Prometheus Road (12 page)

Tom found himself standing on a black cobblestone road under a sky flashing with distant fireworks. The air smelled of smoke and dead fish. The cold wind moaned through the burnt husks of dead trees. Tom noticed that his field of view was limited to a wide slit in front of his eyes, as if he were looking at a long painting by Hieronymous Bosch in one of his father’s books. When he raised his hand to scratch his nose, a silver metal gauntlet clunked in front of his face, partially obscuring his view through the slit. He felt heavier than usual. When he looked down, he saw that his entire body was covered in silver steel, and it finally dawned on him that he was wearing the same plate armor that he’d seen on the figure of the knight just moments ago. This was unusual for one of his dreams, and he felt more aware of his surroundings than normal, but so many odd things had happened lately that he wasn’t surprised.

A warbling scream caused the hair to rise on the back of his neck. He snapped his head up to look around, turning his body to see more because of his limited view through the eye slit. His heart hammered in his chest, almost hard enough for him to hear it echoing inside his suit of armor. Spinning around, he finally located the source of the noise as it screamed again, directly into his face, before slamming its massive beak against his chest. He staggered backward, then tripped on something and landed flat on his back, staring up at a black crow that was at least ten feet tall. The beak came down like a giant hammer, smashing into his chest so hard that he heard the steel creak under the blow. Tom tried to scrabble backward, but it was hard to maneuver the heavy suit. He finally got the heels of his gauntlets wedged into some cobblestones, then flipped himself over so he could rise to his hands and knees. The crow flapped its wings, sending a stream of dust through the helmet slit into Tom’s eyes. Blinking, he staggered upright in time for the crow to peck at his shoulder, knocking him forward.

Dream or not, he knew that if he didn’t find a way to fight back, the crow was going to peck him to death. He looked around for a weapon, maybe a big rock or a stick, and his gaze fell on an old log on the edge of the road. He bent to pick it up, but the log disintegrated when he grasped it with his gauntlet, and the crow chose that moment to peck his armored backside. Tom stumbled forward, tripped over the log, and somersaulted onto the sandy slope of the road, miraculously landing with his feet poised so that his weight rolled and carried him upright once more. When he turned to face the crow, something thudded to the ground beside him—a broadsword that had apparently fallen from a scabbard at his side. Keeping his head toward the crow, he bent to pick up the sword. Caw, the crow called, rapidly hopping toward him, its beak poised for a blow to his head. Tom planted one knee in the sand, turned the point of the sword skyward with the hilt braced against a rock, and ducked as the beak descended, allowing the crow to get the point with its head. Red smoke poured from the wound in its face as it stood upright again, tilted its head at Tom as if reevaluating the wisdom of its attack, and leapt into the air to fly away, staggering Tom under the blast of wind from its wings.

Tom swallowed, took a deep breath, and sat down in the sand, nearly impaling himself on his own sword. His body shook, and sweat dribbled into his eyes. He fumbled around with the bottom of the helmet, wondering how to remove it, and finally gave up in disgust. He hoped he wouldn’t have to urinate anytime soon.

SANDOVAL looked up from the physiological monitoring equipment and frowned at Tom’s twitching body on the simulator couch. “Maybe we should bring him out. The crow nearly got him. His pulse is dropping back to normal, but we don’t want to overdo it on his first visit.”

“I thought he handled that pretty well,” Magnus said, watching the brain scan and mental image monitors from one of the two control chairs. “He’s lucky that his first monster was a crow. It could have been a lot worse, although the crow certainly isn’t a pushover.”

Dead Man was lying flat on his back on the floor between some of the equipment. He lifted his head to peer at Magnus with his bulging eyes. “Why are you driving him so hard, Magnus? He needs to gain more experience in Stronghold before you push him to higher levels.”

Magnus sighed, then turned to look at Dead Man. “The boy has talent, don’t you see that? We haven’t got the time for a casual training period like the rest of us had. The siliboys have already run their forecasts, and they know Tom is a threat to their existence, although they may not know why. They want him dead. Telemachus has his agents out hunting for Tom right now. The real danger for us is that Tom will slide into despair, but I won’t allow that. Tom is too exhausted and too busy to think about the loss of his family, so if we can get him past this rough spot in his life, time will heal the wounds that we can’t reach. He’s already making excellent progress.”

Sandoval shook his head. “He’s not a machine, Magnus. It takes time to learn the skills you’re trying to teach him.”

“If he’s killed in the simulator,” Dead Man said, “he won’t be able to help us at all. He doesn’t know how to walk the Road, and a hollow man can’t cross the barrier into Stronghold. You’ll lose your tool for revenge, and the Dominion will remain in control.”

Magnus clenched his fists. “This is not about revenge! If this boy can free us all from slavery, we owe it to ourselves and the rest of the world to use this opportunity. He has the talent, and he has the right genes.”

“You know this for a fact?” Sandoval asked, his eyebrows raised in uncertainty.

Magnus nodded. “He’s my nephew. He’s got the genes of Ukiah and Luna. I’ve watched him for years, and Telemachus has confirmed my suspicions by nanobombing Tom’s family.”

“Then why didn’t they eliminate him before now?” Dead Man asked.

“His parents raised Tom to look and act like a normal member of the community. He doesn’t know anything about his talents, except for what we’re going to reveal to him. The siliboys had no idea that Prometheus was living right under their noses, but now they suspect, and the thought scares them enough that they’d eliminate Tom’s family and an entire sector of Marinwood to stop the threat. We can make their projections come true. Tom can destroy them.”

“If he survives,” Dead Man prompted.

Magnus sat down again. “Yes. If he survives. And we’ll do our best to make sure that he does.”

TOM realized that he had to stay alert while he sat on the sandy slope by the cobblestone road. When he heard a creaking sound, he turned his head and saw what appeared to be a chunk of dead wood chewing on his armored foot. Although the log wasn’t making much progress, and it made even less when Tom kicked it away, he began to notice things like the brown weeds grabbing at his legs with their leaves while their tiny flower blossoms chewed at his armor with rings of tiny teeth. Small rocks were edging toward him in a threatening manner. Dead leaves tried to catch breezes so they could fly up at his face. The whole place, wherever it was, acted like an environmental nightmare that was out to get him. The road itself seemed to be the only safe area—the weeds, leaves, rocks, and other tiny terrors seemed to avoid the straight rows of clean black cobblestones that ran from horizon to horizon.

Something skittered and hissed across the surface of the road. Tom heaved himself up and turned in a crouch. A group of four demonic creatures with red skin, flaming eyes, and large mouths with sharp teeth stood atop something that looked like an alligator on a bad hair day. The giant reptile had a fluffy red Mohawk hairstyle that ran from the top of its head to a point halfway down its back. The demons were about four feet tall, and each one held some sort of weapon in one of its two claws. The claws themselves ended in shiny knife points. The demons looked pleased to see Tom.

“It looks at ussss,” hissed the demon at the front of the line. It stepped off the reptile’s back with a sudden motion, followed by its pals, almost in a chorus line effect.

“It’s frightened. Look at it,” said the second demon. Their high-pitched voices reminded Tom of the sound of fingernails on a blackboard.

“I don’t like the way it looks at ussss,” said the first demon, raising what appeared to be a human thighbone with a head stuck on the end of it to make a club. The head had seen better days. “Let’s kill it.”

The second demon hopped up and down. “Let’s eat it.”

“Let’s kill it, then eat it,” said the third demon.

“Let’s kill it, eat it, then use its bones to build a housssse,” hissed the fourth demon, who wore a red scarf around its neck.

The first demon raised its arms. “We are agreed, then. The plan is to kill it, eat it, and use its bones to build a house. All in favor?”

All four demons raised their arms and hopped up and down. “Aye! Aye! Aye!”

Tom chopped the first two in half while they were still hopping up and down. The third one stopped the swing of Tom’s broadsword by turning it with its arm so that the flat of the blade slammed into its forehead, making it blink and stagger backward, dropping the bone spear it held in its right claw. The fourth demon used the opportunity to leapfrog over the third demon’s back, its short sword held high; but it came down on the point of Tom’s broadsword, screaming insults at him as it tried to push and twist the blade out of its stomach. The short sword swung wildly at Tom’s head, bouncing off his helmet a few times and ringing it like a bell before the creature finally died. Unable to pry his sword free of the corpse quickly, Tom found himself disarmed when the third demon began swinging the body of one of the halved demons at him, holding it by one leg and spinning in a circle. The torso slammed into Tom’s back twice before he ducked under it and lunged forward, tackling the standing demon.

The demon’s breath smelled of sulfur and dead things. Not content to be crushed under Tom’s weight, it struggled to get free, realized it was trapped under his chest as thoroughly as if a building had fallen on it, and began biting at his neck while making noises like a rat caught in a blender. Tom heard the teeth clunking against the armor at his neck, hoping it wouldn’t find a seam while he tried to figure out how to pound the demon into the ground. The armor restricted his movements, so his best choice seemed to be lying on top of the creature until it died, although he assumed that would take a long time, and he didn’t really have the patience for it.

Then his helmet popped off.

Tom glimpsed the chewed leather straps that had secured the helmet to his shoulders.

“It dies now,” said the demon, smiling with a mouthful of dagger teeth.

Tom tried to roll away as the demon’s teeth plunged toward his face, but the threat suddenly disappeared as the demon’s head exploded beneath him, showering his face with a variety of liquids and brain bits that Tom really didn’t want to think about. He smelled cooked meat.

Disgusted, he rolled over on his back, forgetting how hard it was to get up again from that position. He was lying in a pool of bright light that made it difficult to see the ominous presence standing over him. He heard a clop-clop sound, as if a horse had taken two steps near his head.

The pool of light moved a few feet to one side, and as Tom’s eyes adjusted he saw an enormous armored knight on the back of an armored black horse. Two beams of light emanated from the knight’s helmet, lighting up the road and the broken demons around Tom.

“And you are?” asked a voice that rumbled like thunder.

“GET him out!” Magnus yelled, jumping up from his chair beside the monitors. “Get him out now!”

As Sandoval began to lurch out of his seat, Magnus charged forward and yanked the helmet from Tom’s head. Tom looked dead as his head lolled to one side.

“Wait!” Sandoval yelled. “That’s too fast!”

“It’s Telemachus!” Magnus dropped the helmet and ripped the electrodes away from Tom’s body. “He’ll kill him!”

Magnus pulled Tom out of the simulator couch and threw him over his shoulder, then carried him a few feet away to set him down on the floor. “Tom, can you hear me?” He slapped Tom’s face gently a few times. “Tom? You in there, Tom?”

“Allow me,” Dead Man said, sitting down beside Tom with his legs crossed in a lotus position. Helix bent down to help by licking Tom’s face.

Sandoval hovered over them, wringing his hands. “I knew this was a mistake. We took him too far too fast.”

“Quiet,” Magnus said, gesturing for Sandoval to back away. “Let the man work.”

Sandoval paced in a circle, shaking his head from side to side. “Who knew Telemachus would be in there? How did he know? How could he have found Tom so quickly?”

“Quiet,” Magnus repeated, glaring at Sandoval, who finally slumped down in a chair and leaned forward to cover his face with his hands.

Dead Man’s eyes were closed, and he didn’t appear to be breathing, so that was a good sign. His right hand hovered perfectly still an inch above Tom’s forehead. “He knows now,” Dead Man whispered. “He knows what it is to be a hollow man.”

Magnus nodded and looked at Sandoval, who stared back at him with wide eyes.

“You were right,” Sandoval whispered. “He has the talent.”

“Of course he has the talent,” Magnus growled. “You think I would have wasted all this time on him otherwise?”

“I think you have a soft spot for your nephew who no longer has a home,” Sandoval said, thumping his chest. “I, myself, admire that in you. But now we’ve seen there’s more to this boy than we thought, and I am awed by the possibilities. Thank you for bringing him to us,” he said, putting his hands together and bowing toward Magnus.

Magnus waved his arm to dismiss Sandoval’s comments. “You make too many assumptions. And my motivations aren’t the point here.” He returned his attention to the unconscious Tom. “Can you bring him out of it, Dead Man?”

“He has sustained a serious shock,” Dead Man whispered, moving the palm of his hand to the top of Tom’s head. “Physically, he’s fine, but his focus is deep within—deeper than I can reach. That may be good if he’s absorbing what he has learned, in which case he’ll come out of it naturally when he’s ready. If his focus has retreated because of the shock, he may be in a coma. It’s too early to tell.”

“Great,” Magnus said, slapping his forehead as he stood up. “We finally get the chance we’ve been hoping for, and I drop him into Stronghold like a ton of bricks or, well, you know what I’m trying to say. Now we’ll be trapped in this hole while Humboldt locates Tom’s trail with the sniffer and gets Hermes to call in an air strike.”

Dead Man opened his eyes to look at Magnus. Sandoval looked up at the ceiling. Magnus looked from one to the other. “Well? This is where you say, ‘I did the best I could, my intentions were good, Tom will be fine,’ something like that.”

Helix backed away from Tom’s face and whined, giving Magnus a pathetic look.

“Can’t I even take a nap without you guys hovering over me?” Tom asked, taking a deep breath. “What is it with you?” He blinked at the glare from the overhead lights, then rubbed his eyes and sat up. Helix immediately darted forward and curled up in Tom’s lap. “What are you all staring at?”

Sandoval gasped at Tom. “You’re okay?”

Tom glared at them with bloodshot eyes. “No, I’m not okay. You guys won’t let me sleep. As my father used to say, you make enough noise to wake the dead.” He glanced at Dead Man. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Dead Man said.

Tom rubbed his forehead. “I’m dizzy and my headache is back. My feet hurt. I can’t even tell the difference between my dreams and reality anymore, and I think it has something to do with that nasty drink you gave me, Magnus. What was in it, anyway?”

Dead Man glanced at Magnus, who rolled his eyes, sighed heavily, and finally looked directly at Tom. “Poison.”

Tom gasped in disbelief. “What?”

Magnus shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t all poison. The effects are produced by a variety of organic ingredients such as ayahuasca—the vision vine—that allowed us to have what you might call a common hallucination. That’s how the testing and training starts, you understand, and that’s why I said you’d learn more from the experience if you were exhausted at the time. We expanded your mind, and now we’ve introduced you to Stronghold—the world of the AIs and the other unfortunate phantoms that live there. Stronghold would have been more realistic if we could have injected you with nanomed sims, but we don’t have any available. In any case, you’ve adapted to these new worlds quickly and admirably, which is necessary because it gets harder from here on out, and we have very little time.”

Pushing Helix out of his lap, Tom stood up and glared into Magnus’s eyes with his fists clenched. “You gave me poison.”

Magnus looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes. Perhaps I was wrong, but I assumed you would resist some of the training. I needed a way to motivate you if you changed your mind about becoming a master of the Road. We need you, Tom. The world needs you.”

“So you decided to poison me,” Tom grumbled, grinding his teeth.

“For your own good,” Magnus pointed out.

“Are you listening to yourself?”

Sandoval took a step forward. “That’s why your dizziness won’t go away, Tom. We all went through it with our teachers, more or less. Magnus was just following tradition.”

“You’re all crazy!” Tom yelled, waving his arms. “Where’s the antidote to this poison?”

Magnus pointed at his own head. “In here.”

Tom stepped forward with menace. “I’d be happy to beat it out of you, old man.”

Dead Man put a hand on Tom’s shoulder, and the gesture had an almost immediate calming effect. “Tom, you’ll have to get the antidote yourself, just as we all did. You’ll find it on the Road.”

Tom sighed and looked down at Helix. “If it doesn’t kill me first?”

“Some have failed to reach the Road,” Magnus said. “That is the risk we take for great knowledge.”

“Many have failed,” Sandoval added, looking away when Magnus glared at him.

Magnus put his hand on Tom’s other shoulder. “But you won’t fail, Tom. You’re our Prometheus. You will reach the Road, and you will find the antidote.”

Tom twisted away from all the grasping hands, picked up Helix, and headed for the door. “I’m going to find a dark corner and get some sleep. Don’t bother me. Don’t even look at me. Just leave me alone.”

TOM dreamed of floating. He was back in the bay, facedown, bobbing on the gentle currents above a fantasy underwater garden of colorful fish and plants. Yellow garibaldi chased striped clown fish through the dancing water weeds while red lobsters stood guard as if they were armored tanks parked on the muddy bottom. Remembering the stories of the corpses that had floated in the bay after The Uplift, Tom sensed their presence, and then he spotted Ukiah, Luna, Zeke, and Weed, all dressed formally in black with their feet rooted in the mud, drifting gently with the current, their hair bobbing around their pale faces. Their sad eyes were open and bulging, staring at Tom, full of silent reproach at the fact that he was still alive and they were not, resenting him for defying the gods and bringing the wrath of Telemachus down on their heads. Tom tried to explain, but his mouth filled with water, damping out his voice until he drifted away and his family disappeared from view for the last time.

Broken buildings passed by beneath him as something large landed on his back, driving a sharp spike into his neck. He tried to turn over in the water to remove his attacker, but all he could do was turn his head as another spike plunged into his spine. Blinking to clear his eyes, he saw a massive crow perched on his back, its beak red with Tom’s blood. He recognized the bird as the same one he had defeated on the road in Stronghold. Red smoke still hissed from the wound in its head where Tom had punctured it with his sword. Tom sensed it was after his secrets. Its beak plunged again, poking at one of his kidneys, before it began to scream at him.

Tom woke to the sound of alarms.

A shadow passed over him, and he was startled to see Dead Man standing there, silhouetted by the glow panels on the ceiling. He thought he had hidden himself well on one of the maintenance platforms at the bottom of the empty missile silo, hoping not to be bothered while he slept. The blaring alarms echoed in the cavernous chamber, which was about 150 feet tall and maybe forty feet across.

“How did you find me?” Tom asked, loud enough so that Dead Man could hear him over the noise.

“I’ve learned your vibrations. All I had to do was get close enough to hear them. Now, please hurry, we have to go.”

Dead Man offered his hand and helped Tom stand up. Tom looked around and spotted Helix hiding behind a thick pipe, watching Dead Man with wide eyes and his tail between his legs. He picked up the worried dog, who whimpered as he was brought closer to Dead Man, then followed the walking corpse out the door into the long cableway corridor. “What’s the big emergency?”

“We have visitors,” Dead Man said, walking faster than Tom had ever seen him move. His feet thumped on the steel deck plates.

“Humboldt?”

He ducked under one of the cableway struts. “Perhaps. Someone set off the perimeter alarms on the surface.”

After they passed through the blast lock and decontamination area that joined the cableway from the silo to the control center, they found Magnus and Sandoval watching the overhead security monitors. Ancient hardware racks, arranged in an ominous light gray circle around the missile launch control panels at the main desk, dominated the room. Glow panels hung in place of the old fluorescent lighting fixtures, while the rest of the ceiling space was taken up by pipes, air vents, and surveillance monitors. From his impromptu tour with Helix the previous night, Tom knew that Level One, upstairs, held a small kitchen and dining area, bunk beds, and a restroom. Communications and power control racks were downstairs in Level Three.

“Can you see what he’s doing?” Sandoval asked, looking at one of the monitors, where a ghostly image of a glowing green man moved around in the darkness.

Magnus took a step closer and squinted at the monitor. “He’s done trying to pry open the access door. He’s walking around now. Doesn’t seem to be using the sniffer anymore.”

“Is that Humboldt?” Tom asked.

Sandoval briefly glanced at Tom and nodded. “We think so. It’s hard to be sure with the infrared camera. Very old technology. We’re pretty sure we saw him holding a sniffer. He seems to be alone, unless he has friends waiting outside the clearing.”

“He’s talking into his hand, or to his arm or something. Can’t be sure,” Magnus said. He frowned and walked over to one of the instrument racks, where a tiny gray monitor showed a moving squiggly line. “Radio emissions just spiked on the surface. You don’t think . . . no, if he was signaling Hermes, he’d be using a tightbeam, wouldn’t he?”

Sandoval shrugged when Magnus glanced at him. “Maybe there aren’t any relay towers in the vicinity that still work?” He pressed two buttons on the launch control panel and studied another tiny monitor, then he suddenly bent over to look at it in more detail. “Satellite ping. He signaled his position to someone.”

Magnus whirled around. “Our position. He must be targeting for Hermes. Can you jam his transmission?”

Sandoval jogged toward the staircase behind the equipment racks. “Maybe. The remote doesn’t work up here, but I can try the main panel downstairs.”

“Do it fast. He won’t need much time,” Magnus said. He looked at Dead Man. “Can you find your way to the ship if we get separated?”

“Of course,” Dead Man whispered. “Are you thinking we can sneak out of here?”

“Maybe. The question is whether we think we can outrun a surface strike if they decide to use nanobombs.”

“My guess would be no unless we start very soon. Their strike platform will take a few minutes to arrive, but the zone of maximum damage would be very wide. Could we survive the strike down here?”

Magnus shook his head. “This missile silo was hardened against low-yield nuclear blasts, but the disassemblers in the nanobombs will liquefy everything in their paths. I don’t know how deep a surface penetrator would go, but the disassemblers certainly wouldn’t stop until they were several hundred feet down, maybe more.”

They heard thumping and cursing noises from Sandoval, so they went downstairs to find him repeatedly slamming his hand against an instrument rack. “Sometimes this helps, but I think it’s too late now. The jammers won’t work. The best I can do is try to distract Hermes while you abandon the silo. I think Barney can help me if I point him in the right direction.”

“Escape hatch?” Magnus asked.

“Over there,” Sandoval said, pointing at a round, white hatchway door set beneath a cross brace on the far wall. “It connects to the ladder in the air shaft, then it’s another fifty feet up to the surface. You’ll come out in the bushes on the far side of the silo pad, then you can climb the hill from there. It’s still dark, so our visitor might not see you if you’re quiet. I’ll try to keep him busy to give you a head start.”

“Where do you want us to wait for you?” Dead Man asked.

“Just go,” Sandoval said. “I’ll meet you at the ship. If I can’t get Barney to work, I want to rescue a few things just in case.”

Magnus scowled. “There isn’t time for that.”

“You have your priorities, and I have mine,” Sandoval said, pulling two mechanical waldo arms out of an equipment rack and hooking them into one of the more advanced visual displays that Tom had seen in the facility. While he connected the waldoes, he glanced at Tom. “These will give me manipulator control over Barney.”

Tom wondered who Barney was.