The Future War

'I think I dropped off there. I wasn't sure if I'd dreamed you or not.'

'You did. Drop off, I mean.' He reached out and placed his hand on her head, stroking the hair back from her brow. 'How bad are you hurt?'

'Don't know yet,' she said. 'It'll take a real doctor to tell me that. Hurt enough to really want a painkiller.' Sarah looked puzzled. 'Did that kid give me one?'

'I'll find out,' he said, and rose.

He came back in a few minutes with something in his fist. He sat down again, and taking up her canteen, unscrewed the top and poured some water into it. Then he offered her a pill.

'Codeine,' he said.

'Ah, codeine is our friend,' Sarah said, and popped it, taking the cap and swallowing the water. 'I feel better just knowing I'll feel better.'

He smiled, but in a worried way. 'Mom, I've been thinking.'

'Good,' she said. 'You make a mother proud. Keep that up and we'll all get through this.'

He grinned. 'I've been thinking about you.'

She sighed and signaled him to go on.

'Mom, I think it's time you died.'

She turned wide eyes on him. 'Hello?'

'Not really,' he said quickly, smiling. 'Look, Mom, you're badly hurt here. It might be an incapacitating injury, which means your fieldwork days may be through. I think it's time you went home.'

'Home?' she said, as if she'd never heard the word. Sarah pushed herself up a bit, gritting her teeth as she did so. John made to reach for her, but she warned him off with a look.

'Where exactly is home?' Sarah raised her brows. 'Paraguay?

L.A. perhaps?'

He pressed his lips together and smiled. 'Home, for you, is where Dieter is. And since his injury, Dieter has been in Washington State training people. He could use your help. And I think you'd like to see him again.'

'You know I would,' Sarah agreed. 'But you also know that there's still a lot to do.'

'I'm not proposing that you retire, Mom. Not that you ever would. I'm saying that maybe it's time you stopped fieldwork.'

'Before I make a fool of myself?'

'More like before you get killed. I think you're too valuable.

One of the things you do best is train. Look at me,' he said, flinging his arms wide.

She grinned. 'Yeah, the Great Military Leader Dickhead.' She nodded sagely. 'That's my work.'

'You bet it is. I also need you to run herd on Snog. He and his gang are getting into some very weird tribal stuff. You're the only human being on the planet that scares him enough to rein him in.' John paused and chewed his lower lip for a moment before he continued. 'I also think that we need a martyr.'

Sarah raised her brows. 'Oh, really?'

'Yup. See, I think that people need to be reminded what they're fighting for. And I think that bringing your story'—he looked sympathetically at his mother—'your struggle, before them will remind them that there is hope.'

She frowned. 'Maybe I'm tired, but I still don't see why I have to actually die.'

'Well,' he snorted, 'you don't actually die. We'll just say you did and give you a new identity.'

'Uh-huh. Did I miss the why part?'

'Because if you just sort of semiretire, I'm afraid that people will be reminded how long this thing has been going on and how long it might well continue. Which, as you can see, would be a real downer.'

'And my death would be a signal to party. Yeah, sure, I can see that.'

'Mom. Your death would make you a saint.' He paused. 'A legend.'

She blinked. 'Oh.' It was what Kyle had called her. The legend. Sarah looked up at John with tears in her eyes. 'I see.'

He patted her hand. 'Why don't you sleep on it tonight.'

Yawning hugely, she tried to speak. Then repeated, 'I don't think I have any choice in that. Codeine's kicking in. G'night.'

She moved her lips in a kiss and sank under the drug.

John sat and watched her for a long time. The medic came and checked her, nodded positively at John— which was a relief—and went away. The rest of the battle was routine; the only real question was how many casualties they'd take, and how much productive gear they could capture—and how much they could make sure wasn't booby-trapped.

He thought he'd convinced her. At least he hoped he had. The last thing he wanted was to make her mad. But she needed time to recover from this wound, if she ever did. And he saw no reason why that recuperation shouldn't happen in Dieter's vicinity. And once there she'd be able to see how much she was needed there.

He thought he'd convinced her about the legend thing, too. At least he hoped so.

It took time to become a legend and Kyle was already ten years old. John sighed. Even though he thought this move was necessary, he disliked the dishonesty of it. The 'first' time, maybe his mother really had died in this cave. But since, thank God, she hadn't… now was the time to remove her from immediate danger.

His aide came and tapped John's shoulder, waking him from a doze. With a last fond look at Sarah's sleeping face, he rose and followed the soldier to where his people were waiting to make their reports.

MISSOURI

The clinic was ill lit, small, and not very clean. But given the supplies they had, the three-nurse staff had managed to save a fair number of lives in the three years Mary Reese had been there. There were patients in three of the five beds, two with the mystery fevers that tended to afflict the prisoners here. One with a nasty injury from having his hand dragged into some machinery.

Mary was changing the man's bandages and thinking about the days when microsurgery might have saved his hand. The accident had only happened yesterday and so far infection hadn't set in. That, at least, was good. But if the hand didn't heal and the man couldn't work, he was doomed.

Stretcher bearers rushed in with a man who was badly burned around the head and upper body. He was unconscious and apparently quite heavy.

'Where do we put him?' one of the men barked.

Mary gestured to an examining table and took a second look at them. They were unfamiliar and, she noticed for the first time, not wearing the prisoner's uniform of baggy gray cotton shirt and pants. They were dressed for the outdoors, wearing cammies. The stretcher bearers put the patient down on the table, and abandoning the stretcher, scurried away as though afraid of getting caught someplace they weren't supposed to be.

Mary met the eyes of Tia Nevers, her assistant, a young black woman whose very short hair molded a beautifully shaped skull.

'What the hell was that all about?' Tia muttered.

'My thoughts exactly,' Mary agreed. She quickly finished with her patient and went over to their sink to wash her hands.

Then she brought some warm soapy water over to the examining table and began to briskly wash off the man's face and head. Tia brought scissors and started clipping off the burned hair, clearing his scalp for treatment.

'Looks to me like a plasma beam passed pretty close to this boy,' Tia said.

Mary nodded. 'It does, doesn't it? Which makes me wonder what he's doing here.' The HKs didn't routinely round up the wounded for treatment. They were much more likely to crush them under their treads. Was he resistance? If so, what evil plan was Skynet working on?

She scrubbed, as gently and as quickly as possible, and the soot came off the man's face unwillingly. At last she'd cleared the better part of his countenance and suddenly she recognized him.

Shock froze her and she stood with the dripping cloth in her hand, staring.

Tia looked up at her from where she had been cutting his shirt off and then glanced at the patient. 'Holy shit!' she hissed.

'I know this bastard! He's a goddamned Luddite! His name is Sam.' She stood