Prometheus Road (3 page)

“Get a grip on yourself, boy,” said the hooded figure. He spoke with a voice that was deep, precise, and pedantic. “If I’d wanted to hurt you, I would have done it long before now. You were asleep for almost an hour.”

“Who are you?” Tom demanded, keeping his fists ready just in case.

The figure stopped a few feet away under one of the red lights. He pushed back the hood of his rough brown cloak to reveal a weathered, bony, old face with sunken eyes, a hawk nose, and a mane of thick white hair that fell like a waterfall from his head to his shoulders. “I’m Magnus Prufrock—legend, scholar, and hermit. And since I’m the one who rescued you from drowning, I’d appreciate a more polite tone of voice.”

Tom’s frown softened, then a thrill of electricity rippled through his body. Surprised at his reaction, he decided that his recent trauma underwater had left him disoriented. “Magnus Prufrock? I’ve heard of you. Everyone says you’re crazy.”

He made an expansive gesture. “Do I look crazy to you?”

Tom didn’t feel any need to state the obvious, so he shrugged.

“That’s it. Back in the water with you.”

“Okay, sorry, but where am I? I thought you lived in a cave in the wasteland.”

“That’s what you’re supposed to think. Keeps the curious yahoos out of my hair. We’re actually in the northern transbay tunnel, not far from my home. Bay Area Rapid Transit built the deep tube under the bay in 2030 to connect San Francisco with Alcatraz, Angel Island, and Sausalito. The mag-lev trains don’t run anymore, but it’s still a great way to get around without being seen by nosy parkers with silicon brains.”

Tom looked up at the ceiling and shuddered. “So we’re underwater?”

“About thirty feet of it, yes. And another ten feet of gravel and mud.”

“Then how did I get in here?”

Magnus pointed at a hatch about ten feet away in the side of the tunnel. “Grapple on a robot construction arm. My alarms went off when the guardian entered the water. The defensive system thought my house was under attack. The grapple was meant for the guardian, but I intercepted my robot in time and snatched you instead. Hauled you in through the construction airlock and scrambled the guardian’s brains with a high-voltage shock. You’re lucky I was home.”

Tom rubbed his sore ankle, uncertain as to whether he should thank Magnus for the rescue or curse him. Drowning would have made things so much simpler. “Yeah. Thanks.” He offered his hand. “I’m Tom Eliot, by the way.”

Magnus ignored Tom’s outstretched hand. “I know. I’ve been keeping my eye on you, boy.”

Tom raised his eyebrows.

“Anyone who regularly manages to sneak past the wards like you have deserves my attention. I’m surprised that Telemachus let you get away with it for this long, but now the jig is up. The siliboys know who you are, where you live, and what you had for breakfast. To put it another way, it’s time for you to hit the highway and run like hell.”

“I can’t leave my home. My family depends on me.”

“Up until today that may have been true. If you go home now, not only will the siliboys find you, but they might just decide to take the rest of your family in as well. I know all about their ‘rehabilitation units,’ and I can assure you that you don’t want to see the inside of one. You probably wouldn’t even survive it—many people don’t.”

“How do you know so much about these things?”

Magnus raised an eyebrow, and his gray eyes glittered in the red light. The look jarred Tom, as if he were receiving input on all the channels of his brain simultaneously, communicating amusement, strength, the memory of pain, and wisdom all at once. “I have to get back. Can’t stand around chatting all day. I’ve got work to do.”

Magnus spun on his heel and began to walk away. Tom hesitated, then trotted after him. “Wait. I don’t know how to get out of here.” Magnus snorted and continued walking at a brisk pace. Tom noticed that he didn’t move like an old man; his gait was quick and confident, his movements fluid. Their rapid footsteps echoed in the tunnel.

Magnus glanced over his shoulder. “We’ve met before, you know.”

“We have? When was that?” He was sure he would have remembered such a meeting. Maybe the old man was crazy after all.

“You think about it, boy. If you can remember, we’ll both learn something. If you can’t, I’ll learn something, and you’ll just remain in the dark where you belong.” Magnus stopped suddenly and whirled around, his robes flapping when he raised his arms, looming over Tom like a giant bat. His eyes were wild and full of gray fire. Tom noticed that his right arm looked scarred and unusually smooth. “Every creature has at least one special moment in its life when it learns a secret,” Magnus boomed. “A secret that will alter the course of its future. Are you prepared for that, boy? This may be your one great shining moment when all will be revealed!”

Tom closed his eyes and tried to remember. His world was relatively small, and there were few people in it. He would have remembered if he had met Magnus before. The strangers he saw in town at the weekly market were rare, and Magnus had never been among them. He certainly had never been to the Eliot farm before. No, they could never have met. “Sorry, I don’t remember.”

Magnus dropped his arms. “So be it.” A shadow passed over the old man’s face; he nodded once, then turned away in silence. He walked more slowly now, as if his long years of living had suddenly caught up with him, and there was something about his stride that seemed familiar.

Fire. A memory of fire surged up from the depths of Tom’s memory. Ten years ago, maybe more, a neighbor’s farm had burned in an unusual explosion, and the family that lived there had died. Tom had been very young then, and he didn’t remember having much contact with those neighbors. A bright flash had lit up the sky one night while he was watching the moon, scaring Tom enough to wake his mother, then all of them had raced across the fields to where the roaring flames lit the countryside. When they arrived, fire and black smoke poured out of a crater where the underground home used to be, creating a wall of intense heat. Luna kept Tom and Zeke from going any farther down the slope, but Tom’s father continued running, yelling and waving his arms. Silhouetted by the flames, his black coat starting to smoke from the heat, Ukiah bent over something on the ground, then helped a man stand up. Supported by Ukiah, the man stumbled slowly up the slope, glancing over his shoulder at the inferno behind them. When they got closer, Tom saw the dark burns on the man’s body. When his defeated gaze met Tom’s wide-eyed stare, tears began to stream down the man’s face, and he sagged to his knees in the dirt. Luna quickly covered Tom’s eyes with her hand, but Tom had already felt the pain in those gray eyes.

Tom was surprised by the detailed memory. With the passage of time, he had come to think of it as an old dream. After the fire, his parents had never spoken of it again, and the man with the burns had disappeared into the night.

“The fire,” Tom whispered. “You were the man in the fire.”

Magnus stopped, but he didn’t turn around. When he spoke, his voice was almost inaudible. “That man no longer exists.”

“Was that the night you learned the secret of your life?” Tom asked.

“The first of many,” Magnus replied. He cast a sideways glance at Tom. “And now, whether you’re ready or not, your time has come, young Tom. Your time has come.”

HIS narrow face was human in shape, with a graceful nose set off by prominent high cheekbones, but his chrome complexion made his emotions hard to read, mirroring the faces of the humans who dared speak to him. His eyes reflected without revealing, giving him the otherworldly presence expected of the ambassador of Telemachus. Dressed in black robes woven with the fine silver threads that enhanced and expanded his sensory field beyond his facial perimeter, he descended the ramp into the vortex chamber, hesitating as the concentric rings of color began to radiate from the center of the dark chamber. Telemachus was present, and he would not be fooled by the calm expression on the mirrored face of Hermes. Fortunately, his master had not summoned him to a meeting in Stronghold, and that meant that he had a good chance of leaving the vortex chamber alive.

“It was a simple task,” Telemachus rumbled in his multi-voice. “Explain your failure.”

The rippling circles of color passed through Hermes as if he weren’t there, expanding at a slow and steady pace through the blackness. As each color pulse struck his cloak, his sensory field registered tiny shocks to his nervous system, triggering rapid surges of random emotion in his brain. His normally placid demeanor now bounced between fear, sadness, ecstasy, and any other feeling that Telemachus wished to test while Hermes stood in the vortex chamber. Even without the shock waves, Telemachus could almost read the mind of Hermes through his body language; but he had limitations in understanding human thought and feeling, which was why Hermes and the Oracle had been created as interfaces in the first place. One of the drawbacks to being a nanoborg was regular submission to these emotional shock wave tests, usually while reports were being delivered.

Hermes began to explain. “The guardian lost contact with the target twenty-three feet beneath the surface at—”

“We know all that,” Telemachus interrupted. “I require the details of your failure.”

Hermes hesitated, trying not to reveal anything through his voice quality or the movements of his body, but knowing that his skin temperature, perspiration, muscle tension, and heart rate were being measured remotely.

“Response is required,” Telemachus said. “Now.”

Hermes felt a stronger electrical charge dance across the surface of his skin—a warning about the pain that his master could trigger if he was displeased. If he’d learned anything from his long association with Telemachus, it was how direct the AI could be when dealing with lesser intelligences. Pain and pleasure were doled out by the AIs as the simplest means of controlling the human herds under their care, although they preferred to work indirectly through their nanoborg interfaces whenever possible. That was a policy that occasionally put Hermes in the position of a messenger bearing bad news, and he knew that his future would be severely limited if Telemachus predicted any future incompetencies or major failures on the part of Hermes. Nanoborgs were not easily built or trained by the AIs, but failures were acknowledged and bred out of the genetic algorithms immediately whenever one of the nanoborg units exhibited serious design flaws. The occasional miscalculation or seemingly illogical act was allowed as an inherent by-product of the human side of a nanoborg’s activities; but errors were always tracked and recorded, making it possible for an otherwise successful nanoborg to be destroyed after years of faithful service once its error threshold had been reached.

“I was fooled,” Hermes said. “My human half blinded me. The Eliot boy seemed to be a hardworking youth who fit in well with the community.”

“You are my servant precisely so that we may not be fooled in this way,” Telemachus said.

“I understand,” Hermes whispered, lowering his head as he prepared himself for a fatal shock. He considered that Telemachus might not have summoned him to Stronghold because his failure had been too great to allow for a traditional execution on the high ground. He felt his heart beat faster, then tried to slow it by taking a deep breath and releasing it gradually.

“Continue,” Telemachus intoned.

Hermes blinked in surprise, happy to continue breathing. “Tom Eliot has learned to evade our shoreline wards, and he has managed to find gaps within the forbidden zones where he can slip through without detection.”

“In this sense, he has performed a service for us,” Telemachus said. “We can seal the gaps he has discovered.”

Hermes tipped his head, wondering at the strange turn of the conversation. “This is true.”

“To what purpose does this boy enter the forbidden zones? He is not on the scavenger list.”

Hermes could only guess at the boy’s motivation. “His father says that the boy likes to leave his normal surroundings to meditate. To think.”

“Thinking is bad for them,” Telemachus said. “It leads to independent ambition and can conflict with our long-term goals for the communities. They must assume their assigned tasks and follow the plans we lay out for their lives. The Eliot boy is a wild element in our balanced system and must be eliminated before he contaminates the rest of the community.”

“I understand,” Hermes said. “The community is at risk. We must remove Tom Eliot.”

“You understand very little. The contaminant must be destroyed. Probability is high that components of the Eliot family will not respond favorably to Tom Eliot’s removal or destruction. We must assume that the entire sample has been contaminated by Tom Eliot’s presence. We will choose a time with the highest probability of all family elements being present at the Eliot home, then we will strike.”

Hermes frowned. “Community output will drop dramatically in response. Fear will dominate for weeks after the event.”

“A blip in the evolution of Marinwood. They’re human. Over time, they will adapt and forget that the Eliots existed. After six months, another family may rebuild and occupy the farmland.”

“Perhaps we should try other means first. Tom Eliot has unusual capabilities that haven’t yet been developed. We could threaten the farm, cut off their power—”

Telemachus interrupted him again. “It is not our policy to waste workforce elements, Hermes. Our decision is not colored by emotion, but by facts and projected probabilities. Your human component views Tom Eliot in terms of your similarities—he is isolated from others of his kind by his differences and so are you—but you should view Tom Eliot in terms of his differences. Our task is to protect and guide our human charges, despite what certain factions of the Dominion might have us believe. We do not weaken their growth by coddling them, and we do not allow human performance outside of the safe evolutionary norms we have established.”

“Safety is an illusion,” Hermes blurted out without thinking. He instantly regretted it when his skin crackled with the warning electrical charge, somewhat stronger than the previous time. Then Telemachus shifted the shock wave colors toward the red end of the spectrum, and his emotions pulsed along with them in response—anxiety, worry, fear, panic, terror. He got the point.