by Dan Simmons
It is Hephaestus who speaks up. “Achilles seeks to bring a mortal to the Healer’s tanks, Mother of the first black germless egg. He wants to ask Father Zeus to command the Healer to bring back to life the Amazon queen, Penthesilea.”
Night laughs. If her voice had been a wild sea crashing against rocks, Achilles thinks her laugh sounds like a winter wind howling off the Aegean.
“Penthesilea?” says the black-garbed goddess, still chuckling. “That brainless, blond, big-boobed lesbian tart? Why on a million Earths would you want to bring that musclebound bimbo back to life, son of Peleus? After all, it was you I watched run her and her horse through with your father’s great lance, skewering them both like peppers on a kebab.”
“I have no choice,” rumbles Achilles. “I love her.”
Night laughs again. “You love her? This from the Achilles who beds slave girls and conquered princesses and captured queens as indifferently as others eat olives, only to cast them away like spit-out pits? You love her?”
“It’s Aphrodite’s pheromone perfume,” says Hephaestus, still on his knees.
Night quits laughing. “Which type?” she asks.
“Number nine,” grumbles Hephaestus. “Puck’s potion. The type with the self-duplicating nanomachines in the bloodstream constantly reproducing more dependency molecules and depriving the brain of endorphins and seratonin if the victim doesn’t act on his infatuation. There is no antidote.”
Night turns her sculpted veil-face toward Achilles. “I think that you are well and truly fornicated, son of Peleus. Zeus will never agree to rejuvenate a mortal—much less an Amazon, a race he thinks of rarely and thinks precious little of when they do come to his mind. The Father of All Gods and All Men has little use for Amazons and less use for virgins. He would see a resurrection of such a mortal as a desecration of the Healer’s tanks and skills.”
“I will ask him nonetheless,” Achilles says stubbornly.
Night regards him in silence. Then the big-bosomed, ebony-ragged aparition turns toward Hephaestus, who is still on his knees. “Crippled God of Fire, busy artificer to more noble gods, what do you see when you look upon this mortal man?”
“A fucking fool,” grunts Hephaestus.
“I see a quantum singularity,” says the goddess Nyx. “A black hole of probability. A myriad of equations all with the same single three-point solution. Why is that, Artificer?”
The god of fire grunts again. “His mother, Thetis of the seaweed-tangled breasts, held this arrogant mortal in the celestial quantum fire when he was a pup, little more than a larva. The probability of his death day, hour, minute, and method is one hundred percent, and because it cannot be changed, it seems to give Achilles a sort of invulnerability to all other attacks and injury.”
“Yesssssssss,” hisses shrouded Night. “Son of Hera, husband of that brainless Grace known as Aglaia the Glorious, why are you helping this man?”
Hephaestus bows lower on the step. “At first he bested me in a wrestling match, beloved goddess of dreadful shade. Then I continued helping him because his interests coincided with mine.”
“Your interest is to find Father Zeus?” whispers Night. Somewhere in the black canyons to their right, someone or something howls.
“My interest, Goddess, is to thwart the growing flood of Kaos.”
Night nods and raises her veiled face to the clouds roiling around her castle towers. “I can hear the stars scream, crippled Artificer. I know that when you say ‘Kaos,’ you mean chaos—on a quantum level. You are the only one of the gods, save for Zeus, who remembers us and our thinking before the Change… who remembers little things like physics.”
Hephaestus keeps his face lowered and says nothing.
“Are you monitoring the quantum flux, Artificer?” asks Night. There is a sharp and angry edge to her voice that Achilles does not understand.
“Yes, Goddess.”
“How much time, God of Fire, do you think we have left to survive if the vortexes of probability chaos continue to grow at this logarithmic rate?”
“A few days, Goddess,” grunts Hephaestus. “Perhaps less.”
“The Fates agree with you, Hera-spawn,” says Nyx. The volume and sea-crash timbre of her voice make Achilles want to clap his callused hands over his ears. “Day and night, the Moirai—those alien entities which mortal men call the Fates—toil at their electronic abacuses, manipulating their bubbles of magnetic energy and their mile-long coils of computing DNA—and every day the Moirai’s view of the future becomes less certain, their threads of probability more raveled, as if the loom of Time itself is broken.”
“It’s that fucking Setebos,” grumbles Hephaestus. “Begging your pardon, ma’am.”
“No, you are correct, Artificer,” says the giant Nyx. “It’s that fucking Setebos, let loose at last, no longer contained in this world’s arctic seas. The Many-Handed has gone to Earth, you know. Not this mortal’s Earth, but our old home.”
“No,” says Hephaestus, raising his face at last. “I didn’t know that.”
“Oh, yes—the Brain has crossed the Brane.” She laughs and this time Achilles does clasp his hands over his ears. This is a sound that no mortal should be made to hear.
“How long do the Moirai say we have?” whispers Hephaestus.
“Clotho, the Spinner, says that we have mere hours left before the quantum flux implodes this universe,” says Night. “Atropos, she who cannot be turned and who carries the abhorred shears to cut all our threads of life at death’s sharp instant, says it may be a month yet.”
“And Lachesis?” asks the god of fire.
“The Disposer of Lots—and she rides the fractal waves of the electronic abacus better than the others, I think—sees Kaos triumphant on this world and in this Brane within a week or two. Any way we cut it, we have little time left, Artificer.”
“Will you flee, Goddess?”
Night stands silent. Howls echo from the crags and valleys beyond her castle. Finally she says, “Where can we flee, Artificer? Where can even we few of the Originals flee if this universe we were born into collapses into chaos? Any Brane Hole we can create, any quantum leap we can teleport, will still be connected by the threads of chaos to this universe. No, there is nowhere to flee.”
“What do we do then, Goddess?” grunts Hephaestus. “Just bend over, grab our sandals, and kiss our immortal asses goodbye?”
Night makes a noise like the Aegean in mirthful storm. “We need to confer with the Elder Gods. And quickly.”
“The Elder Gods …” begins the Artificer and stops. “Kronos, Rhea, Okeanos, Tethys… all those exiled to terrible Tartarus?”
“Yes,” says Night.
“Zeus will never allow it,” says Hephaestus. “No god is allowed to communicate with…”
“Zeus must face reality,” bellows Night. “Or all will end in chaos, including his reign.”
Achilles climbs two steps toward the huge, black figure. His shield is on his forearm now as if he is ready to fight. “Hey, do you remember I’m here? And I’m still waiting for an answer to my question. Where is Zeus?”
Nyx leans over him and aims one pale, bony finger like a weapon. “Your quantum probability for dying at my hand may be zero, son of Peleus, but should I blast you atom from atom, molecule from molecule, the universe—even on a quantum level—might have a hard time maintaining that axiom.”
Achilles waits. He has noticed that the gods often babble on in this nonsense talk. The only thing to do is wait until they make sense again.
Finally Nyx speaks in the voice of wind-tossed waves. “Hera, sister and bride, daughter of Rhea and Kronos and incestuous bedmate to her divine brother, defender of Achaeans to the point of treachery and murder, has seduced Lord Zeus away from his duties and his watchfulness, bedding him and injecting him with Sleep in the great house where a hero’s wife weeps and labors, weaving by day and tearing out her work at night. This hero brought not his best bow to do his bloody work at Troy, but left it on a peg in a
secret room with a secret door, hidden away from suitors and looters. This is the bow that no one else can pull, the bow that can send an arrow straight through iron axe-helve sockets, twelve in line, or half again that many guilty or guiltless men’s bodies.”
“Thank you, Goddess,” says Achilles and backs away down the staircase.
Hephaestus looks around, then follows, careful not to turn his back on the huge ebony figure in the flowing robes. By the time both men are standing, Night is gone from her place at the head of the stairs.
“What in Hades was all that about?” whispers the Artificer as they climb into the chariot and activate the virtual control panel and holographic horses. “A hero’s wife weeping, hidden fucking rooms, axe-helve sockets, twelve in line. Nyx sounded like your babbling Delphic oracle.”
“Zeus is on the isle of Ithaca,” says Achilles as they climb away from the castle and the island and the growls and bellows of unseen monsters in the dark. “Odysseus himself told me that he had left his best bow at his palace on that rocky isle of his, hidden away with herb-scented robes in a secret room. I’ve visited crafty Odysseus there in better days. Only he can bring that huge bow to full pull—or so he says, though I’ve never tried—and after an evening’s drinking, firing an arrow through iron axe-helve sockets, twelve in line, is the son of Laertes’ idea of entertainment. And if there are suitors there seeking his sexy wife Penelope’s hand, he would be even more greatly entertained to put his shafts through their bodies instead.”
“Odysseus’ home on Ithaca,” mutters Hephaestus. “A good place for Hera to hide her sleeping lord. Do you have any idea, son of Peleus, what Zeus will do to you when you wake him there?”
“Let’s find out,” says Achilles. “Can you quantum teleport us straight from this chariot?”
“Watch me,” says Hephaestus. Man and god wink out of sight as the chariot—empty now—keeps flying north and west across Hellas Basin.
50
“This isn’t Savi.”
“Did you hear me say it was, friend of Noman?”
Harman stood on the solid metal of the bier seemingly suspended above more than five miles of air a hundred yards from the north face of Chomolungma—staring despite his powerful urge not to stare at the dead face and naked body of a young Savi. Prospero stood behind him on the iron stairs. The wind was coming up outside.
“It looks like Savi,” said Harman. He could not slow the beating of his heart. Both the exposure to altitude and to the body in front of him made him almost sick with vertigo. “But Savi’s dead,” he said.
“You are sure?”
“I’m sure, goddamn you. I saw your Caliban kill her. I saw the bloody remnants of what he ate and what he left behind. Savi is dead. And I never saw her this young.”
The naked woman lying on her back in the crystal coffin could not have been older than three or four years beyond her first Twenty. Savi had been… ancient. All of them—Hannah, Ada, Daeman, and Harman—had been shocked at the sight of her—gray hair, wrinkles, a body that was past its prime. None of the old-style humans had ever seen the effects of aging before Savi… nor since, but that would all change now that the Firmary rejuvenation tanks were gone.
“Not my Caliban,” said Prospero. “No, not my monster then. The goblin was his own master, sick Sycorax-spawn, a lost in thrall Setebosslave, when you encountered it in yon orbital isle some nine months past.”
“This isn’t Savi,” repeated Harman. “It can’t be.” He forced himself to stride back up the stairs toward the central chamber of the Taj Moira, brushing brusquely past the blue-robed magus. But he paused before passing up through the granite ceiling. “Is she alive?” he asked softly.
“Touch her,” said Prospero.
Harman backed another step up the stairs. “No. Why?”
“Come down here and touch her,” said the magus. The hologram, projection, whatever it was, now stood next to the crystal sarcophagus. “It’s the only way you can tell if she is alive.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Harman stayed where he was.
“But I’ve not given you my word, friend of Noman. I’ve given no opinion on whether this is a sleeping woman, or a corpse, or merely a corollary of wax, wanting spirit. But I warrant you this, husband of Ada of Ardis—should she wake, should you wake her, should she be real—and should you then discourse with this waked and decanted spirit, all your most pressing questions will be answered.”
“What do you mean?” asked Harman, descending the steps in spite of his urge to flee.
The magus remained silent. His only answer was to open the crystal top to the clear sarcophagus.
No smell of corruption came forth. Harman stepped onto the metal bier platform, then came around to stand next to the magus. Except for glimpses of hairless corpses in the healing tanks on Prospero’s isle, he’d never seen a dead person until recent months. No old-style human had. But now he’d buried people at Ardis Hall and knew the terrible aspects of death—the lividity and rigor mortis, the eyes seeming to sink away from the light, the hard coldness of flesh. This woman—this Savi—showed none of these signs. Her skin looked soft and flushed with life. Her lips were pink almost to the point of redness, as were her nipples. Her eyes were closed, the lashes long, but it seemed that she could awaken any second.
“Touch her,” said Prospero.
Harman reached a trembling hand and snatched it back before he touched her. There was a slight but firm forcefield above the woman’s body—permeable but palpable—and the air inside the field was much warmer than that above it. He tried again, setting his fingers first to the woman’s throat—finding the barest hint of pulse, like a butterfly’s softest stirring—and then set his palm on her chest, between her breasts. Yes—the slightest beating of her heart, but slow—soft poundings far too far apart to be the heartbeat of a normal sleeper.
“This crèche is similar to the one your friend Noman sleeps in now,” Prospero said softly. “It pauses time. But rather than healing and protecting her for three days, as Noman-Odysseus’ slow-time sarcophagus does this very minute, this crystal coffin has been her home for one thousand four hundred and some years.”
Harman plucks his hand back as if he’d been bitten. “Impossible,” he said.
“Is it? Wake her and ask her.”
“Who is she?” demanded Harman. “It can’t be Savi.”
Prospero smiled. Below their feet, clouds had swept in to the north face of the mountain and were curling gray around the glass-bottomed shelter in which they stood. “No, it can’t be Savi, can it?” said the magus. “I knew her as Moira.”
“Moira? This place—the Taj Moira—is named after her?”
“Of course. It is her tomb. Or at least the tomb in which she sleeps. Moira is a post-human, friend of Noman.”
“The posts are all dead—gone—Daeman and Savi and I saw their Caliban-chewed and mummified bodies floating in the foul air of your orbital isle.” Harman had stepped back from the coffin again.
“Moira is the last,” said Prospero. “Come down from the p-ring more than fifteen hundred years ago. She was the lover and consort of Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan Ho Tep.”
“Who the hell is that?” The clouds had enveloped the Taj platform now and Harman felt on more solid ground with the glass floor showing only gray beneath him.
“A bookish descendant of the original Khan,” said the magus. “He ruled what was left of the Earth at the time the voynix first became active. He had this temporal sarcophagus built for himself but was in love with this Moira and offered it to her. Here she’s slept away the centuries.”
Harman forced a laugh. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why didn’t this Ho Tep whatshisname just have a second coffin built for himself?”
Prospero’s smile was maddening. “He did. It was set right here on this broad bier, next to Moira’s. But even a place as hard to get to as the Rangbok Pumori Chu-mu-lang-ma Feng Dudh Kosi Lhotse-Nuptse Khumbu aga Ghat-Mandir Khan
Ho Tep Rauza will have its visitors over almost a millennium and a half. One of the early intruders pulled Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan’s body and temporal sarcophagus out of here and tossed it over the edge to the glacier below.”
“Why didn’t they take this coffin… Moira’s?” asked Harman. He was skeptical of everything the magus said.
Prospero extended an age-mottled hand toward the sleeping woman. “Would you throw this body away?”
“Why didn’t they loot the upstairs then?” said Harman.
“There are safeguards up there. I will be happy to show you later.”
“Why didn’t these early intruders wake … whoever this is?” asked Harman.
“They tried,” said Prospero. “But they never succeeded in opening the sarcophagus…”
“You didn’t seem to have any trouble doing that.”
“I was here when Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan devised the machine,” said the magus. “I know its codes and passwords.”
“You wake her, then. I want to talk to her.”
“I cannot wake this sleeping post-human,” said Prospero. “Nor could the intruders had they bypassed the security systems and managed to open her coffin. Only one thing will wake Moira.”
“What’s that?” Harman was on the lowest step again, ready to leave.
“For Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan or another human male descended from Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan to have sexual intercourse with her while she sleeps.”
Harman opened his mouth to speak, found nothing to say, and simply stood there, staring at the blue-robed figure. The magus had either gone insane or had always been mad. There was no third option.
“You are descended from Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan Ho Tep and the line of Khans,” continued Prospero, his voice sounding as calm and disinterested as someone speculating on the weather. “The DNA of your semen will awaken Moira.”
51
Mahnmut and Orphu went outside onto the hull of the Queen Mab where they could talk in peace.