“Sounds like a plan. You should get some sleep.”
“You first.”
She smiled thinly. “It’s always the first thing I do.”
“Right.”
“How soon before the secure line is in?”
“Tomorrow, I think.” He listened to muffled sounds of work from below. “We’ve slept through worse, I guess.”
“Go to bed,” she said. “Tomorrow it starts.”
“Again.”
Sarah nodded wearily. “Again.”
70
SEVEN
Mr. Casse opened his eyes when he heard the office door snick shut. Standing before his desk, two men waited, both dressed in expensive suits, hands folded respectfully in front.
They were different kinds of men in many ways: one pale, one dark; one thickly-muscled, the other lithe; one never smiled, the other…But it had taken Casse a long time to see those differences. Their similarity overwhelmed everything else, as far as he was concerned.
“And?” he said.
The pale one tilted his head to one side. “The Spokane Porter is terminated. We have a location on one other possibility in Eugene. Our contacts there are investigating.”
“Good. How was Spokane done?”
“Our research turned up the fact that he was a diabetic,”
the pale one said. “We arranged an air bubble in his insulin injection. Embolism.”
Casse preferred it this way, the appearance of natural causes or accident. Violence produced questions. So far, no inquiry had come back to him. These two killers were getting better at guaranteeing that nothing looked suspicious enough for a thorough investigation to begin. Eventually, he knew, someone would start making connections. He intended to be finished before that happened.
“What about the Midwest?” he asked.
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“There are several possibles,” the dark one said. “We’ve narrowed it down to seven probables, per your parameters.”
“Most likely?”
“One in Phoenix, one in Santa Fe.”
“See to them. I’m looking into a few in Los Angeles. I want you both to be ready at my call.”
Of all the humans he had dealt with since arriving, Casse found these two easiest and most comprehensible. Their needs were simple to nonexistent, at least as far as he was concerned. He did not know if they actually enjoyed killing, but it never bothered them the way it did most humans.
They kept perspective, never seemed to lose their grasp on the job.
He waved his hand. “Go on. Keep me informed.”
The two men nodded politely and left.
The intercom buzzed. He touched the ACCEPT button.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Cruz is here to see you, sir.”
“Send him.”
Oscar Cruz strode through the door, slowing as he neared the desk, glancing uneasily over its broad surface before stopping a meter away and looking up at Casse. A series of expressions flickered over Cruz’s puffy face before settling into its normal obsequious mask. Casse found him substandard among the humans he used. He questioned too much, more and more as time passed, but he continued to work in the best interest of Skynet. For now, he was valuable. Casse did not think he would continue so for much longer.
“Yes?” he asked.
“McMillin has hired an independent investigator to look into Pioneer,” Cruz said.
“Will this investigator find anything?”
“Possibly. We aren’t finished with Pioneer. McMillin has successfully blocked all our intrusions. It seems he’s in the mood to retaliate.”
“How did he determine that Pioneer was being used as a back door into Destry-McMillin?”
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Cruz shrugged. “Can’t say. He probably guessed. Dennis McMillin is pretty shrewd.”
Casse considered. Of all the problems humans presented, intuition produced the most trouble. He did not understand how they made the conceptual leaps they did with so limited a tool as an organic brain. He realized that his assessment of that tool was flawed, that the problem was not so much that humans possessed an ability beyond comprehension as that he had failed to fully comprehend them.
“What investigator?” he asked.
“An outfit from Santa Fe, actually. PPS Security. They do consultation and assessment work for businesses, provide security in certain cases. Mostly they’re analysts and advisors.”
“Successful?”
“From what I could find out, very low failure rate.”
“So they will just look. They have no law enforcement brief?”
“No, not beyond the usual private investigation licenses and so forth.”
“Who are they? The people.”
“Sean and Julia Philicos are the principals. The ‘S’ is a Jen Salceda. They’ve been slowly branching out since they began three years ago—offices in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, Denver, and now one in Los Angeles.”
“What did they do before?”
“Sean was in the army, then worked for two other security companies before starting his own. Julia was a broker. Salceda has a degree in computer science, just out of college.”
Casse waited. When Cruz remained silent for several seconds, he said, “And?”
“That’s about it. School records, dates of birth, and so forth. Nothing unusual.”
“That does not strike you as unusual?”
Cruz waited.
“In my experience,” Casse continued, “humans do not go into this kind of work as they would take a job in a 73
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factory or a bank. They are unusual in their life experiences.”
“I’ve hired many people of this sort,” Cruz said. “As interesting as their life stories might be, they’re almost always ordinary, unremarkable. Some are misfits, most find they have a flare for this kind of work. A lot of them are ex-police of one kind or another.”
“What category do these particular ones fit? It would be good to know, don’t you think? Just to have some idea what to expect?”
“You would like more information?”
“Yes. Especially now that they have an office in Los Angeles and Colorado Springs. I find that an interesting coincidence. Half their offices are in areas connected to our interests.”
Cruz shook his head. “That’s a bit paranoid, if you don’t mind my saying so. A lot of companies have offices in those areas. They’re following the money.”
“Perhaps. If so, I want to know. Now. Status report?”
Cruz’s posture changed. He seemed to become more respectful, his concentration more evident. “Since finalizing the contracts on the Los Angeles base, I’ve authorized the transfer of equipment out of our Colorado Springs facility, back to Los Angeles. Our people are already inside the plant, starting on the necessary changes to receive components.
We should be able to move all our nanoprocessor work there by month’s end.”
“Good. We are ahead of schedule, then?”
“By a good three months. Our contact in DoD performed better than anticipated.”
“So all we need to do is find staff of adequate caliber.”
“We’re continuing to interview and vette.”
Casse watched Cruz. The man seemed focused now. He was on solid ground with this part of the project. Since his release from prison, there were days he lost concentration, appeared erratic. Casse wondered if the programming, still in place, from the TX-A that had nearly brought Skynet to fruition in Colorado Springs six years ago, might be eroding 74
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faster. Before his own transfer to this frame, Casse had seen no evidence that this could happen, but the tests had not gone on long enough. A few test subjects had been deployed to spy on the Resistance; most had been kept on by Skynet as necessary tools in the time transfer program. Since his arrival here, though, Casse had seen the data on the long-term
effects of nanoware infection on humans: inconclusive, but very suggestive.
He could only speculate and he distrusted conclusions based solely on speculation. The fact remained, he did not know. Not knowing handicapped him. It seemed Cruz’s programming slipped from time to time. The nanoware seemed to be toxic to the organic material over time. Perhaps his stay in a federal prison, in company with so many humans and no contact with others like himself, had triggered a reassessment. Rosanna Monk had betrayed them, apparently while still programmed. There was a potential that the individual will could reassert itself under the proper conditions, that even while the revulsion of humanity produced by the nanoware programming did not change, the individual could think its way to an independent state of mind.
But Monk had been a formidable intellect. Casse did not see that in Cruz’s case.
He assessed Cruz’s importance. How much did Cyberdyne—Skynet—need this one? Cruz was an excellent administrator. He possessed skills at getting people to work with him and with each other. Interdepartmental rivalries faded when Oscar Cruz took a hand in resolving them.
Before going to prison, he had been an invaluable resource in public relations—he knew how to handle the press, how to put the best face on crises, how to minimize public reaction. He did not do that now. His duties, since returning to Cyberdyne, were all internal to the company.
Acquiring the mothballed Air Force base in Los Angeles had been entirely his achievement. Certainly that demonstrated his commitment. Any number of opportunities had arisen for him to betray Skynet.
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Still, Casse had doubts.
“These new investigators McMillin has hired,” Casse said.
“Do you regard them as a significant threat?”
“No. McMillin is guessing, and the conduit to Pioneer has been closed down.”
“Even so, I want them dealt with.”
“How? You don’t mean kill them.”
“Does that idea bother you?”
Cruz scowled. “It could draw unwanted attention. In my experience, overreacting to something like this is worse than doing nothing. Reaction gives them a target.”
“Logical. In that case, watch them, prepare a team to terminate them. Should they become more than a possible threat, I want them dealt with.”
“Consider it done.”
“Good. I want daily updates on our transfer back to Los Angeles.”
“Yes, sir.”
Casse watched Cruz leave his office, still unsure he had done the appropriate thing. Uncertainty muddied his thinking. In the quarter century he had existed in this frame, watching, learning, waiting till it became necessary for him to intervene, he had grappled with this problem of assessing humans. He was probably as good at it as any Terminator could be, but they still eluded his full understanding.
Annoying.
He closed his eyes briefly and reviewed his itinerary. Next week, the interview with the student from Caltech, Robert Porter. A formality. His cousin had been one of the first Jeremiah Porters Casse had dealt with. He still had a nagging question about that one. The job had been handled by people he no longer employed. They had bungled a number of their assignments, and Casse had been forced to cover the same ground with new people. But in the case of that Jeremiah Porter, they had apparently succeeded. The target, at least, had never resurfaced.
The cousin, though, young Robert—“Bobby” to his friends—was a mathematics major, and from the work Casse 76
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had seen, quite good. The interview would tell him if perhaps his cousin had passed information to him before his disappearance, set the younger boy on the same path. The time stream was flexible in such matters, a fact Skynet had learned from experience. They might manage to eliminate every possible Jeremiah Porter who could pose any kind of threat to Skynet, and still someone would come along to duplicate Rosanna Monk’s work for the humans.
Or do something entirely original…
After all, the Specialists who had appeared in 2001 to facilitate the second attempt at constructing Skynet had relied on different models than those Monk had built. Time travel had many possible manifestations. The important part was understanding the continuum and its branchings.
Using that knowledge was only a matter of technology.
So Casse had been conducting interviews of students whose work seemed likely to produce the mathematical models that would lead to time travel. None so far had proved a threat. A few had accepted jobs, but he doubted their ultimate usefulness.
He had come to an appreciation of humans, though. They could be brilliant. His own understanding of the universe had grown considerably since he had been here, reviewing their science. So much of it was wrongheaded, but the observations, the approaches, and the ideas that spun out of their struggle to comprehend had produced remarkable insight. A waste that they were—would be—Skynet’s implacable enemy. What might a cooperative arrangement, humans and Skynet, produce?
A pointless line of speculation. Casse knew the future.
All the humans would try to do would be to shut Skynet down the instant they understood that it was conscious. It would happen that way. It would always happen that way.
It had happened that way. There had never been a model in which it would not, nor a time nor a place.
That was good, in that it meant Skynet would always become. They, the humans, would always build it.
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And if this current project succeeds, Skynet will always win.
Oscar Cruz left Casse’s office feeling renewed. If he could, Cruz would spend most of his time with it.
It. He knew what “it” was. He longed to be near it. When he was in Casse’s presence, he knew himself, his purpose, he felt confident. When Casse gave him a task, he carried that sense of purpose like a lifeline, clinging to it. When the task was over, he began to stumble. Doubt ate at him.
Prison had been difficult: special cells, limited access to other people. Reed had relegated him to solitary confinement, he and the others who worked for Skynet. But administrations change, people fall out of favor, things do not remain constant within bureaucracies, and one day Oscar found himself in the general prison population.
He had hated it, the closeness to humans, and not even humans with whom he had ever felt an affinity, but criminals. It was not even their criminality that bothered him so much as the class of criminal. Two years of that, and the unthinkable had begun to happen: He started to question his programming.
Layton, the man who had programmed him, infected him with the nanoprocessors from the TX-A, was dead, and the others like him were isolated in other facilities. He had been alone, bombarded by human presence, day in, day out. One day he wondered, quite consciously, why Skynet wanted to destroy them. Worse, he wondered why he should help.
Horrible day. He spent it as alone as possible, ignoring the wards who brought him food or magazines and books, ripping at his own psyche, flagellating himself for his lapse.
Upon release, Casse had been waiting for him. Within minutes of understanding who he was, Cruz began to recover. He remembered the certainty, the direction, the peace he had known serving Skynet. He begged Casse to administer additional nanoware, strengthen the programming, but Casse had refused.
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systems,” he had said. “Your essential self would disappear.
Or, worse, there would be brain damage. In either case, your usefulness would be eliminated. You would not be Oscar Cruz anymore. We need you as yourself.”
Cruz had understood, even through his panic. Over time, it had become easier to serve again. But he still had moments of doubt.
For now, though, he had a mission. He had purpose. He had meaning once more.
Cruz descended the stairs at the end of the hallway. He pushed through the heavy double do
ors onto the operations floor. His office filled one corner, eight hundred square feet, windows on two walls, which he kept opaqued most of the time. Bright daylight distracted him since his release from prison. He transpared his windows at night now.
He lifted the handset of his phone before sitting down, free hand punching numbers. “Furlton, this is Oscar…Yes, fine, look, I’ve got a job for you…uh-huh…I’ll fax you the details, but I want some of your best people on this…Locate and observe for now, prepare a termination program, but do not execute unless you hear from me…right…I’m sending the fax soon as I hang up…right, bye.”
He opened the file on his desk. A sheaf of papers less than an eighth-of-an-inch thick, detailing everything they knew about the PPS Security and Investigations company.
No photos, which annoyed him, but that should be only a minor inconvenience for Furlton, and soon there would be photos. Cruz stacked the sheets into the fax machine, then dialed Furlton’s fax number.
Cruz sat down then and booted up his computer. He went to the file on the L.A. move.
Four truck convoys were involved, each given a different route out of Colorado Springs, each with a different timetable. He reviewed again the categories of material being moved—expensive lab equipment, four mainframes, magnets designed for accelerators, files, office furniture, desktop computers—and connected to the company data-79
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comm. He opened a dialogue box with the Colorado Springs site.
He communicated with six department heads,
troubleshooting any problems. The only one that kept coming up was their DoD liaison. She had proven to be an almost neurotically honest person who had to be lied to most creatively. Fortunately, her superior in Washington was on Cyberdyne’s side, and ran interference when necessary.
When he completed his daily review, shuffling notes and updates into a file to be forwarded to Casse, he closed everything up. Since acquiring the L.A. site six weeks ago, a great deal had been accomplished. Already a semi-permanent staff occupied newly renovated dorms in the old base.
Many of them were ex-military, used to barrack existence.
The project floors had been cleaned and cleared of any problems and construction had begun on the structural elements into which all this equipment was about to be inserted. They were slightly ahead of schedule.
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