Prometheus Road (29 page)

Telemachus had just made his first mistake. He’d given Tom time to think. He wasn’t thinking very clearly after being banged around inside the steel can he called his armor, but at least he was learning. He remembered the blackness, and drew on his powerful ally.

The scene winked out. He stood in the dark again, waiting a few seconds before he imagined the same hill near the Tree of Dreams, and the location where Telemachus had been sitting on his horse.

When Tom reappeared on the hill, he was directly behind Telemachus, whose headlight eyes were darting around the rocky hilltop in search of his missing prey.

With a yell, Tom jumped up on a boulder and lunged forward with his sword, thrusting at the exposed back of the AI, aiming for a clear space between the steel spikes and curved blades. He felt the shock all the way down his arm as the point rammed home, then the sword bounced up from the heavy steel plate, and the point slid under the narrow seam at the back of Telemachus’s battle helm. Tom shoved against the sword, hoping to ram it through the AI’s neck.

The sword’s point snapped off as the AI spun around in his saddle with a loud roar, reaching back with his own weapon to slash a deep cut through Tom’s armored side. The blade was cold when it made contact with Tom’s skin, and he felt a warm liquid rush down his side, but the armor took most of the blow as he spiraled down to land face-first on the ground with a resounding crash. The horse moved forward again, and one hoof came down hard on Tom’s outstretched left arm. Tom screamed.

Back in the darkness, Tom paused to catch his breath. Pain throbbed in his head and his side, and he only had half a sword to work with. His left arm felt numb and slow, but it still worked. He assumed that Telemachus would not be so easily fooled a second time, so his strategy would have to be different.

This didn’t appear to be a battle he could win by strength alone. The AI was too fast and too powerful, fighting on its home ground, with more knowledge about its environment than Tom could ever hope to learn in time. Tom knew he had access to the powers of darkness, and death, but he wasn’t sure how he could use them here against an inorganic entity. He had also been told that he had to “become one” with the Tree of Dreams, whatever that meant; and he wondered if that might have also been a clue as to how he could stop the tree’s guardian, Telemachus. Was he meant to kill the tree? No, that didn’t make sense.

Tom waited in the darkness, hoping for inspiration or a wise word from Magnus, but nothing presented itself. He tried to remember how it had felt to drift on the waters of the bay back home, bobbing on the surface of the still waters, and he began to relax. He imagined the friendly glow of the full moon and the power he had drawn from its gentle light during his nightly wanderings, and the memory pleased him.

He thought about the Tree of Dreams, whose roots traveled through the worlds, binding and drawing energy for its nutrition from the Prometheus Road, from the physical world, from strange lands he had yet to see, from dreams, and from death itself. In return, the tree held the space-time fabric of the worlds together, joining them as reflections of each other, and performing other functions in Stronghold that had not been explained to Tom. He knew that Stronghold was a virtual construct, but the Tree of Dreams had a reality all its own, giving life to Dead Man’s creations.

Tom blinked in the darkness, realizing he might have discovered a clue.

He thought about the Tree of Dreams, picturing it in his mind, empathizing with it, trying to understand it. Feeling the threads of energy that bound his own consciousness with those of the rest of the world, he sensed the core of the energy web that was focused on the tree, and he followed it home.

He became the Tree of Dreams.

His mind and senses expanded to fill the trunk of the world tree, reaching out into the branches, stretching out through the never-ending roots, tapping the energy of worlds. He felt a surge of power that was beyond anything he had ever experienced, drawing vast energies into his feet/roots, up through his spine/trunk to be processed and transformed by his living system, then passed on to his arms/branches and up into his head/star. Filtered through his body, appropriate energies were classified and stored in the jewel “fruit” that hung from his branches. He probed each fruit, studying them all, learning their functions and understanding their ways. They offered up their secrets to Tom’s sharp mind as he cut them open.

The Jewel of Dreaming turned out to be a compound gem with two components: the blood ruby and the blue diamond. Fueled by the energies of death and of dreams, the diamond was the true Jewel of Dreaming, which had existed since early protohumans had learned to think. The ruby was a more recent creation, bound to the diamond to draw on its energies, placed there by Dead Man to store the “dreamware” core operating system of Stronghold, focusing the powerful forces of the Tree of Dreams to animate the virtual world and give it life.

Tom sensed Telemachus beneath his mighty branches, confused by Tom’s disappearance, circling his horse and scanning the terrain for any sign of the troublesome human. Telemachus was there to protect the tree and its jewels from the virtual Tom, but he had no way of detecting Tom’s presence within the tree itself. On the distant battlefield, Tom saw a column of dust rising in the air and sensed the vibrations of a continuing battle between the Dominion and the dead. And now he had a way to stop it.

His thoughts reached out through his limbs and he sensed the point where the compound Jewel of Dreaming was connected to the tree branch. The connection was strong, and he began to wonder if he could actually break it, when the strain of his effort summoned a reserve of power from deep taproots, sending a dark river of cold energy up through his roots and on to the binding point where the diamond met the branch. The inner light of the ruby began to fade as the death energy rolled in. The binding weakened, then the Jewel of Dreaming broke loose from its perch, falling in silence until it thumped into the dark soil at the base of the tree. As the last of its light faded from view, Stronghold began to fragment just as Tom had seen the cave walls fragmenting when he had first arrived from the Road.

When the jewel hit the ground, Telemachus’s head snapped around in horror. He spurred his horse forward, and Tom began to wonder if the AI could actually interfere with his plan. When Telemachus jumped down from his horse in a cloud of dust, the ruby light went dark, and the armored figure of Telemachus disappeared.

In the distance, the sounds of battle stopped. The black sky, with its slow-motion traceries of firework webs, abruptly descended to engulf the hills on the horizon, then the lowland plains and the canyons. Nightmare creatures shrieked at the sudden realization that the sky was falling.

Darkness washed up against the trunk of the Tree of Dreams, and Tom felt a disorienting movement in his roots, but when Stronghold finally disappeared, the tree remained standing.

Telemachus was gone, but so was the Jewel of Dreaming that Tom was supposed to take back to the physical world.

His mission to recover the jewel had failed.

TOM opened his eyes and found himself staring at a rocky floor. His nose hurt from the pressure of his head resting on it for too long. His skin felt sticky. When he lifted his head, he rubbed his nose to restore circulation, and noticed Lebowski sitting on the floor nearby.

“Sleeping Beauty returns,” Lebowski said, rubbing his left shoulder. When he took his hand away, his entire left arm clattered to the floor, cut off at the shoulder. Lebowski sighed as he looked at the arm with a glum expression. “Hey, man. Give me a hand with this, would you?”

Tom crawled over beside Lebowski and studied the arm. He noticed that it wasn’t bleeding. “What’s going on?”

“My arm isn’t, that’s for sure. Hold it up to my shoulder.”

Tom gingerly picked up the loose limb and held it up to the jagged stump at Lebowski’s shoulder. In place of the bones, tendons, and other squishy bits that Tom expected to see, there was a definite mechanical look to the shoulder joint. “You wear a prosthetic?”

“You might say that,” Lebowski said. He slapped his arm against the shoulder joint a couple of times until Tom heard a loud click. When Lebowski moved his hand, the arm remained in place, but it didn’t respond when he concentrated on moving it. “This is really going to put a crimp in my style.”

Tom noticed three boots when he glanced at Lebowski’s legs, then realized that one of them was connected to Hermes, laid out on his back on the floor, his mirrored face staring straight up at the ceiling. “You killed him? That’s amazing. How did you manage that?”

Lebowski slapped his limp arm in disgust, then sighed and looked at Tom. He hesitated a moment, then pushed back the cowl and mask that had always covered his face. In place of the horrible disfigurement he expected, Tom saw his own reflection in the mirrored features that stared back at him.

“This is how I managed it,” Lebowski said. “I’m a nanoborg.”

Alarmed, Tom threw himself backward, ready to run if Lebowski moved to threaten him.

“Hey, it’s okay, man. I quit that gig.”

“You quit? How is that possible?”

“It’s the Muse. The drug blocks the control commands from the AIs, and it also prevents them from tracking me. I was very young when my parents offered me to the Dominion as a nanoborg, but I got older and wiser. It took years before I was able to find a way to run, and I’ve been an outlaw ever since, but I couldn’t do that gig anymore. I still have all my cybernetic modifications, which also means they can reestablish contact and control me if I ever let my guard down. As long as I keep taking the Muse, I’m safe.”

Tom started to relax, but he jumped to his feet when he saw Hermes’ foot twitch, accompanied by a groan. “I thought you said he was dead?”

Lebowski shook his head. “You’re the one who said that. I try to avoid killing when I can. The old me would have snapped his head off by now, but the new me is basically just a wandering musical prophet who’s doing his best to get by. No, I just introduced our friend to the wonders of the Muse, and it hits you kind of hard the first time you try it.”

“What makes you think he won’t just snap out of his trance and kill us all?”

Lebowski shrugged. “We’ll just have to hope for the best. And if he gives us any trouble, I’ll snap his head off. With one arm.”

Tom turned at the sound of running footsteps echoing up the tunnel. Rose and Frida waved their arms, motioning toward the elevator. “Go! We’ve got three minutes before the bombs go off!”

Without any additional urging, Tom started toward the elevator, but he stopped when he saw Lebowski trying to lift Hermes off the floor. With one bad arm, he was having a hard time of it. Tom turned around and grabbed Hermes’ other arm so they could drag him toward the elevator.

“Get in the elevator,” Lebowski growled. “He’s my responsibility.”

Tom shook his head. “He’s here because of me.”

Rose and Frida were alongside them a moment later. “Leave him here,” Rose yelled. “We don’t have time for this!”

Frida grabbed Tom’s shoulder. “He was trying to kill us!”

“Not at the moment,” Tom pointed out. “Lebowski drugged him.”

Rose growled in exasperation and ran ahead to the elevator, ready to punch the floor button as soon as they hauled Hermes in.

Giving Tom a deadly look, Frida took one of Hermes’ legs and helped drag him toward the elevator. “This is ridiculous.”

With the three of them hauling on the arms and legs of the unconscious nanoborg, they made gradual progress toward the end of the tunnel. Frida rolled her eyes. “He’s too heavy! We won’t make it in time!”

Lebowski nodded. “It’s all the cybernetic hardware in his body.”

A moment later, they had dragged him across the elevator threshold. Rose stabbed a button on the control panel, and the doors nearly closed on Hermes’ head. Immediately, they felt heavier as the fast elevator began its long rise up the shaft.

Rose stood in the corner with her arms crossed, staring coldly at Lebowski. “I hope you’re happy. That delay could kill all of us if those bombs go off before we reach the top of the shaft. And who knows how many of my people Hermes killed before he came down to get us.”

Frida glared at Lebowski. “You’re a nanoborg. Maybe you’re working with Hermes. Maybe this was all part of your plan to delay us.”

“I wouldn’t have let you bomb the nexus if that were the case,” Lebowski pointed out, pulling his hood and mask back up over his mirrored face.

“Maybe,” Frida snorted.

Lebowski started to cross his arms, then thought better of it when his left one wouldn’t move. “Believe what you wish. The main thing is that Tom was able to accomplish his task. Stronghold is gone, Telemachus is destroyed, and the loss of the data center will also demonstrate to the Dominion that we are a force to be feared.”

Rose and Frida looked startled. “He killed Telemachus?”

Lebowski rested his right hand on Tom’s shoulder. “The AI software core for Telemachus was part of the Tree of Dreams, residing in a jewel that was required to reboot his code in the event of a system failure. As the commander for the adjoining southwestern region, the Megrez AI’s jewel was also stored there. With the loss of this data center, the Dominion will have no direct control over almost half of this continent. We’ll be on our own for the first time in two generations.”

Tom just looked at the floor. “I didn’t accomplish everything. I didn’t bring back the Jewel of Dreaming.”

“Ah, but you’re wrong,” Lebowski said, tapping Tom’s forehead. “The jewel is in your head. I can sense its presence. And you now have another ability that the Dominion will fear.”

Before Lebowski could explain any further, the elevator doors opened, and a barrage of sound assaulted their ears. Instinctively, they all pressed back against the elevator walls to avoid any shots that might enter the elevator, but the only thing that entered was broken glass from the large visitor center windows that had just been shattered by an explosion outside. They were confused at first, thinking that the data center bombs had gone off beneath them. The visitor center echoed with voices that were screaming and yelling in panic. Helix poked his head out of Frida’s backpack and started barking, sounding the alarm.

Rose jumped over Hermes and ran out into the waiting area. Tom looked around the corner and saw groups of the Underworld shades hiding behind the information counter, the displays, and the walls that shielded the restroom area. Smoke from the explosion poured into the visitor center, gradually being dispersed by the wind outside. Small fires burned just outside the front doors.

“What happened?” Rose yelled to everyone in the room.

Degas stood up from behind the information counter. “Federal troops. They killed some of our sentries outside and chased the rest of us in here. They want us to come out.”

Tom helped Lebowski and Frida take care of the immediate problem of getting Hermes out of the elevator. As soon as the heavy body was clear of the doors, Tom pushed the button to send the elevator car back down the shaft and stepped out just before the doors closed.

Lebowski doubled over, his left arm hanging limp. “Agh. Not now. Not now.”

Tom knelt beside Lebowski and put his hand on his shoulder. “Can I help?”

“I’ll be okay in a few minutes,” Lebowski said, gritting his teeth. “Try to use the jewel if you can. For you, this world is now an extension of the Road.” He paused to take a ragged breath. “You can change things. The jewel dreams.” With that, he slumped to the floor.

Tom wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. There wasn’t time. “How? What do you mean, it dreams?”

Accompanied by a thundering roar deep inside the dam that vibrated the floor, the elevator doors bulged, then exploded across the visitor center in a flash of fire and black smoke. Tom pulled Lebowski flat on the floor as the doors tumbled past overhead before slamming into the opposite wall near the restrooms.

Tom shook the nanoborg’s shoulder. “Lebowski?” Unlike previous Muse episodes that Tom had seen, this one seemed to have knocked Lebowski out completely.

Tom felt someone touch his leg. He turned around to see Tempest looking back at him. “You okay, Tom?”

Tom blinked, dumbfounded, thinking he might be hallucinating, or that the explosion had given him a concussion, or that he had finally lost his mind completely. “Tempest?”

Her eyes widened and she touched her face. “Gods! I forgot!”

“Forgot?”

Tempest slapped herself on the forehead. “I’m an idiot! I lost it!”

“Lost what?”

They were interrupted by a sudden silence in the room. Tom looked over Lebowski’s chest and saw two figures standing a short distance from the front entrance: one in a black robe with a mirrored face, and one in a white suit with a cowboy hat who looked suspiciously like the president of the United States. Beyond them were hundreds of federal police spread out across the road and the top of the dam. There was no way out except through them.

High above the troops, a long black object floated like an ominous cloud in the sky.

“Come out of there, you mutants!” yelled President Buck. “You’re all under arrest!” He beamed at the cloud of tiny hovering cameras that swarmed around him, then shook his fist at the visitor center doors. “Unless you come out of there in two minutes, you’ve got about as much chance of surviving as a snake at a mongoose convention!”

Tom frowned and looked at Tempest. She was still there, so apparently she wasn’t a hallucination, unless she was a really good one. Frida was gone, and he didn’t want to sort it out now. “What did he just say?”

“Never mind,” Tempest replied, digging in her backpack. “We can’t go out there anyway.”

“Give them Hermes,” Rose said, crawling toward them. “Make it an exchange—Hermes in return for safe passage out of here.”

Tom shook his head. “What good would that do? They’d just hunt us down again as soon as they retrieved Hermes.”

“I agree,” said Tempest, punching her backpack. “I’ve lost it! It’s not in here!”

“You have an idea?” Tom asked.

Tempest sighed. “It doesn’t matter now. We’ll be dead soon anyway.”

“Perhaps,” said a deep voice behind them. “Or perhaps not.”

Tom’s eyes widened. He turned and jumped into a crouch, ready to fight. “Hermes!”

Hermes sat upright on the floor by the elevator shaft. He rubbed his face with his hands. “Daedalus is receiving an update from Alioth right now. I’m not understanding all of it. Everything’s fuzzy. Wish I could think more clearly.”

“What are you going to do?” Tom asked, eyeing him with suspicion.

“Do?” Hermes tipped his head to one side, a gesture that reminded Tom of Helix, who was growling at Hermes from the safety of Tempest’s backpack. “I don’t know. I haven’t had a choice in a long time.”

“What about your friends outside?”

“They’re not my friends.” He glanced out the shattered front windows. “And they’re not outside.”

Alarmed, Tom turned and looked. Buck and the nanoborg were gone. And the troops were gone. “Where did they go?”

Lebowski groaned and rolled over on his side to face Tom. “Alioth recalled them.”

“Why?”

“Did you use the jewel?” Lebowski asked.

“No. I didn’t know how. And there hasn’t been time.”

Lebowski nodded. “Then we’ve won. The Dominion is confused.”

“It’s not over yet,” Rose said, pointing at the dark figure standing in the glaring sunlight outside the front windows. “Daedalus is back.”

“He wants to talk,” Hermes said, rubbing his forehead as he staggered to his feet. “I’ll go.”

“How do we know we can trust you?” Rose asked.

Hermes snorted. “Shoot me if you don’t like what I’m doing. The way I feel right now, I really wouldn’t care.”

“I’ll go with you,” Tom said, standing up. He gestured for Hermes to follow as he started toward the door. His back felt tense and itchy with Hermes behind him, but he was making a point by walking in front.

Daedalus stood quietly with his hands folded in front of him as Tom approached with Hermes. As usual, Tom was disturbed when the nanoborg turned his white eyes toward him, and he remembered reacting the same way to Hermes. He supposed it was something he’d have to get used to.

“You have safe passage,” Daedalus said, speaking to Hermes. “Telemachus is gone, and the Dominion has no immediate plan to restore a regional commander here. The federal police will withdraw. You have destroyed the local power generation facilities, but affected services will continue when electrical power is restored to Las Vegas. Facilities maintained by nanoforms will continue to operate without interruption, but the rehab facility in the city will be shut down.”

Hermes nodded, and Daedalus turned his attention back to Tom. “In return, Alioth requests that you not leave the western and southwestern regions. Once services are reestablished, the Dominion will wish to communicate with you, and they can reach you through Hermes or Janus.”

“I go by Lebowski now,” said the third nanoborg, walking up behind Tom.

“Alias noted,” Daedalus said. “You will be the contact point.”

“Can the shades return to their homes?” Tom asked.