Labane was making nuclear power the issue du jour on his inaugural program. It was an emotional issue for humans—especially Americans, for some reason.
They were constantly fighting the opening of these highly efficient power plants.
Which was surely in Skynet's interests. Keeping the power-dependent humans from having all the juice they wanted would destabilize things nicely. It would create factions, even among the rich and powerful, and it would drive the proles nuts.
As for their perfectly valid fear of nuclear waste, well, an accident had been arranged.
With part of her mind still on the program, Clea contacted her T-101. Through its eyes she saw that the truck it had stolen was behind the convoy carrying some West Coast nuclear waste to its Southwestern dump site.
She glanced at the television image in the upper corner of her screen. But first she'd wait until Ron's program was over. It seemed the polite thing to do.
NEW MEXICO
The Terminator kept a precise distance between himself and the truck in front of him: exactly one hundred and fifty meters. The unmarked eighteen-wheeler carrying the specially designed cargo container was accompanied by two vans, also unmarked. It was all very discreet. Had they not known exactly what they were looking for, they would never have been able to find this particular truck.
The T-101 glanced at the body beside it. It had entered the propane truck's cab at a truck stop and waited for the driver to return. When he did, it had broken his neck before the human had even been aware of its presence. Soon the I-950
would signal the T-101 to go ahead and the body would be needed to stand in for it when investigators sifted through the wreckage.
*Now,* the Infiltrator sent.
The Terminator pressed its booted foot down and sped toward the truck in front of it. The waste truck's companion van tried to move in front of the propane truck, but the Terminator calculated angles as it manuvered and struck the van at precisely the right point to send it spinning off the road and into the first of the few buildings that had begun to appear by the side of the road. It disappeared into the flimsy structure, sending glass flying.
With nothing in its way, the Terminator pulled up beside the waste truck, swerved into the far lane so that it could aim the propane truck at the carrier's exact center, and rammed it at eighty miles an hour, knocking the carrier onto its side with a screech of metal against pavement. The propane truck climbed on top of the rig and then collapsed slowly onto its side, but didn't rupture.
The Terminator was out of the cab and onto the street in seconds, a grenade launcher in its hands. While the van up ahead was backing up, fast, it took aim and fired. The propane truck burst into magenta flame, the blast picked the van up like a dry leaf and flung it nearly a thousand meters, it ripped and burned every inch of flesh from the front of the Terminator's skeleton, leaving only smoking patches on its back. Briefly the T-101 went off-line.
When it came back to itself, burning debris was still falling and the buildings along the highway had been blown flat all around the explosion. Its internal monitors reported radioactive contamination at a very high level.
*Mission accomplished,* it sent.
*Status?* the I-950 queried.
*External sheath severely compromised, no secondary damage, some nuclear contamination.*
Well, Clea thought, back to the vat for you. Any contamination it had picked up would mostly be rubbed away by its travels. *Return to base. Discreetly,*
* Acknowledged.* It looked around itself. Off in the distance it saw a house, undamaged by the blast. Humans had come outside to gawk at the fire. Where there were humans there would be transportation. It headed for them.
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA
Ron offered the last few energy-saving tips and said good night when Tony came tearing onstage. For a split second he thought he'd made an error in his timing
and had left them with a ridiculous amount of dead air. The audience began to rustle and murmur.
Then Tony slipped him a news report and said, "It's an accident. Maybe. Some asshole in a propane truck rammed into a nuclear-waste carrier right in the middle of a small town in New Mexico. There's a news blackout. Apparently the whole state is out."
Ron turned to the audience and clapped his hands. When they'd quieted down he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have some terrible news."
He read them the report in his hand, just the bare, unadorned facts. "I'm told there's a news blackout on this incident, which means that this is all we may know for some time. I'd like you all to bow your heads with me and pray for the people of New Mexico." After a moment's silence he lifted his head and looked at them solemnly.
"Now let's all just remain calm," he said. "We'll know more by and by. But when you get home I'd like you to write your congressman or -woman and tell them we don't want any more accidents like this one."
People applauded enthusiastically, rising to their feet and clapping with an energy that spoke of their anger and their horror. Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, they stopped and began filing out, murmuring to one another.
Ron watched them go, a little seed of anger burning in his breast. This could have happened at the beginning of the show, and ruined everything.
On the other hand, since they had finished the show, this little incident beautifully underscored what he'd been talking about. He'd have to get to his
publicist on this. He'd work up a statement emphasizing that his show had been talking about the dangers of nuclear power just before the news broke.
Ron smirked; there was nothing quite like being able to say "I told you so!"
ENCINAS HALFWAY HOUSE
The show ended, and it hadn't been all that bad for blatant propaganda. As the credits began to roll someone came running in from offstage. Sarah got up, not really thinking anything about it except that the New Luddites didn't have top-quality people running their programs. The nurse switched to another channel, where a news anchor was announcing that a fuel truck had crashed into an eighteen-wheeler carrying nuclear waste.
My God! She thought.
The anchor went on to say that background radiation as far away as Albuquerque had jumped by over 700 percent…
I don't think that's even supposed to be possible! Sarah thought. Those containers are supposed to be specially designed to withstand just about anything up to a direct hit with a bomb. Which an exploding propane tank would very closely resemble. Maybe it's just my nasty mind talking, but this sounds deliberate.
The news anchor was saying that possible terrorist activity was being looked into.
Nice to know it isn't just me for a change, Sarah thought. Paranoids had real enemies, too.
MONTANA
Clea smiled. Her timing had been exquisite. She'd found a weakness, exploited it and voila! Panic in the streets. Or there would be after her message on the Net was discovered.
They'd be blathering about it for weeks, maybe months, and spending untold amounts of money studying and correcting the problem. Little knowing that despite their best and most earnest efforts, she'd just do it again.
Actually, next time she thought she'd cause an oil spill. Clea had been exploring the possibilities of hacking into a ship's closed system by satellite. If it proved feasible she was going to try to time the incident so that some enormously popular place was soiled in the most appallingly photogenic manner possible.
Preferably somewhere with otters. Dying otters just drove humans wild.
For a while she'd toyed with the idea of having a Terminator do the job for her, but it would be better to do it by remote if possible. It would be much, much more difficult for the oil companies to explain if they didn't have a convenient scapegoat, such as a mysteriously missing crewman.
Heads will roll, she thought. What a charming image. She began to see why Serena had found such joy in her work.
Clea was busy with her preparations to leave Montana for New York. She had stepped up her p
roduction of T-101s using the last few chips that Serena had left her and working overtime manufacturing a close facsimile of her own.
Fortunately she found microlithography a relaxing hobby. It would take years of experimentation before she would have the proper materials to make the true
chip, but what she'd been able to cobble together had 97.3 percent of the efficiency of the real ones, so for the interim they should perform adequately.
Her plan was to place the Terminator that had been established as her relative and guardian in shutdown mode and claim that her "uncle" was dead. Then, once he was buried, she would travel to New York to meet with Cyberdyne's CEO
and obtain a job that would bring her in contact with Skynet at last. Anyone checking into her background would find an empty cabin and an only relative buried in the nearest town's nondenominational cemetery.
Shortly before the funeral and Clea's departure, Alissa and the Terminators would move to a new location in Utah. Her buried "uncle" would switch back to active mode after a set time and join them there; traveling by night since its flesh casing would probably die when it was buried and have to be replaced at the new facility.
With her tracks satisfactorily covered and her equipment and replacement safely hidden in a new location, she would be free to perform her function while Alissa grew up at a more normal, and undoubtedly safer, rate than Clea herself had been allowed. At the same time her little "sister" could obtain a human incubator. There just wasn't time for her to do it herself.
She thought everything was going extremely well when Alissa came to her in the lab. "Where is Sarah Connor?" the unnaturally solemn little girl asked her.
"Where is her son, John, and their ally, von Rossbach?"
Clea looked up from her workstation, stunned. The computer part of her brain had been sending her increasingly testy reminders about this subject, but she'd been shunting them aside, barely paying attention to them. True, she had been
busy, equally true her projects were important and Serena's own mission statement had put Sarah Connor last on the list of priorities, but to ignore something just because it was unpleasant… that was… human. The I-950 felt such a wave of self-disgust that her computer flooded her system with mood elevators.
"I don't know," she said. Clea could feel the blood rising in her face, a human-style signal of shame, one her computer part had apparently decided not to suppress.
Sarah Connor had been in custody in a mental hospital the last time she'd checked. John Connor and his friend had disappeared. She had no idea of the current whereabouts of any of them.
"Do you know?" Clea asked.
"Yes," Alissa said. "And no."
"That is nonsense," Clea said. "Either you know or you don't. If you know, tell me; if you don't know, find out. Either way, stop wasting my time, I have a great deal to do." Her little sister could be very annoying when she wanted to be.
"Sarah Connor is in a halfway house in Los Angeles," Alissa said, as though reciting.
"A what?"
"It is a place for the inmates of mental asylums or prisons to stay while they are eased back into society." Alissa paused. "There is absolutely no security. The
inmates are trusted to obey the house rules, to go and return on some sort of honor system. Should I explain honor system?"
"No, I know what that is. What about John Connor?" Clea asked.
Alissa pursed her lips and raised her brows in an annoyingly superior manner.
"Von Rossbach's servants have been recorded speaking to their relatives. He and Connor returned alone. Now they've disappeared again, no one knows where."
Clea felt a sharp bolt of fear shoot through her, followed by a healthy anger.
"When were you planning to share this information with me?" she demanded.
"And what, if anything, have you done about the situation?"
"I was planning to tell you as soon as I confirmed that von Rossbach and Connor were truly absent from the estancia. Which I have done. Naturally I would not initiate any action against them without consulting you. I have suggestions."
Clea made an encouraging gesture.
"We could send a Terminator after Sarah Connor," Alissa suggested. "Though given our track record to date, I'm reluctant to commit-such a resource unless absolutely necessary."
A valid point, Clea had to concede.
Alissa continued: "I think it's safe to assume that von Rossbach and John Connor are on their way to the United States. Probably with the intention of freeing Sarah Connor. They may also be seeking allies. Logic would seem to suggest that they need them rather badly."
"As do we," Clea admitted. Which was, of course, what their support of the New Luddites and their more fanatical brethren was about. Athough dupes and catspaws would be more accurate terms than ally.
Alissa ignored the comment. "I have hacked into surveillance cameras at all customs checkpoints in the United States," she said. "I've assigned a Terminator to monitor them full-time."
Clea nodded. "Excellent," she said. "I think that I agree with you about sending a Terminator for Sarah Connor as well. Perhaps only to observe and report. If her son and ally show up we can try to get them all at once."
"It might be better if I was the one sent to observe," Alissa suggested. "They wouldn't be expecting a child."
The idea held exciting possibilities, Clea had to admit, and she wanted to take advantage of her younger sister's offer, but…
Shaking her head, Clea said, "No. You're too vulnerable and much too valuable.
As yet there is no one to replace you."
Alissa said nothing, but Clea could almost hear her thinking that if they were short of I-950s to share the work, it certainly wasn't her fault.
With a frown Clea snapped, "I'm working as hard and as fast as I can. Right now is not the time to begin breeding another 950. It is to be hoped that my efforts will give you more leisure in these matters."
The problem was Clea herself felt that her efforts were inferior. Instinct told her
that in a better world she would be culled to prevent expensive errors. But in this time and place she was the best available.
No, that wasn't strictly true. Alissa was the better Infiltrator. Clea wished that she dared to use her. Clea looked at her sister for a long time. Then took a deep breath and plunged in.
"In the rush to bring me to maturity I fear that errors may have been made. But that maturity is still a valuable asset, and so I must continue as leader for now. I rely on you to point out oversights such as this one.
It you continue to do so, then we should be all right. Once you have reached maturity I will become your second."
Alissa gazed back at her with a pretty frown. "If you were to start another 950
what would happen?" she asked.
"I don't know," Clea admitted. "None of us has ever been pushed as I have. It may have affected my eggs, making them either infertile or inferior product. The only way to find out is to use them. Which, as I've pointed out, we don't have the time for right now."
The child's face was implacable and her eyes betrayed her disgust. She, too, had sensed Clea's weakness and yearned to correct it by terminating her. But she was also the ultimate pragmatist. Clea was not so inferior as to be useless and her loyalty to Skynet was strong. Skynet itself would encourage them both to use the tools at hand.
"Very well," Alissa said. "But I think that the Terminator we send to watch
Sarah Connor should be a different type than we usually make. It should be smaller, perhaps older looking. Something nonthreatening."
"Yes," Clea agreed, nodding thoughtfully. "A Watcher rather than a Terminator.
Will you see to it for me?"
Looking annoyed, the small I-950 nodded, her lips tight.
"I would also like to send a Terminator to South America," Alissa said. "It may be possible to find out more from that end. It may even be possible to eliminate one or both of them with fewer complications."<
br />
The elder I-950 frowned; her sister had a point. "You don't think that they can be traced by computer?" she asked.
"Yes," Alissa said. "If they use their own names and passports." She knew her sister could calculate the odds of that happening for herself and so didn't bother to offer the figures. "I believe that some investigations are better handled face-to-face."
Clea considered. Her sister hadn't asked to go herself, realizing that the T-101
would be the more logical choice. And it would be helpful to know their enemies' exact locations.
"Very well," she said.
"And if the opportunity presents itself?" Alissa asked.
"Terminate."
The little I-950 actually smiled. "I'll get to work, then."
"Excellent," Clea said, smiling. She went back to her own work feeling more content. They were going to win this time. She could feel it.
Alissa walked away, frowning. She knew very well that her own brain was immature and therefore should have been a tool less keen than her older sister's.
Yet she also knew from several different failures on Clea's part that even with her younger, less developed faculties she saw things more clearly, evaluated outcomes more realistically.
It was troubling, desperately troubling, that Skynet's future was in the hands of an inferior agent.
Alissa tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that even with diminished capacity Clea was still more intelligent than ninety-eight percent of their human enemies. It was the worry that the Connors were among that elite two percent that made her queasy.
She was too young to be in charge. Yet accelerating her maturity might well damage her brain and cognitive function in the same way that Clea's had been.
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