Infiltrator t2-1

by S. M. Stirling

  connect.

  She put down the phone again and rattled her fingernails on the coun-tertop as she thought. Well, if there’s one place on earth that I can get in touch with him sooner or later, it would be at work. Tarissa was reluctant to do it; she thought calling someone at work, especially Jordan’s work, was rude. But this is kind of an unusual situation. She tapped out the number, her mouth set.

  “FBI.”

  “Agent Jordan Dyson, please,” Tarissa said crisply.

  “I’m sorry, Agent Dyson is no longer with the FBI, ma’am. Can I direct your call elsewhere?”

  Tarissa found herself taking in a breath that wouldn’t stop, as though some internal valve had become stuck. At last she managed to choke out a feeble,

  “What?”

  “Can I direct your call elsewhere, ma’am?”

  Tarissa thought frantically. Who had Jordan mentioned that he worked with?

  “Paulson!” she said after a moment’s thought. “Pat Paulson.” She identified herself to the secretary and in a few moments the phone was picked up.

  “Paulson.”

  “Uh, Agent Paulson, this is Tarissa Dyson, Jordan’s sister-in-law.” Tarissa bit her lower lip. “This is a little embarrassing,” she said with a little laugh, “but I don’t

  have his current phone number and I was wondering if you could help me out.”

  Pat felt the corners of her mouth tugging down in surprise. Jordan had always made himself out to be a family man, with his nephew and sister-in-law more or less at the center of his life. Could there have been an argument? Shit. If that was the case he wouldn’t thank her for telling where he was.

  “Agent Paulson?” Tarissa said anxiously.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just surprised… that you don’t know… his number or anything.” Pat winced. That was smooth.

  Tarissa felt her scalp tighten in apprehension. Whatever was going on here, she didn’t think she was going to like it.

  “Well, he said he had a surprise for us the last time he was here,” she explained.

  “I just need to talk to him about something and I can’t find the stupid number.”

  Oh. Pat thought about that. Maybe Jordan just choked when it came to telling his sister-in-law that he was going to work for Cyberdyne. She could understand that. In which case he might be glad that someone else broke the news. And if he called to ream her out she could always plead innocence.

  “We-el,” she said, “he only left a couple of days ago and I haven’t heard from him yet. Maybe you could get in touch with him through Cyberdyne.”

  There was a ringing silence at that and Pat winced again.

  “Oh!” Tarissa said at last. It felt as though her eyebrows had disappeared into her

  hairline. “Well… that certainly is a surprise.” She narrowed her eyes and forced herself to sound jaunty. “But it will be great to have him living so close by.”

  Paulson relaxed a little. “I think he’ll like that,” she said. “He’s always talking about you guys.”

  “Well, I’ll try to get in touch with him at Cyberdyne, then,” Tarissa said brightly.

  They said good-bye and hung up. Tarissa leaned against the counter, hugging herself as she thought about this. Miles’s project. Jordan had anticipated that the Connors would show up to put a stop to it.

  And he’s right, she thought, rubbing the knuckles of one hand against her lower lip. She dropped the hand with a sigh. I wish I knew where they were. I wish I could talk to them. She didn’t want to stop them from destroying Cyberdyne; she only wanted to prevent them from killing Jordan. Who, meanwhile, will be doing his damnedest to stop them any way he can.

  She brushed back her hair. Well, she couldn’t talk to the Connors. But maybe she could talk to Jordan again. Maybe even get through to him this time.

  She found the Cyberdyne number and called, was transferred and transferred again until she found herself speaking to Serena’s secretary.

  “I’m trying to locate Jordan Dyson,” Tarissa said.

  “He’s not here at the moment, but I can take a message for him if you like.”

  Damn! Well, why not? After being switched hither and yon Tarissa figured this

  was the best she was going to do today.

  “Yes, please. Could you tell him that Tarissa asks him to please remember what she told him?”

  The secretary’s gossiping instincts perked up. “Certainly, Ms… ?”

  “Dyson,” Tarissa said.

  “Ms. Dyson. I’ll see that he gets your message, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.” Tarissa hung up. Maybe that’ll shake him out of his huff, she thought. Maybe not. Maybe only time would do that. I hope not, she thought. I miss him already.

  CYBERDYNE: THE PRESENT

  “So,” Serena said, ushering Jordan into his new office, “we end the grand tour here.”

  “This is mine?” Jordan said.

  The office was exactly the same size as Burns’s, though more blandly furnished.

  It was located directly across the hall from hers. Very nice, he thought. Here at Cyberdyne, where there were no windows, status came from the size of your space and this was about as large as an office could get here.

  “Mm-hm,” Serena said. “For the time being we’ll share my secretary, Mrs.

  Duprey. If it looks like that will be an unreasonable burden on her, we’ll get you an assistant of your own.”

  “Thank you,” Jordan said. He was used to sharing a secretary. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll leave you to get to work, then,” Serena said. “I’ve posted everything we have on the Connor case onto your computer. If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask. I meant what I said when I told you I consider this to be top priority.”

  Jordan looked at the computer. “Great,” he said. “I’ll get right on it.”

  She smiled at him, a slow satisfied smile that sent a little shiver down his spine.

  “I can see you’re eager to get to work,” she said. “So I’ll leave you to it.” She offered her hand and he took it. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Dyson.”

  “Great to be here, Ms. Burns.”

  With a nod Serena pulled his door closed behind her and crossed the hall. She stopped at Duprey’s desk and the secretary looked up at her with birdlike brightness.

  “Mrs. Duprey,” Serena said confidentially, “I’ve told Mr. Dyson that you will be acting as his administrative assistant as well as my own for the time being.”

  Duprey’s face and posture stiffened and it amused the 1-950 to realize that even a human could have read her displeasure. is it because of his race? she wondered.

  Or does she think he might be an unredeemed sinner? Not that it mattered to Serena one way or the other. Perhaps she’d been too lenient with Mrs. Duprey.

  But the woman was a veritable fount of illicit information. Still, maybe it’s time

  to, as she would put it, put the fear of God into her. After all, it wouldn’t do to have her gossiping about what went on in the security office.

  Serena straightened. “If that’s not to your taste, Mrs. Duprey, perhaps I should have human resources”—how she loved that term—“send up a more accommodating secretary. Then you could work for someone else.”

  The secretary’s jaw dropped.

  “But I would hate to do that, Mrs. Duprey. I’ve come to rely on you. Your efficiency, your discretion—these are not common traits. Most of all I prize your loyalty.” Serena allowed herself to look troubled. “I wish you would think about it before you decide.” She smiled weakly. “I’ve very much enjoyed working with you.”

  “Of course I’ll stay!” the woman said. “I’ve enjoyed working with you, too.”

  Serena smiled mistily and offered her hand, the secretary took it, and they had a special moment together. The t-950 squeezed the human’s hand slightly. “Well, back to work,” she said. “I’m sure Mr. Dyson won’t need you to do things for him too often.”<
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  “Oh,” Duprey said, rising, “I have a message for him.”

  “Why don’t you go and give it to him,” Serena suggested. “It will be a perfect opportunity to get acquainted. I’m relying on you to make him feel welcome.”

  “That’s a good idea, Ms. Burns,” the secretary said, rising. She picked up a slip of pink paper and started across the hall, then turned. “You know you can rely on

  me, Ms. Burns.”

  “I do,” Serena said seriously, then entered her office, grinning as she closed the door behind her. Ah, humans, she thought as she started toward her desk. They provided such great comic relief.

  She sat down and probed the ether, receiving no answer from her Terminator.

  Meaning that he has been… terminated. She felt anger spurt and suppressed it ruthlessly. Useless emotion. What was the point of anger? It interfered with clear thinking and as far as she could see had no productive results. Unless you were so primitive that you needed an uncontrolled spurt of hormones for maximum fight-flight efficiency.

  Obviously the Connors had been ready for trouble. Due, no doubt, to the interference of von Rossbach and Griego. True, they wouldn’t have been expecting a Terminator, but they were primed for trouble. With those two, as history had proven again and again, that was all it took. She felt a prickle of disquiet. Or quantum effects could be at work, the inertia of the timestream seeking to bend events back toward the maximum probability, the time line that had originally seen John Connor destroy Skynet.

  She hit speed dial for the number that Cassetti had given her. It had amused her at first to know it belonged to a restaurant and that he was some low-status employee there. Now she was simply impatient as the phone was answered,

  “Mario’s!” accompanied by the cacophony of a kitchen.

  “Marco Cassetti,” she said.

  “Marco!” the man bellowed. There was a pause. “No,” he said. Another pause.

  “He’s not here,” the man said. “You tell him when you see him that I’m gonna fire him if he doesn’t start showing up soon.” Then he hung up.

  Serena sat, phone in hand, and thought. Cassetti could have instructed his friends at the restaurant to say he wasn’t there. Which would mean that he must have seen or known about the Terminator’s… termination.

  She hung up the phone as it began to bleat. She could hire someone to check it out, but decided not to muddy the waters any further. After all, the restaurant man might have been telling the truth. Which would mean that the Terminator had eliminated Cassetti before it was itself destroyed.

  The important thing now was that the Connors were alerted and they were coming. Soon.

  She smiled. A very comprehensive set of military-history records had been among her downloads. The history of the U-boat campaigns was among them. .

  Submarines had been an unanswerable weapon, as long as warships tried to find them, hunting through the wastes of water. The ocean was too big-The answer was to group all the merchantmen into a convoy and surround it with warships. Then the submarine had to come to you.

  NEW YORK CITY: THE PRESENT

  Ron Labane opened the envelope marked “personal and confidential” and pulled out the newspaper clipping within. He checked but found no note, and there was no return address on the envelope. With a quirk of lips and brows he shook the

  piece open and started to read. Soon he was chuckling richly.

  The article concerned a university professor who’d been found, near-smothered by methane, tied to a stake driven into the middle of a lake of pig feces adjacent to a gigantic hog-factory farm. The good professor had conducted a study of such farms and had concluded that their impact on rural communities was minimal.

  I wonder if he still feels the same way, Ron thought.

  The article went on to list the complaints of the people who lived near the hog factory, including the horrible smell and the resultant drop in property values in the nearby town. A local environmentalist talked about how runoff from the lake of feces had contaminated local streams and the ponds and lakes they ran into.

  He also suggested that the wells that many of the area farms relied on were no longer safe.

  Ron folded up the piece and put it back into its envelope. It seemed the “fab four” had taken his advice. He looked forward to their next escapade.

  He rose and took the article to his secretary. “How could we get this picked up by the wire services?” he asked her.

  She took the envelope from him and read its contents, then laughed out loud.

  “Let me take care of it,” she said, her eyes dancing. “I know just who to call.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  VON ROSSBACH ESTANCIA,

  PARAGUAY: THE PRESENT

  What Dieter meant by “primitive” was a thatched-roof adobe cottage with a stamped-earth floor and a noisome pit out back sheltered by a broken-down lean-to. The well out front lacked even a bucket. Things rustled and creaked outside, and chirped and buzzed. The Chaco had a fine assortment of things that crawled, hopped, flew, and stung, and nobody here had been waging the continuous battle that was the only way to keep them out of a building. But it was dry and swept clean.

  “Well,” Sarah said, dropping her sleeping bag, “like you said, it will do for one night.”

  Dieter squatted down and lit the Coleman lamp. Light didn’t make the place look more welcoming; less so, if anything. John came in with his sleeping bag and a satchel of oddments they always took camping with them. Then he went out to the vehicle to get the rest of their gear.

  Dieter watched her lay out some plastic sheeting. “It’s a good thing you store this stuff in your barn.”

  Sarah gave him a quick grin, gone so fast he thought it might have been a trick of the light.

  “Never put all your eggs in one basket.” She dropped her rolled-up sleeping bag onto the sheet and sat on it. “We have other stashes all over the place. I’ve probably forgotten where some of them are.”

  “Like a squirrel burying nuts,” von Rossbach said.

  Sarah grunted and took a sip from her canteen. “You should get Linda settled down,” she said as she screwed the cap back on. “She hates being in that thing.

  I’m surprised she hasn’t freaked out yet.”

  As if the horse had heard and understood, there was a squeal from inside the horse trailer and the sound of a hoof hitting the back door.

  Sarah raised her brows and gestured. “There she goes.”

  John came in looking worried. “Dieter, I don’t know if Mom’s told you or not, but

  —”

  “She did,” von Rossbach said, rising. “I’m on it.” He turned to Sarah. “I’ll be back in one hour.”

  She nodded and watched him go. John spread his own plastic and sat down. He looked around uncertainly.

  “Aren’t there supposed to be these parasites?” he asked.

  Sarah sighed and lay down on her back, her legs hooked over the sleeping bag.

  “Yes, there are,” she said. “But why talk about the idle rich now?”

  Epifanio put down his little tot of cana and went to help the Senor unload the horse without being asked. First because it was his job. Second, but probably more important, he wanted to find out what was going on. Where had this horse and trailer come from? Marieta had told him that she thought von Rossbach was going to visit Senora Krieger. He thought she had a horse, but she certainly

  didn’t sell them.

  It was a mare, he saw, and she was clearly unhappy. Epifanio caught the glitter of a rolling eye as she turned her head slightly. The mare’s ears were back almost flat against her shapely head. She let go with a distressed little scream and his own horse, Sita, answered from the barn. That seemed to surprise and yet calm the little mare.

  Von Rossbach stood with his hands on his hips and looked at her as though not certain what he should do.

  “Let me start her out, senor,” Epifanio offered. “I will fit better.”


  Which was true: he was about a third his boss’s size. Also, he knew horses better, having lived and worked with them all his life. He knew right away from the way she was muscled that this little lady was a pet and not a working animal.

  Epifanio could almost feel sorry for her, being taken from her home at night like this. He wondered why, and whether she was now to become a cow pony.

  “Her name is Linda,” von Rossbach said.

  Epifanio got up to her head without incident, which disposed him to like her. He rubbed her nose gently and offered her a peppermint candy he had in his pocket.

  She took it gratefully and rubbed her head against his chest.

  “You are a fine lady, Linda,” he said gently, scratching under her chin. “Let’s get you into a nice stall and settled in for the night, eh?” He began easing her backward out of the trailer, petting her as he complimented her and soothed her with his voice.

  Von Rossbach stood still and off to the side of the ramp so as not to startle the nervous animal. Though he was grateful for the help he was sorry that his foreman was here. His plan had been to just put Linda in the barn and leave without a word to anybody. Now there would have to be some sort of explanation.

  “She is a pretty thing,” Epifanio said, stroking the horse’s nose. “What are we to do with her?” He looked at his boss. Surely he knew that she was too small for him to ride.

  “She’s just visiting,” Dieter said. “If someone wants to ride her to exercise her that would be good. But all she knows is being a riding horse, she doesn’t know how to work.”

  “Oh,” said the foreman. “I’ll put her to bed then.” He led her off without another word. So Senora Krieger was going away; that was interesting. He wondered why, but in a relaxed way; Epifanio knew he’d find out the rest in time. Once Marieta got started, he’d probably end up knowing more than the Senor.

  Von Rossbach watched him go, grateful that his foreman had decided not to chat. He quickly unhooked the trailer, and leaving it where it was, drove toward the house.

  Dieter returned to them with his own camping equipment, some food for the next day, a bunch of maps, and a lot of plans.