“I can’t let it go,” he whispered, his teeth clenched. “I can’t.” He sighed. But he could leave Tarissa and Dan out of it. He hadn’t thought about how it might feel to them when he asked his questions. “Okay,” he said aloud. “From now on I’ll keep it to myself, Tarissa.”
The next time she heard about this would be after those bastards had been tried and convicted. Because he would never give up.
CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS CORPORATION, FT. LAUREL,
CALIFORNIA: THE PRESENT
“This place sucks,” Roger Colvin said.
The CEO put his briefcase down on the highly polished, but rather small, conference-room table and looked around. Institutional-bland, too functional, without the little touches of class he’d come to expect.
Cheap, he thought.
“Is this room bugged?”
Paul Warren, Cyberdyne’s president, shrugged, looking gloomy.
“It would seem superfluous,” he said. “We give them daily reports, they know who and what goes in and out, all our calls are handled by their switching station. Just with that they know as much as we do about what’s going on in the company. Probably more.”
“Having us underground seems a bit much,” Colvin said. He twitched the knees of his trousers and sat. “I swear it’s affecting my allergies.”
“That smell?” Warren asked.
“Yeah, what is that?”
The president shrugged. “I think it might be the carpet adhesive. That stuff always stinks for weeks after it’s laid down. What I mind is the lack of space.”
He looked up at the ceiling. “I’m not crazy about being buried alive, either.”
Colvin gave him a quick look from under his eyebrows. That was a disturbing thought, especially in California. “So why did you call me?” he asked.
Warren looked at him in surprise. “Call you? I didn’t call you. My secretary said that I had a meeting with you here at two-thirty.”
They looked at each other in mutual perplexity. Then, simultaneously, light dawned.
“Trie—” Colvin began.
“Gentlemen!” Tricker breezed through the door and set his case down on the
table. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting. I know how busy you are assigning the parking spaces and all.”
After a beat Colvin said, his expression disapproving, “Actually we’ve been getting this project up and running. And after six years that’s not as simple as it would have been. I’ve always wondered why, exactly, you refused to let us start up again right away.”
“Well…” Tricker sat down and opened his case, placing a file before him. “I have some questions. If you don’t mind?” He looked at them both, smiling pleasantly.
“And if we did?” Warren muttered.
Tricker opened the file, took a pen from his pocket, and made a note.
“Are you going to answer my question?” Colvin finally asked him.
“That was a question, Mr. Colvin? It didn’t sound like a question.” Tricker shook his head. “I don’t have your answer, I’m afraid. I’m just the messenger boy.”
“I bet you tried to run the project yourselves, didn’t you?” the CEO asked.
“I wouldn’t know that.” Tricker pushed his case aside and looked up with guileless eyes.
“You did, didn’t you?” Colvin smacked his hand down on the table. “Son of a bitch! I knew it!” He grinned and shook his head. “You tried it and you couldn’t do it, could you? You found out that you needed us.”
Tricker smiled amiably and shrugged.
“So,” Tricker asked, clasping his hands over the open file—“you’ve been here for a couple of weeks; how’s it working out, gentlemen?” He looked at them both with great interest.
The president and CEO exchanged a look of exasperation. Obviously their liaison wasn’t in a communicative mood.
“I feel like I’m being watched all the time,” Warren said resentfully. “Like every time I take a dump, someone somewhere is measuring it.”
“This facility has that capability, Mr. Warren, but unless we see what appears to be drug abuse, I don’t think we’ll be using it.”
Colvin and Warren goggled at him.
“Anything else?” Tricker said more seriously.
“Are you kidding?” Colvin asked.
“No.” Tricker sat back and looked at them, waiting for an answer to his question.
The two executives looked at each other, then turned back to their adversary.
“The air quality is a concern,” Colvin said after a moment. “There have been complaints about it affecting allergies, and people are commenting on the smell.”
Tricker looked at him for a moment, his chin cupped in his hand.
“Really?” he said at last.
“Yes,” Warren answered with exaggerated patience, “really.”
“That’s interesting.” The liaison sat forward. “Because this facility is fitted with more efficient air scrubbers than your old facility had.” His eyebrows went up. “I did notice a trace of ozone in the air, though. I’ll have it checked for you.”
“If that’s the case, then why are people having allergy problems?” Warren asked.
“Maybe it’s because going from near-zero parts per million of pollutants to the great outdoors is a hell of a wallop for the human system to take,” Tricker looked at them and shrugged. “Anything else?”
“Do we have to be underground?” Colvin asked. “I find it disturbing to be… in a buried facility.”
“Well, it’s a lot safer, don’t you think?” Tricker’s blue eyes moved from one to the other. “Look,” he said, sitting forward and spreading his hands, “I know you think of that corner office with the windows as being one of the perks of your position. But after what happened I’d think you wouldn’t want to be working in a fishbowl. Haven’t you boys ever heard of high-powered rifles?”
Warren and Colvin exchanged a glance from the corners of their eyes.
“I just don’t like being here,” Warren said. “I don’t like being watched all the time.”
“What makes you think you’re being watched?” Tricker asked, looking
fascinated.
“You just told us you could measure…” Warren waved his hands helplessly.
“Hey, I told you we could but we weren’t.” Tricker leaned back. “I really must say I didn’t expect this attitude from the man who instituted urine testing for all employees and job applicants.”
Warren glared at him, while Colvin examined the ceiling.
“Look, boys, could we drop this child-of-the-seventies thing you’ve got going here, along with the knee-jerk, antigovernment response to the idea of our involvement? Has it occurred to you that you’re letting your prejudices run away with you?” He looked a bit hurt. “We are not spying on you. Hell, you’re inundating us with jargon-filled reports on this and that. Who has time to spy on you?”
Leaning forward, he folded his hands in front of him and looked at the two men steadily. “If you’ll recall, Mr. Colvin, Mr. Warren”—the pale eyes flicked from one to the other—“you came to us. You found this amazing stuff stuck in your factory and you needed a huge shot of money to develop it. You didn’t want to risk offering it to one of your larger competitors in a partnership deal because you’d seen too many smaller companies get devoured that way. And you thought that if we heard about it we just might confiscate it for the sake of national security. Besides, you figured you’d need a customer with real deep pockets eventually.” Tricker spread his hands and widened his eyes. “So who else were you going to turn to?”
The two businessmen looked away.
“Knowing how fickle businesses can be, we naturally insisted that you sell these items, now missing,” Tricker said with deadly emphasis, “to us outright. But—
we contracted to allow you to be the exclusive developer of this find.”
He looked at them as though waiting for some response; he got none. After a moment he conti
nued. “Now, suddenly, you think you’ve sold your soul to the devil. Well, poor you!”
Tricker got up and began to pace. Warren and Colvin glanced at one another, and then stared at their liaison morosely. Tricker turned and stared back at them.
“So, what evil things have we done to you? What we’ve done, gentlemen, is to provide you with a secure, safe, state-of-the-art facility, at the taxpayers’ expense.
“And despite the fact that our material has been stolen or destroyed because of your lousy, bungling security, we haven’t demanded one red cent of compensation. Which shows how incredibly greedy and evil we are.”
He stopped and glared at the executives.
“You jerks came knocking on our door. You volunteered, fellas. Now we’re just trying to protect our considerable investment. You could have said no, you know.”
“And how could we have done that?” Colvin inquired with quiet sarcasm.
Tricker spread his hands. “How could you have avoided all this, you ask? By giving us the material you sold to us and any work you’ve done on it. In other
words, you could have said no simply by saying no. You still could.”
He glanced back and forth between them. “So, are you finished having your little tantrum, or do you want to waste some more time here?”
Colvin grimly examined the table before him, a muscle jumping in his cheek.
Then he looked up at Tricker. “Why did you want to see us?”
“Finally. Well, gentlemen…” Tricker sat down again and tidied some papers in his file. “How’s the search coming?” He looked at them like an eager student waiting for approval.
The two men looked puzzled.
“For the security manager?”
Colvin and Warren just stared at him.
“We’re on a military base buried underground,” Warren said at last. “Why do we need a security manager?”
“Why?” Tricker raised his brows. “Because you do, that’s why. This is your company and you’ve already lost a major part of your material; we expect you’re desperate to preserve the rest of it. So, shall I find someone for you?” His expression had become hard. “I don’t want to impose, but I’m going to have to insist that you take care of this immediately.”
“What, exactly, is the big rush?” Warren asked impatiently.
Tricker referred to his file. “Well,” he said, looking up, “this guy you’re hiring.
Kurt Viemeister?”
“That’s a good hire,” Colvin said aggressively, pointing to the file. “We’ve been negotiating that for a while now.”
“The guy’s an Austrian national,” Tricker said evenly. “And this is a top-secret project.”
“He was twelve years old when his family emigrated to the U.S., for Christ’s sake,” Colvin said. “Besides, he’s a naturalized citizen; Austria is just a memory for this guy.”
Tricker’s exasperation was plain. “Yeah, yeah. Have you looked into his background at all?”
“He’s a genuine prodigy; he finished high school at fourteen, got a full scholarship to USC, and his master’s and doctorate at MIT before he was twenty-two,” Colvin continued. “He’s the foremost authority in the world on real-model computer language.”
“So?”
“So, he’ll teach the system we have to answer to spoken commands and to answer verbally,” Warren explained. “Not just menus. Understanding what it’s hearing and saying. Chinese-box stuff.”
Ticker sneered. “Oh, so you’ve got a kraut that talks to a box. How nice.”
“He’s not a kraut. He’s Austrian.”
“So he’s a kraut in three-quarter time who talks to a box. No go.”
“Since you already know about him, I’m surprised you didn’t realize how amazingly qualified he is,” Warren said.
“Did you know he’s a Nazi?” Tricker asked. “Excuse me, a member of the Integral National Socialist Renewal Movement—Tyrolese branch.”
Colvin and Warren exchanged a glance.
“He is?” Warren said. “National Socialist?”
“He sure as hell negotiated like one,” Colvin muttered.
“A lot of geniuses, when they have political ideas at all, have these,” Warren chuckled and waved his hands around, “airy-fairy notions about how things ought to be. Usually it goes no further than an occasional late-night bull session.”
” ‘Airy-fairy’?” Tricker said, genuinely appalled. “I have never before heard Nazism referred to as an ‘airy-fairy notion,’ Mr. Warren. I’ll bet your boy Kurt wouldn’t thank you for that description either.” He gave the president a long look. “In any event”—he pulled a piece of paper out of the file—“your wunderkind has been in a number of marches, for which he’s been arrested twice.
Three of his close friends have been arrested for conspiring to blow up a post office and he rarely misses meetings. Maybe that’s because he’s the secretary for his local chapter.” He tossed the paper across the table. “This is not the kind of guy we like to see hired to work on our defense projects.”
Colvin flicked the paper toward himself with his fingertips. He read it and
pursed his lips.
“We’re going to have to pay a huge kill fee,” he said.
“Which should tell you that he knew this was going to happen and that he was just jerking you around,” Tricker said. “If you had a half-decent security chief this wouldn’t have happened.”
Warren shook his head. “This guy is the best,” he said. “We absolutely need him.”
Tricker widened his eyes and leaned forward.
“Well you can’t have him,” he said softly.
“Paul’s right,” Colvin cut in, looking grim. “We need him. Without Viemeister we might be stuck for years.”
“Years?” Tricker asked, obviously disbelieving.
Colvin nodded.
“He’s basically the inventor of a new science,” Warren explained. “He hasn’t trained anybody, so there’s no competition. But there is a lot of competition for his services. Viemeister has only let out hints of what he’s accomplished, but if even half of what he’s telling us is true it will revolutionize computer communication. We’re talking AI here, Mr. Tricker.”
The government liaison looked at him dubiously.
“Just Tricker,” he said at last. Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, he looked at the two. “I need to interview him.” Raising his hand, he forestalled an automatic protest from Warren. “I promise not to bring my rubber hose, okay? But you can hardly expect us to just automatically approve this, especially in light of the previous disaster. And you must have a good security chief—soon.” Tricker pinned them with a blue glare. “Set up a meeting for me with your kraut. Pardon me, with your cream-pastry-chef fucking Mozart Austrian crypto-fascist.” He tossed them a white card, blank but for an e-mail address. “Drop me a line when you’ve got it arranged.”
He put the file together, dropped it into his case, and slammed the lid. Giving them a last, ambiguous look, he left.
“I do not like that guy,” Warren muttered, seething.
Colvin glanced at Cyberdyne’s president.
“I really don’t think he gives a damn.”
COLORADO: 2028
It was a beautiful, golden day, the air soft and warm, birds twittering melodiously; a gentle breeze wafted pine-scented air to Serena’s nostrils. The sky was an azure bowl over the earth, and they were far from the cindered blast zones. Far off, a single Hunter/Killer flew patrol, a black dot against the clear sky.
Lieutenant Zeller lowered her binoculars and consulted her map. “Almost there,”
she said.
Serena looked at her. The lieutenant’s dark, lovely face was tired and serious.
The humans were about to launch an attack on one of Skynet’s power-cell factories. Which meant coordinating with several other free roaming teams.
They would be the last in position because of the distance they’d had to cover.
Communication was the key to a successful mission.
Communication was going to be interrupted.
Serena was pleased with herself, and Skynet was also; her mission so far had been a resounding success. She’d been with the team for six weeks now and had, with the help of their intelligence, foiled seven separate missions.
Not all of them were her team’s, of course. That would have raised suspicions.
But with very little effort she’d managed to ferret out a great deal of sensitive information. It genuinely never occurred to these people that she might be working for Skynet.
In a way it amused Serena that with all the enhancements, mechanical and genetic, that had been lavished on her, it was the simple ability to look human that was her most valuable asset.
That ability had also helped her to kill—directly or indirectly—four of the original team members. Corporal Ortiz’s death had shattered poor Corpsman Gonzales. And if Lieutenant Zeller was the unit’s head, then Gonzales was its broken heart. Leaving the whole group’s morale very low. And with four untried new team members, they were also very anxious.
Today it was the lieutenant’s turn to die. The woman was simply too effective
and too much a leader to be allowed to live. She’d also been giving Serena some rather long and thoughtful looks lately, doubtless because of the T-950’s endless questions.
“Let’s move out,” the lieutenant said.
They’d been taking a brief rest after a long march through the woods. So far no one had commented on how very sparsely protected this factory was.
Serena found this strange. She’d been monitoring all the humans’ units as they came up to their positions and absolutely no one had mentioned it. True, it was supposed to be a hidden facility, but it was also supposed to be vital, and the place should have been swarming with HKs and T-90s.
So why doesn’t anyone notice? she wondered. It bothered her. Perhaps I should say something? She fervently wished she could ask Skynet, but they couldn’t risk any anomalous signals being detected from her vicinity. Curiosity itched like a healing wound.
The unit moved quickly, but carefully, spaced out, avoiding each other’s line of fire but keeping each other in sight, eyes moving at all times.
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