This was going to be an interesting evening. And… well, Viemeister was Skynet's creator, not Skynet… so it wouldn't be quite like incest.
***
Clea was feeling oddly pleased with herself as she went to confront Tricker.
Every now and again a sense of well-being would sneak up on her. She knew that her processors were scrubbing endorphins by the bucket out of her system.
If she'd known sex was so pleasant she'd have tried it much sooner. Though she suspected that the right partner was important.
The I-950 knocked on the agent's door and opened it without waiting for an invitation.
Tricker looked up, his blue eyes unwelcoming. "Yeah?" he snarled.
Clea gave him a dazzling smile and entered his office, leaving the door open behind her. "I was wondering if you'd heard anything about my request?" she chirped.
"Which request was that? You're pretty much a never-ending fountain of gimmees."
She pouted, then smiled at him. "My request to work with Kurt Viemeister," she said. "Has it been approved?"
"You really ought to stay away from that guy," Tricker said. "You're kinda young for him, for one thing."
"We've gotten very… close," Clea told him, and blushed, smiling at him.
Tricker held up a hand. "I don't want to know." He pulled forward a set of papers. "Your request has been approved. But you'll need to sign these waivers."
"Really?" she said, taking them and looking them over. "What's the point of that?"
"So that you'll know how serious what you're dealing with is." He stared at her, his gaze impossible to interpret.
Clea laughed. "What are you going to do to me if I tell someone about what I'm doing?" she asked. "Send me to Antarctica?"
"You never know." He sat forward in his chair, picking up a pen and offering it to her.
Clea rolled her eyes and took it. She signed the papers and handed them back to him. "I have another request to make."
"Surprise, surprise," he muttered.
"I'm finding it harder and harder to endure being indoors all the time," she said.
"It's like the walls and ceiling are closing in on me."
"Hey, baby, it's cold outside," Tricker quipped.
Clea waved that aside. "I'm from Montana. Cold doesn't frighten me. But being closed up like this does. I need to get outside. I'd like to combine my time outdoors with a project I've thought up. I want to study some of the seals that live nearby."
Tricker sighed. He had a steady stream ot scientists wanting to get away from the base. But not one of them had suggested simply going out for a nature walk.
"There are plenty of scientists on this continent studying seals," he began.
"And it wouldn't hurt anything to have one more." She looked him in the eye.
"Please," she said quietly. "I wouldn't have come to you about this except that it's really becoming a problem for me. I'm just not used to being indoors all the time like this. These other people have probably never been on a hike in their lives. I grew up in the mountains, and they don't call Montana the Big Sky Country for nothing." She let a few tears wet her eyelashes and swallowed hard. "I need to get outside," she whispered.
And she did. Not for the reasons she was alluding to, but to further her plans, to test her new micromachines on a living subject. And hopefully to send messages to her sister through a specially designed radio collar she intended to put on some lucky seal.
Tricker rolled his eyes. "So submit a request," he said. "I'll send it up the pipe."
"Thank you," she said, endeavoring to look more misty-eyed than ever.
"Hey, I'm not promising you anything."
"I know. But if you put your recommendation on it they'll take that into consideration, won't they?"
He just looked at her. She smiled slightly, and lifting her hand slightly, she turned and walked away.
Had she overplayed it? Time would tell. She thought she would get her way in this. If for no other reason than that he'd want to know what she was up to.
CHAPTER TWENTY
VON ROSSBACH ESTANCIA, PARAGUAY
"Dieter entered the living room, where John half lay on the couch, reading a manual on source codes, a beam of bright sunlight spearing through one of the high clerestory windows to bring out the slight reddish hints in his dark hair. The Austrian dropped a package into the young man's lap.
John started as though he'd been asleep and looked from the package to von Rossbach. "What's this?" he asked.
"A package," Dieter said, with a slight edge of sarcasm.
John snorted. "Thanks!" he said, and rose. "I'll be in my room if you want me."
Sarah came in just as he was leaving and he leaned over on his way out to kiss her cheek. Her eyes widened and she turned to watch him go, then turned back to
von Rossbach, her eyebrows raised in inquiry.
"Something came in the mail from that girl in Boston," he explained, sitting down in one of the leather chairs, the rest of the mail in his lap.
"Ahhhh," Sarah said thoughtfully. She moved slowly into the room. "What girl?"
This time Dieter's brows rose. "He didn't tell you about her?"
Trying to keep the hurt out of her expression, Sarah sat next to the big Austrian.
"Uh, no." Her mouth twisted ruefully. "He's seventeen, and this is a girl and I am his mother…" She sighed. "I guess it's only natural he'd want to keep her to himself."
Dieter looked at her sympathetically. "But you're hurt anyway." As far as he could tell, they were unusually close. It was probable that until now they'd shared everything.
Sarah was quiet for a moment, then she wrinkled her nose at him. "A little.
Maybe." Then she sighed. "It annoys me that I am, though, because, really, I'm pleased that he has someone. It would be nice if she were nearby…" She leaned toward him. "Tell me about her."
He shrugged his massive shoulders. "There's not much I can tell you," he said.
"She's somebody he recruited on-line to keep an eye out for mysterious doings.
Then, when we went to the U.S., he took her and her team the Terminator's CPU.
She's a student at MIT," he added. "And clearly, something clicked between them."
"Hmmph," she said. "I guess I'll have to go to the source."
John closed the door to his room, tore open the box that Wendy had sent him, and pulled out her letter.
Hi, Sweetie, she'd written.
Well, that's flattering, he thought. One kiss… On the other hand, we felt close right off. Evidently three months' separation hadn't altered her feelings—and that was extremely reassuring. He read on:
Some of us went to New York this week to attend the New Day show. That’s the show that Ron Labane of the Luddites hosts. It wonderful! I can’t begin to tell you how inspiring I find him. I wish you could have been with us. About a hundred of us from MIT went down in buses.
A hundred? John reread that, shocked. A hundred MIT students went to the New Luddite show? Those people must be more powerful than he'd thought.
The idea shook him. He'd assumed the group would be just another flash in the pan, a this-year's-cause sort of thing. Certainly not the kind of thing that would appeal to really intelligent people. Like Wendy, he thought, troubled. He straightened the folds of her letter and continued reading.