Prometheus Road (20 page)

Concentrating on the shapes, he willed them to become more distinct, and he realized the hazard he was creating when he had to twist suddenly to avoid smacking into a waterfall of steaming red-and-black lava that fell past him and vanished into the white glow some distance beneath his feet. Following the descent of the waterfall with his gaze, he realized that his own body had become fuzzier as his environment sharpened around him.

The white mists dissipated, and the terrain began to stabilize as he followed Helix into a canyon with high, rolling hills on both sides of a clear blue river. Along the banks, the jade spires reached for the sky atop mounds of the lemon yellow amber. The tall grass on the hills shimmered in the breeze, each green blade emitting a subtle light that gathered like vapor, lifted on currents of air to form an emerald wind blowing through the canyon. Neon wildflowers flowed down the hills in cascades of yellow, orange, and purple. Clusters of big trees dotted the landscape, their thick leafy canopies caught in a change of season that left them looking as if captured flames danced on their branches without burning. Above it all, faceted blue topaz formed a celestial ceiling above a ruby sky.

Helix glanced over his shoulder at Tom, his tongue flapping in the wind, then led them down to the surface of the gentle river. Tom gasped as Helix began dissolving into a blue mist, then realized that his own form was changing. Although he continued to breathe, see, and hear, his skin and bones turned to blue powder, blowing off rapidly to form a mist just moments before he struck the river. His body became liquid and joined with the rushing waters. It was a familiar feeling, as if he were floating in the bay back home, guided by moonlight and the warm current.

Tom felt giddy as he wound through deep blue pools where silver flashes marked the trails of startled rainbow trout. He washed over rocks of yellow amber, black onyx, and crystals of purple amethyst. He flowed through red tree roots and glided through the shallows of a diamond riverbed.

“We must be on the Road,” Tom whispered. Awed by this natural cathedral, he didn’t want to speak too loudly, afraid that he might shatter the reality of the moment.

“Almost there,” said a trout, whom Tom took to be Helix in a new form. “This is the River of Light.”

“I’m part of the river.”

“And the river is part of you. We’re all part of the river.” Helix wriggled his tail to dart forward.

“Are we near the Dead Lands?” Tom asked, thinking about his family.

“The Dead Lands are always nearby,” said the trout with a wise tone of voice. “But if you walk the Road, the Dead Lands are some distance away. You’ll get there soon enough.”

The words of the trout confused him, but there were already so many confusing things in Tom’s world that one more didn’t make any difference. However, there was something familiar about the trout’s words, and he knew why when they flowed around a bend in the river; a striking young woman with long, white hair stood waist deep in the clear water, her arms outstretched, her hands dripping with diamonds from the riverbed. Her diaphanous white robes floated behind her, pulled by the current to outline the delicate curves of her body, giving her an angelic appearance. Her eyes were closed, and her face was turned up toward the sky with a slight smile. Although she seemed much younger, Tom recognized the Oracle from Marinwood.

When Tom swirled around her, she stopped the motion of the river with a wave of her hand, and rose petals fell like a soft rain from the clear sky. She opened her white eyes and looked at Tom with amusement.

“Oracle,” Tom whispered.

“Welcome to the River of Light, Tom Eliot.” She tipped her head as if she were studying his transparent liquid form. “You’ve lost weight since I last saw you.”

Tom frowned at the trout. “Is she joking with me?”

Helix swam in a circle, chasing his tail and ignoring Tom.

“You look younger,” Tom said to the Oracle.

Her laugh sounded like the tinkling of tiny bells. Tom had never heard her laugh before, and it confused him further.

“You see me as my true self here,” she said, turning in a circle as if she were on display. Watching her, Tom was filled with a sense of security and a warmer feeling that Tempest had awakened in him.

“You’re beautiful,” Tom said without thinking.

With startling grace, she took a swirling jump forward that brought her warm skin in contact with Tom’s part of the river. He felt the smoothness of her skin and the warmth of her glow. She knelt on the riverbed, allowing the water to come up to her neck, her robes billowing to the surface to mingle with her long hair. Even Helix was surprised enough to stop chasing his tail for a moment to watch her.

“I warned you not to come here,” she said, rippling her fingers through his presence in the water. “I tried to redirect your energies into the land, where you could grow and prosper. You had that chance. The possibility existed for a brief time.”

“Telemachus changed all that when he destroyed my family.”

The Oracle sighed and looked toward the horizon, a sapphire tear tracing its way down her cheek. “At great risk to myself, I warned your father as well. But there was only so much I could do without alerting Telemachus.”

“I thank you for that, Oracle. Do you know how I can reach my family?”

She turned her head and looked through him. “They’re in the Dead Lands now, young Tom. It is not time for you to see them again.”

“I only want to visit them—see them one last time. I want to apologize for what I’ve done.”

“They’ll wait for you. There is no need to apologize. They understand, and their lives have moved to another level now. They no longer concern themselves with matters of the past, and you might be disappointed if you see them too soon.”

“I’m told that I can reach them from the Road,” Tom said. “And I intend to do that.”

She shook her head. The sapphire tear dropped to the surface of the river and became a floating blue flower. “You are a creature of the light, Tom. You must try only to work with the positive energies of that light. The Dead Lands are powerful, and the powers of the darkness are difficult to master. You could be trapped in the kingdom of death. It’s better if you forget about your family until your time comes naturally, as it does to all mortals.”

“He has help,” Helix said, waggling his tail. “He is becoming a master.”

The Oracle closed her eyes. “My powers are limited here, as some of my human parts were removed that I might serve Telemachus, but I do sense the truth of what you’re saying, little trout. I caution you, Tom—the darkness can lure your spirit, driving the light from you. The dead are trapped beyond their barrier, and they feed on visitors, offering you the dark powers in return for the energies that they steal. The darkness will eat at you, and force you to use it to accomplish your goals, but you cannot let it master you. That’s why it’s better that you not go to the Dead Lands at all.” She opened her eyes again. “If you love me, Tom, and I feel that you do, then you must leave this place and forget about the Dead Lands. You’ve already lost your family, and no one expects you to make more sacrifices. You’re not a puppet to the will of others, and you don’t have anything to prove. Go and hide in the wasteland where it’s safe.”

She sounded entirely too reasonable to Tom, and the warmth of her presence made his thoughts cloudy. In this magical place, unrestricted by the Dominion, she had spoken in a clear and direct manner and given him a final warning. He knew he ought to take her advice. He looked downstream, then back the way they had come, marveling at the colors of this new world. He looked at his faithful friend the trout, who eyed him expectantly. He thought of those who had given their lives to get him this far, and he wondered how he’d ever repay his debt to those who had died because they loved him. He felt the Oracle’s fingers caressing him as if he were still in his human form, expressing her love and concern. He also had a headache, and he wondered if the poison in his system would affect his judgment.

“Others have turned back here,” said the trout. “There’s a long history of humans who reached this point and returned home to live normal and happy lives. There’s no shame in it.”

Tom sighed, as a river would sigh while considering what it would have been like to live as a tree or as a golden sunrise, then he looked at the Oracle. “I have a job to do. I have to reach the Road.”

The trout winked at him in approval. “Thank you for not listening to me.”

The Oracle spread her hands in resignation. “I’ve done what I can. I wish you good fortune on your journey, and hope that we will both live to see each other again before we follow your loved ones into the land of the dead. Remember to listen when the thunder speaks, collect the rose petals when you can, and consider the wisdom of the rustling leaves.” Her hands glided over the surface of the water, and the river began to flow once more. She sank lower in the river, submerging her head so that her hair fanned out like water weeds, then she lay back and drifted away, concealed beneath the surface.

Tom watched the Oracle for a moment, then looked at the trout. “Now what?”

“Now you wake up,” Helix said with a wink of one fishy eye.

MEMPHIS Gustafson, Elder Councilman of Marinwood, could not remember the last time he had been this frightened. Hermes had brought him the news that Tempest had somehow managed to escape from the rehabilitation facility. Hermes had also told him of conflicting reports that the Eliot hooligan might still be roaming around the countryside, despite Humboldt’s great sacrifice to ensure that the troublemaker was destroyed. Now, Hermes had returned to the home of Memphis, and he wanted information that Memphis could not give him. Although the mirrored face of the nanoborg betrayed no emotion, Memphis had the impression that Hermes was angry, not necessarily with Memphis, but with himself. He also understood that Hermes was going to take out his frustrations on the closest available target, which was Memphis.

And that explained why Hermes had sealed Memphis’s upper body into the same shock box device Memphis had used to discipline his children.

Certain elements on the council, notably Ukiah Eliot and his supporters, had often decried the use of shock boxes as inhumane torture devices, but the fact remained that they were excellent training tools and gifts from the gods. Children understood such simple approaches to punishment, and Memphis was certain that his offspring had been so well behaved growing up because they appreciated the implied threat of the shock box that was ever present as a reminder in the front yard of their home. If Memphis himself had not softened his approach to discipline so much in their later years, Humboldt might still be alive, and Tempest might still be an obedient daughter. His failures as both a father and an Elder Councilman finally seemed to have caught up with him as the powerful nanoborg strapped him into the shock box and closed the squeaky clamshell lid around Memphis’s bare torso.

The metal was hot from baking in the sunlight. His torn shirt hung from the belt at his waist, and his arms were stretched forward over his head. His boots were firmly planted on the gravel at the base of the shock box. He knew his aging muscles would not last long, and his back would eventually tire enough so that his paunchy stomach would sag and touch the box, delivering an intense and painful shock. His muscles would stiffen, and he would recoil, possibly bouncing off the charged lid of the box and hurting his muscles even more as he attempted to stabilize his position. Hermes had control over the intensity of the shock, but Memphis knew from the nanoborg’s general demeanor that he wasn’t merely trying to prove a point—he would kill Memphis if necessary.

“You must have some idea where Tom Eliot would go,” Hermes said in a calm and reasonable voice. “He was your neighbor, and you claimed to have monitored his movements for many years when you first reported his suspicious behavior to me.”

Memphis licked his lips; his mouth seemed unusually dry. “No, my lord. I’ve told you everything I know about him. He goes off into the forbidden zones, where we can’t follow.”

“And he never spoke of the places he’d been, or any unusual sights he might have seen on his travels? Maybe he mentioned some of these things to your daughter?”

Memphis shook his head, then realized that Hermes couldn’t see him inside the box. “Not to my knowledge. We never spoke at length.”

“Yet you claimed to know so much about him? I find that curious. You would not have tried to use me to retaliate against the boy for his approaches to your daughter, would you?”

“No, my lord! Of course not! You know that’s not true, because you have witnessed his treachery with your own eyes. He killed Humboldt. He came after my daughter.”

“Well,” Hermes said, drumming his gloved fingers against Memphis’s lower back, “to be exact, Humboldt was distracted by an animated cleaning device, then I killed him with a nanobomb. I wasn’t after him specifically, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, if you get my meaning.”

Memphis gasped. “I can’t believe that!”

“Believe what you wish, but give me a better answer about Tom Eliot’s whereabouts.”

Memphis heard the hum of the electricity in the metal that surrounded him. His back muscles were on fire. “I can’t! I don’t know where he is!”

“All right. Let’s try a different question. I’ve told you that your daughter escaped from the rehabilitation facility in Las Vegas. Where would she go?”

“I don’t know, my lord. I’ve never been there.” His sweat sizzled when it dripped off his skin and struck the metal beneath him.

“Of course not. You’ve always been a good Elder Councilman, haven’t you? Yet you know your daughter, and you must know enough about how she thinks to speculate about her activities.”

“We don’t know anyone in Las Vegas. We have no friends or relatives there. I suppose she’d try to get back here, but I don’t know how she’d get across the barrier.”

“Well, that is the point of the barrier, isn’t it? We wouldn’t want any mutants from the western wasteland contaminating the rest of the country, and we wouldn’t want the rest of the citizens poking around in the wasteland.”