by Dan Simmons
Still, as Hera begins to retort to her husband, I am looking at her arms. “Son of Kronos—dreaded majesty,” she says, white arms folded, “what in the hell are you talking about? How dare you consider making all of my labors pointless? I’m talking sweat here—immortal sweat—poured out launching Achaea’s armies, stroking these male hero’s egos just to keep them from killing each other before they kill Trojans, and taking great pains—my pains, O Zeus—in heaping greater pains on King Priam and the sons of Priam and the city of Priam.”
Zeus frowns and leans forward on his uncomfortable-looking throne, his huge white hands clenching and unclenching.
Hera unfolds her arms and throws up her hands in exasperation. “Do what you please—you always do—but don’t expect any of us immortals to praise you.”
Zeus stands. If the other gods are eight or nine feet tall, Zeus must stand twelve feet high. His brow is more folded than furrowed now, and I am using no metaphor when I say that he thunders:
“Hera—my dear, darling, insatiable Hera! What has Priam or the sons of Priam ever done to you that you have become so furious, so relentless to bring down Priam’s city of Ilium?”
Hera stands silent, hands at her side. This seems only to increase Zeus’s royal fury.
“This is more appetite than anger with you, Goddess!” he roars. “You won’t be satisfied until you knock down the Trojans’ gates, breach their walls, and eat them raw.”
Hera’s expression does nothing to deny this charge.
“Well . . . well . . .” thunders Zeus, almost spluttering in a way all too familiar to husbands across the millennia, “do as you please. But one more thing—and remember it well, Hera—when there comes a day that I am bent on destroying a city and consuming its inhabitants—a city you love, as I love Ilium—then don’t even think about attempting to oppose my fury.”
The goddess takes three quick steps forward and I am reminded of a predator pouncing, or some chess master seeing his opening and taking it. “Yes! The three cities I love best are Argos and Sparta and Mycenae of the wide ways, its streets as broad and regal as ill-fated Ilium’s. All these you can sack to your vandal’s heart’s content, My Lord. I will not oppose you. I will not begrudge your will . . . little good it would do me anyway, since you are the stronger of us two. But remember this, O Zeus—although I am your consort, I am also born of Kronos and thus deserving of your respect.”
“I never suggested otherwise,” mutters Zeus, taking his hard seat again.
“Then let us yield one to the other on this point,” says Hera, her voice audibly sweeter now. “I to you and you to me. The lesser gods will comply. Quickly now, my husband! Achilles has left the field for now, but a mewling truce makes quiet the killing ground between Trojans and Achaeans. See that that the Trojans break this truce and do first injury, not only to their oaths, but to the far-famed Achaeans.”
Zeus glowers, grumbles, shifts in his chair, but orders the attentive Athena—“Go quickly down to the quiet killing ground between Trojans and Achaeans. I order you to see that the Trojans are the first to break the truce and do injury to the far-famed Achaeans.”
“And trample on the Argives in their triumph,” prompts Hera.
“And trample on the Argives in their triumph,” Zeus orders wearily.
Athena disappears in a QT flash. Zeus and Hera leave the room and the gods begin to disperse, speaking softly amongst themselves.
The Muse beckons me to follow with a subtle flick of her finger and leads me out of the assembly hall.
“Hockenberry,” says the Goddess of Love, reclining on her cushioned couch, the gravity—light as it is—giving emphasis to all her silky, milky-weighted voluptuousness.
The Muse had led me to this other room in the Great Hall of the Gods, this darkened room with only the double glow from a low-burning brazier and from something that looked suspiciously like a computer screen. She had whispered to me to remove the Helmet of Death and I was relieved to take the leather hood off, but terrified to be visible again.
Then Aphrodite had entered, assumed her position on the couch, and said, “That will be all until I summon you, Melete,” and the Muse had stepped out through a secret door.
Melete, I thought. Not one of the nine muses, but a name from an earlier era, where the muses were thought to be three: Melete of “practicing,” Mneme of “remembering,” and Aoide of . . .
“Hockenberry, I was able to see you in the Hall of the Gods,” says Aphrodite, blinking me out of my scholic reverie, “and if I had pointed you out to Lord Zeus, you would be something less than ashes now. Even your QT medallion would not have allowed you to escape, for I could follow your phase-shift path through time and space itself. Do you know why you are here?”
Aphrodite is my patroness. She’s the one who ordered the Muse to give me these devices. What do I do? Kneel? Prostrate myself on the floor in the presence of divinity? How do I address her? In my nine years, two months, and eighteen days here, my existence has never been acknowledged by a god before, not counting my Muse.
I decide to bow slightly, averting my eyes from her beauty, from the sight of pink nipples showing through thin silk, of that soft cusp of stomach sending shadows into that triangle of dark fabric where her thighs meet.
“No, Goddess,” I say at last, all but forgetting the question.
“Do you know why you were chosen as scholic, Hockenberry? Why your DNA was exempted from nanocyte disruption? Why, before you were chosen for reintegration, your writings on the War were factored into the simplex?”
“No, Goddess.” My DNA is exempt from nanocyte disruption?
“Do you know what a simplex is, mortal shade?”
Herpes virus? I think. “No, Goddess,” I say.
“The simplex is a simple geometric mathematical object, an exercise in logistics, a triangle or trapezoid folded on itself,” says Aphrodite. “Only combined with multiple dimensions and algorithms defining new notional areas, creating and discarding feasible regions of n-space, planes of exclusion become inevitable contours. Do you understand now, Hockenberry? Do you understand how this applies to quantum space, to time, to the War below, or to your own fate?”
“No, Goddess.” My voice does quaver this time. I can’t help it.
There is a rustling of silk and I glance up long enough to see the most beautiful female in existence rearranging her fair limbs and smooth thighs on the couch. “No matter,” she says. “You—or the mortal who was your template—wrote a book several thousand years ago. Do you remember its content?”
“No, Goddess.”
“If you say that one more time, Hockenberry, I am going to rip you open from crotch to crown and quite literally use your guts for my garters. Do you understand that?”
It is hard to speak with no saliva in your mouth. “Yes, Goddess,” I manage, hearing the dry lisp.
“Your book ran to 935 pages and it was all about one word—Menin—do you remember now?”
“No, Go . . . I’m afraid I don’t recall that, Goddess Aphrodite, but I am sure that you are correct.”
I look up long enough to see that she is smiling, her chin propped on her left hand, her finger rising along her cheek to one perfect dark eyebrow. Her eyes are the color of a fine cognac.
“Rage,” she says softly. “Menin aeide thea . . . Do you know who will win this war, Hockenberry?”
I have to think fast here. I would be a pretty poor scholic if I don’t know how the poem turns out—although the Iliad ends with the funeral rites for Achilles’ friend Patroclus, not with the destruction of Troy, and there is no mention of a giant horse except in Odysseus’ comments and that from another epic . . . but if I pretend to know how this real war will turn out, and it is obvious from the argument I have just overheard that Zeus’s edict that the gods must not be informed of the future as predicted by the Iliad is still in effect—I mean, if the gods themselves do not know what will happen next, wouldn’t I be putting myself above the gods, incl
uding Fate by telling them? Hubris has never been an attribute gently rewarded by these gods. Besides, Zeus—who alone knows the full tale of the Iliad—has forbidden the other gods from asking and all of us scholics from discussing anything except events that have already occurred. Pissing off Zeus is never a good plan for survival on Olympos. Still, it seems I’m exempt from nanocyte disruption. On the other hand, I believe the Goddess of Love completely when she says that she will wear my guts for garters.
“What was the question, Goddess?” is all I can manage.
“You know how the poem the Iliad ends, but I would be defying Zeus’s command if I ask you what happens there,” says Aphrodite, her small smile disappearing and being replaced by something like a pout. “But I can ask you if that poem predicts this reality. Does it? In your opinion, Scholic Hockenberry, does Zeus rule the universe, or does Fate?”
Oh, shit, I think. Any answer here is going to end up with me being gutless and this beautiful woman—goddess—wearing slimy garters. I say, “It is my understanding, Goddess, that even though the universe bends to the will of Zeus and must obey the vagaries of the god-force called Fate, that kaos still has some say in the lives of both men and gods.”
Aphrodite makes a soft, amused sound. Everything about her is so soft, touchable, enticing . . . .
“We will not wait for chaos to decide this contest,” she says, her voice shedding all sound of amusement. “You saw Achilles withdraw from the fray this day?”
“Yes, Goddess.”
“You know that the man-killer has already prayed to Thetis to punish his fellow Achaeans for the shame that Agamemnon has heaped on him?”
“I have not witnessed this prayer, Goddess, but I know that it follows the path of the . . . the poem.” This is safe to say. The event is in the past. Besides, the sea goddess Thetis is Achilles’ mother and everyone on Olympos knows that he has called for her intervention.
“Indeed,” says Aphrodite. “That roundheeled bitch with the wet breasts has already been here to the Great Hall, throwing herself at Zeus’s knees as soon as the old fool returned from his debauching with the Aethiopians at the Ocean River. She begged him, for Achilles’ sake, to grant victory after victory to the Trojans, and the old sod agreed, thus putting him on a collision course with Hera, chief champion of the Argives. Thus the scene you just witnessed.”
I stand upright with my arms down, palms forward, head slightly bowed, all the while watching Aphrodite as if she were a cobra, but still knowing that if she chooses to strike me, the strike will come much faster and more lethally than any cobra’s.
“Do you know why you have survived longer than any other scholic?” snaps Aphrodite.
Unable to speak without condeming myself, I shake my head ever so slightly.
“You are still alive because I have foreseen that you can perform a service for me.”
Sweat trickles down my brow and stings my eyes. More sweat forms rivulets on my cheek and neck. As scholics, our sworn duty—my duty for the last nine years, two months, and eighteen days—is to observe the war on the plains of Ilium without ever intervening, observing without ever committing any act whatsoever that might change the outcome of the war or the behavior of its heroes in any way.
“Did you hear me, Hockenberry?”
“Yes, Goddess.”
“Are you interested in hearing what this service will be, scholic?”
“Yes, Goddess.”
Aphrodite rises from her couch and now I do bow my head, but I can hear the rustle of her silken gown, hear even the gentle friction of her smooth white thighs rubbing softly as she walks closer; I can smell the perfume-and-clean-female scent of her as she stands so close. I had forgotten for a moment how tall a goddess is, but I’m reminded of our respective heights as she towers over me, her breasts inches from my downturned face. For an instant I must fight the urge to bury my face in the perfumed valley between those breasts, and although I know well that this would by my last act before a violent death, I suspect at this moment that it might be worth it.
Aphrodite sets her hand on my tense shoulder, touches the rough leather embroidery of the Helmet of Death, and then moves her fingertips to my cheek. Despite my fear, I feel a powerful erection stirring, rising, standing firm.
The goddess’s whisper, when it comes, is soft, sensual, slightly amused, and I am sure that she knows the state I am in, expects it as her due. She lowers her face and leans so close that I can feel the heat of her cheek radiating against mine as she whispers two simple commands in my ear.
“You are going to spy on the other gods for me,” she says softly. And then, barely audible above the pounding of my heart, “And when the time is right, you are going to kill Athena.”
7
Conamara Chaos Central
Counting Mahnmut, there were five Galilean moravecs in the pressurized gathering chamber atop the slab zone. The Europan construct was familiar to him—Pwyll-based prime integrator Asteague/Che—but the other three were more alien than krakens to the provincial Mahnmut. The Ganymedan moravec was tall, elegant as all Ganymedans, atavistically humanoid, sheathed in black buckycarbon and staring through his fly’s eyes; the Callistan was more Mahnmut’s size and design—about a meter long, only vaguely humanoid, showing synskin and even some real flesh under clear polymide coating, massing only thirty or forty kilograms; the Ionian construct was . . . impressive. A heavy-use moravec of ancient design, built to withstand plasma torus and sulfur geysers, the Io-based entity was at least three meters tall and six meters long, shaped rather like a terrestrial horseshoe crab—heavily armored, with an untidy myriad of morphable appendages, thrusters, lenses, flagella, whip antennae, broad-spectrum sensors and facilitators. The thing was obviously used to hard vacuum; its surface was pitted and sanded and repolished, then repitted again so many times that it looked as pockmarked as Io itself. Here in the pressurized conference room it used powerful source-repellers to keep from gouging the floor. Mahnmut kept his distance from the Ionian, taking a place across the communion slab from it.
None of the others introduced themselves via either infrared or tightbeam, so Mahnmut followed suit. He connected to nutrient umbilicals at his slab niche, sipped, and waited.
As much as he enjoyed breathing when he had the luxury of doing so, Mahnmut was surprised that the room was pressurized to 700 millibars—especially with the nonbreathing Ganymedan and Ionian in attendance. Then Asteague/Che began communicating through micro-modulation of pressure waves in the atmosphere—speech, Lost Age English no less—and Mahnmut realized that the room was pressurized for privacy, not for their comfort. Sound-speech was the most secure form of communication in the Galilean system, and even the armored, hard-vac Io worker had been retrofitted to accommodate it.
“I want to thank each of you for interrupting your duties to come here today,” began the Pwyll prime integrator, “especially those who traveled from offworld to be present. I am Asteague/Che. Welcome, Koros III of Ganymede, Ri Po of Callisto, Mahnmut of the south polar prospect survey here on Europa, and Orphu of Io.”
Mahnmut cycled in surprise and immediately opened a private tightbeam contact. Orphu of Io? Are you then my longtime Shakespearean interlocutor, Orphu of Io?
Indeed, Mahnmut. It is a pleasure to meet you in person, my friend.
How strange! What are the odds of us encountering each other in person this way, Orphu?
Not so strange, my friend. When I heard that you were going to be invited on this suicide expedition, I insisted on being included.
Suicide expedition?
“. . . after more than fifty Jovian years without contact with the post-humans,” Asteague/Che was saying, “some six hundred Earth years, we’ve lost track of what the pH’s are up to. It makes us nervous. It is time to send an expedition in-system, toward the campfire, and to find out what the status of these creatures has become and to assess if they are a direct and immediate threat to Galileans.” Asteague/Che paused a moment. “We have re
ason to suspect that they are.”
The wall behind the Europan integrator had been transparent, showing the bulk of Jupiter above the starlit icefields, but now it opaqued and then displayed the various moons and worlds moving in their stately dance around the distant sun. The image zoomed on the Earth-Moon-rings system.
“For the last five hundred Earth years, there has been less and less activity on the modulated radio, gravitonic, and neutrino spectrums from the post-humans’ polar and equatorial habitation rings,” said Asteague/Che. “For the last century, none at all. On the Earth itself, only residual traces—possibly due to robotic activity.”
“Does the small group of original humans still exist?” asked Ri Po, the small Callistan.
“We don’t know,” said Asteague/Che. The integrator passed his hand across the allboard and an image of Earth filled the window. Mahnmut felt his breathing stop. Two-thirds of the planet was in sunlight. Blue seas and a few traces of brown continents were visible under moving masses of white clouds. Mahnmut had never seen Earth before, and the intensity of color was almost overwhelming.
“Is this a real-time image?” asked Koros III.
“Yes. The Five Moons Consortium has constructed a small optical deep-space telescope just outside the bow-shock front of the Jovian magnetodisk. Ri Po was involved in the project.”
“I apologize for its lack of resolution,” said the Callistan. “It has been over a Jovian century since we’ve resorted to visible light astronomy. And this project was rushed.”