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.Finally it stopped."Luddite Patrol A-36," Sam barked."Sam Marshall, AS-783490 commanding."The machine was silent.All of the humans remained silent and immobile, waiting for its response."Patrol A-36," the machine said in a slight Austrian accent.A red laser spot appeared on Mary's chest."What is this?""This prisoner is a medic," Sam explained."Standing orders are to acquire such persons and conveythem to the camp.""And this?" The red spot appeared on Kyle's forehead."This is the prisoner's offspring," Sam said."By retaining him, she becomes more tractable and lessinclined to suicide."Mary stared at him.What had happened to the good ol' boy she knew and loathed?The machine was quiet and still for so long it might have been turned off.None of them made thatassumption, though.Mary had the impression that if the machine didn't answer until the followingmorning, then sunrise would find the humans in exactly these positions."Acceptable," the machine said at last."Carry on, A-36." It backed up slightly, turned, and moved backdown the road.Sam motioned them forward, riding the mule carefully around the flaming wreckage.No one spoke; noone but Mary and Kyle watched the killing machine trundle away.They'd been walking for at least half an hour before Mary got up the courage to ask Sam, "What wasthat?"He didn't answer for a long time, riding on without even looking down at her.They rode and walked onfor a mile or more before he spoke."That was a Hunter-Killer machine," he said at last."Its job is toseek out humans and destroy them."Mary looked at him."I thought, from the way you were all acting, that it was going to kill you."Sam's lips thinned."Sometimes they do.But we're all good Luddites," he said."We've had ourselvesfixed.So there's no need to kill us; we won't be breedin' anytime soon and we're good at our jobs.That'swhat makes this patrol an A unit.""Oh," she said.They walked on for several more miles before she began to notice a definite industrial tang in the air."We're almost there," Mona called out. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlSam called a halt and pulled an instrument out of his pocket.He tapped a code into it and they waited.After five minutes there was a chime from the unit and they started forward again.Shortly thereafter theywalked up a hill, and when Mary came panting to the top, she stopped breathing altogether in shock.Before her, in what once must have been a small valley, was a single one-story building.It must havebeen two miles square by three.Smoking chimneys appeared every five hundred feet or so and therewere towers at each corner and a small satellite dish every thousand feet.The whole structure wassurrounded by a wire fence, which had guard towers every fifty feet.It was ugly and had athrown-together look, common to all completely utilitarian buildings.She hated it on sight."It's a lot worse inside," Sam said.She looked up at him and could have sworn she saw pity on his face.Maybe that's why he wears thoseglasses , she thought.CHAPTER EIGHTEENCORUNA, MEXICD THREE YEARS LATERThe Terminator turned its head toward the ill-defined heat signature, trying to refine its focus.After a fewseconds, when the brightness refused to become distinct, it turned away.Its processors told it that thebright mass was probably rock with a high metal content still hot from the recently set sun.It was the lastevaluation the Terminator would ever make, because its neural net processor was completely wrong.John grinned as he raised his head from behind the rock and watched the Terminator turn away.Snog'snew gizmo might not have much staying power, but it was a real lifesaver while it did last.It offered afalse signal for a space of about four feet around its wearer, evening out the heat signals, making the bodyappear a bright, amorphous mass, such as might be left behind by an explosion.He carefully lined up theTerminator's head; the plasma bolt struck in a beam of actinic light, and the hard resistant alloy of thething's skull turned into a strobing mass of molten gobbets and burning gas.John's night-vision goggles automatically turned the brightness down; he rolled to another rock alwaysdisplace after you shoot then flipped the switch on his unit and moved forward.Others moved forward with him, the HQ strike unit.They went from rock to rock across the stonyhillside, scattered with chamisos and cactus.The night air smelled of the herbal scents of desert shrubs,and of ozone and hot metal as bolts split the darkness.It was unusual for John to do fieldwork these days.Most of what he did now was plan and organize andgive orders.Actually carrying a rifle into the fray? He honestly didn't have the time for it.But in this case, nothing would have kept him out of it.His mother was in trouble.From out of nowhere a spring box leaped up before him, multiple legs reaching, acid-filled hypo alreadyexposed
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