Free Prometheus Road by Bruce Balfour Page B

this? The flash lit the sky like daylight. The air turned to fire. The ground shock traveled for many miles.”
    Memphis shook his head. “I was asleep, my lord. My home is underground, and the Eliots are many miles away. There was nothing—”
    Hermes held up his hand for silence as his eyes narrowed. “Enough. I believe you. Yet the question remains, why was Tom Eliot not at home this evening? According to your sighting information and your speculations regarding his daily routine, the Eliot boy should have been home at the hour of the strike. Now I’ve heard rumors that he wasn’t there. Do you realize that I will have to explain this to Telemachus? I do not like to fail, Elder Memphis. If Tom Eliot is not discovered quickly, I will return here and take your son away.”
    “No, my lord. Please,” Memphis gasped, dropping to one knee again. “If there has been some mistake, I will do everything within my power to help you correct it.”
    “See that you do,” Hermes said. With a swirl of his cloak, he turned on his heel and went out the door, shutting it tight behind him.
    “Father?” Humboldt staggered into the room while Memphis stood up.
    “You!” Memphis whirled and pointed an angry finger at him. Humboldt stepped back and bumped against the wall as if he’d been struck. “You bring shame on us all!”
    Humboldt blinked. “What? How could—”
    “I should have turned you over to Hermes, but I seem to have some self-destructive urge to protect my offspring! Why didn’t you bring Tom back here like I told you? Were you trying to think for yourself again? Could my directions have been any simpler?”
    “I know where he is, Father. And he’s dead. Probably.” Humboldt backed into a chair and sat down heavily.
    Memphis loomed over him, his fists clenched, barely managing to contain himself. “Probably isn’t good enough, you fool! The gods will not be mocked! They nanobombed the Eliot farm tonight because I said they’d all be home. And this all started because you saw the young hooligan on his way to the forbidden zone. We were removing several thorns from our sides all at once, then you had to go and blunder around in the forest with your idiot friends. Ukiah should have been removed long ago, but at least he mellowed with age. The boy is a loose cannon. You don’t think he’ll be able to figure out who turned him in? Judging by your appearance, it looks like you lost the fight, and the boy will be on his way here to get revenge as soon as he can.”
    Humboldt shook his head. “I’m sure he’s dead, Father. I saw him fall, and I know that hill, even in the dark. If he survived, somehow, he must be trapped there.”
    “Then you won’t have any trouble finding him. Get to it.”
    Humboldt frowned. “Now? It’s the middle of the night. I can get help in the morning.”
    “You’re a big boy,” Memphis said, poking him in the chest. “You don’t need any help. Just bring Tom Eliot here before Hermes comes back; otherwise, I’ll tell him what happened, and you’ll be on your way to a rehabilitation unit.”
    “But I was only trying to help,” Humboldt whined.
    Memphis clouted him on the side of the head with his open hand, bouncing Humboldt’s skull off the wall. “Telemachus helps those who help themselves.”
     
    EXHAUSTED, Tom dragged himself into the cemetery in the meadow on top of Big Rock Ridge, then sat down heavily on a white marble crypt with an enormous winged angel draped over it in mourning. Two vultures watched him from a long-dead oak tree nearby. A wide variety of crypts and monuments, in shades of white, gray, and black, crowded together on top of the hill to keep each other company and admire the view. It was an old cemetery for the Marinwood area, populated before The Uplift, but not old enough to contain pioneer gravesites or the bones of historical celebrities. Helix sniffed around at the base of the winged angel crypt, then followed his nose on across the