Rising Storm

'Well, ideally we all should be free, and well fed and have a comfortable, safe place to sleep at night. But I don't think that's the way things are. Do you?'

She gave a 'hunh!' and glared at him.

'Don't let your pride get in the way of your considerable intelligence,' he said.

'You know you never should have gotten involved in this without checking into it further, don't you?'

With a shrug she said, 'I checked you out. As far as I could. Your Web address belongs to a guy named Dieter von Rossbach and he isn't you. But why you're using his computer, I couldn't find out. I also couldn't find any reference to an AM anywhere. Which indicates that it's a new name. So, either you've never done anything like this yourself, or you've screwed it up so badly that you needed a new handle.'

He considered her answer. Not bad for what was mostly guesswork. He scrubbed his face with his hands, being careful not to dislodge his facial hair, and looked at her.

'Well?' she asked, one eyebrow raised.

'It is a new name. Spur-of-the-moment thing,' he admitted. 'I've done research on the Net before and I've lurked around a bit. But this sort of thing, getting other people involved…' He turned down the corners of his mouth and shook his head. 'Yeah. This is new.'

Wendy huffed a little and leaned back in her chair, studying him. He was young, probably younger than she was, but he felt older, and she instinctively knew she

could trust him. Maybe she was being snippy.

'So what's this about?' she asked. 'I guess you didn't come all the way from South America because you thought I was cute or something.'

'Sure I did,' he said, grinning. Then held up his hand to ward off her response.

'Well, maybe it helped. I came up here because it would be irresponsible to let you keep doing this research without having some idea of why and what you're doing. I am not lying when I tell you it could be dangerous. Now I'm not talking gun battles on the quad here.' At least I hope like hell I'm not. 'Maybe a better word would be risk.'

'Risk?' she said. Wendy took a sip of her soda, watching him.

'Yeah. You're taking a risk on your future here. Which is why I believe you need more information.'

Biting her lips, she nodded slowly, meeting his dark-eyed gaze. He had a point.

The powers that be might, at the very least, think that what she'd been doing was unethical, if not uncommon. And that could impact her career path.

'All right,' she said. 'Enlighten me.'

Okay, here goes. 'What you've been working on is an attempt to locate a very dangerous military AI project.'

After a moment's pause she asked, 'A U.S. government project?'

'Ye-ah.' Who else? he wondered.

'Because, you're from Paraguay, aren't you?'

'I'm from the U.S., I live in Paraguay,' he said impatiently. 'What's your point?'

'I dunno. I guess'—she shrugged—'I wondered why you'd be interested.'

People are right, John thought, Americans are self-centered. If you're not from here what do you care what we do? Naive and unconsciously arrogant, to say the least.

'My interest is in stopping this project, at the very least slowing it down.'

Suddenly mindful of where their acquaintance had begun, Wendy asked suspiciously, 'Are you some kind of a Luddite?'

' Now you ask me?' John favored her with an exasperated look. 'No, I'm not a Luddite. I'm willing to admit that they have a few good ideas, but by and large I don't think their ideology is applicable to real life. And I don't like terrorists; they're all self-centered, mean-spirited nutcakes, if you ask me. Me, I just have this one lousy project that needs to be stopped. I have my reasons, which I'll explain to you someplace less public. But I'm not here to hurt you, Wendy, far from it.'

Wendy considered that. 'Have you read Labane's book?' she asked.

John shook his head. 'I haven't had time.'

'So you really can't say whether their ideology is, in fact, applicable.' She crossed her arms and watched him for his reaction.

John was a bit confused. Suddenly she wanted to play debating team? To him the question and its follow-up had come out of left field. Maybe it's like a time-out, he thought. She's trying to get some space to think about me being here so she's distracting me with this nonsense.

'You know what?' he said. 'You're right. I can't speak to the Luddite ideology with any authority because I haven't made a minute study of their position. I think they bear watching, but frankly'—he flattened his hand on his chest—'I'm not that interested. I have this one thing I have to do and it takes all my time and concentration. I'm hoping that once you've heard what I have to say, you and your friends will want to continue helping me. And if you don't I'm trusting you to keep quiet about it. Everything else is irrelevant to me. Okay?'

She kind of lifted her head and pursed her lips. 'Sure, whatever.' Wendy took another sip of her drink, annoyed and slightly embarrassed. 'So. Have you got a place to stay?'

'Uh, actually I was kind of hoping you might have a suggestion about that.'

She gave him a cool, level look that went on long enough to see that he understood he wasn't staying with her.

'A motel, a bed-and-breakfast maybe?' he quickly suggested.

'Hotels in Boston and Cambridge, if you can find one with a room, tend to be expensive, and B-and-Bs are even more so. I'll see if I can find someone to put you up in their room.' She took up her backpack. 'You can eat here if you like.'

She shrugged. 'It's not very good, but it is cheap. Or there are restaurants all

around the campus that have reasonable prices and fairly good food.'

John stood up to follow her, but she held up her hand.

'I'm going to talk to my friends about you and I don't think you should be there.

Be back here by seven-thirty and I'll bring you to the meeting.' She started off, then said 'bye' over her shoulder with a vague sort of wave.

John was left standing there, feeling a little foolish, and a lot uncertain about how this was going to work out. He wanted Wendy to like him and he'd really come on strong, which he could tell she didn't like. Wait till she found out what he was talking about. He blew out his breath.

No wonder Mom flipped out for a while, he thought. Being right doesn't help much when you're right about something this weird.

He slipped on his backpack and looked around the busy room. He sure hoped Dieter was having a better time than he was.

I'm beginning to look forward to meeting with those arms dealers. A sure sign that things weren't going all that well here.

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

Alissa had cast a broad net when she went looking for von Rossbach and Connor. The boy had slipped through, but the former Sector agent had used one of his old aliases. So when Vera Philmore sent out queries on the Net with that name attached, the I-950 had immediately purchased a one-way ticket to the woman's present location.

The Terminator had arrived at the dock to find that Philmore's yacht had sailed.

It wasn't difficult to get a copy of the yacht's itinerary, and the T-101 bought a ticket on a small plane bound for Macapa, Brazil, the next afternoon.

CHAPTER NINE