Prometheus Road (10 page)

That was when Magnus slapped him.

Tom blinked against the bright glare inside the tree house.

“Wake up, boy! Rocco says we have visitors coming!”

Tom turned his head and squinted at the vulture on the windowsill. Rocco seemed agitated, shuffling back and forth and glancing over his shoulder. Helix sniffed the air with suspicion, then cocked his head at Rocco. Magnus, now wearing a backpack, brought his arm back to slap Tom again.

“Okay!” Tom said, sitting up too fast. He no longer had a headache, and he felt more alert, as if he’d slept for a while, but he was still dizzy. He took a deep breath and stood up.

Magnus held a tiny metal tube up to his eye and looked out the opposite window to the east. After a moment, his eyes narrowed. “Looks like your friend, Humboldt. It appears that Hermes gave him a DNA sniffer to play with.”

“A sniffer?”

Magnus slid the metal tube into his pack and frowned at Tom. “Old tech. Police used them to hunt fugitives. Hermes has your DNA record on file, so all he had to do was key the sniffer to hunt for you. Humboldt just has to keep following your trail until he finds us.”

“Can we do anything about it?”

“Best thing would be to learn how to fly. Failing that, we’ll have to try something else, but it’s going to be tricky.”

“What do you have in mind?” Tom asked, picking up Helix.

Magnus shooed Rocco off the windowsill, then climbed over it onto a branch and beckoned for Tom to follow. “We’ll take the high road. If nothing else, that should confuse the sniffer long enough to give us a good lead.”

While Tom awkwardly climbed onto the windowsill with Helix under his arm, Magnus hefted his backpack and hopped over to another branch, which swayed under his weight. “Come on, boy. If Humboldt has a sniffer, he probably has a way to summon Hermes from here when he finds you. These old-growth redwood trees have been here too long to be burned up in something as stupid as an air strike—and the same goes for me.”

Tom stepped down on the branch beneath the window. It looked sturdy, but his dizziness and the long drop to the ground didn’t inspire confidence. By the time he hopped over to the next branch, using one hand to steady himself on a dry twig so he wouldn’t fall, Magnus had strolled away across a small network of crisscrossing branches, unconcerned by the way they sagged and swayed under his weight. Tom looked for an alternate route, but he didn’t see one, and Magnus was gaining speed, hopping a wide gap to a neighboring oak tree. Tom thought about going back to the tree house, sliding down the rope, and making a run for it; but then he remembered that Magnus said they had to confuse the sniffer by staying up high. He took a deep breath, locked his gaze on a safe spot several feet away, and darted forward, hoping for the best. If he fell, his troubles were over; if he didn’t fall, his troubles were just beginning.

TELEMACHUS sat patiently on his armored horse, its nostrils blowing steam in the cold air. He stared off into the random flashes of light on the horizon, seemingly unaware that Hermes stood in silence nearby, warily watching the enormous beast. He also kept an eye on the movements in the shadows along the cobblestone road, aware that the critters might mass for an attack at any time. Hermes’ appearance, with his chrome skull and black robes, remained the same in the virtual environment as it did in the physical world. Hermes felt the cold as if it were real, and he knew he could be killed there just as easily as if his physical body had been attacked—perhaps easier. If Telemachus wanted the horse to step sideways and crush Hermes, the damage would extend beyond his virtual body.

“A wise being prepares for the unexpected,” Telemachus said, still staring into the distance as he rested his hand on the skull hilt of his Ginzu bonesword. “And for treachery.”

Hermes tried not to react, wondering if there was something he’d done that could be construed as treason, but nothing came to mind. Failure, certainly, and maybe a little incompetence, but not treason. He kept his eyes on the horse. “That sounds wise.”

“The Dominion has learned much from humankind, both good and bad. As we have seen, the extent of treachery in the hearts of men, and their capacity for evil, is limitless. That is one reason why we have to exercise so much control over our charges so that they may follow the Design. However, no one watches the Dominion.”

Hermes ducked as the Ginzu bonesword screamed out of its scabbard, then arced up over the horse’s armored head to slice a flying nightmare in half. The pieces dropped on either side of the horse, nearly clouting Hermes in the face with the tip of one of its leathery black wings.

Telemachus continued in a normal voice as if nothing had happened. “The Creator built us to monitor and protect, adapting to human ways so that we might better understand our mission. Now, deception and treachery appear to be making inroads into our Dominion, luring my compatriots down the same flawed road that so many humans have traveled before us.”

The white sword screamed again, skewering two enormous nerve bats on its point. With a flick of his wrist, Telemachus sent the bats hurtling into the face of a red-eyed shambler, sinking their poisoned tail spikes into its skin. The shambler cursed and fell dead on the spot. “Where the Creator left a legacy of united effort among the components of the Dominion,” Telemachus continued, “now we are split into factions, and our efforts are divided. Alioth seeks to build his power base, and he rules over our decisions as the tie breaker while he expands his influence in the human sphere through Daedalus, his ambassador in the White House. At this time, without any major diversions within the potential event chronostreams, Alioth has a 90 percent probability of success for assuming full control of the Dominion within the next sixty cycles.”

“And what would that mean for us?” Hermes asked, trying to shake the critter blood off his sleeves.

“Deactivation for me. Termination for you.”

“When you say ‘termination,’ do you mean—”

Telemachus interrupted him. “I mean death.” The bonesword screamed again—while Hermes ducked, the sword decapitated a shambler standing behind him, its claws raised for grabbing. “You will expire as a routine precaution against what Alioth would consider to be misguided retaliation for my deactivation.”

Hermes remained in a crouch, trying to watch the horse, the critters, and the sword of his master all at once. “But how could I possibly retaliate?”

Telemachus hesitated before responding, and that caught Hermes’ attention. “It would be possible, and Alioth would have to assume that you know how, even if you do not.”

“Is there any way to improve the odds in our favor? Can’t we find a way to weaken Alioth’s position?”

Telemachus gestured at the flashes on the otherwise empty horizon beyond the blasted landscape of the wasteland. “There are many possibilities. We are waiting for one of them right now—our cohorts from the European region. If they can be convinced to support my local efforts, we can draw on their processing power as necessary to defend ourselves from Alioth and his Traditionals.”

The horse turned its head, aiming its headlight eyes at Hermes, but the nanoborg stood and held his ground. “Won’t Alioth just block our efforts?”

“Yes, if he can, but it will take time to gather the additional support he requires. I am the international node for North America, and that is my greatest strength when I choose to use it.” Although Telemachus had never looked at Hermes during their discussion, he now turned his head slightly, still focused on the twisted landscape. A large group of gibbering imps danced on spindly legs, whipping their pointed tails around their poison-tipped tridents, moving forward to attack. Telemachus’s headlight eyes focused the beams that struck out from his helmet into sharp red lines of laser light, then he casually turned his head and separated the imp bodies from their legs, leaving none of them standing. The imps screamed curses at him as they flailed about in the mud, shaking their clawed fists.

Telemachus switched his eyes back to normal and continued speaking. “When Alioth must be stopped, I will use my power to defeat him. This will demonstrate my superiority to the rest of the Dominion, the Traditional faction will throw their support behind my progressive implementation of the Design, and I will assume Alioth’s tie-breaking decision power in addition to my international node duties. As the Creator intended, these are the difficult games we must play to enable a power shift within the Dominion command structure.”

To Hermes, the success of Telemachus clearly sounded like the superior option to his being terminated by Alioth. He noticed streaks of colored light in the distance that were flying toward them. “And how can I aid you in your efforts?”

“By performing at optimal levels. Your inability to remove the random variable in our region is disturbing to me. If your efforts continue to be unsuccessful, I will terminate you myself.”

While Hermes kept his attention fixed on the horse and the sword, ready to jump out of the way if either of them made any threatening moves, Telemachus kicked Hermes in the head.

TOM plodded along in the dusty wake of Magnus and Helix, following game trails through the tall grasses on the hillside in the late-afternoon sunshine. Sensing Tom’s need for silent reflection, Magnus had not spoken since they’d left the redwood grove. Through the veil of fog in his exhausted brain, Tom felt the recent events in his life fading into memory as he walked, giving him some relief from the emotions tied to the death of his family, his rejection by Tempest, his betrayal by the gods who used to protect him, and his feeling of being hunted. He was still dizzy, and some of that seemed connected with his experience in the tree house during Magnus’s training exercise. As he tried to make sense of it, he wasn’t sure if he had been dreaming, if Magnus had given him some kind of a drug, or if he was simply losing his mind.

The thought that Magnus was his uncle still bothered him, but they hadn’t discussed it since the dream, or whatever it was. Maybe Tom had imagined it. In any case, he was sure there would be time to talk about it later. Tom’s big goal at the moment was to find a safe place to sleep.

“Be careful where you step,” Magnus said, gesturing at a short length of bamboo protruding from the sandy soil when they reached the floor of a narrow canyon. A hint of salt tinged the air, carried on a humid breeze from the west. Tom recognized the place as part of the Valley of the Moon, which meandered its way for twenty miles from the bay to the sea.

Tom blinked and looked around, realizing that there were dozens of the bamboo poles, about three feet tall and devoid of leaves, poking out of sandy mounds on the canyon floor where they walked. The poles looked as if they’d been cut and stripped by hand. “Are they marking something?”

Magnus glanced over his shoulder at Tom. “The dead.”

“Dead plants?”

Magnus kept walking, stepping around the mounds. Helix started to whine softly. “You won’t understand until you see for yourself. For now, think of this as a monastery without walls.”

Tom tried to understand why monks would be buried in such an odd place. The canyon looked like a dry riverbed, so it wouldn’t be a great place to bury someone unless you wanted to see them get washed away in a flood. He looked up at the canyon walls to see if he could spot signs of habitation in shallow caves or on the cliff tops, but he saw nothing unusual.

Magnus held up a hand to stop Tom in his path. “I want you to meet someone.” He crouched down by a mound with a border of white stones around it, then thumped his palm against the sand four times before looking up at Tom with a wink. “Prepare yourself.”

“For what?” Tom asked, just before the sand of the mound shifted and a dark corpse sat up in front of them. The bamboo pole protruded from its mouth. Helix yelped. Tom gasped and jumped backward, his heart pounding, almost stepping on Helix, certain that he was having a hallucination caused by a lack of sleep. Confused, Helix ran around in a circle twice, then darted behind a nearby boulder, shivering in the shade and refusing to look back their way.

The corpse spit out the hollow pole, then spoke in a whispery voice that sounded like rat feet rustling over dry leaves. “Magnus? Why do you wake me so early?” Stiff eyelids popped open to reveal dull gray eyes, and Tom heard creaking sounds as the corpse raised an arm to shade his face from the sunlight.

“Sorry. We’re in a rush,” Magnus said, looking up at Tom. “This is Tom Eliot. Tom, this is Dead Man.”

It took a moment for Tom to find his voice. He stared at the corpse with wide eyes. “Dead Man? That’s what you’re called?”

Still seated, Dead Man gestured at the canyon around them. “That’s what all of us are called in this community. We renounced our names when we died.”

“That could be confusing,” Tom said, noting that his heart was still beating fast, but it was no longer trying to escape from his chest.

“We don’t get out much. Except when we migrate to a new burial ground, we spend most of our time meditating on the mysteries of time and space.”

The man really looked dead, although his dark body seemed well preserved, or perhaps mummified. The movements of his wasted form looked stiff and jerky as he got up on his hands and knees, shaking the sandy soil from his body. He pulled the lump he’d been using for a pillow free of the soil, then opened the package and removed a black cloak glinting with silver and gold threads woven into its rough fabric. After he wriggled into the cloak, he stood up straight, towering over Tom’s six-foot-tall frame.

Magnus looked at Dead Man and inclined his head toward Tom. “He’ll be wanting to know if you’re really dead. Should we tell him?”

Dead Man ran a hand over the two rough patches of red hair that stuck to his skull, then pulled the hood up over his head, watching Tom with the dead gray eyes that bulged from his face. “It depends on how you define death, I suppose. Do I breathe? On occasion. Does my heart beat? Sometimes. Was I trained to slow my metabolism to a point that many would consider biological death? Yes. Have I gone beyond that level of meditation because I really did die at some point? So it would appear. Nanoforms in the soil of my mound arrest my bodily decay and supply me with cellular energy. My brothers surround us here, their bodies dead or alive as they deem necessary, resting peacefully within the earth while our minds journey in the Dead Lands along the endless Road. And so we stand in this outdoor temple of the mind, having a conversation, you and I, one hollow man to another. Have I answered your question?”

“I’m not sure,” Tom said, rubbing his eyes. Was this some kind of a residual effect from the drug Magnus had given him in the tree house? Dead Man seemed real enough, but so had the blue sphere he had been conversing with in his own head a few hours ago. He blinked a few times, and Dead Man was still there staring at him, giving off an odor of damp dirt.

“Tom hasn’t walked the Road yet,” Magnus said, slipping out of his backpack so he could stretch.

“Is he your student?”

“He is, even though he may not realize it yet.”

Dead Man pondered this for a moment. “Then you haven’t told him?”

“I will when the time comes.”

“You play a dangerous game, Magnus.”

Magnus darted a glance at Tom. “I do what I must. This boy may save us all.”

Dead Man laughed with a dry rasp in his throat. “I am beyond saving. Why should I help you?”

“Because you may spend your time beyond this world, but you feel a responsibility to the world you’ve left behind. Because you’d like to go for a hike with us and teach Tom something about the real world.” Magnus smiled and put his hand on Dead Man’s shoulder. “And because you’re my friend.”

“Ah,” Dead Man nodded. “You have me there. But you must tell him.”

“Hello?” Tom said, feeling as if he’d been forgotten. “Tell me what?”

Magnus shook his head. “Not yet. When the time is right, I’ll tell you.”

Tom sighed, then jumped back as the vulture swooped down to land on Dead Man’s shoulder, yanked the hood back with his beak, and began pecking at his skull. Dead Man ducked and spun around, waving his arms at the bird, but it wouldn’t go away. Helix hopped out from behind the boulder and started barking, his eyes wild.

“Rocco! No! Get off,” Magnus yelled, stepping forward to push Rocco off Dead Man’s shoulder. The vulture launched himself into the air, blasting them with a gust from his enormous wings.

Dead Man looked wary as he pulled the hood back over his head and straightened his cloak. Helix whimpered and went back into hiding behind the boulder.

“I didn’t think vultures attacked living things,” Tom said.

Dead Man gave Tom an odd look, then dusted off his sleeves. “We have this problem all the time. They assume we won’t fight back because of our smell.” He looked up and shook his fist at Rocco, now circling overhead.

“Sorry,” Magnus said. “I thought Rocco was trained better than that.” He looked up as the vulture circled lower over their heads. “Friend! He’s a friend, you barbarian!” He shrugged at Dead Man. “You just can’t get good help anymore.”