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bounced between fear, sadness, ecstasy, and any other feeling that Telemachus wished to test while Hermes stood in the vortex chamber. Even without the shock waves, Telemachus could almost read the mind of Hermes through his body language; but he had limitations in understanding human thought and feeling, which was why Hermes and the Oracle had been created as interfaces in the first place. One of the drawbacks to being a nanoborg was regular submission to these emotional shock wave tests, usually while reports were being delivered.
    Hermes began to explain. “The guardian lost contact with the target twenty-three feet beneath the surface at—”
    “We know all that,” Telemachus interrupted. “I require the details of your failure.”
    Hermes hesitated, trying not to reveal anything through his voice quality or the movements of his body, but knowing that his skin temperature, perspiration, muscle tension, and heart rate were being measured remotely.
    “Response is required,” Telemachus said. “Now.”
    Hermes felt a stronger electrical charge dance across the surface of his skin—a warning about the pain that his master could trigger if he was displeased. If he’d learned anything from his long association with Telemachus, it was how direct the AI could be when dealing with lesser intelligences. Pain and pleasure were doled out by the AIs as the simplest means of controlling the human herds under their care, although they preferred to work indirectly through their nanoborg interfaces whenever possible. That was a policy that occasionally put Hermes in the position of a messenger bearing bad news, and he knew that his future would be severely limited if Telemachus predicted any future incompetencies or major failures on the part of Hermes. Nanoborgs were not easily built or trained by the AIs, but failures were acknowledged and bred out of the genetic algorithms immediately whenever one of the nanoborg units exhibited serious design flaws. The occasional miscalculation or seemingly illogical act was allowed as an inherent by-product of the human side of a nanoborg’s activities; but errors were always tracked and recorded, making it possible for an otherwise successful nanoborg to be destroyed after years of faithful service once its error threshold had been reached.
    “I was fooled,” Hermes said. “My human half blinded me. The Eliot boy seemed to be a hardworking youth who fit in well with the community.”
    “You are my servant precisely so that we may not be fooled in this way,” Telemachus said.
    “I understand,” Hermes whispered, lowering his head as he prepared himself for a fatal shock. He considered that Telemachus might not have summoned him to Stronghold because his failure had been too great to allow for a traditional execution on the high ground. He felt his heart beat faster, then tried to slow it by taking a deep breath and releasing it gradually.
    “Continue,” Telemachus intoned.
    Hermes blinked in surprise, happy to continue breathing. “Tom Eliot has learned to evade our shoreline wards, and he has managed to find gaps within the forbidden zones where he can slip through without detection.”
    “In this sense, he has performed a service for us,” Telemachus said. “We can seal the gaps he has discovered.”
    Hermes tipped his head, wondering at the strange turn of the conversation. “This is true.”
    “To what purpose does this boy enter the forbidden zones? He is not on the scavenger list.”
    Hermes could only guess at the boy’s motivation. “His father says that the boy likes to leave his normal surroundings to meditate. To think.”
    “Thinking is bad for them,” Telemachus said. “It leads to independent ambition and can conflict with our long-term goals for the communities. They must assume their assigned tasks and follow the plans we lay out for their lives. The Eliot boy is a wild element in our balanced system and must be eliminated before he contaminates the rest