Ilium

by Dan Simmons

  Who’s here in 1200 b.c.? Indians. It would be ironic if the QT medallion had whisked us away from imminent death by our Muse’s hand—literally—only to bring us to the New World where we’ll be scalped by Indians. Most of the tribes didn’t scalp their victims before the white men arrived, drones on the pedantic part of my professor’s brain. Although I seem to remember reading somethere that sometimes they took ears as proof of their kill.

  Well, that makes me feel better. You can always trust a murderer to have a good prose style, so the saying goes, and a professor to come up with something depressing when you’re already depressed.

  “Hockenberry?” demands Nightenhelser, sitting on a nearby footstool-sized rock—not too close to me, I notice—and rubbing his own elbows and knees.

  “I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” I say in my best Jack Benny voice.

  “Well, when you’re finished thinking,” says Nightenhelser, “maybe you could tell me why the Muse just killed young Houston.”

  This sobers me, but I’m not sure how to respond. “There are things going on with the gods,” I say at last. “Plots. Intrigues. Pacts.”

  “Tell me about it,” says Nightenhelser, meaning it both in irony and as a serious request.

  I raise both hands, palms up. “Aphrodite was trying to use me to assassinate Athena.”

  Nightenhelser stares. He manages—barely—not to drop his jaw.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I say. “Why me? Why use Hockenberry? Why give him the power to QT by himself and the Hades Helmet to hide under? And I agree—it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that,” says Nightenhelser. A meteorite slices across the star-filled sky above us. Somewhere in the forest beyond the hill, an owl makes its not-quite-hooting noise. “I was just wondering what your first name was.”

  It’s my turn to stare. “Why?”

  “Because the gods discouraged use of first names and we were afraid of getting to know each other well because scholics were always being . . . disappeared and replaced by the gods,” says the big man, bearlike even in shadow-darkness. “So I want to know your first name.”

  “Thomas,” I say after a second. “Tom. Yours?”

  “Keith,” says the man I’ve known slightly for four years. He stands up and looks at the dark woods. “Well, what now, Tom?”

  Insects, frogs, and other night critters are making noise in those black woods. Unless they’re really Indians sneaking up on us.

  “Do you know how to . . . I mean, have you camped a lot . . . I mean . . .” I begin.

  “You mean, will I die if you leave me here alone?” asks Nightenhelser . . . Keith.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. Probably. But I suspect my chances are a hell of a lot better here than back on the plains of Ilium. At least while the Muse is on the warpath . . .”

  I guess that Keith is fixated on Indians right now as well.

  “Plus I have all my little scholic tech-toys and gear. I can make fire, use the levitation harness to fly if I have to, morph into an Indian if necessary, even use the weapon taser. So I guess you should QT back to wherever you have to go and do whatever you have to do,” says Nightenhelser. “Fill me in later on the details . . . if there is a later.”

  I nod and stand. It seems strange . . . wrong . . . to leave the other scholic here alone, but I don’t see any choice.

  “Can you find your way back?” he asks. “Here, I mean. To fetch me.”

  “I think so.”

  “Think so? Think so?” Nightenhelser rubs his hand through his wild hair. “I hope you weren’t the chairman of your department, Hockenberry.”

  I guess the era of first names is over.

  There’s no place in the universe that I’d less rather be than Olympos. When I arrive, the inhabitants of this mountaintop are gathered in the Great Hall of the Gods. Making sure that the cowl of the Hades Helmet is pulled on tight and that I throw no shadow, I slip into the huge Parthenon-style building.

  In my nine-plus years as scholic, I’ve never seen so many gods in one place. On one side of the long hologram pool sits Zeus, high on his golden throne, larger than I have ever seen him. As I’ve mentioned, the gods are usually eight or nine feet tall except when they take mortal form, and Zeus usually towers over them by three or four feet, a divine adult to their cosmic children. But today Zeus is twenty-five feet tall or taller, each of his muscled forearms as long as my torso. I fleetingly wonder what this does to that conservation of mass and energy the other scholic tried to teach me about years ago, but that’s not important now. Staying back against the wall, away from the milling gods, and not making any noise or movement or sneeze that will betray me to all these refined superhero senses—that’s important.

  I thought that I knew all the gods and goddesses by name, but there are scores here that I don’t recognize. Those that I do know, the gods and goddesses who have been most involved in the fighting at Troy, stand out in the crowd like movie stars at a meeting of minor politicians, but even the least of these gods is taller, stronger, handsomer, and more perfect than any human movie star I remember from my other life. Nearest Zeus, opposite him across the hologram pool—which divides the room like a long moat now—I can see Pallas Athena, the war god Ares (obviously out of his healing tank, which was not damaged when I destroyed Aphrodite’s), Zeus’s younger brothers—the sea god Poseidon (who rarely comes to Olympos), and Hades, ruler of the dead. Zeus’s son, Hermes, stands near the pool, and the guide and giant killer is as lean and beautiful as statues I’ve seen of him. Another son of Zeus, Dionysus, the god of ecstatic release, is talking to Hera and—contrary to his public image—he has no goblet of wine in his hand. For a god of ecstatic release, Dionysus looks pale, feeble, and dour—like a man in only the third week of a twelve-step program. Beyond them, looking older than time, is Nereus, the true sea god, the Old Man of the Sea. His fingers and toes are webbed and there are gills visible below his armpits.

  The Fates and the Furies are here in force, milling by accident or design between the gods and the goddesses. These are gods—of sorts—yet sometimes they have regulatory power over the other gods. They are not as human in appearance as the regular gods and goddesses, and I confess I know almost nothing about them except that they don’t live on Olympos, but on one of the three volcanoes far to the southeast, near where the muses reside.

  My Muse, Melete, is here, standing with her sisters, Meneme and Aoide. The more “modern” muses are also in the crowd—the real Kalliope, Polymnia, Ourania, Erato, Kleis, Euterpe, Melpomene, Terpsichore, and Tahleia. Just beyond the muses are the A-list goddesses. Aphrodite is not among them—that is the first thing I notice. If she were, I would be as visible to her as these divinities are to me. But her mother, Dione, is in attendance, speaking to Hera and Hermes and looking very serious indeed. Near that group are Demeter—the goddess of crops—and her daughter Persephone, Hades’ wife. Behind them I can see Pasithea, one of the Graces. Farther back, as befits their lesser place, are the Nereids, nude to the waist, lovely, and treacherous-looking.

  The meta-goddess called Night stands alone. Her gown and veil are of a purple so dark as to be black, and even the other gods and goddesses give her a wide berth. I know nothing about Night, except rumors that even Zeus is afraid of her, and I’ve never seen her on Olympos before.

  I feel like a gawking movie fan in the crowd outside the Academy Awards, trying to separate the superstars from the lesser gods. Hebe there, for instance, standing near the males—she is the goddess of youth, Zeus and Hera’s child, but only a servant to the gods—and there, red hair like flames, is Hephaestus, the great artificer, talking to his wife, Charis, who is only one of the Graces. Pecking order among gods and goddesses I realize, not for the first time, is complicated stuff.

  Suddenly the goddess Iris, Zeus’s messenger, flies forward—yes, flies—and claps her hands. “The Father will speak,” she says, her voice as clear and crisp as a flute s
olo.

  Immediately the scores of soft conversations cease and the great, echoing hall goes silent.

  Zeus stands. His gold throne and the gold steps leading up to it exude a glow that bathes him in divine light.

  “Hear me, all you gods, and goddesses, too,” says Zeus, his voice soft but so strong that I feel the vibration of it off the high marble walls. “Some god or goddess this day has tried to hurt Aphrodite, now healing in our hall of healing, and—while she will live—it was a close thing and she will need many more days to heal again. Some god or goddess tried to kill an immortal this day—tried to kill one of us who is not fated for death.”

  The muttering and shocked conversation start as a buzz and rise to a roar in the huge room.

  “SILENCE!!” roars Zeus, and this time his voice is so loud that it knocks me down and slides me across the marble floor like a tumbleweed in a tornado. Luckily, I hit none of the gods or goddesses in my slide, and the noise I make is drowned out by the echoes of Zeus’s shout.

  “Hear me now, oh gods and goddesses,” he continues, his voice amplified as if from the ultimate public address system. “Let no beautiful goddess, nor no god either, attempt to defy my strict decree. You will submit to my will—NOW!”

  This time I am ready for the hurricane force of his voice and I cling to a column until the energy of it has passed.

  “Listen to me,” says Zeus, almost whispering now, the sense of his power even more terrible for the soft tone. “Any god who violates my decree by helping the Trojans or Achaeans the way I have seen this month, back that god or goddess comes to Olympos, whipped on by my lightning and scourged by my thunder, eternally disgraced, banned henceforth from Olympos. Defy me, and find what it is like to be cast down to the murk of Tartarus half a universe away in space and time, in the deepest gulf that yawns beneath our quantum selves.”

  As he speaks, the long hologram pit boils and bubbles, turns pitch-black, and then becomes something other than a hologram; the rectangular pit—looking like a dozen Olympic-sized swimming pools laid end to end, now broiling and filled with bubbling black oil—suddenly lets loose with a roar of its own, and becomes a hole opening on someplace dark and fiery and terribly deep. The stench of sulfur roils up and the gods and goddesses near the edge back away.

  “Behold Tartarus,” cries Zeus, “the lowest depths of the House of Hades, a place as far below hell as Hades’ home is beneath the earth itself. Do you remember—you senior gods and goddesses amongst us—when you followed me into that ten-year war with the Titans who ruled before us? Do you remember that I cast Kronos and Rhea—my own parents—beyond these iron gates and brazen thresholds—aye, and Iapetus, too, for all his god-power?”

  The hall is silent except for the muted roars and bellows and screams coming up from the open Tartarus Pit. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is a hole to hell, not a hologram, falling away not thirty feet from where I cower.

  “IF I CAST MY PARENTS DOWN INTO THIS PIT OF PITS FOR ALL ETERNITY,” roars Zeus, “DO YOU DOUBT THAT I WILL THROW YOUR SCREAMING SOUL THERE IN A SECOND?”

  The gods and goddesses do not answer, except to take several paces farther back from that foul void.

  Zeus smiles terribly. “Come, try me, immortals, so that all can learn.”

  A huge golden cable falls from the roof of the hall, straddling the hole to hell. Gods and goddesses scurry to get out of the way of its fall. It stikes marble with a resounding crash. The rope is thicker than a ship’s hawser and seems to be spun of thousands of inch-thick strands of true gold. It must weigh many tons.

  Zeus strides down his golden stairs and lifts the cable, holding it easily in his giant hands. “Grasp your end,” he says almost cheerfully.

  The gods and goddesses look at each other and do not move.

  “GRASP YOUR END!”

  Hundreds of immortals and their immortal servants rush to comply, scrambling for a handhold on the long cable like kids at a picnic tug-of-war. In a minute there is Zeus alone on his side of the Tartarus Pit, casually holding the cable, and the countless mob of gods and goddesses on the other side, powerful god-hands gripped tight on gold.

  “Drag me down,” says Zeus. “Drag me down from sky to earth to Hades and deeper, to Tartarus’ stinking depths. Drag me down, I say.”

  Not a single god moves a bronzed muscle.

  “DRAG ME DOWN, I COMMAND THEE!” Zeus grasps the golden cable and begins to haul on it. Gods’ sandals slip and squeak and scuff on marble. Several hundred gods and goddesses all in a row are pulled closer to the pit, some stumbling, some going to their knees.

  “PULL, GODDAMN YOU!” howls Zeus. “PULL OR BE DRAGGED INTO STINKING TARTARUS UNTIL TIME ITSELF ROTS AWAY FROM THE BONES OF THE UNIVERSE!”

  Zeus tugs again and twenty yards of gold cable coils behind him. The conga line of gods and goddesses and graces and furies and nereids and nymphs and you-name-it on the other side—everyone pulling except purple-gowned Night—slides and screeches closer to the pit. Athena is the first on the cable and is only thirty feet from the edge when she screams, “Pull, you gods! Pull the old bastard in!!”

  Ares and Apollo and Hermes and Poseidon and the rest of the most powerful gods put their backs into it. They quit sliding. The cable pulls tighter, fraying and creaking from the tension. The goddesses scream and pull in unison, Hera—Zeus’s wife—pulling even harder than the others. The gold cable stretches and groans.

  Zeus laughs. He is holding them all at check with only one hand on the rope. Now he grabs the cable with his other hand and pulls again.

  The gods scream like children on a roller coaster. Athena and those near her on the cable go sliding across the marble as if it were ice, closer and closer to the raging Tartarus Pit, even as dozens of lesser immortals surrender and throw themselves away from the cable. But Athena will not release her grip. The gray-eyed goddess is pulled relentlessly to the edge of the steaming trapdoor to hell. It looks as if the whole line of straining, sweating, cursing immortals is going in.

  Zeus laughs and drops the cable. Score upon score of gods and goddesses fly backward and land unceremoniously on their immortal asses.

  “You gods and goddesses, children, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, cousins, and servants—you cannot drag me down,” says Zeus. He walks back to his throne and sits. “Not even if you pulled your arms from their sockets, if you pulled yourselves to death, could you budge me if I do not choose to move. I am Zeus, the highest, mightiest of kings.”

  He raises one huge finger. “But . . . if I choose to drag you up in earnest, I’d hoist you off this Olympos, dangle you in black space above Tartarus, tie on the earth and sea as well, hook the end around the horn of this hill called Olympos, and leave you dangling there in darkness until the sun grows cold.”

  If I hadn’t just seen what I have seen, I’d think the old bastard was bluffing. Now I know better.

  Athena gets to her feet, not more than a yard from the edge of the Tartarus Pit, and says, “Our Father, son of Kronos, who art in the highest throne of heaven, we know your power, Lord. Who can stand against you? Not us . . .”

  All the immortals seem to be holding their breath. Athena’s temper is legendary, her diplomacy skills frequently lacking—if she says the wrong thing now . . .

  “Even so,” says Zeus’s gray-eyed daughter, “we pity these mortals, my doomed Argive spearmen, acting out their little roles on their little stage, dying their terrible deaths, drowning in their own blood at the end of their little lives.”

  She takes another two steps, so that the tips of her sandals are hanging over the edge of the black pit. Somewhere thousands of feet below her in the lightning-lashed Tartarus darkness, something large bellows in pain and fear. “Yes, Zeus,” continues Athena, “we will keep clear of the war as you command. But grant us—at the very least—permission to offer our mortal favorites tactics that may save them, so that they all won’t fall beneath the lightning of your immortal wrath.”

  Zeus lo
oks at his daughter a long moment and I for one can’t read his eyes. Fury? Humor? Impatience?

  “Tritogeneia—third-born child—dear daughter,” says Zeus, “your courage has always given me a headache. But do not lose heart, for nothing of the lesson I showed you here today flows from anger, but only seeks to show all gathered here the consequences of their disobedience.”

  And having spoken, Zeus steps down from his throne and his personal chariot flies in between the giant pillars, his pair of bronze-hooved horses—real, I see, not holograms—landing near him, their golden manes streaming behind them. Strapping on his golden armor and lifting his whip from its stand, Zeus climbs aboard his battle car, cracks the lash, and I watch the matched team and chariot roll across marble and then take to the air, circling the hall once a hundred feet above the gods’ and goddesses’ heads before flying out between the pillars and disappearing in a crack of quantum thunder.

  Slowly the gods and goddesses and lesser sorts file out of the hall, murmuring and plotting among themselves, none—I’m sure—planning to obey their lord and king.

  And me—I just sit here for a while—invisible and glad to be so. My jaw is hanging slack and I am breathing shallowly, like a whipped dog on a hot day. It feels like I’m drooling slightly.

  Sometimes, up here on Olympos, it’s hard to believe completely in cause and effect and the scientific method.

  25

  Texas Redwood Forest

  Daeman was all alone now, just him and the sonie in the forest clearing, and he didn’t like it.

  After Savi left, Odysseus had told his endless, pointless story and walked into the woods at the end of it. Hannah had waited a minute and then gone after the old man. (Daeman had known immediately that morning that Hannah and the bearded man had slept together the night before—his sex radar was seldom wrong.) A few minutes later, Ada and the other old man, Harman, had said they were going for a short walk and then disappeared under the trees in the opposite direction. (Daeman knew that they’d had sex the night before as well. Evidently he and the old witch, Savi, were the only ones not having any fun.)