by James Gunn
He knew, with a terrifying certainty, that no matter what the artistic necessity, he would have saved Hector if he could. That was the true measure of his compulsion. He wanted the dream to go on even if it meant that the war continued for another ten years, that men fell in his dream like slaughtered oxen, that blood ran instead of water between the banks of the Scamander—so long as he could return to Helen.
He would return, he knew. He would return to Helen's sensuous arms and the unaging splendor of her body. He would return to a world without Hector, to a world where he would have to face Achilles, yes, and kill him.
He sat upright as the thought came to him. Hector had said that Paris would bring down Achilles. If he could slay Achilles, no matter how fierce the struggle, then the war was not yet lost. Even more important, he would become a hero to the Trojans, a hero to Helen. What would that bring to their lovemaking?
More disturbing than that was the realization that he had accepted Hector's prophecy. He, the skeptic, the mover not the moved, had accepted the reality of a world in which people could see the future or could read the will of the gods in omens and auguries. He did not want to believe, he could not believe that he had dreamed a world like that, but everything had happened as Cassandra and Helenus had foreseen, as Aesacus had prophesied before the birth of Paris.
There had to be another explanation. Perhaps he had spent too long in that world, and the basic material was overwhelming his conscious desires. Was there another will than his to be reckoned with? Was there another dreamer shaping events to his desires? Who could it be? Old Homer? Was Samuel so weak and the material so powerful that he was moved around by it as if he were no less a puppet of the Olympians than the Trojans and the Achaeans who spilt their wine upon the ground and burnt their animal offerings to the quarrelsome gods?
It had to be something else. He was no apprentice dreamer, no cheap-jack exploiter of sensations.
“Have you had any other inputs to this dream, other than mine?” he asked.
“Yes,” the console said in its womanly voice. He would have to get it changed.
So much for gods and poets, he thought. “What kind of inputs?"
“That information is not available."
Samuel tapped the arm of the chair. “You won't tell me?"
“I do not know. I merely know that the information is not available."
“To you or to me?” Samuel asked cannily.
“The answer to that is not available."
Samuel had never run across this kind of unresponsiveness before. “What if I tell you to eliminate the foreign information or the instructions, whatever it is, from your operational system or your memory, will you be able to comply?"
“Since I cannot distinguish between inputs, the answer is no."
“Whose input is involved—besides mine?"
“That information is not available."
Samuel paused to consider the implications of what he had learned. Someone or something had complicated his dream and had done it so cleverly that he could not discover what had been done. The situation called for the services of a computer expert, who could talk the language better than he, but there were few experts available in anything. A search might take many periods and then be unsuccessful.
If he wanted to correct what had been done, he would have to become an expert himself. With a little practice and a few caps, he could become sufficiently informed to handle any kind of computer difficulty. It was, after all, only a problem of how to converse with the console, what questions to ask, what orders to give in what precise way. But that, too, would take time, and his memory would be clogged for many periods or even cycles with useless information. He might be ruined as a dreamer.
And how could he stay away that long from Helen and the world of Ilium? They were the siren songs that promised him, like Odysseus, knowledge of the many things that in broad Troy the Achaeans and the Trojans suffered at the will of the gods.
“Could we start all over,” Samuel asked, “eliminating everything, all the dream, and begin again? Fresh, with new data?"
“Yes."
No equivocation here. He could wipe it out. He could start over. But he couldn't. He could not bear to kill the woman he loved beyond honor, beyond reason, even if he could resurrect her the next moment. And if he did, she might be not quite the same. She might be subtly changed by the knowledge that he had killed her once, twice, a hundred times before; she might not love him but fear that he might kill her again.
Besides—the inexorable river of events was carrying him toward some unseen destination, and he could not swim against it.
Regi or Zoe might have sought revenge or attempted to keep him from enjoying the dream each envied. But he wouldn't give it up. Whatever the outcome, he would take his chances.
He got to his feet, staggering a bit as he stood up, and made his way to the round bed and placed himself in the position for dreaming.
* * * *
The city of Ilium was fated not to fall if Troilus, son of Priam, reached the age of twenty. But as he fought with Achilles, the peerless killer of men fell in love with him. When Troilus would not yield to his embraces, Achilles slew him.
I lie beside Helen, the sweat of our lovemaking drying upon our bodies. We lie in the bedroom of the palace I built for her upon the ruins of other buildings, sometimes using their stones as materials for construction.
The city beneath us is layered like memory. At least five civilizations built cities on this hill. Each in turn was destroyed and built again. No one knows where the Trojans came from, whether we have always been here, whether we were part of a great migration by sea from the southeast, or whether we were Greeks arriving from the north.
Eventually Ilium must fall, and other cities will be built on its ruins. In these savage times no city endures for long. But a few decades, a few years, are the difference between destruction and survival. It must not happen now. We will defend these walls. We will force the Achaean invaders from our shores. We will protect our right to levy tribute on the ships that traverse the Hellespont. And I will protect my right to Helen and our moments of ecstasy that we have bought so dearly.
Achilles remains our greatest danger. After the death of Hector he behaved like the barbarian he is. He slit Hector's heels behind the tendons and tied them to his chariot with leather straps, and he dragged Hector's body through the dust to the Achaean camp. The Achaeans burned Patroclus's body in a giant funeral pyre that we could see from the walls of Troy and built a great barrow for his bones. Then they had a feast in his honor and followed it with funeral games on the beach. We could hear the shouting and laughter in Ilium when our own lamentation eased off for a moment. We were praying to Aphrodite and Apollo to keep Hector's body from decay and not to let the dogs eat it.
The actions of Achilles cannot be condoned by the gods; he will be punished. Every day he harnessed his horses to his chariot, tied the body of Hector behind it, and hauled him three times in the dust around the barrow of Patroclus. Finally, on the twelfth day, Priam could endure no longer the indignities suffered by his son's body. He went unarmed and with only a herald to the Achaean camp. There, in the hut of Achilles, he offered a prince's ransom for Hector's body. Clasping Achilles’ knees and kissing the hard hands that killed his son, he begged for the corpse. The killer of men, surprisingly, was moved and agreed to let the body go. Or perhaps he was moved only by the ransom.
Whatever the reason, Priam returned with the corpse, and we lamented for him. For nine days we gathered firewood and built a pyre fit for a king. We placed Hector's body upon it and set fire to the wood, and when the fire had completed its work, we collected his bones, wrapped them in soft purple cloth, placed them in a golden chest, and lowered it into a hollow grave. We covered the grave with large stones and built a barrow over it.
Such were the funeral rites of Hector, tamer of horses.
And then there came an Amazon, Penthesileia, who sought refuge in Ilium from t
he Erinyes of her sister, Hippolyte. She had shot her sister accidently while hunting, but Priam purified her, and she fought for Troy. She killed many Achaeans, including the surgeon Machaon, and several times she drove Achilles himself from the field. But at last Achilles ran her through with his spear. According to some who say they saw it happen, Achilles fell in love with her dead body and committed necrophilia upon it.
Priam persuaded his half brother, Tithonus of Assyria, to send two thousand troops under the command of his son Memnon the Ethiopian. Memnon was as black as ebony and the handsomest man alive—I say it myself—and a great warrior. He killed many Achaeans, including Antilochus, son of Nestor.
That day we nearly burned the Achaean ships, but some unseen hand dragged down the veil of night, and we had to retire. The Achaeans chose Big Ajax to challenge Memnon to single combat, but the next morning Achilles heard about the death of Antilochus and insisted on taking Ajax's place. Memnon, too, died on the point of Achilles’ bright spear.
Achilles still rages upon the plains of Troy, but the walls of Ilium stand unscaled. I lift Helen's arm and admire the marvelous reticulation of the bones and the way the flesh surrounds them and how the skin, as smooth as silk, slides over the flesh as I place the arm upon the rounded hip upthrust beside me. With a finger I trace the feathery dark eyebrow above the closed eyes and the nose and the velvet lips. Helen is a miracle of design and construction, like any other woman and yet to me unique beyond credibility.
“Why?” I ask.
She senses my meaning and replies, “Because the gods willed it."
“The gods,” I say, turning on my back and pillowing my head on my right arm. “They are merely our explanation for the inequalities of chance, for one man's luck and another man's misfortune."
Her dark eyes open wider. “Nothing happens by chance. There must be a cause for everything. You call it ‘luck’ and ‘misfortune.’ What is that but another name for the Fates? Do you think I loved you by choice? Oh, you're pretty enough, and we have brought each other much pleasure, though much torment, too. But why would I bring such tragedy on so many people if it were not the will of the gods? No, each man has his lot determined at birth: I am yours, and you are mine. And we are Troy's. If we did not believe this to be true, our suffering would drive us mad."
Zeus the Thunderer keeps two jars on the floor of his palace. They hold his gifts, the evils in one, the blessings in the other. People who receive a mixture have varying fortunes, sometimes good, sometimes bad. But when Zeus reaches into the jar of evil only, he makes that man an outcast, chased by the gadfly of despair over the face of the earth; he goes his way damned by gods and man alike.
“Besides,” she says, “you must not blaspheme. It might bring evil upon us."
I roll to a sitting position and begin to put on my armor. “If it's all predetermined,” I say, “then it doesn't matter what I say or do. It was prophesied that Achilles would not long survive the death of Hector and that I would kill him. We will see if this is the day."
But we flee once more before the Achaean slayer of men, as if some nightmare must be repeated time and again before it will release us from its terrors. Achilles harries us across the plain toward the city, killing the laggards, killing the cowards who are afraid to run and the brave warriors who turn to fight. Death plays no favorites today, and my will is submerged in the fear that grips Paris. I feel as if Zeus has stolen my courage and I must flee.
And yet at the Scaean Gate my resolution suddenly returns. Achilles approaches in his chariot, throwing his spears through the backs of Trojans flying before him, cutting through flesh and bone with his bronze sword, like a monstrous machine for killing.
I remove the bow from my shoulder and carefully select an arrow. I fit it against the string and pull it back, accounting for distance, wind, and the speed and direction of Achilles’ chariot. I release it. The arrow rises in the air and then dips. I feel as if an unseen hand is guiding it, mine or another's; it flies miraculously toward its target and then, as the chariot turns, the arrow drops from sight.
I think that I have failed again, and my shoulders sag. But suddenly Achilles droops against the chariot rail. The chariot slowly tips under the weight of his gigantic body. He falls to the ground, writhing in agony, my arrow buried in his heel.
When I look up to the walls of Ilium, the Trojan people are cheering my great victory. Even Priam smiles. Helen is there, too, her eyes aglow with another kind of joy. I see her turn and leave and I know where she is going to wait for me. I think of her naked there upon the bed, and my happiness is almost too great to contain.
* * * *
Samuel opened his eyes. For a moment the red room blurred as if seen through tears. Each time he was awakened from his dream, he felt weaker, as if his strength and will were being drained into Paris. Unless this trend were reversed, some day he might not wake up at all, despite all the efforts of the console to invigorate his body. Strangely, the thought of retiring permanently into his dream, like some will-less poppet, didn't alarm him. Perhaps it was a measure of his weakness.
But why should he care if he existed permanently in this dream now that he had been victorious? Achilles was dead; Helen was his. And yet what of the prophecies? They had all been right: Calchas, Cassandra, Helenus, even Polydamas. They all foresaw the fall of Troy, the burning of Ilium, the massacre of the men, the enslavement and concubinage of the women.
Hector had been destined to die on Achilles’ spear, and Achilles was destined to die soon after with Paris's arrow through his heel, and how would Paris escape the fall of Troy? And if he died ... That was impossible; the dreamer cannot die. But if he died, what would be the fate of Helen? In whose lustful arms would she lie, to whose pitiless fingers would she yield her body, to whose savage arrogance would she loosen her thighs? Whose ears would hear the melody of her hastened breath, the moans of her consummation?
Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
He could still make his will prevail, Samuel thought, and staggered to his feet. He could still shape this dream into his epic—his epic, not Homer's. He could—but he forgot what he could do, because he had to concentrate on getting to the lavatory without falling. He stood in the cubicle, leaning against one wall, his eyes closed, while the alternating hot and cold water beat down upon him.
“Samuel."
“Yes, Helen.” No, he was getting confused. That could not be Helen. Helen would have called him Paris. There was nobody calling him. “Noman is my name,” he brought from some recess of memory.
“Samuel."
He came weary and dripping from the shower to face an image of Zoe. It was projected from the console into the space between the bed and the drop shaft. She looked real enough, but Samuel knew she was only an image because he could see the outline of the drop shaft through her legs.
“Let me alone,” he said.
“I can't,” the image replied.
“Then dream of me, but don't bother me,” Samuel said. “I'm tired to death of you."
“You think I'm a foolish girl,” Zoe said, with a kind of tragic dignity Samuel once would have admired, “but I'm a real person, with ideas and imagination and feelings that go as deep as yours. If I'm foolish, it's for loving you when you don't deserve it and for not being able to help myself."
“I don't deserve it,” Samuel said, collapsing into a chair and resting his chin in his hands. “I'm old and ugly and selfish and unpleasant, and your vitality wears me out. I don't have any love in me; I've never loved anybody. All I have now is my dream. Let me go back to it in peace."
“You can't go back,” Zoe said. “That's what I came to tell you."
“Why not?” Alarm made him lift his heavy head. What had this foolish girl done?
“I've added information to the console, and you can't go back."
“What did you ad
d?"
“The information you left out. The rest of the story. The Odyssey and a few other things. It tells how the war comes out and what happens to Paris. You must have noticed!"
Of course he had noticed. That explained the resistance to his dreaming, the other will at work, the information that occurred to him when he should not have known. But his subconscious knew, and it controlled his dreams in ways he had not thought about until now.
“It turns out badly,” Zoe said. “It will be too much for you. You're not strong, Samuel. Paris dies, and when he dies..."
Now that he knew what the problem was, he could solve it. He felt confident of that. If only he didn't feel so weak, so tired. Well, in the dream he wasn't weak. He could be strong. He would be strong for Helen.
“I only did it so you wouldn't go back,” Zoe said. “You understand that, don't you? I don't want you to die, and you'll die—I know it—if you go back to that terrible place—"
“You will allow nobody to enter this room under any conditions,” Samuel told the console. “You will allow no one to alter the instructions I have given you or to add or subtract information. You will keep me alive as long as you can without waking me, and you will not wake me until the dream is over. You understand? Until the dream is over."
“Don't go back!” Zoe pleaded. “You musn't go back. I won't bother you anymore. I'll change the instructions. I'll remove the information. Don't go back! Please, Samuel—"
He assumed the position for dreaming and allowed the little needles to begin their work.
* * * *
"Troy will not be taken without the bow and arrows of Heracles that are now in the possession of Philoctetes."