brighter lights appeared higher up the mountain.

A vehicle's high-beam headlights spilled across her momentarily, through the trees and scrub, then disappeared down the mountainside. She detected an infrared reading as the car passed on her left. Eve forced her way quickly through the walls of scrub, finding the road, then ran towards Cyberdyne's research base, the Advanced Defense Systems Complex. She knew she would find one entrance built into the rock above her—1500 feet below the mountain's summit. That cluster of lights, higher up the slope, must be her target. She ran now, passing a turnoff on her right that led to the other entrance. She maintained her top speed of twenty miles per hour, for which her fuel cell could sustain her almost indefinitely.

Minutes later, there were more lights behind her in the distance. She pivoted on her heel, turning as she ran, jogging backwards. Bright lights in the humans' visible spectrum flashed into her eyes. There was the swishing of tires, the low-pitched snarl and infrared glow of an automobile engine. She stopped directly in the vehicle's path as it squealed to a halt. Perhaps it was the same car as before, investigating the lightning-like effect of the displacement field. She assessed it as a late model, unmarked sedan.

It pulled over to the shoulder of the road, gravel crunching under its tires. Its headlights dimmed but stayed trained on her. Two Air Force personnel stepped out, leaving the car running. They wore pale uniforms and sidearms; one carried a long-handled flashlight. Eve waited dispassionately, analyzing their body dimensions as they approached. Their clothes might be useful, though neither of them closely matched her body shape. The weapons and car she could certainly use.

Both of them were male. The driver was a black man, tall and very bulky—well over 200 pounds. His passenger, the one with the flashlight, was a wiry, fair-skinned Caucasian, somewhat under six-foot, perhaps 160 pounds. She would almost fill out his uniform. 'I need your clothing, your guns and your car,' she said.

'What the hell is this?' said the Caucasian. He glanced to his partner.

'Quickly!' Eve said.

The black man spoke in what she recognized as a 'soothing' tone—the exaggeratedly tolerant way that humans spoke when they wanted to avoid violence. 'Lady,' he said in a slow drawl, 'is this some kind of joke?' He looked her up and down, then glanced all round the edges of the road, as if to satisfy himself that she was naked— the humans had a nudity taboo—and that she had no vehicle nearby. 'If you're trying to make a protest, you can't do it like this. This is a restricted area. Just being here is a serious federal offense. How did you get this far?'

'Irrelevant,' she said.

'I don't think you're listening to what I'm saying. You can't come here. We're going to have to take you into custody.'

'Wrong.'

As they drew their handguns, she confirmed a course of action. If they lived, they might interfere.

She marked them for termination.

COLORADO

THE ADVANCED DEFENSE SYSTEMS COMPLEX

The Colorado complex was staffed by a mix of military personnel, civilian officers from the Defense Department, and Cyberdyne's own staff. They were rostered on round-the-clock, seven-day shifts. The military staff slept here, and there was adequate accommodation for the entire complement of 120 servicemen and other regular workers. For the past month, everyone had put in crazy hours, getting the Skynet project up and running. It was craziest of all for the Cyberdyne and Defense staff in charge of the project. As Cyberdyne's chief AI researcher and head of its Special Projects Division, Miles Dyson had been stuck here full-time, working eighty-hour weeks, and getting his sleep at odd hours when he could. He'd been worrying over every detail of the project—that, and other things.

Miles had his own ten-by-ten square office tucked away In a corner of Level A, the complex's top floor. He'd left its walls and its metal shelving almost bare, since his real office and his real life were back in LA. His desk was topped with computer equipment: two screens running, performing calculations; keyboards; processing units; and a high-quality printer. To the left was a framed photo of his wife, Tarissa, and son, Danny. In front of that, Miles had placed a pile of computer printouts, half an inch thick, marked with highlighter pen and indexed crudely with yellow sticky notes.

He held his head in both hands, thankful that he'd sent Tarissa and Danny on a holiday to Mexico, 'just in case,' wishing he could have joined them.

As the digital readout on his computer screen turned over to 23:30 hours, his worries reached a crisis point. He called Oscar Cruz, who was who was still on deck tonight, like everyone else who counted. 'You free, Oscar?'

'Hello, Miles,' Oscar said. He sounded pretty tense himself, which was understandable. 'Is anything wrong?'

'No, nothing definite. Nothing's happened—just getting nervous.'

Oscar laughed nervously. 'Me, too, of course. I have to ring Charles Layton in a minute—I'm updating him every hour. You know how he feels about all this. I'll talk with you a little later.'

Layton was never an easy man to deal with. Mentally, Miles wished Oscar luck. 'Do you mind if I have a word with Jack?' he said.

'Go ahead. We'll all catch up after I've spoken to Charles.'

Miles would be meeting through the  night with Oscar, Jack Reed and Samantha Jones, but he needed to talk now. He called Jack, who answered his phone immediately: 'Reed speaking.'

'Miles Dyson here, Jack.'

'Yeah, Miles, what's up? Anything wrong at your end?'

'No, nothing actually wrong. I just had a word with Oscar. At my end, everything is nominal.'

'Good. You sound like you want to talk it over.'

'If you've got a minute.'

'Yeah, okay. Come around. I'm damn sure not going anywhere tonight.'

'I know. See you soon.'

'Let's get a cup of coffee first. Then we can talk in my room.'

Miles grabbed the printouts from his desk, and walked next door to a small kitchen with a microwave. He made two cups of plunger coffee and found a wedge of pizza in the refrigerator.

As he warmed the pizza through, Jack came in, looking tired but vaguely amused. His sun-leathered, wrinkled face was capped by a full head of brown hair, graying only at the temples, combed back in waves over his ears. He raised his eyebrows questioningly. 'So what's the story?' he said.

Miles replied with a rueful shrug.

As the civilian Defense officer in charge of the Skynet project, Jack Reed was Cyberdyne's immediate client, the man that Miles and Oscar had to keep happy. He was also the only person here with the authority to shut down Skynet. Though Miles had developed some rapport with him, it was currently being stretched.

'Maybe I'm just too nervous tonight,' Miles said.

'Sure, we all are, but you guys have been doing a great job. Everything's been working perfectly.'

'Yeah, Jack, technically it's fine. Better than fine. But this stuff still bothers me.' Miles gestured with the printouts. 'And Skynet has been acting pretty strangely.'

'Strangely, you think? How?'

'It's too good. It's better than we designed it.'

The microwave pinged to say Miles's pizza was ready. He found a plate for it, then poured the coffee into a pair of chipped mugs. 'Let's go back to my office,' Jack said. 'It's a helluva lot more comfortable than here.'

Jack had a plush twenty-foot by ten-foot office, the best in the complex, harshly lit by fluorescent tubes shining through plastic deflectors. There was a shiny, black-topped desk near the entrance. Built into the opposite wall was a floor-to-ceiling video unit, nearly ten feet across. Like Miles, he'd left his office here largely undecorated. On one wall he'd Blu-tacked a large poster of the boxer Muhammed Ali, taken from a 1960s photograph—one of the fights with Sonny Liston.

They sat at a plain wooden coffee table in the farthest corner from the doorway. As Miles chewed his pizza, Jack said, 'That stuff really bothering you?' He gestured at the printouts, on the floor at Miles's feet.

Miles bent and picked up the top page. 'Well, yeah.' Like the others in charge here, he'd been given 150-odd pages of postings on Internet sites and public mailing groups, all predicting that Skynet would malfunction tonight

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