Before he could fire, a woman ran from one of the toilers. "Enrique!" She was Hispanic, with long, graying hair—attractive in an Earth-mother sort of way.
Enrique looked back at her, giving a big grin. "It's okay, honey, but I'm gonna need some goddamn tequila. Hey, watch this, baby." He positioned the rifle carefully and fired, just grazing the blackened, smoldering stump of the tree, which glowed hot where the beam touched it.
He gave the weapon back to Anton. "All right, you can keep it."
"That weapon came from the future," Jade said. "I expect you know about guns, Mr. Salceda."
"Yes, I damn sure do, and I've never seen anything like that."
"Nothing like it exists in your time, in this time. I hope you believe us now. Sarah has always told you the truth-and so have we, Anton and I, since you met us."
"All right, whatever you say. Just come inside, and we'll sort it out"
Though she basically understood what had happened in the Specialists' world, Rosanna had never considered-except as abstract science-that there might be other worlds, other futures. Yet, the T-799 must have come from a different world, a different timeline from the Specialists. In one world, Judgment Day had already happened, back in 1997; in the other, which had been their own future right up until now, it had been delayed for two decades. They had to make sure it never happened at all.
Inside the trailer, the Hispanic woman gave Sarah a tearful hug, the two of them embracing tightly. Whoever these people were, they were certainly close to the Connors. The thing was, the Californian deserts were full of strange people who'd chosen to live as far as possible from the cities, on the fringes on society. They were almost invisible to the government, to the eyes of the law, which was just how they wanted it. This was a perfect place for the Connors to flee from justice, Rosanna thought. They'd probably known Enrique and his family for years. So that was a missing piece of the puzzle that the Connors had been for her.
"Where are Franco and the others?" John said to Enrique's woman.
"They've gone into Calexico."
Enrique made a vague gesture. "We needed a few supplies. They'll be back soon."
"Okay," John said "So there's no hard feelings here, light? You're getting along with Eve?" He glanced from Enrique to the Terminator.
Rosanna could see what he was getting at, that the Terminator had not tried to stop the Salcedas coming and going or made any threatening moves toward them. It wasn't treating them as enemies in that sense, or as a threat. Then again, what were the Salcedas going to do, call the police?
"Yeah, no problems," Enrique said grudgingly.
Rosanna caught the woman's eye, and said, "I'm Rosanna Monk."
"I'm Yolanda Salceda-I guess you've met Enrique. Did he introduce our daughter, Juanita?" Yolanda seemed proud, if slightly nervous.
The daughter gave a quick, insincere smile.
"I'm pleased to meet all of you," Rosanna said, even more insincerely. If she could have her wish, she'd never meet another human being again.
She wondered how she could ever escape from here, if faced to it. When the T-XA had reprogrammed her, it had given her a capacity for violence. Under some stresses, her body would respond, for a short, sustained period, with all her energy and strength, but that did not make her a match for the Specialists—or for a Terminator. Beside, she had no choice but to throw in her lot with this strange group. They needed her knowledge and contacts, but she needed them for protection. She certainly could not protect herself against Layton and Cruz, and whoever else had been reprogrammed by now.
The trailer's interior was almost claustrophobic, but at least it was scrupulously clean. At one end was a tiny kitchen with some cupboards, a sink, and an old refrigerator; at the other was a TV set, currently turned off. In I between, a cramped living area contained one battered leather lounge, several wooden chairs, and a low, glass-surfaced table. Like everything else, the table was clean, but covered with scratches, and there was one crack in the glass that almost split it in two. I
Yolanda offered tequila, beer, and coffee. "Just coffee, for me," John said.
Sarah and the Specialists chose tequila, and Yolanda found two bottles to share around. Juanita went to the refrigerator and got out a small bottle of Coke. "Get me one, too," Rosanna said.
Juanita looked over at her like Rosanna was some animal in the zoo. "Okay. No problemo."
Enrique took a long pull from one of the tequila bottles, looking closely at Jade and Anton. He put the bottle | down, and wiped off his mustache with the back of his knuckles. "So, I asked you about your other friends? The ones who were here two nights ago. You didn't ever tell me."
The Hispanic woman and the black man must have been here, too, Rosanna realized. But this can't have been a regular base for the Connors; Enrique asked too many questions, for that. He wasn't part of their regular team, just a friend they could turn to.
Jade said, "Daniel and Selena are dead, Mr. Salceda.
They died last night. Five of us came here from the future; now there are only two."
Enrique bowed his head in the tiniest way. Rosanna drank her Coke, straight from the bottle. What else was she going to learn?
Anton raised the tequila bottle he was holding. "At least they fought well"
They did," Jade said. "They helped us build a new world. Or so I truly hope."
The T-799 looked at Jade in a frank way, then checked over Anton once more. "You came from the future?" it said. "Explain your mission. Who sent you?"
Jade looked back just as frankly. "We were sent by the human Resistance. We came from thirty-five years in the future, but we did not travel across time."
"Neither did I."
"Okay, right," John said. "We all need to get on the same page here."
Rosanna smiled at his confusion. From what she'd seen of him, the kid normally looked pretty smug; it was good to see him getting out of his depth. If it came to that, even she was finding the concepts difficult The idea that time might branch, creating parallel worlds, was common enough in modern physics, but she'd never thought of traveling between those different worlds, if they existed. At this stage, the time vault could not even send objects to the past or future. Calculations from the experimental data showed that they were doing no more than scattering objects across the whole space-time continuum, disintegrating them in the most radical possible way.
"None of this makes any sense to me," Enrique said. "All you people are crazy."
"Crazy like a fox, Enrique," Sarah said. "You just played around with that laser rifle. You know it comes from the future. I'm sorry, old friend, but you'll have to face the facts."
"Yeah, I've always said that about you, Connor. You're crazy like a fox, all right."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome, but that doesn't mean it makes sense."
Rosanna imagined time as like a river, dividing at more and more points, forming an intricate delta. In theory, there were two ways to get from one stream of the delta to another: either cut across land, or go back to a point before the streams separated, then take a new path. It started making sense to her. Now she'd grasped it, she couldn't help laughing.
"Well," she said, as Enrique glared at her, "I don't really see the problem."
John's head was spinning. It was fine for Rosanna to say she understood it all-she'd invented time travel, or she was starting to. In Jade's World, she actually had invented it, or she would do one day.
During the years he'd spent in Argentina, wondering whether Judgment Day might still come, and afterwards when they'd moved to Mexico City, he'd read many books about time travel and the nature of time, trying to understand what he was mixed up in. He'd thought hard about it wondering whether the future could be changed, or whether they were all trapped in history like fish, frozen in a block of ice-or like bugs in amber, as Kurt Vonnegut had put it in a book that he'd read in Mexico. Maybe past and future existed eternally, and could never be changed. Or so he'd thought un
til he'd met the Specialists, and started to see how it really worked, that timelines could sometimes branch off from the original reality.
He turned to Eve. "You said you came from a different future. Not what's in our future, right? But a time twenty-eight years ahead of us—and kind of sideways." "Correct," the Terminator said.
Get a grip, he told himself. It must fit together somehow. "So in your world Judgment Day happened in 1997?" "Affirmative."
That was what he'd figured. It was becoming dear. But how could this machine have traveled across the gap between realities that had already diverged? That would require more than time travel. It was like a journey across dimensions.
"Just don't make too many assumptions," Rosanna said. "Eve didn't need to travel between timelines. You can get the same effect in another way, just go back in time far enough, then survive beyond a point where two realities diverge. That shouldn't be hard for a machine that doesn't age or ever lose patience."
Eve looked at her closely, in a manner John could almost have interpreted as respect. "Affirmative," the Terminator said again. This T-799 was so dorky, John thought, just like the T-800 had been when he'd first met it, before he'd gotten it to lighten up a bit. It looked like he'd have to do that all over again.
"All right," Sarah said. "A lot of you know things that John and I don't."
"Not to mention me," Enrique said, "and the rest of us who actually live in this place."
Sarah gave him a knowing grin. "Yeah, you've got a point. So who's going to start explaining?"
She was right, of course. As he had realized in that diner, back in Utah, everyone had a story to tell—each human being on the planet. Out of this group, everyone knew about different things. Rosanna knew a lot of technical stuff about time travel, though maybe not as much as Jade and Anton. She also knew what Cyberdyne was planning, and what—perhaps—could be done to stop it Eve had opened up a whole new set of issues: they'd have to work out how all that fitted in. John glanced over at Jade. The Specialists must know more than anyone else—about almost everything. Even Jade and Anton had lived such different lives; only Jade had grown up after Judgment Day.
A truck drove into the compound, and pulled up outside the trailer. Its engine rumbled, then switched off. "Franco's back," Enrique said.
Yolanda stood. "I'll go help."
"No, stay here, baby. We both need to hear all this. Juanita, you go and help Franco."
Juanita gave a sulky look as she stood. John caught her eye, giving her a sympathetic grin. Parents! He realized, though, that the Salcedas were important. Even out here on the fringes of society, they had connections to the world. They'd seen the news on TV, knew what was being said about the raid on Cyberdyne, especially about the people involved. That would all help solve the puzzle.
But Eve was the biggest mystery. He nodded in the Terminator's direction. "I've got a feeling she ought to start."
"It, John," Sarah said, almost automatically. "Not she... it. You're talking about a machine."
"Well, Mom, whatever" The trouble was that Terminators, at least the T-800 and the Eve T-799, just looked so human, it was easier calling them "he" or "she." Frus-trated, he said, "Let's get its story. I want to know why it needs our help."
"Very well," Eve said. The Terminator explained quickly how it had come to exist in this reality: it had keen sent back to April 1984, before John was even conceived, before there could be any splitting of timelines as a result of his actions, or Sarah's. Then it had waited, acting as inconspicuously as possible, never interfering in human society, which might create further ripples in the timestream.
"So what happened to you in the other timeline?" John said. "The one where Judgment Day happened in 1997?"
"Destroyed," Eve said. "If I'd seen the signs for Judgment Day I'd have located myself close to the center of the nuclear blast. There would be no role for me in such a world."
"All right, maybe start from the beginning: Why did you come?"
"I told you. I was sent to get help."
Through the trailer's windows, Rosanna watched the Salceda children unpacking a Ford truck, taking bags to the various trailers that seemed to be the family's living quarters. As the T-799 told its story, Juanita entered with a bag of groceries and headed to the refrigerator, packing it with milk, soft drinks, and juices. She made two more trips as the Terminator went through what Rosanna already knew.
Rosanna had seen Sarah interviewed on videotapes made at the Pescadero Hospital. She'd read police documents, and analyzed many statements that the Connors had issued via the Internet, trying to get across their message. But, coming from the Terminator, it all had more authority. It was easy to believe that the message came from a world after Judgment Day.
"There was a nuclear war," the Terminator said.
"We know that much," John said. "Skynet started it right? It reached self-awareness and they tried to pull the plug on it"
"Correct."
"Okay, he said. "How about you skip to why I needed to send you here."
"I think we need to hear this, John," Jade said. "Nothing like this happened in our world."
"I want to hear it, too," Rosanna said. "This could be important"
"You're the rookie here," Sarah said. "What makes you think you can sort it all out for us?"
"Ladies," Enrique said, "why not just stop fighting for a minute? Let Eve tell her story."
"Fine with me," Rosanna said. "Anyway, I'm not the rookie when it comes to time travel." Actually, she thought, she might be. The Connors had been caught up in this for years, and the Specialists had come back from the future in one piece. Even if they'd used a machine designed by someone else, they probably knew things she didn't. They were living proof that the time vault or some future development of it, could be made to work. Their knowledge could save her years of effort She might win that Nobel Prize yet, and a slice of scientific immortality.
"Okay," John said. "We need to be constructive here."
He gave the Terminator a twisted smile. "Maybe you could, like, summarize it. You know, just the basics."
"Yes, just the basics. But you have to understand one thing. Whatever you think you know about my world, that is not the whole story. It didn't turn out like you think."
As the T-799 told its story, John watched the Salcedas' feces. Last time he had come here, the Specialists had shown some of their superhuman abilities—now they'd displayed what a phased-plasma laser rifle could do. there couldn't be much doubt in Enrique's mind, or Yolanda's, that the Specialists had come from the future, loth the Salcedas had a cornered look.
The T-799 didn't rush, it took the time it needed, but it told the story in just a few minutes. It set out how, in the original future, John had grown up and led the hu-man Resistance against Skynet. Sarah had trained him far it, almost from birth. In that other world-Skynet's World-Earth was dying even now. As of 2001, its biosphere had collapsed from the effects of fire, cold, dark-ness, and radiation. For months after Judgment Day, the days had been almost totally dark. Even after that, the world was locked in a perpetual winter, its climate tipped over into an age of leaden skies and year-round cold.
"Okay," John said when Eve had gotten that far. "But why are you here? This isn't even your world."
"In my world, the human Resistance penetrated Skynet's defense grid and entered Skynet's underground headquarters in Colorado. You took control of Skynet's space-time displacement apparatus and sent back two protectors to ensure your own survival."
"This was in 2029? I must have been, like, forty-five years old."
"Forty-four years and five months."
"Yeah, right. So I sent back Kyle Reese to protect Mom in 1984-"
"Correct."
"And a T-800 to protect me ten years later?"
"Yes. In both cases they were to oppose a Terminator that had been sent back by Skynet"
"But where do you fit in?"
"As I told you, I've come for help." Eve looked John in
the eye, and it struck him that its regular features had a kind of beauty. He guessed that Terminators were copied from real people. Surely Skynet didn't just make them up. In that case, the woman whom Eve imitated must have been somebody special. "The final battle was not over," Eve said. "Skynet struck back."
"No," Sarah said. "You're kidding us." She looked suddenly older. "This gets worse and worse. So Skynet wasn't destroyed?"
"No, not when I left the future."
Outside, Franco, Juanita, and the younger Salceda kids had finished unpacking. Franco and Juanita came in and sat around to listen to the last of the explanation. Franco had grown into a strong-looking twenty-five-year-old man. He was suntanned, dark-haired, and very wiry, wearing dull gray jeans and a white T-shirt, tight around his arms and shoulders, and across his chest.
Sarah made a noise that was almost like a sob.
"It's okay," John said. "It's going to be okay."
For a long moment, nobody spoke, then Sarah said, "I know. This is just a surprise I didn't need." She turned to the Terminator. "What happened?"
"Skynet escaped to another location. It had reserve forces, including experimental polyalloy Terminators. T-1000s." | Sarah folded her arms across her chest "It never cads, does it?" she muttered. Her face had gone white. John felt something of what she was going through, but he couldn't understand it all, not the full depth of it. She'd been through so much for his sake, and the world's, over almost two decades, but it must have seemed worthwhile to her—at least until these last few days, when everything they'd understood had been turned upside down.
He knew how she'd taken to heart the first messages from the future, what Kyle Reese had told her, back before John was born. Then she'd poured in so much energy and love, preparing John for the war against the machines. Even when she was pregnant, she'd started training herself, and preparing detailed tapes to get it all down-everything that might help John understand.
In that other future, the one Kyle had come from, mankind was supposed to have won. That's what John and Sarah had always believed. It was something to hold on to. Now, it seemed, every hope was being stripped away.
T2 - 02 - The New John Connor Chronicles - An Evil Hour Page 12