Jordan let out his breath in a little 'huh!' of surprise, as though someone had poked him in the stomach. His mind immediately crowded with questions.
Possible? What did that mean? He'd seen them, and in his opinion there was no mistaking one. And Sarah was the world's longest-lived expert on the subject, so if even she wasn't sure, what did that mean?
Digging in his pocket he pulled out some change and dropped coins into the phone. He dialed Consuela, a college student he knew who was delighted to pass along his cryptic messages for the fifty-plus-expenses he slipped her.
'Yo!' It sounded like Jennifer Lopez was singing backup to Consuela's studies tonight.
'Hi,' Jordan said, 'it's me. I've got a message for you. This time I'll need you to make the call.'
'Sure,' she said. 'Shoot.'
He rattled off the number first. 'Ask for Dieter or John. If neither of them is there I still want you to leave the message, but you've got to stress that this is very, very important, and that they have to be given the message as soon as possible, okay?'
'Ok.'
'Sure,' she said; you could almost hear the shrug in her voice. 'For fifty bucks I'll make them think it's the only way to save the world.'
avoid halfway measures at all costs. Let the package come to you.' '
She repeated it back to him. 'Sounds like a fortune cookie,' she said.
'Everybody's a critic. How's your Spanish?' he asked.
'Better'n yours, chico.'
'Good,' he said, smiling. 'Because you'll probably be speaking to people with no English.'
'No proh. That it?'
'Yup. I'll slip the money in your mailbox,' he said. 'Good night.'
'Night.'
Jordan went to their table and sat down with a smile. 'Well, that's taken care of, we shouldn't be interrupted again,' he said.
Sarah's smile was radiant as she said, 'The specials are veal piccatta and fettucciniprimavera.'
'Sounds good,' Jordan said. He smiled at Silberman. 'What are you having, Doctor?'
The Watcher/Terminator had searched the house and had not found the subject Sarah Connor. It had even asked one of the humans if he had seen her. The man responded by describing a sexual fantasy that even the Terminator knew wasn't healthy.
It hadn't yet gone to Dr. Silberman's office. Calculations had indicated that it would be best to avoid the doctor since the Watcher/ Terminator's estimation of Silberman's reaction to their first meeting signified a 48 percent chance (plus or minus 5 percent) that the doctor had found it suspicious. But now it seemed best to override that decision; this was fast becoming an emergency situation.
The glass panel in the doctor's door was dark, indicating that he wasn't there. The Terminator tried the door and found it locked.
'He's gone,' a young woman said.
The Terminator recognized one of the other psychologists who worked here. 'I was going to clean his office,' it said.
'Don't you have a key?' the woman asked.
'No,' it said.
She shrugged. 'Then it'll have to wait till tomorrow. G'night,' she said cheerfully, and walked off.
It watched her go as it sorted through the information it had. The doctor was gone, Connor was gone. By the rules of this place she couldn't go off on her own; therefore it seemed likely that they were together.
Given Connor's history with Silbennan, there was a good chance that she'd kidnapped him. The question was, why? Escape?
The Watcher's appearance was very different from that of other Terminators, and
with the death of the only I-950 that Connor knew about, she had no reason to suspect that she was in immediate danger. Its inspection of her file in Silberman's office showed that she was being treated very gently here, eliminating abuse as a reason for escaping.
The Watcher's processor offered the possibility that John Connor and their ally von Rossbach had come to collect her, giving that scenario a fifty percent chance of being correct.
It needed more information. The Watcher had tapped the pay phone that the patients used; now it accessed those recordings. And there it was. She was meeting Jordan Dyson at a cafe on Sunset Boulevard. It headed for the small, elderly sedan that had been assigned to it.
Joe Consigli and Paul Delfino sat in the van watching Cafe Verice on a monitor, trying to decide which of them should haunt the bar by way of keeping a closer eye on their quarry.
'I should, I should,' Joe insisted, stabbing a finger at his chest. 'I spent a month in the dead zone watching lobotomy candidates while you were out walking around in the real world. So I get to go inside.'
'Yeah, but you've been going in and out of that building right next door to her. If she's going to recognize one of us, it's going to be you.'
Consigli held up his hands. 'She never saw me, man.'
'Joe, you walk into that bar, I betcha ten bucks she buys you a drink.'
'Oh yeah?'
'Yeah!'
Consigli was thoughtful for a moment. 'Okay, so neither one of us should go in.
But one of us should watch the back.'
'No, no,' Paul said, shaking a finger. 'I am not spending several hours soaking up the ambience of a garbage-and piss-and puke-soaked alley. No, no, not me, pal. Unh unh.'
Joe looked at him. 'Y'know, I'd forgotten what a pain it was working with you.'
'I'll tell you what you forgot, you forgot our rule,' Paul said. At Consigli's puzzled look he snapped, 'Whoever thinks it up has to do it!'
'Okay, fine!' Joe said. Anything to get away from this bullshit. He pushed himself to his feet when something on the monitor caught his eye. 'Hey,' he said, pointing. 'That's the new janitor. Isn't it?'
Delfino looked. 'Yeah, it is.' He glanced at Consigli. 'Not exactly dressed for fine dining, is he?'
The Watcher, still clad in gray coveralls, came down the street, its gaze fixed on the Cafe Verice. It walked up to the van and stationed itself so that it could look through the van's windows into the restaurant.
'Sometimes they just beg to be arrested, don't they?' Delfino asked.
Consigli flashed him a look. 'You think he had something to do with the other janitor's death?'
'Did you see the size of his hands?' Paul asked by way of response. 'And going by his arms and shoulders, he could bench-press a bull, never mind break the neck of some sixty-something-old guy. Now he's eyeballing the place where our subject is having dinner. My guess, he's here to either help her out or to take her out.'
'Either way we'd better do something,' Joe said. 'But carefully, we don't want Connor to see. Hey!'
The Watcher had quickly become aware that the van it was hiding behind was tenanted and began to move away. Both Consigli and Delfino piled out of the van, guns drawn, to move in pursuit.
'Stop!' Delfino shouted.
