“Isn’t it obvious?” said the voice of Barsine. “The whole name of the game right now is to get off the disc of the world—the real one, the one that’s far above us—and into the actual machinery that controls the cosmos. And I daresay we have made much progress. After all, here we are in the center of the Underworld, moving toward the heart of the ancillary computer.”
Eurydice looked like she’d been slapped in the face. “There’s another? One more vital than this?”
“Of course.”
“Fuck’s sake: where?”
“In the real celestial sphere. Far overhead.”
“Then—”
“I don’t know how to get there. But rest assured I intend to find out—”
“But you don’t even know how to use this computer to manipulate the world above.”
“Because it’s latent,” said Barsine. “It’s turned off.”
“Looks pretty active to me.”
“Mostly latent, then.”
“Now you’re splitting hairs. Alexander seems to have already attained at least some control over it. Those storms—”
“I’m not sure how he’s doing that. A telepathic”—Lugorix didn’t understand the word, but he recognized it as a compound of the Greek terms for distant and experience—“link with one or both of the computers, maybe—but it’s partial, and it’s only over certain elements.”
Eurydice looked like she wanted to throw Barsine straight off the orb of Kronos. “But how does controlling this machinery control the universe in the first place? Why should a machine—”
“What the hell do you think the universe is?” demanded Barsine.
Throughout this exchange, Matthias’ gaze kept flicking back and forth from woman to woman, his mouth open, his brain left far behind. But Lugorix was concerned with more practical matters. Like the cracks that continued to grow along the ceiling far above. More fire kept on licking through, spreading along the roof of the dome. The Macedonians who had fallen into the gear-shaft seemed to have jammed that apparatus completely; as Lugorix watched, it disintegrated altogether, pieces of it flying into still more gear-shafts that in turn broke or splintered—a chain reaction that kept gathering pace, until suddenly Lugorix noticed the rail on which Zeus was rising toward them start to bend out of alignment, under ever greater pressure. He cleared his throat.
“Hey guys,” he said, “I think we might have a problem.”
Matthias suddenly seemed to snap out of his trance—he pointed up at the fiery hole at the summit of the orb above.
“You’re right about that,” he said. Lugorix abruptly realized that it wasn’t just flames coming through anymore.
It was also scores upon scores of necks.
“That fucking hydra,” breathed Lugorix.
“This is getting tricky,” said Matthias.
All the way to heaven: that’s how high the Helepolis seemed to tower. In truth it was only about four times the height of the Leviathans that Alexander had employed at Athens. But no one on the ground was in the mood to quibble. The siege-tower smashed its way through what was left of the Circle fortress—and then poured on the steam, crunching through the monuments and mansions of Syracuse’s wealthiest districts. It seemed like the whole city beyond that was on fire. Flame and smoke was everywhere. Those who were still stupid enough to be cowering in the buildings and basements came running out like swarms of insects to be crushed or shot. In the windows that lined the Helepolis, the archers were having good sport. Diocles could hear them yelling and joking to each other as they nailed everything in sight. The fact that he was so close to that monster scared him absolutely shitless. But it couldn’t be helped. Leosthenes and Agathocles had a plan. Which was ironic, the two men who ought to have been enemies cooperating in one last desperate attempt to save Syracuse. And Xanthippus, with his accursed sense of duty, was going to die helping them.
Which meant that Diocles would too. The four of them were making their way along the third level of the city’s four-level aqueduct, up to their waists in water and shit and hoping that the Helepolis wasn’t about to change direction any more than it had already done. It was right outside, moving parallel to the aqueduct, which ran down across the heights of the plateau and then down its eastern side and into the city. That was essentially the route the Helepolis intended to follow—and as far as Diocles could see there was absolutely nothing to stop it from steamrollering its way all the way into inner Syracuse, straight up to the Harbor, after which it would undoubtedly find a way to get across to the Ortygia and destroy the final citadel of Athenian resistance. He could see it through the aqueduct’s archways as it rumbled past them—and then that view was obscured by smoke as hails of flame-bolts fired by the defenders of Syracuse struck the front of the Helepolis, lodging there, burning themselves out against the metal-armor. Ahead of him, Leosthenes had stopped and taken a bizarre-looking weapon out of his satchel.
“Where’d you get that?” said Agathocles.
“From Aristotle’s workshop,” said Leosthenes. “Where all the good shit comes from.”
“Too bad you idiots couldn’t hang onto him.”
“Treason’s a dodgy thing,” said the viceroy. The device he was setting up was some kind of large crossbow, except the bolt itself looked for all the world like a grappling hook.
“That one there,” said Agathocles, gesturing through the smoke at the nearest arrow-slit as the enormous machinery clanked past.
“It’s occupied,” said Xanthippus. Agathocles nodded, removed a dart-thrower from his belt—whipped it forward. The dart shot across the space between them and the Helepolis and smacked an archer right in the face. He dropped.
“Not anymore,” said Agathocles. Leosthenes nodded, aimed the grappling hook and fired. It flew straight into that window and stuck fast. The rope hung there, suspended.
“Oh shit,” said Diocles as he realized where this was going.
“Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” said Ptolemy.
Eumenes couldn’t take his eyes off it. None of them could—save for Kalyana who was too busy driving. With a noise that literally shook the artificial universe, the rails along which Zeus was riding had just snapped—and now the huge planetary orb was sailing into space, straight toward the star-encrusted firmament.
“It’s coming straight for us,” said Eumenes—and now Kalyana did look up and acted immediately, sending the railcar ripping down another rail altogether, desperately veering away from the incoming course of the orb. The cars bearing the Carthaginians and the Macedonian soldiers saw the problem as well—the Carthaginians shot off at an angle, still running parallel with the orb of Kronos. The Macedonians went the other way.
It just happened to be the wrong one.
The giant sphere cannoned straight into them and just kept going, leaving a Zeus-sized hole in the firmament from which flame immediately began pouring. So great was the heat that Eumenes could feel it wash across him as the railcar continued speeding down the concave side. Earth was getting ever closer, though the firmament and the terrestrial disc didn’t intersect—there was a wide gulf between them even at their closest point. But the competition was in even worse shape. Kalyana gestured up at Kronos, high overhead, where the tiny figures of the four who rode it could still be seen—and whose plan to make the leap down to Zeus was no longer an option.
“No offense to them,” said Kalyana, “but they are fucked.”
Lugorix was thinking the same thing. They were still stuck on the outermost planet, and the amount of wreckage now piling up in the Zeus-orbit had made any kind of move there basically impossible. Just to make matters worse, the Balearic slingers on the wall of the firmament were getting pretty good at using gravity to augment their shots. Rocks were zinging past, and the four who clung to Kronos had no way to shield themselves. They were right on the top of the orb, otherwise they’d slide right off—and there were no crevasses or or pits to hide in, as planetary bodies were perfec
t by definition.
Which made Lugorix feel like ever more of a sitting duck. It was only a matter of time before they got nailed. Matthias had tried to get a few shots off with his bow, but he was firing against the pull of gravity, and the arrows got nowhere near the Carthaginians. But even though the situation was rapidly coming apart at the seams, the entity within Barsine didn’t seem worried.
“Eurydice,” it said. “How many of those bombs do you have left?”
“That’d be one,” said Aristotle’s daughter. “We used one on the Xerxes, one on the roof overhead, so we’re down to our last—”
“Give it to me.” Eurydice handed it over, albeit reluctantly. As she did so, another stone from one of the slingers just missed her hand—she almost dropped the bomb but Barsine reached out with unnatural speed and grabbed the device. She then smeared on the egg-honey mixture they’d used to adhere the previous bomb to the firmament overhead before adjusting the device’s wick and lighting it. As she held it, she looked around slowly—at the Earth far below, at the planetary orbs above that, at the flame jetting in from the ceiling, at all those heads of the hydra reaching down toward them. She seemed to be lost in thought. And all the while that wick was burning down.
“Would you mind getting rid of that thing?” said Eurydice. Barsine looked at her as though genuinely surprised—then in a single fluid motion she threw the bomb directly behind them, right onto Kronos’s rail. For a moment Lugorix watched that bomb recede. But only for a moment.
And then it detonated.
Instantly the rail snapped. As it did so, Lugorix suddenly felt Kronos shift beneath him—and suddenly his heart flew into his mouth as the portion of the rail they were on bent under the weight of the planetary orb…which in turn slowed, stopped, and then slid backward, the rail bending still further as they rolled straight toward the severed end.
“Oh shit,” said Lugorix.
“Everyone hold on,” said Barsine.
They plunged off into space.
“Think that’ll work?” asked Ptolemy as they watched the orb of Kronos tumble away toward the inner solar system.
“Not a chance,” said Eumenes. He could now see hydra-necks coming in through the second hole, the one that the wayward Zeus had created. Apparently fire was no problem for them. That meant two places where the dome was breached.
Suddenly there were a whole lot more.
A short distance behind where Eumenes was: several of the artificial stars past which the Carthaginian railcar was riding suddenly blew open—the furnace windows shattering as hydra-necks crashed through and seized the hapless occupants of the railcar. The two slingers were caught immediately; Hanno was knocked from the railcar altogether and tumbled away. A hydra-neck darted after him, but wasn’t going to catch up with him in time—until its tongue shot out and grabbed him. Eumenes could hear him screaming as he was drawn back to the hydra’s maw.
“We need to get off this ceiling fast,” said Ptolemy, eyeing the still-extant stars around them.
“I am working on that very problem,” said Kalyana.
They hurtled through the solar system, and worlds reeled past them. They shot through the wreckage of Zeus’ orbit, in between the gears and rails and ramps hanging in all directions, and plunged ever further downward. They weren’t falling as fast as Lugorix would have thought—Barsine said that was because they were travelling through something called aether—but they were still going down way too quickly for comfort. The disc of Earth grew as they veered in toward it. Lugorix could see the orbs of the inner planets getting ever closer. They were heading for one in particular—much smaller than either Zeus or Kronos, and colored dark-red.
“Get ready!” yelled Barsine, and it was the most emotion they’d heard from that voice since she’d been possessed by the thing within her. Next moment they just missed that red planet and struck the rail on which it was riding, bouncing for a moment… and then the grooves of gears clicked into place as they slid along its orbit, heading in the opposite direction—but no longer falling.
“Welcome to Ares,” said Barsine.
Leosthenes scrambled over the rope first, followed by Agathocles—the two of them disappearing into the window of the Helepolis, that rope slowly growing tauter as the Helepolis kept on cranking forward.
“Now you go,” said Xanthippus to Diocles.
“I’m not sure I can,” said Diocles.
“I’ll be right behind you. Now go.”
And Diocles did. He couldn’t face being shamed in Xanthippus’ eyes, and there were only seconds anyway. Not only was the rope on the point of snapping but the Helepolis was about to brush up against the aqueduct a little further down. So he banished all thought and fear from his mind, grabbed onto the rope—almost slipped, but then locked his legs around it while he pulled ahead with his arms. What probably saved him is that he didn’t look down—though looking up was bad enough, for he was staring all the way along the Helepolis, its topmost battlements set against the darkened sky. And then the rough hands of Agathocles and Leosthenes were grabbing him and dragging him through the window, pulling him onto the floor next to the body of the dead archer. It took a moment for Diocles to realize he wasn’t dead too. But then he leapt to his feet—just in time to see Xanthippus pulling himself through the window. Next moment there was a gigantic crashing noise: a mere fraction of the sound the whole of the siege-tower was making, but all too loud in that window as the Helepolis began to scrape the aqueduct. Bricks started falling past the room into which the four men had just climbed. Outside the window Diocles watched as the entire aqueduct swayed, then collapsed amidst clouds of choking dust. Then he felt the floor tilt beneath him as the Helepolis began to move down the far, eastern side of the plateau.
“Next stop central Syracuse,” breathed Agathocles.
“We’d better make this quick,” said Leosthenes.
Which was precisely what Eumenes was thinking as Kalyana accelerated the railcar still further, somehow pushing it way beyond whatever its safety margins were. Next moment, Kalyana hauled on the levers; Eumenes felt a jolt.
Next moment they fell away from the firmament.
Eumenes figured they’d come off the rails altogether, were tumbling down toward oblivion. Beside him Ptolemy was muttering prayers and curses all in the same breath. But then he realized that they were still on a rail—a very slender one, practically impossible to see against all the others that filled this chamber, for it was far narrower than any of the planetary ones and it led in a completely different direction from any of them, past the orbits and gears of Ares and through an opening in the almost-invisible crystal sphere of the Sun, past the orbits of Aphrodite and Hermes—and straight in toward the Earth. They plummeted down toward the disc, which swelled with every passing second. It was all Eumenes could do to catch his breath enough to ask the obvious question.
“What are we on?” he yelled.
“It is the route of a hairy star,” said Kalyana. “You remember it, no?”
Eumenes remembered all right, but not in his wildest nightmares did he imagine he’d be riding along the path of one, particularly not in some enormous simulation of the universe so far beneath the real one. They streaked in over the edge of the terrestrial disc, right above the hemisphere that stretched above it, containing air and roiling patterns of weather. Then blue of ocean was replaced by the green and brown of continents: there was a long one running north to south that he’d never even heard of, and then they were over Asia. He was stunned to see just how much land there was to the east of the furthest extent of Alexander’s march—and then they were cruising in above the mountains of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush where he and Hephaestion had spent so much time in search of the lost treasures of the ancients… the ancients whose world he was even now penetrating straight to the heart of. He wondered if they had populated the disc beneath him with miniature creatures or automata, or if they’d simply left it barren, uninhabited, the only intelligence in h
ere that of the machine itself. He wondered how that machine worked in the first place—how it was controlled, what it controlled (was it really the entire world above?—was the whole universe simply a huge machine?—were there worlds beyond even it—unseen worlds past the cosmic fire that ringed the universe, that contained the universe, nothing but machine encompassing machine encompassing machine?)—and then they were sweeping out above the Mediterranean, over the Pillars of Hercules, past the Fortunate Islands, dropping ever closer to the Ocean. Which was when Eumenes suddenly realized that Kalyana had screwed this one up, that they were going to smash straight into the hemisphere of air—he was close enough to that hemisphere to see the engines and pipes stacked along it that controlled its atmosphere and weather—but then he realized the ramp extended past it, just missed the edge of the disc and continued onward.
Except now they were switching onto yet another ramp and rising up again, the western edge of the Earth dropping away beneath them, nothing but abyss below them.
And nothing but the Moon in front of them.
“Brace yourself,” said Kalyana.
Then they were off, battling their way out into the Helepolis, killing everyone who tried to stop them and sneaking right past all those who didn’t notice. And there were a lot who didn’t: most of the crew were working the siege-engines and firing out the arrow-slits at the mass of targets below—and there was so much smoke and so much noise that most of them never even bothered to turn around.
Not that the intruders were staying in the high-trafficked areas. Leosthenes led the way; apparently he’d seen the plans for this monstrosity, either through Athenian intelligence or because Aristotle had taken it with him when he fled Pella. The place was a veritable maze of catwalks and stairs and ladders. In short order they made their way off the level they’d boarded at and up some rungs onto the next. There was a gap in the floor ahead of them: Diocles suddenly found himself looking out into a vast hollow space, a hole cut through several levels. At each level, hundreds of men were turning gigantic capstans, while rising through the entirety of the open space were enormous clanking engines and whirling gears that hissed and spat as conveyor belts of buckets dumped water to cool them.
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