'I'm just keeping you informed. I've got Oscar here, as you know—and Samantha Jones. I'll talk with them again soon. I'm totally satisfied with the system at this point.'
'Good. That's very good. There's nothing you need to do, Jack. You can rule out sabotage at our end— everyone is totally loyal, even if Miles does get nervous. And you know how tight the security checks were.'
'There's no criticism of your people, Charles. Nonetheless, I'm monitoring the situation closely. I'll let you know if anything comes up.'
'Understood,' Layton said again, in the same tone of voice. 'I'm available if you need to speak with me.'
'Thanks, Charles.'
'Thank you for calling, Jack.' Layton hung up. One call down.
Much as Layton was cold, formal, and sometimes prickly, he had no real authority. The important thing was to keep the military hierarchy informed. If Skynet ever detected a Russian attack and decided to launch the American ICBMs, there was a clear line of command to confirm its decision, beginning with NORAD's Command Director, going through its Commander-in-Chief at Peterson Air Base, then the defense chiefs in Washington and Ottawa. In the end, the U.S. President would have to make the call, consulting with the Prime Minister of Canada and whomever else he saw fit.
Soon they would give Skynet sole responsibility for aerospace surveillance, decommissioning the NORAD site at Cheyenne Mountain. Once that happened, shutting down Skynet would require the same line of authority as firing the missiles. For the moment, there was redundancy in the surveillance system, and Jack could still take Skynet off- line on his own authority, though he'd have to answer for it all the way up.
He called the NORAD Command Director. 'Jack Reed here.'
'Everything okay?'
'The system's working fine. Miles Dyson thinks it's working too well, which is pretty funny from the guy who designed it. Anyway, that's the only complaint anyone's got so far.'
'All right.'
'I'll be meeting with Cruz, the Cyberdyne President, and Sam Jones as the night goes on. If there's any glitch at all, I want to take the system down, just in case—put the issue beyond any doubt. I can't see it happening, but I'll need your support if it does.'
'Everything is nominal here, Jack,' the Command Director said, sounding only slightly puzzled. 'We can get by without Skynet for a few hours if we must. We've done it before for long enough.'
'Of course you have.'
'It's your call, pal. Don't worry, I'll back you up if I can. Just make sure you've got a damn good reason.'
'Yeah, thanks. I appreciate it. I don't want to give you the wrong impression—we're not panicking over here. It's just if there is some glitch...'
'Yeah, yeah, I understand—you're just keeping me in the loop. Don't worry, that's fine. I'll have another word with the Commander-in-Chief.'
Jack put down the receiver, feeling relieved to have that out of the way. The whole thing was ridiculous, but it still gave him the creeps. Well, he'd been given responsibility to deal with the problem and he damn sure would, one way or other. Next, he'd give Cruz and Jones a quick call.
What he couldn't get over was the fact that someone had such good information. Jack had played it down with Miles, but Miles was right: There was more behind all this. Some kind of sabotage could not be ruled out, not absolutely. Despite Layton's obvious impatience with the idea, some whacko might be trying to give them a twisted sort of warning.
The alternative, of course, was out of the question: Perhaps Sarah Connor really
No, that didn't bear taking seriously.
CHAPTER FIVE
JOHN'S WORLD
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
MAY 1994
Oscar Cruz ate half his sandwich and gulped down most of his coffee. He left the diner, handing across enough cash to cover the check easily, then waved down a taxi. He jumped in the back seat and gave Rosanna Monk's address. At this time of morning, it would take half an hour to reach her apartment.
On the way, he made some phone calls. First, he checked in with Cyberdyne's attorney, Fiona Black, from Black Jessup Nash. She had a complicated story about the insurance and the difficulty with getting any cooperation from Tarissa Dyson. 'A lot of this doesn't add up,' she said. 'The insurers are going to be difficult about it I've already spoken to their attorneys and it's pretty obvious they don't want to grant indemnity. They almost seem to be blaming the Dysons.'
Oscar cursed silently, but he wasn't really surprised. It was still unclear why Miles had gone to the site with the Connors and their accomplice. At first glance, it looked like he'd been forced to accompany them, but that didn't add up. The Connors had let Tarissa and the kid, Danny,
go free-so why hadn't she called the police straightaway, instead of waiting for a guard at the site to do it? Perhaps she'd been intimidated by threats of reprisals, but an early intervention might have saved her husband's life. If the Dysons weren't actually in league with the Connors, they'd sure behaved foolishly.
'Tarissa won't even talk to me,' Black said. 'She won't talk to the insurer or its lawyers, either. Everything has to go formally through her own lawyer. You'd think she was the subject of a criminal investigation.'
'Maybe she will be,' Oscar said, glancing at the taxi driver and just making sure that his end of the conversation didn't make sense to the driver. He guessed not.
Black said, 'Maybe so, though I gather she's been prepared to talk to the police, as long as her attorney's present.'
'Okay. So it's turning into a quagmire at your end?'
'Well, it's what you pay me for. You just need to understand that it's getting complicated.'
Oscar had been around long enough to know that this was lawyer code for expect a huge bill He didn't like paying avoidable legal expenses, but it seemed that Black was doing a good job in absurdly difficult circumstances. It wasn't just the Dysons who'd screwed up badly. You'd think that the LA.P.D. could have stopped two adults and one nine- or ten-year-old child from demolishing a city office block. An entire SWAT team had failed to stop them, for God's sake.
If Black and her firm were going to get a windfall out of this, that might be a small price to pay. They had to sort out the big questions-not just the insurance money, but also the company's defense contracts. They'd have to convince the government that Cyberdyne was not at fault and that it still had the capacity to deliver. It didn't matter much what it took in legal expenses, or any other short-term pain, if they got a good result.
'Okay,' he said. 'That's all fine. I understand what you're up against Do what you have to do.'
He left a message for Jack Reed in Washington, just saying he'd call back later. Then he called Charles Layton, just to say to whom he'd been talking.
'Very good,' Layton said, sounding slightly patronizing. 'Keep me informed, Oscar.'
Rosanna answered the door of her apartment, dressed in a plain white T-shirt, faded pink jeans, and a pair of flexible plastic sandals. She led him to a paved terrace out back, with cane furniture and an open sun umbrella.
'Thanks for making the time, Rosanna.'
'Well, it's not like I had to go to work today.'
She was probably the smartest of all Cyberdyne's team of young research employees, a pretty blonde in her late twenties, with very pale skin and a genius for neural net design work. She'd become involved in the nanochip project since joining the company two years before, with a doctorate and a raft of other degrees from UCLA. Next to Miles Dyson, she knew more about the project's details than anyone, even Oscar himself. But that was not necessarily saying so much. Miles had been the real expert. The project was his baby.
'Can I get you something to drink?' Rosanna said.
'Just water, please. Chilled, if that's not a problem. Nothing with bubbles.'
