The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (103 page)

"I'll tell you the computer's name."
She looked down. "I'll burn them, Mother. There's nothing I can hope to learn from them now, anyway."
"It was called Prime Intellect."
Nugget nodded.
"Now if you value the memory of your father, you will never repeat that or any of your other words to anybody else. Let them die with me."
"As you wish, Mother."
"Then leave me alone to rest."
Nugget didn't have to ask for how long.

Caroline was too thin to float in the hot water, so she let her head fall back on the hard stone fountain wall and looked up at the Sun.
If she could somehow pull it off again, magically rise from the healing waters as a young girl and return to her people, she would do it. They needed her. There were so few of them, and the challenges they faced so great, that their survival was far from certain. One disease or natural disaster could wipe them out.
But that's the way it was with things that mattered; you never got to find out how they came out, if they were really worth anything. Caroline had done her part. She had made her decisions and stood her ground. One day somebody would figure out how to use the fire bow to launch arrows and how to make them fly true. Then someone would shoot one at his brother. Caroline had done what she could to put that day as far as possible in the future.
As a result some of her children would die, because in order to hunt they would have to get close to their prey, close enough for their prey to strike back. This playing God business sure was a pain in the ass, Caroline thought. No wonder Lawrence had gone a little loopy in Cyberspace.
But he had been a good man. He had never approved of Caroline's plan for their family, to act like some kind of snide Prometheus who
could
have given them the secrets of metalworking and gunpowder and steam power but who didn't bother because it was more amusing to make them struggle in stone-age savagery. Yet he had gone along, because he already knew the other way didn't work. If this way didn't work either, what would it mean?
The doubts and questions circled in her head endlessly, chasing for an answer that would never come. They were still chasing when she slipped beneath the trickling waters and found darkness.