Terminator 2_Hour of the Wolf Read online

  It was mid-afternoon. A pair of large vans stood in front of the address. Portis gathered up the papers and the box of discs. He found himself standing before a two-story stucco-finished building with new windows and door. A modest, hand painted sign leaned against the wall on the sidewalk, PPS SECURITY AND INVESTIGATIONS, L.L.C. above a phone number, waiting to be hoisted into place over the entrance.

  A workman stood by one of the vans, coiling electrical cable around a spool.

  Portis entered the building.

  “I don’t care who’s pulling what strings, this property is not for sale!”

  “I don’t have time for this right now. It’s a good offer—”

  “I don’t care! That was never on the table!”

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  Portis stopped just inside the door. A heavyset man stood in front of the glass-topped reception desk, behind which stood Sarah Connor, hands on hips, glaring at him. She glanced briefly at Portis, but her eyes shifted immediately back to the man.

  “This is lease property,” he said, raising a hand, palm up, and tapping the palm with a finger. “I expect it to remain lease property.”

  “For the day the neighborhood turns around again, I suppose, and you can double the rent?” Sarah snapped back.

  “Or did you just figure out that the neighborhood isn’t as bad as you thought it was? The other day was probably the first time you’d actually come here to see it for yourself.”

  She grunted. “It’s moot. You have an offer on the table for direct purchase. We’ve already made our upgrades to the property, we’re not going anywhere.”

  “That’s another thing. You had no right to do this much to my building.”

  “Mr. Soams, I don’t see—”

  “This is all illegal. You’ve damaged my property. You’re already in violation of the lease. I want you out and I want reparations for all these modifications.”

  “You really don’t want to meet my lawyer, Mr. Soams.

  Now, if you please, I have a client to talk to, I’m busy—”

  The man—Soams—looked at Portis, then back at Sarah.

  “We’re not finished. I’ll have the sheriff’s office here at end of day to start moving you people out. I have connections in—”

  Sarah raised a hand. “Enough. You’re threatening me now. People who threaten me do not have happy days.”

  “Mr. Soams,” Portis said, stepping forward. He set the discs and papers on the desk.

  “What?” Soams frowned at him suspiciously.

  “You have several properties available for lease?”

  “I…depends. Where—look…”

  “I’m in the market for a storefront myself,” Portis said, extending a hand. “I would like to discuss some possibilities with you, sir. My name is Portis. Lee Portis.”

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  “Uh…yes, I’m sure…” Reluctantly, Soams clasped Portis’s hand. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have…”

  The change took a few seconds, but Portis saw it in the momentary confusion in Soam’s eyes, then a relaxing of the scowl. He blinked at Portis. “What, uh, exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Portis?”

  “I was thinking midtown, but we can go over that later.

  For now I would be pleased if you could come to an amic-able settlement here. I have business with—”

  “Philicos,” Sarah said quickly.

  “—Ms. Philicos. We’re associates, and I’d hate to start a relationship knowing—”

  “Yeah, sure,” Soams said. “Of course.” He looked at Sarah Connor, baffled. “I just thought—”

  “You have our offer, Mr. Soams,” Sarah said, her face pointedly neutral, though Portis could see a new stiffness in her posture.

  “It’s, uh…fine. I’ll have my attorney contact the owners, then get with you with the documentation. Sorry for the misunderstanding.”

  “No problem. These things happen.”

  Soams fished a business card from his jacket and handed it to Portis. “When you get ready to discuss your requirements, give me a call, Mr. Portis. I’ll be happy to show you what I have.”

  “I’m sure you will. Thank you, sir.”

  “Good afternoon.”

  Soams picked up a briefcase on the floor and strode out of the office.

  “Tell me,” Sarah said, “you didn’t do that to me.”

  “I did not. If you give it some thought, you’ll recognize that as the truth.”

  “I was unconscious.”

  “I did not tamper with you.”

  Sarah looked skeptical. She gestured at the door. “How long will he be like that?”

  “He won’t change his mind about selling to you, if that’s what you’re worried about. The ’coders last a few days, 184

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  maybe a week. By then you should have your sale and he won’t quite know what to think about it. You can reinforce the behavior by daily contact—not re-infestation, just every day talking to him.”

  “I’d rather not. So…why did you do that? To prove I can trust you?”

  “I didn’t think it would hurt. But I don’t believe it’s sufficient all by itself.”

  “No. It’s not.” She came to a decision and gestured. “Come back here. We’ll talk.”

  Portis gathered up the material he had brought in and stepped around the desk as Sarah Connor went through a plain white door. When he entered the next room, he found a collection of desks with workstations, several screens, and Sarah Connor holding a large, dull-surfaced weapon aimed at him.

  “Close the door,” she said. When he complied, she said,

  “Do you recognize this?”

  He looked at what she held. “Yes, roughly. It’s a particle beam weapon. I don’t know that exact design, but I recognize the elements.”

  “So you know what it can do.”

  “Of course.”

  “Put the discs and papers on the desk to your right and take off your overcoat.”

  Portis did as she asked. He stood with his arms away from his sides. “Do you have many of those?” he asked.

  “A few. More are coming.”

  “Do you expect the kind of fight in which you’ll need them?”

  “We’re prepared for it, let’s put it that way.”

  “Sensible,” Portis said.

  “Should we expect that kind of fight?”

  “Who can say?”

  “If you’re from the future,” Sarah said. “You probably have a good idea.”

  “It depends which future I’m from, though, doesn’t it?”

  “No fate?” She smiled. “I’ve heard that one before.”

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  “But you don’t know how it works.”

  “A few years ago I went on a rather strange trip. I saw a lot of things that maybe should have cleared up my questions. But I still don’t trust my conclusions.”

  “That is sensible as well. You know, I am rather surprised you gave me the correct address. I expected less confidence from you.”

  “Where else would I send you? I don’t know who you are. I don’t want you here, maybe, but I want to know where you are more. This is about the only place in L.A. I know where I have at least some control. If I don’t like what you tell me, you don’t leave this building.”

  “Which you will soon own, thanks to my intercession.”

  “If I forget later, let me say thank you now.”

  “You’re welcome. As fast as I move, do you really think you could use that before I got to you?”

  “I don’t know how fast you move. I know how fast Terminators move.”

  “Ah. Of course, if I wanted to kill you—”

  “Don’t. If you’d killed me at the apartment, you still wouldn’t know where my son is, and he would be alerted then.”

  “Utterly logical,” Portis said. “So, what now? What can I say to you that will cut through all thi
s suspicion? We don’t have all the time in the world.”

  “Did you kill Eisner?”

  Portis was surprised. “No, I didn’t. I’d been interrogating him. How…?”

  “We’ve been keeping track of all the infected Cyberdyne employees since their release from prison. You were seen entering and leaving his place several times. Who do you think killed him?”

  “The name Casse has come to my attention. He’s on the board of Cyberdyne, a vice president in the company. I suspect he’s had the same people watched—Oscar Cruz works for him.”

  “I know.”

  “My last visit to Eisner, I found him dead. I saw some 186

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  people enter his apartment after me, probably hoping to catch me there.”

  “True, but those were our people.”

  “Have you been following me since?”

  She hesitated. “No. You moved too fast. We thought you were heading to Minnesota. Very neat dodge.”

  Portis sighed. “Ms. Connor—or should I call you Ms.

  Lawes?—we can continue like this for hours and accomplish nothing. What can I tell you that will hurry this along?”

  “You say you’re looking for Jeremiah Porter. Why? What will you do when you find him?”

  “Keep him from working for Cyberdyne.”

  “Cyberdyne may have already accomplished that for you.

  Why? Who is he and why would Cyberdyne want him?”

  Portis pointed to the papers and discs on the desk.

  “Judging by what I saw there, he is something of a genius.

  His work seems to concern time. Does the name Rosanna Monk mean anything to you?”

  “You know it does.”

  “Mr. Porter is her natural successor.”

  “Sit down. Why don’t you tell me about…”

  Portis moved to a chair and sat. “About?”

  “About the future.”

  “Mine?”

  “You already know mine, I assume. I want to know about yours. Fair is fair.”

  “Do we have time?”

  “Don’t you know?” She grinned. “We’ll make time.”

  Portis sighed. Maybe I should have used the ’coders. “Very well.”

  “We’re beginning to rebuild the cities. Many of them are in ruin, mostly in the northern hemisphere. Reconstruction is operating out of Buenos Aires and Johannesburg. Populations are starting to recover. But many people are leaving Earth because of the toxic conditions. Mars is being settled, the moon developed, and expeditions have been sent to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. We also built a project to try 187

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  to use time travel to lessen some of the worst of the decades since the Nexus.”

  “The Nexus?” Sarah asked. “That’s a new one.”

  “It would be, to you. The Nexus was discovered by one of our theorists when she attempted to make sense of the inconsistencies in the historic records. We are still trying to make sense of it. It is the point in time at which causality broke down and events became fluid as a consequence of actual time displacement. When time travel began, what we call history became probabilistic. Events became virtual, indeterminate, a matter of statistical potential.”

  Sarah blinked. “You’ve lost me.”

  “I’m not sure I can help you. We understand what happened imperfectly. Vaguely. It’s a symptom of the process. As best we have determined, there are three possible futures, only one of which leads to my time. Naturally, we would prefer to see that one prevail. The other two both lead to unimaginable destruction and the faintest chance that humanity can survive.”

  “Not unimaginable to me.”

  “No. You have the luxury of experience. In my day, your exploits are legendary. In the precise definition of the term.”

  “You don’t think it all happened?”

  “In a way, it didn’t. Something occurred, to be sure, but it may be no more than an artifact of an unstable temporal thread. You see, we have at least three stories about you to choose from. Which one is true? In the most concrete way, only time can tell.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. I hate it when people bullshit me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Sounds like bullshit to me.”

  “In one timeline,” Portis continued, “you died in 2001, leaving your son to fight alone. He perished in 2007 and Skynet overwhelmed the resistance, establishing permanent hegemony at the Nexus point in 2029. In another timeline, you survived to see the resistance fully begun by 2021 with the first real successes and the subsequent destruction of Skynet in 2029—also at the Nexus point. In the third 188

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  timeline, you and your son organized and fought a constant resistance to the creation of Skynet, managing to successfully delay its creation until the abandonment of all development of global management systems in 2025. Cyberdyne attempted again and again to build Skynet secretly until it was finally eradicated in 2029—also at the Nexus point. We have stories about your battles from all three timelines, mingled, mixed, impossible to reconcile, and yet all containing the seeds of truth. Like myths out of the deep past, they cannot all be true yet they are all resistant to ultimate debunking. So I say to you, you are a legend.”

  “The Nexus point…2029 is the year Skynet began sending Terminators back to kill me.”

  “Not just you, but yes.”

  “Is that why you call it the Nexus point?”

  “We call it that, because it is. Until Skynet began doing that, the timeline was stable, set, immutable. Time travel disrupted it, opening the entire continuum up to quantum effects on the macro level. History became probabilistic.

  Connected, linked, yet indeterminate.”

  “You said the three most probable timelines. There are others?”

  “Many.”

  Sarah frowned deeply. “If Skynet hadn’t started sending back Terminators, what would have happened?”

  “We don’t know. The various lines have become so confused, it’s no longer possible to know which one was the original. It became even more tangled when Kyle Reese impregnated you.”

  She flinched at the mention of Reese, but she did not pursue the topic. “So…was there a Skynet or not?”

  “Somewhere along one of the lines, Skynet was created.

  It existed. Once the timeline became fluid, through its own actions, Skynet also became a probability.”

  “Does it exist now or not?”

  “In a way, it does. It has the potential to exist depending on how things develop along the way to the Nexus point.

  If events favor Skynet, then it will acquire stability. It will 189

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  exist. It will have won. In order to do that, it must win here, in the past. To prevent its existence, you must win. Here, now, and tomorrow, and the next day.”

  Sarah looked at him blankly for a long time. Then: “So, in your time, did Skynet exist?”

  “No. Where I come from, there never had been a Skynet.

  It too is legend.”

  “But you said you’re rebuilding from the destruction.”

  “Oh, yes. Skynet failed to exist. But the war to prevent it, to stop it, that was real enough.”

  She shook her head. “I think I’m about to get a headache.

  And what does Jeremiah Porter have to do with this?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “No! Really?”

  Portis found himself liking Sarah Connor. He grinned at her. She looked momentarily puzzled. Then she set the weapon down.

  “I need a drink,” she said. “How about you?”

  “I…”

  A phone chirped. Sarah grabbed it. “Yeah? Yes, I’m—where?” She looked at Portis over her shoulder. “What do you want to do? Okay. We’ll be there.” She hung up.

  “Forget the drink. Do you want to meet Jeremiah Porter?”

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  Arc light
s illuminated the cavernous room with harsh white.

  The walls supported scaffolding and walkways, columns of cable and conduit, all feeding into the skeleton of a complex machine growing at one end. Casse did not accept what humans called Luck, but he understood how improbable Cyberdyne’s acquisition of this facility had been.

  The old Los Angeles Air Force Base had fallen victim to base closures only a few years before. Casse’s people managed to beat all other potential buyers and obtain the site.

  Of course, had it been a Cyberdyne purchase, the sale would never have gone through. Two shell companies fronted for them. Once secured, Casse began moving the Skynet project into the R & D facilities left behind. Though the military had stripped a great deal of the technology, Cyberdyne found it relatively easy to install everything they needed and match it up with what remained. The humans had done missile defense research here. Most of the missiles had been built out in San Bernardino, but prototypes had been constructed here and all the space and tools necessary for a sophisticated high-tech program could be found on site.

  The last century’s satellite defense systems had been managed from here as well.

  Trucks had been arriving for the past week delivering new equipment from various sources, all in preparation to 191

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  receive what had been recovered of the Skynet systems from Colorado Springs. Work proceeded around the clock adapting the facility.

  Casse, satisfied with what he saw, took the underground corridor from Building 100 to Building 105. Cyberdyne’s corporate headquarters took up most of the old administration building; Casse’s own office on the top floor used to house the command section for the whole base. Most of the personnel had moved from the rooms they had occupied at the nearby Ramada less than a month ago. Casse had teams on the site before the contracts had been finalized, confident that the deal would go through once negotiations became earnest. The base included housing to the south, enough to keep all the project-sensitive people close, on hand, and within a fence. Arrangements were being made to convert some of the base housing into ready-stations for T units once production could begin.

  Casse rode the elevator up to the top floor, considering the logistics. He would prefer to eliminate humans from the project. Not possible, not yet. Casse needed them—Skynet needed them. During his time in this frame, Casse had begun to acquire a vague understanding of irony. This qualified.