by Dan Simmons
Amen, sends his friend.
At that moment alarm bells begin ringing all over the ship, while alarm lights and klaxons override tightbeams and flash and clang across all other shared virtual and comm channels.
“Intruder! Intruder!” sounds the ship’s voice.
Is this a joke? sends Mahnmut.
No, replies Orphu. Your friend Thomas Hockenberry just… appeared… on the deck of the engine room here. He must have quantum teleported in.
Is he all right?
No. He’s bleeding profusely… there’s already blood all over the deck. He looks dead to me, Mahnmut. I’ve got him in my manipulators and I’m moving toward the human-hospital as fast as my repellors can get me there.
The ship is huge, the gravity is greater than anything he’s operated in before, and it takes Mahnmut several minutes to get out of his submersible, then out of the hold, and then up to the decks that he thinks of as the “human levels” of the ship. Besides enough sleeping and cooking quarters and toilets and acceleration couches to accommodate five hundred human beings, besides an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere set at sea-level pressure to be harmonious for humans, Deck 17 has a working medical infirmary outfitted with state-of-the-art early Twenty-second Century surgical and diagnostic equipment—ancient, but based on the most updated schematics that the Five Moons moravecs had on file.
Odysseus—their reluctant and angry human passenger—has been the only occupant of Deck 17 for this first day out from Phobos, but by the time Mahnmut arrives, he sees that a majority of the moravecs on the ship have gathered. Orphu is here, filling the corridor, as is the Ganymedan Prime Integrator Suma IV, the Callistan Cho Li, rockvec General Beh bin Adee, and two of the pilot techs from the bridge. The door to the medlab surgery is closed, but through the clear glass, Mahnmut can see Prime Integrator Asteague/Che watching as the spidery Amalthean, Prime Integrator Retrograde Sinopessen, works frantically over Hockenberry’s bloody body. Two smaller tech ‘vecs are taking Sinopessen’s orders, wielding laser scalpels and saws, connecting tubes, fetching gauze, and aiming virtual imaging equipment. There is blood on Retrograde Sinopessen’s small metal body and elegant silver manipulators.
Human blood, thinks Mahnmut. Hockenberry’s blood. There is more blood spattered here on the floor of the wide access corridor, some on the walls, and more on the pitted carapace and broad manipulators of his friend Orphu of Io.
“How is he?” Mahnmut asks Orphu, vocalizing the words. It is considered impolite to tightbeam in the company of other ‘vecs.
“Dead when I got him here,” says Orphu. “They’re trying to bring him back.”
“Is Integrator Sinopessen a student of human anatomy and medicine?”
“He’s always had an interest in Lost Era human medicine,” says Orphu. “It was his hobby. Sort of like you with Shakespeare’s sonnets and me with Proust.”
Mahnmut nods. Most of the moravecs he’d known on Europa had some interest in humanity and their ancient arts and sciences. Such interests had been programmed into the early autonomous robots and cyborgs seeded in the Asteroid Belt and Outer System, and their evolved moravec descendants retained the fascination. But does Sinopessen know enough human medicine to bring Hockenberry back from the dead?
Mahnmut sees Odysseus emerging from the cubby where he’s been sleeping. The barrel-chested man stops when he sees the crowd in the corridor and his hand automatically goes to the hilt of his sword—or rather, to the empty loop on his belt, for the moravecs had relieved him of his sword while he was unconscious on the hornet trip up to the ship. Mahnmut tries to imagine how strange this all must look to the son of Laertes—this metal ship they’ve described to him, sailing on the ocean of space he cannot see, now this motley assortment of moravecs in the corridor. No two ‘vecs are quite the same in size or appearance, ranging from Orphu’s two-ton hulking presence to the blackly smooth Suma IV to the chitinous and warlike rockvec General Beh bin Adee.
Odysseus ignores all of them and goes straight to the med lab window to stare in at the surgery, his face expressionless. Again, Mahnmut wonders what the bearded, barrel-chested warrior is thinking, seeing this long-legged silver spider and the two black-shelled techvecs hunched over Hockenberry—a man whom Odysseus has seen and spoken to many times in the last nine months—Odysseus and the group of moravecs in the corridor all staring at Hockenberry’s blood and opened chest and spread ribs splayed like something in a butcher shop. Will Odysseus think that Retrograde Sinopessen is eating him? wonders Mahnmut.
Without turning his gaze away from the operation, Odysseus says to Mahnmut in ancient Greek, “Why did your friends kill Hockenberry, son of Duane?”
“They didn’t. Hockenberry suddenly appeared here in our ship… you remember how he can use the gods’ abilities to travel instantly from place to place?”
“I remember,” says Odysseus. “I’ve watched him transport Achilles to Ilium, disappearing and appearing again as do the gods themselves. But I never believed that Hockenberry was a god or a son of a god.”
“No, he’s not, and has never claimed to be,” says Mahnmut. “And now it looks as if someone has stabbed him, but he was able to QT… to travel like the gods travel… here for help. The silver moravec you see in there and its two assistants are trying to save Hockenberry’s life.”
Odysseus turns his gray-eyed gaze down on Mahnmut. “Save his life, little machine-man? I can see that he is dead. The spider is lifting out his heart.”
Mahnmut turns to look. The son of Laertes is right.
Unwilling to distract Sinopessen, Mahnmut contacts Asteague/Che on the common channel. Is he dead? Irretrievably dead?
The Prime Integrator standing near the surgical table watching the procedure does not lift his head as he answers on the common band. No. Hockenberry’s life functions ceased for only a little over a minute before Sinopessen froze all brain activity—he believes that there was no irreversible damage. Integrator Sinopessen informs me that normally the procedure would be to inject several million nanocytes to repair the human’s damaged aorta and heart muscle, then insert more specialized molecular machines to replenish his blood supply and strengthen his immune system. The Integrator discovered that this is not possible with scholic Hockenberry.
Why not? asks the Callistan integrator, Cho Li.
Scholic Hockenberry’s cells are signed.
Signed? says Mahnmut. He’d never had much interest in biology or genetics—human or moravec—although he had long studied the biology of kraken, kelp, and other creatures of the Europan ocean where he’d driven his submersible for the last standard century and more.
Signed—copyrighted and copy-protected, sends Asteague/Che on the common band. Everyone on the ship except Odysseus and the unconscious Hockenberry is listening. This scholic was not born, he was… built. Retroengineered from some starter DNA and RNA. His body will accept no organ transplants, but more important than that, it will not accept new nanocytes, since it is already filled with very advanced nanotechnology.
What kind? asks the buckycarbon-sheathed Ganymedan, Suma IV. What does it do?
We don’t know yet. This answer comes from Sinopessen himself, even as his thin fingers wield laser scalpel, sutures, and micro-scissors while one of his other hands holds Hockenberry’s heart. These nanomemes and microcytes are much more sophisticated and complex than anything this surgery has or anything we’ve designed for moravec use. The cells and subcellular machinery ignore our own nano-interrogation and destroy any alien intrusion.
But you can save him anyway? asks Cho Li.
I believe so, says Retrograde Sinopessen. I’ll finish replenishing Scholic Hockenberry’s blood supply, complete the cell-repair and sewing up, allow neural activity to resume, initiate Grsvki-field stimulus to accelerate recovery, and he should be all right.
Mahnmut turns to share this prognosis with Odysseus, but the Achaean has turned and walked away.
The second day out from Mars and Phobos.
&n
bsp; Odysseus walks the hallways, climbs the stairways, avoids the elevators, searches the rooms, and ignores the Hephaestan artifices called moravecs as he seeks a way out of this metal-halled annex to Hades.
“O Zeus,” he whispers in a long chamber empty and silent except for humming boxes, whispering ventilators, and gurgling pipes, “Father wide-ruling over gods and men alike, Father whom I disobeyed and rashly warred with, He who hast thundered forth from starry heaven for all the length of my life, He who once sent his beloved daughter Athena to favor me with her protection and love, Father, I ask thee now for a sign. Lead me out of this metal Hades of shadows and shades and impotent gestures to which I have come before my time. I ask only for my chance to die in battle, O Zeus, O Father who rules over the firm earth and the wide sea. Grant me this final wish and I shall be thy servant for all the days remaining to me.”
There is no answer, not even an echo.
Odysseus, son of Laertes, father of Telemachus, beloved of Penelope, favorite of Athena, clenches his fists and teeth against his fury and continues to pace the metal tunnels of this shell, this hell.
The artifices have told him that he is in a metal ship sailing the black sea of the kosmos, but they lie. They have told him that they took him from the battlefield on the day the Hole collapsed because they seek to help him find his way home to his wife and son, but they lie. They have told him that they are thinking objects—like men—with souls and hearts like men, but they lie.
This metal tomb is huge, a vertical labyrinth, and it has no windows. Here and there Odysseus finds transparent surfaces through which he can peer into yet another room, but he finds no windows or ports to look out onto this black sea of which they speak, only a few bubbles of clear glass that show him an eternally black sky holding the usual constellations. Sometimes the stars wheel and spin as if he’s had too much to drink. When none of the moravec machine toys are around, he pounds the windows and the walls until his massive, war-calloused fists are bloody, but he makes no marks on the glass or metal. He breaks nothing. Nothing opens to his will.
Some chambers are open to Odysseus, many are locked, and a few—like the place called the bridge, which they showed him on that first day of his exile in this right-angled Hades—are guarded by the black and thorny artifices called rockvecs or battle ‘vecs or Belt troopers. He has seen these black-thorned things fight during the months they helped protect Ilium and the Achaean encampments against the fury of the gods, and he knows that they have no honor. They are only machines using machines to fight other machines. But they are larger and heavier than Odysseus, armed with their machine weapons, and armored with their built-in blades and metal skin, whereas Odysseus has been stripped of all his weapons and armor. If all else fails, he will try to wrest a weapon away from one of the battle ‘vecs, but only after he has exhausted all his other choices. Having held and wielded weapons since he was a toddler, Odysseus, son of Laertes, knows that they must be learned—practiced with—their function and form understood as any artist understands his tools—and he does not know these blunt, scalloped, heavy, pointless weapons that the rockvecs carry.
In the room with all the roaring machines and the huge, plunging cylinders, he talks to the huge metal crab of a monster. Somehow, Odysseus knows the thing is blind. Yet somehow, he also knows, it finds its way around without the use of its eyes. Odysseus has known many brave men who were blind, and has visited blind seers, oracles, whose human sight had been replaced with second sight.
“I want to go back to the battlefields of Troy, Monster,” he says. “Take me there at once.”
The crab rumbles. It speaks Odysseus’ language, the language of civilized men, but so abominably that the words sound more like the crash of harsh surf on rocks—or the plunge and hiss of the huge pistons above—rather than true human speech.
“We have… long trip… in front of me… us… noble Odysseus, honored son of Laertes. When that is dead… finished… over… we hope to remove you… return you… to Penelope and Telemachus.”
How dare this animated metal hulk touch the names of my wife and child with its hidden tongue, thinks Odysseus. If he had even the dullest of swords or the crudest of clubs, he would bash this thing to pieces, tear open its shell, and find and rip out that tongue.
Odysseus leaves the crab-monster and seeks the bubble of curved glass where he can see the stars.
They are not moving now. They do not blink. Odysseus sets his scarred palms against the cold glass.
“Athena, goddess… I sing the glorious Power with azure eyes, Pallas Athena, tameless, chaste, and wise… hear my prayer.
“Tritogenia, goddess… town-preserving Maid, revered and mighty; from his awful head whom Zeus himself brought forth… in warlike armor dressed… Golden! All radiant!… I beseech thee, hear my prayer.
“Wonder, goddess, strange possessed… the everlasting Gods that Shape to see… shaking a javelin keen… impetuously rush from the crest of Aegis-bearing God, Father Zeus… so fearfully was heaven shaken… and did move beneath the might of the Cerulean-eyed…. hear my prayer.
“Child of the Aegis bearer, Third Born… sublime Pallas whom we rejoice to view… wisdom personified whose praise shall never unremembered be… hail to thee… please hear my prayer.”
Odysseus opens his eyes. Only the unblinking stars and his own reflection return his gray-eyed gaze.
The third day out from Phobos and Mars.
To a distant observer—say, someone watching through a powerful optical telescope from one of the orbital rings around Earth—the Queen Mab would appear as a complicated spear-shaft of girder-wrapped spheres, ovals, tanks, brightly painted oblongs, many-belled thruster quads, and a profusion of black buckycarbon hexagons, all arranged around the core stack of cylindrical habitation modules, all of which, in turn, are balanced atop a column of increasingly brilliant atomic flashes.
Mahnmut goes to see Hockenberry in the infirmary. The human is healing quickly, thanks in part to the Grsvki-process, which fills the ten-bed recovery room with the smell of a thunderstorm. Mahnmut has brought flowers from the Queen Mab’s extensive greenhouse—his memory banks had told him that this was still proper protocol in the prerubicon Twenty-first Century from which Hockenberry, or at least Hockenberry’s DNA, had come. The scholic actually laughs at the sight of them and allows that he’s never been given flowers before, at least as best he can recall. But Hockenberry adds that his memory of his life on Earth—his real life, his life as a university scholar rather than as a scholic for the gods—is far from complete.
“It’s lucky that you QT’d to the Queen Mab,” says Mahnmut. “No one else would have had the medical expertise or the surgical skills with which to heal you.”
“Or the spidery moravec surgeon,” says Hockenberry. “Little did I know when I met Retrograde Sinopessen that he’d end up saving my life within twenty-four hours. Funny how life works.”
Mahnmut can think of nothing to say to that. After a minute, he says, “I know you’ve talked to Asteague/Che about what happened to you, but would you mind discussing it again?”
“Not at all.”
“You say that Helen stabbed you?”
“Yes.”
“And the motive was just to keep her husband—Menelaus—from ever discovering that it was she who betrayed him after you quantum teleported him back to the Achaean lines?”
“I think so.” Mahnmut was not an expert at reading human facial expressions, but even he could tell that Hockenberry looked sad at the thought.
“But you told Asteague/Che that you and Helen had been intimate… were once lovers.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to excuse my ignorance about such things, Dr. Hockenberry, but it would appear that Helen of Troy is a very vicious woman.”
Hockenberry shrugs and smiles, albeit sadly. “She’s a product of her era, Mahnmut—formed by harsh times and motives beyond my understanding. When I used to teach the Iliad to my undergraduate student
s, I’d always emphasize that all of our attempts to humanize Homer’s tale—to make it into something explicable by modern humanist sensibilities—were destined to fail. These characters… these people … while completely human, were poised at the very beginning of our so-called civilized era, millennia before our current humanist values would begin to emerge. Viewed in that light, Helen’s actions and motivations are as hard for us to fathom as, say, Achilles’ almost complete lack of mercy or Odysseus’ endless guile.”
Mahnmut nods. “Did you know that Odysseus is on this ship? Has he come to see you?”
“No, I haven’t seen him. But Prime Integrator Asteague/Che told me he was aboard. Actually, I’m afraid he’ll kill me.”
“Kill you?” says Mahnmut, shocked.
“Well, you remember you used me to help kidnap him. I was the one who convinced him that you had a message from Penelope for him—all that garbage about the olive tree trunk as part of his bed back home in Ithaca. And when I got him to the hornet… zap! Mep Ahoo coldcocked him and loaded him aboard the hornet. If I were Odysseus, I’d sure carry a grudge against one Thomas Hockenberry.”
Coldcocked, thinks Mahnmut. He loved it when he encountered a new English word. He runs it through his lexicon, finds it, discovers to his surprise that it isn’t an obscenity, and files it away for future use. “I’m sorry I put you in a position of possible harm,” says Mahnmut. He considers telling the scholic that in all the confusion of the Hole closing forever, Orphu had tightbeamed him an order from the prime integrators—get Odysseus—but then he thinks better of using that as an excuse. Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., had been born into the century when the excuse of I was only following orders went out of style once and for all.
“I’ll talk to Odysseus …” begins Mahnmut.
Hockenberry shakes his head and smiles again. “I’ll talk to him sooner or later. In the meantime, Asteague/Che posted one of your rockvecs as a guard.”
“I wondered what the Belt moravec was doing outside the medlab,” says Mahnmut.