Rising Storm

hit with a bomb. Which an exploding propane tank would very closely resemble. Maybe it's just my nasty mind talking, but this sounds deliberate.

The news anchor was saying that possible terrorist activity was being looked into.

Nice to know it isn't just me for a change, Sarah thought. Paranoids had real enemies, too.

MONTANA

Clea smiled. Her timing had been exquisite. She'd found a weakness, exploited it and voila! Panic in the streets. Or there would be after her message on the Net was discovered.

They'd be blathering about it for weeks, maybe months, and spending untold amounts of money studying and correcting the problem. Little knowing that despite their best and most earnest efforts, she'd just do it again.

Actually, next time she thought she'd cause an oil spill. Clea had been exploring the possibilities of hacking into a ship's closed system by satellite. If it proved feasible she was going to try to time the incident so that some enormously popular place was soiled in the most appallingly photogenic manner possible.

Preferably somewhere with otters. Dying otters just drove humans wild.

For a while she'd toyed with the idea of having a Terminator do the job for her, but it would be better to do it by remote if possible. It would be much, much more difficult for the oil companies to explain if they didn't have a convenient scapegoat, such as a mysteriously missing crewman.

Heads will roll, she thought. What a charming image. She began to see why Serena had found such joy in her work.

Clea was busy with her preparations to leave Montana for New York. She had stepped up her production of T-101s using the last few chips that Serena had left her and working overtime manufacturing a close facsimile of her own.

Fortunately she found microlithography a relaxing hobby. It would take years of experimentation before she would have the proper materials to make the true

chip, but what she'd been able to cobble together had 97.3 percent of the efficiency of the real ones, so for the interim they should perform adequately.

Her plan was to place the Terminator that had been established as her relative and guardian in shutdown mode and claim that her 'uncle' was dead. Then, once he was buried, she would travel to New York to meet with Cyberdyne's CEO

and obtain a job that would bring her in contact with Skynet at last. Anyone checking into her background would find an empty cabin and an only relative buried in the nearest town's nondenominational cemetery.

Shortly before the funeral and Clea's departure, Alissa and the Terminators would move to a new location in Utah. Her buried 'uncle' would switch back to active mode after a set time and join them there; traveling by night since its flesh casing would probably die when it was buried and have to be replaced at the new facility.

With her tracks satisfactorily covered and her equipment and replacement safely hidden in a new location, she would be free to perform her function while Alissa grew up at a more normal, and undoubtedly safer, rate than Clea herself had been allowed. At the same time her little 'sister' could obtain a human incubator. There just wasn't time for her to do it herself.

She thought everything was going extremely well when Alissa came to her in the lab. 'Where is Sarah Connor?' the unnaturally solemn little girl asked her.

'Where is her son, John, and their ally, von Rossbach?'

Clea looked up from her workstation, stunned. The computer part of her brain had been sending her increasingly testy reminders about this subject, but she'd been shunting them aside, barely paying attention to them. True, she had been

busy, equally true her projects were important and Serena's own mission statement had put Sarah Connor last on the list of priorities, but to ignore something just because it was unpleasant… that was… human. The I-950 felt such a wave of self-disgust that her computer flooded her system with mood elevators.

'I don't know,' she said. Clea could feel the blood rising in her face, a human-style signal of shame, one her computer part had apparently decided not to suppress.

Sarah Connor had been in custody in a mental hospital the last time she'd checked. John Connor and his friend had disappeared. She had no idea of the current whereabouts of any of them.

'Do you know?' Clea asked.

'Yes,' Alissa said. 'And no.'

'That is nonsense,' Clea said. 'Either you know or you don't. If you know, tell me; if you don't know, find out. Either way, stop wasting my time, I have a great deal to do.' Her little sister could be very annoying when she wanted to be.

'Sarah Connor is in a halfway house in Los Angeles,' Alissa said, as though reciting.

'A what?'

'It is a place for the inmates of mental asylums or prisons to stay while they are eased back into society.' Alissa paused. 'There is absolutely no security. The

inmates are trusted to obey the house rules, to go and return on some sort of honor system. Should I explain honor system?'

'No, I know what that is. What about John Connor?' Clea asked.

Alissa pursed her lips and raised her brows in an annoyingly superior manner.

'Von Rossbach's servants have been recorded speaking to their relatives. He and Connor returned alone. Now they've disappeared again, no one knows where.'

Clea felt a sharp bolt of fear shoot through her, followed by a healthy anger.

'When were you planning to share this information with me?' she demanded.

'And what, if anything, have you done about the situation?'

'I was planning to tell you as soon as I confirmed that von Rossbach and Connor were truly absent from the estancia. Which I have done. Naturally I would not initiate any action against them without consulting you. I have suggestions.'

Clea made an encouraging gesture.

'We could send a Terminator after Sarah Connor,' Alissa suggested. 'Though given our track record to date, I'm reluctant to commit-such a resource unless absolutely necessary.'

A valid point, Clea had to concede.

Alissa continued: 'I think it's safe to assume that von Rossbach and John Connor are on their way to the United States. Probably with the intention of freeing Sarah Connor. They may also be seeking allies. Logic would seem to suggest that they need them rather badly.'

'As do we,' Clea admitted. Which was, of course, what their support of the New Luddites and their more fanatical brethren was about. Athough dupes and catspaws would be more accurate terms than ally.

Alissa ignored the comment. 'I have hacked into surveillance cameras at all customs checkpoints in the United States,' she said. 'I've assigned a Terminator to monitor them full-time.'

Clea nodded. 'Excellent,' she said. 'I think that I agree with you about sending a Terminator for Sarah Connor as well. Perhaps only to observe and report. If her son and ally show up we can try to get them all at once.'

'It might be better if I was the one sent to observe,' Alissa suggested. 'They wouldn't be expecting a child.'

The idea held exciting possibilities, Clea had to admit, and she wanted to take advantage of her younger sister's offer, but…

Shaking her head, Clea said, 'No. You're too vulnerable and much too valuable.

As yet there is no one to replace you.'

Alissa said nothing, but Clea could almost hear her thinking that if they were short of I-950s to share the work, it certainly wasn't her fault.

With a frown Clea snapped, 'I'm working as hard and as fast as I can. Right now is not the time to begin