Infiltrator t2-1

by S. M. Stirling

  In this case, the request for information about the Sarah Connor case had come from a Jeffrey Goldberg. Subsequent research indicated that he was an employee of a covert— extremely covert—antiterrorist group known as the Sector.

  Serena considered the information as data scrolled across the inside of her eyelids, casting a ghostly blue flicker over her eyes, without disturbing the motionless perfection of her face.

  The request for Connor’s file might have been the result of some sort of bureaucratic housecleaning. Some decade-overdue review of terrorists-at-large.

  She checked. Goldberg’s session log showed that he asked only for Connor and her son and any known information about their adult male accomplice.

  Interesting.

  That would seem to indicate that he had a specific reason for inquiring. Goldberg was stationed in Vienna, which implied that Connor might have been sighted in Austria. Or, given whom Goldberg worked for, one of their remote outstation operatives might have sighted them.

  She set the computer to search Goldberg’s phone and e-mail records for calls and messages over the previous twenty-four hours. The phone log would reveal the numbers of those who called in, which would at least give her some locations.

  She had higher hopes for the e-mail, which would carry much more in the way of details. As an afterthought she also directed the computer to check his home phone.

  Then she composed herself for sleep. There was nothing inherently untoward

  about someone from Sector requesting information on a known terrorist. Dealing with terrorists was Sector’s raison d’etre. But it was promising. Serena resolved to continue monitoring Goldberg for the next several weeks.

  Perhaps I should set up a Connor site of my own on the Web, she mused. Make herself out to be some sort of advocate, one of those people who see government conspiracies in every arrest and conviction.

  In the case of Sarah Connor there was the bonus of the conspiracy actually existing. Even if the organizing force behind that conspiracy didn’t quite exist yet.

  There might well be people out there who would respond if there was something to respond to. And if it’s a good enough site it might even get the attention of the Connors themselves. A cheering thought.

  But it would be a delicate line to walk. Knowing what she did about the case, she would need to avoid inadvertently revealing information dangerous to Skynet.

  Or, just as bad, information that only the Connors and Skynet should have.

  Thinking about her future parent/creator, Serena smiled. It was barely in its infancy just now. Little more than a very capable computer, with no hint of awareness. But the potential was there and the engineers were rapidly closing in on the essential elements that would give life to Skynet.

  She’d met Kurt Viemeister and had been charmed to realize that his was the voice that Skynet would use when it spoke. It was the voice of all the T-l0ls who had taught her, «and she couldn’t get enough of it or the warm, secure feelings it aroused.

  Perhaps she should be troubled to notice a weakness like this in herself. The last thing she would have expected was to be homesick. Perhaps not so much homesick as bereft of Skynet’s eternal presence. It was hard, very hard to be completely alone here.

  Still, unless it was of benefit to the project, she really shouldn’t spend too much time with Viemeister. Other humans didn’t seem to like him, though it was obvious they respected him. But she knew that much of her mission’s success would depend on her being liked and trusted. If an association with Viemeister would imperil that, then she would just have to sacrifice her developing friendship with the human.

  Skynet comes first, she reminded herself, then smiled. In this case, I guess I come first and Skynet follows me.

  And, this time, they would win.

  Serena tugged at the stringy pink tissue gently, her hand deep in the viscous, faintly salt-smelling goo of the underground vat. Bonding nicely, she thought as it resisted her pull. Threads of the cultured human muscle were weaving themselves into the porous ceramic that coated the metallic bones.

  A soundless blip interrupted her. Ah, she thought, drying her hands on a towel as she moved over to the computer workstation. Transmission.

  Goldberg was relaying a part of the dossier he had acquired on the Connor case to an e-mail address in Paraguay.

  The silicon-and-metal part of Serena’s brain connected her to the remote computer that was monitoring Goldberg, data trickling in through electrodes finer than a human hair knitted into the organic neural nets. The picture that came up on her eyes was of the Terminator that Skynet had sent to eliminate Sarah Connor. Even boosted by her superior processor, the picture was grainy.

  She supposed that was why Goldberg had sent it by e-mail. There was nothing else, though. A quick check showed a call-in-progress from Goldberg to a phone number in Paraguay. She had forgotten to check the fax lines, but she was sure that if she did look, there would be one to Paraguay. She ran a check on the address belonging to the phone number.

  Dieter von Rossbach, rancher. Oh, really? And why would a rancher in Paraguay happen to need information on the Connors? Because he thinks he’s found them.

  She ordered the computer to search for information on this Dieter. Who would undoubtedly turn out to be more than a mere cow herder, she was sure.

  Meanwhile she would seek permission to send someone down to South America to look into this situation. Without hesitation she called Paul Warren.

  Behind her, the liquid in the vat gurgled, and the metal and ceramic of the Terminator’s structure gradually disappeared beneath the spreading web of pink and pulsing crimson. Life mated with death, in the service of a sentience that was neither.

  PAUL WARREN’S RESIDENCE, BEVERLY HILLS: THE PRESENT

  Warren sat at the head of the table and sipped his dessert wine, letting the conversation flow around him as he admired the dining room. One wall of the room was a row of French doors opening out onto a flagstone patio. Stairs led

  from there down to a lawn and garden. In the daytime the dining room was full of light, making rainbows in the Italian crystal of the chandelier. The remaining walls were decorated with a watered ivory silk and paintings of some of his wife’s ancestors: a grim, dyspeptic-looking crowd of Yankee bluebloods, looking as if they were sniffing in disapproval of the scents of Kauna coffee and jasmine tea and sacher-torte wafting toward them.

  The guests were his wife’s friends and they rather bored him. But then, I suppose I rather bore them. He being little more than a computer geek… No culture with a capital K. Still, a lot of Mary’s friends were in politics and it didn’t hurt to have connections.

  They preferred to dine without covering the table’s softly glowing dark wood. So each setting had a linen place mat, trimmed with intricate Spanish cutwork and a matching napkin. More heirlooms. The dishes were German porcelain, thin enough to see your fingers through, writhing with a design of tiny roses and dripping twenty-four-karat gold. Paul thought the candy-pink design was headache inducing, but women seemed to love it. The crystal was French. His wife sneered that anyone could own Waterford; the kiss of death as far as Mary was concerned. The silverware was from her mother’s family, solid and heavy and almost as ornate as the plates.

  He took another sip of his wine and tuned in to what his wife was saying to the state-senatorial candidate on her left. Then he tuned out again. She was refining the man’s opinion on school budgets. An opinion she’d given him in the first place.

  Their maid slipped in quietly and murmured to him that he had a phone call.

  Paul looked apologetically at his wife and her guests. Mary’s lecture continued, but her upper lip twitched as if she’d just smelled something exceedingly impolite. He put down his napkin and rose, following the maid out of the room.

  Warren went across the hall to the small room he used for a home office.

  Originally it was going to be quite large, but Mary had the architect whittle away at
it—to expand the dining room, to widen the hall—until it wasn’t much more than a cubicle. It existed more for the tax break than anything else. Mary didn’t like him taking work home.

  “Hello?” he said. Suddenly a knot of tension gripped his neck. It was late for a call from work. Not another bombing? he thought desperately.

  “Mr. Warren? This is Serena Burns. I’m sorry to call you at home, but something has come up that I feel I must pursue as soon as possible. I think I might have a lead on the Connors’ whereabouts and I’d like your permission to send someone out to investigate.”

  “You found them?” Paul squeaked. He couldn’t believe it! She’d been working for Cyberdyne for only two weeks and she already had a line on those murdering bastards?

  “I’m not certain, sir, that’s why I wanted your okay. It’s going to put a hole in the budget, I’m afraid.”

  While Warren stood at his desk, flummoxed, his wife strode in, her face set in righteous anger, and seized the phone. He was so startled that he gave it up without a fight.

  “Whoever this is,” Mary Warren said icily, “and whatever this is about, it—and you—can wait until tomorrow. My husband and I are entertaining guests. Good night!”

  She hung up the phone and turned to her husband. “You can’t let them start calling you at all hours like that, Paul.” She stabbed the dark surface of the desk with a pale finger. “I am not going to be one of those work-widows who only get to see their husbands when they come home to shower and change clothes. I thought we had that understood between us.” She glared at him.

  “Mary, we may have a lead on the terrorists who destroyed the factory and murdered Miles Dyson.”

  She raised one brow coolly. “Who?” she asked.

  Warren let out an exasperated breath. When she was in this mood he wouldn’t get anywhere with her.

  He led his wife out of his office, she closed the door behind her so firmly he looked over his shoulder at her. Mary’s face was set. He knew she wouldn’t give him any opportunities to call his security chief back tonight. He turned away and tightened his lips once more. He hated scenes, and if they fought he wouldn’t be able to sleep at all. Not to mention the havoc it would wreak on his digestion.

  Warren adjusted his face to a pleasant smile and apologized for leaving his guests for so long.

  “A new, overly enthusiastic employee,” he explained.

  John Rudnick, a newly elected judge, nodded solemnly.

  “Some of these kids would take over your life if you let them,” he said. “We’ve got a strict rule about it at home.” He smiled at his wife, who returned him a you’d-better-believe-it smile.

  Paul shrugged. “So do we,” he said.

  “Perhaps tomorrow, when you go to work,” Mary said with arctic calm, “you should make that clear to the person who called you.”

  “I intend to, dear,” he said, and changed the subject.

  Serena hung up the phone, genuinely astonished. She’d been trained to a strict and all-consuming pragmatism; otherwise she might have had trouble believing the evidence of her own ears. She stood with her hand on the receiver, certain that Warren would call her right back. Surely this was a bizarre way for one spouse to treat another? Even by pre-Skynet human standards.

  She crossed her arms and stared down at the quiet phone. One thing is certain, she thought, if Mary Warren is going to make herself an obstacle, then Mary Warren is going to have to be eliminated.

  Serena had been considering an affair with either Colvin or Warren as a means of ensuring that she would always know what was going on. Paul Warren might be the more receptive of the pair.

  Or perhaps not, she thought as the minutes lengthened.

  Humans, especially the males, had extremely fragile egos. Being humiliated like that in front of an employee, especially a female, couldn’t be good for Warren’s.

  He would probably be embarrassed the next time they met. She put one hand on her hip and sighed.

  A discreet affair was all she’d had in mind—something that would cool to a warm friendship spiced with occasional bouts of physical pleasure.

  Mary Walsh-Warren was the daughter of a very wealthy, very influential family.

  It was her family’s money that had given Cyberdyne its start, and Mary’s political contacts that had provided their first lucrative government contracts. That gave her a disproportionate share of power in her marriage.

  Which made poor Paul’s wife a potentially dangerous enemy. Serena had also learned from company gossip that Mary was almost pathologically jealous. One whiff of a warming relationship between herself and the president and Serena had no doubt she would be summarily fired.

  She tapped her fingers impatiently on the worktable. So. Terminating Mary Warren rather than undermining her marriage seems to be the most logical course of action.

  Serena had hoped to avoid killing indefinitely, because Skynet would not be well served by her spending decades in prison.

  Unfortunately she sensed that it was inevitable. The woman’s influence was just too poisonous. Poisonous enough to make the risk of terminating her worthwhile, besides being aesthetically satisfying.

  Since it was inevitable she might as well do it now while she was an unlikely suspect. After all, she’d never even met Mrs. Warren, she barely knew the president, and at present their association was purely professional.

  I suppose an auto accident would be best, she mused. A flaming wreck could hide all sorts of precrash mayhem. Perhaps she could send the Terminator. A sort of test run.

  Meanwhile, she would find and hire a private investigator in the Asuncian area.

  Someone competent, but low profile!

  She had done her own checking into Dieter von Rossbach and had found out that he, like Mary Warren, came from a wealthy, prominent family. He had entered the army after university, then had disappeared from all official records appearing only in a few society columns, all of them very thin on detail, until now. When he resurfaced it was as a rancher in Paraguay, which was extraordinarily unlikely.

  She’d been too late to get a tap on his conversation with Goldberg, getting on the line just in time to hear them say good-bye and hang up. She’d left the tap on von Rossbach’s line and had listened in to a number of utterly prosaic phone calls.

  Let the PI do it, she thought, exasperated. Tomorrow she would get on it, first thing. For now, she still had that tissue to check.

  TARISSA DYSON’S HOME, LOS ANGELES: THE PRESENT

  Jordan gave his sister-in-law a warm hug. Dan stood beside her, looking nervous and slightly embarrassed. He held out his hand to shake.

  Jordan raised an eyebrow at him. “Come here!” he growled playfully, and swept his nephew into his arms. “A handshake?” he chided. “That’s no way to greet family!”

  Dan grinned and ducked his head, shrugging, his eyes shyly downcast.

  “How long can you stay?” Tarissa asked, closing the front door behind him.

  “I have to go back Sunday,” Jordan told her. “And I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon. That’s something I want to talk to you about, by the way.”

  He looked at her to check her reaction. She looked interested, but distracted.

  “But the rest of the time,” he said, holding out his arms, “I am all yours.”

  Both Tarissa and Danny instantly wore identical sick smiles.

  Jordan put his suitcase down and waved them into the living room. “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind,” he suggested. “I’ve got a feeling it might kill you, or at least cause serious damage, if we wait much longer for you to let me in on whatever it is you brought me here for.”

  He sat down and looked at them expectantly.

  Tarissa and Danny looked at each other, then looked into the living room as if they weren’t sure what to do. Simultaneously they chose the couch and sat, both of them on the very edge of the cushions. They exchanged anxious glances again, wringing their hands and chewing their lips.<
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  “So what is this?” Jordan asked. “Mother and son competitive nervousness?

  What?” He held out his hands. “Just tell me. Whatever it is, it can’t possibly be

  that bad.” He grinned. “I’ll still love you, even if you’ve gambled away the house.”

  Tarissa and Danny looked at each other for a long moment. Then they faced Jordan.

  “It’s so hard to know how to begin,” Tarissa said, her voice was shaking. Turning the corners of her mouth down, eyes on her hands she continued, “But I’m afraid that you will find that what we have to say… might have a profound effect on our relationship.” Tarissa looked up at him, her eyes pleading.

  The first thing he thought was, Cancer? Could Tarissa be sick?

  Tarissa saw the fright leap into Jordan’s eyes and hastened to reassure him.

  “We’re both all right,” she said, reaching toward him. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, Tarissa, lay it on me! You’re making me crazy here.”

  “It’s about the night Dad died,” Dan said. “There’s stuff we didn’t tell you.”

  “But now we think we have to,” Tarissa said, taking up the tale and her son’s hand.

  She paused to collect her thoughts. Tarissa could see that she had all Jordan’s attention and he wasn’t angry with them. Yet. He looked puzzled and concerned, but not actually upset. That’s a relief. She looked around the room and made a decision.

  “This is a discussion for the kitchen,” she announced. “I want something to wet

  my mouth and it’s more comfortable there.” Without another word she rose and left the room. Once in the kitchen she put on the kettle and reached for the teapot. It was more of a tea than a coffee kind of conversation coming up. Danny trailed in a moment later, eyes downcast.

  “Put out some cups, would you, hon?” she asked. She poured hot tap water into the pot to warm it.

  Jordan came in, his hands in his pockets. “Hello?” he said, his head tilted to the side.