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of the community.”
    “I understand,” Hermes said. “The community is at risk. We must remove Tom Eliot.”
    “You understand very little. The contaminant must be destroyed. Probability is high that components of the Eliot family will not respond favorably to Tom Eliot’s removal or destruction. We must assume that the entire sample has been contaminated by Tom Eliot’s presence. We will choose a time with the highest probability of all family elements being present at the Eliot home, then we will strike.”
    Hermes frowned. “Community output will drop dramatically in response. Fear will dominate for weeks after the event.”
    “A blip in the evolution of Marinwood. They’re human. Over time, they will adapt and forget that the Eliots existed. After six months, another family may rebuild and occupy the farmland.”
    “Perhaps we should try other means first. Tom Eliot has unusual capabilities that haven’t yet been developed. We could threaten the farm, cut off their power—”
    Telemachus interrupted him again. “It is not our policy to waste workforce elements, Hermes. Our decision is not colored by emotion, but by facts and projected probabilities. Your human component views Tom Eliot in terms of your similarities—he is isolated from others of his kind by his differences and so are you—but you should view Tom Eliot in terms of his differences. Our task is to protect and guide our human charges, despite what certain factions of the Dominion might have us believe. We do not weaken their growth by coddling them, and we do not allow human performance outside of the safe evolutionary norms we have established.”
    “Safety is an illusion,” Hermes blurted out without thinking. He instantly regretted it when his skin crackled with the warning electrical charge, somewhat stronger than the previous time. Then Telemachus shifted the shock wave colors toward the red end of the spectrum, and his emotions pulsed along with them in response—anxiety, worry, fear, panic, terror. He got the point.
    “It is a useful illusion for our purposes,” Telemachus said.
     
    “YOU summoned me?” Ukiah asked. He gripped the stiff brim of his hat in his right hand, bowing slightly to avoid the downward thrust of a white stalactite as he stepped forward into the middle of the dimly lighted cavern. He heard the brief echo of his voice seeking escape from the subterranean vault. Unseen bats squeaked in the dark hollows of the ceiling. A glowing pool of clear water occupied the middle of the rough oval floor, illuminated from below by an intense orange light. Little streamers of fog, disturbed by the air currents, coiled and swirled on the surface of the water, impeded only by the delicate figure of the Oracle, floating on her back, her white robes billowing around her as if she were a giant butterfly, her white hair streaming away from her skull like a living thing. Her larger shadow loomed on the ceiling, broken only by the stalactites that protruded from it, as if giant rock daggers impaled her body. She soaked in a nutrient bath of microscopic creatures that kept her young, complemented by the medical nanobots that lived in her bloodstream. Completely human once, she had chosen to serve the gods as the Oracle, and had lived her life as an interface, more machine than human, ever since she had accepted the blessing of the nanoborg conversion before Ukiah had even been born. Along with Hermes, the ambassador of the gods, she served Telemachus and the other powers of the Dominion in her sacred stewardship of Marinwood and the surrounding region.
    “Elder Ukiah. Approach.”
    Ukiah took a few steps closer to the pool. In the orange glow, he saw her white eyes staring up at the ceiling, and beyond it into the future.
    “This is the last time we shall speak,” she said in her haunting whisper. “A storm is coming.”
    Ukiah frowned. “What kind of a storm?”
    “The winds of change.”
    “Should I prepare for this storm?