"Are we thinking the same thing?" he asked, grinning wickedly.
"Yes, I'm terribly afraid that we are," she said, still laughing.
"Don't be afraid," he said. He took her free hand in both of his. "There's nothing to be afraid of."
* * *
John held her in his arms and looked down at the bright head resting on his shoulder, feeling her soft, rhythmic breath upon his chest, and felt… wonderful. More relaxed than he had felt in a long time. He caressed her shoulder with his thumb and smiled.
He liked her. He knew it wasn't love; he'd had that with Wendy and he'd recognize it if it came to him again. But he really liked this girl, and who knew what that could lead to? He admired her self-reliance and enjoyed her sense of humor. He sensed, though, that she was one of those lost souls casting about for a noble cause. He'd like to be the one to give it to her…
"Where did you get the scars?" she said drowsily, tracing the lines down the left side of his face.
"Would you believe a cybernetically controlled leopard seal slashed my face?"
Ninel laughed and poked him in a sensitive spot. "If you don't want to tell me, that's okay. But I like your sense of humor!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ALASKA
Luddites?" John said, peering at the screen.
A trainee—he showed real promise at scout work—brought in another armful of split wood and pitched a few billets into the woodstove. It thumped and gave a muffled whoosh as he adjusted the air intake, and the day's damp chill receded a bit.
"Yes, sir. That's our intel," Jack Brock said.
John rolled his eyes. Jack was still completely enamored of military parlance, while John Connor was already sick of it.
Better get over that, he thought with resignation. It was going to be the lingua franca for the next thirty years or more.
And every calling needs a jargon. It helps keep the organization's purpose sharp and clear.
"There must be millions of 'em," Brock was saying.
Connor jerked his mind back to the matter at hand.
"Worldwide," he agreed. "Hundreds of thousands, at least." He sat forward. "Good work, Jack. Congratulate Reese and Susie for me on a job well done. Out."
"Thanks, John. Will do. Out."
Luddites. He'd known that Skynet had human assistance, but he'd never expected it to come from that quarter. The progress-hating, machine-scuttling, science-despising Luddites would seem to be the last people Skynet could get to help. And yet…
They share a lot of the same goals. Namely, reducing humanity in population and power. Of course I don't think that most Luddites want to reduce humanity to zero. But there would be some who would. He winced. Wendy would have hated this.
Connor moved out onto the now bustling floor of the once abandoned building that his mother had acquired—it had originally been HQ and smelter for a series of gold dredges.
They'd spent a lot of time and money improving the building from the inside before Judgment Day. Outside, they were well disguised as a semidilapidated series of aging buildings of unpainted pine. Inside, they were weather tight and roomy enough to provide barracks, offices, training areas, a canteen, and hardened storage for tons of electronic equipment.
John still went home occasionally; he needed his alone time.
But it made his heart swell with pride to see the people they'd recruited before Judgment Day pitching in and recruiting people themselves. The resistance was really shaping up.
It helps that we're not coming from behind this time, he thought. They'd drained Dieter's freely given fortune to build this. Exploited his every contact and resource, and it was paying off, visibly.
Now they were in a kind of race, to see if they could prevent Skynet from building its army, or at least defeating it far sooner than they had the first time.
Would that mean that Kyle Reese would never be born, or that having been born, he'd never be sent into the past?
Will I disappear midsentence one day? John wondered. Who cares? What's one life if I can save millions by giving mine.
He'd never liked the idea that he was destined to send his father to his death. If he could prevent that by ceasing to exist, well, C'est la guerre. He grinned. It isn't like I'd know.
COMODORO RIVADAVIA, ARGENTINA
"I'm not asking for anything like your full production," Sarah said. "I'm only asking for a slight increase to those countries you've already been supplying."
"But all to the advantage of the United States," Senor Reimer said. "Do we really wish to see the United States once again so powerful?"
Sheesh! Sarah thought. To hear people down here talk, you'd think we were the Roman legions; invading everywhere, stealing everything that wasn't nailed down— including the people— and then pretending it was a good deal because one day the remaining folks would be citizens. We have our faults, God knows, but we weren't that bad.
Sarah's Spanish was virtually accent-free—with a tinge of Paraguay and Nicaragua—and she seldom bothered to mention that she was from California. It simplified things. Unfortunately, it was impossible to get this business done without being a bit more up-front.
For a moment she looked out the window, controlling her temper. Comodoro was on the northern edge of Patagonia; steep ground fell to the cold-looking gray water, and oil storage tanks and pipelines and refinery cracking towers were everywhere.
There wasn't much of a tang in the air because the wind blew constantly—she'd considered hiding out around here when she was on the run with John after the attack on Cyberdyne, but the perpetual howling and the bleak flat landscape didn't appeal to her. Comodoro's other buildings were mostly medium size and flat-roofed; one of the bigger ones had a ten-story-high colored Coke ad, something that sheep ranchers came miles to see.
And they have to sell the oil, she told herself. Argentina hadn't been badly hit—no actual nuclear bombs, yet. That didn't prevent economic collapse, riots, regional warlordism, and general crisis. She'd have preferred to deal in Venezuela, but the Maricaibo fields there had been major enough to be on a target list.
"It is unlikely that the United States will ever be that powerful again," she said aloud. "In the meantime, there are people there that need our help. And there are opportunities here for those with the vision to take them. South America is in a position to take its place as a world leader."
Reimer looked thoughtful. "Ah, but which South American country shall lead? That is the question."
Long training kept Sarah from rolling her eyes and yelling:
"No, it's not, you idiot!"
The United States never would have gotten powerful enough for morons like this one to resent it if the big question had been: Which state is going to be the most important? No wonder Simon Bolivar, South America's equivalent to George Washington, had died despairing and saying his career had been like trying to plow the sea…
Things would have been tougher still, of course, if the early Americans had had Skynet to contend with instead of just the British. But telling Senor Reimer about a great computer menace would certainly end this already shaky interview.
Poor bastard, she thought. Sooner or later Skynet's going to come after you, too— with nukes or plagues or HKs, or all of the above.