by Dan Simmons
“No.”
Odysseus nods. “That’s smart. That’s wise. You must come from a long line of philosophers.”
“My father fought,” says Hockenberry, surprised at the memories flooding in. As far as he can tell, he’s not thought of or remembered his father in the last ten years of his second life.
“Where?” asks Odysseus. “Tell me the battle. I may have been there.”
“Okinawa,” says Hockenberry.
“I don’t know of this battle.”
“My father survived it,” says Hockenberry, feeling his throat tightening. “He was very young. Nineteen. He was in the Marines. He came home later that same year and I was born three years after that. He never spoke of it.”
“He didn’t brag of his bravery or describe the battle to his boy?” asks Odysseus, incredulous. “No wonder you grew up to be a philospher rather than a fighter.”
“He never mentioned it at all,” says Hockenberry. “I knew he was in the war, but I found out about his actions on Okinawa only years later, by reading old letters of commendation from his commanding officer, a lieutenant not much older than my father when they fought. I found the letters, and medals, in my father’s old Marine trunk after he died. I was already close to having my Ph.D. in classics then, so I used my research skills to learn something about the battle in which my father received a Purple Heart and a Silver Star.”
Odysseus doesn’t ask about these odd-sounding prizes. Instead, he says, “Did your father do well in battle, son of Duane?”
“I think he did. He was wounded twice on May 20, 1945, during a fight for a place called Sugar Loaf Hill on the island of Okinawa.”
“I don’t know this island.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Hockenberry. “It’s far away from Ithaca.”
“Were there many men in this fight?”
“My father’s side had one hundred and eighty-three thousand men ready to be thrown into the battle,” says Hockenberry. He is also looking out at the stars now. “His army was carried to the island of Okinawa in a fleet of more than sixteen hundred ships. There were a hundred and ten thousand of the enemy waiting for them, dug into rock and coral and caves.”
“No city to lay siege to?” asks Odysseus, looking at the scholic with an expression of interest for the first time since their conversation began.
“No real city, no,” says Hockenberry. “It was just one battle in a bigger war. The other side wanted to kill our people to prevent an invasion of their home island. Our side ended up killing them any way they could—they poured flame into their caves, entombed them alive. My father’s comrades killed more than a hundred thousand of the hundred and ten thousand Japanese on the island.” He takes a drink. “The Japanese were our enemies then.”
“A glorious victory,” says Odysseus.
Hockenberry makes a soft noise.
“The numbers involved—men, ships—reminds me of our war for Troy,” says the Argive.
“Yes, very similar,” says Hockenberry. “As was the ferocity of the fighting. Hand-to-hand in rain and mud, day and night.”
“Did your father return with much plunder? Slave girls? Gold?”
“He brought home a samurai sword—the sword of an enemy officer—but put it away in a trunk and never even showed it to me when I was a boy.”
“Were many of your father’s comrades sent down to the House of Death?”
“Counting both the men fighting on land and at sea, 12,520 Americans were killed,” says Hockenberry, his scholar’s mind—and his son’s heart—having no trouble recalling the figures. “There were 33,631 wounded on our side. The enemy, as I said, lost more than a hundred thousand dead, thousands and thousands burned to death and entombed in the caves and holes where they dug in to fight.”
“We Achaeans have lost more than twenty-five thousand comrades in front of the walls of Ilium,” says Odysseus. “The Trojans have built funeral pyres to at least that many of their own.”
“Yes,” says Hockenberry with a slight smile, “but that’s over a period of ten years. My father’s battle on the island of Okinawa lasted only ninety days.”
There is a silence. The Queen Mab rotates again, as smoothly and majestically as some giant marine mammal rolling over as it swims. Brilliant sunlight pours over them briefly, causing each man to raise his hand to shield his eyes, and then the stars return.
“I’m surprised I’ve never heard of this war,” says Odysseus, handing the scholic a fresh gourd of wine. “But still, you must be proud of your father, son of Duane. Your people must have treated the victors in that battle like gods. Songs will be sung of it for centuries around your hearths. The names of the men who fought and died there will be known to the grandsons of the grandsons of the heroes, and the details of every individual combat will be sung by minstrels and poets.”
“Actually,” says Hockenberry, taking a long drink, “almost everyone in my country has forgotten that battle already.”
Are you hearing this? sends Mahnmut on tightbeam. Yes. Orphu of Io is outside on the hull of the Queen Mab, scuttling around with the other hard-vac moravecs during the twenty-four hours that the ship is not under acceleration or deceleration, doing inspections and carrying out repairs on minor damage from micrometeorite hits, solar flares, or the effects of the fission bombs they have been detonating behind them. It is possible to work on the hull while the ship is under way—Orphu has been outside several times in the last two weeks, moving along the system of catwalks and ladders rigged for that purpose—but the big Ionian is already on record as saying he prefers the zero-gravity to what he’s described as working on the face of a hundred-story building while under acceleration, with an all-too-real sense of the stern and pusher plate of the ship being down.
Hockenberry sounds quite drunk, sends Orphu.
I think he is, responds Mahnmut. This wine that Asteague/Che had the galley replicate is powerful stuff, based on a sample of Medean wine from an amphora “borrowed” from Hector’s wine cellar. Hockenberry has been drinking lesser versions of this red Medean for years with the Greeks and Trojans, but almost certainly in moderation—the Greeks mix more water than wine into their cups. Sometimes they add saltwater or perfumes like myrrh.
Now that sounds barbarous, tightbeams Orphu.
At any rate, sends Mahnmut, the scholic hasn’t eaten since he was spacesick earlier today, so his empty stomach isn’t any help in keeping him sober.
It sounds as if he’ll be spacesick again later today.
If he is, sends Mahnmut, it’s your turn to bring him more spacesickness bags. I’ve held his head over them enough for one twenty-four-hour cycle.
Darn, sends Orphu of Io, I’d really love to take my turn at that, but I don’t think the doorways there in the human-cubby level of the ship are wide enough for me.
Wait, sends Mahnmut. Listen to this.
“Do you like to play games, son of Duane?”
“Games?” said Hockenberry. “What kind of games?”
“The kinds of game one would play during a celebration, or a funeral,” says Odysseus. “The games we would have had at Patroclus’ funeral, if Achilles had acknowledged his friend’s death and allowed us to put on a funeral after Patroclus’ disappearance.”
Hockenberry is quiet for a minute and then says, “You mean discus, javelin… that sort of thing.”
“Aye,” says Odysseus. “And chariot races. Footraces. Wrestling and boxing.”
“I’ve seen your boxing matches there at your camps near where the black ships are drawn up,” says Hockenberry, slurring only slightly. “The men fight with just rawhide thongs wrapped around their hands.”
Odysseus laughs. “What else should they wear on their hands, son of Duane? Great soft pillows?”
Hockenberry ignores the question. “Last summer in your camp I watched Epeus beat a dozen men bloody, smashing their ribs, breaking their jaws. He took on all comers and fought from early afternoon to late after moonrise.”
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br /> Odysseus is grinning. “I remember those matches. No one could stand up to Panopeus’ son that day, although many men tried.”
“Two men died.”
Odysseus shrugs and sips more wine. “Diomedes was training and backing Euryalus, son of Mecisteus, third in command of the Argolid fighters. He had him out running every morning before dawn, hardening his fists by slugging oxen halves fresh from the slaughter pens. But Epeus coldcocked him that evening in only twenty rounds. Diomedes had to drag his man out of the circle with poor Euryalus’ toes leaving ten furrows in the sand. But he lived to fight another day—and the next time he won’t drop his fucking guard, that’s for sure.”
“Boxing is a filthy enterprise,” quotes Hockenberry, “and if you stay in it long enough, your mind will become a concert hall where Chinese music never stops playing.”
Odysseus brays a laugh. “That’s funny. Who said it?”
“A wise man by the name of Jimmy Cannon.”
“But what is Chinese music?” asks Odysseus, still chuckling. “And what exactly is a concert hall?”
“Never mind,” says Hockenberry. “You know, in all the years of watching the war, I don’t remember your boxing champion, Epeus, ever distinguishing himself in aristeia—single combat for glory.”
“No, that’s true,” agrees Odysseus. “Epeus himself acknowledges that he’s no great man of war. Sometimes the courage it takes to face another man bare-fisted is not the kind required to run an enemy through the belly with your spearpoint, and then twist the blade out, spilling the man’s guts like so much offal in the dirt.”
“But you can do that.” Hockenberry’s voice is flat.
“Oh, yes,” laughs Odysseus. “But the gods have willed it so. I’m of a generation of Achaeans whom Zeus has decreed, from youth to old age, must wind down our brutal wars to the bitter end until we ourselves drop and die, down to the last man.”
Odysseus is quite the optimist, sends Orphu.
A realist, says Mahnmut on the tightbeam.
“But you were talking about games,” says Hockenberry. “I’ve seen you wrestle. And win. And you’ve won camp footraces as well.”
“Yes,” says Odysseus, “more than one time I’ve carried off the cup at the running race while Ajax has had to settle for the ox. Athena has helped me there—tripping up the big oaf to let me cross the finish line first. And I’ve bested Ajax in wrestling as well, clipping the hollow of his knee, throwing him backward, and pinning him before the dull-witted giant noticed that he’d been thrown.”
“Does that make you a better man?” asks Hockenberry.
“Of course it does,” booms Odysseus. “What would the world be without the agon—the agonistics of one man against another—to show everyone the order of precedence among men, just as no two other things on earth are alike? How could any of us alive know quality if competition and personal combat did not let all the world know who embodies excellence and who merely manages mediocrity? What games do you excel in, son of Duane?”
“I went out for track my freshman year at college,” says Hockenberry. “I didn’t make the team.”
“Well, I have to admit that I’m not half bad in the world of games where men compete,” says Odysseus. “I know how to handle a well-carved, fine-polished bow and will be the first among my comrades to hit my man in a moving mass of enemies, even with my friends jostling against me, everyone trying to take aim at once. One reason I was willing to follow Achilles and Hector into a war with the gods was my eagerness to test my prowess as an archer against Apollo’s skill—although in my heart, I knew this was folly. Whenever mortal man rivals the gods in archery—look at poor Eurytus of Oechalia—that man can bet he’ll die a sudden death, not pass away from old age within the halls of his own home. And I don’t think I’d go up against the Lord of the Silver Bow unless I had my best bow with me, and I never take it to war when I sail off in the black ships. That bow is on the wall of my great hall even now. Iphitus gave me that bow as a sign of friendship when we first met—the bow belonged to his father, the archer Eurytus himself. I liked Iphitus a lot, and I’m sorry I gave him only a sword and rough-hewn spear in exchange for the finest bow on earth. Heracles murdered Iphitus before I really had time to get to know the man.
“As for spears, I can fling a lance as far as the next man can shoot an arrow. And you’ve seen me box and wrestle. As for sprinting—yes, you saw me beat Ajax, and I can run for hours without vomiting up my breakfast, but in the short sprint, many runners will leave me behind in the dust unless Athena intervenes on my behalf.”
“I could have qualified for track,” says Hockenberry, almost muttering to himself now. “Long distance was my thing. But there was this guy named Brad Muldorff—the Duck we used to call him—who squeezed me out for the last position on the team.”
“Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit,” says Odysseus. “Shame on any man who gets used to that taste.” He gulps some wine, throwing his head back to swallow, then wipes droplets from his brown beard. “I dream of talking to dead Achilles in the shaded halls of Hades, but it’s my son Telemachus whom I really want to know about. If the gods are going to send me dreams, why not dreams of my son? He was a boy when I left—timid and untested—and I’d like to know if he’s turned into a man or become one of those pantywaists who hang around better men’s halls, seeking a rich wife, buggering boys, and playing the lyre all day.”
“We never had any children,” says Hockenberry. He rubs his forehead. “I don’t think we did. Memories of my real life are mixed up and murky. I’m like a sunken ship that someone refloated for their own reasons, but didn’t bother to pump all the water out—just enough to make it float. Too many compartments are still flooded.”
Odysseus looks at the scholic, obviously not understanding and obviously not interested enough to ask a question.
Hockenberry looks back at the Greek captain-king, his gaze suddenly focused and intense. “I mean, answer me this if you can… I mean, what does it mean to be a man?”
“To be a man?” repeats Odysseus. He opens the last two gourds of wine and hands Hockenberry one.
“Yess … excuse me, yes. To be a man. To become a man. In my country, the only rite of passage is when you get the car keys… or get laid for the first time.”
Odysseus nods. “Getting laid for the first time is important.”
“But certainly that can’t be it, son of Laertes! What does it take to be a man—or a human being, for that matter?”
This should be good, Mahnmut sends to Orphu on the tightbeam. I’ve wondered this myself more than a few times—and not just when I’m trying to understand Shakespeare’s sonnets.
We’ve all wondered it, replies Orphu. All of us obsessed with things human. Which is to say, all of us moravecs, since our programming and designed DNA lead us back to studying and trying to understand our creators.
“Being a man?” repeats Odysseus, his voice serious, almost distracted. “Right now I have to piss. Do you have to piss, Hockenberry?”
“I mean,” continues the scholic, “maybe it has something to do with consistency.” He has to try the word twice before getting it right. “Consistency. I mean, look at your Olympics versus ours. Just look at that!”
“That other moravec told me how to piss in that latrine in the room, it has some sort of vacuum that sucks it in even in this floating time, but I find it damned hard not to send blobs everywhere, don’t you, Hockenberry?”
“Twelve hundred years you ancient Greeks kept your Games going,” says Hockenberry. “Five days of games, every four years, for twelve hundred years, until some pissant Christian emperor of Rome abolished them. Twelve hundred years! Through drought and famine, pestilence and plague. Every four years, the wars would be brought to a halt, and your athletes would travel from all over their world to Olympia, to pay homage to the gods and to compete in the chariot races, footraces, wrestling, discus, and javelin, and pankration—that weird mixture of wrestling and kickbox
ing that I’ve never seen and I bet you haven’t either. Twelve hundred years, son of Laertes! When my own people brought the Games back, they couldn’t keep them going for much more than a hundred years without three of them being canceled for war, countries refusing to show up because they were pissed off by this or that slight or offense, and we even had terrorists kill Jewish athletes…”
“Pissed off, yes,” says Odysseus, releasing the gourd on its tether and spinning around, ready to kick back to his cubby. “Have to piss. Be right back.”
“Maybe the only thing that’s really consistent is what Homer said—‘Dear to us ever is the banquet and the harp and the dance and changes of raiment and the warm bath and love, and sleep.’ ”
“Who’s Homer?” asks Odysseus, pausing in midair at the irised door to the astrogation bubble.
“No one you’d know,” says Hockenberry, drinking more wine. “But you know what…”
He stops. Odysseus is gone.
Mahnmut goes out through the medical deck airlock, tethers himself even though he has reaction-thruster fuel in his backpack, and follows catwalks, ladders, and ship lines around and up the Queen Mab. He finds Orphu of Io welding a patch on the cargo bay doors in which The Dark Lady is stored, cradled under the folding wings of the reentry shuttle.
“That could have been more enlightening,” says Mahnmut on their private radio frequency.
“Most conversations share that particular quality,” says Orphu. “Even ours.”
“But we’re not usually drunk during our conversations.”
“Since moravecs don’t ingest alcohol for stimulative or depressive purposes, you are technically correct,” says Orphu, his shell, legs, and sensors brightly illuminated by the shower of sparks from his welding. “But we’ve discussed things while you’ve been hypoxic, drugged with fatigue toxins, and—as the humans would say—scared shitless, so Odysseus’ and Hockenberry’s disjointed conversation did not sound unfamiliar to my ears… if I had ears.”
“What would Proust say about what it takes to be human… or a man, for that matter?” asks Mahnmut.