by Dan Simmons
Daeman had tugged up his mask—there was just enough air in the firmary to breathe, although it still smelled like a meat locker with the power off—and now he rubbed his beard. “We can’t get her to the sonie with only two thermskins. She’d die of exposure in the city, much less in space.”
“There’s the sonie forcefield and heater,” whispered Harman. “Savi had them on when we were flying high.” He’d tugged his own mask up again, and his breath fogged in the cold air. There were icicles in his beard and mustache. His eyes looked so tired that it hurt Daeman to look at them.
Daeman shook his head. “Savi told me all about how cold and hot it was in space, what vacuum does to the body. She’d be dead before we got the forcefield powered up.”
“Do you remember how to power it up?” asked Harman. “How to fly the damned thing?”
“I . . . don’t know,” said Daeman. “I watched her fly it, but I never thought I’d have to. Don’t you remember how?”
“I am so . . . tired,” said Harman, rubbing his temples.
Hannah had quit shaking and now looked dead. Daeman peeled his thermskin glove back and put his bare palm on her chest. For a second he was sure she was gone, but then he felt the faint, bird-rapid beat of her heart.
“Harman,” he said, voice strong, “get out of your thermskin.”
Harman looked up at him and blinked. “Yes,” he said stupidly, “you’re right. I’ve had my five Twenties. She deserves to live more than . . .”
“No, you idiot.” Daeman began helping him tug off his suit. The air was already turning Daeman’s exposed face and hands to ice; he couldn’t imagine being naked in this cold. The air was thinning as they spoke, their voices sounding higher and fainter. “Share the thermskin with her. Count to five hundred, then peel it off her and warm yourself. Keep swapping unless she dies.”
“Where are you going to be?” gasped Harman. He’d tugged the thermskin off and was trying to pull it on the unconscious girl, but his hands and arms were shaking so badly from the cold that Daeman had to help him. Immediately the thermskin adapted itself to Hannah’s body and she began shaking again, although the suit was holding in almost 100 percent of her body heat now. Harman set his osmosis mask over her face.
“I’m going for the sonie,” gasped Daeman. He handed Harman the gun, but had to lift his own osmosis mask to make himself heard since the other man wasn’t on suitcomm any longer. “Here. You keep this in case Caliban comes for you two.” Daeman lifted the four-foot-long length of pipe they’d used as a crowbar.
“He won’t,” said Harman between racking breaths. “He’ll go for you. Then he can eat us all at his leisure.”
“Well, I hope we give him a bellyache,” said Daeman. He pulled down his osmosis mask and kicked and ran and floated toward the exit membrane.
It was only after Daeman had used the sharp end of the pipe to rip and tear a man-sized hole in the membrane, kicking through into the even lower gravity and deeper cold and dark outside the firmary, that he realized that he hadn’t told Harman that his plan was to come back with the sonie—to somehow get it through the window wall to pick them up. Well, too late to go back to tell him now.
Daeman had always had trouble keeping up with Savi and Harman when the three of them were first swim-kicking their way through the crystal city a month ago—an eternity ago—but now Daeman swam through the thin air like some low-gravity sea creature, a crystal-city otter, always finding the perfect place from which to kick off at just the right instant, paddling through the air with his three free limbs with pure economy of effort, somersaulting and pirouetting with perfect timing to find the next strut or table or even the next post-human corpse to kick off from for his next leg of the trip.
It still wasn’t fast enough. He could feel time winning this race, even as he looked up at the panels of the crystal city—the panels showing their dying glow, bringing an even deeper darkness to the kelp beds and body-strewn terraces where he kicked and swam—but there were no clear panels here through which he could see the onrushing linear accelerator. Will I hear it when it crashes through the crystal roof, or is the air too thin for sound?
He shook the question out of his head. He’d know when it arrived.
Daeman almost passed the crystal tower headed south when he looked up and saw that he was already directly under the hundreds and hundreds of stories of air rising into darkness above him.
He landed on the asteroid, held the pipe in both hands, swiveling, using only his thermskin lenses to penetrate the darkness. Humanoid shapes floated out there, some close, but their purposeless tumble suggested they were probably post-corpses, not Caliban. Probably.
Daeman tucked the pipe under his arms, crouched low, remembered Caliban’s long-armed squat, imitated it, and shoved off with all the remaining energy in his legs and arms. He floated upward, but slowly, far too slowly. He felt like he was barely moving by the time he got to the first extruded terrace some seventy or eighty feet up, and realized how weak he was as he used the terrace railing to push himself upward again, watching the shadows as he rose.
There were too many shadows. Caliban could leap at him from any of those darkened terraces, but there was nothing Daeman could do about it—he had to stay close to the wall and the terraces to keep pushing off, always moving, floating upward—quickly at first, then with dying speed until he chose the next terrace—feeling like a frog jumping from one stone and metal lily pad to the next.
Suddenly Daeman laughed out loud. His thermskin, beneath the dirt and mud and blood and grime, was green. He did look like some awkward, scrawny frog, squatting to push himself off vertically at every tenth railing of every tenth terrace. His laugh echoed hollowly through his commpads over his ears and shocked him back into silence except for his tortured breathing and grunts.
With a stab of fear, Daeman paused and did a somersault even as he floated higher. Have I passed the level where the sonie’s parked outside? The distance to the floor below seemed impossible—a thousand feet of empty air, at least—and the sonie was only . . . How many stories up? His heart pounding with panic, Daeman tried to remember the holo image in Prospero’s control room cell. Five hundred feet or so up? Seven hundred?
Sick with terror at having lost his way, Daeman floated out further from the wall and checked the panels of glass. Most glowed that sickly, ever-weakening orange. Some were clear this far up, silver with earthlight. None showed the white mark of the semipermeable membranes at the first airlock and Prospero’s door. Did I see such a window mark on the holo, or just assume there’d be one visible from the inside?
Floating almost to a halt now at the apogee of his last leap, Daeman wrenched his osmosis mask loose. He was going to vomit.
You don’t have time for that, idiot. He tried to breathe in the air up here, but it was too thin, too cold, too rank. Only semiconscious, Daeman pulled the mask back down. Why didn’t I bring the flashlight? I thought Harman might need it to tend to Hannah or to shoot at Caliban, but now I can’t make out the fucking windows.
Daeman forced himself to slow his breathing and to calm down. Before the gravity began pulling him down again toward that dark floor hundreds of feet below, he kicked and paddled his way farther out from the wall, rolling over onto his back like a swimmer looking up at the stars.
There. Another fifty feet up, on this wall. The white square on an opaque window panel.
Daeman did a pirouette, clasped the pipe between his chin and chest, and used both arms and his gloved hands in a powerful breaststroke. If he couldn’t get to that closest terrace now, he’d lose two hundred or more feet of altitude, and he didn’t think he had the strength to fight his way back up again.
He reached the terrace, grabbed the pipe with his left hand, and kicked his way vertical, timing it so perfectly that he slowed to a stop just as he reached the white-marked panel. Panting, his vision dimmed with sweat, Daeman extended his right arm—his hand and forearm passed through the membrane as if it w
ere slightly sticky gauze.
“Thank you, God,” gasped Daeman.
Caliban hit him then, leaping out of the shadowed recesses under the next terrace up, long arms and longer legs wide and grasping, teeth glinting in earthlight.
“No,” grunted Daeman just as the monster struck, wrapping arms and legs and long fingers around the man, teeth snapping for Daeman’s jugular. The human managed to get his right forearm up to protect his throat—Caliban’s teeth ripping through flesh and meeting on bone—while the two forms, entangled and thrashing, blood fountaining in low-g around them, fell together through the thin air down to the next terrace, crashing into glass and plastic and wood and frozen post-human flesh as they tumbled into darkness there.
59
The Plains of Ilium
Mahnmut may have been the first to notice what was happening in the sky, sea, and earth around Ilium, but that was because he was expecting it. He hadn’t known what he was expecting . . . but certainly not what he saw now.
What do you see? asked Orphu on the tightbeam.
Ah . . . gasped Mahnmut.
A rotating sphere some hundreds of meters across had appeared in the sky several thousand feet above Ilium. Then a second one rotated into view just above the battlefield, centered between the city and Thicket Ridge. Mahnmut turned quickly and saw a third sphere pop into existence above the Achaean encampments, then a fourth one suddenly appearing several miles out to sea immediately in front of the scores of fleeing Achaean ships. A fifth one appeared to the north of the city; a sixth one to the south.
What do you see? demanded Orphu.
Uh . . . said Mahnmut.
All of the spheres showed flashing colors but were suddenly filled with stabbing fractal designs; then all resolved themselves into multiple images of Olympus Mons, seen from different distances, viewed from different angles, and framed by different perspectives; now all showed the Martian volcano and the blue Martian sky. One of the spheres settled into the plains of Ilium ahead so that the Martian ground in the hundred-meter-wide circle extended smoothly from the Trojan soil. The huge sphere to the west flattened to a circle in the sky and then sank until the Martian ocean was level with the Mediterranean Sea. Water surged back and forth between the two worlds. The Achaean ships tried to drop their sails, men quit rowing, but the high-beaked ships could not stop in time and sailed through the circle of boiling turbulence into the Martian northern ocean, with white-sloped Olympus Mons looming in the background. No matter which direction Mahnmut looked, he could see the Martian volcano, even through the spheres now resolving themselves into circular portals high in the sky over Ilium.
What’s going on? shouted Orphu over the tightbeam.
Ah . . . said Mahnmut again.
Scores of black flying objects hurtled through the circular portals in the sky, out of the circle slicing into the sea behind Mahnmut, even through the ground-level portal—more arch now than circle, since its base was under Trojan soil—opening less than a hundred meters in front of Achilles and Hector and his men. The flying objects threw themselves through the sky like giant hornets and Mahnmut noticed that they were black, barbed, sharp-planed, not much larger than Orphu, and powered by visible pulse-engines in their bellies, sides, and sterns. The machines had bulbous, black-glassed cockpits and were festooned with whip comm antennae and what looked to be weapons—missiles, guns, bombs, ray projectors. If these were new-generation chariots from the gods, they’d gone high-tech industrial in a hurry.
Mahnmut! bellowed Orphu.
Sorry, said the little moravec. Almost stuttering, he hurried to describe the chaos in the skies, seas, and fields around them. He had trouble catching up to real time.
What are Achilles and Hector and all the other Greeks and Trojans doing? asked Orphu. Running?
Some are, said Mahnmut. But most of the Achaeans around me and the Trojans near your ridge are running into the closest circle-portal.
Running into it? repeated Orphu of Io. Mahnmut had never heard his big friend sound flabbergasted before.
Yeah. Achilles and Hector started it—they shouted, bellowed something, held their spears and shields high, and just . . . well . . . rushed into it. I guess they see Olympus Mons and know what it is and just . . . attacked.
Attacked a Martian volcano? repeated Orphu. He sounded even more thunderstruck.
Attacked Olympos, the home of the gods, said Mahnmut, sounding pretty stupefied himself. Oh, my!
What “Oh, My”? demanded Orphu.
The circle-portal-thing behind us, stammered Mahnmut. Dozens of Greek ships went through it . . .
Yeah, you said that.
But there are hundreds of ships visible through the portal.
Greek ships? asked the Ionian.
No, said Mahnmut. Most of them are LGM ships.
Little green men? Orphu sounded like a poorly engineered voice-synthesis device, sounding each word out as if he’d never heard it before.
Thousands of LGM. On hundreds of ships.
Feluccas? said Orphu.
Feluccas, those big barges they used to transport the stones for heads, larger sailing ships, smaller ships . . . they’re all sailing toward Olympus Mons, mixed in with the Achaean ships now.
Why? asked Orphu. Why are the zeks sailing toward Olympos?
Don’t ask me! shouted Mahnmut. I just work here . . . uh-oh.
Uh-oh?
The sky’s full of fiery streaks now, like meteors flaming down from space.
The gods resuming their bombardment? asked Orphu.
I don’t know.
Which direction?
What? said Mahnmut. If he had been designed with a jaw, it would be dropping now. The sky was a latticework of fiery streaks, with the circular portals showing Olympus Mons in a dozen places around Ilium and the sky filled with black barbed machines jetting back and forth at increasingly lower altitudes. Thousands more Achaeans and Trojans had rushed into the first portal after Achilles and Hector, while tens of thousands more Trojans and their allies were taking up defensive positions on the walls of Ilium and on the plain just outside the Scaean Gates. Gongs rang out. Drums beat. The air sizzled with energy and echoed with roars. Achaeans ran to defensive positions on their trenches, sunlight glinting on polished armor. A thousand Trojan archers on the Ilium ramparts went to full pull on their bows, arrows aimed skyward. A score more of black ships put out to sea from the Achaean camp. Mahnmut couldn’t pivot fast enough to take it all in.
Which direction are the meteor trails going? said Orphu. West to east, east to west, north to south?
What the hell does it matter which direction? snapped Mahnmut. No, wait, sorry. They’re coming from all parts of the sky. Making cross-hatches against the blue.
Any of them heading for Ilium? asked Orphu.
I don’t think so. Not directly. Wait, I can see something at the end of one of those trails now . . . I’m zooming in . . . good heavens, it’s a . . .
Spaceship? said Orphu.
Yes! breathed Mahnmut. Fins, hull, roaring engine . . . it looks like a cartoon of a spaceship, Orphu. It’s hovering on a column of yellow energy. The other meteors are also ships . . . some hovering . . . one coming down. Uh-oh.
Uh-oh again? said Orphu.
That hovering spaceship appears to be landing, said Mahnmut. So are four or five of the smaller black flying machines.
Yes? said Orphu. The Ionian sounded calm, perhaps even amused.
They’re landing on the ridge near you! Almost right on top of you, Orphu! Stay put, I’m coming! Mahnmut began running on all fours at top speed for the ridge where the yellow spacecraft exhaust was kicking dust and small rocks a hundred feet into the air. He couldn’t see Orphu through the dust as the various machines set down next to the amazon’s tomb. The barbed flying machines were extending a complicated tripod landing gear. The weapons on the landing hornet ships were swiveling, targeting Orphu. Mahnmut saw this just before he lost sight of everything as he galloped into th
e dust storm.
I’m not going anywhere, sent Orphu. But don’t sprain a servomechanism hurrying, old friend. I think I know who these guys are.
60
The Equatorial Ring
Rolling in the terrace darkness with Caliban, it felt to Daeman as if the monster were trying to tear his arm off. Indeed, the monster was trying to tear Daeman’s arm off. Only the metallic fibers in the thermskin and the suit’s automatic response to seal all rends kept Caliban’s teeth from ripping the meat off Daeman’s arm and then tearing the bones one from the other. But the suit wouldn’t save Daeman for much longer.
The man and man-beast crashed into tables, rolled among post-human corpses, bounced off a girder, and rebounded in microgravity from a glass wall. Caliban would not release his grip and hugged Daeman tightly to him with long fingers and prehensile webbed toes. Suddenly the creature relaxed its bite, pulled its slavering head back, and lunged for Daeman’s neck again. Daeman blocked the lunge with his right forearm again, was bitten to the bone again, and moaned aloud as they bounced back to the terrace railing. In spite of the suit’s automatic closing, blood jetted out in discrete spheres, bursting on impact with Daeman’s suit or Caliban’s scaly hide.
For a second they were wedged against the terrace railing and Daeman was staring into Caliban’s yellow eyes, only inches from his own. He knew that if his punctured forearm wasn’t in the way, Caliban would bite through his osmosis mask and rip his face off in a second, but what really passed through Daeman’s mind at this moment was a simple phrase and an astounding fact—I’m not afraid.
There was no firmary standing by to fax his dead body away and fix it in forty-eight hours or less, no blue worms waiting for Daeman now—whatever happened next was forever.
I am not afraid.
Daeman saw the animal ears, the slavering muzzle, the scaly shoulders, and he thought again how physical and fleshy Caliban was. He remembered from the grotto the obscene pink of the animal-thing’s bare scrotum and penis.