Right?"
"If she walks she'll take that Intellimetal with her," the president warned.
"You've gotta trust our lawyers to write a better contract than that," Colvin said with a smile.
Clea was pleased. They'd accepted her without question. For the first time in ages she felt that she'd performed well. The only downside was that they hadn't risen to the bait she'd dangled in the way she'd expected. Could it be that they really weren't involved in the Skynet project any longer?
Cyberdyne had provided a limo and driver for her and the car was waiting out front when she exited the building. She didn't even acknowledge the driver when he opened the door for her, but stepped in and settled herself for the ride back to the hotel, lost in her own thoughts.
Clea woke up lying on a sofa, its firm cushions upholstered in blue-green tweed.
The room she was in appeared to be a cheaply paneled conference room, with, unusually, a large mirror in the wall opposite the couch. No. That is one-way glass. The room is institutional; government, not corporate.
Her eyes searched the mirror for hints of movement from a possible hidden room
as she sharpened her hearing and listened.
"… took enough hypno to knock out an elephant! I thought she'd never go down," a male voice was saying.
"Maybe there's a flaw in the delivery system," another man answered, "because she just woke up. If she'd absorbed as much of the drug as you say you gave her, she'd sleep until tomorrow night."
Clea detected movement in the mirror, as though one of the speakers had leaned forward for a better look.
Well, well. I've been kidnapped! One of Cyberdyne's more aggressive competitors, perhaps? Or Cyberdyne itself? She considered the idea. It would be strange if it was them. For one thing, nothing in their dossier indicated that they played such games. For another, it seemed a criminal waste of their president and CEO's time if they had intended to negotiate by force all along.
Now who else might have an interest in my little inventions? And who else could or would employ such an extreme technique as drugging and kidnapping her?
Organized crime came briefly to mind, but she dismissed the idea. They were hardly into research and development.
It's much more likely to be Tricker or one of his friends, she thought. Excellent.
She'd been wondering where the agent had got himself to; it looked like she might be about to find out.
Clea sat up, faking a wobbliness that she in no way felt, one hand to her brow as
though her head ached. Which it should, but for the computer and nanites that had worked so hard to cleanse her blood. She blinked, and narrowed her eyes as though the fluorescent light bothered her.
"Hello?" she said, sounding shaky.
"That's my cue," said one of the men.
She heard a door open and close and there was a flash of light in the mirror.
Then the door to the room she was in opened and she got up from the couch quickly. The I-950 immediately sat down again, resting her head against the back of the couch, her hand over her eyes as though dizzy.
"Take it easy, miss," the man said soothingly. "Are you okay?"
"Dizzy," she murmured.
She dropped her hand as though exhausted, keeping her eyes closed for effect.
But her nose and ears told her where he was, even what he'd last eaten—
hamburger with some sort of hot sauce. The glimpse she'd had of him when he walked in confirmed her suspicion. He worked for the government. His clothing and appearance were so artfully average that in a crowd he would be effectively invisible. It wasn't Tricker, but he might have been a close relative.
"That will pass," the man said gently.
She heard water pouring and then felt the touch of his hand. Opening her eyes, she saw that he was offering her a glass of water; when she took it he held out two aspirin.
"For the headache I'm sure you have," he said with a sympathetic smile.
Clea accepted the pills and took them with a sip of water, studying him over the rim of the glass. He was tall and slender, with muddy hazel eyes and a narrow face; his silvering blond hair was beginning to recede and there was an element of grayness about him somehow. But his voice was pleasant, as was his manner, both conveying trustworthiness.
Which was actually quite different from Tricker, who seemed to go out of his way to be abrasive. And yet this man reminded her of no one so much as of Serena's old nemesis.
He could be dangerous if he needed to be, she thought. Or if he wanted to be.
There was the essential resemblance; like Tricker, this man was competently ruthless. Not unlike myself, she thought. They probably work for the same agency.
Clea swallowed. "Where am I?" she asked.
He didn't answer, but sat looking at her.
"And who are you?" She pulled herself up until she was sitting straight.
"Aren't you going to ask why you're here?" he prompted.
"Well, I assume you're going to tell me," she snapped. "Or are we just going to sit and stare at each other until we starve to death? But I've got to tell you, mister, if you're looking for a ransom you've got the wrong girl! My only relative is dead and all I've got in the world is a few thousand dollars in the bank. So what's going on here?"
"That's not entirely true, Ms. Bennet, now is it?" the gray man said. "You have the house and land in Montana, don't you?"
The I-950's eyes widened quite involuntarily as her mind flashed to that empty grave in the modest country cemetery. Should she have replaced the Terminator with a human corpse? Surely they wouldn't check her background that thoroughly?
"Oh yes," the man continued complacently, "we know everything there is to know about you. Certainly everything that is a matter of public record." He gave her a tight little smile. "And we've come to the conclusion that only we can offer you the resources to allow your inventiveness full scope."
"Who are you?" she almost shouted. All the time thinking, Ah, so I was right.
Tricker's gang.
"My name is Pool," he said.
"Just Pool?" Clea demanded sarcastically, remembering Tricker's insistence on being called a simple, unadorned "Tricker."
"Yes," he agreed with a slightly deprecatory smile. "Just Pool."
Clea drew in a deep breath. "And who is we, Pool?"
The smile broadened. " We are your tax dollars at work, Ms. Bennet."
Setting her jaw, Clea tilted her head at a defiant angle. Actually she was delighted; the government had to have taken over the Skynet project when
Cyberdyne's second facility was destroyed… by the Connors, again. But a human would object to this sort of treatment…
"And if I don't want to work for the government?" she asked.
Pool shrugged. "Then we would have to tell Vladimir Hill that the wonderful new material you've been letting him play with as though it was clay is one of the most carcinogenic materials ever devised." He paused as if to gauge her reaction.
Clea gave him one. "Nonsense!" she snapped, sitting forward. Then she looked queasy and leaned back again. "What are you talking about?"
"He'll probably be dead by next year," Pool said. "But that would allow him plenty of time to sue you. And, of course, there would probably be charges of criminal negligence. You'd probably do jail time." His eyes cooled. "In fact, you can count on that. And afterward, well, Cyberdyne wouldn't touch you or Intellimetal with a ten-foot pole, and neither would anyone else." He spread his hands. "Which would leave you with us. But not before we both lost a lot of time and effort and money. So why not just cooperate and we'll all be happy?"