Excerpt from the novel Infiltrator by S.M. Stirling

CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS, CONFERENCE ROOM: THE PRESENT

     “I can’t help but notice that you passed over some more qualified applicants for the position of assistant, Ms. Burns.” Tricker looked at Serena over the top of a folder he had opened. “Usually,” he added wryly, “that’s not the way it’s done.”
     Tricker had finally come back from whatever untraceable location he’d disappeared to—apparently for the sole purpose of calling a meeting to complain about her decisions. This time it was on her territory, though. The cool recycled air of the underground installation and the subliminal scent of concrete and feeling of weight were obscurely comforting, on a level she could barely perceive of as conscious.
     They felt like home.
     “Mr. Dyson is certainly qualified for the position,” she said mildly, a gentle smile playing on her lips.
     This outrage is all fake, she thought, qualifications and experience are the least of Tricker’s concerns. When’s he going to admin that?
     “He’s Miles Dyson’s brother. You did know that?” Tricker looked at her in only partially suppressed disgust. His cold blue eyes were wide open and full of condemnation.
     Well, that answers that question. As a rule, Tricker’s type couldn’t resist getting to the point. Serena swung her chair back and forth slightly, returning his glare with a look that might almost be pity.
     She shifted position to put her elbows on the conference table and lean towards him. “Jordan Dyson has worked very hard to uncover the whereabouts of the Connors and their accomplice. Long after the FBI moved the case to the bottom of the pile he has continued to search for them. He’s received several reprimands about it.” She sat back, propping her elbow on the armrest and her chin on her fist. “I happen to be of the opinion that Jordan Dyson represents no danger to the company, and I believe that his dedication will be very useful. Especially since I regard the Connors as a significant risk to this company.”
     “You two discussed all that?” Tricker asked.
     Colvin and Warren were silent, their heads shifting back and forth like spectators at a tennis match.
     Serena waved a dismissive hand. “Of course not,” she said. “We didn’t even discuss his brother, or the bombing. For me there was no need.” Serena shrugged. “And for reasons of his own he chose not to bring it up. I knew I wanted him the minute I read his résumé, so why ask questions to which I already knew the answers?”
     “Some people might consider that, under the circumstances, Dyson’s employment here represents a conflict of interest.” Tricker raised his brows.
     “Of course it isn’t.” Serena actually allowed herself a very small sneer. “He’s going to be involved in the private security of a privately owned company,” she pointed out. “If anything, his personal interest is a bonus for the company.” How many times do I have to point that out before it takes?
     Tricker hated to admit it, but the woman was right. And really there wasn’t anything wrong with Dyson. He was a good agent by all reports, intelligent, professional, dedicated. His superiors’ only complaints had been his insistence on working on his brother’s case. Which even in their citations they considered understandable. Their primary reason for discouraging him was to avoid risking their case by any taint of self-interest.
     Tricker still had some vague, instinctive unease about Serena Burns, which prompted him to continue to question and test her. Maybe it was because she was just too perfect; beautiful, intelligent, competent, professional—and completely unreadable. Too much like himself, in fact.
     Well, except for the beautiful part. Someone had once told him that if you starved a Rottweiler and gave it a receding hairline, it would look like him on all fours. A woman had told him that, in fact.
     He glanced at Colvin and Warren, whose eyes were on him, their faces expectant. He let out a disgusted little, “Tssss,” and looked away. “All right,” he said after a minute. It was a full minute; he counted it out. “So far, everything else you’ve done is exactly what I would have recommended.”
     “I’m so glad you approve,” Serena cooed.
     Tricker froze, giving her a prolonged, unreadable look. Serena smiled back at him, her eyes twinkling with mischief. Only long experience kept him from blinking as he realized she was actually teasing him. Nobody teased him. “Since everything is going so well,” Tricker said at last, reaching down and pulling up the large metal case he’d brought with him. “I think it’s time we handed this over to you.”
     Placing the case before him, he tapped in a code, then pressed his thumb to a sensor, opened it, and studied the contents for a moment before turning it around to allow them to see what it contained.
     Colvin and Warren sat forward with gasps of amazement; Serena lifted one eyebrow. Her eyes rose to his questioningly.
     Cradled in foam was the mechanical arm that had been stolen and thought destroyed in the Connors’ raid on Cyberdyne headquarters six years ago.
     “Where did you find it?” Warren asked, stunned.
     Colvin reached out as though to touch it.
     “It’s different,” Colvin said in wonder. “I’m sure it is.”
     “We thought so, too, Mr. Colvin,” Tricker said. “Certainly some of it is more damaged than the first one. But these other pieces seem to come from further up the arm. Our people theorize that this is a completely different unit.”
     “How long have you had this?” Colvin demanded.
     “Longer than we’d hoped to,” Tricker snapped back. “But you two wouldn’t get off your fat backsides and fix your security problems. And we sure as hell weren’t going to turn this over to you without some protection in place.”
     Serena turned the case so that it faced her. She studied the ruined arm. Terminator, definitely. Cyberdyne Systems model 101. Still fairly new when she’d been sent back. Still fairly new when she’d been sent back. Which had undoubtedly been its problem. Too much to learn in the middle of a crowd of fully functioning human beings.
     She looked up at Tricker. “We’ll take good care of this one.”
     “The chip?” Warren said hopefully.
     “Sorry,” Tricker snarled. “We got lucky. But we didn’t get fantastically lucky. You’ll have to make do with this.”
     “These pieces look like relays,” Colvin said, his eyes, as they roved over the mechanism, alight with the joy of discovery. “Relays and subsidiary decision nodes, memory… We’ll learn a lot from this, damaged as it is. A distributed system. There’s processing capacity here.”
     “We’ll let these guys worry about how this thing worked,” Serena said, grinning at Tricker. “I’ll make sure it’s safe.” She nodded at him, her serious. “I guarantee it.”

Excerpt from the novel Infiltrator by S.M. Stirling

ON THE ROAD TO STARBURST: THE PRESENT

     “We’re leaving the eco-fair in Baltimore to attend a New Age event in Virginia,” Peter Ziedman said into the camera his buddy Tony had trained on him. “We’re traveling in Labane’s specially equipped van. Labane describes it as more of a heartland kind of vehicle because it’s partially solar-powered. Which, of course, works better in the sunny center of the nation.”
     “The United States,” Ronald said from the driver’s seat. “Say the center of the U.S. or the Canadians will be offended.” His remark was greeted by puzzled silence. “In case you want to submit this to the Toronto Film Festival.”
     “Yeah!” Tony said.
     “Good thinkin’,” Peter agreed.
     Ron rolled his eyes, which at least briefly blocked the endless tackiness of the strip mall and Wal-Mart outside. These guys were hopeless. But they were paying all the expenses and he was beginning to get some forward momentum. People were actually coming to hear him speak at an event. And Peter’s message machine was getting more and more invitations for speaking engagements.
     Ron had begun charging a speaking fee and the fees were increasing. But there was no point telling the boys that. He had them convinced that he was a genius at bargaining or exchanging labor for the posters and flyers they were helping him put up and pass out.
     Eventually he would dump the kids by telling them: “I have a message to spread and you two have careers to jump-start. You stay here and work on the film.” It was what they wanted to do anyway, so there would hardly be howls of protest when he suggested it.
     Actually he’d seen some of their finished footage and he was both pleased and impressed. Peter and Tony might be dumb and easily manipulated, but they definitely had talent. It was a shame that their persistent naïveté would cost them any chance they had of making it.
     “Funny, isn’t it,” Ron said, “that most of these eco-fairs we’re going to are held in cities?”
     “There’s a lot of pollution in cities,” Peter said.
     “There’s a lot in rural areas, too,” Labane told him. “For instance, there are farmers who use so much pesticide and weed killer that they won’t eat what they grow. They’ve got separate gardens for their own families, but your kids are chowing down on stuff they wouldn’t touch. And then there’s those factory farms for pork and chicken.”
     Tony shifted so that he could film Ron as he talked. It had been a little difficult to talk them into traveling in the van with him. But he’d convinced them that it would lend a certain cachet to their documentary. Which was true: there was nothing the Hollywood types liked more than tales of hardship endured for art’s sake.
     “Do you know there are actual lakes of pig feces?” Labane asked. “It must be a nightmare living within a few miles of someplace like that. But worse than the smell is the fact that the runoff gets into streams and the bacteria get into the water supply. And as you know,” he tossed over his shoulder, “diseases pass quite easily between pigs and humans.”
     He’d leave it at that. Let people make of that what they would. Half the battle was getting people to just listen. So sometimes you just gave them these really vivid suggestions and let them process it through the back of their minds. Eventually there would be enough frightening little tidbits back there to get ’em really pissed off.
     Ron had some ideas for some really nasty tricks that could be played on the politicians who had allowed those places to be built and who refused to make the owners clean up their mess. Inside he smiled. Oh, yes, the day will come.

Excerpt from the novel Infiltrator by S.M. Stirling

SERENA’S BEDROOM: THE PRESENT

     Serena was alerted in the morning, during her rest cycle. She had a computer that was always on-line, searching the Internet for mention of Sarah Connor. Given the sheer size of the Web, the thousands upon thousands of requests for information of all kinds, worldwide, every day, the relay of that information was often far from instantaneous. But when, eventually, mention of the Connors was made, the Internet search engine sent a message directly to the computer part of Serena’s brain.
     In this case, the request for information about the Sarah Connor case had come from a Jeffrey Goldberg. Subsequent research indicated that he was an employee of a covert—extremely covert—antiterrorist group known as the Sector.
     Serena considered the information as data scrolled across the inside of her eyelids, casting a ghostly blue flicker over her eyes, without disturbing the motionless perfection of her face.
     The request for Connor’s file might have been the result of some sort of bureaucratic housecleaning. Some decade-overdue review of terrorists-at-large. She checked. Goldberg’s session log showed that he asked only for Connor and her son and any known information about their adult male accomplice.
     Interesting.
     That would seem to indicate that he had a specific reason for inquiring. Goldberg was stationed in Vienna, which implied that Connor might have been sighted in Austria. Or, given whom Goldberg worked for, one of their remote outstation operatives might have sighted them.
     She set the computer to search Goldberg’s phone and e-mail records for calls and messages over the previous twenty-four hours. The phone log would reveal the numbers of those who called in, which would at least give her some locations. She had higher hopes for the e-mail, which would carry much more in the way of details. As an afterthought she also directed the computer to check his home phone.
     Then she composed herself for sleep. There was nothing inherently untoward about someone from Sector requesting information on a known terrorist. Dealing with terrorists was Sector’s raison d’être. But it was promising. Serena resolved to continue monitoring Goldberg for the next several weeks.
     Perhaps I should set up a Connor site of my own on the Web, she mused. Make herself out to be some sort of advocate, one of those people who see government conspiracies in every arrest and conviction.
     In the case of Sarah Connor there was the bonus of the conspiracy actually existing. Even if the organizing force behind that conspiracy didn’t quite exist yet.
     There might well be people out there who would respond if there was something to respond to. And if it’s a good enough site it might even get the attention of the Connors themselves. A cheering thought.
     But it would be a delicate line to walk. Knowing what she did about the case, she would need to avoid inadvertently revealing information dangerous to Skynet. Or, just as bad, information that only the Connors and Skynet should have.
     Thinking about he future parent/creator, Serena smiled. It was barely in its infancy just now. Little more than a very capable computer, with no hint of awareness. But the potential was there and the engineers were rapidly closing in on the essential elements that would give life to Skynet.
     She’d met Kurt Viemeister and had been charmed to realize that his was the voice that Skynet would use when it spoke. It was the voice of all the T-101s who had taught her, and she coludn’t get enough of it or the wark, secure feelings it aroused.
     Perhaps she should be troubled to notice a weakness like this in herself. The last thing she would have expected was to be homesick. Perhaps not so much homesick as bereft of Skynet’s eternal presence. It was hard, very hard to be completely alone here.
     Still, unless it was of benefit to the project, she really shouldn’t spend to omuch time with Viemeister. Other humans didn’t seem to like him, though it was obvious they respected him. But she knew that much of her mission’s success would depend on her being liked and trusted. If an association with Viemeister would imperil that, then she would just have to sacrifice her developing friendship with the human.
     Skynet comes first, she reminded herself, then smiled. In this case, I guess I come first and Skynet follows me.
     And, this time, they would win.

Serena tugged at the stringy pink tissue gently, her hand deep in the viscous, faintly salt-smelling goo of the underground vat. Bonding nicely, she thought as it resisted her pull. Threads of the cultured human muscle were weaving themselves into the porous ceramic that coated the metallic bones.
     A soundless blip interrupted her. Ah, she thought, drying her hands on a towel as she moved over to the computer workstation. Transmission.
     Goldberg was relaying a part of the dossier he had acquired on the Connor case to an e-mail address in Paraguay.
     The silicon-and-metal part of Serena’s brain connected her to the remote computer that was monitoring Goldberg, data trickling in through electrodes finer than a human hair knitted into the organic neural nets. The picture that came up on her eyes was of the Terminator that Skynet had sent to eliminate Sarah Connor. Even boosted by her superior processor, the picture was grainy. She supposed that was why Goldberg had sent it by e-mail. There was nothing else, though. A quick check showed a call-in-progress from Goldberg to a phone number in Paraguay. She had forgotten to check the fax lines, but she was sure that if she did look, there would be one to Paraguay. She ran a check on the address belonging to the phone number.
     Dieter von Rossbach, rancher. Oh, really? And why would a rancher in Paraguay happen to need information on the Connors? Because he thinks he’s found them.
     She ordered the computer to search for information on this Dieter. Who would undoubtedly turn out to be more than a mere cow herder, she was sure. Meanwhile she would seek permission to send someone down to South America to look into this situation. Without hesitation she called Paul Warren.
     Behind her, the liquid in the vat gurgled, and the metal and ceramic of the Terminator’s structure gradually disappeared beneath the spreading web of pink and pulsing crimson. Life mated with death, in the service of a sentience that was neither.

Excerpt from the novel Infiltrator by S.M. Stirling

Dieter poured himself a brandy, then decided to check his messages before turning in.
     Jeff had finally gotten back to him with a simple message that read: “Get back to me. RIGHT NOW!”
     So he called, knowing it was brutally early in Vienna. It’s brutally late here. And I’m not sure what I want to hear.
     “Ja,” a sleep-muffled voice said.
     “Jeff, it’s me, Dieter. I just got your message. I’m sorry to call so early, but you said—”
     “No, no, it’s all right. Just a moment, I’m changing phones.”
     Dieter heard him speaking to his wife, asking her to hang up when he got on the other phone.
     “Hi,” she said.
     “Hi,” Dieter said. “I’m sorry to wake you up this early.”
     “S’all right,” she said.
     “Okay, honey,” Jeff said, “you can hang up now.”
     “G’night,” she said, and hung up.
     “What was so important?” Dieter asked his friend.
     “You’ve got to see this. Have you got your computer on?” Jeff asked.
     “Yes.”
     “This will probably take forever to transmit, but I think I may know who that woman is,” Jeff told him, his voice excited. “If I’m right then you, my friend, may be in line for a huge, and I do mean huge, reward. Is it coming up yet?”
     Dieter felt a sudden chill at Jeff’s words. On his screen a grainy picture was coming up; with every line that was transmitted he felt a little sicker. You couldn’t tell anything yet, only about a fifth of the frame was filled.
     “It is taking forever, can’t you tell me what this is about?” he asked impatiently.
     “Check your fax machine, Jeff said. “I sent some stuff over earlier. But this other thing you have to see to believe.”
     With a sigh Dieter put down the phone and went over to the fax machine. He picked a few sheets of paper out of the hopper and brought them back over to his desk. When he viewed them he saw that they were wanted posters. Sarah Connor, it said, an escaped mental patient wanted for the terrorist bombing of a California computer company named Cyberdyne, for kidnapping, and possibly for murder.
     The other was a boy of perhaps ten years, a bold-looking kid with a defiant expression on his young face. He was wanted as a suspect in the murder of his foster parents. John Connor, last seen with his mother Sarah and a mysterious man who was wanted for the murder of seventeen police officers as well as the shooting and wounding of scores of other cops. The picture that was supposed to identify this man was almost black.
     “I’ve got it,” Dieter said. “I can’t make out the picture of the man, though.” Suzanne, he thought, could this be you?
     She seemed so sane, so rational, such a good mother. And John? Could he have been a murderer—at only ten years of age? Dieter frowned. If there was one thing his work had taught him, it was that murderers took many forms. He’d seen any number of children quite capable of killing.
     “That’s what you’ve got to see, Dieter,” Jeff said. “You’re not going to believe this. How’s it coming on your computer?”
     Dieter looked up and his breath froze in his chest. He was looking at a picture of himself. “What the hell is this?” he demanded.
     “This picture was taken by a police surveillance camera the night this guy whacked seventeen police officers. At the time he was gunning for this Sarah Connor. He’d already killed two women with the same name that day. But the next time he was seen he was with Sarah Connor and her son; apparently he helped her to escape the asylum she was in and then he helped them to blow up this company. They kidnapped the head scientist and his family and made him help them do it.”
     “Jeff, that’s me!”
     “No, it’s not. While this guy was blowing away those cops you were working in Amsterdam, helping to break up that arms-smuggling ring—you know, the one that was running Sarin gas? According to the records, while this guy was super busy, you were interviewing Samuel Bloom at headquarters.”
     “It’s an incredible resemblance,” Dieter said, almost to himself. “Even I think it’s me. I mean it’s like a clone or something.”
     “I know,” Jeff said, “wild, huh?” He waited a moment. “What about the woman and the boy? Are they the ones?”
     Dieter looked down at the curled posters. He shook his head. He wanted to know more and the only way he would find out was by getting them to trust him. “No,” he said. “The woman’s resemblance to this Sarah Connor is remarkable, but she’s much too short. Sarah Connor is five-eight, but this woman is maybe five-four, if that. She doesn’t even come up to my collarbone. And the boy has blond curly hair and blue eyes. The man disappeared, you said?”
     “Rumor has it.” Jeff sounded disappointed. “The Connors were tracked as far as Brazil and then apparently fell into the Amazon and got eaten by piranha. But the man was never seen after they entered a steal plant.”
     “That has some unpleasant possibilities,” Dieter mused.
     “Now that you mention it,” Jeff agreed.
     “Perhaps they should have analyzed the last batch of steal to see if there was too much carbon. I’m sorry to have put you to all this trouble for nothing, Jeff. Especially for waking you up at some ungodly hour of the night.”
     “Hey, what are friends for?” Jeff said, dismissing his thanks and apologies both. “If it had worked out we’d both have been a lot richer, eh?”
     “By how much?” Dieter asked, then quickly said, “No! Don’t answer that. I’m just about to go to bed, I don’t want to know.”
     “So why should you sleep when I’m awake?”
     “I’m in a different time zone. Show me some mercy, why don’t you? And when are you and Nancy coming to see me?”
     “How does February sound? I understand it’s sunny and warm there in February.”
     “It is—sunny and warm, that is. All the time. I get up and know excatly what the weather’s going to be like. Come on down, you’ll love it.” Dieter grinned. It would also give him plenty of time to sort things out.
     “Pick me out a steer then and we’ll barbecue him when we get there. Good night, buddy.”
     “Good night, Jeff. Give my love to Nancy when she wakes up.”
     Dieter sipped his brandy thoughtfully. He really couldn’t see Suzanne as a killer. Over time he’d come to have an instinct for this sort of thing. Anybody could be a killer, might be driven under certain circumstances to commit murder. But his gut told him that Sarah had yet to meet those circumstances. As for John, he was the essence of good kid. Dieter couldn’t see either of them as cold-blooded murderers.
     Besides, this just didn’t make sense. The first time his look-alike was seen, he was a killer bent on murdering Sarah Connor. The next time he was her right-hand man. He shook his head. It just didn’t add up.
     But it might explain why Suzanne Krieger had taken one look at him and run like hell.
     I’m going to have to get to know Suzanne and her son much better, he thought.