by Dan Simmons
I’m going to be killed if I stay here. When I was a scholic, especially when I was Aphrodite’s secret-agent scholic, all decked out in levitation harness, impact armor, morphing bracelet, stun-baton, the Hades invisibility helmet—and whatever else I hauled around then—I felt pretty invulnerable, even when moderately close to the fighting. Except for the arrows, which are deadly enough at astounding distances, there isn’t much killing-from-afar in this war. Men smell their enemy’s sweat and breath and are splattered with his blood, brains, and saliva when they shove steel—or in most cases, bronze—into the man’s guts.
But I’ve almost been skewered three times in the last two hours: once by a cast spear that came over the lines of defenders and almost took my balls off—I leaped in the air to avoid it and when it buried itself in the wet sand here and I came down straddling it, the vibrating shaft smacked me in the gonads. Then an arrow parted my hair and a minute later another arrow, one of thousands darkening the sky and rising like a miniature forest out of the sand everywhere here, would have taken me square in the throat if an Argive I don’t even know hadn’t raised his round shield, leaned over, and deflected the barbed and poisonous shaft.
I have to get out of here.
My hand has touched the QT medallion a hundred times in the hours since dawn, but I haven’t quantum teleported away. I’m not sure why.
Yes I am. I don’t want to desert these men. I don’t want to be safe in Helen’s bathchamber or atop some nearby hill knowing that these Achaeans I’ve spent ten years watching and talking to and breaking bread with and drinking wine with are being slaughtered like proverbial cattle on this blood-dimmed bit of beach.
But I can’t save them.
Or can I?
I grab the medallion, concentrate on a place I’ve been, twist the gold circle half a turn, and open my eyes to find myself falling down a long, long elevator shaft.
No, I’m not falling, I realize—realize too late since I’ve already screamed twice—I’m in free fall in the main corridor on the deck of the Queen Mab, or at least in the main corridor on the deck where I’d had my private quarters. But there had been gravity then. Now there is only this falling and falling, tumbling in space but not really falling, flailing to get to the cubby door or to the astrogation bubble twenty yards down—or up—the corridor.
Two black and chitinous Belt moravecs, the soldiers with the built-in black armor, barbs, and masklike heads, kick out of a nearby elevator shaft—there is no elevator car in it—and grab me by the arms. They shoot back toward the shaft and I realize that the rockvecs can move in this zero-g not just because they’re used to it—it must be close to their native level of gravity in the Asteroid Belt—but because their carapaces have built-in and nearly silent thrusters that pulse expanding jets of what may just be water. Whatever it is, it allows them to move fluidly and quickly in this zero-gravity world. Without a word, they pull me into the shaft that runs the length of the Queen Mab—imagine jumping into an empty elevator shaft the height of the Empire State Building—so I do the only thing a sane man would do—I scream again.
The two soldiers jet me hundreds of feet up or down this echoing shaft—echoing to just my screams—and then pull me through some sort of forcefield membrane into a busy room. Even upside down as I am, I can recognize it as the bridge of the ship. I’d been on the bridge only once during my stay, but there was no mistaking this room’s function—moravecs I’d never seen before are busy monitoring three-dimensional virtual control boards, more rockvec soldiers are standing by holographic projections, and I recognize General Beh bin Adee, the skittery spider ‘vec—I can’t think of his name right now—as well as the strange-looking navigator, Cho Li, and the Prime Integrator, Asteague/Che.
It’s the Prime Integrator who effortlessly kicks through the zero-g bridge space to me as the two soldiers firmly set me into a mesh chair and tie me down so that I can’t escape. No, I realize, they’re not tying me down like a captive, merely attaching mesh web belts to hold me in place. It helps—just being stationary gives me a sense of up and down.
“Dr. Hockenberry, we didn’t expect you back,” says the little moravec who’s roughly the same shape and size as Mahnmut, but made of different-colored plastics, metals, and polymers. “I apologize for the lack of gravity. We’re not under thrust. I could arrange for the internal force-fields to exhibit a pressure differential that could simulate gravity for you—after a fashion—but the truth is we’re station-keeping near Earth’s polar ring and we do not want to exhibit a major change in internal energy uses unless we have to.”
“I’m all right,” I say, hoping that they haven’t heard my screams in the elevator shaft. “I need to talk to Odysseus.”
“Odysseus is… ah… indisposed right now,” says Asteague/Che.
“I need to speak with him.”
“I am afraid that this will not be possible,” says the moravec who’s about the same size as my friend Mahnmut, but who looks and speaks so differently. His voice actually has a soothing quality to it.
“But it’s imperative that I …” I stop in midsentence. They’ve killed Odysseus. It’s obvious that these half-robot things have done something terrible to the only other human being on their ship. I don’t know why they would have killed the Achaean, but then I’ve never understood two-thirds of the things these moravecs do or don’t do. “Where is he?” I ask, trying to sound in-control and authoritarian even while web-strapped into my little chair. “What have you done to him?”
“We’ve done nothing to the son of Laertes,” says Asteague/Che.
“Why would we harm our guest?” asks the boxlike, spiderlegged ‘vec whose name I can’t remember… no, I do recall it now, Retrograde Jogenson or Gunderson or something Scandinavian.
“Then bring Odysseus here,” I say.
“We cannot,” repeats Prime Integrator Asteague/Che. “He is not on the ship.”
“Not on the ship?” I say, but then I look at one of the holographic displays set into a niche in the hull where a window should be. Hell, for all I know it is a window. The full blue and white is turning below, filling the viewscreen.
“Odysseus went down to this Earth?” I say. “To my Earth?” Is it my Earth? I lived and died there, yes, but thousands of years ago if the gods and moravecs are to be believed.
“No, Odysseus has not gone down to the surface again,” says Asteague/Che. “He has gone to visit the Voice that contacted the ship during our transit… the Voice which asked for him by name.”
“Show Dr. Hockenberry,” says General Beh bin Adee. “He’ll understand why he can’t talk to Odysseus right now.”
Asteague/Che appears to ponder this suggestion. Then the Europan moravec turns to look at the navigator Cho Li—I suspect some sort of radio transmission has taken place between them—and Cho Li moves a tentacle arm. A six-foot-wide three-dimensional holographic window opens not two feet in front of me.
Odysseus is making love to the most sensuous woman I’ve ever seen in my life—except perhaps for Helen of Troy, of course. My male ego had thought that my lovemaking—well, sexual intercourse—with Helen had been energetic and imaginative. But thirty seconds of staring slackjawed at the coupling going on between the naked Odysseus—his body battle-scarred, tanned, barrel-chested but short, and the pale, exotic, pneumatic, sensous, and slightly hirsute woman with the incredible eye makeup—lets me know that my exertions with Helen had been tame, unimaginative, and in slow motion compared to what these erotic athletes are involved in.
“Enough,” I say, mouth dry. “Turn it off.”
The pornographic window winks out of existence. “Who is that… lady?” I manage to say.
“She says her name is Sycorax,” answers Retrograde Somebody’sson. It’s always odd to hear that solid voice coming out of that tiny metal box atop those long skinny legs.
“Let me talk to Mahnmut and Orphu of Io,” I say. I’ve known those two ‘vecs the longest and Mahnmut is the most human of a
ll these machine-people. If I can convince anyone here on the Queen Mab, it will be Mahnmut.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, either,” says Asteague/Che.
“Why? Are they having sex with some female moravec babes or something?” I hear how stupid my attempted witticism is as it mentally echoes in the long seconds of censuring silence that follow.
“Mahnmut and Orphu have entered the Earth’s atmosphere in a dropship carrying Mahnmut’s submersible,” says Asteague/Che.
“Can’t you link up to them by radio or something?” I ask. “I mean, they could patch together radio calls like that way back in my Twentieth and early Twenty-first centuries.”
“Yes, we are in contact,” says Retrograde Whoever. “But at the moment their ship is being attacked and we do not want to distract them with unnecessary communications. Their survival is problematic at best.”
I consider asking more questions—who on Earth is attacking my friends? Why? How?—but realize that such a dialogue would only distract me from my real reason for being here.
“You need to create a Brane Hole back to the beach near Ilium,” I say.
General Beh bin Adee moves his black-thorned arms in a way that might suggest a question. “Why?” he says.
“Because the Greeks are being slaughtered to a man by the Trojans and they don’t deserve to be wiped out that way. I want to help them escape.”
“No,” says the general. “I meant why do you think we have the ability to create Brane Holes at will?”
“Because I saw you do it once. You created all those Holes that you jumped through from the Asteroid Belt to Mars, then accidentally to Ilium-Earth. More than ten months ago. I was there, remember?”
“Our technology is not adequate to the effort of creating Brane Holes to different universes,” says Cho Li.
“But you did it, goddammit.” I can hear the whine in my voice.
“No, we did not,” says Asteague/Che. “What we actually did at the time was… it is hard to describe and I am not a scientist or engineer, although we have many… what we did at the time was interdict the so called gods’ Brane Hole connections and tunnel some of our own into the quantum matrix they had created.”
“Well,” I say, “do it again. Tens of thousands of human lives depend on it. And while you’re at it, you can bring back the few million Greeks and others in the Europe of Ilium-Earth who were disappeared—shot into space in a blue beam.”
“We don’t know how to do that, either,” says Asteague/Che.
Well then, what the fuck good are you? I’m tempted to ask. I don’t.
“But you’re safe here, Dr. Hockenberry,” continues the Prime Integrator.
Again, I want to shout at these plastic-metal things, but I realize that he—it—is correct. I am safe here on the Queen Mab. Safe from the Trojans at least. And perhaps the luscious babe boinking Odysseus has a sister….
“I need to go back,” I hear myself saying. Go back where, you idiot? To the Greeks’ Last Stand? Sounds like a baklava shop in L.A.
“You’ll be killed,” says General Beh bin Adee. The large, dark, humanoid soldier-thing doesn’t sound the least bit upset at the prospect.
“Not if you can help me.”
The moravecs seem to be communicating silently with one another again. I can see one of the holographic window-monitors far across the bridge is tuned to Odysseus and the exotic woman still going at it like rabbits. The woman is on top now and I can see that she’s even more beautiful and desirable than my first glimpse had suggested. I concentrate on not getting an erection in front of these moravecs. If they notice, and they tend to notice a lot about us humans, they might take it wrong.
“We will help you if we can,” Asteague/Che says at last. “What do you desire?”
“I need to go somewhere without being seen,” I say and begin describing the lost Hades Helmet and my old morphing bracelet to them.
“The morphing technology—at least as it applies to living organisms—is beyond our technological capabilities,” says Retrograde… Sinopessen… I remember it now. “It manipulates reality on a quantum level we do not yet fully understand. We are far away from being able to create machines to alter that form of probability collapse.”
“And we have no clue as to how this Hades Helmet proffered true invisibility,” adds Cho Li. “Although if it is consistent with the Olympians’—or those powers behind the Olympians—other technologies, it probably involves a minor quantum shift through time rather than space.”
“Can you whomp up something like that for me?” I ask. I realize that there’s no compelling reason for these busy moravecs to do anything for me.
“No,” says Asteague/Che.
“We could adapt some chameleon cloth for him,” says General Beh bin Adee.
“Great,” I say. “What’s chameleon cloth?”
“An active-stealth camouflage polymer,” says the general. “Primitive but effective if one does not move too quickly between widely varying backgrounds. Roughly the same material that your Mars ship was coated in, only more breathable and invisible to the infrared. The eyepieces are nanocytic, so there would be no interruption of the chameleon adaptation.”
“The gods saw us and shot our Mars ship out of orbit,” I say.
“Well, yes… ” says General Beh bin Adee. “There is that to consider.”
“This chameleon cloth is the best you can do?”
“On short notice,” says Asteague/Che.
“Then I’ll take it. How long will it take your people… I mean your… moravecs… to fit me out in this chameleon suit and show me how to use it?”
“I ordered the environmental engineering department to begin work on such a suit the second we began discussing it,” says the Prime Integrator. “We had your vital measurements on record. They should bring the finished product within three minutes.”
“Wonderful,” I say, wondering if it is. Where exactly am I going? How can I convince those where I’m going to help the Greeks escape? Where could the Greeks escape to? Their families and servants and friends and slaves have all been sucked up into the blue beam rising from Delphi. As if in anticipation of getting out of here, I begin playing with the gold medallion hanging around my neck, fingering the sliding circle that activates it.
“By the way,” says Cho Li, “your quantum teleportation medallion does not work.”
“What!?” I rip myself out of the straps and float in place. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Our inspection when you were on the ship earlier has shown the disk to be effectively functionless,” says the navigator.
“You’re full of shit. You guys told me earlier that it just couldn’t be replicated for your use, that it was keyed to my DNA or something.”
Prime Integrator Asteague/Che makes a self-conscious noise that sounds amazingly like a human male clearing his throat in embarrassment. “It is true that there is some… communication… between the medallion around your neck and your cells and DNA, Dr. Hockenberry. But the medallion itself has no quantum function. It does not QT you through Calabi-Yau space.”
“That’s nuts,” I say again, trying to curb my language. I still need these moravecs’ help and lizard suit to get out of here. “I got here, didn’t I? All the way from the universe of the Ilium-Earth.”
“Yes,” says Cho Li. “You did. With no help whatsoever from that hollow gold medallion hanging around your neck. It is a mystery.”
A soldier moravec with the chameleon outfit appears from the open elevator-shaft doorway. The garment looks like nothing special. Actually, it reminds me of an oversized version of a so-called leisure suit I was foolish enough to own in the 1970s. It even had the same stupid, pointy collars and monkey-puke-green sheen to it.
“The collars extend into a full cowl,” says Asteague/Che as if reading my mind. “The suit itself has no color. This green is merely a default setting so we can find the material.”
I take the suit
from the ‘vec soldier and make the mistake of trying to pull it on. Within seconds, I’m tumbling out of control, spinning around my own axis in zero-g, hanging on to the useless garment as if I’m waving a flag, but achieving nothing else.
General Beh bin Adee and his trooper grab me, secure me—they seem to know just where to lodge their feet on the consoles to keep themselves from acting with an equal and opposite reaction—and then they unceremoniously stuff me into the chameleon outfit. Then they attach one of the chair straps to my suit, velcroing me to some patch I can’t see. It keeps me in place.
I pull the collars up into a cowl and pull the cowl completely over my head.
It’s not nearly as comfortable as just putting on the Hades Helmet and disappearing. For one thing, it is tremendously hot in this lizard suit. For a second thing, the nanowhatsits that allow me to see through the material in front of my eyes don’t quite achieve cricital focus. An hour peering out of this thing and I’ll have the worst headache of my life.
“How is it?” asks Prime Integrator Asteague/Che.
“Great,” I lie. “Can you see me?”
“Yes,” says Asteague/Che, “but only via gravitational radar and other bands of the nonvisible-light spectrum. To all visual intents and purposes, you have blended in with the background. With General bin Adee, actually. Will the personages where you are traveling be using gravitational radar, enhanced negative thermal imaging, or other such techniques?”
Would they? I have no clue. Aloud, I say, “There’s one problem.”
“Yes? Perhaps we can fix it.” The Prime Integrator sounds solicitous, even actively concerned. My wife used to love James Mason.
“I have to twist the QT medallion to QT,” I say, wondering how muffled my voice sounds to them. Sweat is rolling down my temple, cheeks, and rib cage by now. “I can’t twist it without opening the suit and…”
“The chameleon cloth is tailored to be very loose,” interrupts Beh bin Adee. The military ‘vec always sounds slightly disgusted with me. “You can pull your arm inside the suit to touch the medallion. Both arms if you need to.”