Eventually, the Specialists were satisfied. Still in their clothes, they bedded down for the night. John tossed and turned, aching from exertion, then the long car ride. For what seemed like hours, he worried about it all, how they were ever going to beat the T-XA, even with all these weapons. Surely it knew what they planned. It would be in Colorado before them, ready to reacquire them. He'd had enough experience with Terminators to know how they thought.
At some point he must have drifted off, because then there was a light in the trailer, and Sarah's hand on his shoulder, gently shaking him awake.
They headed north to pick up 1-15, Danny taking the first stint at the wheel. He drove smoothly on the dark road into an unknown future. John sat in the back seat, not too comfortable, between Sarah and Jade. Anton took a position in the back of the truck, squeezing into a corner, watching after their weapons and equipment. Whenever the Specialists drove, John felt almost surplus to requirements, since they could handle long stretches at the wheel with no sign of fatigue. Offering to take a shift would sound ridiculous.
For a long time, no one spoke. Danny kept the Ford right on the speed limit. Having gotten this far, the Specialists wanted no more problems with police. That could only slow them down, maybe force them to steal yet another vehicle.
"So what's the plan?" Sarah said. "You just want to barge into a Defense site at Colorado Springs and blow everything Up? I guess you could do it with your abilities, but this could get nasty."
Selena looked round from the front. "That's about it," she said, sounding flip. "You got a better idea, Sarah?"
"It's not the way I'd want to do it. If we could get some cooperation... maybe from the woman who's doing the research."
"Rosanna Monk," Danny said. "She took over from my father. I don't think she's going to be very cooperative."
"This must be painful for you, Danny," Sarah said. "But we convinced your parents. We could convince Monk as well."
"I don't think Rosanna needs convincing, Sarah. Not about the time travel stuff."
"Why not?"
"In the future that we came from, she led the team that invented time travel."
"She what?"
"She never said anything in public, but we're pretty sure she worked out that the technology she used as the basis for her nanoprocessor came from the future. That got her working on the problem. She's not a physicist, but she knows physics. And she got top physicists involved. By now, their work is a long way advanced."
"Christ! But if you could convince her about Judgment Day..."
"Sarah, we'll try. Maybe the T-XA won't get to her in time. Anything's possible."
"Ms. Connor," Jade said, "we don't have a lot of choice how we do things, not with the T-XA around. We planned to see all the senior people at Cyberdyne, and their con-tacts in Washington. If we had the choice, we'd try to convince them all. But the T-XA will have anticipated that."
"It can get around faster than we can," Danny said. "And it can hit multiple targets."
John recalled his experiences with the T-1000. "You mean it's terminated them by now? Killed them? And maybe copied itself after them?"
"No, John. Worse than that. The TX-A is Skynet's most advanced infiltrator unit. It's got nanoware that lets it read or control minds. It can analyze a human brain and reconstruct its memories, or insert part of its own programming. These models have been devastatingly effective against the human Resistance."
"So that's why you couldn't let it have Robert's body?"
"That's correct," Jade said. "He knew too many secrets. If the T-XA got its hands on him while his brain was still fresh, it would know everything we know, including all our plans."
"And all our weaknesses," Anton said from the back. "Our technology. Everything."
"Can't you do anything about it?" John said, turning to him.
"We have our own counter-intrusive nanoware. Its effectiveness is unknown."
"By now, it will have programmed the senior Cyberdyne people to assist and obey it," Jade said in her sad, resigned voice. "There's nothing we can do to convince them."
"But we've got to," John said.
"I'm sorry, John. It's too late."
"That's why it was no use hurrying last night," Danny said. "If we'd run around exhausting ourselves, trying to beat the T-XA to Cyberdyne's people, we'd have run into it again, for no advantage. We couldn't have stopped it We'll stake out Monk's place tonight, see if we can talk to her, just in case the T-XA missed her somehow, but we could never have gotten to all of them."
John considered that The T-XA couldn't have gotten to everyone, but it could split up. If it got to some of the top people in L.A., and the researchers in Colorado Springs, that would be enough to cause problems. There'd be reinforcements tonight waiting for them. Not only that, they couldn't trust anyone. Even if someone said they'd help, what if the T-XA had reached them first?
He'd seen the abilities of the Specialists, but he doubted that even they could fight both the T-XA and all the resources the military could throw at them. Not only that-even if they could destroy Cyberdyne's research, it wouldn't be enough. They'd found that out already. Even destroying everything in 1994 hadn't stopped work on the nanoprocessor, just slowed it down. There would always be someone else to do the work, like happened after Miles's death. They'd have to get cooperation. Somehow, they had to convince people never to build Skynet, or anything like it.
There were underlying forces you had to deal with, forces that pushed events in a certain direction. They'd need to convince people with the power to make decisions, get them to understand the dangers-that the world wasn't big enough for both Skynet and humanity. There had to be an ongoing will to stop it.
"Monk isn't just working on time travel," Anton said. "All her research is more advanced than has been announced. They'll only release information when it suits them, or if they think someone else is getting close. By now, she's got a working nanoprocessor, the most advanced computer hardware on the planet. It's not yet ready for military purposes, but announcements will be made in the next few years. Soon they'll have a chip that can fly the stealth bombers."
Sarah groaned. "It's just like the Terminator told us, There except it's been postponed a decade."
"Perhaps, but it might not all be the same. There are different personalities involved, different perspectives. Right now, they're using their new hardware for different hardware purposes. The announcements will come later, when they get their first success."
"Different purposes?" John said. "You mean like the time travel research?"
"Yes. And developing new weapons systems."
"Yeah, that figures," Sarah said. "It never ends, does it? There's always someone wanting to make a mark on the world, thrust out and say, Took at me, aren't I smart? I can invent time travel, or a new doomsday bomb, or some other obscene weapon that you wouldn't believe.' Them and their damn weapons. It just pisses me off that there's a woman involved this time. I always used to think it was men and their need to prove their creativity. Doesn't anyone want to take responsibility anymore? Do we all have to go around building technologies that will destroy us, until the future doesn't need us at all?"
"Bill Joy made a big impression on my mom," John said. "You know, that article in Wired magazine." It was obvious the Specialists didn't know what he was talking about, so he let it drop. "Mora, maybe there's nothing wrong with technology. Maybe we've just got to use it the right way."
"The right way? When the military are funding it? You think time travel is going to be used for some nice educational purpose, John, going back and watching the dinosaurs or something, checking out whether they had feathers, or how fast T-Rex could run when it was hungry?"