Infiltrator t2-1

by S. M. Stirling

  “Whaddaya suppose that was all about?” Colvin asked out of the side of his mouth.

  “Who the hell knows,” Paul muttered as he steered himself into his reserved

  space near the entry. “Typical beef-brained soldier, probably.”

  Serena, miles away, listened to their complaints via the bug she’d planted in their car, and smiled. More likely he was letting Tricker know that you were there, she thought. She’d have left orders to that effect. Any unusual activity to be reported.

  No entry without personal approval.

  She was finding it frustratingly difficult to learn anything about the mysterious government liaison. So she’d begun attributing to him powers and abilities that he might not even have. Better to overestimate an enemy’s abilities than to be caught unprepared. Tricker unnerved her.

  But these two! When she gave them the disk they were like kids. Human kids, that is: undisciplined and utterly transparent. She’d been able to see that they thought they were very clever, but she wasn’t absolutely sure whether they thought they were outsmarting her or Tricker.

  She’d watched them arrive at the bar of their choice, listened to them argue in the car about whether one of them should go in while another waited outside for her arrival. Heard them decide it really made no difference and watched them go in together.

  Well, it really didn’t make any difference. Except that it made it easier for her to plant the bug in Warren’s car. What she was really looking forward to was the moment when they put that disk into their computers. It would give her full access to Cyberdyne’s computers and she would finally be able to check their progress on Skynet. She would also be able to hear any conversations that took place in front of those computers. That way, if she failed to get the job she’d still be able to influence events to some extent.

  I really hope I haven’t overplayed my hand, she thought. It had been obvious that the humans were both angry and frightened. And while their attempts to hid their true feelings were amusing, they were also worri-some. Serena wondered how she should handle the situation. Seduction, perhaps?

  She hadn’t wanted to go that route once she realized that the two men were friends. It would be bad for the Skynet project to have them at each other’s throat in a fog of jealousy. Serena tapped the steering wheel with her fingernails, thinking.

  Apology, she decided. A simple, up-front, embarrassed apology might work. If she did it right they’d end up charmed instead of appalled. Which they both seemed to be now.

  She closed her eyes and forgot about her surroundings for a moment as her computer systems began to receive a flood of information from Cyberdyne.

  Opening her eyes in satisfaction, she listened to the real-time conversation between the president and CEO.

  “That’s impossible,” Warren was saying.

  “Not necessarily,” Colvin answered, his voice thoughtful, as though he was still reading. “This is Dyson’s work we’re talking about here. That guy was amazing.

  Not many people can make me feel like I’m falling behind, but Miles almost always did.”

  “A fully automated, computer-controlled munitions factory?” Paul said. “C’mon, Roger, that doesn’t even sound safe, let alone possible.”

  There was a long silence. Then: “We need to see the rest of this,” the CEO said.

  “The government will love it!”

  “What if there isn’t any more?” Warren asked.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. But this is Dyson’s work, Paul. It has to be! And if there is more of it, then it will probably move our work forward by up to six months. I say we go for it.”

  “We still don’t know what she wants!” Warren protested. “Let’s not jump into bed with the bitch until we’ve got that tacked down. That breaking-into-your-house number was a little too psychotic for my peace of mind.”

  Colvin laughed. “I’m not sure I’d be any more comfortable after telling her she wasn’t going to get the job.”

  There was silence again except for clicking of keys.

  “Tell Tricker,” Warren said. “Let him sort it out.”

  One of them inhaled deeply, then exhaled sharply.

  After a moment Roger said thoughtfully, “I’m not sure I want to go that far.”

  ” What?” Warren’s voice squeaked with surprise. “It was your house that was broken into. If she’s going to be trouble that would imply it’s you she’d go after. I say neutralize her, now, when she’s not expecting it.”

  “Okay, let’s just look at this calmly for a minute,” the CEO said. “She’s young—

  much younger than the other candidates. Maybe she just got carried away.”

  “Boy, I’ll say.” Paul sneered.

  “I find myself wondering how I would be reacting to this if it had been, say, Bob Cho.”

  Cho was another candidate for the security-chief position; he was forty-five, about five-eight, slender, but very fit. He’d gotten his start in the CIA.

  “Ye-ah,” Warren said slowly. “I guess I see what you mean. But would he do something like that?”

  “If he had an ace like this to play, yes, I think he might. And if she’d called up and asked for a private meeting, would you have given her one?”

  Warren laughed at that, sharply but just once. “Hell, no!”

  “Me neither. All because she’s an attractive young blonde. So what I ask myself is, what choice did she have? Really?”

  There was another long pause.

  “Okay,” Warren said reluctantly. “You’ve made a good enough case that I’m willing to hold off sicking Tricker on her until after she’s hired. I mean, sooner or later we’re going to have to come clean about where this new stuff came from.

  Right?”

  “Why don’t we seek out the advice of our new security director on that one?”

  Colvin answered.

  Yes! Serena thought. Ah, the wonderful ability of the human brain to find reasons not to be frightened. How useful it was! She put her car in gear and drove off.

  Time to go home and process the information she’d gathered.

  Would tomorrow be too soon to apologize, or should she wait until she’d been working with them a few days? She could attribute the delay to embarrassment.

  They would probably find that rather appropriate.

  She pushed in a CD titled Hits of the Eighties, purchased so that she could become familiar with the popular culture of her supposed childhood.

  Few of the songs made sense, but that was humans for you. Most of these sounds tickled the pleasure center of the brain to a slight degree, which was undoubtedly the point. So, like a human, she decided to just sit back, relax, and let the sensation roll over her.

  Soon she could move into phase two.

  ECOLOGY EXPO, NEW YORK: PRESENT DAY

  “This is boring,” Peter Ziedman said. He frowned and shifted the heavy camera on his shoulder.

  “No kidding,” his soundman and college bud Tony Roth agreed. “It’s nothing like what I expected.”

  They glared at the neatly set-up booths and the casually well-dressed people around them. Even the loopier outfits had cost real money, you could see that.

  They’d been expecting a lot more over-the-rainbow stuff from the New York Ecology Fair.

  Ziedman had been pinning his hopes on it, in fact. He’d graduated from Chapman University only two month ago, with honors, and already his dad was asking, “So what did I spend my money for?”

  Like you could get a full-fledged movie together over the weekend. Well, okay, some people had done that, but not lately, and probably not while sober.

  So Peter had decided to do a documentary on an inspired madman. They’d find their guy at a place like this and then follow him around while he tried to convert the world. It would be hilarious.

  But what he’d found instead was a slew of start-up businesses looking for venture capitalists. And while he knew there was a st
ory worth telling in that, at the moment he needed something fast, easy, and moderately entertaining from the first shot. The story of water-purification devices just wasn’t going to do that.

  “Where are the nuts?” he shouted.

  A young woman beside a solar-energy display turned to look at him. “The Rain Forest Products booth is giving away Brazil nuts in aisle four.” She pointed vaguely in that direction.

  Ziedman looked at her; she was attractive in a washed-out, WASPY kind of way.

  He walked over to her and said, “I’m making a documentary and I was hoping for some more colorful characters to spice up the narrative.” He shrugged and then shifted the camera. “It can’t all be facts and figures.”

  She nodded, looking vaguely disapproving. That was when he noticed that her badge said she was the fair’s cochair.

  “So what exactly are you looking for?” she asked.

  Peter thought that he was probably very lucky that she wasn’t asking him to leave, as he hadn’t received permission from the fair to film here. She looked capable of kicking him out. He decided to be honest.

  “I’m looking for someone with a message,” he said. “Someone who can’t get anyone to listen but who thinks he, or she, can save the world. You know anybody like that?”

  She laughed, and it changed her whole face. She really was attractive. “Oohhh yes,” she said. “I know tons of people like that. But they tend to avoid places like this. To them we’re all sellouts.” She looked around and seemed to spot someone. Pointing to a tired-looking man on a folding chair near the door, she said, “Try him. That’s Ron Labane. He used to be a pretty good guy, associated with a small, fairly successful organic farm in Washington state.” She shook her head. “Now… it’s kinda sad really. He’s got a book he’s trying to get published.

  He’s kind of into a lone-wolf thing right now.”

  Ziedman looked at the man. He was wearing tan chinos and a sport jacket over a sweater vest and an open-collared blue shirt. Though he was clean-shaven and his hair was neat, there was something a little shopworn about him. His whole body spoke: of discouragement and exhaustion.

  Peter turned on the camera and zoomed in on him. As if by instinct, like the lone

  wolf the woman had named him, Labane turned to look directly into the lens. He raised one brow and with a lopsided smile raised his hand and gestured Peter over.

  “Thanks,” Ziedman said to the woman. He and Tony hustled over.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PARAGUAY THE PRESENT

  Sarah felt horribly conspicuous—which was understandable, since she was outrageously overdressed. Everyone around her was wearing casual clothes and sandals; some were even in shorts. She was dressed in Scarlett O’Hara’s garden-party dress, with an oversized sun-bonnet, little gloves, puffy sleeves, low bodice, crinolines, and an enormous hoopskirt. Except that hers was in black and red.

  People were grinning at her. The smiles were not very friendly; in fact, there was a distinctly predatory edge to them, as if the guests were really a pack of socially superior wolves. She smiled back, trying desperately to carry it off.

  Victor Salcido—her host—approached carrying an enormous rack of barbecued ribs, dripping with sauce, on a very small paper plate. Sarah tried to refuse it, but he forced it on her. The plate buckled and the ribs and sauce poured over her.

  Suddenly her dress was white and the sauce looked like thick blood as it ran down her front. She dropped the plate and looked at her gloved hands. It was blood.

  Everyone was laughing and pointing. She stepped back, looking around in vain

  for one friendly face. The crowd parted to reveal a huge man in black leather; his head turned like a gun turret, slowly, slowly. It was the Terminator. He began to walk toward her; everything in her screamed to run, but she couldn’t move. His face grew softer, the lower planes of it beginning to sprout a beard. He reached into his jacket. When his hand came out it was normal, or seemed so at first. But the index finger kept growing, turning silvery as it grew. Then his body changed, becoming more slender, shorter, until she was looking into the implacable face of the T-1000.

  “Call to John,” it said. “Call to John, now!”

  Sarah turned and ran, her heart pounding, tears spilling down her cheeks. The party goers watched her as dispassionately as spectators at a golf game.

  Suddenly she was in the Chaco, and grass and scrub were catching at her absurd skirt, twisting and lashing like living whips. Finally she fell and the grasses and thorns grabbed hold as if they were organic barbed wire.

  She felt paralyzed, trapped; all she could do was lie there while redheaded Douglas from the Pescadero State Hospital leaned over and slowly, lasciviously, licked her cheek. He stood up and looked down at her while the spit on her cheek burned like acid. She couldn’t even scream.

  The T-1000 came and stood over her beside the male nurse. The machine and Douglas looked at one another, then down at her. “Call to John,” the T-1000 said.

  He opened his hand and it grew into the shape of an old-fashioned steam shovel, the jaws lined with sharp teeth. They opened and clamped shut, then swept toward her and swallowed her head.

  Sarah screamed and flung herself upright.

  “Mom?”

  John hit the light switch and her lamp came on; she started and shivered. He came over and sat on the bed beside her. Her son stayed motionless and simply offered the comfort of his presence, waiting.

  She was at home, she was in bed, she was safe.

  After a moment she gathered him in her arms and held him fiercely, breathing in gasps, trying not to cry.

  “Bad one, huh?” he said, gently stroking her back. Her hair was wet with sweat though the night was cool, occasionally shudders racked her tightly coiled body.

  Sarah let go and leaned back”, her hand automatically reaching for a cigarette that wasn’t there. She met John’s smiling eyes sheepishly. “If you’d just had that dream you’d reach for cigarette too, you little wise-ass.”

  He grinned. “You haven’t had one this bad for a while,” he said, suddenly serious.

  “They’re all bad, John.” Sarah scooted up the bed so that she was leaning against the headboard. “Dear old Dr. Silberman once told me that I was a very imaginative woman, and that was why I had such bad dreams.”

  She snorted, then looked ruefully at her son. “Everybody else has dreams where they can’t catch the right bus, or they ‘show up for work in their underwear. I dream that unstoppable killing machines are coming to murder me.”

  “Gee, I wonder why,” John said.

  They laughed and some of the tension drained out of her.

  “I bet seeing that Dieter guy—”

  “Von Rossbach,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah. I bet seeing him prompted the dream.” John hooked one leg over the other and looked at his mother, inviting her to talk.

  She smiled fondly, appreciating his willingness to help. “Well, maybe not just von Rossbach,” she said. “The dream started at the Salcido asado. I was dressed as Scarlett O’Hara.” John started to laugh. “Only the dress was red and black.”

  John looked at her from under his eyebrows. “I got Scarlett O’Hara?” he said.

  “Ya gotta hand it to Silberman; as far as being imaginative goes, he had you pegged, Mom.” He leaned over on one elbow, his head on his hand, making a bridge over her legs. “You must really be nervous about this party,” he commented.

  “Well, yuh,” she said, and shrugged. “This could be my entree into society. And I’m just not very good at that feminine shtick”—John’s eyebrow went up at that

  —“that they’re so fond of around here.” Sarah sighed. “I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your friends,” she said.

  John sat up.

  “Mom,” he said seriously, “you couldn’t. You’re my hero.” Then he began to sing, falsetto, “You are the wind beneath my wings.”

  Sarah hit him with her pillow. “Out!�
� she said, laughing. “Get out of my room and take your schmaltz with you.”

  “Lalala-la-la-la-laaaa-la,” John sang, slowly flapping his arms as he danced out.

  “You are the wind beneath my wings.”

  “Goodnight, John.”

  He leaned back into her room and flipped the light switch.

  “‘Night, Mom.”

  Sarah settled back on her pillow and chuckled. God but he was a good kid! And thanks to me, he doesn’t have to spend the rest of his life saving the human race from extinction.

  Dieter felt good. The first few mornings had been hard; a mere five kilometers had left him exhausted. Today he’d done ten at an easy light trot, jogging in the comparative coolness of dawn with the dry dust of the ranch’s roads puffing up around his feet and the pungent smell of the Chaco brush in his nostrils. Then he’d spent a good part of the morning doing kata after kata in the courtyard outside his office.

  Now to finish off with something that needs delicacy and control, he thought.

  Throwing knives wasn’t something that had much practical use, but it was a good

  way to keep your edge. He held the tip of the blade between thumb and forefinger, feeling the balance of the weapon as he concentrated; his body glistened with a healthy sheen of sweat and the strong sunlight sparkled off the golden hair on his massive chest.

  Elsa Encinas, Epifanio’s niece, watched him as she washed the office window.

  Her big brown eyes were wide, and her hand moved more and more slowly as her mouth dropped open. She’d been cleaning the same small square of glass for about a half hour now and she was beginning to make Dieter nervous. He didn’t think she was even blinking anymore.

  Marieta bustled into the office looking for Elsa, intending to scold her for not being finished yet. One brief glance and she was upon her niece, finger and thumb closed on an ear as she dragged the protesting Elsa behind her into the corridor. With a wide sweep of her strong arm she brought the miscreant around to face her.