Part 4: No Fate But What We Subtly Influence
They are halfway to Los Angeles before she stops the car.
"I can't drive anymore," she says.
He has been sleeping. He's groggy, but his head clears as he takes in, with alarm, her pinched, glassy eyes.
"Tired?"
"Something like that. God, my head is killing me."
"There should be a motel. It's the interstate. There will be a motel."
"We...we have to keep moving..."
"We did move. And now, we'll move to a motel."
She stiffens. "You don't understand."
"Stop saying that."
"Well, stop pissing me off. You really don't understand, you know. If you did, you wouldn't still be so relaxed about this. Let's stop? At a motel? This is WAR, Ellison. War! Do you get that?"
"There is more than way way to fight a war, Sarah. More than one way to be a general. Maybe that's why you're still back here and not where he is. Maybe that's what you need to do differently this time. Trust me."
"I don't trust anybody. We have to keep moving."
"And we will. We'll keep moving straight to the next motel, where we'll sleep, get in a good breakfast and then make our plans. Got it?"
She sinks back into the seat, closes her eyes. Winces. "I hate you."
"Noted. Now, move over. I need to drive."
He catches her arm as she climbs over him to the passenger side, and her hand is clammy and trembling. He brushes her cheek and feels flushness. Damn, she's sick.
"Sarah?"
"Shut it, Ellison. Just drive."
She slumps beside him, and her breathing jolts a little, too slow, too careful, too raspy for his liking. By the time he spots the exit, gets them off the interstate and toward a motel, she's drawn up her knees and has dropped her head between them, hands clenched at her sides, knuckles white with tension.
"Sarah?"
"Stop...talking...just...drive..."
He pulls into the motel parking lot. Then leans over and pushes open her door. She nearly falls over and vomits onto the pavement.
He peeks into the back seat. Savannah's still sleeping. "Stay here," he tells Sarah. Can you stay here for a second?"
She retches weakly, spits, then tries to straighten herself. "Yes."
He gathers what bags he can, carries them in with him and signs for a room. He is beginning to assimilate her paranoia, and does not take the desk clerk up on his offer to take their bags up. He goes himself, deposits their things and locks the door after him, then goes out to the car to get the girls. Savannah is still sleeping. Sarah looks like death. He can only carry one of them. Should he wake Savannah?
But she awakens on her own when he clicks the door open, stretching like a cat and beaming him a beatific smile as she clutches her monkey and rises to alertness.
"Hey, Uncle James."
"Hi, Savannah."
"Are we here?"
"For now. We'll move again soon. We have some things to do first."
"Okay."
"Aunt Sarah is...she's not feeling great, Savannah. I'll need to help her get inside. We'll have to take care of her."
Savannah peeks into the front seat, and he hears her gasp as she takes in the state of things. Sarah has worsened remarkably quickly, and is barely holding it together up there. She resists a little when he picks her up, then twitches again and goes limp in his arms.
He barely even looks to see Savannah following. He feels nothing but his feet moving one step at a time, and her dead weight in his arms. And then they are at the room again, and he has her on the bed, and he's looking at Savannah and, at last, wondering just what he's gotten himself into.
--
There is a knock on the door, and on the bed, Sarah flinches. "Ellison..."
"Let me," he says. He stares out the peephole. It's the desk clerk, with a tentative smile and a large bag in his hands.
"I need to speak with Sarah Connor," the clerk says.
This is not the name he has used to register the room. He fingers his gun, but the boy continues. "John sent me. I know what's going on, Mr. Ellison. You need my help."
He looks at Sarah. She shakes her head. He shrugs, then opens the door, ignoring the murder in her eyes. She will deal with his defiance later, no doubt. If they live.
The boy puts the bag down on the second twin bed, puts his hands up, turns around slowly. Lets himself be patted down.
"We need to talk," he says. "But first things first." He opens the bag, and it's full of bottles, pills, bandages, medical supplies of every type. He pulls out a cold compress, wraps it in a towel, presses it on Sarah's face.
"Hello, Mrs. Connor. My name is Edward. I'm here to help you."
She flinches, a token struggle, for show. But the cold compress is too soothing, and she closes her eyes, stills, lets the boy minister to her. After a moment, the visitor---Edward---motions Savannah over, shows her how to hold the cold compress in place, then moves away, rummaging in his bag again. He opens a bottle, places a pill under her tongue ('Just Tylenol,' he says. 'For the fever...') then hooks up a saline IV.
"She's going to throw up a few more times," he says. "You'll be on your way faster if you don't let her get dehydrated too."
"How did you know we'd be here? How did you know she'd be sick?"
"I told you, John sent me. Not for good, you understand. Yours for the night, but I do have another mission here, and I'll be leaving for it as soon as you guys are set."
"What is it?"
"Mr. Murch," he says. "A friend of yours, I believe, Mr. Ellison."
"Are you going to kill him?"
"Not yet. I'm going to recruit him, hire him. Keep an eye on him."
"Does he build Skynet?"
"Maybe. It doesn't quite...it's not one person. And it's not...we don't just...we don't just go and take people out, you know? We were, until John came along. But he's the one who changed everything."
He thinks of the teenaged boy he knew, tries to picture him changing the world. "How?"
"He's the only one who's really seen what time travel does. He's met people who have come back and changed things and then sent other people back from futures where things were different. Where things were worse. Where they had taken out one player and a worse one had come along. Fate likes to have its way, Mr. Ellison. A brute assault on destiny? That never ends well. It changes things in all the wrong ways. And once we figured that out, with John, we changed things too."
"How so?"
"We send people back, but for longer-term assignment. Like me. I wasn't sent back to kill Murch. Not yet, anyway. I was sent back to keep him away from certain people and direct him toward certain other ones. To make sure, over months, over years, that he goes toward our side, not theirs."
"And how do we play into this?"
"You don't. Well, you do, but as I said, we've learned that it's not 'no fate but what you make' so much 'no fate but what you subtly influence.' We know some things, from what certain...survivors...have told us..."
"Do you mean Savannah?"
"I wasn't told from who. Look, we don't do it that way anymore. All I know is, I have a mission. And part of that is to stay here, tonight, with you before we go our separate ways. I have a message for her, when she's ready for it."
"I have a lot of questions for you."
"They are not mine to answer. It doesn't work that way. I have a message for you too, Mr. Ellison."
"Oh?"
"He made me memorize it exactly. He said 'Thank you. Be strong. And don't let them take your faith away from you. God is not as far away as you think he is.' I'll be back in the morning, to check on her."
And Edward was gone, leaving behind the bag of bottles and pills and cold compresses. He checks on Sarah before falling asleep himself, and she's still twitchy and overly warm. It's not until he's tucked into bed himself that it occurs to him to wonder if the 'they' Edward was referring to was Sarah and Savannah, or the machines.
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