Jordan leaned back, his eyes half-closed, assessing. But he was listening.
Tarissa licked her lips and closed her eyes. It helped her remember the order of events. There was nothing about that night that she could ever forget, except for the order in which things happened.
"After she shot Miles, he pushed Dan away, and I grabbed him and held him.
Sarah was crying; she said, 'It's all your fault. I'm not gonna let you do it.' Miles asked, 'What, what?' And she shushed us, and then she collapsed in a heap,
crying. I let go of Danny and grabbed Miles, holding him in my arms. And then the door crashed open and this huge man in black leather came in, followed by this boy of maybe ten." She looked up at Jordan, then back down at her cup.
"The boy was John Connor. He went to his mother and calmed her down. Then, when Miles asked, 'Who are you people?,' John said, 'Show em,' and handed the big man a knife. Then he got Dan out of the room.
"I will always be grateful to him for that, and that Blythe was asleep." She took another sip of tea.
"Then," she continued, "while we watched, the big man took a knife"—she held up her arm—"and sliced into his arm." Tarissa drew her other hand around and down her arm, miming the action. "Then he dropped the knife and grabbed the skin, and pulled it off in one piece."
Jordan's jaw dropped and he looked at her with his eyes wide. He shook his head. "What happened then?" he asked, glancing at Danny.
"I wasn't there to see that," Dan said. "But later I snuck down the hallway and listened while everybody talked. I heard what he said."
"You did, baby?" She hadn't known that—no wonder he had nightmares. Tarissa reached out and rubbed her son's arm, then took a sip of tea and continued.
"What happened after he pulled his skin off? Well, under his skin wasn't muscle and fat and bone and veins." She shook her head and shuddered. "Oh, no, nothing human at all."
" What?" Jordan leaned forward, squinting. "What do you mean, nothing human?"
"It was a very intricate machine," she said. "There was blood, but that was there to feed the skin. It wasn't really blood, either; it was red like blood, but it was a nutrient fluid." Her eyes got a faraway look. "I can still see it displaying its hand to us. So many little steel parts and cables and, like… these pumps, they made a kind of whirrr when he moved and…" She let out a little huff of breath. "I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't seen it. And believe me, Jordan, I wish to God I hadn't seen it! Eui-l-did!"
Jordan closed his eyes and ran a hand over his head.
"Maybe this was some kind of special effect," he suggested. "Like a prop or something in a movie. He might have held his real arm against his side and…"
Tarissa was shaking her head. "He was wearing a tight T-shirt. And he was using the arm and the hand, manipulating things with it. It was real, Jordan." She held up her hand. "And that's not all. He told us what Sarah meant by 'it's all your fault.' She meant that Miles was going to design a revolutionary chip that would go into the creation of a computer called Skynet. Skynet would be put in charge of all military hardware, all the computers, the missiles, the planes that carry the missiles, the subs, everything. Humans would be removed from the equation in the United States in order to eliminate"—she held up her hands and made air quotes—"human error."
"That kinda sounds like a good thing," Jordan said hesitantly.
Tarissa looked at him over her teacup and shrugged.
"Maybe it would have been, if Skynet hadn't become sentient."
"Okay, time out," Jordan said. "How could you believe this? This is Sarah Connor's psychosis, this is what the doctors said she babbled about constantly.
It's what made her go around destroying factories and killing people."
"Look, if there's one thing I'm sure of, Jordan," Tarissa said firmly, "it's that Sarah Connor is not a killer."
"Oh, come on!" Jordan slapped the table. "Miles is dead, Tarissa! My brother, your husband, is dead because of that woman!"
Tarissa leaned forward, her hand to her breast. "Miles is dead because he was trying to save us!" she said. "And because the police shot him. No one was supposed to get hurt." She waved her handito stop his next comment.
"I know she's not a killer; when she had him at her mercy, with nothing to stop her from killing the man she honestly held responsible for… basically causing the end of the world, she—did—not—shoot. She could have, she wanted to, but she couldn't do it." Tarissa sat back and looked at her brother-in-law. "I was there, Jordan. And I know."
Jordan just looked at her. Oh, my, God, he thought. She's crazy. Tarissa is completely out of her mind. He looked at his nephew.
"It's true," Dan said. "I didn't see him tear the skin off, but I saw his hand before he put the glove on it. He was a machine, and he told us about Judgment Day."
"Oh, no!" Jordan said, raising a hand to stop them.
He rose from his chair and walked over to the kitchen counter and stood looking
out the window into the backyard. There was a bird splashing and fluttering in the birdbath and he looked at it in relief. It was something normal, something sane. After a moment he turned around to look at his sister-in-law and nephew, crossing his arms over his chest.
"It's bad enough that you're telling me that you bought into this woman's delusions," he said. "But you're also trying to tell me that my brother got killed trying to destroy his own work." He took a few steps toward his sister-in-law.
"His own work, Tarissa." Jordan hunched forward and sat down again. "I knew Miles, Tarissa. He would not destroy his work. It meant"—he waved his hands in an encompassing gesture— "ever".
"Everything to him," Tarissa said, her eyes infinitely sad. "I know that." She shook her head. "But we couldn't deny what they'd shown us, what they'd told us. Their belief in what they were saying was absolute. And, frankly, there was no other way to explain the Terminator."
"Terminator," he said flatly.
She looked up at Jordan. "They convinced us. If you'd been there you would have believed them, too." Her eyes pleaded with him to believe her now.
Jordan's mouth twisted and he lowered his eyes, refusing to meet hers, more thoughtful than angry, Tarissa judged.
"It wasn't a fake arm," she insisted. "There isn't a prosthesis in existence that intricate. He walked in and started handling Miles—with both hands—like he was Danny's size. He said, 'Simple penetration, no shattered bone. Hold here, compression should stop de bleeding.' " Tarissa sighed. "It did, too. Then he
bandaged him."
"Why are you talking in a German accent?" Jordan asked. His voice was cool.
"That's how it talked," Dan said. "It sounded German."
"It?" Jordan said precisely.
"It wasn't human," Tarissa said, giving him a look. "What else would you call it?"
Jordan got up slowly and once again walked over to the counter, he turned and faced them, his arms crossed.
"You know, nobody knew that this guy was a German. You know why nobody knew that? Because no one, except the Connors… and you of course," he said, nodding at them, "had ever heard him speak."
He looked at them, they looked at him. Suddenly Jordan laughed, it ended in a hiss. Jordan looked at his feet and his jaw worked.
"You know what I'm thinking of?" he asked. He rubbed one finger over his upper lip. "I'm thinking of that conversation we had that night in the living room, Tarissa." He rubbed his eyes as though crying and spoke in a falsetto voice. " 'It's just too painful, I can't take it anymore. It's my way or the highway, Jack!' " He spun and slapped his hands down on the counter, his jaw clenched.