Rising Storm t2-2

by S. M. Stirling

  "I will, I will," she said, smiling.

  "And get to work." His eyes were already roving up and down the corridor.

  "I will, I will," she repeated, closed the door, locked it, and went to the computer bay.

  Clea spit the feed, watching Connor fruitlessly check the labs while his "sweetie"

  got to work. The girl stripped off her bra and slid a pair of microdiskettes out of

  a slit in the lining. Not bad, the I-950 thought, amused. She watched fascinated as the girl put the disk into its drawer and began to work.

  The I-950 was reasonably confident that the security protocols they'd installed in the Skynet program could defeat any worm that this child could come up with.

  Viemeister might be a prick, and he hadn't yet made Skynet intelligent, but he was no slouch in the security department. So this material would be shunted into a buffer, where the computer would evaluate it.

  At first she was puzzled by what she was reading. Then she sucked in her breath in amazement. This was it! This was the key to Skynet's living intelligence. Why would their worst enemy deliver it to them?

  And then she understood; they would enumerate every possible path that led to sentience and then program the machine to ignore any paths or commands leading to that result. Unless the programmers knew those codes were there, they could batter their heads against an impenetrable wall of cross-commands for a very long time.

  Viemeister might figure it out eventually, but probably not before his funding ran out. Or his patience. He wasn't the kind of human who clung to a project that didn't work out. Well, there was the Nazi thing, but he was really involved with that more to annoy people than for any sincere belief.

  Clea rose from her chair. The girl had brought two disks; she had to stop her before she installed whatever was on the second one.

  Dieter studied the GPS unit and it told him that he was very close to the base, possibly within ten minutes if he could keep up this pace. Good. he thought.

  Because he suspected he was getting a nice little case of frost-nip on his toes and face.

  He'd turned the balaclava around and made tiny holes on the solid back surface in hopes of protecting his eyes from snow blindness, and now that the wind had turned, he hoped it would keep them from freezing all together. It felt like his lungs were raw right to the bottom, not that he could breathe that deeply. He held his arms tight around himself to keep his ribs as still as possible, which wasn't very, and tried to ignore the pain. He had so many to choose from by now that it was almost easy.

  There was a copper-penny taste in the back of his throat as though he was bleeding, and he was very thirsty. Ice kept forming on the wool around his mouth and nose, making his lips sore and increasing the likelihood of frostbite.

  All in all, not one of my better days.

  He slogged on as quickly as he could push himself. When the first of the base's sheds came into view, he said a heartfelt "thank God!" and hurried toward it.

  It was small on closer examination, obviously a storage shed, but by then he could see a larger building looming up, and headed for it. Off to his right a moving shape came toward him and he paused, thinking it must be someone from the base. It was almost upon him before he could make out what it was.

  "Oooh, no! Not another fucking seal!"

  The creature barked and stretched its neck out at him, teeth bared.

  With all the strength that frustration, desperation, and outrage could lend a man,

  von Rossbach hauled off and belted the exhausted animal. It made a small sound and collapsed at his feet, rolling onto its back with flippers extended in a limp V-shape. Dieter swayed in the wind, looking down at it for a moment, not quite believing it had been that easy. It stayed down.

  "Good," he said with a satisfied nod, and headed for the largest shed.

  Burns, Tricker thought, must save Burns. No, not Burns, Bennet. Bennet was the asset. Burns was an asset to Cyberdyne. And she had assets. She'd tried to use those assets to vamp him. But she didn't try very hard, he thought regretfully. He frowned. Bennet, not Burns. Have to save Bennet. Bennet wasn't Burns. But she might be. Two peas in a pod.

  He blinked and shook his head, regretting it instantly as it rang like a carillon.

  "Shit!" he said aloud. He tried to move and found himself well and truly bound.

  "Shit," he said again, with much more resignation.

  What had he been thinking about? Oh, yes. Burns and Bennet and how much alike they looked. The two women might be identical twins. What were the odds of that, two unrelated people looking exactly alike except for hair color. Which could easily be handled by Lady Clairol.

  And what the hell did it matter? He had to get out of here and down to the labs, where the action was. Tricker started to pull his belt around. One edge of the buckle was especially sharp, something that came in handy for times like these.

  Then he heard the outside door open and slam shut.

  The shed door was unlocked and Dieter entered, slammed it behind him, and slid

  down its surface to rest on the floor. To him the room was pitch-dark. Didn't escape the snow blindness entirely, he thought, disappointed. But at least he wasn't going to freeze. He pushed back his hood and yanked the soaking balaclava from his head. Next time he was going to get one of those fleece ones.

  Better yet, he thought, next time there's not going to be a next time. He knew now, right down in his bones, how close he'd come to dying out there. If the wind had been just a little worse…

  "Hey!" a voice called from another room. "Who's out there?"

  With a mental sigh Dieter got himself to his feet, then cautiously moved farther into the room. "Hello?" he said.

  "Who is that?" the voice called. "Viemeister?"

  "I can't see," Dieter said as he bumped into what felt like an office chair. He took hold of it and pushed it in front of him like a bulky white cane. "I've got a touch of snow blindness. Keep talking and I'll find you."

  "Over here," Tricker called. "There's a hallway. I'm in the first room on your left.

  This way."

  Dieter found the wall and followed it, still pushing the chair until his hand fell through an opening. "It's pitch-dark for me," he said. "Are the lights on at all?"

  "No. There's a switch to the right of the door, about four inches from the frame."

  Von Rossbach found the switch easily and flicked it on. To him the light was

  dim, but he could easily make out a man tied up on a bunk. "Ah! I see my young friends have already been here," he said with a smile.

  "You must be the guide they mentioned," Tricker said sourly. "Did they try to kill you, too?"

  "Did they try to kill you?" Dieter asked, surprised. He unzipped the parka and began to shrug out of it.

  Tricker thought about it. "No. I guess not." He lifted his bound hands significantly. "You gonna help me out here?"

  "No," Dieter said, and turned around, peering into the dark of the hallway.

  " No?" Tricker said. "Why not?"

  "They're just a couple of crazy kids," von Rossbach explained. "There's no real harm in them. I'll round them up and get them out of your way. The thing is, if they've tied you up they must have had a reason. Until I find out what that is, it might not be safe to let you go. Eh?"

  "Buddy, this is a U.S. government scientific installation! I demand that you let me go."

  Dieter looked at him. "Are you the only one here?" he asked mildly.

  Tricker hesitated. "At the moment, yeah."

  "You might have a touch of cabin fever, then. It may be that you attacked my young friends. Where are they, anyway? Is there another large building on this

  base? I didn't see one."

  Tricker tightened his lips and put his head back down on the pillow. "Maybe they ran off into the storm," he muttered.

  "And left you like this? I hardly think they'd be so irresponsible."

  "They left you, didn't they?" Tricker said precisely.
<
br />   "A different situation altogether," Dieter assured him. His eyes were beginning to adjust and he could see things, finally. Like the roll of duct tape on a shelf and the open door on the other side of the hall. He picked up the duct tape and began to wind it tightly around his torso, feeling immediate relief. He cut it off with the knife he found on the shelf. It was John's; he decided to keep it. "I'll just have a look around for them, shall I?"

  "Like you'd stay put if I told you no?" Tricker muttered.

  "Surely you want me to find them," von Rossbach said cheerfully. Even his face wasn't feeling so bad now; maybe he'd escaped frostbite after all.

  "Oh, surely," Tricker muttered as he heard the man clatter down the stairs and then heard the elevator begin to work. Don't call me Shirley, he thought woozily.

  He'd only been awake for maybe a minute when he heard the man come in.

  Then, when he'd heard that slight accent, he'd thought, crazily, that it might be Viemeister coming after Bennet.

  That kid must have hit me pretty hard, he thought. Hell, if I'm imagining that

  super-kraut would risk his precious ass in an Antarctic blizzard for a woman who has publicly rejected him, then I might actually have brain damage. But then this place seemed to be turning into Grand fucking Central Station, so who knew who was going to turn up next.

  He got to work pulling his belt around so that he could use the buckle to get him out of this mess. This definitely wasn't one of his most shining moments, he complained to himself. On the downside, it was three to one and the kid had his gun.

  But on the upside, that wasn't his only gun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Clea was hiding in one of the labs that John had already inspected when she heard the elevator engage. Empty, she thought as she mentally switched to the surveillance camera. But von Rossbach waited patiently for it to arrive…

  She had assumed the Sector agent was dead and was not pleased to see him.

  Still, having almost all of her important enemies in one isolated place had its charm. Though having one less to worry about would be even more charming.

  So far the seals had been a disappointment. "If only Antarctica had polar bears!"

  she mused.

  The I-950 quickly moved to a lab three doors closer to Viemeister's when John entered another lab to inspect it. She watched Wendy work through the security cameras, and evaluated the program, even helped her when the girl got bogged down too much. It would be necessary to be careful, though; it wouldn't do to

  help her so much that she began to install the second and, presumably, dangerous part of her program.

  Meanwhile von Rossbach had entered the elevator and was on his way down.

  Fortunately, one of the base's security measures was the ability to halt the elevator at any point. Clea did so now, freezing it between the office and laboratory floors.

  From the look of the man, she doubted he'd be able to squeeze through the escape hatch. Of course he could just break the controls— but that would send the car plummeting to the bottom of the shaft. Actually overriding them would take either sophisticated equipment or specialized knowledge and a great deal of patience. Which left him out of the equation for the moment.

  Tricker was still writhing around on the bunk, trying to get free. And even if he was free, how was he going to get down here? The elevator was disabled, and the emergency exit couldn't be opened from outside, so that was two down.

  Which left her free to deal with Connor and the girl. It would be the girl first after all. Connor would return to her eventually, which was convenient. And once she'd ensured that the girl's program couldn't harm Skynet, the I-950 would have plenty of time to deal with all of the humans.

  Clea slipped down the corridor to Viemeister's lab. It amused her that despite all of his elaborate precautions, it seemed never to have occurred to Connor that she might have a key to this door. Such a simple thing, she thought, silently working the lock, but so very important. The I-950 slid into the lab so quietly that Wendy never once looked up.

  Tricker flung the last of the duct tape from him in disgust. Then he rushed out to the office to put on his parka and gloves. Step one, he thought, is to find whatever damned jamming device they've brought with them and disable it. Even if McMurdo couldn't send help because of the storm, they'd at least be able to block their escape. He flung open the door, swearing under his breath.

  Something huge reared up with a roar and threw itself at him, stinking of rotten fish and gleaming with fangs. Tricker slammed the door and braced himself against it as it nearly jarred loose from its hinges when the thing struck. The pressure wasn't constant; he just managed to slam it home and work the dead bolt before the next lunge hit it. He wished he had a bar to put across like a castle gate.

  Was that a seal? he thought in disbelief. An unmistakable series of urrrfing barks and a less violent hammering answered the thought.

  "Yes," he said numbly, "that's a seal." A very big, homicidal seal.

  Every time he opened this door today there was something dangerous out there—

  a whiteout blizzard, the spy kids, a killer seal.

  Would-be killer seal, he corrected himself as his heart rate returned to normal.

  He wouldn't count the mystery guide; the guy had let himself in.

  But what the hell was a seal doing way out here? And what did it have against him? Maybe he was getting cabin fever; maybe this whole day and all the wild things that had happened were all some paranoid fantasy. What were the symptoms of cabin fever anyway? Could you detect them in yourself? I was wondering things like this a good sign or a bad sign?

  Maybe there wasn't a seal out there, maybe he'd imagined it. There's only one way to find out, he thought, standing away from the door. He seized the latch and took a deep breath. And I'm not going to do it. He turned away and slipped off his gloves and parka.

  So he couldn't call McMurdo. Given his state of mind, maybe that was for the best. Wait a minute, if someone knocks you out and you wake up tied to the bed, that's not paranoia. That was… something else.

  He ducked under his desk and flipped up the carpet. Underneath was a board with a ring attached; he lifted it and revealed a parcel wrapped in oilcloth.

  Taking it out, he closed the small cubby and tossed back the rug, then sat at the desk. As he unwrapped the gun he watched the monitor, his fingers automatically stripping the action, reassembling it, slapping home the magazine.

  A few spares went into his pockets.

  The guide was in the elevator. Still? Tricker thought with surprise. He wondered what had gone wrong. For a few seconds he watched the man work on the control box. That's government property, pal, you'd better know what you're doing. Then the view changed.

  After a few of the labs had flicked by on the screen, Viemeister's came into view.

  Bennet was standing by the door watching the girl work on her computer. She stood absolutely still and it was obvious that the younger woman had no idea that she was there. For some reason, something about the sight sent a chill down Tricker's spine. Very few human beings could stand that still. Almost anyone would make the small unconscious movements and sounds that gave the one being watched that I'm-being-watched feeling. He'd better get down there before

  something nasty happened.

  Wendy had disabled every one of Kurt Viemeister's security protocols. She was feeling very proud of herself, even though she had a hunch that these had been mere sketches of what the real security programs would eventually become. But even so, this was Kurt Viemeister's work she was unraveling. It was like jamming with Mozart.

  She tapped a few keys and the sentience program flowed into a buffer she'd created. Now to upload the antisentience program. Really this should have come first, but she hadn't labeled the disks and had actually forgotten which was which. Wendy tapped the button and reached toward the open drawer for the used disk.

  A hand clamped over her wrist, squeezing hard enough to
grind the small bones together. Wendy screamed in pain and surprise. Another hand clamped over her mouth, cutting off the sound before it could reach a climax. The grip that held her face was enormously strong. Wendy thought she felt the bones of her face flex and screamed against the hand that inexorably pulled her from her chair and forced her up onto her toes. Wendy struck out with her free hand to no effect.

  She found herself looking into the pleasantly smiling face of a beautiful young woman. Wendy's eyes bulged and tears of agony poured down her cheeks as she recognized her. This was the woman from the Venus Dancing video, the one John said was a Terminator. She believed him now. She'd thought she believed him before, but she hadn't, not really. She believed him now, though, most completely.

  The woman released Wendy's wrist, allowing her to scratch and pull on the arm that held her. "I'll just take care of this," the woman said, picking up the unused disk. "We wouldn't want my files corrupted, now would we?" She snapped the tiny disk in half and put the pieces in her pocket.

  Wendy kicked her in the knee and the woman shook her, hard. "Don't annoy me," she warned through clenched teeth. "I want to keep you alive because your computer talents may be useful, but that doesn't mean you can't hurt. You may think you're in pain now, but you have no idea."

  John froze where he was and listened. He could have sworn that he heard a woman cry out. Wendy! He stepped to the lab's door and peered out into the corridor, straining his ears. There was no repeat of the sound; there was no sound at all. Yeah, it could be Wendy, or it could be the Terminator trying to draw me out. But there was no one out here. He swallowed hard. I'd better check, he thought.

  He moved quickly down the corridor, gun at the ready, back against the wall, his head and eyes constantly moving until he reached the only closed door he'd left behind him. John tightened his lips anxiously, then, from about two feet away as he pressed his back to the wall, he tapped on the door with the barrel of his gun.

  The I-950 lifted Wendy almost off her feet and called out, "Ye-a-h?" in Wendy's voice. Clea could feel the girl trying to get the breath to scream again, so she pinched her windpipe closed with her other hand. Her victim began to thrash about in earnest now, so the I-950 moved into the center of the room, away from chairs and desks and noise-making objects.