Counting Up, Counting Down

by Harry Turtledove

  “First, though, you’ll have to get me off,” Perseus said.

  She squawked. “Listen, mister, if I didn’t just take care of that—”

  “No, off this cliff,” he said.

  “Oh,” Andromeda dipped her head in agreement. “Well, that can probably be arranged, too.” She drew the sword again and swung it. It sheared through the metal that imprisoned Perseus like a divine sword cutting cheap bronze chains. After four strokes—considerably fewer than he’d been good for—he fell forward and down. They caught each other in midair. Hermes’ sandals were strong enough to carry two. Andromeda had figured they would be. She and Perseus rose together.

  After topping the rocks, they flew north toward Argos. Perseus said, “Can I borrow your sword for a minute?”

  “Why?” Andromeda looked at him sidelong. “I like the one you come equipped with.”

  “It won’t cut through the manacles on my ankles and wrists,” Perseus said.

  “Hmm. I suppose not. Sure, go ahead.”

  Divine swords had a lot going for them. This one neatly removed the manacles without removing the hands and feet they’d been binding. Thinking about all the times she’d sliced herself carving wild boar—those visiting Gauls could really put it away—Andromeda wished she owned cutlery like that.

  Perseus said, “Can you steer a little more to the left?”

  “Sure,” Andromeda said, and did. “How come?”

  “That’s Acrisius’ palace down there.” Perseus pointed. “Who knows? Maybe I can make a prophecy come true.” He dropped the manacles and the lengths of chain attached to them, one after another. He and Andromeda both watched them fall.

  “I can’t tell,” Andromeda said at last.

  “Neither can I.” Perseus made the best of things: “If I did nail the old geezer, Matt Drudge’ll have it online before we get to Olympus.”

  The wedding was the event of the eon. Andromeda’s mother and father, Cepheus and Cassiopeia, flew up from their Ethiopian home in their private Constellation. Acrisius’ cranium apparently remained undented, but nobody sent him an invitation. Danaë, Perseus’ mother, did come. She and Hera spent the first part of the weekend snubbing each other.

  Zeus dishonored two maids of honor, and, once in his cups, seemed convinced every cupbearer was named Ganymede. After he got into the second maid of honor, he also got into a screaming row with Hera. A couple of thunderbolts flew, but the wedding pavilion, though scorched, survived.

  Hera and Danaë went off in a corner, had a good cry together, and were the best of friends from then on out. A little later, Zeus sidled up to Andromeda and asked in an anxious voice, “What is this First Wives’ Club my wife keeps talking about? Do you suppose it is as powerful as my sword?”

  “Which one, your Godship, sir?” she returned; she was in her cups, too. Zeus didn’t answer, but went off with stormy, and even rather rainy, brow. Before long, he and Hera were screaming at each other again.

  And then Andromeda and Perseus were off for their wedding night at the Mount Olympus Holiday Inn. In her cups or not, Andromeda didn’t like the way the limo driver handled the horses. Perseus patted her knee. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” he said. “Phaëthon hasn’t burned rubber, or anything else, for quite a while now.”

  She might have argued more, but Perseus’ hand, instead of stopping at the knee, kept wandering north. And, with all the gods in the wedding party following the limo, odds were somebody could bring her back to life even if she did get killed.

  Ambrosia—Dom Pérignon ambrosia, no less—waited on ice in the honeymoon suite. The bed was as big as Boeotia, as soft as the sea-foam that spawned Aphrodite. Out in the hallway, the gods and demigods and mortals with pull who’d been at the wedding made a deityawful racket, waiting for the moment of truth.

  They didn’t have to wait very long. Perseus was standing at attention even when he lay down on that inviting bed. Wearing nothing but a smile, Andromeda got down beside him. At the appropriate time, she let out a squeal, pretending to be a maiden. Everybody in the hallway let out a cheer, pretending to believe her.

  After the honeymoon, things went pretty well. Perseus landed an editorial job at Argosy. Andromeda spent a while on the talk-show circuit: Loves Fated to Happen were hot that millennium. They bought themselves a little house. It was Greek Colonial architecture, right out of Grant Xylum, and they furnished it to match.

  When Andromeda sat down on the four-poster bed one night, she heard a peculiar sound, not one it usually made. “What’s that?” she asked Perseus.

  “What’s what?” he said, elaborately casual.

  “That noise. Like—metal?”

  “Oh. That.” Elaborately casual, all right—too elaborately casual. Perseus’ face wore an odd smile, half sheepish, half . . . something else. “It’s probably these.” He lifted up his pillow.

  “Chains!” Andromeda exclaimed. “Haven’t you had enough of chains?”

  “Well—sort of.” Perseus sounded sheepish, too, sheepish and . . . something else. An eager something else. “But it was so much fun that first time, I, I . . . thought we might try it again.”

  “Did you?” Andromeda rubbed her chin. You don’t find out everything right away about the person you marry, especially if it’s a whirlwind courtship. Gods knew she hadn’t expected this. Still . . . “Why not?” she said at last. “Just don’t invite that damn sea serpent.”

  And a good time was had by all.

  Goddess for a Day

  This one is taken from a real incident related by the Greek historian Herodotos. One of the more interesting challenges here was finding out what the Akropolis of Athens looked like in the sixth century B.C., before the Persian invasions and before the great building program that followed them. Everything here is as authentic as I could make it—which is, of course, not the same as saying it’s true.

  * * *

  The driver held the horses to a trot hardly faster than a walk. Even so, the chariot jounced and pitched and swayed as it rattled down the rutted dirt track from the country village of Paiania to Athens.

  Every time a wheel jolted over a rock, Phye feared she’d be pitched out on her head. She couldn’t grab for the rail of the car, not with a hoplite’s spear in one hand and a heavy round shield on the other arm. The shield still had the olive-oil smell of fresh paint. Before they’d given it to her, they’d painted Athena’s owl over whatever design it had borne before.

  Another rock, another jolt. She staggered again. Peisistratos, who rode in the car with her, steadied her so she didn’t fall. She was almost big enough to make two of the tyrannos, but he was agile and she wasn’t. “It will be all right, dear,” he said, grinning at her like a clever monkey. “Just look divine.”

  She struck the pose in which he’d coached her: back straight so she looked even taller than she was (the Corinthian helmet she wore, with the red-dyed horsehair plume nodding above it, added to the effect), right arm out straight with the spear grounded on the floorboards of the chariot (like an old man’s stick, it helped her keep her balance, but not enough), shield held in tight against her breast (that took some of the weight off her poor arm—but, again, not enough). She stared straight ahead, chin held high.

  “It’s all so uncomfortable,” she said.

  Peisistratos and the driver both laughed. They’d really fought in hoplite’s panoply, not just worn it on what was essentially a parade. They knew what it was like.

  But they didn’t know everything there was to know. The bell corselet they’d put on Phye gleamed; they’d polished the bronze till you could use it for a mirror. That corselet would have been small for a man her size. Mashed against hard, unyielding metal, her breasts ached worse than they did just before her courses started. The shield she carried might have been made of lead, not wood and bronze. One of her greaves had rubbed a raw spot on the side of her leg. And, of course, she stared straight ahead; the cheekpieces and noseguard on the helmet gave her no other choice. The hel
m was heavy, too. Her neck ached.

  She itched everywhere.

  A couple of people—a man with a graying beard and a younger woman who might have been his daughter or his wife—stood by the side of the track, staring at the oncoming chariot. Phye envied them their cool, simple mantles and cloaks. A river of sweat was pouring down her face.

  Peisistratos waved to the couple. He tapped Phye on the back. They couldn’t see that. She couldn’t feel it, either, but she heard his nails rasp on the corselet. “The gods love Peisistratos!” she cried in a loud voice. “The gods ordain that he should rule once more in Athens!”

  “There! You see?” the man said, pointing at Phye. “It is Athena, just as those fellows who went by the other day said it would be.”

  “Why, maybe it is.” The woman tossed her head to show she thought he was right. “Isn’t that something?” She raised her voice as the chariot clattered by: “Hurrah for Peisistratos! Good old Peisistratos!”

  “It’s going to work,” the driver said without looking over his shoulder.

  “Of course it will.” Peisistratos was all but capering with glee. “We have ourselves such a fine and lovely goddess here.” He patted Phye on a bared thigh, between the top of her greave and the bottom of the linen tunic she wore under the corselet.

  She almost smashed him in the face with her shield. Exposing her legs to the eyes of men felt shockingly immodest. Having that flesh out there to be pawed showed her why women commonly covered it.

  She didn’t think she’d given any sign of what was passing through her mind, but Peisistratos somehow sensed it. He was no fool: very much the reverse. “I crave pardon,” he said, and sounded as if he meant it. “I paid your father a pound of silver for you to be Athena, not a whore. I shall remember.”

  The village lads made apologies, too, and then tried to feel her up again whenever they got the chance. After that once, Peisistratos kept his hands to himself. Whenever the chariot passed anyone on the road—which happened more and more often now, for they were getting close to Athens—Phye shouted out the gods’ love for the returning tyrannos.

  Some of those people fell in behind the chariot and started heading into Athens themselves. They yelled Peisistratos’ name. “Pallas Athena, defender of cities!” one of them called out, a tagline from the Homeric hymn to the goddess. Several others took up the call.

  Phye had not thought she could get any warmer than she already was under helm and corselet and greaves. Now she discovered she was wrong. These people really believed she was Athena. And why not? Had she been walking along the track instead of up in the chariot, she would have believed it was truly the goddess, too. To everyone in Paiania, the Olympians and other deities were as real and close as their next-door neighbors. Her brother, for instance, swore he’d seen a satyr in the woods not far from home, and why would he lie?

  But not to Peisistratos and his driver. They joked back and forth about how they were tricking the—unsophisticated was the word Peisistratos used, but Phye had never heard it before, and so it meant nothing to her—folk of the countryside and of the city as well. As far as they were concerned, the gods were levers with which to move people in their direction.

  That attitude frightened Phye. More and more, she wished her father had not accepted Peisistratos’ leather sack full of shiny drachmai, even if that pound of silver would feed the whole family for a year, maybe two, no matter how badly the grapes and olives came in. Peisistratos and his friend might imagine the gods were impotent, but Phye knew better.

  When they noticed what she was doing, what would they do—to her?

  She didn’t have much time to think about that, for which she was grateful. The walls of Athens drew near. More and more people fell in behind the chariot. She was shouting out the gods’ will—or rather, what Peisistratos said was the gods’ will—so often, she grew hoarse.

  The guards at the gate bowed low as the chariot rolled into the city. Was that respect for the goddess or respect for the returning tyrannos? Phye couldn’t tell. She wondered if the guards were sure themselves.

  Now the road went up to the akropolis through hundreds upon hundreds of houses and shops. Phye didn’t often come in to Athens: when you used a third of the day or more walking forth and back between your village and the city, how often could you afford to do that? The sheer profusion of buildings awed her. So did the city stink, a rich, thick mixture of dung and sweat and animals and stale olive oil.

  “Athena! Pallas Athena!” the city people shouted. They were as ready to believe Phye was the goddess as the farmers outside the walls had been. “Pallas Athena for Peisistratos!” someone yelled, and in a moment the whole crowd took up the cry. It echoed and reechoed between the whitewashed housefronts that pressed the rutted road tight on either side, until Phye’s head ached.

  “They love you,” the driver said over his shoulder to Peisistratos.

  “That sound—a thousand people screaming your name—that’s the sweetest thing in the world,” the tyrannos answered. “Sweeter than Chian wine, sweeter than a pretty boy’s prokton, sweeter than anything.” Of the gods, he’d spoken lightly, slightingly. Now his words came from the heart.

  Men with clubs, men with spears, a few men with full hoplite’s panoply like that which Phye wore, fell in before the chariot and led it up toward the heart of the city. “Just like you planned it,” the driver said in admiration. Peisistratos preened like a tame jackdaw on a perch.

  Phye stared up toward the great buildings of wood and limestone, even a few of hard marble, difficult to work, that crowned the akropolis. They were hardly a stone’s throw from the flatland atop the citadel when a man cried out in a great voice: “Rejoice, Peisistratos! Lykourgos has fled, Megakles offers you his daughter in marriage. Athens is yours once more. Rejoice!”

  The driver whooped. Unobtrusively, Peisistratos tapped Phye on the corselet. “Athens shows Peisistratos honor!” she called to the crowd. “Him Athena also delights to honor. The goddess brings him home to his own akropolis!”

  At the man’s news and at her words, the cheering doubled and then doubled again. From under the rim of her helmet, she looked nervously up toward the heavens. Surely such a racket would draw the notice of the gods. She hoped they’d note she’d spoken of Athena in the third person and hadn’t claimed to be the goddess herself.

  Past the gray stone bulk of the Hekatompedon, the temple with a front a hundred feet long, rattled the chariot. At Peisistratos’ quiet order, the driver swung left, toward the olive tree sacred to Athena. “I’ll speak to the people from the rock under that tree,” the tyrannos said. “Seems fitting enough, eh?”

  “Right you are.” The driver reined in just behind that boulder. The horses stood breathing hard.

  Peisistratos hopped down from the chariot. He was nimble, even if no longer young. To Phye, he said, “Present me one last time, my dear, and then you’re done. We’ll put you up in the shrine for the night”—he used his chin to point to the plain little wooden temple, dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon, standing behind the olive tree—“get you proper woman’s clothes, and send you back to Paiania in the morning.” He chuckled. “It’ll be by oxcart, I fear, not by chariot.”

  “That’s all right,” Phye said, and got down herself. She was tempted to fall deliberately, to show the crowd she was no goddess. But she had taken on the outer attributes of Athena, and could not bring herself to let the goddess fall into disrepute from anything she did. As gracefully as she could, she stepped up onto the rock.

  “See gray-eyed Athena!” someone exclaimed. Phye’s eyes were brown. The Corinthian helm so shadowed them, though, that people saw what they wanted to see. Thinking that, she suddenly understood how Peisistratos had been so sure his scheme would work. She also discovered why he spoke of an adoring crowd as sweeter than wine. Excitement flowed through her as the crowd quieted to hear what she would say. She forgot the squeeze and pinch of armor, the weight of the shield, everything but the sea
of expectant faces in front of her.

  “Athena delights in honoring Peisistratos!” she cried in a voice so huge it hardly seemed her own. “Let Athens delight in honoring Peisistratos. People of Athens, I give you—Peisistratos!”

  She still had not said she was Athena, but she’d come closer, far closer, than she’d intended. She got down from the boulder. The tyrannos hopped up onto it. Most of the roar that rose from throats uncounted was for him, but some, she thought, belonged to her.

  He must have thought so, too. He leaned down and murmured, “Thank you, O best of women. That was wonderfully done.” Then he straightened and began to speak to the crowd. The late-afternoon sun gleamed from his white mantle—and from the crown of his head, which was going bald.

  Phye withdrew into the temple and set down her spear and shield with a sigh of relief. She was out of sight of the people, who hung on Peisistratos’ every word. She did not blame them. If he accomplished half, or even a fourth part, of what he promised, he would make Athens a better substitute for Zeus than Phye just had for Athena.

  He must have memorized his speech long before he returned to the akropolis. It came out as confidently as if he were a rhapsode chanting Homer’s verses. He made the people laugh and cheer and cry out in anger—when he wished, as he wished. Most of all, he made them love him.

  Just as the sun was setting, Peisistratos said, “Now go forth, O men of Athens, and celebrate what we have done here today. Let there be wine, let there be music, let there be good cheer! And tomorrow, come the dawn, we shall go on about the business of making our city great.”

  A last cheer rang out, maybe louder than all those that had come before. The Athenians streamed away from the akropolis. Here and there, torches crackled into life; when night fell, it fell sudden and hard. Someone strummed a lyre. Someone else thumped a drum. Snatches of song filled the air.