Prometheus Road (2 page)

Weed noticed that all the buildings in town looked like they grew out of the ground, just like her own house, and she was wondering if anyone had ever thought of building them on the surface so the sunlight could come in through windows all the way around, when Luna abruptly turned and they started back toward the farm. The roaring noise of all the voices, and the smells of all the strange foods, began to recede. Weed’s tummy grumbled. Luna would usually buy her something to eat before they left the market, but for some reason today had been different, and she hadn’t received a treat. Perhaps Weed had done something wrong, and Luna would tell her about it later.

Then Weed’s eyes grew large and her mouth watered as Luna handed her some roasted cornfruit on a stick. Weed loved cornfruit. And she was happy that she hadn’t done anything wrong. It would have been hard to wait another week for her treat.

Life was good.

THE breathing mask over Tom’s face made his nose itch. That was unusual, as the old relic from the ruins, which he had cleverly purchased at the bazaar from a man who knew nothing of its purpose, had never been uncomfortable before. Relaxed and drifting on the gentle currents, he suddenly realized that he had been floating a long time, much farther than he usually did. His back felt warm, so it had to be well after sunrise.

Then Tom sensed icy fingers reaching up through the shallow waters of the bay to stroke his skin. He was over one of the few deep channels that had not been completely filled in by The Uplift. He squinted to activate the contact patches, which pulled back from his eyes to let him see through the clear face shield, on down through shafts of twinkling sunlight into the greenish depths, and his eyes widened. A few feet beneath him, the pointed tower of a broken building reached for the sky, doomed to remain beneath the surface until gradual erosion made it an intimate part of the silt on the bay floor. Sheets of algae clung to the walls around the dark windows, fluttering like torn curtains in the gentle current. He rarely saw fish in the bay, perhaps because they feared the ghostly presences in the underwater tombs. Tom felt goose bumps on his skin: He had no idea if the stories about the ghosts were true, or if they were just tales made up by parents to keep their kids in line, but the aura of death was unmistakable.

He knew the history of his people. Although he wasn’t old enough to have witnessed The Uplift event as his father had, Tom knew that almost three million people had died within a few minutes of each other, most from drowning, and that their pale corpses had drifted in the bay for days, washing up on breakwaters and drifting in estuaries, where they rotted in the sun for weeks. He knew there had been early attempts to search for survivors, but none had ever been found, and the gods quickly decreed the entire bay to be a forbidden zone. Tom suspected that the restriction now remained only out of tradition and not for any practical reason, but his punishment would be just as severe if the elders of Marinwood discovered his secret pastime.

A winged gargoyle, frozen in gray stone on the side of a building, glared at Tom with evil in its eyes as he passed a few feet over its head. Tom could imagine it perched high above a city street, willing itself to break free of its masonry prison and descend on the innocent pedestrians far below. Now that it was underwater, Tom assumed it must be thoroughly confused by the strange turn of events.

Fate. Tom’s thoughts drifted back to his fateful meeting with the Oracle so many years before. His entrance into puberty had heralded the time when his life path would be chosen during a personal visit from the Oracle. As the Oracle rarely left her rocky underground vault in the foothills outside of Marinwood, the visitation was an event that unsettled his entire family, breaking the routine of the farm. They all quit work early, and there was a lot of pacing and nervous chatter that evening after dinner. Ukiah and Luna made regular treks to the Oracle twice a year, so they were accustomed to her spooky presence; but Tom’s first glimpse of the figure that appeared in his bedroom doorway had nearly made him yelp in alarm, even though he was pretending to be asleep. When the door creaked open around midnight, the Oracle’s white robes were bathed in a bluish glow from a shaft of moonlight in the core of the house. Her white eyes glittered with an unnatural light, looking straight at him in the darkness as if she’d been in his room many times before. Cascades of thick white hair framed a face that was always young, even though she was the same Oracle that had chosen Ukiah’s life path when he was a boy. Although she spoke in a whisper, her sharp voice could clearly be heard from across a room, as if she were able to direct and focus the sound waves when they left her mouth.

“Tom Eliot,” the Oracle whispered, “I know your secret.”

Startled, Tom quickly ran through a mental list of all the possible secrets the Oracle might have plucked from his mind, but it was a very short list, and he had no idea why she would be interested in such trivia from the daily routine of his life. He saw his mother standing a short distance behind the Oracle, and he wondered if this might be some sort of parental trick to see if Tom would confess to valid reasons for some of his admittedly bizarre behavior. Then it occurred to Tom that the old woman might just be playing with his head to see how he would react.

“Yes,” she said. “I do know what you’re thinking. In fact, I know more about you than you do, little man-thing.”

“He’s not all that little,” Luna said.

The Oracle turned her gaze on Luna for a few seconds, then Luna bowed her head and backed away from the doorway. That simple motion demonstrated the Oracle’s authority, and Tom felt the seriousness of the occasion. He licked his lips, breathing faster than usual as the Oracle turned her gaze on him once more.

“Your eyes smell like the sound of rain,” the Oracle said, gliding across the floor toward his bed. He couldn’t see her feet, and her robes billowed behind her as she moved, giving Tom the impression that she was floating. “As the trees dream of light, you dream of futures past, tumbling in time, seeking your reflection in smoky mirrors. In this quest, you will fail.”

Tom didn’t know what she was talking about, but he felt as if he were being punished for bad thoughts. “Why? What have I done?”

She stopped beside his bed, looming over him. “What will you not do? Time is a gift and a curse, little man-thing. I can only guide and foresee, while you must live your death with each passing day.”

Tom wished his mother would come back into the room.

The Oracle’s white eyes bored into his skull. “You have a greatness in you, Tom Eliot, but this will also be your downfall. To be something, you must be nothing first, and your parents can prepare you for this. Your life stretches out before me, a turbulent time stream, among which I can only select the currents and help you avoid the submerged rocks. But I am certain of one thing—the path you must seek is the path of nothing: being nothing, becoming nothing, remaining nothing. You must join your community as your community joins you, plowing the fields as you would plow your mind.”

Tom inched his head farther back on the pillow as she reached for his face, finally touching his forehead with her cold fingers, then covering his eyes with her palm. “Your path is here among the soil: working in it, growing in it, and finally resting in it.”

She had chosen his life path. Could he ask for a second choice?

“No,” the Oracle said, gliding toward the exit. The prophet had spoken. Some were chosen to serve the gods, others were chosen for dangerous exploration tasks or to work in occupations that supported the village, but lives such as those were apparently not suited to Tom’s skills. No, the Oracle had looked into his head, past his hopes and fears and dreams, seeking the truth of his inner being, and she had found only dirt. Tom was doomed to spend his life on his family’s farm, striving to be nothing.

And so he floated, feeling the freedom of the water supporting his body, living in the present so he could ignore the future.

THE alert from the Alcatraz ward on the Inner Barrier flashed through the network faster than a human synapse could respond. The information was indexed, correlated, and analyzed, then joined with a solution matrix. After evaluation and forecasting, a response array was generated almost faster than the incoming alert had arrived at its destination. Triangulating with their extended eyes in orbit, distributed processors fixed the position of the interloper, identified it with pattern recognition algorithms, tracked its heat trail through the water far enough to extrapolate its origin, and relayed the data to the terminal execution nodes for final disposition.

Inner guardian release 37°48' 28“ West Latitude 122°26' 30” North Longitude.

TOM had to get back, and it would have to be by a quicker route than usual. Helix was faithfully waiting for him where the river emptied into the bay, so Tom would have to circle back on land, avoiding the wards and the roving watchers, to pick up Helix and head for home. It was market day, so most of their neighbors would be in town and less likely to spot Tom on his return. Across the bay to the south and the east, he saw the twisted spikes where huge towers had reached for the sky in the great cities, reduced now to the few ruins clinging to mountainsides that had formerly been flat terrain. He shook his head, annoyed that he had allowed himself to drift this far; it was the sort of mistake that could get him into big trouble.

Tom felt an odd vibration moving through his body, similar to what he felt on land before the earth shifted beneath his feet. A bubbling sound reached his ears, coming from somewhere behind him. He lifted his head from the water and looked back. Blinking as if he might clear the rivulets streaming down across his mask from his wet hair, he saw the fast-moving wake of some narrow object, like a huge fish, racing in his direction just below the surface. Tom lowered his face into the water to see if he could get a better view from below, and he was startled to see two large eyes with a brilliant orange glow. He stiffened when he realized that the creature was moving much faster than any fish he’d ever seen, and it didn’t move like a living thing.

A guardian. The shoreline wards must have spotted him.

He’d never actually seen one before, but he’d get a close look soon enough. It would be on him in seconds. There was no way he could swim faster or deeper than the guardian, and he didn’t think he could fool it by remaining motionless.

The guardian turned. A quicksilver flank glittered in the sunlight as it dove a few feet deeper and reoriented itself toward its target. Tom had never been a target before, and he didn’t enjoy thinking of himself as prey. But there was no place he could hide, no place he could run. The pounding of his heart shook his body in a steady rhythm, waiting for the inevitable, until an older part of his brain took over and he turned away from the oncoming threat, swimming like a madman in his futile attempt to get away.

Then it had him. A heavy claw wrapped around his ankle and yanked him below the surface, dragging him down as he flailed and struggled to break free and swim back to the surface. The unyielding claw remained in place, tearing at the skin of his ankle, foreshadowing the pain he would soon feel when his mask tore away and his lungs filled with water after his last breath burst from his screaming mouth.

His body slammed into something hard, causing a hollow boom in the water, and a dense cloud of bubbles billowed past him. His last thought was of his family, and how he had failed them by defying the law, and how the gods would seek retribution on them for Tom’s disgrace.

UKIAH stopped chopping carrots to glance at the kitchen clock, then his shoulders slumped. “Where is he?” Distracted, he nicked his thumb with the sharp blade. A spot of blood appeared on one of the carrots. “It’s noon, and the lad is normally back at his chores by midmorn.”

Luna stopped shredding lettuce and reached for Ukiah’s hand. “Better give me that knife before you cut your fingers off, old man.” She gently took the knife from him and set it on the table, then put her hand on his shoulder and looked into his dark blue eyes. “We need to encourage Tom’s independence. He needs to get away to think.”

Ukiah licked his wound, then put a finger over it to stop the bleeding. “Thinking is a bad habit. It leads to unhappiness. I should have hidden those old books in a better place.”

“What old books?” She raised an eyebrow, wondering if there really might be forbidden books on their farm.

“Tom found my library hidden in the cellar beneath the barn. Most of it was my father’s collection, but I collected more from the ruins before the zones were established. Tom’s been reading those books for years. He doesn’t know that I know about it, of course. I didn’t think it would do any harm for him to know a few things about the old ways, and he’s more motivated to learn when he can sneak around to do it.”

Luna’s eyes were wide. “You never told me.”

Ukiah shrugged. “Better that you didn’t know. If Memphis found out about it and told Hermes, they’d burn me at the stake.”

“Then why are you telling me now?”

“In case something happens to me, I guess. There’s fuel in the cellar, so that you can torch the whole thing if someone decides to raid the farm. Destroying the evidence might help keep the rest of the children safe.”

“Don’t be so dramatic. Did you try looking for Tom in the barn cellar?”

“Of course. That’s part of my concern. I haven’t seen him at all this morning.”

Then it was Luna’s turn to sigh. “Don’t worry. He’ll get his chores done. And he’ll come running when he smells the cornfruit I’ve got roasting.”

“I’m not worried about his chores, Luna. He’s got bigger problems.”

“Memphis is an old fool,” Luna said, turning to pour herself some spice tea from the steaming pot on the stove.

“Fool or not, he runs the council.”

The spicy aroma of the tea filled the air as it burbled into Luna’s cup. “Without Hermes, Memphis would be nothing. And Hermes would be nothing without the power of Telemachus behind him.”

“You don’t seem to understand. Tom is at risk here. We are at risk.”

Holding the warm teacup between her hands, Luna glanced up with a frown. “Did the Oracle tell you this?”

“No, but you know how it works. If Telemachus thinks Tom is a renegade element, they’ll come for him. They’ll take him away.”

“It’s been years since anyone was removed. Why would they single out Tom?”

“Because he’s too different. Because he doesn’t follow the rules, and he rubs their noses in it. Not overtly, mind you, but just enough to imply that he’s above the law. They don’t like what he represents.”

Luna gripped his forearm. “You need to speak to the Oracle. If there’s real trouble coming, she’ll know.”

“She already summoned me. I’m supposed to visit her this afternoon.”

“By yourself?”

Ukiah nodded.

Luna released her grip on Ukiah’s arm and took a deep breath. “This could be a good thing. The Oracle might tell you that Memphis will be gone soon, and you’re to replace him.”

“Not much chance of that, I’m afraid. Memphis is perfectly healthy for his age, and he would never recommend me to be his successor.”

“The rest of the council would vote for you,” she said, sipping her tea.

Ukiah shrugged. “They might have once. But I think they’re just as nervous about Tom’s behavior as Memphis is. They don’t wish to anger the gods.”

“Ukiah, this is ridiculous. Once or twice a year, some family does something to attract the attention of Telemachus, then Hermes pays them a visit or the village power grid gets shut off for a week. Nobody gets removed anymore.”

Ukiah sat down heavily on the edge of the dining table and rubbed his face in his hands. “Okay, maybe I worry too much, but the boy is in danger. Why does he have to go out of his way to draw attention after all our efforts to make him fit in? I only want what’s best for him.”

Luna set her cup down, then put her arms around him and rested his head on her chest. “I know what bothers you. Tom isn’t so different from you when you were his age. Yet you chose to be a responsible member of the community and join the council when Medoc died. You became a leader when the people needed you.”

“That was different. I never openly defied the law.”

“Perhaps they need Tom to lead them, too, but in a different way. Times have changed. You look at Tom, and you see how he’s like you, so you worry for him. Instead, you should look at Tom and see how he’s like you, then recognize the greatness in him.”

Ukiah shook his head. “I don’t want him to be great. I want him to be happy. And I want him to be safe. We’ve gone to great lengths to hide his unique qualities from Telemachus.”

“Safety is an illusion, my love.”

Ukiah looked up into her twinkling sapphire eyes. “And happiness?”

“That’s real,” she said, hugging him closer.

THE dry branch of the old oak tree creaked as Tempest Gustafson shifted to a more comfortable perch. The heavy brown suede of her pants and long-sleeved shirt smelled good in the warm sun, and she allowed the warmth to seep through her olive-toned skin into her sore muscles. These were her metalworking clothes, and a bit stiff for tree climbing, but the stunted oak had offered enough support for her to reach the lower branches so she could study her prize in relative privacy. Her half brother, Humboldt, was around somewhere, but she had discovered that hiding in plain sight was often the best tactic with him if she wanted to be left alone for a little while. She pulled the ribbon out of her long brown hair and it tumbled forward to hide what she held in her hand—a crystal doorknob that sparkled in the sunlight. When she held the crystal up close to her face, she saw the tiny prisms glowing in each facet where the light struck, creating enough depth and dimension to make her feel as if she could climb inside and live within the crystal walls. Tom had found it on one of his trips into the forbidden zones a week ago, and she had originally imagined it to be a huge diamond despite Tom’s description of its mundane origin. She knew that such a pretty and carefully crafted thing must have meant more to its long-dead owner than simply a way to open a door, just as it meant more to her as a gift from Tom. For the last three days, she had been welding a large sculpture from old scraps of steel, depicting a woman on one knee offering something to the sky in her cupped hands. When the life-sized sculpture was finished, the crystal would serve as the woman’s offering, placed upright in the hands of the sculpture to look even more like a giant diamond. Until the sculpture was ready, Tempest had to keep the crystal hidden because her father would not approve of such a thing, particularly if he learned it had come from Tom.

When a light breeze lifted her hair, Tempest turned her head at the sound of a small scream from the barn. She frowned, then realized when she heard it a second time that the scream was coming from stressed metal. Her sculpture was in the barn.

Shinnying down the tree, the bark nicking at her bare feet and ankles, she plopped down beside her boots at the base of the trunk, picked them up, and ran toward the barn. At the open door, she stopped in a cloud of dust and stared at the stocky figure with the upraised pry bar standing in the sunlight. Two large pieces of her sculpture lay broken on the ground.

“What are you doing!” Tempest screamed. She took a step forward, her fists clenched.

Humboldt looked up from where he was prying another chunk of metal away from the main body of the sculpture. He wore a leather vest and dirty black work pants. One of his muddy boots was wedged against the statue’s knee for better leverage. “I need some scrap to fix the windmill. What about it?”

She stumbled forward, thinking how big and mean he could be when he was angry, knowing she couldn’t stop him. “That—that’s my sculpture!”

Humboldt glanced at the kneeling metal figure, then back at her. “This thing? It’s scrap.”

“It’s a kneeling woman! Can’t you see it? Look at it!”

Humoring her, Humboldt took a step back and squinted. “Don’t see it.” Then he stepped forward and rubbed his hands on the figure’s head with a smirk. “Well, okay, maybe. But what’s it good for?”

“It’s art! I made it!”

“Looks like windmill parts to me,” he said, placing the long pry bar beneath the figure’s head, ready to pop the head off.

Tempest screamed and ran straight for him. Startled, he stepped back and she rammed her head into his stomach. Humboldt barely moved, and she realized she’d made a major error as she grabbed her spinning head and saw Humboldt’s face turning red. She started to turn away, but he grabbed a handful of her loose hair and yanked her sideways before slapping one of her ears. She screamed and turned, trying to kick at him, but he held her out at arm’s length, then turned her around so he could pick her up with his huge arms around her waist in a bear hug, lifting her off the floor while she kicked her legs in the air.

“Let me go!”

“Why? You’ll just try to hit me again. I’m taking this thing apart.” He kicked at her sculpture with his booted foot, knocking it over on its side.

“No! Stop it!” Her vision was getting darker as her head continued to spin. She smelled his strong odor and felt his sweat on her skin. Then she managed to jerk around enough to snap open enough of the buttons on her stiff leather shirt so she could get her right arm loose and smash her hand into the side of his head. He grunted, stumbled, and she felt them both falling backward, but he twisted and she hit the dirt face-first before the weight of his body landed on her back, pressing her into the loose soil from head to toe.

“Get off me,” she yelled into the dirt. She tasted bits of carbonized steel in the soil.

His weight remained on top of her, making it difficult to breathe, and it occurred to her that he might be unconscious. She could smother in the dirt before he woke up. “Get off!”

Then, suddenly, Humboldt jumped to his feet and brushed himself off as she angrily raised her head, spitting dirt out of her mouth.

“What is going on here?” demanded the powerful voice of her father.

Tempest tried to speak and started coughing instead. Humboldt shook his head and shrugged. “Demons, Father. Tempest nearly took my head off with this pry bar, then she jumped down on the ground and began eating the dirt.”

Memphis angrily stepped into the barn, then stumbled on the crystal doorknob lying in the dirt. Humboldt darted forward to keep him from falling, then Memphis shook his son away and picked up the crystal to examine it with suspicious eyes. “What is this bauble?”

“I shouldn’t say,” Humboldt said. “It belongs to Tempest.”

“Tempest!” Memphis whirled on her. “Explain yourself!”

Tempest spit on the ground to clear the rest of the dirt from her mouth while she lurched to her feet. “Nothing, Father. It’s—”

Memphis slapped his hand on top of her head and forced her down to her knees. “Spit at me, will you? Disrespect your father, will you?”

“No, Father, I—” She grimaced as her right knee found a sharp piece of metal. The point didn’t puncture her leather pants, but it hurt anyway.

Memphis shoved the crystal into her face. “Explain this! It’s from the ruins, isn’t it? From the forbidden zone!”

Tempest bit her lip and nodded. His breath smelled of the garlic cloves he liked to chew.

Humboldt moved closer. “I’m sure she didn’t know where it was from, Father.”

“Get back to work, Humboldt,” Memphis snapped. He glared at his son, and Humboldt lumbered back over to the broken sculpture before looking back with a brief smile at Tempest. He picked up the pry bar.

She shook her head. “Stop him, Father! Make him leave it alone! That’s my sculpture!”

“You dare to tell your father what to do?” Memphis hissed. He looked at the crystal again. “This is from Tom Eliot, isn’t it?”

Her teeth chattered. “No.”

“Don’t lie to me, girl. It will go worse for you if you add lying to your list of sins this day.”

Tempest swallowed and nodded once, her eyes wide, bracing herself for whatever might happen next.

“Humboldt!” Memphis roared. “Come here!” When Humboldt jogged back over beside Tempest, Memphis lifted her and shoved her into his arms. “Take her to the box.”

Humboldt swallowed as he grabbed Tempest under the arms and lifted her. “The box?”

“You heard me,” Memphis growled, breathing hard. “Take her there now, or you’ll be next.”

“Please, Father, no!” Tempest cried, struggling to get away from Humboldt as he dragged her away.

“You’ve made your choice, girl.” His voice was softer as he followed them out of the barn. “I’ve warned you about Tom Eliot, yet you continue to defy me. Now he’s giving you forbidden gifts, thumbing his nose at the gods, and defying my word. But this will stop. And your disrespect will stop. It will all stop right now!”

TOM awoke with a pounding headache, a bruised ankle, and the startled awareness that he was not dead. He blinked several times, trying to clear his blurred vision, then sat upright in a puddle of water on the cold concrete floor. His marsh grass camouflage was still attached to the back of his skinsuit, but it had been flattened by his sleeping on his back, giving him the appearance of a porcupine on a bad hair day. His vision cleared a little more. He was in a dim tunnel, lit only by a line of red ceiling lights spaced ten feet apart that vanished into the distance. When he coughed, his foot bumped against a metal rail that ran lengthwise down the tunnel. The air smelled damp and musty, and the only sounds were the gentle hum from the rail accompanied by a chorus of chittering rats.

The wet hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he sensed someone watching him. Turning to look over his shoulder, he saw only more red lights receding into the distance until his eyes adjusted enough to see one of the tall shadows along the wall moving toward him. With his heart pounding, he lurched to his feet to face the enemy.