"How's it going?" she asked uneasily. "There's no modem…"
"Not as well as I'd hoped," he admitted. "In the movies they always break a code like this in a couple of hours."
"Ah, but this isn't the movies," Sarah said wisely. "Maybe you should take a break."
He shook his head. "Nah. I've got to keep banging away at this. I couldn't sleep anyway."
Wanna bet, Sarah thought. She seemed to remember sleep coming easily at sixteen, no matter what the circumstances.
"So what's the problem?" she asked.
John shrugged, drawing one corner of his mouth up sardonically.
"I dunno; maybe I'm just not cut out to be a hacker."
"My advice is to go for the simple solution," she said. "The machines probably aren't that big on innovation. Anything they used was undoubtedly based on human work. It might even be less complicated than something used for humans."
John frowned and nodded, his eyes on the screen.
"Let Dieter help you," she ordered. "He's been trained in cryptography."
John raised his head at the change in her tone.
"I'd like to see some progress on this by tomorrow morning," she said. Then she got up and walked away.
John blinked. He'd just been given a lesson, he realized. Okay, he thought, so I'M
get the big kraut.
"First of all, I think we should disconnect this," Von Rossbach said. He pulled the clips off of the CPU and drew it out of its slot. "If it's functioning it might be altering any information remaining, or erasing it."
John slapped his forehead.
"Don't be hard on yourself," Dieter said. "Nobody can think of everything."
"Now here's what we're going to do." He began typing rapidly. The screen lit up and columns of numbers and symbols flowed past.
John leaned close. "What's it doing?"
"It's the latest decryption software from the Sector," Dieter said. "I've been told this is the best in the world." He gave John a look. "But then, they always say that."
The computer beeped and information began scrolling up in standard English.
Dieter's face lit with surprise.
"Hey, maybe they were right!"
John leaned out the door of the bus. "Mom! Hey, Mom!"
Both Yolanda and his mother came running, both of them shushing him and making violent waving motions with their hands.
"For God's sake, John! The kids are asleep!" Sarah hissed.
"Sorry; sorry, Yolanda," he said, reducing his voice to a near whisper.
Yolanda ruffled his hair and rolled her eyes. "There's no point in whispering now, hombre," she said. "I'll go check on them." She cast Sarah one of those shared-between-mothers glances women do so well.
Sarah smiled and shook her head, then she approached the little table. "So what's all the excitement?"
"We cracked the code!" John said. "Well, Dieter did."
Sarah looked at him.
"The Sector did," von Rossbach said modestly. "We've got entry codes, a map of the facility—"
"Anything on this master Terminator we've been supposing," she asked.
"Uh, no. At least, not so far," Dieter said.
"There's a chance that the Terminator may have altered its memory, or erased stuff," John admitted reluctantly.
Sarah tightened her lips and put her hands on her hips. She stood in thought for a
moment, then she shook her head. "We can't use this," she said bitterly. "And this… possible misinformation, coupled with the fact that they know we're coming, only makes me even more certain that we should go for the main facility first."
"No, Sarah. We need to know more before we can attack there." Dieter's voice held absolute conviction. "Nothing has really changed here," he insisted. "I still believe our best chance of succeeding with Cyberdyne lies in the Sacramento facility."
"And I still believe that going there would be a mistake," she said. "My gut tells me it would be a wrong choice."
"Sarah, we're not ready," Dieter said quietly. "We need the information that the Sacramento facility holds."
"Need I remind you that they are ready," she said through clenched teeth.
"But we know that!" John said.
Sarah rubbed her face, then slowly pulled her hands down and away. "So what you're saying is that we know that they know that we know, and that's supposed to make some kind of a difference?"
"Yeah, 'cause they don't know that we know," John said. "We only think that they know that we know. But do they?"
Sarah glared at Dieter.
"Don't look at me," he said. "I lost you the first time around. My argument is that Sacramento is the only place where we might be able to obtain entry codes and a map of the main facility. You know we'll need that. And we don't dare go on-line looking again.
"Besides, their main facility is on a military base. At the very least we need to know which one! Or were you planning to just hit them at random, hoping you'd get the right one the first time out."
Sarah blew out her breath and paced two steps one way, two the other, then stopped, her lips pressed into a thin line. "All right," she said reluctantly. Her eyes snapped toward John. "But you are staying here."
"Mom!"
Dieter nodded. "Fine by me."
"Well, it's not fine by me!" John protested.
"My mind is made up, John," his mother said.
"Mom, if you keep me from taking risks I'm never going to learn anything and I'm never going to lead anyone! This is my fight, too." He drew himself up.
"And I am going."
"It's too big a risk!" Sarah insisted.
They looked at each other and said a great deal with their eyes.
"I think it's a bigger risk to leave me here." John shook his head. "You can't
protect me forever, Mom. Skynet has to be stopped, and even if I am a kid, I have to try to stop it, too."
He startled her by pulling her into a hug and by doing so once again reminded her of how tall he'd grown. Sarah leaned her head against his shoulder and hugged him back. She could put her arms around him twice, he was so adolescent thin. Sarah let out her breath, and the last precious thread of her dream of a peaceful life for him slipped away in a long sigh. She pushed back and looked him in the eye, then she nodded once and released him.
"I want to go on record as saying I don't like this." Sarah muttered.
"We'd better get some sleep, then," Dieter interrupted, rising. "We leave at dawn."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SERENA'S LAB: THE PRESENT
Serena frowned at the newly decanted pair of Terminators standing dripping on her improvised laboratory floor, amid the musky smells of the nutrient bath and the scent of damp concrete. Because she had needed them so quickly she'd put some of the tissue accelerant into their nutrient baths. Perhaps a little too much.
They looked like weather-beaten men in their mid to late thirties. But they'd come out with full heads of hair and beards and a full crop of body hair, which was a convenience.
She walked around the two. No gaps, no flaws. But something niggled at her.
I've forgotten something, the T-950 thought. As she came around to the front
again Serena saw it immediately. They were identical. She gave an exasperated hiss. ,
This is what comes from having too many balls in the air, she thought. It was necessary to assign them both to the Sacramento facility and they were going to draw attention with their looks. I suppose they could be twins. No. Maybe brothers or cousins, but twins would cause too much comment.