great pleasure in their brief acquaintance.

After closing the door behind them, Ron simply sat down on the chair in the

foyer and stared at nothing.

No, not at nothing: into the future.

HARTFORD

A very pleasant memory. Even sitting down driving, Ron felt ten feet tall. The numbers had indicated that he would be the near-unanimous choice of New York voters.

"Unanimous!" he said aloud, and laughed. New Mexico probably hadn't hurt…

This was heady stuff. Should I expect to hear from the Democrats next? he wondered. Not that he would accept an offer from them. He didn't think his support would be unanimous with the Democrats.

His support! He was definitely thinking like a politico already. Must mean this was meant to be.

As Ron pulled off the highway and into the parking lot of the cheap motel, he frowned. I'll have to be more careful, he thought. A lot more careful. Maybe this should be the last one.

The last of hundreds of clandestine meetings that he'd held over the last few years. Meetings designed to give the last little nudge to people who didn't need very much in the way of a push in the first place.

But his presence had helped. Had helped to keep even the most aggressive and angry extremists from becoming too violent. While at the same time offering direction and ideas, ideas that had been making headlines for a long time now.

Some people called it a "terrorist network." but that wasn't how things worked. It was more in the nature of an umbrella.

He sat in his car looking at the cabin where the meeting was being held. Maybe he should just not show up at all. The truth was, of all the crazies he'd had contact with over the years, these people were the only ones who truly scared him.

At least they haven't killed anybody. Yet.

No one that he knew about anyway. But when he looked in their eyes he could see that in their hearts they'd murdered thousands.

Hell, they were so misanthropic that the only reason they could tolerate one another was because of their dedication to their cause.

A cause which Ron had gradually come to see was not quite the same as his own.

His fingers tapped the steering wheel and he felt his reluctance grow the longer he sat. Ron frowned. He was cagey enough to know that he wasn't worried about what effect being seen with these people might have on his potential political career. He could always say he was trying to rein them in, and he thought he'd be believed.

The problem was that he didn't trust them. They looked at him like they hated him; even as they hung on his words and did as he directed, he could feel their loathing, like an oily heat against his skin.

He pictured them in his mind's eye as he'd seen them last. They were all young,

all white, seven of them, three women and four men. He didn't know their real names; they certainly weren't born with names like Sauron, Balewitch, Maleficent, Dog Soldier, Death, Hate, and Ore. They were pale, and underfed, with stringy hair and a slightly swampy smell about them, as though they lived underground.

Ron smiled at the thought. They most certainly did.

And they were angry. Their bodies were stiff with rage, even though their faces were usually blank, until you looked at their eyes. There was emotion enough in those eyes all right, none of it wholesome.

They didn't talk about their families or their pasts, so he had no idea what forces had molded them into the dangerous people they'd become. But they spoke freely of their education. Each of them was brilliant, each had received scholarships and had attended prestigious universities.

And each one thinks he or she is the smartest one in the group and should be in control, Ron thought.

They thought they were smarter than he was, too. It didn't take a genius to guess that they were jealous of him and resented his influence— on them and on other people. Influence they wanted for themselves.

He gave a shudder and pulled the keys from the ignition with a jangle of metal.

This wasn't going to get any better with waiting.

He strode to the door of the cabin and gave the prescribed knock. Two knocks, pause, one knock, pause, five knocks, pause, one knock.

"Who is it?" a surly male voice demanded.

"English muffin," Ron said wearily. There was a peephole in the door for crissake!

The door swung open on a darkened room and Labane entered with an audible sigh, He closed the door behind him. "May we have some light?" he asked with exaggerated patience.

Maleficent turned on the lamp beside her chair and glared at him with what appeared to be heartfelt contempt. "You're late," she said coldly.

"Yes," he agreed. "I was delayed starting out."

Ron went over and sat on the bed, almost landing on Sauron's legs, since that worthy disdained to move them. "It's been a while," Ron said.

"Meaning?" Balewitch snapped in her foghorn voice, ice-pale eyes blazing. She, more than the rest, was inclined to take every remark personally.

"Just an observation," Ron said, his voice carefully unapologetic.

He decided to say nothing more. They'd asked for this meeting; therefore, let them talk. The old Buddhist stuff about the power of silence had something to it; if you made the other guy speak first, you had him off balance. He waited, and waited, feeling like a mailman surrounded by Dobermans on speed. After what felt like an hour of charged silence— in reality about five minutes—Ron got to his feet and moved toward the door.

"Thanks for inviting me to your meditation session," he said sarcastically. "But I've still got a couple of hours of driving to do and a great deal of meeting and greeting at the end of it. So if there's nothing else you wanted—"

"Sit down," Hate said, his uninflected voice weighty with threat.

"No, I don't think I will," Ron said, clasping his hands before him. "I will give you a few more minutes. What do you want?"

"Now you're meeting with political mavens you think you're too good to spend time with us?" Sauron asked.

Ron's head snapped around to glare at him, hiding the curdling horror he felt inside. For the first time he realized that Ore was missing. How long have they been watching me? he wondered, feeling the back of his neck clench with a sudden chill.

Sauron sneered at him. Sauron was the smooth one; he was able to hide his feelings most of the time. He wasn't bothering now. "MacMillan and his school of sycophants," he drawled. "But they didn't linger."

"No," Labane agreed. "They said what they came to say and they left." He looked at each of them. "Their arrival was as much a surprise to me as it was to Ore."

"We weren't surprised," Balewitch said. Her graying bristle-cut clean for a change, she stared at him as if he was a spot on a white wall.

"Is that why you asked me here? To discuss their proposal?" Ron asked, trying

not to let them see how disturbed he was.

"Have you sold your soul yet?" Death asked, looking at him sidelong through a dark curtain of her lank hair.

Ron snorted. "They offered to sponsor me as a candidate for the Senate from New York," he told them. Even though they probably already knew that.

"And?" Dog Soldier asked, his voice disinterested.

"And, I'm considering it."

Maleficent actually hissed. Ron looked at her, one brow raised. "That's where the evil is," she said.

"That's where the money is," Dog Soldier corrected.

Maleficent shot him a glare that should have singed his hair.

"That's where the power is," Ron interrupted.

"The power to change things?" Dog Soldier asked, a smirk playing on his lips.

"The power to right all the wrongs, cross all the ts, dot all the is."

"Yes," Ron said. "Why shouldn't I want that kind of power? Think of the good I could do for the cause with that kind of influence."

There was the strangest feeling then, as though, without moving, they'd all drawn back from him in disgust.

"That's the sort of thing someone who'd already made up his mind might say to excuse being greedy," Sauron observed. "You already have a lot of influence with your little television show."

"Influence with power behind it will go a lot further," Labane insisted. "And there's no telling how high this road could climb. This is a golden opportunity for our cause."

The six of them exchanged glances around him.

"I suspect that we have different goals," Death told him.

"We all want to save the planet!" Labane said in exasperation.

Once again their eyes met, excluding Ron.

"Fine," he snarled. "Just forget it. I'm outta here."

"Ron." Sauron stopped Labane with his hand on the doorknob. "Just in case the thought has crossed your mind, I'd like to discourage you from any ideas you might have of turning us in." He shook his head. "That would be a very bad idea."

"I do know something about loyalty," Ron said.

"If you're going to be a politician that'll be the first thing to go," Dog Soldier told him, snickering.

"You do us the dirty and you'd better watch your back, Labane," Death warned, her dark eyes narrowed to slits.

"You know what:'" Ron said. "Don't call me, I'll call you."

"Thanks for dropping by, Ron," Sauron called just before the door slammed.

They were quiet for a while. Then Maleficent observed, "He's gone over to the other side. He just doesn't know it yet."

"And he never will," Dog Soldier said. "That kind of insight takes time."

"Death to traitors," Balewitch growled.

They crossed glances again. This time they smiled.

ROUTE 91, MASSACHUSETTS

Ron felt better once he'd left Connecticut behind him. Being with that crowd was always a trial, but tonight! Tonight had been different. The idea that they had been watching him made his stomach clench like an angry fist. How dare those sick little bastards spy on him? How long has this been going on?

And how far had it gone?

The thought frightened him and the fear broke the fever of his outrage with a cold sweat. Had they been in his apartment?

No, he assured himself, they couldn't have; I'd have smelled them. The contempt felt good.

Besides, he paid a premium to live in a building with first-class security. It was

one thing to watch MacMillan enter his building and to guess where he was going. It was quite another to actually break in.

His eyes flicked to the mirror to watch a car coming up behind. A little frisson of fear shivered through his belly. Was it them? Were they up to something?

As the vehicle passed him he saw that it was one of those pickups with a complete backseat and what seemed to be an eighteen-foot bed— known in some circles as an "adultery wagon." Ron relaxed, feeling himself loosen, almost deflating behind the wheel. Even in deep disguise, that crowd wouldn't go near one of those things. Unless they planned to bomb it.

He forced himself to be calm. They had no reason to be after him. He'd never betrayed them. And I don't need to betray them now. Without him to keep them on an even keel, they'd be in police custody in a month. Most likely they'd betray one another.

Geniuses! He gave his head a little shake. A lot of the time they had no practical sense at all. They wouldn't last long enough to create problems for him.

And if they did… well, he knew some other people, too.

THE VICTORIAN INN, AMHERST,

MASSACHUSETTS

Labane entered the pleasant guest room—plenty of froufrou and color, to match the theme—and flung his jacket onto the tiny sofa; then he pulled off his tie and threw that down, too. Unbuttoning his cuffs, he entered the bathroom, unbuttoned his collar, and turned on the tap. He splashed cold water on his face,

dried off with one of the inn's luxurious towels, and stared at himself in the mirror.

He looked almost as exhausted as he felt.

Last night had run later than he'd planned, but the company had been good.

Besides, he suspected that he'd been too keyed up for an early night. Then today there was the traditional campus tour, followed by the obligatory meeting with the campus's ecology clubs, an interview with the local press, a formal dinner with the president of the college and all of the faculty and guests from the surrounding colleges—of which the area held a multitude—and then his address to the college. After which there was a mill-and-swill where some people introduced themselves and spoke with him, and more people stared at him from a distance as though he were on exhibit.

God, it was good to be alone again. He went back into the room and sat in one of the comfortable club chairs; he wondered idly if they were Victorian. Didn't seem likely. The chair didn't try to make him sit ramrod straight and the cushions accepted the shape of his posterior without the apparent resentment of true Victorian furniture.

He'd ordered coffee, and though he knew that the average guest would have been denied, his celebrity status got him what he wanted.

Ron smiled; life was good. He was tired, but it was worth it. Seeing all those eager young faces, knowing they were hanging on his every word, shaping their lives to fit his philosophy. He closed his eyes, hands folded across his stomach, and sighed contentedly. It just didn't get any better than this.

There was a discreet knock at the door.

"Room service."

"C'mon in, it's open," Ron called out from his chair. "You can just put it there on the coffee table."

Then he realized that there was more than one person entering the room. He opened his eyes, annoyed, but smiling through it. Sometimes being a celebrity got you what you wanted, but sometimes the fans wanted something back in return; like the opportunity to show you off to their friends.

Then he realized he was looking at Hate and Dog Soldier. The artificial smile froze on his face, then slipped away. "What's up, fellas:'" he asked.

Hate handed Dog Soldier a pillow from off the bed. Dog soldier pulled out a huge gun and wrapped the pillow around it.

"Wait a minute!" Ron said, holding up his hand.

"Not even," Dog Soldier said cheerfully, and shot him between the eyes.

At least that was where he'd been aiming. With large-caliber ammunition it was sometimes hard to tell exactly where the bullet struck.

Hate picked up the phone and dialed room service. "I'm so sorry." he said in a nearly perfect imitation of Labane's voice. "I have to cancel that request for coffee. I'm suddenly so tired I couldn't even take a sip. I apologize for the inconvenience."

Dog Soldier watched him as he put the gun down on the coffee table.

"Oh, thank you," Hate said into the phone pleasantly.

Dog raised a brow as he flung the pillow back onto the bed and took out a small box.

"Well, that's always nice to hear," Hate said.

Dog got to work on the gun, unscrewing the handgrip and carefully replacing the grip plates with those that had been handled by their mark.

"Really," Hate said, rolling his eyes and gritting his teeth even as he kept his voice friendly and cheerful. "All that way? Just for me?"

Dog Soldier grinned and shook his head.

"Well, thank you, but I really must go. Yes. Yes, everything is wonderful. Yes.

Thank you. You're very sweet. I must go. Yes. Good night." Hate put down the receiver carefully. "I was ready to go down there and blow them all away," he snarled. " Cattle!"

Dog chuckled. "I don't blame you, man. People get to me the same way. Save the planet—kill all the people!"

Wendy walked along the dark street feeling totally jazzed. She'd been invited to a private meeting with Ron Labane! She gave a little skip and hugged herself.

When she'd heard Labane was going to be speaking here tonight, she'd made

arrangements to stay with her friend Diana, skipped her classes, and took a bus to Amherst. His speech had been wonderful, and even Di, who really wasn't that interested in ecology, had agreed about that. She'd been invited to go along to this meeting, too, but hadn't wanted to.

Wendy sighed. Di was a good friend, but she was more into dancing and dating than saving the world. Wendy would have loved her company tonight. It would have been so good to share this opportunity.

It was just pure luck that they'd found themselves behind two guys who worked on Labane's show in Oklahoma City. One of them, Rich, was kind of creepy, but the other, Joe, was friendly enough. He'd reminded her a little of Snog, a good sense of humor and obviously very smart.

They got to talking and Joe invited them to this private meeting. He explained that Mr. Labane was especially interested in talking to students in the high-tech area.

"Well, that lets me out," Diana had said, grinning. "I'm an art major."

"Hey, you can come," Joe said.

"Got a date," Diana told him.

Di had told Wendy later that she thought he was hitting on her. "When I want a guy to hit on me," she said, "I'll let him know it."

Joe didn't act like he'd been rejected, though. He kept talking with them and joking. He was wearing latex gloves. When Wendy had asked him about it he

told her that he'd been burned when a battery exploded and the gloves protected him while making it possible to handle things.

He claimed that they had a special pass, but he couldn't find it. He kept handing her things from his pockets as he searched for his pass. The weirdest collection of stuff—metal and plastic and wire and string—but no pass. In the end they'd bought tickets like everybody else, which Joe's friend was clearly annoyed about.

"Did you believe him?" Di had asked later.

"Sure," Wendy said.

"I hope you're not letting yourself in for a nasty experience going to meet these guys," Diana warned. "There was something fishy about those two."

"It's at the Victorian, Di," Wendy had said in exasperation. "That's where Mr.

Labane is staying."

It kind of annoyed her, Diana coming on so superior like that. As if U. Mass.

Amherst was a hotbed of sophistication next to Cambridge and MIT.

I bet she's sleeping around, Wendy thought cattily. She'd known other girls who suddenly felt all worldly because they were suddenly "doing it" regularly.

Wendy entered the lobby and looked around; the man behind the desk had his back turned as he filed something. There was a lot of ornate furniture with red plush upholstery and matching drapes. The wallpaper was a sepia-toned print of acanthus leaves; the carpet had plate-sized pink roses all over it. She wrinkled her nose; it was very nice, she supposed, just not her style.

She went to the ornate staircase and climbed to the second floor. Mr. Labane's room was 207, at the far end of the hall. The hall was quiet and the ambience here was restful. She wished she could stay in a place like this: Diana's dorm was as noisy as the inside of a drum at a rock concert.

She found the door to 207 slightly open, but the room was quiet. Biting her lower lip, Wendy hesitated. She really didn't want to be the first to arrive. How would she explain her presence if Rich and Joe weren't here? By the same token, she'd look stupid hanging out in the hall like this. And if she was first she'd actually get some private time with Mr. Labane. Taking a deep breath, she knocked twice.

"Come in." It was Ron Labane's voice.

She clasped her hands as her excitement surged, then nervously pushed the door open. Just inside the door on the left was the bathroom; Joe was coming out as she entered.

"Hi," she said happily.

Smiling broadly, he lifted his hand as if to blow her a kiss and blew a fine powder right into her face.

Wendy started to suck in her breath in surprise, gagged, and fell to the floor unconscious.

"Gets 'em every time," Dog Soldier said, brushing off his hands.

"Get her out of there and close the door for crissake," Hate snarled. "Couldn't

you have waited until she was further in?"

"Picky, picky, picky." Dog grinned. He grabbed Wendy under the armpits and dragged her a few feet, dropped her like a sack of potatoes, and stepped over her to close the door. "That was easy," he said, watching Hate position the girl on the floor beside Labane.

"Yes," Hate agreed. He spread the girl's right hand and touched the gun to her fingers in a number of different directions. "Why did we have to replace parts if we could do this?"

"Extra measure of safety," Dog said. "Dude I knew got caught because of a fingerprint on the inside of a mother-of-pearl handgrip plate. Besides, we didn't know if we'd have the leisure. She might have brought a friend."

Hate nodded, not looking up. Then he placed the gun in the girl's hand. Lifting Wendy up, he brought her close to Labane, the gun pressed against what was left of Ron's head, Hate's hand over hers on the gun. Dog wrapped the pillow around her hand and Hate pulled the trigger.

Wendy got most of what splashed, though Hate caught some blood and matter on his face and hair.

"Shit!" He dropped her and headed for the bathroom. He took a handful of toilet paper and cleaned off the worst of it, then pocketed the mess. "Let's get out of here," he growled.

"Sure," Dog said. "Bye, Wendy."

They pulled the door quietly to behind them and went down the back stairs, exiting through the inn's rear door, where Hate had unscrewed a bulb earlier, leaving the back path in darkness.

"You wanna make the call, or shall I do the honors?" Dog asked.

"You," Hate said. Why should he take the risk of having his voice recorded?

"Oh! Y'know what?" Dog Soldier said. "You could imitate Ron! You could call up and say this coed stalker was threatening you and you'd seen her in the hotel and the cops should come and take her away, or something." He grinned excitedly. "It would be so cool!"

Hate stopped walking and looked at him. Actually, it would be cool.

Perhaps, thanks to a superior gag reflex, Wendy hadn't inhaled as much of the drug as Dog Soldier had assumed, or perhaps she had a resistance to it—for whatever reason, she returned, more or less, to consciousness before Labane's killers hit the back door.

Slowly she realized she was lying on the floor, and she wondered how and why this was so. Then, for what seemed like a long time, she stared at what looked like a very messy piece of raw meat. All at once she realized what it was she was looking at and her stomach rebelled.

Wendy tried to rise but couldn't. She threw up on the carpet and partly on the corpse. When she was through retching she pushed herself away from the body, weeping, her head turned away. She took shallow breaths, afraid the smell would make her vomit again, and struggled to her feet, sobbing.

Staggering to the bed and grabbing one of its posts, she looked around the room.

A very nice room. Wendy swayed, blinking, feeling the sweat dry off her face as she tried to make sense of what was happening. A quick glance at the floor told her the body was still there.

Hadn't there been something in her hand? She looked at her hand clasped on the carved wood. Nothing there. But there had been something. Wendy looked down at the floor, but not at the body. There was a gun. It was lying in a pool of blood going tacky. The gun had been in her hand. She looked at her hand; there was blood on her fingers. And the smell…

Wendy's knees gave way and she dropped, holding on to the bedpost for dear life. No! No matter what, she knew that she wouldn't kill anybody. Wait, she didn't even have a gun. She loved Ron Labane and everything he stood for; nothing could make her hurt him.

Wendy forced herself to take deep breaths, fighting the dizziness and the panic.

Her legs steadied and she leaned her forehead against the bedpost, trying desperately to remember what had happened. Something came to her—Joe coming out of the bathroom, lifting his hand…

I have to get out of here, she thought. I have to find Diana.

She got to the door, having trouble keeping her feet, weaving left and right as though she was drunk. Her stomach wanted to heave again, this time because her head was whirling, but she forced herself to move.

Back stairs, she thought muzzily. Too many people out front. Wait, shouldn't she tell them? Someone had been murdered after all. She stood in the hallway, feeling as though gravity wanted to pull her flat to the carpet, trying to make up her mind.

Deep inside, some instinct warned her to go, to sneak out. Good idea, she thought. She wasn't sure what was going on. She could always go to the police later, when she figured out what had happened.

Once outside, she headed in the opposite direction from Hate and Dog. She thought she'd take a shower as soon as she got back to the dorm. She always felt dirty after she threw up and… she thought she smelled blood. Wendy caught her breath in a sob. Had that really been Ron Labane? What had Joe done to her and why?

He seemed so nice, she thought plaintively.

"Hey, sleepyhead!" Diana nudged Wendy a little harder, not entirely pleased with her friend right now. "Wake up!"

With a wrenching effort Wendy managed to say, "Unh." If Diana hadn't started gently slapping her face, she'd probably have dropped off again. "Nnnno," she murmured, raising her hands. "Stop."

"Listen, Sleeping Beauty, we've got an hour and a half to get you dressed and fed and onto your bus. C'mon"—she tugged on Wendy's nightgown—"sit up. That's a good girl."

Wendy pressed her hand to her aching brow and felt her stomach clench. Oh

God, she prayed, not again. She'd thrown up three times last night. "Oh God,"

she said out loud, her voice sounding rusty.

"What the hell happened to you last night?" Diana asked. "I come back, you're passed out on my bed, thank you very much, your clothes are in a soaking-wet heap on the floor." She raised her hands and did a little hootchie dance move.

"Whoo-hoo! Those intellectual discussion groups. Wild times, I'm tellin' ya!

Wild times!"

Wincing, Wendy looked at her friend through narrowed eyes. "I have a headache," she said pitifully.

"Thought you might." Diana collected two tablets and a glass of water from her night table. "I put your clothes, including your shoes"-she raised a brow—"in the dryer. What happened?"

Wendy looked at her, her mind blank for a moment, then an all-too-vivid memory crowded in. She made an involuntary sound of disgust that sent Di arching back.

"You're not going to be sick again, are you?"

Wendy shook her head, then wished she hadn't. She put one hand to her aching brow and took another sip of water. "You were right," she said. The story took shape as she spoke, almost as if she were channeling it. "Those guys didn't know Ron Labane at all. They met me outside the inn and said I was too early." She let out a soul-deep sigh. "Let's go for a walk, they said. When we were a ways from the inn they admitted that they'd tricked me. Then they asked me if I wanted to do a threesome with them."

"Bastards!" Di snapped. She put an understanding hand on Wendy's shoulder.

Wendy smiled sadly at her and covered her friend's hand with her own, then she went on with her lie. "I told them they were assholes and to get lost." Her throat grew tight and tears threatened; she fought them back, but when she continued her voice sounded strangled. "The next thing I knew I was sitting on a park bench and I'd thrown up all over myself." She covered her eyes, for a moment, then looked at Diana.

Her friend sat with her mouth open, an uncertain look on her face. "Are you all right?" Di asked carefully.

Wendy nodded, looking down at her lap. "Yeah," she choked out. She shook her head. "I don't think they even tried to touch me. You can tell. You know?" She looked at Di.

Diana nodded. "Yeah. I know." She bit her lips and said solemnly, "Do you want to go to the police?"

Wendy gave her a deer-caught-in-the-headlights stare, then shook her head vehemently. "Oohhh," she groaned, clutching her temples with both hands and wincing. "No. No time, for one thing. I've got a bus to catch. And while it was a dirty trick and they're a pair of assholes, they didn't actually hurt me. They didn't even take my wallet. I checked." Wendy sighed, then wrinkled her nose. "I guess I'll have to chalk it up to experience."

Turning down the corners of her mouth, Di nodded. "Get dressed," she said suddenly, rising from the bed. "We'll catch a burger at the bus station. We've

only got about an hour and ten minutes."

They were walking to the bus station, a good half-hour walk, at Wendy's request.

She'd explained that she thought the exercise might clear her head. It did seem to be helping, though her mind was still a confused knot. "Fuck me!" Diana suddenly exclaimed.

Wendy frowned at her. "You're one of my best friends, Di, but frankly, you're not my type."

Diana tossed her a disgusted look and pointed to a newspaper box standing at the corner of the building beside them. Wendy stepped closer to look at it and her breath froze in her chest.

ECOLOGY SPOKESMAN SLAIN IN

LOCAL INN

"Oh, my God," she said. Somehow it felt like she was just finding this out.

"Are you okay?" Di asked. "You just got really pale."

"I'm fine," Wendy said in a faint voice. She dug in her jeans for quarters and bought the paper. "I just can't believe it."

She didn't want to believe it. The memory of Ron Labane's shattered head and the smell of his blood hit her and she staggered. Di took her by the shoulders and guided her to the curb, where she made her sit down.

"If you're feeling faint you should duck your head between your legs," Di said gently.

"I—I'm okay." Wendy looked at her friend and smiled faintly. "It's just… such a shock." She took a deep breath. "And I was there. I was right th—"

"Stop right there," Di said firmly. "You were not right there. You were in the neighborhood; that's not the same thing at all. What you're saying is like saying everybody in Amherst was right there, and we weren't. So if you think you could have saved him just by standing next to the inn or have known what was going to happen, you're wrong. Don't you take that on yourself."

Wendy smiled at her; she couldn't help it. A wave of affection caused her to hug her friend in gratitude. "Thank you," she said. "I needed to hear that."

She knew in her heart that if she confessed to waking up beside his body with a gun in her hand, Diana would still have believed in her innocence. She was that kind of friend.

"C'mon," Di said, standing and snatching the paper out of her friend's hands.

"You can read this on the bus."

There were a couple of policemen talking to a young, dark-haired woman as they entered the bus station. One of them glanced at Wendy and Di as they walked by. When they entered the Burger King he looked away. "You've only got twenty-five minutes," Di said, checking the clock.

"Then I guess I'd better skip the Whopper." Wendy sighed. "I'm not really all that hungry."

"Get some fries, then," Di suggested. "And some orange juice."

" There's a combination," Wendy muttered. But she did as her friend suggested. It was easier, and she was too tired.

Glancing out the window, Di pointed. Wendy looked out and saw the cops talking to yet another dark-haired girl.

"Whaddaya think is going on?" Di asked.

Wendy shook her head. "Maybe somebody ran away," she suggested.

"Huh." Di shrugged. "Maybe they're trolling for dates."

They looked at each other and grinned. Then they passed the next few minutes in eating and idle chatter.

As they walked to the bus bay for Boston, Di said, "Y'know, you might want to think about reporting those guys. I'll back you about their invitation. I mean, you got away okay, but somebody else might not be so lucky."

Wendy nodded. "I know," she said. "I just can't right now. I still feel kind of sick and I just want to get to my own room. Y'know?" She looked up into her friend's sympathetic face and reached out for a good-bye hug.

"Excuse me, girls."

They looked up to find themselves confronted by the police they'd noticed earlier.

"Could we ask you a few questions, please?"

"Sure," Di said.

Wendy nodded, then she pointed vaguely toward the bus bay. "My bus is boarding, though."

Both looked at her as though expecting her to continue.

Wendy cleared her throat. "Sure, what do you want to know?"

They wanted to know if Wendy and Diana knew who Ron Labane was, did they go to his speech, how did they feel about him, and most important, where had they been last night.

"Well, I went out clubbing," Di said happily. "But my buddy here got food poisoning and spent the night at the dorm yawning in Technicolor."

For some reason the phrase sent a spasm though Wendy's stomach and she put her hand over her mouth, just in case.

"Sorry," Di said, wincing.

"So you were by yourself last night?" one of the cops said. They both moved slightly closer to her.

"Well," Di said, wincing again, "I just couldn't… I mean, she was soooo sick.

She said it was okay if I went out. But I kept coming back to check on her, so it isn't like I deserted her." She gave the cops a kind of an accusing look.

"How many times did you look in on her, miss?" the cop asked.

"Oh, I dunno. Four?" She'd changed clubs four times, so that seemed right. Di looked at Wendy.

"I think so," Wendy said. "I was kind of out of it."

The cops looked at her. "You do look a little pale," one of them said.

"There's a flu going around Boston," Wendy said, quite truthfully.

The cops moved back slightly. Just then the station announced the last call for her bus and Wendy pointed outside. "I have to go," she said.

The two policemen looked at each other. "Okay, thanks for your cooperation.

We'll get your address from your friend here, in case we need to speak to you again."

"Okay." Wendy hugged Di. "Thanks," she said, meaning it. "I'll call you later."

"Yeah. I want to be sure you got home okay."

As the bus pulled out Di was still talking to the police, but they were laughing at some joke she'd made. Except for the uniforms, they could have been any pair of young guys flirting.

Wendy read the paper as the roadside ribbons of urban sprawl, interrupted by occasional patches of woods, rolled by outside the grimy window of the bus.

Labane had made a call to the police to report that a young woman with long red hair had been stalking him, threatening him. He'd asked the police to investigate, but by the time they arrived at the inn he was already dead. Three high-caliber

gun shots to the head from close range, the coroner reported.

They're looking for me, Wendy thought. They just don't know it yet. But they'd find her name on the list of New Day show attendees, they'd find her name on the pledge list, she'd subscribed to the magazine, her name was all over his lists.

Just the way a stalker's would be.

She'd been well and truly set up by those guys.

Somewhere along the way she drifted off to sleep again. She came to with the bus driver giving her a gentle shake. "Miss," he said quietly. "Miss."

She looked into his fatherly face for a moment, confused. Then she asked, "Are we there yet?"

He grinned. "Yep. I came back to get something and I noticed you. You almost got a trip back to Amherst." He raised his brows. "Good weekend?"

She shook her head tiredly, then smiled. "Memorable anyway."

"Good for you," he said. "Make as many memories as you can." He tapped his head. "Supposed to be good for your brain."

"I'll keep that in mind." Wendy smiled as she slipped out of the seat.

"You got any luggage down below?" the driver asked.

She shook her head and pulled her duffel from the overhead rack. "Just this.

Thanks."

They made their way down the aisle and he waited for her to get off before he closed the door, then they said good-bye and went their separate ways. Wendy moved slowly through the crowd of travelers, still feeling groggy. She wandered out the front doors and stopped to look around.

John, she thought. The name brought her head up. Yes, John. He'd been running from the cops since he was, like… born! I need to talk to him.

Gripping the strap of her duffel, she turned on her heel to go back into the bus station to the bank of phones and ran smack into Yam's narrow chest.

"Hey!" she said, and gave him a one armed hug. "Am I glad to see you!"

"Me, too," he said. "Keep walking, we've got to get out of here; the cops are looking for you."

"Oh God," she said. "Already?"

"Yep, we're supposed to meet Snog at the Coop."

Yam explained that they'd pooled their resources and come up with fifteen hundred in cash for her.

"Snog got to your computer; there wasn't anything there that needed to be erased, but we had to check. Did you leave any disks or anything around?"

"No. All my stuff is at the central drop." She shook her head. "I don't do written notes. At least not about that." She was referring to the CPU John had given them.

"Good." He gave her a brief, nervous smile. "C'mon."

Upstairs at the Coop they found Snog and Carl waiting for them at a corner table near the big windows that looked out on the alley and the brick wall opposite.

Snog rose and enveloped her in a hug. Then he stepped back, his hands on her shoulders.

"Thweetie," he lisped, "you tho need a makeover." Wendy blinked at him in astonishment. "Hey, thanks, Snog! "That just caps my day!"

"No, no, no. You don't understand," he said, grinning. "Here, sit down before you fall down."

That didn't make her feel much better, but she let herself be persuaded.

"Cuppa joe?" Carl asked.

"Please," Wendy said with heartfelt gratitude.

"Decaf," Yam said, sitting down beside her. They all looked at him. "I've got some schematics to draw later," he explained.

"Ah," they all said at once.

"Here's your passport." Snog slid a blue booklet over to her.

"I don't have a passport," Wendy said, confused.

She opened the cover and stared at the photo inside. The girl was a goth-rock vision with multiple piercings on lip, nose, eyebrow, and ears. Her short hair was

purple; in fact, in her physical description the color was listed as brown/purple.

The girl stared out of the picture with an unnerving intensity, as though, somehow, she could actually see Wendy looking at her. Wendy snapped the cover shut.

"Who is this psycho?"

Snog laughed. "That's my sister, Carolyn. I'll have to tell her you said that; she'll laugh. She belongs to a band in Canada and one time when they pulled her license she decided she needed another ID to get across the border. It's okay, she never uses it anymore since she got her license back."

"Snog, I don't look anything like your sister!"

"You will once my girlfriend gets through with you."

"You have a girlfriend?" Yam said.

Carl, who had returned with their coffees, looked askance at Snog.

"Well," Snog said, pulling his head back and looking down into his cup, "she's a friend, and she's a girl…" He glanced up at them. "Okay, she's more a friend of my sister's, but she kinda likes me."

They all stirred their coffee and he looked around the table at them.

"Hey, she likes me enough that she agreed to make Wendy look like Carolyn."

"I really appreciate this, Snog," Wendy said, looking up at him. "But I just can't

get my face pierced." Wasn't she in enough trouble without adding physical pain, too?

"No, no, no. This is the cool part." He held up his hands. "She's a makeup artist.

She can fix you up with fake piercings. And the great thing is, even if you aren't a perfect match, nobody over twenty-five can look someone with eyebrow piercings in the face."

"You have a point," Yam said after a thoughtful sip of his coffee.

"Am I going somewhere?" Wendy asked. "And if so, where?"

"Yeah, you're going somewhere," Snog said.

"You can't stay here." Carl shook his head sadly. "Brad says the cops are all over your dorm."

"Is that where he is?" Wendy asked, relieved. She'd been afraid he thought she was guilty.

Snog slid two phrase books over to her, one Portuguese and one Spanish.

She looked around the table at their serious faces.

"John," Yam said, and shrugged. The others nodded.

"Who else that we know can tell you what to do?" Snog asked.

Wendy looked down, biting her lips, fighting the tears that wanted to come. "I didn't do it, you know."

"We know that." Carl placed one of his big hands over hers. "But Brad says the cops are acting like they've got something pretty solid on you."

"Do you know what that would be?" Yam asked.

Wendy nodded, then waved a hand in a negative swipe. "I'm not going to tell you anything. The less you know the better."

Snog slid a packet across the table. Wendy opened it to find a ticket to New York and one to Sao Paulo, Brazil. She looked at him, her eyes wide with unasked questions.

Shrugging, Snog explained, "He once said that if I needed to meet him face-to-face, I should send him a message, go there and wait." He glanced up at her. "I assumed he told you the same thing."

She nodded. Actually, John had trusted her further than that, but saying so might hurt her friend's feelings, so she kept it to herself.

"We should get going," Snog said, rising. "You'll need some new clothes of the right type and then we get you made up. Your flight leaves at seven and they like you to be at the airport at least two hours before that."

"I can't thank you guys enough." Wendy reached out and touched Carl and Yam, looking up at Snog with tears in her eyes. "I am innocent, but I can't prove it."

Snog grinned and spread his arms. "Hey, that's why we're helping you. C'mon, let's get cracking."

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL

The customs agent stared at her in fascination and Wendy couldn't blame him.

She felt like a complete clown. Not only was her hair rinsed purple, and her makeup taken to the extreme, her face covered with various types of faux piercings, but both arms writhed with intricate tattoos.

The vintage black velvet dress was hot even inside the air-conditioned building; she didn't want to think what it was going to be like when she got out into the smog-sizzling tropical atmosphere of Brazil's biggest city. It hung on her like a bag, and the brand-new army boots were killing her. Once I get them off I'll probably have to go barefoot for a week, she thought. Her feet and ankles were undoubtedly destined to swell to twice their size. She'd been moving from one form of transport to another for the last fourteen hours.

The customs agent went through his list of rote questions, then hesitated.

"I must warn you, senhorita, that having anything to do with drugs in this country is a very serious crime."

Wendy smiled sweetly. "Oh," she said, shaking her head carefully lest she shake something loose, "thank you, but I'm not into that. I'm into Christian goth rock.

We sing about the sufferings of our Lord, not sex and drugs. See." She held out her empurpled arms. "I'm totally clean. Do you believe that Jesus is your personal savior?"

"Yes," he said, quickly stamping her passport. "And I have a very active patron saint. Welcome to Brazil, have a nice day. Next!"

Was that a note of desperation I heard in your voice? she wondered as she moved toward the Hertz counter. Wendy put on a pair of huge, black-rimmed sunglasses she'd bought in New York. She slipped them down to rest on the tip of her nose as she got to the counter and, taking out her Portuguese phrase book, prepared to do battle.

At the sight of the book a look of subdued horror crossed the clerk's face. "I speak English," he said quickly. "American?"

"Yes," she said, relieved. "How did you know?"

"The last plane in was from New York. You will pardon my observing that you look like New York. Yes?"

Wendy laughed. "I suppose I do," she said, trying to sound as though she enjoyed the way she looked. "I'd like to rent an economy car." She plunked Carolyn's Visa card on the counter.

("Don't worry," Snog had insisted. "She won't even notice it's missing.") Actually Wendy was willing to bet that she would. At the very least she'd notice when charges from Brazil started showing up on her statements.

"May I see your driver's license, please," the young man said pleasantly.

She handed over her own Massachusetts license.

"This is a different name from the card," he said. "I'm afraid I can't accept this."

"But it's obviously me," Wendy objected. "Carolyn Brandt is my stage name, the

one I travel under." She handed him the passport. "See, that's me, too." She offered him a brilliant smile. "I explained all that to the Massachusetts DMV and they said no. They said I had to take off my makeup and rinse the dye out of my hair and use my birth name. The federal government," Wendy said loudly, "was willing to accept me as I am, but not Massachusetts. But really, a federal document supersedes a state document," she said confidently.

He looked up at her, comparing the pictures from the license and the passport with what he saw. "It does seem to be you," he said.

Wendy smiled and nodded. He began comparing signatures. Fortunately Carolyn's handwriting and her own were very similar, hers being slightly neater.

"This handwriting is a little different," the clerk said, pointing to the license.

Wendy nodded. "They made me write it three times. It has to be legible, they said." She scrunched up her face and felt one of the brow rings loosen. "So are we all right, or what?" she asked, suddenly impatient.

The young man hesitated, still. "How long did you want to rent the car for?"

"Ten days," Wendy said without hesitation.

That way, if John didn't want to help her, she could get it back here easily enough. She supposed that she could lose herself in a city this size. Hell, she thought, maybe I can start up a Christian goth-rock band.

The young man made his decision and processed her request, sold her insurance.

"Very wise, miss." And had her sign the rental agreement.

Wendy had bought a wrist brace when out shopping with Snog and it supplied the requisite messiness to make her handwriting an almost perfect copy of Carolyn's. Certainly it brought a look of relief to the clerk's face.

She stopped at the bank window to change her U.S. money into Brazilian currency, and remembered to buy some guaranies for when she entered Paraguay. Within ten minutes, a map on the seat beside her, she was on her way.

I hope John won't be mad, she thought.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

RED SEAL BASE, ANTARCTICA

Kurt Viemeister swaggered through the bland corridors of the base's living quarters to find Clea Bennet's door open. Putting his hands on either side of the doorway, he leaned in and looked around, pleasantly conscious of the way his broad sculpted shoulders and thick-muscled arms rippled beneath the thin T-shirt.

The room was just like a generous ten-by-fourteen cubicle, painted off-white, with a full bed, bookcase, cheap desk with an uncomfortable chair, bedside table, bureau, and a first-rate computer. Space was at a surprising premium in the base; armoring against the Antarctic was almost as much trouble as guarding against the environment of the moon.

Clea was packing.

"Going somewhere?" he asked, half humorously. As if there was anywhere to go.

"Yes," she said, coming out of the tiny bathroom. "Kushner, Locke, and I are going seal hunting." Clea gave him a sidelong smile. "In a manner of speaking."

"What about our work?" Kurt snapped, straightening.

The I-950 turned a cool look on the self-styled superman.

"Hey, Kurt, why don't you say that a little louder, I don't think Tricker heard you.

Or, you could wear a T-shirt that says 'I break the rules, please punish me.' "

Clea raised one sardonic brow at him as she crossed the room to take something from her bureau drawer. "If you want me to work with you it wouldn't hurt you to ask for my assistance. Officially." She gave him a very false smile. "I suspect Tricker thinks I want to be your groupie."

Viemeister frowned. "I will speak to him now, this hour. I don't want you wasting your time fooling around with dumb animals."

Serena had been right; Viemeister was ridiculously lacking in social skills, and laughably unaware of it. The man was convinced that it was his choice entirely that people left him alone. He was equally convinced that if he wanted someone's company he could charm them into liking him.

Fat chance! Clea thought. Viemeister had brains and good looks— but then, so did a very bright Doberman. Apparently he's never tested that I-am-charming-when-I-want-to-be theory.

She turned to him with a slight smile. "Kurt, I'm going stir-crazy down here. I want to see some sky." She tilted her head toward him. "Okay?"

"I didn't even know you were interested in pinnipeds," he said sullenly.

The I-950 laughed. "I'm interested in everything. Especially wringing concessions from Tricker. It amuses me."

Frowning, Viemeister took a deep breath and crossed his massive arms over his swollen chest.

Is that for my benefit? she wondered.

"I don't like Tricker," he announced.

"Big surprise there," Clea said. "I doubt he'd win a popularity contest hereabouts.

If you don't like him it should please you that I enjoy torturing him."

Kurt snorted. "I suppose it should. But it concerns me that you claim to be going stir-crazy. It is a weakness, and you should fight any weakness in your character."

"It's a state of mind, and I'll do what I like."

The I-950 gave him a hard look and watched him lift his head, like a bull scenting a challenger. She smiled and looked away, a dimple in her cheek. "I'll be back in a week," she said. "You're just jealous because I'm getting to do something different."

His stance and expression softened slightly. "Perhaps I'm jealous that you're going to be out on the ice with two other men."

Clea laughed and went to embrace him, chuckling as his arms wrapped around

her. She leaned back and looked up at him, her eyes sparkling. Yes, she was definitely developing a sense of humor.

"You have to have seen these guys," she said. "Kushner is a potato with legs and Locke looks like the mummy of Ramses the Second walking." She poked him in the chest, perhaps a little too hard, but he was such a jerk. "I've made my choice, and that ought to tell you something about my taste in men."

This time he laughed, and something in the way of it was intended to remind her she'd been a virgin until she met him.

"Exactly," she purred.

Clea pushed herself off from his chest, forcing him to let her go, though he obviously didn't want to. Arching a brow, she asked, "Weren't you going to go ask Tricker to allow you my services?" She smiled wickedly.

"I can't dissuade you?"

"Uh-uh."

"Then I may as well go." He turned on his heel and walked out without another word.

Clea snorted, knowing he heard her because she knew exactly how to direct sound to her intended hearer. She knew he'd been deliberately ambiguous, assuming that she'd wonder if he'd even bother to ask Tricker for her assistance in his work.

As if he'd risk alienating her. Poor Kurt was a very lonely boy and she'd made a point of filling his off-hours with lots of rigorous exercise and stimulating conversation. What ha considered stimulating conversation anyway, which alternated between talking about how wonderful he was, his absurd politics, and his project. Clea actually enjoyed talking about that last subject though.

So, no, he wouldn't risk antagonizing her. By the time she got back, everything should be settled and then she could begin work on the most important thing in the world. A thrill of anticipation shot through her.

Skynet!

Clea approached the downed leopard seal at a jog, moving effortlessly over the irregular, slippery surface of the ice. Had the humans been watching, she would have crept up on it, as if it was going to jump up and savage her. But she could plainly see that it was unconscious, and hear the rhythm of its heartbeat and breathing.

The I-950 quickly plucked the orange-tipped dart from its side and stowed it away in her pouch. Then she pulled out a radio harness, tested it, and fitted it around the seal's body. Pulling out a punch, she attached a tag to its flipper.

All of this was done at speeds far exceeding the human norm. It kept her warmer and she saw no reason to suffer when there wasn't anyone to witness her relative comfort. She couldn't push her metabolism too hard, unfortunately, as the supply of food was both limited and carefully calculated. So, like the humans accompanying her, her socks froze to the soles of her feet and she actually needed the multiple layers of clothing she wore.

Pulling a syringe out of her jacket, where it had been kept warm until this moment so the saline medium didn't freeze, she carefully flushed the needle to eliminate air bubbles. Inside, just barely visible to the most refined sight her augmented eyes could manage, were the microscopic machines that would allow her control over this animal.

She regretted the size of the things, but it was the best she could do with the materials at hand, the constant surveillance, and supplies so carefully monitored.

The I-950 had only gotten away with the limited number she'd managed to cobble together because she was using minute pieces of parts she then destroyed in "experiments."

Each machine had a tail, like a sperm, that would allow it to swim through the fluid surrounding the seal's brain to the area it was programmed to affect. There it would gently drop onto the surface of the brain and adhere itself by releasing a microscopic drop of surgical glue. Then tiny filaments would spin out, attaching themselves to crucial parts of the mammal's brain—essentially a more limited form of the machine-neuron symbiosis that made up her brain, and derived from the same technology.

Not for the first time, she wondered how much of what Skynet would know in the future would come from research, and how much through a closed timelike loop from her. With an effort, she pushed these musings aside; the question was simply unanswerable, as was the question of where the information came from in the "first place." That was meaningless, when time travel was factored into the equation.

The machines would respond to signals sent through a special transmitter she'd

added to the one on the radio harness. This should allow her to see and hear through the animal's eyes and ears. How well that would work, exactly, she had yet to find out. The transmitter would also allow her to excite certain portions of the seal's brain to elicit a desired response. Relentless, violent rage, for example.

In a world without Terminators she had to improvise.

Clea plunged the needle into the seal's neck at the base of the skull and inserted the machines.

"Clea! What did you just do?" Hiram Locke trundled gingerly over to her across the ice. "Did I just see you inject air into that seal?"

She couldn't see his face at all, as it was covered by a fleece balaclava and mirrored goggles, but she could tell from his voice that his expression as disapproving. "Hiram!" she snapped back. "Wouldn't that kill the animal?"

He hesitated. "Yes," he said.

"As we both already know that, what possible reason would I have to do something so stupid?"

Locke looked around, as though hoping for backup. "What were you doing?" he asked uncertainly.

"I was trying to get a blood sample. But my fingers are numb and I missed the vein. Would you like to give it a try?" She stood and held out the syringe.

"No, no," he said, backing a step, holding up his mittened hands.

She took a step closer to him. "I had the impression you didn't think I knew how to use one of these." Her voice was hard, leaving no doubt as to how she felt about his interference. "Wouldn't you like to demonstrate?"

"Sorry," Locke said, continuing to back away. "I spoke out of turn."

"What do you want" Clea asked.

She wasn't happy that he'd come looking for her. He was supposed to be a couple of miles away with his partner. She'd been taking chances and he might have seen something. But the risks had been unavoidable. Her time alone was severely limited; safety regulations demanded that no one go out on the ice alone. She'd only managed to acquire this time by making herself completely unendurable to the two humans.

Still, I shouldn't have been taken unaware like that.

With her whole head muffled by a balaclava, goggles, and a fur-trimmed hood, even her computer-enhanced senses were severely hobbled. She judged that she was currently human normal in the realm of her senses. Which put her way ahead of her companions.

Still, she should be more alert than a human. Especially because of the reduction in her abilities. Clea wondered if at some level she was trying to get caught. Or perhaps I'm looking for an excuse to kill a human. Perhaps it was frustration over how long it was taking to get Skynet on-line.

The computer that would one day be Skynet was exceptional, but it was just a machine, completely empty of consciousness. Being in the presence of such a

truncated version of her creator was acutely painful in the emotional sense. It certainly kept her own computer busy balancing her brain chemistry. Perhaps too busy.

"We were concerned," Locke said. "You're not supposed to be alone out here. If anything happened to you…"

She laughed at him. "If anything happens to me it will be my own fault and there'd be nothing you could do about it."

"Well, I don't want to be the one to tell Tricker that you were left alone out here like this." His voice was sullen.

"Then don't tell him." Clea shrugged one shoulder. "What he doesn't know won't bother him. Do you think I'm going to complain to him about it when we get back?" She leaned toward him. "Look, I have my work and you have yours. And guess what? My work is more important to me than yours is. I don't want to help you, or hang out with you, when I could be accomplishing things on my own."

They'd discussed all of this, ad nauseam, before they all set out to work this morning. Possibly the human was nervous and wanted to cover his butt in case Tricker somehow found out about her working independently.

"By the way, if we're not supposed to be alone out here, where the hell is Kushner?"

Locke shuffled his heavily booted feet. "He'll be all right."

"Well, so will I!" Clea snapped in frustration.

The scientist drew himself up. "But you're a woman."

Does he honestly think I'm unaware of my gender? she wondered, momentarily confused. Her computer gave her a prompt. *Human females have historically been considered the weaker sex.* She almost laughed aloud.

"Yes," she agreed quietly, "I'm a woman." Sort of. "But I'm also a lot younger than both of you and in much better shape. I suggest that you two watch out for each other and leave me to my no-doubt-deserved fate."

"There's no need for you to get snippy," Locke said huffily. "I'm only trying to help."

"There's no need to get patronizing. Go away, I'm busy."

They stared at each other. It's a good thing he can't really see my face, the I-950

thought. He'd probably have a heart attack. Of course, then at least half of her problem would be solved.

Killing them both was so tempting. She could toss the bodies down a crevasse today, and by the time searchers found them, the two would be so frozen no one would be able to tell exactly when they'd died, and even if she beat them to a pulp they'd most likely attribute the wounds to the fall. Then she'd be free to work in peace. A perfect solution.

Except… it would also redouble Tricker's surveillance. She sighed, looking around at the white, white landscape with its drifting wisps of ice crystal under the deep-purple-blue sky. In the long run she supposed the best thing to do was to simply put up with them. But it is so tempting. Without them, I could imagine

there were no humans in the world at all. This place is… clean.

"Look," the I-950 said, trying to sound conciliatory, "I'll call in every half hour, and if anything, anything at all seems to be going wrong, I'll call you and immediately head back to camp." Clea shrugged. "What more can I do? If I don't do this now it will be time to go back and I'll have accomplished nothing."

Locke folded his arms across his chest and seemed about to speak.

"Unless you'd both like to give up some of your time out here to stay with me while I work?" she suggested.

He barked a laugh. "The thing is, Tricker…"

Here we go again, she thought. "Who's going to tell him?" Clea demanded. "I'm not." She shrugged. "Look, it's cold out here and we're losing working time. Why don't we discuss this later, back at camp?" Just like they had every day so far.

After a moment's hesitation he nodded. "All right," he said. Then, almost reluctantly, he turned and tottered off.

Clea watched him go. Suddenly an image of him squirming on the ice with blood pouring from his mouth came to her. If only, she thought, and regretted the virtue of necessity.

She looked down at the seal. Its heartbeat was normal and it seemed to be sleeping naturally. The circuit that activated the machines she'd implanted was controlled by another one in her complex and somewhat bulky wristwatch. Clea activated them, testing each one in turn and getting a positive signal. Now all

that remained was to give them an actual field test.

Something to look forward to, she thought.

She looked behind her and saw Locke disappearing around a wind-sculpted ridge of snow touched with exquisite shades of pale blue. Clea watched for a full minute and saw no sign of him, not even in the ultraviolet stage. Her ears hadn't picked anything up that sounded human either.

Picking up her backpack and sliding it on, she jogged off, looking for another leopard seal. Time wasted delayed Skynet's advent.

Kurt was there to greet her, in the chamber that resembled an air lock when they came in off the ice. Clea grinned and ran into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and kissing him passionately.

"We have permission to work together," Kurt murmured in her ear when they came up for air; then he licked her neck.

The I-950 giggled and snuggled her head into his shoulder. "Good," she whispered.

"I hate to break this up, kids," Tricker said, "but we have some things to discuss."

Clea continued to cling to Viemeister like a monkey as she glanced over her shoulder at Tricker. She offered him a lazy smile. "Oh? Then let's make an appointment," she suggested.

"Hey, I'm free now," he said, appearing totally unimpressed by their display of

heated sensuality.

The I-950 looked adoringly at Kurt. "But I'm busy," she said. Then she looked over her shoulder again at Tricker. "Perhaps in a couple of hours?"

"Perhaps now?" Tricker didn't try to hide his dislike for either of them most times; now he seemed to be doing his best to project it. He had an extremely effective way of suggesting what he was seeing when he looked at a person—

something reminiscent of a small, yapping, incontinent dog that might be too valuable to be put down.

Viemeister moved his hands from Clea's waist to cup her buttocks; he hoisted her up and she laughed. "Two hours," he said, and started to walk off.

"Kurt," Tricker said, pointedly not looking at the muscular scientist and his comely burden, "you make me wait, I make you wait."

Kurt and Clea looked at each other and sighed as one, then smiled wickedly. He let her down slowly, and she came over to the security chief.

"What exactly is there to discuss? You've received permission for me to work with my friend. So… ?" She shrugged, her eyes wide.

"I need to know what you're going to do about your work," he said through clenched teeth.

"I think this is more important," Clea told him. If you only knew how much more important, human. "Once my attention is engaged like this, it's very difficult for me to concentrate on anything else."

"So you're just going to abandon the work you were brought here to do?"

"Well, actually…" She produced a disk and handed it to him with a sweet smile.

"It's largely finished. I think you'll find several people here—" she named them

—"can handle the remaining details. That's okay with you, isn't it?"

Tricker bit the inside of his cheek. "Sure," he said after a moment. He gave her an insincere smile. "Run along, kids. Get some work done." The sarcasm was as thick as butter.

"All in good time." Clea blew him a kiss, then engulfed Viemeister's muscular arm in a hug and looked up at him. "All in good time."

She walked off with Kurt, feeling as happy as it was possible for her to feel without Skynet whispering in her mind. She looked forward to the sex she would soon be having with Kurt. And it was good that she now had official permission to work with him on Skynet. No one on earth, with the exception of Alissa, could offer more help in developing its intelligence. As a bonus, she'd annoyed Tricker again.

Serena had regarded him as an exceptional human being. But Clea wasn't finding him to be that formidable; he hadn't even pursued her resemblance to her parent, which, frankly was a relief.

It was also a relief to know that she'd finally convinced her computer to allow her natural reactions to sex to prevail. She'd successfully argued that as she was less experienced than her predecessor, she was less able to fake her reactions.

Therefore, it was reasonable to assume that someone as intelligent as Viemeister

would almost certainly detect her lack of enthusiasm.

Her stomach fluttered pleasantly in anticipation. Life was good.

ROUTE 9, PARAGUAY

Wendy had somehow thought of Paraguay as a small country. She supposed that was because it looked like a peanut nestled between Brazil and Argentina. But the place was; as big as most American states and its character had changed completely since she'd passed the Brazilian border. Lush semitropical forest full of smoking clearings had given way to flat, dry grasslands where scattered cattle grazed between occasional clumps of palms. It smelled strange, too: hot in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature; dusty like spices and acrid musk.

Even the smells of cattle were alien. She'd been a city girl all her life.

According to what John had told her, he was living on a farm or something just outside Villa Hayes. Sometimes it sounded like he was talking about Dogpatch, and sometimes like the Ponderosa.

She was tired, and she was hungry, and she was fighting the feeling that she was hopelessly lost, it was hot and everything that she'd brought with her was made of black velvet at Snog's insistence. She'd kill for a T-shirt and shorts right now.

Money was rapidly running out, making her want to continue to drive, not stopping for bed or food, but she could barely keep her eyes open. Besides fighting sleep, she was fighting the sneaking suspicion that John wouldn't be too happy to see her.

Should she call him, warn him that she was coming? What if he said no, he

wouldn't help her? Wendy's heart beat faster at the thought, exhaustion allowing panic a footlhold.

Her ordinary sunny self-confidence was gradually eroding in the face of the sheer foreignness of her Surroundings, not to mention her circumstances. She was homesick and scared and very lonely. Wendy found it disconcerting to realize just how protected she had always been until now. She'd always considered herself an independent, self-sufficient type of woman.

But I'm really just a clueless college girl on the lam. Wendy licked dry lips and decided to press on, deciding she wouldn't give John a chance to say no. After everything else she'd been through over the last few days, she was learning to take things as they came.

VON ROSSBACH ESTANCIA, PARAGUAY

Epifanio Ayala, von Rossbach's overseer, watched the plume of dust approach the main house of the testancia and assumed it was yet another delivery. They had received many such in the last few days: although littie remained, for Don von Rossbach and young John had taken the accumulation away to Asuncion in the estancia's truck today. Epifanio's wife, Marietta, from whom almost no secret could be kept for long, had informed him that these things were mostly very warm winter clothing and expensive camping gear.