drove closer to the alley so the others could pile into the back, unseen by anyone who strayed past. A few seconds later, a group of revelers came by, two couples who looked they'd come from a party or a dance club. One young man wore a purple velvet dinner suit. The other had a plain black business suit with a flamboyant lime green tie. The women wore short dresses, tight round their hips, with low-slung belts. They tottered on high heels. Such absurd clothing people wore in this era, Anton thought. Especially the women. Those clothes could never be practical for fighting. Still, they might do for Selena, and Jade, at least for the moment.
Robert pulled up alongside the partygoers, winding down the car window when they ignored him. They glanced over at the police car, possibly wondering what they'd done wrong, or maybe just feeling drunk and aggressive.
'Excuse me,' Robert said in Spanish, 'but we need your clothes...'
The T-XA stepped forward, and the policemen fired a shot into the air. 'Put down your weapon,' one said. 'This is your last warning. Drop to the ground. Now!'
'That won't be necessary, officer.'
'Now!' The police fired in the air. At the same time, the T-XA's pseudo-dog component sprang for one officer's throat, its mouth unhinging and its teeth elongating into throat-tearing daggers. The other officer fired, and several bullets impacted on the pseudo-human components of the T-XA, scarcely affecting its polyalloy construction. The male human component fired its laser rifle just once, as the female component commandeered the car. Its work done, the dog component jumped into the rear of the vehicle.
The pseudo-man had a last task to do. Quickly, it extended a finger into through the skull of the policeman that the dog component had terminated. As it probed the human's brain, the polyalloy extension broke down into thousands of minimally programmed nanoware fragments. These swarmed through the human's nervous system according to a preprogrammed routine, eating, digesting, and analyzing nerve fiber, building up sufficient data records to reintegrate into a highly simplified version of the man's personality and memories. Seconds later, the tiny components streamed back into the T-XA, carrying all that information with them. The Terminator reintegrated them into its body, and its main software reconstructed the information it needed.
Unfortunately, little of the information was of direct use. There was nothing about Sarah and John Connor, but, in that regard, the T-XA had what it needed. Skynet had given it good files of the Connors' futile actions in trying to prevent Judgment Day, including their address in Mexico City. Most usefully, the policeman's recent memories included reports of strange blue lightning in the direction where the T-XA had sensed a space-time disruption.
As the male component slid into the car, it discarded most of the information it had retained. The complex organization of a human brain, even when drastically simplified, was too much for it to incorporate efficiently in its dispersed, multiply-redundant programming. It kept only what it needed. It placed its hand on the female component's shoulder, letting their polyalloy bodies run together to share the policeman's significant memories. Then it withdrew. The female component extruded a finger into the car's ignition mechanism to start the engine. The T-XA headed for its destination: the city square known as the Zocalo.
It cruised the area slowly, looking out for the human time travelers. There were no apparent signs of any recent space-time displacement event, or of any encounter between time travelers and the humans of this period, but the T-XA had fairly precise information about the lightning-like disturbance in a back alley. The pseudo-woman parked the police car in the area, and reached for the laser rifle, as its pseudo-male counterpart opened the passenger side door, then liquefied into a dozen quicksilver blobs. These took shape as streamlined catlike creatures, which ran from the car, faster than any cheetah, rushing in a search pattern through the nearby alleys.
After a minute, there were screams. Soon, the pseudo-cats returned to the police car, then merged to reform the human male component. Once reintegrated, the male shared the newly-gained knowledge with the female, then extended an arm over the back seat to mingle programming with the pseudo-dog.
The pseudo-cats had discovered six humans, tied up in an alley, and taken the opportunity to terminate them. Two of them had been police officers, and all of them had encountered the time travelers. The pseudo-cats' information included the registration number of a police car that the time travelers had commandeered, as well as detailed data on their appearances, voices, capabilities, and methods.
Once more, the T-XA retained only the most useful in- formation, sharing it through all its components. Next, imitating the voice of one of the police it had terminated when it obtained its own car, it reported that the other police car had been stolen and its occupants killed. That might cause the time travelers some difficulties.
Meanwhile, it knew where they had probably gone: the Connors' cyber cafe, El Juicio, slightly north of here. That was their logical destination. The pseudo-woman turned the wheel, and accelerated.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SKYNET'S WORLD
ADVANCED DEFENSE SYSTEMS COMPLEX
COLORADO
JUDGMENT DAY
The phone rang, and Jack answered it. He was silent, listening, but he beckoned them ail back, pointed downward to say stay right there.
'What?' he said into the handset. Miles listened, trying to work out what was going on. 'My God...Do whatever you have to. Just make sure Miles can get into The Cage...Yeah, he's going there right now—him and Sam Jones.' Jack replaced the receiver. Given what had happened with Skynet, Miles thought, what could possibly be so important?
Jones said, 'What's wrong?'
'That was Steve Bullock. He says we're under attack.'
'What? Who from? Demonstrators? Or do you mean for real?'
'Oh, it's for real, all right.' Jack took a .45 caliber handgun from his desk drawer, and checked the mechanism. 'It's only one intruder, but somehow she's gotten past all our outer defenses and she's headed this way.' He started shutting down his terminal.
'But there's over a hundred people in this facility,' Samantha said. 'Most of us are armed. What can one intruder do?'
Jack headed for the door. 'I know all that. Why don't you tell Bullock? Come with me, folks, unless you want to be in the middle of a firefight. Steve has herded her onto this floor.'
'Her?'
There was a sound of rifle fire nearby, from the direction of the elevators—a series of single shots, then three-round bursts. Miles wondered how dealing with one intruder could require so much firepower.
The Advanced Defense Systems Complex was built with the newest, strongest alloys and ceramics. It was hardened to withstand a near miss from a high-yield warhead, and was full of armed servicemen. It had sophisticated security systems making it almost impossible to penetrate or attack. Even for Eve, it was no soft target.
But it could be done, with the right knowledge.
Once inside the elevator, she found the electronic keycard that she'd taken. She touched it to a glowing sensor, then entered the six-digit security code on a touchpad. By now, the humans would be fully alert to her presence. They would surely stop the elevator at Level A, to ensure they met her when she exited. There was little she could do about that, so she accepted it as a mission constraint, and pressed the button for that level, 1000 feet below.
She was equipped with detailed files on the facility's design and operations.
It had two entrances, one of which was blocked by huge, permanently-closed blast doors—even for her, they were far too heavy to open without assistance. That was essentially an emergency exit. She was entering the complex in the only practical way.
Its highest and smallest floor, Level A, consisted of executive offices and meeting rooms. Level B, immediately below, housed the operations areas, including Skynet's hardware. That was her initial target. Level C was Cyber-dyne's general experimental facility, with large assembly and testing areas. Gaining control of this was imperative. Level D had sleeping quarters, mess rooms and various community facilities, while Level E had all the basic infrastructure, including the huge diesel-powered generators that made the complex almost independent of
