Rising Storm

desk.

'My dear Wendy, we can't afford should. We need to kill this monster.'

'Which John tells me you've already done twice!' Wendy challenged from her chair in front of him. 'So killing it isn't working. You need to prevent this thing from becoming a monster. Maybe something less obvious and less destructive is the answer. Let them have their Skynet!' She waved her hands in an expansive gesture. 'Just don't let that Skynet reach its full potential. All they're looking for is a tool, not something that's going to try and take over the world. Let them have what they want while making sure you get what you want. They'll never even suspect anything's wrong—because from their point of view, nothing will be wrong!'

She stopped talking, looking at him as though willing him to give her a go-ahead. Von Rossbach pushed out his lower lip as he thought and John stood behind Wendy's chair, tapping his foot nervously.

'How likely are they to find this program you're proposing?' Dieter asked.

'Not very,' Wendy assured him. 'A program like the one that makes up Skynet is extremely complex; there are millions of lines of text involved. I could never have done it without that data that John gave us, from the thing's… head. What I'm intending isn't going to interrupt Skynet's function, so it won't cause problems for the designers. All I want to do is prevent unintended consequences, and I can do that by spreading my program out quite a bit so that it won't stand out as something alien.' When von Rossbach still looked dubious she hastened to explain further. 'They'll certainly check the program after your visit,' she admitted. 'I know I would. But they'll be looking for key words that will involve self-destruction. While our goal isn't to destroy but to get the computer to ignore

certain data. Something like that won't stand out. And unless someone is so anal that they insist on going over every single line of text, it will not be noticed.'

'Where's your mother?' Dieter asked John, who shrugged. 'Let's go find her.'

Sarah was in John's room working on his computer. She glanced up with a distracted frown as they came in, then looked a question at them.

'Wendy has a new idea that we'd like to run by you,' Dieter said.

Sarah turned to the girl and gave her all her attention. After Wendy had finished explaining she sat quietly rocking the desk chair as she thought. 'It could work,'

she said at last. 'Maybe destroying Skynet is impossible; it certainly feels that way. But sabotaging it…' Sarah chewed her lower lip, then nodded once, firmly.

'Yes. Let's try it. It isn't like bombing the place isn't taking a risk, too. And this way they won't feel the need to start all over again. And'—she glanced at her son

—'John can stay here.'

John simply stared at her in shock and Wendy caught her breath in a gasp.

'You've got to be kidding,' he said.

Sarah shook her head. 'Completely serious. The mission doesn't need you and I don't think that with this new plan there's any excuse for putting you at risk like that.'

'Mom, you're asking me to send my girlfriend in my place! Do you think I'm going to just stand by and let you do that?'

'I expect you to weigh the risks against the benefits and to come up with the

same results that I have.' Sarah met his eyes with a hard look.

'I can't believe this,' John said, turning his back on her. Then he swung around again. 'Wendy hasn't had the training to take on something like this.'

'You haven't been around snow since you were four, kiddo,' Sarah reminded him. 'And Dieter can take very good care of her. I was trusting him to take care of you, so now he can do the same thing for her.' Slowly she realized that he was more angry than she'd ever seen him; the skin around his nostrils was actually white. 'Besides, you don't have enough supplies for three people.'

'Those could be acquired.' Dieter shrugged in the face of her glare, his face unreadable.

'I'm going, Mom.' John was breathing hard, but his voice was calm and his eyes were cool. 'That's the end of it.' Then he turned and started to walk out of the room.

Sarah sprang to her feet, hiding a wince. 'John! It's an unacceptable risk!'

'Mom, I ask you, what good will I ever be if I stay here safe and warm while sending someone I love out to maybe get killed. How would I ever be able to call myself a man?' He glared at her from the doorway.

Wendy had been watching them wide-eyed; now she spoke up, her voice shaking. 'I won't go without him.'

Sarah's eyes widened and her head snapped around to face the girl. She could feel the blood draining from her face. Then she looked at Dieter. The big

Austrian stood like an oak, his arms folded, his eyes downcast.

'Sarah, you have not healed completely. You would be a liability. You know it, we all know it. Why not admit it?'

'If you'd all already decided this was what you were going to do, then why in hell did you interrupt my work?' she demanded fiercely. 'Get lost, I've got things to do.' She sat down and began typing.

John looked at von Rossbach, who tossed his head in the direction of the door.

Wendy scuttled out first, followed by John. Dieter gave Sarah's back a long, last look.

'You're right,' she said, in an almost whisper.

'What was that?' he replied politely.

'I said, you're right. I'm not fit to go into the field right now. I'll be more useful here.' A pause. 'Harder to wait than to do.'

Dieter smiled and pulled the door gently to.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

LOVE'S THRUST, VERA PHILMORE'S

YACHT, THE RAGING FIFTIES

'John stood alone on the deck, so deep in his own thoughts he barely noticed the driving rain that competed with the seawater blasting under his oilskins. The sky above was steel gray, the same color as the rough-sided mountains of moving

water before and behind, topped with frothing white where the keening wind slashed their tops into foam. It was a storm fifty million years old, here where wind and water circled eternally from east to west about the Antarctic coasts.

The young man ignored it, save for the tight grip on the railing and eyes slitted against the spray.

He had been brooding ever since the stiff leave-taking with his mother. He'd been busy breaking down the moments before good-bye into smaller and smaller pieces.

From the time when she'd first sent him to the academy, his mother had insisted on carrying his bag out to the car for him, no matter how heavy it got. As he grew and realized that despite his mental image of her, Sarah Connor was not a towering Amazon, he'd tried to take over that task; but she wouldn't allow it. It became a kind of good-natured contest between them. A contest he'd never won until that morning.

He'd dragged his duffel downstairs to find her already on the portal, looking out into the yard, unsmiling, arms crossed, her back military straight, the fingers of her hands digging into her arms. The bag was a little thing—really an unimportant thing—but it signaled her displeasure to him vividly and he regretted the rift between them.

'Did you forget anything?' she'd asked, obviously unable to break old habits completely.

'Nope,' he'd said, just as he always did. 'Got my toothbrush, my comb, and an extra pair of shoelaces.'

That had earned him only a slight, distant smile.

Wendy, in her eagerness to avoid contact with his mother, was already in the car, in the backseat—crowding the far door in an effort to escape Sarah's gimlet eye.

Knowing Wendy might be watching them made him feel even more awkward.

John was disappointed that the women in his life hadn't taken to each other, but under the circumstances he had decided to just let it ride.