David Hagberg: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

The diamondback reared back and struck, sinking its two-inch fangs into the man-thing's left calf, its reflexive muscle action pumping several ccs of deadly venom through the hollow killing teeth.

Terminator's sensors were aware of the creature, and his memory banks correctly identified the reptile as Cro-talus adamantous, dangerous to man and most mammals.

He reached down and picked up the snake, holding it gently just behind its head before it could strike again.

For several moments cyborg and reptile remained eye to eye, each regarding the other with a resigned curiosity. For Terminator the snake was a fact of biological life on earth. For the snake the man-creature was just that, an object that was not food, but that presented an extreme danger.

Terminator opened his mouth and emitted a sound from the back of his voice processing unit that perfectly mimicked the snake's warning rattle, then tossed the animal over his shoulder, turned, and strode away from the still burning Joshua tree, his onboard sensors perfectly attuned to his environment, his processors fully up to speed with the parameters of the mission.

If Terminator could have any emotion at all, it would have been a certain satisfaction that he was back.

"Stupid thing's not working," Kate Brewster said crossly.

She and her fiance Scott Peterson were in the Bridal Registry Home Accessories department of Bloomingdale's in Century City. She was trying to get the scanner gun to accept the bar code on the bottom of an elegantly engraved sterling serving tray. But the computer was not accepting the code.

Scott held up the tray and took the scanner gun from her. "Hold it like this," he said. "Dirty Harry." He pulled the trigger but the screen on the register showed a string of zeroes. "What's wrong with this thing?" he muttered.

Kate and Scott, the ideal couple, Kate thought with only the slightest trace of sarcasm in her mind. She caught a reflection of herself in a gold freestanding dressing-room mirror. She was of medium height, pleasant figure, small, high breasts, dark brown hair, a rounded nose, strong hips like her mother's.

"Katie, the nicest girl at Ferris High," her pals in school had written. Not "Katherine, the most beautiful," or "Katherine, the most likely to succeed, or the most likely to marry mister-up-and-coming, the next president, the next multibillionaire."

She glanced at Scott, still fiddling with the scanner, and she knew that she should be having warm, gushy bride feelings now. But the best she could do was think what a nice guy he was. Pleasant. Even-tempered most of the time. Good-looking, reasonably so. Innocuous was the word that came to mind.

At five feet eleven, Scott looked good in a suit and tie and drove a Mercedes, a leased C class, but a Benz nonetheless. He had a good if bland job selling pharmaceuticals, which meshed with her job as a veterinarian, and he treated her well.

They were the ideal couple. Everyone said so. But her dad would never know it He was right in the middle of another hush-hush project out on the desert. Lieutenant General Robert Brewster was the military director of a Cyber Research Systems project at Edwards.

His career, and especially his involvement with CRS, had been, she knew, the main reason her mom left him. A man could have only one wife. She made her husband choose: CRS or her. And he hadn't even hesitated.

"It's important, sweetheart," he'd said. "More important than you can imagine.''

So she'd walked out on him.

Now it was Kate's turn to try marriage. And looking at Scott she wondered how he would classify her worth in the scheme of things, if the question was put to him.

Was his career more important than she could imagine? More important than her?

Her cell phone chirped in her purse and as she dug it out, Scott held the scanner gun up and shook his head.

"I hate machines," Kate said. She pressed send on the phone. "Hello?"

"Kate, it's your father," General Brewster said.

For just a moment Kate lit up with pleasure, and she turned away. Her father had always been her Rock of Gibraltar; a steady hand when she learned to walk, when she tried her first pair of roller blades, the first time she got on a bicycle. He'd been there. Maybe he'd not been much of a husband for his wife, but he'd been a wonderful father to Kate, an only child.

Until lately. The last few years had been different, and then Mom leaving while Kate was finishing veterinary school. And suddenly she was really hearing her father's voice; not as a child would, but as an adult. He sounded… how? Regretful?

In the background she could hear a lot of noise; highspeed printers, perhaps. Chimes warning of something, and the constant ring of telephones and people talking; a lot of telephones, a lot of people.

Kate resigned herself. "You're blowing me off again, aren't you, Dad?"

"I'm so sorry, hon. You know how much I wanted to see you this weekend."

She believed that part of it, as far as it went. But he hadn't finished the sentence, so she did it for him. "I know, Dad, but it's a matter of national security. Right?"

"Sweetheart, please. We're swamped here, that's all. But it'll ease up, I can promise you that much."

"When?"

"Soon. Honest" Her dad let the word hang, and Kate really did understand. It was the damned CRS project he'd been assigned to. It was eating him alive. His wife had been the first casualty and Kate was beginning to wonder if she was next. She softened.

"I know, you can't talk about it." She glanced at Scott who had picked up a sterling picture frame and was trying the scanner on its bar code. But he was watching her, listening. "It's just that Scott was really looking forward to this."

The expression of relief on Scott's face was almost comical. He didn't want to admit it but he was having some trepidation about meeting Kate's father — the general, as he called him.

"Aw, Katie, I'm so sorry. I can't believe I still haven't met him."

"It's okay, Dad," Kate said. "You're bound to run into him at the wedding."

"Please, I'm still in a state of denial about that," General Brewster told his daughter. She could hear the wry note in his voice. He'd told her a couple of years ago that he was having trouble thinking of his little girl out there in the real world on her own. To him she was still the tomboy with pigtails and scabby knees who brought every stray or hurt animal that could fly, hop, slither, or swim home with her.

He definitely was having a much harder time accepting the fact that his only child was about to get married. Which was, Kate had to admit, just about how she was feeling right now.

"You're not the only one—" she said.

"Just a second, sweetheart," the general said, and Kate could hear that someone had come into her dad's office.

"Sorry to bother you, sir, but the Agency needs a fast turnaround on the last DoD promotionals."

"Right, the dog and pony show," General Brewster said. He was apparently holding a hand over the phone, but Kate could still hear the conversation. "When are they screening?"

"Tomorrow. One p.m.," the man said. Kate figured he was an aide. She thought she heard a door close.

"Dad? Are you still there? Dad?"

"I'm here, Katie," General Brewster said. He lowered his voice. "Are you okay, sweetheart? What's the matter?"

Scott had walked over to one of the clerks and was saying something to him.

"Nothing," Kate said, unsure even now just how much of this she wanted to tell her father. But she had no one else. "It's just that I don't know—"

The general said something to someone at his end, but then he was back. "Look, why don't you come see me out here this weekend? If Moses can't come to the mountain, maybe the mountain can come to him."