On Raoul's estancia, they made their final preparations for the cold new world. They slaughtered most of -the cattle, eating as many as they could—barbecuing them each week in traditional Gaucho style. They dried, smoked, or salted the meat of others, cutting back the herd to a fraction of what it had been. At all times now, they conserved fuel, using the horses or manual labor. Diesel and gasoline would become precious in the years ahead. In late August, spring had been coming to the Pampas, but that reversed itself. The days grew dark, and a long winter set in, like none that mankind had known.
As the months passed, John waited for Skynet's machines. How long would they take? Surely Skynet would need years to start building Terminators and all the other weapons it needed. Where were its factories? As of Judgment Day, none of that existed. Anything it could use in the U.S. cities must have been nuked. Still, they could take no chances. Sentries kept watch, day and night, ready to greet the machines. Everyone went armed. Raoul and Gabriela put the estancia on full alert. They had a more immediate reason: Rumors had drifted to them, of warlords rising in the cities and military bases. The winter brought the return of barbarism.
One morning about 4:00 a.m., alarms sounded. John woke in the dark, switching on a bedside light. There was the sound of gunfire, then worse: the reports of artillery, nearby mortar explosions. He pulled on his jeans, shirt and jacket, found an M-16 rifle, checking its action quickly, then a 9mm. pistol. At that moment, the T-800 entered his room, armed with an AK-47 and an M-79 grenade launcher. It wore two bandoliers of grenades around its body.
"We are under attack," it said. There were more explosions, some nearby, some further away. The estancia was exchanging artillery fire with some new enemy. Was it Skynet? Surely it was too soon.
"Who is it?" John said. "Why?"
"Unknown."
There was a huge explosion, like a crack of doom. The bungalow shook, and people were running in the corridors. It sounded like a shell had hit the casco. There were shouts and the sounds of vehicles. Through John's window, flares lit up the sky. A helicopter flew overhead, its rotors thrumming. It threw down a bright spotlight, then gave a burst of withering mini-gun fire. Someone cried out in pain.
The helicopter circled, broadcasting a message in Spanish, then repeating it in English, the same message over and over. "Surrender your weapons and join the Rising Army of Liberation. Your lives will be spared. You will be given an honored place."
The sound of machinegun fire came from Raoul's guard towers, then the unmistakable back blasts of RPG tubes. As John found his way to the door, people rushed past in every direction, grabbing clothes, armor, weapons. Sarah came round a corner, and gripped John by the shoulders, her fingers like steel claws, digging into him. She had a black CAR-15 strapped around her body.
"Stay here, John!" she said. "It's too dangerous."
"Mom!"
"There'll be other battles," Sarah said. "You can't risk your life in this one. Think about Skynet."
"I've got to learn some time," he said stubbornly. Inside, he was terrified. He didn't want to go out there and face the enemy gunfire, but it was no safer in here. Those mortars and mini-guns could reduce the bungalow to matchwood in a matter of seconds. At this point, the enemy was probably holding back only to conserve assets that might be valuable if Raoul surrendered. Besides, John thought, he had to get used to combat. However terrible this was, there was even worse ahead.
Before he could argue, the bungalow shook with more explosions.
"I'll deal with it," the Terminator said.
It stepped outside, firing the AK-47 on full auto. As John watched, bullets whistled past it, and some must have struck home. The chopper flew close by.
"Look out!" John said. He didn't know how the Terminator would fare against mini-gun fire.
The Terminator launched a grenade, which hit the chopper's rear fuselage and exploded, throwing the chopper in a crazy circle. It didn't go down immediately, like a stone, but spiraled out of the sky, crash-landing with a dreadful tearing of metal. It sat there, in the darkness, but no flames went up. People might still be alive in there.
John broke away from Sarah and ran outside. The Terminator watched the wreckage of the chopper.
"Hasta la vista, baby," it said.
CHAPTER NINE
JOHN'S WORLD
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
AUGUST 2001
What should they do?
"You think we'll have to blow up Cyberdyne all over again?" John said.
"Yes," Sarah said. "I'm starting to think so. I don't like it, but I'm seriously starting to think it."
"Me, too." Four years ago, at the Tejada estancia, it had seemed much simpler. What, exactly, had they gotten themselves into?
If time was always trying to spring back at you when you changed the future, you'd have to watch it like a hawk, make sure that you never gave it a chance, hold it in its new shape with all your willpower, doing whatever it took. That put a different spin on their motto "NO FATE." There was no fate but what you worked at, continually, with all your strength. You had to hold on—until what? When could you be sure? With something like Judgment Day, when could you be absolutely sure it was not going to happen? Did it take forever? Did it mean you could never rest? Could you ever be sure it wasn't in vain?
"I know, John," Sarah said. "I know that's what you think about at night when you're on the Net."
"You mean I'm that obvious?"
"Maybe it's just an obvious way to think."
They were still in good physical shape. If they had to do something drastic, they were ready. But it was so hard to know. There were no more messages from the future to guide them. Lately, every time they'd discussed it, started this sort of conversation, it had led them nowhere.
"Sometimes I think that we'll never stop them," Sarah said. "It looks like there's always someone out there who wants to build better and better technology, until it's better than people. You'd think nothing else was important, as if there aren't a lot of other problems in the world."
"Well, machines that are better than people might not be such a bad idea, not when you think what people can be like."
"No. Don't say that,* she said quickly. "That's how Skynet must have thought. You don't know what you're saying."
"Hey, chill out, Mom. I'm one of the good guys, remember? I nearly got wasted by a Terminator, too."
As she looked at him, he realized that she still found it hard to understand how fast he'd had to grow up. He was sixteen now, certainly not a child anymore, but he'd been through stuff that made him a lot older still, at least in some ways. He had ideas of his own. Sarah must understand that.
"I won't ever forget," she said, her face creasing into worry lines. He hoped this waiting, this not knowing was not going to grind them down. Maybe it would take years before they could be sure, one way or the other.
They were both tired. Things always seemed better in the morning.
"Let's worry about it tomorrow," he said. "Maybe we're getting a bit obsessed." They'd sleep until 10:00 a.m., then do their chores for the day-training, some shopping, John's home learning program. The cyber cafe opened at 5:00 p.m. and kept them working through the evening. It was a pretty good routine, really, if a bit too crowded. If they could relax about Cyberdyne and just be plain Deborah and David Lawes, like on their passports, maybe they could fit it all in, and still make some real friends. The customers liked them. It couldn't be all that hard.
"This isn't a normal life for either of us," Sarah said, echoing some of his thoughts. "We can't tell people the truth about us, we can't relax about Judgment Day, and we can't do anything more without proof. We can't just go and endanger innocent people unless we know more about what Cyberdyne's doing. Life can be a bitch."