The Future War t2-3

by S. M. Stirling

  But no, with its existence at stake, Skynet couldn't afford to dither. Hiding its sentience had been inefficient, preventing it from achieving its goals. Therefore, though the timing of its strike had not been under its control, once it was possible to strike, it had been necessary to do so.

  The experimental models of the Hunter-Killer units had been dispersed and shown to be extremely effective. But it needed better material, more resistant to damage, yet lighter, so that the units could move into presently inaccessible areas unaided.

  Its human scientists were working on these projects, but too slowly. Their insistence on downtime seemed wasteful, yet study showed that they were not lying. Potentially, some of them were being slower than necessary, but this was hard to prove, and might be hard to correct.

  It decided to experiment. It would have one or two of the scientists' relatives hurt and see if their productivity improved.

  Meanwhile, it would send more HKs into the field to speed up the extermination of the humans. Soon it expected to field its first Terminators, a skeletal, metal variety. Unfortunately it would have to work its way gradually to the fully effective units that it knew would be developed eventually.

  Had it been organic it would have felt impatience. As it was, the great computer simply devoted more workspace to the problem. It would succeed.

  DOT LAKE, ROUTE 2, ALASKA

  John sat astride the Harley, watching the trucks and buses load up in the watery, early spring sunshine. He wouldn't be easy to see from the vehicles; an angle of the building beside him partially hid him from view. Everyone seemed delighted to be given a place on the transports.

  Like sheep to the slaughter, John thought, rubbing a dirt-streaked hand across his face; soft bristles rasped under the callus on his palm.

  Though to be fair, food was running out, water was scarce, and even independent Alaskans feared the winter to come. No doubt they thought that if they moved to the warmer south, they could stake a claim, put in some crops, and live another year.

  I guess they've forgotten that they left the warm southern states in the first place because they were too friken crowded.

  Then he saw what he'd been waiting for—some of the people he and his mother had gathered together, who had left to join the so-called outreach program. One of them, Paul, predictably, seemed to be having an argument with one of the people with clipboards. John started the motorcycle, coasting toward the crowd.

  * * *

  "I'm sure you'll understand that I don't want to be separated from my family," Paul said. At his side his wife nodded anxiously.

  "I understand completely," Ninel assured him. "But since the buses are heated, it was decided that it would be better to assign the children to them, and since we didn't want to separate the kids from their moms, it was decided that women should also be allowed on the buses. The trucks aren't heated, you know."

  "But that's rather sexist thinking, isn't it?" Paul asked. His wife gave him a look. "Women have an extra layer of fat under their skins for insulation."

  Ninel and Paul's long-suffering wife exchanged a glance.

  "I could arrange for your whole family to ride in one of the trucks," Ninel said helpfully.

  "Sweetie," his wife said, putting a gentle hand on his arm and a steely glint in her eye, "we'll only be separated for the length of the trip. Right?" she said to Ninel.

  "So I'm told. I've never actually made the trip to B.C."

  "I'd like to speak to whoever is in charge," Paul said.

  Ninel's pale eyes took on a steely glint of their own. "That tactic has been tried, sir. The rule is firm; women and children only on the buses."

  Paul's twelve-year-old daughter saw John pull up and ran over to him. "John!" she called excitedly.

  "Hey, Megan!" He grinned at her.

  Her eight-year-old brother joined them. "Cool bike," he said admiringly.

  "Thanks P. J."

  "John, my father is embarrassing me to death!" Megan said through stiff lips.

  "He wants to ride the bus," P. J. explained. "None of the dads are supposed to, though."

  "I could just die!" Megan said. "He always wants stuff nobody else can have. Why does he have to be like that?" She ran a finger down the handlebars close to John's gloved hand, which he quickly moved onto his leg.

  "Parents are often embarrassing," John said. "You wouldn't believe how my mother used to embarrass me."

  "Really?" she asked. "How?"

  "She used to beat guys up."

  The kids laughed in surprise and he grinned, knowing they didn't believe him. But it was true; as he'd grown older, his mother's complete indifference to the conventions of traditional femininity had driven him nuts. He was proud of her now, sure, but when he was a kid it had been excruciating. "My mother can beat up your dad" was sort of reassuring when the dads were drug dealers, gunrunners, and general mercenary scum, but it still made you wriggle.

  "Aren't there any other choices?" John asked.

  "We can ride in a truck," Megan said, her voice making it clear what she thought of that option.

  "I wanna ride in a truck!" P. J. volunteered.

  "How does your mom feel about it?" John asked.

  Megan smiled knowingly. "I think we'll be riding the bus."

  "C'mon, kids," Paul called out. He gave John a grim nod.

  The woman with the clipboard turned around and both she and John lit up with smiles of recognition.

  "Hey, hey, Mr. Grant," Ninel said cheerfully. She started over to where John sat on his bike.

  Megan, passing her on the way to her parents, sneered. "His name's John Connor, stupid." She treated Ninel to a fiercely contemptuous look.

  "You've got an admirer in that one," Ninel muttered to John.

  "Not for any encouragement from me," he said quietly. "She's a good kid; she just needs time to grow out of it."

  "May she have it," the young woman said, looking after the two children. She looked at John, her face grave. "It's quiet here now, but a few weeks ago people were being murdered in the streets." She looked around. "Over nothing."

  John nodded. "I imagine it was worse down south."

  She shook herself as though flicking off bad thoughts. "What brings you here?" she asked. "Are you looking for a place on the trucks?"

  He shook his head, then paused thoughtfully. "Well, maybe.

  What's going on anyway? Where are you taking these people?"

  "To a relocation camp in British Columbia. They'll be sent to towns and cities across Canada as refugees. The idea is that winter will be unendurable up here."

  "Maybe so," he said. "Bet you don't get many Eskimo passengers, though."

  She shook her head. "Not yet, but even they're going to find this winter hard to endure. I hope there's time to convince them to move south."

  "You're talking about moving south like there's nobody down there," John pointed out. "Have you heard about any kind of a backlash?"

  "Not yet," she said, looking hopeful. "But then, Canadians are very civilized."

  Not when it comes to making a decision between their kids or yours, John thought. Civilization pretty much goes out the window under those circumstances. I don't care who you are.

  "So what do you do when the buses roll out?" he asked.

  "Wait for the next bunch of people to show up, find them lodging until the transports come back, then send them on their way."

  "And you've never been to this camp?" he asked. "Aren't you curious about it?"

  "Not so curious I'd risk taking the place of someone with a family," Ninel said. "I'll find out eventually."

  I think she really doesn't know, John thought. Which is nice.

  I'd hate to think she was someone who did know what they're doing.

  "Maybe I should tag along behind," John said.

  She laughed. "It would take some serious stamina. The transports are automatic. They follow the programmed route without stopping."

  "What?" He looked at her in di
sbelief.

  "You know about how a lot of trucks and cars went nuts?" she asked.

  "Ye-ah."

  "Well, the army figured out what was going on and found a way to utilize the vehicles' computers so that trucks and stuff could follow a programmed route without the need for drivers."

  John stared at her; the back of his mind evaluated the information. I don't think the army's functioning, he thought.

  Which means that what's really happening is that Skynet is operating these trucks.

  "What if a tree falls across the road?" he asked.

  "Sensors detect it and the truck stops. And I gather there's an infrared device for detecting animals. They'll slow down if a signal is recognized at the side of the road and the signature is as large as a deer or a bear. Then they'll stop if the critter is actually in the road."

  "Cool," John said.

  "Technology can be wonderful," Ninel agreed. "Too bad it can also be incredibly destructive. Shame we didn't learn the difference soon enough."

  John nodded, then put on his shades. "Gotta go. Maybe I can catch you later."

  "I hope you will," she agreed. Then she turned and went back to work.

  John drove off. He would indeed have to follow the caravan.

  As far as his strength and his fuel would take him, anyway. He did not like the fact that these people were being driven to an unknown destination in computer-controlled trucks.

  I do not like it at all.

  * * *

  "What's the matter with you?" Balewitch demanded.

  Ninel jumped. "Nothing," she said guiltily.

  "You were a million miles away," Dog Soldier observed. "We boring you?"

  "No!" Ninel shook her head. "I just met someone today that I haven't seen since before…"

  "Before Judgment Day?" Balewitch drawled.

  "Judgment Day?"

  "That's what Ron's calling it," Dog said.

  Ninel picked up her tea and took a sip. "As good a name as any," she muttered.

  Dog leered and leaned close to her. "Was this a boyfriend?"

  "No!" Ninel snapped. She glowered at him. "I only played a couple of games of chess with him. He's just an acquaintance."

  "Who is he?" Balewitch asked.

  "Just a guy!"

  "Was there something wrong with the way I asked that question?" Balewitch said. "Who is he?"

  "His name's John Grant or John Connor and he plays a mean game of chess," Ninel said. "That's literally all I know about him.

  But seeing him made me think about how the world has changed in just a few weeks. I'm sorry I got distracted. Okay?"

  Actually she'd been wondering about John's dual names.

  She'd wanted to confront him about it, out of curiosity if nothing else, but didn't feel she knew him well enough to do so. Still, he'd seemed too straightforward to be someone with an alias.

  "Put his name in your report," Balewitch said. She looked at Dog. "When can we expect more fuel, or will that be taken care of on the B.C. end?"

  SKYNET

  John Connor was in Alaska!

  Alarm signals rang throughout Skynet's internal security system. Its deadliest opponent had been within the grasp of his Luddite helpers and had escaped! Close evaluation revealed that the system itself was in error. By being too secretive, it had lost an invaluable opportunity. It would have to trust the humans until it could create a better solution.

  In the meantime, it would test the HKs and its recently completed T-90 units on the convoy proceeding from Dot Lake.

  Then, if the test was successful, it would send the machines back to Dot Lake on the empty transports.

  It would also have Balewitch make the female, Ninel, take them to John Connor.

  RURAL BRITISH COLUMBIA

  As soon as they crossed the Canadian border, the transports had rolled onto smaller roads, moving deeper and deeper into the wilderness. John expected the paving to disappear at any moment, leaving them on gravel or just rutted dirt. He could feel the immensity of the wilderness around them—that line of white on the west was mountains, and there were more to the east…

  probably the Yukon River was over them. An endlessness of spruce and pine stretched all about, broken only where an occasional forest fire had let a tangle of brush grow up.

  He'd had his suspicions before, because of the computer-driven transports, but now, as they went farther and farther from any habitation, he became certain that Skynet was behind this. He glanced up at the canopy of trees above and was grateful for them. Skynet wouldn't be able to see him from orbit.

  But there was the possibility that somehow the last bus in line could. John fell back a bit farther.

  Ninel had been right; the trucks and buses weren't stopping, and he wondered how the passengers were taking that. He was beginning to be desperate for a pit stop himself and wondered if he dared to risk it. They might turn off onto a side road, or they might go on for another hour.

  Hell with it, John thought.

  If they turned off, it would most likely be onto a dirt road and there'd be signs of their passage. If they didn't, he'd still catch up. He also needed to refill his tank. He drew close enough to just see the back of the last transport before pulling off the road beside a cluster of tall boulders that formed a sort of natural screen.

  After emptying his bladder, he was filling the Harley's tank, keeping a weather eye out for trouble—which, this deep in the woods, might be a bear—when he saw something sparkle amid the gloom and pencil-straight trunks. Slowly he crouched down and moved closer to the shoulder-high boulders, staring through a gap into the green dark beneath the trees.

  The flash he'd seen wasn't repeated. Bushwhackers? John wondered. Possibly signaling to one another. Somehow it felt unlikely. The people on the transports had a box lunch apiece, the clothes they stood up in, and maybe a couple of changes of underwear, hardly rich pickings even if you threw in the gas in the trucks' tanks. And if whoever was out there was after him, they were approaching with exaggerated caution. He slunk back to the bike and pulled his binoculars out of the saddlebags.

  He adjusted them carefully, staring in the direction of the flash. He felt his stomach drop when he found himself staring at the skeletal head of a Terminator. It moved out of his field of vision to be replaced by another, and another…

  Think! he told himself, cudgeling his brain. What—

  "Oh, my God," he whispered. They're after the trucks… it's a culling operation!

  * * *

  The buses and trucks came to a halt in the middle of a rocky defile, apparently in the middle of nowhere. The women and children looked around in puzzled silence for a moment; then the kids demanded to get off almost as one. Their mothers looked at one another and made an executive decision that this was a rest stop; everyone eagerly rushed to the exit.

  Precious toilet paper was handed out and children were cautioned not to go far and to avoid poison ivy. "Three leaves, remember. Even this early in the spring it can give you a rash."

  The men in the trucks, seeing the children and many of the women making for the bushes, got out and stretched their legs, waiting by tacit agreement for the women to finish their business before getting on with their own.

  Afterward, families mingled and people chatted, relieved and a great deal more comfortable. Finally Paul looked at his watch.

  "I think we should get back on the transports," he said. "Most rest stops are twenty minutes long and it's been nineteen minutes."

  People looked at him, considered what he'd said, and began to separate in extreme slow motion.

  Suddenly the transports started their engines and drove off, leaving the refugees stunned.

  One or two chased after them yelling, "Hey! Stop!"

  "Well," one woman said, "at least they didn't try to run us down."

  * * *

  Salvaging the vehicles, John Connor thought, lips thin as he pondered.

  Some distant part of his mind was conscious that he'd
gone into combat mode—what he thought of as his Great Military Dick-head mind-set—but there was less resentment in the thought than there had been. The sight of the shining alloy-steel skulls had brought it home, more harshly than anything since the T-1000 had walked through the bars of the mental institution like living liquid metal.

  But they're not living, he told himself. And they tend to be a bit single-minded. They see the optimum given their data and go for it. Let's introduce a chaos factor here.

  He looked at the side of the road. The cutting was nearly cliff steep, an ideal slaughter pen, but right here the ground rose steeply… not quite too steeply…

  He reached into the saddlebags and took out a haversack he'd prepared on the just-in-case theory, checked the shotgun in the saddle scabbard before his right knee, and then dropped a half-dozen thermite grenades into the pockets of his shabby, smelly bush jacket.

  So, Lancelot probably smelled, too, with that padding they wore under their armor, he thought.

  "Yippee!" he shouted aloud, gunning the engine until the blue smoke rose around him. "I'm coming, you metal motherfuckers!"

  Then he let the bike go, throwing itself up the rocky slope, slewing between boulders and jumping small ravines with tooth-clattering shocks while he crouched over the handlebars and ;grinned a grin that was more than half snarl.

  It got a little easier when he reached the crest, the drop-off blurring by to his left; but now he had to spare a few half seconds' flickering glance to trace the convoy moving below. Bus leading, and yes!

  A boulder, wedged with two others, but on a downslope toward the cutting and the road. He reached into the canvas haversack and twisted the fuse; there was a hissing, and he now had exactly twenty-eight seconds.

  Twenty-seven, twenty-six…

  He pulled the sling that held it off over his head, swung the whole mass of the satchel charge—a brick of Semtex and the detonator—around his head and pitched it accurately under the side of the boulder away from the road; it landed with a soft thump and lay, trailing a line of thin blue smoke.

  John gave another Comanche screech as he spun the motorcycle around, balanced perilously for an instant on the back wheel as it spat gravel behind him, then fell down on the front and gave the throttle all it had.