by Dan Simmons
Ada accepted a cold drink from one of the permanent volunteers—a young man named Reman who was growing a beard, as so many of the disciples were—and she wandered back to the field where Odysseus spoke and answered questions four or five times a day, for ever larger crowds. Ada had half a mind to interrupt the arrogant barbarian’s useless lectures to ask him—in front of everyone—why he, Odysseus, hadn’t bothered to say good-bye to the young woman who worshiped him.
Last night, at Hannah’s First Twenty party—the celebrations were always thrown the day before the actual birthday, the day before someone actually faxed to the firmary—Odysseus had barely made an appearance at the dinner. Ada knew that Hannah had been hurt. The young woman still thought she was in love with Odysseus, even though the man seemed indifferent to Hannah’s feelings. After returning from their trip, Hannah had been Odysseus’ shadow, but he barely seemed to notice. When he had eschewed Ada’s hospitality and chosen to build a camp for himself in the forest, Hannah had tried to accompany him there, but Odysseus had insisted that she sleep in the big house. During the course of each day, as Odysseus ran, exercised, and, later, wrestled with his male disciples, Hannah was always nearby—running, climbing on the obstacle course ropes, even volunteering to wrestle. Odysseus never agreed to wrestle the beautiful young girl.
At the First Twenty party, each of the dozen or so guests around the table set under the giant oak had made the traditional speeches—congratulations to Hannah for her first visit to the firmary, wishes for lifelong good health and happiness—but when it came to Odysseus’ turn, the old man had said simply, “Don’t go.” Hannah had wept later in Ada’s bedroom—had even considered not going, of somehow hiding from the servitors who even then were embroidering her ceremonial Twenty gown—but of course she had to go. Everyone went. Ada had gone. Harman had gone four times. Even the absent Daeman had been to the firmary twice—once on his First Twenty and again after the accident with the allosaurus. Everyone went.
So this morning, when Hannah had come down from her room dressed in only the ceremonial cotton robe, ornamented by just the small, traditional embroidered image of the caduceus—two blue snakes of healing twined around a staff—Odysseus had not been there to say good-bye to his young friend.
Ada had been furious as the two rode in one of Ardis’s droshkies to the fax pavilion. Hannah had wept a bit, turning her face away so that Ada wouldn’t see. Hannah had always been the toughest young woman Ada’d known—the artist and athlete, the risk-taker and sculptor—but this morning she’d seemed a lost little girl.
“Maybe he’ll pay attention to me after I return from the firmary,” Hannah had said. “Maybe I’ll seem like more of a woman to him tomorrow.”
“Maybe,” said Ada, but she was thinking that all men seemed to be self-serving, selfish, insensitive pigs, just waiting for an opportunity to act like greater self-serving, selfish, insensitive pigs.
Hannah had looked so fragile as the two servitors floated out of the fax pavilion, each taking one of Hannah’s arms, and led her to the faxportal. It was a beautiful day, clear blue sky, soft winds from the west, but it might as well have been raining so far as Ada’s mood would have dictated. She had no idea why she had this sense of doom—she’d seen scores of friends off to their various Twenty trips to the firmary and had gone herself, remembering only hazy images of floating in a warm liquid—but Ada had wept when Hannah had raised her hand and waved in that second before the faxportal whisked her away and out of sight. The ride back to Ardis Hall alone had simply deepened Ada’s anger at Odysseus, at Harman, and at men in general.
So Ada felt like anything but a loving disciple as she wandered up the hill behind Ardis Hall to listen to Odysseus’ lecture to the faithful and the curious.
The short, bearded man was dressed in his tunic and sandals, sword by his side, sitting against a fallen dead tree that Odysseus had cut down himself, while all around him and stretching down the hill toward the house sat and stood several hundred men and women. Several of the men were wearing tunics similar to Odysseus now, belted by the same kind of broad leather belt. Most seemed to be growing beards, which had not been in style in Ada’s lifetime.
Odysseus was answering questions at the moment. Ada knew that his usual schedule was to speak for about ninety minutes one hour after sunrise, then to go off by himself for hours, answer questions in the hour before lunch, speak again without interruption in the mid-afternoon, and entertain questions in the long twilight hour after the sun set. This was the pre-lunch gathering.
“Teacher, why must we find out who our fathers are? It’s never been important before.” It was a new young man who had held up his hand.
When Odysseus spoke, Ada had noticed over the past month, he usually held his hands straight out, thrusting his short, strong fingers at the air as if driving home the points of what he said. His arms and legs were tanned and powerful. For the first time, Ada noticed that some of the bearded men in the audience were also getting tanned and muscled. Odysseus had set up an obstacle course—all ropes and logs and muddy pits—in the forest up the hill, and demanded that anyone who listened to him more than twice must exercise at least an hour a day on the course. Many of the men—and some of the female disciples—had laughed at the idea the first time they tried it, but now they were spending long hours on the course, or running, each day. It made Ada wonder.
“If you don’t know your father,” Odysseus was answering in that low, calm, but fiercely firm voice of his that always seemed to carry as far as it had to, “how can you know yourself? I am Odysseus, son of Laertes. My father is a king, but also a man of the soil. When I saw him last, the old man was down on his knees in the dirt, planting a tree where an old giant of a tree had fallen—cut down by his hand finally—after being struck by lightning. If I do not know my father, and his father before him, and what these men were worth, what they lived for and were willing to die for, how can I know myself?”
“Tell us again about arete” came a voice from the front row. Ada recognized the man speaking as Petyr, one of the earliest visitors. Petyr was no boy—Ada thought he was in his fourth Twenty—but his beard was already almost as full as Odysseus’. Ada didn’t think the man had left Ardis since he’d first heard Odysseus speak that second or third day, when the visitors could be counted on two hands.
“Arete is simply excellence and the striving for excellence in all things,” said Odysseus. “Arete simply means the act of offering all actions as a sort of sacrament to excellence, of devoting one’s life to finding excellence, identifying it when it offers itself, and achieving it in your own life.”
A newcomer ten rows up the hill, a heavyset man who reminded Ada a bit of Daeman, laughed and said, “How can you achieve excellence in all things, Teacher? Why would you want to? It sounds terribly tiring.” The heavy man looked around, sure of laughter, but the others on the hill looked at him silently and then turned back to Odysseus.
The Greek smiled easily—strong white teeth flashing against his tanned cheeks and short, gray beard—and said, “You can’t achieve excellence in all things, my friend, but you have to try. And how could you not want to?”
“But there are so many things to do,” laughed the heavy man. “One can’t practice for them all. One has to make choices and concentrate on the important things.” The man squeezed the young woman next to him, obviously his companion, and she laughed loudly, but she was the only one to laugh.
“Yes,” said Odysseus, “but you insult all those actions in which you do not honor arete. Eating? Eat as if it were your last meal. Prepare the food as if there were no more food! Sacrifices to the gods? You must make each sacrifice as if the lives of your family depended upon your energy and devotion and focus. Loving? Yes, love as if it were the most important thing in the world, but make it just one star in the constellation of excellence that is arete.”
“I don’t understand the agon, Odysseus,” said a young woman in the third row. Ada knew that her
name was Peaen. She was intelligent, a skeptic of all things, but this was her fourth day here.
“The agon is simply the comparison of all like things, one to the other,” Odysseus said softly but clearly, “and the judgment of those things as equal to, greater than, or lesser than. All things in the universe take part in the dynamic of agon.” Odysseus pointed to the dead tree he was sitting on. “Was this tree greater than, lesser than, or simply equal to . . . that tree?” He pointed to a tall living tree up the hill, at the edge of the forest there. Voynix stood under the shadows of the branches. The voynix would not come close to Odysseus.
“That tree is living,” called the heavy man who had spoken earlier. “It must be superior to the dead tree.”
“Are all living things superior to all dead things?” asked Odysseus. “Many of you have gone under the turin cloth and seen the battle there. Is a dung merchant alive today a better man than Achilles was then, even if Achilles is dead now?”
“That’s comparing unlike things,” cried a woman.
“No,” said Odysseus. “Both are men. Both were born. Both will die. It matters little if one still breathes and the other resides only in the impotent shades of Hades. One must be able to compare men—or women—and that is why we need to know our fathers. Our mothers. Our history. Our stories.”
“Well, that tree you’re sitting on is still dead, Teacher,” said Petyr. This time people up and down the hill did laugh.
Odysseus joined in the laughter. He pointed to a sparrow that had just landed on one of the few branches Odysseus hadn’t hacked away from the fallen tree. “It is not only still dead,” he said, “it is newly dead. But already the usefulness of the tree—in usefulness terms of the agon—have surpassed the agon usefulness of that living tree up the hill. For that bird. For the insects even now burrowing into the bark of this fallen giant. For the mice and voles and larger creatures who will soon come to inhabit this dead tree.”
“Who is to be the final judge of the agon then?” asked a serious, older man in the fifth row. “Birds, bugs, or men?”
“All,” answered Odysseus. “Each in his turn. But the only judge who counts is you.”
“Isn’t that arrogant?” demanded a woman Ada recognized as a friend of her mother’s. “Who elected us judge? Who gave us the right to be judgmental?”
“The universe elected you through fifteen billions years of evolution,” said Odysseus. “It gave you eyes with which to see. Hands with which to hold and weigh. A heart with which to feel. A mind to learn the rules of judgment. And an imagination with which to consider the bird’s and bug’s—and even other trees’—judgment in this matter. And you must approach this judgment with arete to guide you—trust me that the bugs and birds and trees already do. They have no time for mediocrity in their world. They do not worry about the arrogance of judging, whether it is in choosing a mate, an enemy—or a home.”
Odysseus pointed to where the sparrow had hopped into a hole in the fallen trunk, disappeared into the hollow there.
“Teacher,” said a young man far back in the crowd, “why do you ask us men to wrestle at least once a day?”
Ada had heard enough. She took the last of her cold drink and walked back up to the house, pausing on the porch to look down the long grassy yard to where dozens more of the visitors—disciples—walked and talked together. Silk on the tents stirred to the warm breeze. Servitors shuffled from one visitor to the other, but few accepted offers of food or drink. Odysseus had asked that anyone staying to hear him speak more than once not allow the servitors to work for them, or the voynix to serve them. That had initially driven many away, but more and more were staying.
Ada looked up at the blue sky, noted the pale circles of the two rings orbiting there, and thought about Harman. She’d been so angry at him when he’d talked about women choosing among men’s sperm months or years or decades after intercourse—it was simply not discussed, except between mothers and daughters, and then only once. And that nonsense about a moth’s genes being involved, as if human women had not chosen the fathers of their allowed babies like that since time immemorial. That had been so . . . obscene . . . of Harman to bring that up.
But it was her new lover’s statement that he wanted to be the father of Ada’s child . . . not only be the one whose seed was chosen at some future date, but be around, be known as the father . . . that had so nonplussed and infuriated Ada that she’d sent Harman away on his harmless adventure with Savi and Daeman without so much as a kind word. In fact, with hostile words and glances.
Ada touched her lower belly. The firmary had not notified her through servitors that her time for pregnancy had arrived, but then, she had not asked to be put on the list. She was glad that she didn’t soon have to choose between—what had Harman called them?—sperm packets. But she thought of Harman—his intelligent, loving eyes, his gentle and then firm touch, his old but eager body—and she touched her belly again.
“Aman,” she whispered to herself, “son of Harman and Ada.”
She shook her head. Odysseus’ prattle the last weeks was beginning to fill her head with nonsense. Yesterday, fed up, after dark, after the scores and scores of disciples had wandered off to the fax pavilion or sleeping tents—more to the tents than to the pavilion—she had bluntly asked Odysseus how much longer he planned to stay at Ardis Hall.
The old man had smiled at her almost sadly. “Not much longer, my dear.”
“A week?” pressed Ada. “A month? A year?”
“Not so long,” said Odysseus. “Just until the sky begins falling, Ada. Just until new worlds appear in your yard.”
Furious at his flippancy, tempted to order the servitors to evict the hairy barbarian at once, Ada had stalked up to her bedroom—her last place of privacy in this suddenly public Ardis Hall—where she had lain awake being angry at Harman, missing Harman, worrying about Harman, instead of ordering servitors to do anything about old Odysseus.
Now she turned to go into the house, but a strange motion caught at the edge of her vision made her turn back. At first she thought it was just the rings rotating, as always, but then she looked again and saw another streak—like a diamond scratching a line across the perfect blue glass of the sky. Then another scratch, broader, brighter. Then yet another, so bright and so clear that Ada could clearly see flames stretching behind the streak of light. A few seconds later, three dull booms echoed across the lawn, made strolling disciples pause and look up, and caused even the servitors and voynix to freeze in their duties.
Ada heard screams and shouts from the hill behind the house. People on the lawn were pointing skyward.
There were scores of lines marring the azure sky now—bright, flaming, roiling red lines slashing and crisscrossing, falling west to east, some with plumes of color, others with rumbles and terrifying booms.
The sky was falling.
48
Ilium and Olympos
The ultimate war begins here in a murdered child’s nursery.
The gods must have quantum teleported down to talk with mortals this way a thousand times before—Athena, arrogant in her divinity, Apollo, secure in his power, and my Muse, probably brought along to identify the rogue scholic, Hockenberry. But this day, instead of encountering deference and awe, instead of conversing with the foolish mortals eager to be cajoled into more interesting ways of slaughtering one another, they are attacked on sight.
Apollo lifts his bow in my direction, the Muse pointing and saying “There he is!” but before the god can nock one of his silver arrows, Hector leaps, swings his sword, hacks down the bow, steps closer, and thrusts his sword deep into Apollo’s belly.
“Stop!” shouts Athena, throwing up a forcefield, but too late. Fleet-footed Achilles has already stepped inside the circle of the forcefield and slashes the goddess from shoulder to hip with a single mighty swing.
Athena screams and the jet roar is so loud that most of the mortals in this room—myself included—go to one knee in pain w
ith hands over our ears. Not Hector. Not Achilles. The two must be deaf to anything but the internal roar of their own rage.
Apollo shouts some amplified warning even as he raises his right arm—either to warn off Hector or to unleash some godly lightning—but Hector doesn’t wait to discover the god’s intentions. Swinging his heavy sword in a two-handed backhand that reminds me of Andre Agassiz in his prime, Hector slices off Apollo’s right arm in a spray of golden ichor.
For the second time in my life, I watch a god writhe in agony and change shape—losing his godlike human form and becoming a whirlpool of blackness. From that blackness comes a bellow that sends the servants running from the nursery and drops me to both knees. The five Trojan women—Andromache, Laodice, Theano, Hecuba, and Helen—pull daggers from their robes and turn on the Muse.
Athena, her shape also quivering and unstable, stares down at her slashed breasts and bleeding belly and then raises her right hand, firing a beam of coherent energy that should have turned Achilles’ skull to plasma, but the Achaean ducks with superhuman speed—his DNA is nanocell enriched, tailored by the gods themselves—and swings his sword at the goddess’s legs even as the wall behind him bursts into flame. Athena levitates—rising off the floor and hovering—but not before Achilles’ sword slashes through divine muscle and bone, leaving her left leg dangling in two pieces.
This time the scream is too loud to bear, and I lose consciousness for a minute, but not before I see my Muse—the terror of my days—so panicked that she forgets her power to teleport and simply runs from the room, my five Trojan women chasing her with daggers in hand.
I come to a few seconds later. Achilles is shaking me.
“They fled,” he snarls. “The shit-eating cowards fled to Olympos. Take us there, Hockenberry.” He picks me up with one hand, his fist tight around the strap that holds my breastplate in place, shakes me at arm’s length, and sets the tip of his god-blooded sword under my chin. “Now!” he snarls.