Rising Storm t2-2

by S. M. Stirling

  The moped fishtailed and almost went over, but she managed to bring it to a skidding halt, sideways to the main road. The limo came on and Sarah gasped in horror.

  The gunmen, intent now on capturing their targets, ceased firing, but leaned farther out, shouting insults and threats. They came on fast and Sarah wondered if the goons intended to smash them into the wall.

  "John!" she said, and hopped off the moped, readying herself to jump onto the limo's hood. In a second her son stood beside her.

  The alley narrowed almost imperceptibly just beyond the deceiving curve.

  Before the driver could stop, the momentum of the car forced it tightly into the alley; the gunmen disappeared and the glossy sides of the vehicle screeched as they were crushed against the stone walls of the surrounding houses.

  "Whoa!" John said, wincing. "That's gotta hurt!"

  Blowing out her breath, Sarah let her head hang for a moment. Then there was a tapping sound from the limo. They, whoever had survived, were trying to break through the windshield. Thank God for bulletproof, shatterproof glass, she thought.

  "C'mon," she said to her son. "Let's get out of here before they manage to break

  out."

  John snorted in amusement and took hold of the bike. Together they lifted it up onto the hood and rolled it onto the roof. Within the car they could hear them screaming and pounding on the windshield and roof. When John and Sarah stepped up onto the roof shots rang out, followed by screams and curses as the bullets ricocheted around the armored interior.

  It's like they're the Keystone Kops, Sarah thought, shaking her head in disbelief. I know Garmendia's men aren't the brightest tools in the shed, but John knew better than that when he was seven!

  They got down off the back as silence fell within the limo. Sarah glanced at the blank glass and opened her belt pouch. She pulled out a set of lock picks and got to work on the trunk lock.

  There was a sudden series of blows on the back windshield.

  "I'd just like to remind you, Lazaro," Sarah said, her voice mild in spite of her having to speak loudly enough to be heard in the backseat, "that that glass is the only thing between you and me." She looked up at the window. "And you've been shooting at my son."

  There was silence for a moment, then the dim imprint of a face as Garmendia got as close as he could to the rear windshield. "You lied to me, Connor! Your brat there, he threatened to tell!"

  "I haven't broken my word," Sarah said, her voice hard. "The kid was bluffing, Lazaro. I swore that I would never tell and I never will, not even to him." Her

  eyes narrowed. "I don't give my word often, Garmendia, and I don't break it when I do. But I'll break you if you DON'T BACK DOWN!"

  The smuggler's face disappeared from the window and there was silence in the limo. Sarah went back to work on the lock. In less than thirty seconds she had it open.

  "You're out of practice, Mom," John said as the lid came up.

  "Everybody's a critic," Sarah groused. Then she sucked in her breath through her teeth at the sight of von Rossbach. "Eeee-ee," she said.

  The big man lay on his side, his hands tied behind his back, his blond hair soaked in blood. As was the side of his face, and his nose and eye had begun to swell.

  I could sure use a drink, Sarah suddenly thought. A chaotic snarl of emotion was erupting within her, horror at her friend's condition mixed with compassion, as well as rage at Garmendia for doing this to him. Not to mention the stiff anger she felt toward Dieter for being so foolish, and John for risking himself, and herself for risking John. It was almost overwhelming. She licked her lips.

  A nice drink would sure… Do no good whatsoever. A smoke would be nice, too, but that wouldn't help either. She took a deep breath and pushed the insidious cravings aside. "You awake?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

  "Barely," he said. Dieter turned his head and looked at her. His eyes were mere slits in the bruised flesh. He tried to smile.

  "Uh, Dieter," she said, her heart sinking.

  Reaching in, she checked his bonds. John tapped her on the shoulder, flicking his right hand to set the blade of his balisong. She took the wickedly sharp little knife and cut the sisal twine, unwound the ropes from where they were digging into his wrists. Shaking her head, she stood back to look at him.

  "C'mon," she said, "let's get you out of there."

  "You sound like a nurse," he quipped.

  Sarah didn't answer but held on to his shoulder to keep him from falling over.

  John hastened to lend a hand, supporting him from the other side.

  Glancing at the moped, John said, "Mom, we can't get him away on that. We'll look like a team of Chinese acrobats."

  Putting a hand to her forehead, Sarah tightened her lips as she thought. "You have a place to stay?" she asked quietly.

  John nodded.

  "Okay," she said. "Go steal a car. I'll follow you back on the moped. Once we've got him inside, you can return it to the same neighborhood."

  Without another word John jogged off.

  "You've got him well trained," Dieter said, impressed as always at the way John and his mother worked together.

  "Shut up," she said, offhandedly. Then she frowned at him. "You can lie down until he gets back."

  "I don't think so, if you don't mind," the Austrian said. He gripped the edge of the trunk and began to climb out. Sarah steadied him. "Is there a point to this?"

  "Yeah." Dieter worked his sore jaw. "I'm afraid I'll go unconscious again." He sat on the back bumper.

  "CONNOR!" Garmendia shouted from within the limo.

  Actually she was surprised he'd been this patient.

  "Yeah?" she answered.

  "Get me out of here!"

  Given the company he was keeping, she could well understand his desperation.

  "Hang on," she called back. "Don't worry," she said to Dieter. "I have no intention of doing anything until you two are well out of here. Even then I might only give him advice." She smiled slightly and shook her head. "You're an idiot.

  You know that?"

  "John advised me against it," he admitted.

  "I figured that," she said.

  He frowned slightly, then winced as the movement hurt. "How did you know?"

  "You were alone in the trunk," she said.

  John and Dieter had been gone about ten minutes, and it had taken both of them to walk him back down the alley to the car John had boosted. Sarah shook her head as she remembered how weak he'd been. Ideally they'd be out of town before Garmendia made it out of this alley, but von Rossbach's condition made that chancy.

  She let out a deep breath and slammed the trunk lid. "Okay," she said. "What have you been doing in there?"

  "Smothering and waiting for you to get us out," Garmendia snapped.

  Sarah grinned. "Well, I guess I could shoot a few holes in the window and you can kick it out. But if I were you I wouldn't be too comfortable with that idea."

  "What do you suggest, Senhora?" Lazaro sneered.

  "Haven't you got a cell phone? Why don't you just call your garage?" she said.

  "You're going to need a tow anyway. I'm not your mommy, Lazaro; this isn't up to me. You wouldn't be in this fix in the first place if you weren't doing something damned stupid."

  Not to mention if I hadn't been doing something damn stupid. She'd been a lot more focused when she was crazy. Now that I know they're still out there maybe I should let myself go crazy again. Lazaro banged on the glass. Speaking of crazy.

  "I don't have my phone with me."

  Sarah rolled her eyes. "Okay," she said. "Who do you want me to call?"

  Twenty-four hours later they were on the road to Asuncion in an old wreck of a car that she had gotten by calling in an old debt. Garmendia had agreed to leave them alone on the condition that they left town immediately and never contacted him again. This came about because Lazaro was totally thrown by the new, sane Sarah.

  Enjoy it while you can, Sarah thought
at him. Who knows how long it will last.

  "Mom?" John said. "Are you all right?"

  She put a hand on her hip, feeling the lumpy crumpled bulk of the bandage under the cloth; the wound wasn't bleeding much, but it needed a doctor to take out the slug, and there hadn't been time.

  "I've been better, but it'll heal. Another of my patchwork of scars," she went on, smiling at Dieter's lumpy, bruised face; it was going to turn every color of the rainbow soon.

  "I shouldn't have left you with Garmendia," he fretted.

  "It wasn't him. It was the bodyguard, the freak," she repeated patiently. "And Garmendia shot him, right afterward. If you'd been there, you might have caught this—and between your eyes, possibly."

  "Garmendia shot him?" Dieter asked. "The one who looked like a giant Neanderthal in a guayabera?"

  "In the back," Sarah said.

  Dieter touched the side of his face, wincing. "It's an unfamiliar sensation."

  "A bruise?"

  "No, feeling envious of Garmendia," the Austrian said. "I wanted to be the one who shot that guy, very much."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LOS ANGELES

  Clea did her best to project untutored country girl at the CEO and president of Cyberdyne. In an effort to aid that effect she'd worn a denim skirt and jacket with a red plaid Western shirt, her tooled leather belt had a big silver buckle, and on her feet were a pair of well-broken-in cowboy boots. The rustic costume, with the glasses and attitude, she hoped, would eliminate any resemblance to Serena's slick corporate look and, therefore, to Serena.

  As long as he doesn't focus on my tits, some sardonic corner of her mind thought.

  They're just like Serena's. Clea scowled at the inner voice; it was far too much like the recorded memories of her clone sister/mother. Eventually they would notice; it was inevitable. But by that time they would be used to her and might comment on the resemblance, but they wouldn't be suspicious. Merely curious.

  That's one of the things I actually like about humans— their willingness to explain away anything strange. From what she'd observed, on her own and through Serena's memories, they'd perform some unbelievably convoluted feats of logic to return to their everyday frame of reference. At times she found it incredible that these people had conceived and built Skynet.

  The I-950 set her battered briefcase on the conference-room table and extracted a portable computer, smiling nervously at the two men as she set it up. The new corporate HQ was nothing like Serena's memories of the underground center the Connors had destroyed; it was pure minimalist functionality, the sort of

  "nothing" that cost a great deal of money, and left you wondering if anything as vulgar as paper ever crossed anyone's desk. Some of the people in the cubicles outside weren't even using thin-screen monitors; they were peering into the telltale blackness of vision goggles, miniature lasers painting text and diagrams directly on their retinas.

  "Would you like some coffee?" the president of Cyberdyne offered. Paul Warren hefted a carafe with his own hands, considerable condescension from an executive at his level.

  She shook her head and gave him a shy smile. He smiled back warmly and she knew she'd taken the right tack with him. Serena had considered initiating a romantic affair with him, but she'd miscalculated his affection for his wife. This was one instance in which Serena's mistake really didn't matter, though. The woman had had to die, even if it did turn out to be a setback in other areas.

  By now, though, he must be lonely and his distress over his wife's death should be fading. Perhaps she should co-opt Serena's plan for herself. Although the very thought of intimate relations with a human revolted her.

  "Welcome to Cyberdyne," Roger Colvin said. "I think, based on what I saw at the unveiling the other night, that we've got a lot to offer each other."

  Clea squirmed as though pleased and allowed her face to flush as though she was

  embarrassed. Don't overdo it, she warned herself. "Thank you," she said aloud, allowing just a touch of Montana into her voice.

  "I was just wondering," Warren said, "what have you named your product and have you got a copyright on it."

  "I, uh, sent in the paperwork, but I hadn't heard back before I left home." She shrugged. "It may be that it hasn't caught up with me yet."

  "We'll check on that for you," Colvin said. "What name have you registered it under?"

  "Intellimetal," Clea said. She smiled ruefully. "That's more for what it will be one day than for what it can do now. What Mr. Hill was working with was my earliest successful prototype."

  "Really," Colvin said, his voice dripping with interest.

  "Uh-huh," she said, smiling. "But"—she twisted her fingers together—"I'd rather not go into detail until we've come to some sort of agreement." Clea shrugged prettily. "My uncle was a stickler for getting things in writing. Never agree to anything until you see it written down, he'd say. It always looks different then."

  Warren and Colvin exchanged a glance that said, "This little lady might be inexperienced, but she's nobody's fool."

  They set to work, and work it was. Clea knew exactly what she wanted, how much she wanted, and what terms she'd accept. As far as she was concerned, almost nothing was negotiable, however hard the two humans tried. Two hours

  later Clea typed in the last word of her "rough notes," as she called them, on her portable and handed the CEO a disk.

  "There ya go," she said cheerfully. "Now I'll need to see this all written up formally before I can even begin to decide for sure what I want to do."

  "Thank you," Colvin said palely.

  "You're welcome." She met his eyes and leaned forward confidentially. "I would like to leave you contemplating this one little idea I had. Now, I haven't done any real special work on it, but I've been thinking about it real hard." Watch the Montana effect, she warned herself. She was in serious danger of enjoying her role too much.

  "We'd love to hear about it," Warren said, leaning forward himself.

  "Well. You know the F-101, that flying-wing stealth plane?"

  The two men nodded.

  "The only reason something like that can keep from crashing is because it has an onboard computer that makes thousands of adjustments a minute." Her listeners nodded again. "So I was thinking, what we need is a machine that can do that and know it's doing it. You know what I mean?"

  Colvin and Warren exchanged nervous glances.

  "A machine like that could control thousands of planes, thousands of miles apart.

  And not just planes, either, but tanks and gun emplacements and even battle

  robots." Clea sat back, having noticed long since the subtly appalled expressions on their faces. "Not detailed control—it would be a distributed system—but a strategic artificial intelligence… Is something wrong?"

  "No, no. It sounds fascinating," Warren reassured her. "But… well, perhaps at some future date we could look into something like that. But right now you've put so much into developing Intellimetal that we'd like to help you with that project."

  She was silent for a moment, her glance roving from one to the other. "Really?"

  Clea tapped her fingertips on the arms of her chair. "Because I've always thought of Cyberdyne as one of the foremost robotics specialists in the field. I had the impression that artificial intelligence was sort of your bailiwick."

  "You have to understand, Ms. Bennet"—Colvin spread his hands helplessly

  —"that in some instances our hands are tied."

  Her eyes widened. "Oh!" she said, looking from one to the other. "I see." Then she shrugged, and allowed another blush. "And here I thought I was being original."

  "I'm sure that anything that comes out of that brain of yours is original, Ms.

  Bennet," Colvin said.

  "Absolutely," Warren agreed eagerly.

  Clea smiled at them. "Well then," she said, rising. "I'm sure you gentlemen have a great deal to do and I've already taken up an amazing amount of your time."

 
"Not at all." Colvin rose with her and extended his hand.

  She shook it, smiling, and turned to Warren, who had offered his hand as well.

  "I'll look forward to hearing from you, then."

  With a nod the I-950 preceded them out of the room and without another word or backward glance marched down the corridor toward the elevator.

  Warren looked askance at the CEO and gestured toward the young woman. "Is she annoyed, or something?" he asked.

  Colvin shook his head. "No, I don't think so. She may be a little socially backward. Apparently she was raised by an eccentric uncle in the wilds of Montana and they didn't get out much. Home schooling, the whole nine yards.

  She's never even been to a university."

  "You're kidding!" Warren said, appalled.

  Colvin held up his hand. "I know what you're going to say."

  "Yeah, and I'm going to say it, too. Why would we want to hire some kid who's never even graduated from college, especially at the price and on the terms she's demanding? That's crazy."

  "We're trying to hire her so that we can exploit this metal she's invented. You have to see this statue to believe it, Paul. It's the most amazing thing I've ever laid eyes on."

  "Why don't I just hop on a plane to New York, then, and go take a peek?"

  Warren asked.

  "Why don't you just trust me, buddy?" Colvin said, putting an arm around the president's shoulders. "I know what I'm doing here. Believe me, if we don't snap her up now somebody else will. Look, we're going to put in an escape clause, right? So we can both walk away if it doesn't work out and nobody's a loser.

  Right?"

  "If she walks she'll take that Intellimetal with her," the president warned.

  "You've gotta trust our lawyers to write a better contract than that," Colvin said with a smile.

  Clea was pleased. They'd accepted her without question. For the first time in ages she felt that she'd performed well. The only downside was that they hadn't risen to the bait she'd dangled in the way she'd expected. Could it be that they really weren't involved in the Skynet project any longer?