Ilium

by Dan Simmons

  I don’t think that Achilles will leave in a few hours when Dawn stretches forth her rosy fingertips. Uh-uh. I think Achilles will stay and observe, just as he does in Homer’s tale, taking pleasure in further misfortune for the Greeks. “I think now that the Achaeans will come crawl at my knees,” Achilles will say after the next bad day, when all the great captains—Agamemnon, Menelaus, Diomedes, and Odysseus—are hurt. And this is after last night’s embassy to Achilles, where they’ve already groveled to get him back. Achilles will take pleasure in the defeat of his fellow Argives and Achaeans, and it’s only Hector’s murder of his friend Patroclus, snoring now in the next room, that will bring the man-killer back to the battlefield.

  So Patroclus has to die to turn the direction of events now.

  I stand and take inventory of the things I’m wearing and carrying. A short sword, yes, to blend in with the troops, but I’ve never used the damned thing and know it doesn’t even have an edge. The Muse gave it to me as a prop, not a weapon. For real defense these past nine years, I’ve been equipped with the lightweight layer of impact armor—enough to stop a sword thrust or errant spear or arrow, we were told in the scholics barracks, although I have never had to test it—and the 50,000-volt taser tucked into the end of the shotgun mike baton we all carry. That weapon was designed only to stun an aggressor long enough for us to escape to a QT portal. Other hardware includes the lenses that enhance my vision, filters that boost my hearing, the stolen, cowl-like Hades Helmet furled around my shoulders, the QT medallion on its chain around my neck, and the morphing bracelet on my wrist.

  Suddenly a plan—or at least part of a plan—begins to form in my tired mind.

  I act before I can lose my nerve. Pulling up the Hades Helmet, disappearing from mortal and divine sight, feeling like Frodo or Bilbo or the gollum slipping on the ring that binds them all, I tiptoe from the sleeping annex where they laid out Phoenix’s cushion to Achilles’ bedchamber.

  Achilles and Patroclus are sleeping together naked, the slave girls long gone, Patroclus’ arm flung across the man-killer’s shoulders.

  This sight in the dim light stops me in my tracks. Achilles is gay? That means that stupid gay- and lesbian-obsessed junior professor in the department was right—his ranting papers correct—all that politically correct babble true!

  I shake this out of my head. It means nothing except that I’m three thousand years away from Twenty-first Century Indiana and that I don’t know what I’m seeing. These two men have just fornicated with slave girls for two hours and fell asleep where they lay. And besides, who cares about the secret love life of Achilles?

  I trigger the morphing band and bring up the scan I’d made two days earlier in the hall of the gods on Olympos. I don’t know if this will work—the other scholics used to laugh at the idea.

  Probability waves shift through quantum layers I can’t perceive. The air seems to quiver, stand still, then quiver again. I slip the soft Hades Helmet off my head and become visible.

  Visible as Pallas Athena, Tritogenia, Third Born of the Gods, Daughter of Zeus, defender of the Achaeans. Nine feet tall, radiating my own divine light, I step closer to the bed as both Achilles and Patroclus awake with a start.

  I can feel the instability in every atom in this morphed form. The morphing bracelet was not designed for us to take the form of gods, but although my shape hums like a hardstruck harp, I use the short time this quantum substitution will give me. I work to ignore the sensation not only of suddenly having breasts and a vagina—I’ve never morphed into the form of a woman before—but also ignore the sensation of being a goddess.

  The form is unstable. I know in my heart that I haven’t assumed the powers of Athena, just borrowed her quantum shell for these few seconds. Feeling as if there’s going to be some nuclear reaction, a morphing meltdown, if I don’t shed the quantum waveform of Athena quickly, I speak fast.

  “Achilles! Wake! On your feet!”

  “Goddess!” cries the fleet-footed man-killer, rolling from the cushions to the floor. “What brings you here in the middle of the night, Child of Zeus?”

  Rubbing his eyes, Patroclus also struggles to his feet. Both men are naked, their bodies more sculpted and beautiful than the finest Greek statues, their uncircumcised penises dangling against their muscled and tanned thighs.

  “BE QUIET!” I bellow. Athena’s voice comes out amplified, superhuman. I know that I’m waking the others in Achilles’ tent and probably alarming the guards outside. I have less than a minute. As if to prove my point, Athena’s golden arm quivers, shifts to Professor Thomas Hockenberry’s pale and hairy forearm, and then morphs back to Athena’s. I see that Achilles’ eyes are downcast and that he hasn’t noticed. Patroclus stares wide-eyed, confused.

  “Goddess, if I have offended you . . .” begins Achilles, raising his eyes but keeping his head bowed.

  “SILENCE!!” I bellow. “CAN AN ANT CRAWLING IN THE DIRT OFFEND A MAN? CAN THE LOWEST AND UGLIEST FISH IN THE SEA OFFEND THE SAILOR WHOSE THOUGHTS ARE ON OTHER THINGS?”

  “An ant?” repeats Achilles, his handsome, sculpted face showing a rebuked child’s confusion.

  “YOU’RE ALL LESS THAN ANTS TO THE GODS,”I roar, taking a step closer so that Athena’s radiance flickers over them like radioactive light. “YOU’VE AMUSED US WITH YOUR DEATHS, ACHILLES . . . SON OF PELEUS AND IDIOT CHILD OF THETIS.”

  “Idiot child,” repeats Achilles, red rising to his high cheekbones. “Goddess, how have I . . .”

  “SILENCE, COWARD!” I’ve amplified Athena’s voice until they could hear this insult in Agamemnon’s camp almost a mile down the beach. “WE CARE NOTHING FOR YOU. NOTHING FOR ANY OF YOU. YOUR DEATHS AMUSE US . . . BUT YOUR COWARDICE DOES NOT, SWIFT-RUNNING ACHILLES!” I sneer these last few words, turning the poet’s honorific into a demeaning insult.

  Achilles balls his fists and takes a half step forward, as if approaching a foe. “Goddess, Pallas Athena, Defender of Achaeans, I have always offered you the finest sacrifices . . .”

  “A COWARD’S SACRIFICE MEANS NOTHING TO US ON OLYMPOS,” I roar. I feel the probability wave that is the real goddess Athena approaching critical collapse. I have only seconds in this half-morphed form.

  “WE’LL TAKE AND BURN OUR OWN SACRIFICE FROM THIS MOMENT ON,” I say and Athena’s arm extends toward Patroclus, the baton hidden under my forearm, my finger on the activator. “IF YOU WANT YOUR BOYFRIEND’S CORPSE, FIGHT YOUR WAY TO THE HALLS OF OLYMPOS TO GET IT, COWARD ACHILLES!”

  I taser Patroclus in the center of his tanned, hairless chest, the near-invisible electrodes and invisible wires carrying 50,000 volts into him.

  Patroclus seizes his chest as if struck by a lightning bolt, cries out, twitches and writhes as if in the throes of an epileptic fit, pisses himself, and collapses.

  Before Achilles can react—the swift-footed warrior stands there naked with his hands balled into fists and his eyes bugging out, too shocked to move—I have Athena take two steps forward, grab the collapsed and apparently dead Patroclus by his hair, and drag him roughly across the floor.

  Achilles unfreezes, snarls, and pulls his sword from its scabbard on the chair.

  Still dragging the limp Patroclus by his hair, Athena’s form quivering out of quantum morph stability now and as static-lashed as a bad TV picture, I touch the medallion at my throat and quantum teleport Patroclus and me the hell out of Achilles’ tent.

  33

  Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Basin

  Savi led Daeman and Harman off the roof, down the ladders and steps, and into one of the narrow alleys. The starlight and blue glow from the neutrino beam on the Temple Mount gave just enough illumination for them not to crash into walls or fall into wells as they ran, although shadows were a solid black in the doorways and empty windows. Daeman soon fell behind, gasping. He’d never run, even as a child. It was an absurd thing to do.

  Closer now, less than a short block away in the maze of flat-topped buildings and labrynthine alleys, came
the scrabbling of the hundreds of hurrying voynix.

  Itbah al-Yahud! rasped the voice from those loudspeakers Savi had called muezzin.

  Savi led them across a cobblestoned street, down another dark, narrow alley, across a small clearing strewn with glowing human bones, and into an interior courtyard that was even darker than the alley. The pad-thump and manipulator-scratch of voynix running at high speed along walls was closer now.

  Itbah al-Yahud! The amplified cry seemed more urgent.

  Only Savi here is a Jew, whatever that is, thought Daeman, his lungs burning, staggering to keep up. If Harman and I let her go on by herself, the voynix will leave us alone, probably even help us get home. There’s no reason we should share her fate.

  Harman was running hard behind the old woman as she crossed the courtyard and ducked through a low arch into the ruins of an ancient building. Or I can take care of myself, thought Daeman. Harman can stay with her if he wants.

  Daeman slid to a stop on the dusty cobblestones. Harman paused in the black rectangle of a doorway and waved him on. Daeman looked over his shoulder toward the sounds behind them—like claws or hollow bones rattling against stone—and, in the light of the blue beam, saw the first of a dozen voynix running in the street they had just crossed.

  Daeman felt his heart lurch—he wasn’t used to the emotion of fear and found the thought of doing anything alone right now as the most terrifying option—and then he ran into the dark doorway behind Harman and the old woman.

  Savi led the way down a series of increasingly narrow staircases, each flight of steps older and more worn than the one above. Four flights down, she tugged a flashlight from her backpack and flicked it on as the last of the reflected light disappeared from the dim blue glow above. The narrow beam illuminated a wall at the bottom of the narrowest flight of steps and Daeman’s heart lurched again. Then he saw what looked like a flap of dirty burlap hung over a hole he was sure was too small to allow him through.

  “Hurry,” whispered Savi. She pulled the gunny sack material aside and slipped through the hole. Daeman heard echoes as if from a well. Harman quickly followed the old woman into the blackness.

  Daeman heard scrabblings from the ruined house above, but no voynix footsteps sounded on the stairs. Not yet at least.

  He leaned into the little hole, squeezed his narrow shoulders through, found that he was hanging over a bottomless black circle less than four feet across, and then his flailing hands found iron rungs in the wall opposite and he grunted as he pulled his torso and hips through the opening, scraping skin against ancient plaster until his legs were free and dangling. Then his feet found purchase on the rusty metal rungs and he began clambering down toward the muted sounds of Savi and Harman descending below him.

  Cold air flowed up past his face. Daeman’s fingers and feet shifted uncertainly downward from cold rung to cold rung, he heard whispers below, and suddenly there were no rungs under his feet and he dropped four or five feet onto a brick floor.

  Harman’s hands steadied him. He could see the circle of Savi’s flashlight illuminating a round tunnel made of ancient stones or bricks.

  “This way,” she whispered and began running again, bent over to avoid the low ceiling. Harman and Daeman scrambled along behind, trying to avoid the irregular bricks in the curved floor by watching the circle of her flashlight rather than their own feet.

  They came to a junction of tunnels. Savi checked her glowing palm function and they followed the left passage.

  “I don’t hear the voynix behind us,” said Harman. He’d spoken softly, but his voice still echoed from the curved brick. The tallest of the three, Harman had to bend the most to walk.

  “They’re above us,” said Savi. “Following us on the streets.”

  “Are they using proxnet?” asked Daeman.

  “Yes.” She paused at another junction, chose the center of three smaller passages. They all had to bend low here.

  Harman looked at Daeman again, obviously curious about the proxnet comment, but not asking any questions now.

  “They’re following you, you know,” said Savi, pausing to look first at Daeman and then at Harman. The harsh flashlight beam made her face look even older and more skull-like.

  “Not you?” said Daeman, surprised.

  She shook her head. “I don’t register on any nets. The voynix don’t even know I’m here. It’s you two who are showing up out of bounds on their farnet and proxnet scans. I think the nearest faxportal is Mantua. They know you didn’t walk this far.”

  “Where are we going now?” whispered Harman. “The sonie?”

  Savi shook her head again. Her gray hair was wet with sweat or condensation and plastered to her skull. “These tunnels don’t go beyond the old city. And the voynix have rendered the sonie inoperable by now. I’m headed for the crawler.”

  “Crawler?” said Daeman, but rather than explain, Savi turned away and began leading them through the tunnels again.

  A hundred paces further and the round brick tunnel became a narrow corridor, thirty paces beyond that and the corridor became stairs, and then a wall stopped them.

  Daeman felt his heart trying to pound through his chest wall. “What do we do?” he said. “What do we do? What do we do?” He spun away from the light, listening hard in the darkness for voynix sounds.

  “Climb.”

  Daeman turned back to see Savi being lifted into another vertical well—this one narrower than the one they had descended—and then the light was gone as the flashlight bobbed above them.

  Harman jumped up for the lowest rung, missed, cursed softly, jumped again, caught it, and pulled himself up. Daeman could barely see the outline of the older man’s arm as he reached down. “Come on, Daeman. Hurry. The voynix are probably already up there, waiting for us.”

  “Then why are we climbing up there?”

  “Come on.” Harman seized Daeman’s forearm in the darkness and pulled him up.

  The voynix broke through the wall of the building just as the three humans were scrambling onto the crawler.

  The huge machine took up much of the space in the central area of what Savi said had once been a large church. When they came up the stairs from the cellar, Savi’s flashlight flicking this way and that, Daeman had paused on the steps, not sure of what he was seeing. The crawler filled the space like some giant spider, its six wheels—each at least twelve feet tall—linked by hinged spidery struts, its passenger sphere glowing milkily in the center of the struts like a white egg at the center of a web.

  The battering against the church doors and walls began even before Savi began climbing the thin, metallic access ladder hanging from the struts. “Hurry,” she said, no longer whispering.

  Third in line—again—Daeman thought that the old woman was the master of the unnecessary imperative. A boarded window sixty feet up a wall exploded inward and five voynix scrabbled in, their bladed manipulators hacking into stone like ice hammers. The eyeless, rust-red domes above their carapaces turned ponderously downward and fixed on the crawler and the three people trying to get to its passenger sphere. Stones burst from the far wall and half a dozen other voynix came in on two legs.

  Savi touched a faded red circle on the underside of the sphere, tapped digits into a small yellow energy diskey that appeared, and a section of the glass globe slid open with an audible rasp. She crawled up and in, Harman followed, and Daeman got his legs in just as the first of the voynix hurtled across the dusty stones toward him.

  The slice in the sphere slid closed. There were six cracked-leather contour seats in the center of the sphere, and he and Harman threw themselves into side seats as Savi ran her hand over a flat metal wedge protruding above the front seat. A softly glowing projection control panel—much more complicated than the one on the sonie—pulsed into life around her. She touched a virtual red dial, ran a bright yellow circle along a green slide, and slipped her hand into a form-fitting controller.

  “What if it doesn’t start?” a
sked Harman, whom Daeman now nominated for master of the poorly timed rhetorical question. A score of voynix pulled themselves up and over the high black mesh wheels and jumped like giant grasshoppers onto the top of the glass sphere. Daeman flinched and ducked low.

  “If it doesn’t start, we die,” said Savi. She twitched the virtual controller to the right.

  There was no engine roar or gyro hum, just a soft buzz so low as to be almost subsonic. But searchlights stabbed out in front of the crawler and a dozen other virtual displays flicked into life.

  The half-dozen voynix atop the passenger sphere had been pounding and clawing on the glass, but suddenly they slid away and fell to the ground twenty feet below. They weren’t injured or damaged—each voynix leapt to its feet and jumped for the sphere again—but each then fell away again, unable to gain purchase on the surface they’d been clinging to only a few seconds earlier.

  “It’s a micron-thick forcefield,” muttered Savi, her attention on the glowing designs and icons appearing all over the virtual panel. “Frictionless. It was designed to keep snow or rain from accumulating on the canopy, but it appears to shed voynix as well.”

  Daeman turned to watch a score of voynix scrambling up the huge wheels, battering at the metal mesh, pulling at the struts and braces. “We should go,” he said.

  “Yes.” Savi pushed the virtual controller forward and the crawler crashed through the ancient church wall, fell a dozen feet before the wildly articulated wheels found purchase on the wall and ground, and then accelerated forward. The lane was slightly narrower than the crawler, but this didn’t slow the machine a bit. Walls several thousand years old collapsed on either side until the crawler lurched out onto David Street and Savi turned it left, toward the west, away from the blue beam still stabbing skyward behind them.

  Countless voynix scrabbled in pursuit while dozens more threw themselves in front of the speeding crawler and leapt for the passenger sphere. Still accelerating, the crawler ran over those in the street that failed to dodge and left the rest of the pack behind. Half a dozen persistent voynix still clung to the struts and were hacking away at the metal, clawing at the spinning wheels.