started fighting with the warlords, it carried weapons openly. Right now, it had an AK-47, a hostered- .45-caliber pistol, and a 12-gauge shotgun for close-range stopping power.
'
'What do you want to do?' Sarah said.
'I don't know.' John went and sat beside her. 'I wish there was something more—I don't know— constructive...'
'I know, John. It's been hard.' She stood and found her packet of cigarettes. She seldom smoked these days, just a few cigarettes per week, but now he had her thinking. 'Maybe it's time to make some decisions.' She sat on the edge of a table, lit up and shook the match to snuff out its flame.
'That's the trouble,' he said. They'd had these conversations before, every few months, when the tension built up inside him. They kept going round in circles. 'Skynet's making decisions, too, Mom. We can count on that. It's working out how to find everyone who's left, and how to exterminate us.' Again, he glanced at the T-800. 'Isn't that right?'
'Highly probable.'
'Yeah, I know: you don't have the specific data.'
'Correct.'
'If we could just hit Skynet hard before it becomes too strong.' John imagined it there, thousands of miles away in the Rocky Mountains, safely hidden from sight. Even now, it might be building the factories and machines it needed. 'Right now, we're getting distracted. We've got to go forward... I don't know... somehow! We need to organize people.'
'That's what we're doing, John.' Her voice had that flat kind of sound, like she wasn't going to help him with this. Perhaps she'd had enough of it. Talking about the problem never seemed to get them anywhere.
'I know, but—'
'But what?'
He clenched his fists until his knuckles were white. 'But it's not going to stop Skynet. Not this way.' It was all happening like the messages said it would. Nothing they'd done before Judgment Day had helped, and nothing now was preventing the war against the machines. This was why it would take so many years to defeat Skynet, why the messages came back from 2029—nearly thirty years in the future! Meaning the war had lasted, or would last, for decades. He could see, now, why it would happen like that. There were so many other problems.
Skynet was built under a mountain. To crack open its defenses, they'd need massive explosive weapons. Weapons like that must be around somewhere. They couldn't all have been destroyed on Judgment Day. But he had no way of getting hold of them, let alone delivering them. They didn't even know what communities had survived. All communications had broken down, along with civil order. Before the Internet had totally crashed, he'd found some people still alive in Africa, central Asia, and elsewhere in South America. There must be others in remote places, but he couldn't contact them, use whatever resources they had. Not without a lot of re-building. If only they could all band together, share resources somehow, before Skynet acted first.
He looked at the Terminator, thinking it over. Nothing had changed the sequence of events. Skynet itself had tried and failed. Some time in the future, it would send back the first Terminator to 1984. The Terminator had tried to kill Sarah—and failed. It would also send the T-1000. Well, the T-1000 was still out there—but, so far, it too, had failed. Maybe time was like a solid lump of rock, except in four dimensions. Nothing ever changed it. If you knew the future and tried to stop it, or even if you sent back a time traveler, it didn't work. It would never work. Every time you did it, time had already taken it into account. If you tried to kill your grandfather in the cradle, you'd know in advance you were going to fail. You couldn't succeed, because the past had factored your actions in—and you hadn't succeeded.
In that case, all this NO FATE stuff was crap; it was nonsense, just a bunch of high-sounding, feel-good words, another useless distraction. Whatever he did, it would all turn out the same way. Right now, that was how it looked. Oh, he'd grind on, and eventually succeed, because he had to, because that's what the messages said, because it was all he could do. He was trapped.
'Let's talk later, Mom. I need to think. There's got to be a better way.'
'We'll win, John,' Sarah said. 'One way or other, we'll win this war.'
'I know,' he said, feeling a twinge of anger, though not with her. Not really. 'We'll win in the end. All the same, there's just got to be a better way.' He looked sharply at the Terminator. 'Give me an answer once and for all. Can time be changed?'
'Unknown.'
'Yeah. Unknown. But Skynet must have thought it could. What did it know that we don't?'
'Insufficient data.'
'Yeah, that's kinda what I thought. I guess you were just a grunt in Skynet's army.'
'Correct.'
'Just concentrate on surviving,' Sarah said. 'Everything depends on that.'
'Does it, Mom? Does it? We just don't know.'
'All right, then.' She was suddenly hard. 'I asked you what you wanted. It's your turn to have an idea.'
'I don't know! I don't know!'
'Yes, John, you do. It's eating you up.' Relentless now. 'So make a decision. No one else can make it for you. What do you want?'
'I said, I don't know.' He was almost in tears, he was so angry, so frustrated.
'What do you want, John? Tell me.' She stubbed out her cigarette, and stared at him, searching for an answer.
'Tell me, John.'
'Can't I think about it some more?'
Sarah seemed to deflate. 'Of course,' she said. 'I'm sorry. If that's what you need—'
But something fell in place inside him. 'No,' he said. 'It's okay.' Before Judgment Day, John and Sarah had built a reputation on the Internet. They'd predicted the nuclear holocaust, and gotten it right. There must be people out there who'd trust them, who'd believe them and help.
They'd have to show themselves, whatever risks it involved.
He'd reached a decision. 'Okay,' he said. 'We've got to take the fight to Skynet.'
'Good,' Sarah said. 'The choice had to be yours. It's what I hoped you'd say.'
ARGENTINA
2003
An icy wind blew across the dustbowl. John had turned eighteen, and his fame was spreading through the Argentine countryside. Some remembered how he and Sarah had predicted Judgment Day, either because they'd seen something on the Net before it happened or because they knew someone who had. Some had military contacts, who knew the Connors' names, and how they'd been a thorn in the side of the U.S. government.
John was working with the T-800 and Juanita Salceda, fixing one of Raoul's Humvees. Juanita was fourteen now, growing tall and skinny, like a dark foal. She was good with machines and stuff. John liked having her around. 'Okay,' he said. 'Let's try it.'
Juanita started the vehicle, and it roared into life.
John turned to the T-800. 'Hey, whaddya think?'
'Cool,' the Terminator said. It held out the palm of its big hand. 'Give me five.'
'Right!'
Just then, Raoul drove into the compound, his Jeep Cherokee raising a rooster tail of dust along the track from the Cordoba road. There was something funny, though. He drove confidently enough, smoothly, but not in his usual gonzo style. Despite his age, Raoul could be crazy once he got behind the wheel. Right now, he seemed to be holding back for some reason. He parked in front of the casco, and Gabriela stepped out to greet him. Their once- elegant mansion was ugly from years of battles and repairs, the original stone largely gone. Its gardens, groves and lawns were an ill-kempt jungle of weeds and cactus bushes. Even Raoul's dog, good old Hercules, was thinner, almost gaunt. They'd learned to live with hunger.
Raoul stepped out of the Cherokee and looked around, kind of alert, like he was casing the joint. He saw John, and their eyes met for a moment. 'Hello, John,' he said. 'We need to talk. Something's happened, companero.'
