by Dan Simmons
“Holy God,” whispered Hockenberry.
“Yes, exactly,” said Helen. “And then Zeus disappeared in a crack of the loudest thunder yet, louder even than his voice that had deafened hundreds, and the wind howled into the place where giant Zeus had been, ripping up the Achaean tents and swirling them thousands of feet into the air, swirling strong Trojan stallions from their stalls and over our highest walls.”
Hockenberry looked to the west where the armies of Troy had surrounded the diminished army of the Argives. “That was almost two weeks ago. Have the gods returned at all? Any of them? Zeus?”
“No, Hock-en-bear-eeee. We have seen no immortals since that day.”
“But that was two weeks ago,” said Hockenberry. “Why has it taken so long for Hector to besiege the Argive army? Surely with the deaths of Diomedes, Big Ajax, and Menelaus, the Achaeans must have been demoralized.”
“They were,” agreed Helen. “But both sides were in shock. Many of us could not hear for days. As I said, those on the wall or those Argives too close to the opening pit of Tartarus were little more than drooling idiots for a week. A truce was called without either side declaring it. We gathered our dead—for we had suffered terribly during Agamemnon’s assaults, you remember—and for almost a week, corpse fires burned both here in the city and along the miles of shore where the terrified Argives still had their camps. Then, in the second week, when Agamemnon ordered men to the forests at the base of Mount Ida to begin felling trees—to make new ships, of course—Hector began the assault. The fighting has been slow and heavy work. With their backs to the sea and no ships for their flight, the Argives fight like cornered rats. But this morning, you see, the few thousands left are encircled there at the edge of the water and today Hector will unleash our final assault. Today ends the Trojan War, with Ilium still standing, Hector the hero of all heroes, and Helen free.”
For a while the man and woman just sat on their respective great stones and stared out to the west, where sunlight glinted on armor and spears and where horns were sounding.
Finally Helen said, “What will you do with me now, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”
He blinked, looked at the knife still in his hand, and set it in his belt. “You can go,” he said.
Helen looked at his face but she did not move.
“Go!” said Hockenberry.
She left slowly. The sound of her slippers came up the circular staircase—he remembered the same soft sound from when he lay dying here two and a half weeks ago.
Where do I go now?
Trained as a scholic in his second life, he had the loyal urge to report these variances from the Iliad to the Muse, and thence to all the gods. This thought made him smile. How many of the gods still existed in that other universe where Olympus Mons on Mars had been turned into Olympos? How extensive had Zeus’s wrath really been? Had there been a genocidal deicide up there? He might never know. He didn’t have the courage to quantum teleport to Olympos again.
Hockenberry touched the QT medallion under his tunic. Back to the ship? He wanted to see the Earth—his Earth, even one three thousand years or so in his future—and he wanted to be with the moravecs and Odysseus when they saw it. He had no duty or role here in this Ilium-universe now.
He brought the QT medallion out and ran his hand over the heavy gold.
Not back to the Queen Mab. Not yet. He might not be a scholic any longer—the gods may have abandoned him just as he had betrayed them—but he was still a scholar. Decades of teaching the Iliad, all those memories of wonderful dusty classrooms and very young college students, all those faces—pale, pimply, healthy, tanned, eager, indifferent, inspired, insipid—came flowing back now, filling in the gaps. How could he not see the last act in this new and absurdly revised version?
Twisting the medallion, Dr. Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., quantum teleported to the center of the besieged and doomed Achaean encampment.
40
Later, Daeman wasn’t sure when he decided to steal one of the eggs.
It wasn’t while he was sliding down the rope to the floor of the dome-crater, since he was too busy hanging on and trying not to be seen to plan anything then.
It wasn’t while he was scurrying across the hot, cracked floor of the crater, since his heart was pounding too loudly during that sprint to allow him to think of anything except reaching the fumarole where he’d seen the eggs. Twice he saw groups of calibani scuttling along beyond the nearest smoking vents and both times Daeman threw himself down and lay still until they had hurried off on their business toward the main Setebos nest. The floor of the crater was hot enough that it would have burned his hands if he hadn’t been wearing the thermskin under his regular clothes. As it was, a minute lying on his belly caused his shirt and trousers to singe. He sprinted forward and reached the side of the fumarole, crouching and panting in the heat—the walls of the fumarole were about twelve feet high, but rough, made of the same blue-ice as everything else. Daeman found enough fingerholds and footholds to climb it without using his ice hammers.
The fumarole—a hissing crater within the larger crater, one of dozens inside the dome-cathedral—was filled with human skulls. These were so heated that some glowed red even while sulfurous vapors hissed around them and rose into the stinking air. At least the steam and vapors gave Damean some cover as he dropped onto the mound of skulls and looked at the Setebos eggs.
Oval, gray-white, each pulsing with some internal energy or life, the things were each about three feet long. Daeman counted twenty-seven in this nest. Besides the cradling heap of hot skulls, the eggs themselves were surrounded by a ring of sticky, blue-gray mucus. Daeman crawled closer, fingers and feet scrabbling on skulls, and looked at the tall heap of eggs from as close as he could get without lifting his head above the level of the fumarole crater rim.
The shells were thin, warm, almost translucent. Some already glowed brightly, others had only a white gleam at their center. Daeman reached out and gingerly touched one—a mild heat, a strange sense of vertigo as if some instability in the egg itself flowed through his thermskinned finger. He tried to lift one and found it weighed about twenty pounds.
Now what?
Now he had to beat a retreat, get up the rope, out through the tunnels, back to the Avenue Daumesnil crevasse, and back to the Guarded Lion faxnode. He had to report all this to everyone at Ardis as soon as possible.
But why come all this way and risk exposure on the crater floor without taking a souvenir?
By dumping everything out of his rucksack except the extra crossbow bolts, he made room for the egg. At first it wouldn’t fit, but by pushing gently but insistently he managed to get the broad end of the oval through the opening and wedge the bolts in around the side of the egg. What if it breaks? Well, he’d have a messy pack, he thought, but at least he’d know what was inside the damned things.
I don’t want to break one of the eggs here, so close to Setebos and the calibani. We’ll inspect it back at Ardis.
Amen, thought Daeman. He was finding it very hard to breathe. He’d had his osmosis mask on all this time, but the sulfurous vapors from the fumarole vent and the overwhelming heat made him dizzy. He knew that if he’d come into the dome without the thermskin and mask, he would have lost consciousness long ago. The air in here was poisonous. Then how do the calibani breathe?
To hell with the calibani, thought Daeman. He waited until the steam and vapors were thick as a smoke screen and slid down the side of the fumarole, dropping the last five feet. The egg shifted heavily in his rucksack, almost causing him to fall.
Easy, easy.
“ ‘Saith, what He hates be consecrate, all come to celebrate Thee and Thy state! Thinketh, what I hate be consecrate to celebrate Him and what He ate!” Caliban’s chant-hymn was much louder down here. Somehow the acoustics of the giant dome-cathedral amplified as well as directed the monster’s voice. Either that or Caliban was closer now.
Running in a crouch, dropping to one knee at any hint of
motion through the shifting vapors, Daeman made it the hundred yards to his rope still dangling from the blue-ice balcony. He looked up at the rope hanging free.
What was I thinking? It must be eighty feet to the balcony. I can never climb that—especially not with this weight on my back.
Daeman looked around for another tunnel entrance. The nearest one was three or four hundred feet away around the curve of the dome wall to his right, but it was filled with the huge arm-stalk of one of Setebos’ crawling hands.
That hand’s up there in the ice tunnels, waiting for me… with the others. He could see other arm stalks disappearing into tunnel openings now, the slick gray flesh of the tentacles almost obscene in their wet physicality. Some of them rose three or four hundred feet up the curving wall, hanging down like fleshy tubules, some visibly writhing in a sort of peristalsis as the hands pulled more arm-stalk in after them.
How many hands and arms does this motherfucking brain have?
“ ‘Believeth that with the end of life, the pain will stop? Not so! He both plagueth enemies and feasts on friends. He doth His worst in this our life, giving respite only lest we die through pain, saving last pain for worst!”
It was climb or die. Daeman had lost almost fifty pounds in the last ten months, converting some weight to muscle, but he wished now that he’d been on Noman’s obstacle course in the forest beyond Ardis’s north wall every single day of the last ten months, lifting weights in his spare time.
“Fuck it,” whispered Daeman. He jumped, grabbed the rope, got his legs and shins around it, reached higher with his thermskinned left hand, and began dragging himself up, shinnying when he could, resting when he had to.
It was slow. It was agonizingly slow. And the slowness was the least part of the agony. A third of the way up and he knew he couldn’t make it—knew he probably did not have the strength even to hang on while sliding down. But if he jumped, the egg would break. Whatever was inside would get out. And Setebos and Caliban would know at once.
Something about this image made Daeman giggle until his eyes were filled with tears, fogging the clear lenses on the osmosis mask hood. He could hear his breath rasping in the osmosis mask. He could feel the thermskin suit tightening as it labored to cool him off. Come on, Daeman, you’re almost halfway. Another few feet and you can rest.
He didn’t rest after ten feet. He didn’t rest after thirty feet. Daeman knew that if he tried to just hang here, if he paused to wrap the rope around his hands to just cling, he’d never get moving again.
Once the rope shifted on its belay pin and Daeman gasped, his heart leaping into his throat. He was more than halfway up the eighty-foot rope. A fall now would break a leg or arm and leave him crippled on the steaming, hissing crater floor.
The pin held. He hung there a minute, knowing how visible he was to calibani anywhere on this side of the crater. Perhaps dozens of the things were standing below him right now, waiting for him to fall into their scaly arms. He did not look down.
Another few feet. Daeman raised his aching, shaking arm, wrapped rope around his palm, and pulled himself up, his legs and ankles seeking traction. Again. Again. No pause allowed. Again.
Finally he couldn’t climb anymore. The last of his energy was done. He hung there, his entire body shaking, the weight of his crossbow and the giant egg in his pack pulling him backward, off balance. He knew that he would fall any second. Blinking madly, Daeman freed one hand to wipe the mist from his thermskin lenses.
He was at the overhang of the balcony—a foot beneath its edge.
One last impossible surge and he was up and over, lying on his belly, pulling himself up to the belaying pin and lying on it, lying on the rope, spread-eagled on the blue-ice balcony.
Don’t throw up … don’t throw up! Either the vomit would drown him in his own osmosis mask or he’d have to tug the mask off and the vapors would render him unconscious in seconds. He’d die here and no one would even know that he’d been able to climb eighty feet of rope—no, more, perhaps ninety feet—he, pudgy Daeman, Marina’s fat little boy, the kid who couldn’t do a single chin-up on the buckycarbon struts.
Some time later, Daeman returned to full consciousness and willed himself to move again. He pulled off the crossbow, checked to make sure it was still cocked and loaded, safety off now. He checked the egg—pulsing more whitely and brightly than before, but still in one piece. He set the ice hammers on his belt and pulled up the hundred feet of rope. It was absurdly heavy.
He got lost in the tunnels. It had been twilight when he’d come in, the last of daylight filtering through the blue-ice, but it was deep night outside now and the only illumination was from the yellow electrical discharges surging through the living tissue all around him—Daeman was sure the blue-ice was organic, somehow part of Setebos.
He had left yellow fabric markers at the intersections, nailed into the ice, but somehow he missed one of those and found himself crawling to new junctions, tunnels he’d never seen before. Rather than backtrack—the tunnel was too narrow to turn around in and he dreaded trying to crawl backward in it—he chose the tunnel that seemed to head upward and crawled on.
Twice the tunnels ended or pitched steeply downward and he did have to backtrack to the junction. Finally a tunnel both rose and widened, and it was with infinite relief that he got to his feet and began moving up the gently sloping ice ramp on his feet, crossbow in his hands.
He stopped suddenly, trying to control his panting.
There was a junction less than ten feet ahead, another one thirty feet behind, and from one or the other or both came a scratching, scrabbling sound.
Calibani, he thought, feeling the terror like the cold of outer space seeping through the thermskin, but then a colder thought came. One of the hands.
It was a hand. Longer than Daeman, thicker through the middle, pulling itself along on fingernails emerging from the gray flesh like ten inches of sharpened steel, with black-barbed fiber hairs at the ends of the fingers grabbing ice, the pulsating hand pulled itself into the junction less than ten feet in front of Daeman and paused there, the palm rising—the orifice in the center of that palm visibly fluttering open and shut.
It’s searching for me, thought Daeman, not daring to breathe. It senses heat.
He did not stir, not even to raise the crossbow. Everything depended upon the slashed and worn old thermskin suit. If he was radiating heat from it, the hand would be on him in a millisecond. Daeman lowered his face to the ice floor, not out of fear but to mask any heat emissions that might be leaking from his osmosis mask.
There was a wild scrabbling and when Daeman jerked his head up, he saw that the hand had taken a tunnel to his right. The fleshy, moving arm-stalk filled the tunnel ahead, almost blocking the junction.
I’ll be goddamned if I’m going backwards, thought Daeman. He crawled forward to the junction, moving as quietly as he could.
The arm-stalk was sliding through the junction; a hundred yards of it had already flowed past but it seemed endless. He could no longer hear the scrabbling of the hand itself.
It’s probably circled around through the tunnels and is behind me.
“ ‘Listen! White blaze—a tree’s head snaps—and there, there, there, there, there, His thunder follows! Fool to give at Him! Lo! ‘Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!”
Caliban’s chant was muffled by distance and ice, but it flowed up the tunnel after him.
Inches from the sliding arm-stalk, Daeman weighed the possibilities.
The tunnel it slid through was about six feet across and six feet high. The arm-stalk filled the width of the junction and tunnel—at least six feet, compressed by the blue-ice, but it was broader than it was tall. There was at least three feet of air between the top of the endless, sliding mass and the tunnel ceiling. On the other side, the tunnel Daeman had been following broadened and headed gradually toward the surface. Through the thermskin, he thought his skin could feel a movement of air from the outside. He might be only
a few hundred feet from the surface here.
How to get past the arm-stalk?
He thought of the ice hammers—useless, he couldn’t hang from the ceiling and cross that six feet. He thought of going back, back into the labyrinth that he’d been crawling through for what seemed like hours, and he put that thought from his mind.
Maybe the arm-stalk will slide past. That thought showed him how tired and stupid he was. This thing ended in the brain-mass that was Setebos, the better part of a mile away in the center of the crater.
It’s going to fill all these tunnels up with its arms and its scrabbling hands. It’s searching for me!
Part of Daeman’s mind noted that pure panic tasted like blood. Then he realized that he’d bitten through the lining of his cheek. His mouth filled with blood, but he couldn’t take time to slide the osmosis mask off to spit, so he swallowed instead.
To hell with it.
Daeman made sure the safety was on and then he tossed the heavy crossbow across the sliding mass of arm-stalk. It missed the oily gray flesh by inches and skittered on the ice of the tunnel opposite. The pack and egg were more difficult.
It’ll break. It will smash open and the milky glow inside—it’s brighter now, I’m sure it’s brighter—will spill out and it’ll be one of these hands, small and pink rather than gray, and its orifice will open and the little hand will scream and scream, and the huge gray hand will come scuttling back, or perhaps straight down the tunnel ahead, trapping me…