by Dan Simmons
Then, suddenly, inexplicably—given the real-time terror of the situation—the undying pedant in me, the would-be scholar rather than the has-been scholic, is struck by a Miltonic line by Lucifer: I will exalt my throne above the stars of God …
Something rips the roof and upper floors of the Great Hall of the Gods clean away, revealing naked sky and a shapeless form. Wind and voices roar.
The wall crashes inward. Huge shapes, some vaguely human, smash in masonry, tumble pillars, flow down from the sky, and attack the assembled gods. Every immortal with any sense QT’s away or takes off running. I am frozen in place.
Zeus leaps to his feet. His golden armor and weapons are stacked not twenty feet from where he stands, but that is too far away. Too many forms are closing too quickly for the Father of the Gods to arm himself.
He raises and pulls back his muscled arm to fling lightning, to guide the thunder.
Nothing happens.
“Ai! Ai!” cries Zeus, staring at his empty right hand as if it has disobeyed him. “The elements obey me not!”
“NO REFUGE! NO APPEAL!” booms a voice from the shifting thundercloud mass looming over the disassembled building and the warring gods and shapes. “COME DOWN WITH ME NOW, USURPER. THOSE WHO REMAIN, LOVE NOT THRONES, ALTARS, JUDGMENT-SEATS, AND PRISONS, ALL THOSE FOUL SHAPES ABHORRED BY TRUE GOD AND MAN. COME, USURPER, TYRANT OF THE WORLD, COME TO YOUR NEW HOME STRANGE, SAVAGE, GHASTLY, DARK, AND EXECRABLE.”
For all its booming volume, the terrible voice is more terrible because of its calmness.
“No!” cries Zeus and quantum teleports away.
I hear the immortals fighting near me shout “Titans!” and “Kronos!” and then I run, praying that I remain invisible in my moravec chameleon suit, running out through the tumbling pillars, past the fighting forms, through literal lightning, out under the fire-rent blue skies of the Olympos summit.
Already some of the Olympian gods have taken to their flying chariots, and already they have been met and joined in battle by larger, stranger chariots and their indescribable drivers. All around the shores of the Caldera Lake, gods are fighting Titans—I see a form that can only be Kronos taking on both Apollo and Ares—while monsters are fighting gods and gods are fleeing.
Suddenly I am seized. A powerful hand jerks me to a stop, pins my right arm before I can reach for my QT medallion, and strips the chameleon suit off me like someone ripping Christmas wrap from a poorly wrapped package.
I see that it is Hephaestus, the bearded dwarf-god of fire, Chief Artificer to Zeus and the gods. Behind him on the grass are what looks to be a series of iron cannonballs and a goldfish bowl.
“What are you doing here, Hockenberry?” snarls the unkempt god. Dwarfish as he is to other Olympians, he’s still taller than me.
“How did you see me?” is all that I can manage. Fifty yards away, it appears as if Kronos has killed Apollo with a huge cudgel. The stormcloud-being hovering above the roofless Great Hall of the Gods seems to be dissipating on the high winds that blow around the summit of Olympos.
Hephaestus laughs and taps a glass and bronze lens-thing dangling from his vest amidst a hundred other tiny gizmos. “Of course I could see you. So could Zeus. That’s why he had me build you, Hockenberry. It was all supposed to lead to his ascension to the Godhead today being observed—observed by someone who could fucking well write it down. We’re all postliterate here, you know.”
Before I can move or speak, Hephaestus grabs the heavy QT medallion, rips it off me—breaking the chain—and crushes it in his massive, blunt-fingered, filthy hand.
OhJesusGodAlmightyno I manage to think as the god of fire opens his fist just enough to drop the crumbs of gold into a vest pocket he pulls out wide.
“Don’t shit your pants, Hockenberry,” laughs the god. “This thing never worked. See—there’s no fucking mechanism! Just the dial you could ratchet around. This has always been your Dumbo Feather.”
“It worked… it’s always… I came from… I used it to…”
“No, you didn’t,” says Hephaestus. “I built you with the nanogenes necessary to quantum teleport—just like the big boys. Just like us gods. You just weren’t supposed to know about it until the proper time came. Aphrodite jumped the gun—gave you the fake medallion to use you in her plot to kill Athena.”
I look around wildly. The Great Hall of the Gods has collapsed. Flames lick up through the tumbled pillars. Fighting is spreading everywhere, but the summit is emptying out as more and more gods are flicking away to hide on Ilium Earth. Brane Holes are opening here and there and the Titans and monstrous entities are following the fleeing gods. The
Thundercloud Being that had ripped the roof and top three floors off the Great Hall is gone.
“You need to help me save the Greeks,” I say, my teeth actually chattering.
Hephaestus laughs again, rubs the back of his sooty hand across his greasy mouth. “I’ve already vacuumed up all the other humans on that fucking Ilium-history Earth,” he says. “Why should I save the Greeks? Or even the Trojans for that matter? What have they done for me recently? Plus, I’ll need some humans down there to worship me when I take this throne of Olympos in a few days…”
I can only stare at him. “You vacuumed up the people? You put the population of Ilium Earth in the blue beam rising from Delphi?”
“Who the hell do you think did it? Zeus? With all his technical prowess?” Hephaestus shakes his head. The Titan brothers Kronos, Iapetos, Hyperion, Krios, Koios, and Okeanos are walking this way. They are covered with the golden-ichor blood of gods.
Suddenly Achilles appears from the burning ruins. He is fully clad in his gold armor, his beautiful shield also besmirched by immortal blood, his long sword out, his eyes staring almost madly from the slits of his streaked and sooted golden helmet. The apparition ignores me and shouts at Hephaestus. “Zeus has fled!”
“Of course,” replies the god of fire. “Did you expect him to wait around for the Demogorgon to drag him down to Tartarus?”
“I can’t find Zeus’s location anywhere on the holographic pool locator!” shouts Achilles. “I forced Aphrodite’s mother, Dione, to help me with the locator. She said it would find him anywhere in the universe. When she failed, I cut her to ribbons. Where is he?”
Hephaestus smiles. “You remember, fleet-footed mankiller, the one place Zeus had hidden from all eyes when Hera wanted to fuck him into an eternity of sleep?”
Achilles grabs the fire god’s shoulder and almost lifts him off the ground. “Odysseus’ home! Take me there! At once.”
Hephaestus’ eyes crinkle into unamused slits. “You do not command the future Lord of Olympos such, mortal. Singularity that you are, you must treat your betters with more respect.”
Achilles releases his grip on Hephaestus’ leather vest. “Please. Now. Please.”
Hephaestus nods and then looks at me. “You come, too, Scholic Hockenberry. Zeus wanted you here for this day. Wanted you as witness. Witness ye shall be.”
82
The moravecs aboard the Queen Mab received all the following live, in real-time—Odysseus’ nano-imagers and transmitters were working well—but Asteague/Che decided not to relay it down to Mahnmut and Orphu of Io where they were working there beneath the ocean of Earth. The two ‘vecs were six hours into their twelve-hour job of cutting free and loading the seven hundred sixty-eight critical black-hole warheads and no one on the Mab wanted to distract them.
And what was occurring now could qualify as distracting.
The lovemaking—if that was what the near-violent copulation between Odysseus and the woman who had identified herself as Sycorax—was in one of its temporary states of pause. The two were sprawled naked on the tousled cushions, drinking wine from large two-handled mugs and eating some fruit, when a monstrous creature—amphibian gills, fangs, claws, webbed feet—pushed aside curtains and flip-flop-walked its way into Sycorax’s chambers.
“Dam, thinketh he yes that he must announce
that as he was readying to melt a gourd-fruit into mash, when so Caliban did hear the airlock cycling. Something there is which has come to see you, Mother. Saith, it has all flesh-meat on its nose and fingers like blunt stones. Saith, Mother, and in His name I shall rend this work’s tasty flesh from its soft-chalk bones.”
“No, thank you, Caliban, my darling,” said the naked woman with the purple-colored eyebrows. “Show our visitor in.”
The amphibian thing called Caliban stepped aside. An older version of Odysseus entered.
All of the moravecs—even those who sometimes had trouble telling one human being from another—could see the resemblance. The young Odysseus sprawled naked on the silk cushions stared dumbly at the older Odysseus. This older version had the same short stature and broad chest, but more scars, gray hair and gray in his thicker beard, and bore himself with much more gravity than their passenger on the Mab’s voyage had.
“Odysseus,” said Sycorax. As well as the moravecs’ human emotion auditory analysis circuits could deduce, she sounded truly surprised.
He shook his head. “My name is Noman now. I’m pleased to see you again, Circe.”
The woman smiled. “We have both changed, then. I am Sycorax to the world and myself now, my much-scarred Odysseus.”
The younger Odysseus started to rise, his hands bunched into fists, but Sycorax made a motion with her left hand and the young Odysseus collapsed back onto the cushions.
“You are Circe,” said the man who called himself Noman. “You were always Circe. You will always be Circe.”
Sycorax shrugged very slightly, her full breasts jiggling. Young Odysseus was sprawled to her left. She patted the empty cushions on her right. “Come sit next to me, then… Noman.”
“No, thank you, Circe,” said the man dressed in tunic, shorts, and sandals. “I will stand.”
“You will come and sit next to me,” said Sycorax, her voice intense. She made a complicated motion with her right hand, her different fingers moving not at random.
“No, thank you, I will stand.”
Again the woman blinked in surprise. Deeper surprise this time, the moravec facial-emotion analysts thought.
“Molü,” said Noman. “I think you know of it. A substance made from a rare black root which bears a milk-white bloom out of the earth once each autumn.”
Sycorax nodded slowly. “My, you have traveled far. But haven’t you heard? Hermes is dead.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Noman.
“No, I suppose it doesn’t. How did you get here, Odysseus?”
“Noman.”
“How did you get here, Noman?”
“I used Savi’s old sonie. It took me almost four full days, creeping from one orbital lump to the next, always hiding from these robotic intruder destroyers of yours or outrunning them in stealth mode. You need to get rid of those things, Circe. Or sonies need to include toilet facilities.”
Sycorax laughed softly. “And why on earth would I get rid of the interceptors?”
“Because I ask you to.”
“And why on earth would I do anything you ask, Odys… Noman?”
“I’ll tell you when I finish with my requests.”
Behind Noman, Caliban snarled. The human ignored the noise and the creature.
“By all means,” said Sycorax. “Continue with your requests.” Her smile showed how very little attention she was prepared to pay to these requests.
“First, as I say, eliminate the orbital interceptors. Or at least reprogram them so that spacecraft can move safely within and between the rings again…”
Sycorax’s smile did not waver. Nor did her violet-eyed, purple-painted gaze warm.
“Secondly,” continued Noman, “I would like you to remove the interdiction field above the Mediterranean Basin and to drop the Hands of Hercules fields.”
The witch laughed softly. “What an odd request. The resulting tsunami would be devastating.”
“You can do it gradually, Circe. I know you can. Refill the basin.”
“Before you go on,” she said coldly, “give me one reason I should do this thing.”
“There are things in the Mediterranean Basin which the old-style humans should not have soon.”
“The depots, you mean,” said Sycorax. “The spacecraft, weapons…”
“Many things,” said Noman. “Let the wine-dark sea refill the Mediterranean Basin.”
“Perhaps you haven’t noticed since you’ve been traveling,” said Sycorax, “but the old-style humans are on the verge of extinction.”
“I’ve noticed. I still ask you to refill the Mediterranean Basin—carefully, slowly. And while you’re at it, eliminate that folly that is the Atlantic Breach.”
Sycorax shook her head and lifted the two-handled cup to sip wine. She did not offer Noman any. The young Odysseus lay back glazed on the cushions, apparently unable to move.
“Is that all?” she said.
“No,” said Noman. “I’ll also ask you to reactivate all faxnodes for the old-style humans, all function links, and the rejuvenation tanks remaining on both the polar and equatorial rings.”
Sycorax said nothing.
“Finally,” said Noman, “I want you to send down your tame monster here to tell Setebos that the Quiet is coming to this Earth.”
Caliban hissed and snarled. “Thinketh, time has come to pluck the mankin’s sound legs off and leaveth stumps for him to ponder. Think-eth, He is strong and Lord and this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, nay, two worms, for using His name in vain.”
“Silence,” snapped Sycorax. She stood, looking more regal in her nakedness than other queens could in full regalia. “Noman, is the Quiet coming to this Earth?”
“I believe so, yes.” She seemed to relax. Lifting a clump of grapes from the bowl on the cushions, she carried them to Noman, offered them. He shook his head.
“You ask much of me, for an old and non-Odysseus,” she said softly, pacing the space between the cushioned bed and the man. “What would you give me in return?”
“Tales of my travels.” Sycorax laughed again. “I know your travels.”
“Not this time, you don’t. This has been twenty years, not ten.” The witch’s beautiful face twisted in something the moravecs’ interpreted as a sneer. “Always seeking the same thing… your Penelope.”
“No,” said Noman. “Not this time. This time when you sent the young me through the Calabi-Yau doorway my travels in space and time—twenty years for me—were all in search of you.”
Sycorax stopped her pacing and stared at him.
“You,” repeated Noman. “My Circe. We loved each other well and have made love well many times these twenty years. I’ve found you in your iterations as Circe, Sycorax, Alys, and Calypso.”
“Alys?” said the witch. Noman only nodded. “Did I have a slight gap between my front teeth then?”
“You did.” Sycorax shakes her head. “You lie. In all lines of reality it is the same, Odysseus-Noman. I save you, pull you from the sea, succor you, feed you honeyed wine and fine food, tend your wounds, bathe you, show you physical love of a sort you have only dreamed of, offer you immortality and eternal youth, and always you leave. Always you leave me for that weaving bitch Penelope. And your son.”
“I’ve seen my son this twenty years past,” said Noman. “He is grown into a fine man. I do not need to see him again. I wish to stay with you.”
Sycorax returns to her cushions and drinks two-handed from the large goblet. “I am thinking of turning all your moravec mariners into swine,” she said at last.
Noman shrugged. “Why not? You did that to all my other men in all these other worlds.”
“What kind of swine do you think moravecs will make?” asked the witch, her tone merely conversational. “Will they resemble a row of plastic piggybanks?”
Noman said, “Moira is awake again.” The witch blinked. “Moira? Why would she choose to waken now?”
“I don’t know,” said N
oman, “but she’s in Savi’s young body. I saw her on the day I left Earth, but we didn’t speak.”
“Savi’s body?” repeated Sycorax. “What is Moira up to? And why now?”
“Thinketh,” said Caliban behind Noman, “He made the old Savi out of sweet clay for His son to bite and eat, add honeycomb and pods, chewing her neck until froth rises bladdery, quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain.”
Sycorax rose and paced again, coming close to Noman and raising one hand as if to touch his bare chest, then veering away. Caliban hissed and crouched, his palms on granite, his back hunched, his arms straight down between his crouched and powerful legs, his yellow eyes baleful. But he remained where she had told him to stay.
“You know I can’t send my son down to tell his father Setebos about the Quiet,” she said softly.
“I know this… thing … is not your son,” said Noman. “You built him out of shit and defective DNA in a tank of green slime.”
Caliban hissed and began to speak again in his terrible lisping rant. Sycorax waved him silent.
“Do you know your moravec friends are lifting more than seven hundred black holes into orbit even as we speak?” she asked.
Noman shrugged. “I didn’t know that, but I hoped they would be.”
“Where did they get them?”
“You know where they must have come from. Seven hundred sixty-eight black-hole warheads? There is only one place.”
“Impossible,” said Sycorax. “I sealed that wreck off inside a stasis-egg almost two millennia ago.”
“And Savi and I unsealed it more than a century ago,” said Noman.
“Yes, I watched as you and that bitch hurried around with your hopeless little schemes,” said Sycorax. “What in the hell did you hope to accomplish with those turin-cloth connections to Ilium?”
“Preparation,” said Noman.
“For what?” laughed Sycorax. “You don’t believe those two races of the human species will ever meet, do you? You can’t be serious. The Greeks and Trojans and their ilk would eat your naïve little old-style humans here for breakfast.”