Though to be honest he hadn't wanted to go back. Being unwanted was unpleasant enough—but Pescadero was the scene of the most terrifying events of his life. It had been very easy to turn his back on the place.
He'd taken a long break from work, as long as his benefits and his savings would allow. And since he wasn't working with patients, he worked on himself, trying to put himself back together. He'd sought therapy and willingly allowed the doctors to convince him that he'd imagined the whole thing. They assured him
that in his understandable terror he'd bought into his own patient's delusions.
And he agreed.
In time the nightmares had begun to fade and his belief in his therapist's diagnoses became firm. What he'd seen was impossible; therefore it hadn't happened. When it was time to go back to work he found that his attitude toward his profession had changed. Once it had been about his career; now he wanted to help people. So he'd sent in his formal resignation to Pescadero and begun looking into clinics.
But after they found out about his reason for leaving his previous position, he got a lot of rejections. Which was ironic. How did they expect their patients to reintegrate with society when they wouldn't reintegrate one of their own colleagues?
Then a friend had told him about the halfway house. He'd felt comfortable here and he'd done good work with his patients, work he was proud of.
But now here was Sarah Connor, and he had some decisions to make all over again. Because now he knew he hadn't had a psychotic break; what he'd had was a taste of Sarah Connor's reality.
Sarah explained, "Dr. Ray says that now that I've stopped this project from going forward and Cyberdyne has dropped it from their roster, I'll probably never want to destroy their factory again. Obsession works that way sometimes, he says. So the board of review agreed to let me come here prior to my release."
"Will you have to go to jail after here?" a woman asked.
Sarah shook her head. "Apparently not. Since I was insane at the time."
"Well, Sarah," Dr. Silberman said with a weary smile, "we hope we can help you to overcome this obsession of yours."
"Thank you, Doctor." Sarah smiled tentatively at him. "I know I was very hard on you when I knew you before and I'd like to apologize. I really can't even imagine ever being that person again."
"I think, Sarah, that you will always rise to the occasion," Silberman said enigmatically. He checked his watch. "Well, group, that's it for today. We'll meet again on Thursday." He smiled, nodded, and rose from his seat.
"I didn't get to say anything," a heavy young man protested.
"I'm sorry about that, Dan." Silberman patted his shoulder. "We'll be certain to let you talk on Thursday."
As Sarah went by him at the door he leaned in close and said, "Sarah, I need to talk to you."
Well, I don't want to talk to you, Connor thought. "Now?" She looked around nervously.
"Now would be good." Silberman gestured down the hallway toward his office.
Her full lips jerked into a smile. "Sure," she said, and preceded him down the hall.
"Sit down," he said as he closed his office door. Then the doctor went to his desk
and sat. He looked at her for a long time, until she felt it was necessary to fidget.
"After you left"—he spread his hands— "escaped, rather, I was in therapy for a long time."
"I'm sorry about that, Doctor," Sarah said. And sincerely meant it. She didn't like knowing what she knew either and she'd certainly never enjoyed therapy.
"After about five years I was able to convince myself that what I saw was a delusion brought on by stress. Of course"—he rubbed a finger across his nose
—"dealing with the fallout caused by having a complete breakdown under stress has been keeping me pretty involved ever since. Running a halfway house is a considerable step down the career ladder from my former position, you realize."
Sarah shifted uncomfortably.
"And now you're here," he continued. "And… it's all come back to me. As clear as the day it happened. And that's the thing, Sarah. It did happen. So what I want to know is… how can I help?"
Sarah's jaw dropped. "Doctor?" she said.
"I know." He raised a hand to stop her. "How can you possibly trust me? You broke my arm, you threatened to kill me, and so on." He leaned forward, his eyes eager. "But now I know for certain. What I saw was real!"
She narrowed her eyes and looked at him sidelong. "Doctor, I've been over this with Dr. Ray. My obsession with Cyberdyne relates to my deeply buried resentment of their lawsuit when I was in the hospital years ago. He explained that I somehow displaced my legitimate anger and grief at the man who hurt me
and murdered my mother onto the more accessible Cyberdyne. I bought into those other people's psychotic fantasies because I'd been so hurt and traumatized.
None of it was real. None of it could be real."
Silberman let out his breath with a huff. "I just want you to know, if you ever need my help, you have it."
"Thank you, Doctor." Either he's crazier than I ever was, or he's telling the truth. But how was she supposed to tell?
"I mean that sincerely, Sarah."
"I know you do," she said gently. "Thank you."
NEAR PUERTO VALLARTA, MEXICO
Vera glanced at Dieter as she jogged by again. Every morning she took a hundred turns around the deck, usually wearing pink shorts and a black tank top, her champagne hair wrapped in a chiffon scarf. The bright tropical sunlight blinking off the water turned the colors to the glowing pastels of an old Pop Art poster from the sixties, the sort he'd had up on his wall when he was a grammar-school student.
She's flaky. Dieter thought, but I like her. And who was he to call anybody flaky? He'd recently dedicated his life and fortune to fighting a mad, genocidal computer that hadn't even been built yet. And while she was flaky she was also tough; he'd known many a man who'd have collapsed completely at the sights she'd witnessed.
"I'm in," she said the next time she came by.
"What?" he asked, looking up from where he was polishing brass.
Vera ran in place beside him. "I said, I'm in. I know you're not telling me the whole story, von Rossbach. But whatever is going on here has to be stopped."
Her eyes flickered away and then returned. "Besides, whether I like it or not, I'm involved now. So I'll help you sneak into the U.S. and I'll help you finance whatever." She held up a finger. "I'm not prepared to go bankrupt. But you should be able to get a fair chunk of change out of me. I'm getting older," she said with a weak smile, "so I can't hammer one of those things flat with a crowbar. But you can, so I want to help." Without another word she ran off.
And I didn't even have to sleep with her, he thought, just maybe a little disappointed.
Contrary to what the novelists said, even counter-terrorist operatives didn't often get the chance to seduce beautiful women into financing their schemes. Usually it was more a matter of putting in invoices and arguing with the finance department.
For once, he'd thought life might imitate art. It certainly would have been a lot more pleasant than being beaten up by a Terminator.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MIT CAMPUS
Who the hell is Sarah Connor?" Snog asked.
Wendy smacked his leg. "I told you about her, remember? She's kind of a Luddite heroine."