by Dan Simmons
There were a little more than a hundred people in the Joint Council meeting. Helen counted seventy-three raised fists—including her own—and only twelve palms down, including Deiphobus’ and, for some reason, Andromache’s.
There was much celebration inside and when the heralds announced the outcome to the tens of thousands in the central plaza and marketplace outside, the cheers echoed back off the new, low walls of New Ilium.
It was outside on the terrace that Hector came up to her. After a few words of greeting and comments on the chilled wine, he said, “I want so badly to go, Helen. I can’t stand the thought of this expedition leaving without me.”
Ah, thought Helen, this is the reason for Andromache’s no vote. Aloud she said, “You cannot possibly go, noble Hector. The city needs you.”
“Bah,” said Hector, swallowing the last of his wine and banging the cup down on a building stone that had not yet been set in place. “The city is under no threat. We’ve seen no other people in twelve months. We spent this time rebuilding our walls—such as they are—but we shouldn’t have bothered. There are no other people out there. Not in this region of the wide Earth, at least.”
“All the more reason for you to remain and watch over your people,” said Helen, smiling slightly. “To protect us from these dinosaurs and Terrible Birds our tall Ardisian tells us about.”
Hector caught the mischief in her eye and smiled back. Helen knew that she and Hector had always had this strange connection—part teasing, part flirting, part something deeper than a husband and wife’s connection. He said, “You don’t think your future husband will be adequate to protect our city from all threat, noble Helen?”
She smiled again. “I esteem your brother Deiphobus above most other men, my dear Hector, but I have not agreed to his marriage proposal.”
“Priam would have wished it,” said Hector. “Paris would have been pleased at the thought.”
Paris would have puked at the thought, thought Helen. She said, “Yes, your brother Paris would be happy to know that I married Deiphobus… or any noble brother in Priam’s line.” She smiled up at Hector again and was pleased to see his discomfort.
“Would you keep a secret if I tell you?” he asked, leaning close to her and speaking almost in a whisper.
“Of course,” she whispered back, thinking, If it is in my interest to do so.
“I plan to go with Thrasymedes and his expedition when it sails,” Hector said quietly. “Who knows if any of us will ever return? I will miss you, Helen.” He awkwardly touched her shoulder.
Helen of Troy set her smooth hand over his rough one, squeezing it between her soft shoulder and her soft palm. She looked deeply into his gray eyes. “If you go on this expedition, noble Hector, I will miss you almost as much as will your lovely Andromache.”
But not quite so much as Andromache will, thought Helen, since I will be a stowaway on this voyage if it costs me the last diamond and the last pearl of my sizeable fortune.
Still touching hands, she and Hector walked to the railing of the Council palace’s long stone porch. The crowds in the marketplace below were going mad with happiness.
In the center of the plaza, exactly where the old fountain had stood for centuries, the mob of drunken Greeks and Trojans, milling together like brothers and sisters, had pulled in a large wooden horse. The artifact was so large that it wouldn’t have fit through the Gaean Gate, if the Scaean Gate still stood. The lower, wider, topless gate, hastily erected near the place where the oak tree had stood, had no problem swinging wide for this effigy.
Some wag in the mob had decided that this horse was to be the symbol for the Fall of Ilium and today, on the anniversary of that Fall, they planned to burn the thing. Spirits were high.
Helen and Hector watched, their hands still touching lightly—silently but not without communication to each of them—as the mob set the torch to the giant horse and the thing, made mostly of dried driftwood, went up in seconds, driving the mob back, bringing the constables running with their shields and spears, and causing the noblemen and women on the long porch and balconies to murmur in disapproval.
Helen and Hector laughed aloud.
93
Seven years and five months after the Fall of Ilium:
Moira quantum teleported into the open meadow. It was a beautiful summer’s day. Butterflies hovered in the shade of the surrounding forest and bees hummed above clover.
A black Belt soldier moravec approached her carefully, spoke to her politely, and led her up the hill to where a small, open tent—more a colorful canvas pavilion on four poles, actually—flapped gently in the breeze from the south. There were tables in the shade of the canvas and half a dozen moravecs and men bent over them, studying or cleaning the scores of shards and artifacts laid out there.
The smallest figure at the table—he had his own high stool—turned, saw her, jumped down, and came out to greet her.
“Moira, what a pleasure,” said Mahnmut. “Please do come in out of the midday sun and have a cold drink.”
She walked into the shade with the little moravec. “Your sergeant said that you were expecting me,” she said.
“Ever since our conversation two years ago,” said Mahnmut. He went over to the refreshment table and came back with a glass of cold lemonade. The other moravecs and men there looked at her with curiosity, but Mahnmut did not introduce her. Not yet.
Moira gratefully sipped the lemonade, noticed the ice that they must QT or fax in from Ardis or some other community every day, and looked down and over the meadow. This patch ran a hilly mile or so to the river, between the forest to the north and the rough land to the south.
“Do you need the moravec troopers to keep away rubberneckers?” she asked. “Curious crowds?”
“More likely to interdict the occasional Terror Bird or young T-Rex,” said Mahnmut. “What on earth were the post-humans thinking, as Orphu likes to say.”
“Do you still see Orphu much?”
“Every day,” said Mahnmut. “I’ll see him this evening in Ardis for the play. Are you coming?”
“I might,” said Moira. “How did you know that I was invited?”
“You’re not the only one who speaks to Ariel now and again, my dear. More lemonade?”
“No, thank you.” Moira looked at the long meadow again. More than half of it had its top several layers of soil removed—not haphazardly, as from a mechanical earthmover, but carefully, lovingly, obsessively—the sod rolled back, strings and tiny pegs marking every incision, small signs and numbers everywhere, trenches ranging from a few inches in depth to several meters. “So do you think you’ve found it at last, friend Mahnmut?”
The little moravec shrugged. “It’s amazing how difficult it is to find precise coordinates for this little town in the records. It’s almost as if some… power… had removed all references, GPS coordinates, road signs, histories. It’s almost as if some … force … did not want us to find Stratford-on-Avon.”
Moira looked at him with her clear gray-blue eyes. “And why would any power… or force… not want you to find whatever you’re looking for, dear Mahnmut?”
He shrugged again. “It’d be just a guess, but I would say because they—this hypothetical power or force—didn’t mind human beings loose and happy and breeding on the planet again, but they have second thoughts about having a certain human genius back again.”
Moira said nothing.
“Here,” said Mahnmut, drawing her over to a nearby table with all of the enthusiasm of a child, “look at this. One of our volunteers found this yesterday on site three-oh-nine.”
He held up a broken slab of stone. There were strange scratches on the dirty rock.
“I can’t quite make that out,” said Moira.
“We couldn’t either at first,” said Mahnmut. “It took Dr. Hockenberry to help us know what we were looking at. Do you see how this forms IUM and here below US and AER and here ET?”
“If you say so,” said M
oira.
“It does. We know what this is now. It’s part of an inscription below a bust—a bust of him—that, according to our records, once read—‘JUDICO PYLIUM, GENIO SCORATUM, ARTE MARONEM: TERRA TEGIT, POPULUS MAERET, OLYMPUS HABET.’ ”
“I’m afraid I’m a bit rusty on my Latin,” said Moira.
“Many of us were,” said Mahnmut. “It translates—THE EARTH COVERS ONE WHO IS A NESTOR IN JUDGEMENT; THE PEOPLE MOURN FOR A SOCRATES IN GENIUS; OLYMPUS HAS A VIRGIL IN ART.”
“Olympus,” repeated Moira as if musing to herself.
“It was part of an inscription under a bust the townspeople had made of him, and set in stone in the chancelry of Trinity Church after he was interred there. The rest of the inscription is in English. Would you like to hear it, Moira?”
“Of course.”
“STAY PASSENGER, WHY GOEST BY SO FAST?
READ IF THOU CANST, WHOM ENVIOUS DEATH HATH
PLAST,
WITH IN THIS MONUMENT SHAKSPEARE: WITH
WHOME.
QUICK NATURE DIDE: WHOSE NAME DOTH DECK YS
TOMBE, FAR MORE THEN COST: SIEH ALL, YtHE HATH WRITT, LEAVES LIVING ART, BUT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.”
“Very nice,” said Moira. “And quite helpful for your search, I would imagine.”
Mahnmut ignored the sarcasm. “It’s dated the day he died, the twenty-third of April, 1616.”
“But you haven’t found the actual grave.”
“Not yet,” admitted Mahnmut.
“Wasn’t there some headstone or inscription there, as well?” she asked innocently.
Mahnmut studied her face for a moment. “Yes,” he said at last. “Something cut into the actual grave slab set over his bones.”
“Didn’t it say something about—oh …’Stay away, moravecs. Go home?’ ”
“Not quite,” said Mahnmut. “The grave slab is supposed to have read—
“GOOD FRIEND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE,
TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOSED HEARE:
BLESTE BE YE MAN TY SPARES THESE STONES,
AND CURST BE HE TY MOVES MY BONES.”
“Doesn’t that curse worry you a little?” asked Moira.
“No,” said Mahnmut. “You’re confusing me with Orphu of Io. He’s the one who watched all those Universal flatfilm horror movies from the Twentieth Century… you know, Curse of the Mummy and all that.”
“Still …” said Moira.
“Are you going to stop us from finding him, Moira?” asked Mahnmut.
“My dear Mahnmut, you must know by now that we don’t want to interfere with you, the old-styles, our new guests from Greece and Asia… with none of you. Have we thus far?”
Mahnmut said nothing.
Moira touched his shoulder. “But with this… project. Don’t you sometimes feel as if you’re playing God. Just a little bit?”
“Have you met Dr. Hockenberry?” asked Mahnmut.
“Of course. I spoke to him only last week.”
“Odd, he didn’t mention that,” said Mahnmut. “Thomas volunteers here at the dig at least a day or two every week. No, but what I meant to say was that the post-humans and the Olympian gods certainly ‘played God’ when they re-created Dr. Hockenberry’s body and personality and memories from bits of bone, old data files, and DNA. But it worked out all right. He’s a fine person.”
“He certainly seems to be,” said Moira. “And I understand he’s writing a book.”
“Yes,” said Mahnmut. The moravec seemed to have lost his train of thought.
“Well, good luck again,” said Moira, holding out her hand. “And do give my best to Prime Integrator Asteague/Che when you see him next. Do tell him that I so enjoyed the tea we had at the Taj.” She shook the little moravec’s hand and began to walk toward the line of trees to the north.
“Moira,” called Mahnmut.
She paused and looked back.
“Did you say you were coming to the play tonight?” called Mahnmut.
“Yes, I think I will.”
“Will we see you there?”
“I’m not sure,” said the young woman. “But I’ll see you there.” She continued walking toward the forest.
94
Seven years and five months after the Fall of Ilium:
My name is Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., Hockenbush to my friends. I have no friends alive who call me that. Or rather, the friends who once might have called me that—Hockenbush, a nickname from my undergraduate days at Wabash College—have long since turned to dust on this world where so many things have turned to dust.
I lived fifty-some years on that first good Earth, and have been gifted with a bit more than twelve rich years in this second life—at Ilium, on Olympos, in a place called Mars although I didn’t know it was Mars until my last days there, and now back here. Home. On sweet Earth again.
I have much to tell. The bad news is that I have lost all the recordings I have made over the past twelve years as both scholic and scholar—the voice stones I handed to my Muse with each day’s observation of the Trojan War, my own scribbled notes, even the moravec recorder I used to describe the last days of Zeus and Olympos. I lost them all.
It doesn’t matter. I remember it all. Every face. Every man and woman. Every name.
Those who know say that one of the wonderful things about Homer’s Iliad is that no man died nameless in his telling. They all fell heavily, those heroes, those brutal heroes, and when they fell they went down, as another scholar said—I’m paraphrasing here—they went down heavily, crashing down with all their weapons and their armor and their possessions and their cattle and their wives and their slaves going down with them. And their names. No man died nameless or without weight in Homer’s Iliad.
If I tried to tell my tale, I would try to do as well.
But where to start?
If I am to be the Chorus of this tale—willing or unwilling—then I can start wherever I choose. I choose to start it here, by telling you where I live.
I enjoyed my months with Helen in New Ilium while that city rebuilt itself, the Greeks helping after the agreement with Hector that the Trojans would help them build their long ships in return, once the city’s walls were up again. Once the city lived again.
It never died. You see, Ilium—Troy—was its people… Hector, Helen, Andromache, Priam, Cassandra, Deiphobus, Paris… hell, even that ornery Hypsipyle. Some of those people died, but some survived. The city lived as long as they did. Virgil understood that.
So I can’t be Homer for you and I can’t even be Virgil telling the tale from the time of the fall of Troy… not enough time has passed for that part to become much of a story, although I hear that might be changing. I’ll be watching and listening as long as I am living.
But I live here now. In Ardis Town.
Not Ardis. A big house has gone back up on the broad meadow far up the hill a mile and a half from the old fax pavilion, a big house very near where Ardis Hall once rose, and Ada lives there yet with her family, but this place is Ardis Town, no longer Ardis.
There are a few more than twenty-eight thousand of us here in Ardis Town now, according to the last tax census—taken just five months ago. There is a community up on the hill, scattered around Ada’s new home of Ardis House, but most of the town is down here, spread along the new road that runs from the fax pavilion down along the river. Here is where the mills are, and the real marketplace, and the tanners’ smelly buildings, and the printing press and paper, and too many bars and whorehouses, and two synagogues, and one church that might best be described as the First Church of Chaos, and some good restaurants, and the stockyards—which smell almost as bad as the tannery—and a library (I helped bring that into being) and a school, although most of the children still live in or around Ardis House. Most of the students in our Ardis Town are adults, learning to read and write.
About half our residents are Greek and half are Jewish. They tend to get along. Most days.
The Jews have the advantage of being
fully functioned; that is, they can freefax wherever the hell they want to go whenever the hell they want to do it. (I can do that as well… not fax, but QT. It’s in my cells and DNA, you know, written there by whoever or Whoever designed me. But I don’t QT as much any more. I like slower forms of transportation.)
I do help Mahnmut with his Find Will project, at least once a week if I can. You’ve already heard about that. I don’t think he ever will find his Will, and I suspect he believes that also. It’s become a sort of hobby for him and Orphu of Io, and I help out in the same spirit of “what the hell.” None of us—not even Mahnmut, I think—believes that Prospero, Moira, Ariel, any of the Powers That Be… even this Quiet we keep hearing so much about… are going to allow our little moravec to find and recombine the bones and DNA of William Shakespeare. I don’t blame the Powers That Be for feeling threatened.
The play is going on up at Ardis this evening. You’ve heard about that as well. Many of us in Ardis Town are going up the hill to it, although I confess the hill is steep, the road and stairs are dusty, and I may pay fivepence to ride up in one of the steam coaches that Hannah’s company runs. I just wish the damned things weren’t so noisy.
Speaking of finding and not finding someone, I don’t believe I’ve told you how I found my old friend Keith Nightenhelser.
The last I’d seen of my friend, he’d been with a prehistorical Indian tribe in the wilderness of what would once be Indiana—say in three thousand more years. It was a hell of a place for him and I felt guilty because I’d put him there. The idea was to keep him safe during the war between the heroes and the gods, but when I went back to look for old Nightenhelser, the Indians were gone and so was he.
And Patroclus—a very pissed-off Patroclus—was wandering around there somewhere as well, and I suspected that Nightenhelser had not survived.
But I freefaxed to Delphi three and a half months ago when Thrasymedes, Hector, and his crowd of adventurers interdicted the Delphi blue beam and lo and behold, in about the eighth hour of people emerging stunned from that little building—it reminded me of the old circus act where a tiny little car would drive up and fifty clowns would climb out—about eight hours into the people, mostly Greeks, emerging from that building, here comes my friend Nightenhelser. (We always called each other by our last names.)