Theobroma: Child of Fire and Blood

SEVEN

Under the light of Tarakk’s crimson and gold moons, Shakata raced through one of his people’s beautifully intricate cities along an unpredictable path. As he had practiced and played during many daylight hours, the vibrant young man sprinted across open spaces, leapt over gaps in his path and dove from heights his mother would never approve to tumble to safe landings. Unlike his daytime escapades, though, the night saw him darting from shadow to light to shadow again with definite purpose. He raced through the night to evade capture.

Scores of keen eyes worked to keep track of him as he moved through the temperate night air with the fluid grace and agility of a predator on the hunt. His tactical direction changes showed, though, the awareness of one being hunted. He knew the Argus drones were attempting to lock their tracking systems on him to facilitate his containment. The aerodynamic drones, their shape akin to a teardrop flying in an arc, sped through the air raising all the noise of a whisper. Their silvery gray skin did nothing to make them easier to see than to hear, but he did his best to stay aware of as many of the ones nearest him as he could.

What’s he up to? Kieren Sha wondered as she continued to watch him. Wondering and guessing, were all she could do until he deigned to talk again. He was being stubbornly silent, not wanting to give away any clues to his position by having their communications tracked. She thought it might not have bothered her so much if she were able to tear herself away from watching. She was trying to monitor his breathing, muscular activity and other such performance factors with passive scanning equipment, but was having almost as much difficulty getting solid data on him as the drones were.

“Stop going higher,” she whispered futilely. “Why does he keep going higher?”

His lack of concern for his personal safety was so aggravating sometimes that a part of her thought to curse him for worrying her, but she was quick to quiet such thoughts lest something actually come of them. Even if she refused to admit them, she knew her true feelings for him bore no connection to such dark thoughts. That was enough to make her resist dwelling on a momentary aggravation.

Kieren Sha glided about as silently as the Argus drones, though her own levitation was achieved by other means. She was determined to stay close enough to Shakata to help him in the event his confidence got him into more trouble than he could handle. As hard as he was pushing himself to outwit not only the city’s central computer system, but their own people as well, she knew that physical prowess would not be the thing to fail him.

She trusted Shakata, but all he would tell her about his escape plan was that he had figured out how to vanish from Oracle’s sight. She knew she had to see that. Shakata was easily one of the smartest people she knew, so she never sought to dismiss his ideas as crazy. Still, they did seem to involve an inherent pandemonium as often as not. Whatever his latest plan, he was talking about doing something that no one ever had. Oracle saw everything, after all. That was what it had been designed to do.

He kept running. He was still incredibly fast and strong, making leaps that surprised even her and showing no signs of fatigue. Kieren Sha was having to fight harder against the urge to intervene the longer she watched him. Even though she could not actually see him doing it, she knew he was smiling with delight at every increasingly risky stunt, flipping off of rooftops and running up walls.

When is he going to get to the part of the plan with the hiding? she wondered. Where are you going to hide from Oracle?

The answer failed to manifest no matter how many ways she asked herself the question. One thing that was becoming clear to her was that she was getting tired of holding her breath over him.

Magi cities were not just built by molecular machines, they were made of them. Every construct they had around them was a mixture of energized smart dust and energy fields, all part of synergistically integrated quantum computers. Kieren Sha could not figure out where Shakata was planning to hide in a city whose every molecule was essentially part of the network of artificial intelligences that managed the city’s functions.