What he couldn't get over was the fact that someone had such good information. Jack had played it down with Miles, but Miles was right: There was more behind all this. Some kind of sabotage could not be ruled out, not absolutely. Despite Layton's obvious impatience with the idea, some whacko might be trying to give them a twisted sort of warning.
The alternative, of course, was out of the question: Perhaps Sarah Connor really had received information from the future.
No, that didn't bear taking seriously.
CHAPTER FIVE
JOHN'S WORLD
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
MAY 1994
Oscar Cruz ate half his sandwich and gulped down most of his coffee. He left the diner, handing across enough cash to cover the check easily, then waved down a taxi. He jumped in the back seat and gave Rosanna Monk's address. At this time of morning, it would take half an hour to reach her apartment.
On the way, he made some phone calls. First, he checked in with Cyberdyne's attorney, Fiona Black, from Black Jessup Nash. She had a complicated story about the insurance and the difficulty with getting any cooperation from Tarissa Dyson. "A lot of this doesn't add up," she said. "The insurers are going to be difficult about it I've already spoken to their attorneys and it's pretty obvious they don't want to grant indemnity. They almost seem to be blaming the Dysons."
Oscar cursed silently, but he wasn't really surprised. It was still unclear why Miles had gone to the site with the Connors and their accomplice. At first glance, it looked like he'd been forced to accompany them, but that didn't add up. The Connors had let Tarissa and the kid, Danny,
go free-so why hadn't she called the police straightaway, instead of waiting for a guard at the site to do it? Perhaps she'd been intimidated by threats of reprisals, but an early intervention might have saved her husband's life. If the Dysons weren't actually in league with the Connors, they'd sure behaved foolishly.
"Tarissa won't even talk to me," Black said. "She won't talk to the insurer or its lawyers, either. Everything has to go formally through her own lawyer. You'd think she was the subject of a criminal investigation."
"Maybe she will be," Oscar said, glancing at the taxi driver and just making sure that his end of the conversation didn't make sense to the driver. He guessed not.
Black said, "Maybe so, though I gather she's been prepared to talk to the police, as long as her attorney's present."
"Okay. So it's turning into a quagmire at your end?"
"Well, it's what you pay me for. You just need to understand that it's getting complicated."
Oscar had been around long enough to know that this was lawyer code for expect a huge bill He didn't like paying avoidable legal expenses, but it seemed that Black was doing a good job in absurdly difficult circumstances. It wasn't just the Dysons who'd screwed up badly. You'd think that the LA.P.D. could have stopped two adults and one nine- or ten-year-old child from demolishing a city office block. An entire SWAT team had failed to stop them, for God's sake.
If Black and her firm were going to get a windfall out of this, that might be a small price to pay. They had to sort out the big questions-not just the insurance money, but also the company's defense contracts. They'd have to convince the government that Cyberdyne was not at fault and that it still had the capacity to deliver. It didn't matter much what it took in legal expenses, or any other short-term pain, if they got a good result.
"Okay," he said. "That's all fine. I understand what you're up against Do what you have to do."
He left a message for Jack Reed in Washington, just saying he'd call back later. Then he called Charles Layton, just to say to whom he'd been talking.
"Very good," Layton said, sounding slightly patronizing. "Keep me informed, Oscar."
Rosanna answered the door of her apartment, dressed in a plain white T-shirt, faded pink jeans, and a pair of flexible plastic sandals. She led him to a paved terrace out back, with cane furniture and an open sun umbrella.
"Thanks for making the time, Rosanna."
"Well, it's not like I had to go to work today."
She was probably the smartest of all Cyberdyne's team of young research employees, a pretty blonde in her late twenties, with very pale skin and a genius for neural net design work. She'd become involved in the nanochip project since joining the company two years before, with a doctorate and a raft of other degrees from UCLA. Next to Miles Dyson, she knew more about the project's details than anyone, even Oscar himself. But that was not necessarily saying so much. Miles had been the real expert. The project was his baby.
"Can I get you something to drink?" Rosanna said.
"Just water, please. Chilled, if that's not a problem. Nothing with bubbles."
She went inside, and Oscar called Reed again, getting his secretary, who put him through. They lined up a time for Oscar to visit him at the Pentagon, bringing Layton along. Layton had said he'd make any day available.
"I'm going to bring Rosanna Monk, as well," Oscar said. "With Miles gone, she's our best researcher. I'm sure she'll impress you."
"Okay," Reed said. "I've entered you in my diary." Rosanna returned with a clear plastic tray containing a jug of water and a couple of plastic tumblers. She put it down on the cane table, and pulled up a chair in the shade of the umbrella. With her pale complexion and large eyes, she looked like some nocturnal mammal.
Oscar got to the point. "I just spoke to Jack Reed in Washington. He wants to meet you. I told him that you're our top researcher on the nanochip device. After Miles, of course.
"Maybe." Her skinny hand shook slightly as she poured water for them both.
"I don't think there's much doubt," he said. "Look, I won't stay long-this must be tough on you. I guess you think it could have been you last night."
"Am I that easy to read?" She looked at him in an odd way, as if they'd only just met, and she was sizing him up
"No, I'm sorry. But I've been having similar thoughts."
Her expression softened a bit, and she nodded. "Okay.
"Those maniacs could have picked me to call on, just as easily as Miles. It makes you think."
"That's an understatement."
"I'm sure we're not the only ones in the company who are shaken up, but you and I must have been next in line."
"Yeah. Cheery thought, eh?" She gestured for him to eat some of the grapes. "Maybe it's not safe anymore, doing this kind of research."
Was she getting cold feet? He couldn't afford to lose her. "Well," he said, changing his voice a little, trying to tone things down and get some rapport, "one of the mysteries is how Sarah Connor even knew about it. There must be stuff the police haven't uncovered yet You know her background, I take it?"
"Not much, only what I've heard this morning-that she tried to blow up an AI lab in San Diego a year or two back. They caught her that time."
"Yeah, and they should have last night, too. Our guards got a message to the police-there was nothing wrong with our security arrangements. But somehow Connor and the others fought off a whole SWAT team and God knows how many other cops. How they did that is beyond my reckoning." He drank some of the water.
"Well, what next?" Rosanna said.
"I've got to go to Washington with Charles, the day after tomorrow. I want you to come with us."
"So I can meet Reed?"
"Yeah, I think that's pretty important. He really does want to meet you, and I want you to meet him. we've got to rebuild the team, and the relationships." He chewed one of the fat white grapes, then finished his water. "You said before-on the phone-that the project is still viable."
"Yes. I've been thinking about it some more, while I was waiting for you. I'm sure it could be done. It's just a question of how long we'd need."