by Timothy Zahn
“Whoa,” Hope said, feeling her eyes widen. “You mean some kid who visited here thirty years ago is back? That’s really... unlikely.”
“Unlikely as in the scratch end of zero,” Preston agreed. “I know. And for the record, it was closer to forty years ago. But I can’t think of any other reason why those two T-700s would suddenly decide to head up opposite sides of the riverbank. Whoever they’re hunting must have gotten across the river, and that’s the only other place for miles where that’s possible.”
“That assumes the bridge is still there, of course,” Hope warned. “Rope bridges and mountain winters don’t exactly go together.”
“Which is why I want to go up there and take a look,” Preston said. He checked his rifle’s magazine, then headed for the door.
“What if the Terminators are waiting?” Hope asked, scooping up her bow and quiver and hurrying to catch up.
“They won’t be,” Preston assured her. “The bridge comes off a narrow path at the bottom of a steep defile. Even if the machines know where it is, they’re not going to be able to get down there without dumping themselves into the river. Best they can do is look down on it from above, and even that’s iffy.” He stopped, eyeing her as she came up beside him. “Where exactly do you think you’re going?”
“With you,” she said. “First thing you taught me was that the forest can be dangerous, and that you don’t go out there alone.”
“I meant that you don’t go out there alone,” he countered.
“We should make up a survival pack before we go,” Hope said, ignoring him. “Whoever’s out there may need food or medical care.” She cocked her head. “And if it turns out he needs carrying, we’ll need two of us there anyway.”
“No,” Preston said firmly. “There are Terminators out there.”
“And they can’t get down your path, remember?” Hope said. “Besides, if Lajard is right, they’re not after us, which means we don’t have anything to worry about.”
“And if Barnes is right?”
“Then we’re all doomed anyway,” Hope said calmly, “and it doesn’t matter whether I’m out there with you or back here in town.”
Her father made a face.
“Did I ever tell you that you inherited your mother’s sense of logic?”
“No, but I’ll take that as a compliment,” Hope said.
“You would.” Preston sighed. “Fine. Go pack a food bag. Nothing too heavy—we’ll be going up and down some tricky slopes. Let me go double-check that I have all the ammo we’ve got for this thing.”
He nodded toward her quiver.
“And you’d better bring all the rest of your arrows, too. Just in case.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ginny Halverson was a small, thin woman with a quiet manner that was in stark contrast to the bluster of her loud and borderline-bullying husband. She accepted Halverson’s sudden imposition of guests without complaint, showed Blair and Barnes to a bedroom, and assured them that a meal would be ready soon.
“We must really look tired,” Blair commented as she looked over the room. Like the couple of rooms she’d seen in Preston’s home, this one was only sparsely furnished, with a large bed piled high with bear skins, a dilapidated chest with two of the drawers missing, and a chunk of log serving as a side table with a large partially burned candle stuck to its top. On the walls beside the room’s single window were more bear skins, probably there as insulation. Clearly, Halverson liked to hunt.
“What was that?” Barnes asked as he lowered his minigun to the floor with a muffled thud.
“I said we must look tired,” Blair repeated. “Everyone here seems to think we need to go rest somewhere.”
“Or else they just don’t want us going anywhere,” Barnes growled as he slid his rifles off his shoulders and propped them against the wall beside the minigun. “Not until they’ve figured out what to do with us.”
Blair felt her stomach tighten. She’d been thinking pretty much the same thing.
“So you think they’re up to something, too?”
“Someone’s sure as hell up to something,” Barnes said darkly. “I don’t care what that idiot Lajard says. Mission or no mission, if Terminators have ammo to spend, they spend it. On people”
“Mmm,” Blair said noncommittally. In general, he was probably right.
On the other hand, she’d seen plenty of H-Ks veer off for strategic or tactical reasons even when they still had something to shoot with. “Maybe Lajard’s right about Skynet being concerned about its ammo supply,” she suggested. “There can’t be a lot of places out here where they can reload.”
“Yeah, and that’s another thing,” Barnes said. He paused by the bed long enough to test its softness with his hands, then continued on to the window. “Where the hell did those machines come from, anyway?”
“Good question,” Blair agreed. “You think it’s possible they’re a search party?”
“Three whole months after they got lost?”
“Point,” Blair admitted. “Maybe they’re remnants from the lab explosion, then. Some perimeter guards or scouts that survived Connor’s attack.”
“Then where were they going?” Barnes countered. “You saw them—they weren’t just wandering around waiting for instructions. They were heading somewhere.”
“Which brings us back to some kind of special mission,” Blair said. “Maybe they didn’t shoot at Preston and the others because there wasn’t any point in doing so. It’s not like their guns were doing a lot of damage.”
“At least, not until we showed up,” Barnes said thought-fully. “And they did shoot at us. They shot at me, anyway.”
Blair thought back to the brief battle.
“The southern one shot at me, too,” she said slowly. “Nothing really came close, but that was mostly because you were keeping it off balance.”
“That’s the same one that blew off a piece of sky over my head when I was putting down the minigun,” Barnes said, peering back and forth out the window.
“Because we were the ones who were a threat.”
“Or because we were the only strangers in the group,” Barnes said.
Blair frowned. That was a possibility that hadn’t occurred to her before.
“You think Skynet’s leaving the locals alone for some reason?”
“Why not?” Barnes asked. “Lajard made a deal with Skynet. Maybe the whole damn town did, too.”
“But why?” Blair persisted. “I can see Skynet wanting human scientists to work for it—there are still things even the smartest computer can’t do. But what can these other people possibly have that that Skynet would want or need?”
“Don’t know,” Barnes said. “But I can tell you right now that Lajard’s story doesn’t hold water. If they were worth hauling in to work in that lab, they were worth sending out an H-K to look for them.”
Blair nodded. “So either the three of them aren’t worth anything, or else Skynet deliberately left them out here for some other reason. Some experiment out in the woods, maybe?”
“You’re the one who found the fancy cable,” Barnes reminded her. “What could they be doing that they’d need a data transfer back to the lab?”
“It could be almost anything,” Blair admitted. “You ever hear about this Theta Project Lajard mentioned?”
Barnes shook his head. “No. But if Skynet had a hundred scientists on it, it must have been pretty damn serious about it.”
“Yeah.” Blair chewed at her lip. “I’m starting to think it might be time for a strategic withdrawal. Whatever’s going on here, it may be more than we can handle on our own.”
“Too late,” Barnes said. “Whatever Skynet’s got going, it’s bound to have a guard on the chopper by now.” He gestured out the window. “But we could follow Preston and see what he’s up to.”
“Preston?” Blair echoed, frowning as she circled the end of the bed and joined Barnes at the window.
Sure enough, Preston and h
is daughter were walking quickly through the middle of town, heading toward the path to the river. Preston had his rifle slung over his shoulder, while Hope had her bow and a very full quiver of arrows at her side.
And both of them were wearing small ragged backpacks.
“Maybe they’re just relieving the watch at the river,” Blair suggested.
“Or maybe they’re not,” Barnes said, stepping back from the window and studying its frame. “Let’s find out.” Turning the lock, he carefully pushed the window open. “Go get the guns.”
Blair looked back at the door, wondering what Halverson would say if he caught his guests sneaking out the bedroom window.
“The minigun, too?”
“Yes,” Barnes said, heading back toward their stack of weapons. “Never mind—I’ll get them. You go on through.”
The open part of the window was narrow, and the glass looked extremely fragile, and Blair had a couple of bad moments as she worked her way through. But she made it without breaking anything. By the time she was on the ground Barnes had returned to the window with everything except the minigun.
“Here,” he said, poking the butt of her Mossberg through the opening.
“No minigun?” Blair asked as she took the shotgun.
“Too big to fit through,” he grunted, poking the SIG 542 toward her. “But I took the rest of the ammo belt.”
Thirty seconds later the weapons, backpacks, and Barnes were all outside with Blair.
“Head around that side of the house,” he ordered, pointing, as he pushed the window closed again. “Long as Halverson and his wife stay in the kitchen they won’t see us.”
They made their way through the town, managing to avoid the handful of people also moving around outside. Preston and Hope were out of sight by the time they reached the edge of the forest, and Blair took special care to keep an eye on the woods around them as they made their way down the path. It was only an assumption, after all, that the Prestons were going all the way to the river.
Five minutes later, they reached the rushing water.
“What now?” Blair asked as she and Barnes peered from behind a screen of branches at the woman and two men standing apprehensive sentry duty at the ford.
“We could ask them where Preston went,” Barnes said doubtfully. “But if the whole town’s in on it, they’ll probably lie.”
“Then let’s not ask them,” Blair said, thinking hard. “In fact, let’s just forget about Preston.”
Barnes eyed her suspiciously. “If you didn’t want to follow them, this is a hell of a time to bring it up.”
“I was thinking we might try a different approach,” Blair said. “Whatever’s going on in Baker’s Hollow, it has to be connected somehow to the cable. We know the cable was running along the far side of the river, or at least the last vector we had on it suggested it was running along that side. If Skynet’s playing games, maybe part of that game is to keep us on this side of the river.”
For a moment Barnes didn’t reply. Blair braced herself, waiting for the inevitable scornful blast...
“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” he said, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “You’re saying Skynet heard us talking about the cable through all those pieces of broken machine lying around outside the lab. It wanted to stop us there—tried to stop us there—only it couldn’t. So it grabbed all the T-700s it had in the area and put them over there. Not to keep someone from getting across from that side, but to keep us from going across from here.”
“Exactly,” Blair said, wondering if he was seriously considering her suggestion or just setting her up for a harder fall.
“What if we’d put down on that side instead of this side?”
“We couldn’t,” Blair said. “There weren’t any clearings big enough to land the Blackhawk, not for miles. Skynet would know that if we wanted to look around over there we’d have to come from here.”
“So why pull the machines out, then?” he persisted. “Why send them upriver?”
“I’m not sure,” Blair admitted. “Maybe it wanted to get them under cover before we could blast them.”
“Or maybe it figured that the town could handle us,” Barnes suggested. “Maybe it thought that once they spun us that story about someone on the run we’d be so busy trying to find him that we’d forget about the cable.”
“Could be,” Blair said cautiously. She was still having trouble buying Barnes’s notion that everyone in Baker’s Hollow was in on some grand conspiracy. But as one of her old wingmen had often said, just because someone was paranoid didn’t necessarily mean he was wrong.
“And by sending one Terminator up each side of the river, it makes us think there’s another way across upstream,” she added slowly. “Which forces us to search both sides for our refugee.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Barnes concluded. “Worth checking out, anyway. You got a plan?”
Blair braced herself. Was this where he was going to cut her down?
“If Skynet doesn’t want us crossing the river,” she said, “I say we do precisely that.”
Once again, he surprised her.
“Okay,” he said. “Go ahead—I’ll cover you in case the guards give you any trouble. Once you’re across, you can cover me.”
“Right,” Blair said, eyeing the guards. For their sake, they’d better not give her any trouble. “Keep an eye out for Preston and Hope, too. There’s no guarantee they’re actually ahead of us.”
With the three guards focused on the river, Blair got within five paces before one of them noticed her and snapped a warning that brought the others spinning around, rifles held at the ready.
“It’s all right,” Blair said hastily. “Blair Williams. I came with Barnes on the helicopter.”
“What’s happened?” one of the men asked, looking anxiously over her shoulder. “Did that Terminator find the town?”
“No, not as far as I know,” Blair assured him. “It occurred to me that no one’s tracking the T-700 that’s still on the other side of the river. I thought I’d go over and see if I can figure out where it’s gone.”
“Sounds dangerous,” the woman said.
“Also stupid,” the first man said brusquely. “We sure as hell don’t want you drawing it over to this side.”
“I won’t,” Blair promised, a thought suddenly occurring to her. “I could use a guide, though. One of you want to come along?”
The first man shook his head. “Halverson told us to stay on guard here.”
“You always do everything Halverson tells you?”
“Damn right,” the first man growled. “You listen to experts, you stay alive longer.” He gestured. “And one of the things experts say is not to go into a forest alone.”
“Oh, I’m not alone,” Blair assured him, glancing back over her shoulder. “I guess he’s fallen behind a little.” She looked back at the others. “Last chance for one of you to come along and help out.”
“Just go,” the man growled. “And if you hear a whistle—three shorts, three longs, three shorts—get back here as fast as you can.”
“We will,” Blair promised, wincing at the thought of a T-700 rampaging through Baker’s Hollow. “I’d better go—Barnes can catch up whenever he catches up. By the way, Preston did head up the east side of the river, right?”
“Preston?” the first man repeated, frowning.
“He was ahead of us,” Blair said. “You didn’t see him?”
“Haven’t seen anyone since you all headed back to town.”
“He might have taken another route,” the woman offered. “There are a couple more paths heading upstream off the main one that you can’t see from here.”
“That’s probably where he went,” Blair said. “See you later.”
Blair had seen the river depth at the ford when the T-700 was crossing, and had already calculated that her boots would be high enough to keep out most of the water. What she hadn’t anticipated was the she
er raw strength of the river’s current. Over the twenty-five-foot trek she had to stop four times to consolidate her balance, and even then nearly had her feet knocked out from under her twice. The water was cold, too, and by the time she stumbled up onto the bank her bad leg was throbbing and her feet felt like chunks of ice. She climbed up a short embankment, found a convenient tree where she would be out of sight of the guards, and drew her Desert Eagle.
She’d barely gotten settled when Barnes appeared, striding toward the river as if he owned it. He didn’t stop to chat with the guards, but merely exchanged nods with them and headed across.
Headed across quite effortlessly, in fact, to Blair’s annoyance. He stopped only once, at one of the spots where Blair had nearly been knocked over, but aside from that simply walked straight through.
Of course, he was massive compared to her. And he’d had the chance to watch her cross first and see where all the trouble spots were.
Blair backed up a few steps as he reached the riverbank, waiting until he’d entered the relative safety of the trees before holstering her gun.
“Anything from the guards?” he asked, turning to look behind him.
Blair shook her head. “They weren’t even watching you, let alone targeting you. I invited one of them to come along with us, too, just to see how they’d react.”
“And?”
“No interest,” she said. “If they’re worried about us stumbling across something we shouldn’t, they’re more worried about disobeying orders.”
“Halverson’s orders.”
“He does seem to be the real power in town,” Blair agreed. “Makes you wonder why they even bother with a title like mayor. Or why Preston’s the one wearing it.”
“Makes me wonder why Preston puts up with him,” Barnes growled. “Where do you want to start?”
“Let’s head up along the river,” Blair suggested. “If we keep the water within hearing distance we shouldn’t get lost.”
“If we head upriver, we might run into that Terminator,” Barnes warned.
“If there’s something out here Skynet’s hiding, we’ll probably run into more than just one.”
