by Dan Simmons
“Have you ever seen a servitor fail?” asked Odysseus.
“Never,” said Ada.
More disciples gathered. “Is this the end of the world?” asked the young woman named Peaen. It wasn’t clear who she was addressing.
Finally Odysseus spoke over the sky roar. “It depends on what’s falling.” He pointed his powerful, stubby finger at the e- and p-rings just visible behind the meteor storm pyrotechnics. “If it’s just some of the big accelerators and quantum devices up there, we should survive this. If it’s one of the four major asteroids where the posts used to live . . . well, it could be the end of the world . . . at least as we know it.”
“What’s an asteroid?” asked Petyr, ever the curious disciple.
Odysseus shook his head, waving the question away.
“When will we know?” asked Ada.
The older bearded man sighed. “A few hours. Almost certainly by tomorrow evening.”
“I never really thought about the world ending,” said Ada. “But I certainly never imagined it ending by fire.”
“No,” said Odysseus, “if it ends for us, it’ll end by ice.”
The circle of men and women looked at him.
“Nuclear winter,” muttered the Greek. “If one of those asteroids—or even a big enough chunk of one—hits the ocean or land, it’ll throw enough garbage in the atmosphere to drop the temperature by sixty or seventy degrees Fahrenheit in a few hours. Maybe more. The skies will cloud over. The storm will start as rain and then turn to snow for months, maybe centuries. This planetary tropical hothouse you’ve grown accustomed to in the last millennium and a half will become a playground for glaciers.”
A smaller meteor ripped low in the northern sky, striking somewhere in the forests there. The air smelled of smoke and Ada could see distant flames in all directions. She took a second to think about how unknown this whole world was to her. What was north of Ardis Hall in the forests there? She’d never walked more than a few miles from Ardis or any other faxnode, and then always with an escort of voynix for protection.
“Where are the voynix?” she asked suddenly.
No one knew. Ada and Odysseus circled Ardis Hall, checked the outer fields and driveway and lower meadow where the voynix usually stood waiting or walking perimeter duty. None were there. Nobody in the small group on the lawn remembered seeing any even before the meteor shower began.
“You finally frightened them away for good,” Ada said to Odysseus, trying to make a joke.
He shook his head again. “This isn’t good.”
“I thought you didn’t like voynix,” said Ada. “You cut one of mine in half your first day here.”
“They’re up to something,” said Odysseus. “Their time may have come ’round at last.”
“What?”
“Nothing, Ada Uhr.” He took her hand and patted it. Like a father, thought Ada and, stupidly, shockingly, began to cry. She kept thinking about Harman and how confused and angry she’d been when he’d told her he wanted to help her choose him as a father for her child, and how he wanted the child to know that he was the father. What had seemed an absurd idea—almost obscene—now seemed so very, very sensible to Ada. She gripped Odysseus’ hand tightly and wept.
“Look!” cried the girl named Peaen.
A less brilliant meteor was descending right toward Ardis, but at a shallower angle than all the others. It still trailed a fiery trail against the darkening sky—the sun had finally set—but this meteor tail looked more like real flames than screaming, heated plasma.
The glowing object circled once and seemed to fall out of the sky, crashing with audible impact somewhere beyond the line of trees above the upper meadow.
“That was close,” said Ada. Her heart was pounding.
“That wasn’t a meteor,” said Odysseus. “Stay here. I’m going to walk up there and check it out.”
“I’m going with you,” said Ada. When the bearded man opened his mouth to argue, she said simply, “It’s my land.”
They walked up the hill together into the deepening twilight, the sky above them still alive with silent flame.
The flames and smoke were visible just beyond the edge of the upper meadow, just past the line of trees, but Ada and Odysseus didn’t have to go searching in the darkness there. Ada saw them first—two bearded, emaciated men walking toward them from the forest. One of the men was naked, skin glowing palely in the dim twilight, ribs visible from fifty feet away, and he appeared to be caring a bald, blue-suited child in his arms. The other skeletal, bearded man was dressed in what Ada immediately recognized as a green thermskin suit, but the suit itself was so torn and filthy she could barely see the color of the material. This man’s right arm hung uselessly at his side, palm forward, and his bare wrist and hand were dull red with blood. Both men were staggering, struggling to stay upright and to keep moving.
Odysseus drew his short sword halfway from its scabbard on his belt.
“No,” cried Ada, pushing Odysseus’ hand and sword down. “No, it’s Harman! It’s Daeman!” She ran toward them through the high grass.
Harman started to pitch forward as she approached and Odysseus sprinted the last twenty paces, catching Harman’s burden as the man fell forward. Daeman also went to his knees
“It’s Hannah,” said Odysseus, laying the semiconscious young woman in the grass and setting his fingers on her neck to find her pulse.
“Hannah?” repeated Ada. This woman had no hair or eyelashes, but the eyes under flickering eyelids were Hannah’s.
“Hi, Ada,” said the girl on the ground.
Ada went to one knee and crouched next to the fallen Harman, helping him roll over onto his back. He tried to smile up at her. Her lover’s face was bruised and cut under the whiskers, his cheeks and forehead all but covered with caked blood. His eyes were sunken, skin an unhealthy white, and his cheekbones too sharp above his beard. Harman shivered with fever and his eyes burned at her. His teeth chattered when he spoke. “I’m all right, Ada. God, I’m glad to see you.”
Daeman was in worse shape. Ada couldn’t believe that these two battered, bloodied, emaciated men were the same two who had set forth so casually a month earlier. She put one arm under Daeman’s arm to keep him from pitching facefirst into the ground. He swayed on his knees.
“Where’s Savi?” asked Odysseus.
Harman shook his head sadly. He seemed too tired to speak again.
“Caliban,” said Daeman. His voice sounded twenty years older to Ada’s ear.
The worst of the meteor storm had abated, the audible impacts and more fiery falls having moved off to the east. A few dozen minor streaks crossed the zenith west to east almost gently, looking more like August’s annual Perseid showers than the violence of earlier in the evening.
“Let’s get them back to the house,” said Odysseus. He stood, lifted Hannah easily in both arms, and gave his right shoulder to Daeman to lean on as he rose. Ada helped Harman to his knees and then to his feet, putting his right arm over her shoulder and holding much of his weight as they all headed down the darkened meadow toward the lights of Ardis Hall where Odysseus’ disciples and Ada’s friends had lighted candles.
“That arm looks bad,” Odysseus said to Daeman as the four of them and the unconscious girl descended. “I’ll cut the thermskin off and take a look at it when we get in the light.”
Ada used her free hand to reach and gently touch Daeman’s bloodied arm, and the gaunt man moaned and almost swooned. Only Odysseus’ strong shoulder and Ada’s right hand slid quickly to the small of his back kept Daeman upright. The young man’s eyelids fluttered for a few seconds, but then he focused, smiled at her, and kept walking.
“These are serious injuries,” said Ada, feeling close to tears for the second time that evening. “You should both be faxed to the firmary.”
She didn’t understand at all when both men started laughing, hesitantly and painfully at first, more coughing than laughing for a moment, but then the
barking changing to pure laughter, increasing in volume and sincerity until the two battered, bearded men sounded almost irritatingly drunk in the throes of their own private amusement.
63
Olympos
Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano on Mars, rises more than seventeen miles above the surrounding plains and above the new ocean at its base. The volcano, at its base, spreads more than 400 miles in diameter. With its green summit peaking above 87,000 feet, Olympus Mons is almost three times the height of Mount Everest on Earth. The sides of the mountain, white from snow and ice in the daytime, are glowing almost blood red this evening from the glare of the setting Martian sun.
The ragged cliffs here at the northeast base of Olympus Mons sweep up vertically for 17,000 feet. On this particular Martian evening, the long shadow of the volcano stretches east almost to the line of the three Tharsis volcanoes on the hazy horizon.
The high-speed crystal elevator that used to snake its way up this side of Olympos has been sliced in two not far above the cliffs, and sliced as cleanly as if cut by a guillotine. A powerful seven-layer forcefield generated by Zeus himself—the aegis—shields the entire Olympus Mons massif from attack and shimmers now in the red light of evening.
Just beyond the cliffs, near where the base of Olympos comes close to the northern ocean terraformed here just a century and a half earlier, a thousand or more gods have come down to gather for war. A hundred golden chariots, each powered by invisible forces but visibly pulled by powerful steeds, fly air cover thousands of feet above the masses of gods and golden armor assembled on the high plains and shingled beaches below.
Zeus and Hera are at the forefront of this immortal army, each figure twenty feet tall, husband and wife both resplendent in armor and shields and weapons hammered into shape by Hephaestus and other craft-skilled gods; even Hera’s and Zeus’s high helmets are forged of pure gold, laced with microcircuits, and reinforced by advanced alloys. Athena and Apollo are temporarily missing from the forefront of this divine phalanx, but the other gods and goddesses are here—
Aphrodite is here, still beautiful in her war gear. Her war helmet is studded with precious stones; her tiny bow is made to shoot crystal arrows with hollow tips filled with poison gas.
Ares is here, grinning beneath the brow of his red-crested war helmet, happy in anticipation of the unprecedented bloodletting soon to come. He carries Apollo’s silver bow and a quiver full of heat-seeking arrows. Any target he shoots at, he will kill or destroy.
Poseidon is here—the Earth-Shaker, huge and darkly powerful, dressed in war gear for the first time in millennia. Ten men, even including Achilles, could not lift the massive axe Poseidon carries in his left hand.
Hades is here—darker in countenance, mood, and armor than even Poseidon, his red eyes gleaming from the depths of his battle helmet’s deep sockets. Persephone stands by her lord, armored in lapis lazuli, a barbed titanium trident held firm in her long, pale fingers.
Hermes is here—thin and deadly, wrapped in his red-insect’s armor, poised to quantum teleport into battle, kill, and leap away before mortal eye can record his arrival, much less the carnage he will leave behind.
Thetis is here, her divine eyes red from weeping, but dutifully clad in full-scaled war gear, ready to kill her son, Achilles, if and when Zeus wills it so.
Triton is here—bold in layers of green-black armor; this is the forgotten Satyros of the old worlds—terror of the conch-horn and rapist of girls and boys, the god who took pleasure in discarding children’s bodies in the depths after he’d had his pleasure with them.
Artemis is here—gold-armored goddess of the hunt, her war-bow in her hand, ready and eager to spill gallons of human blood as the first step toward avenging the injury to her beloved brother, Apollo.
Hephaestus is here—armored in flames and ready to bring the torch to the mortal enemy.
All the gods except healing Apollo and healing Athena are here—row upon row of giant armored silent figures drawn up beneath the shadows of the cliffs. Above them, more gods and goddesses circle in their flying chariots. Above everything, the shimmering aegis—both offensive and defensive weapon—shimmers and builds its energies.
In the no-man’s-land beyond the gods, just beyond where the aegis shimmer slices into soil and stone and continues downward, curving in a sphere deep toward the center of Mars, the bodies of the two cerberids lie. Two-headed dog-things more than twenty feet long with teeth of chrome steel and gas chromatograph mass spectrometers in their snouts, the cerberids sprawl dead where Achilles and Hector each killed one upon the heroes’ arrival at Olympos only hours earlier.
A hundred feet beyond the cerberids are the burned remnants of the old scholic barracks. Beyond the barracks are the armies of humankind, a hundred and twenty thousand strong this evening.
Hector’s forces are drawn up in ranks and rows on the inland side, forty thousand of Ilium’s boldest fighters. Paris has been ordered to stay behind in Ilium, tasked by his older brother with the heavy responsibility of protecting their homes and loved ones in the ancient city—domed now by the moravec forcefield, but more securely protected, Hector has said, by bronze spearpoints and human courage. But the other captains and their contingents are here.
Near Hector stands the Trojan supreme commander’s trusted brother, Deiphobus, in charge of ten thousand handpicked spearmen. Nearby is Aeneas, forging his new destiny here, no longer favored by the Fates. Behind Aeneas’ contingent of fighters is noble Glaucus, at the head of his ranks of chariots and 11,000 wild Lycians ready to fight.
Ascanius from Ascania, co-commander of the Phrygians, is here, the young captain fully clad in bronze and leather and eager for glory. His 4,200 Ascanians are eager to spill immortal ichor, if immortal blood is not available.
Behind the Trojan fighters, too old and too valued to lead men into combat but dressed in battle gear this day and ready to die if such is the universe’s will, are clustered the kings and counselors of Ilium—first King Priam himself, wearing legendary armor hammered from the metal of an ancient meteor, then old Antenor, father of many Trojan heroes—most of whom have already fallen in battle.
Near Antenor stand Priam’s honored brothers Lampus and Clytius, and gray-bearded Hicetaon—who until this day had honored Ares, the god of war, above all other beings—and behind Hicetaon those most respected of Trojan elders, Panthous and Thymoetes. Standing with these old men today, eyes always on her husband, dressed in red as if she’s become a living banner of blood and loss, is beautiful Andromache, Hector’s wife, mother of the murdered Scamandrius, the babe known to the loving residents of Ilium as Astyanax—“Lord of the City.”
At the center of this three-mile-long human battle line, commanding more than 80,000 battle-tested Achaeans, towers golden Achilles, son of Peleus, killer of men. He is said to be—save for one secret weakness—invulnerable. This evening, in full battle dress and flushed with the superhuman energy of almost inhuman rage, he looks immortal. The spot to Achilles’ right has been left empty to honor the memory of his dearest friend and battle-comrade, Patroclus, said to have been savagely murdered by Pallas Athena less than twenty-four hours earlier.
Behind and to the right of Achilles is the surprising troika of Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Odysseus. The two sons of Atreides are still bruised from their single combat with Achilles, and Menelaus’ left arm is too injured for him to carry a shield, but the two deposed leaders have found it necessary to be with their captains and men on this day. Odysseus, apparently lost in thought, is looking out over the human and immortal battle lines and scratching his beard.
Spread through the rest of the Achaean ranks, in chariots and on foot, always at the head of their men, are the surviving Greek heroes of nine years of bitter war—Diomedes, still dressed in his lion’s skin and carrying a club larger than most men; Big Ajax, bulwark of the Achaeans, towering over his entire line of warriors, and Little Ajax, leading his professional killers from Locris. Within a rock’s t
hrow of these heroes stands the great spearman, Idomeneus, at the head of his legendary Cretan warriors, and nearby, tall in his chariot, Meriones, eager to ride into combat next to Big Ajax’s half-brother, the master archer Teucer.
On the Achaeans’ right flank, nearest the ocean, row upon row of armored men turn their crested helmets to look to their leader and the oldest Achaean captain present this day, wily Nestor, breaker of horses. Nestor has placed himself out ahead of all others there on the right flank, red-caped and visible in his four-horsed chariot, so he will be the first on this flank to fall or the first to fight his way through the battle line of the immortals. In nearby chariots, obviously eager to ride into combat with their father, are Nestor’s sons, Antilochus—Achilles’ good friend—and Antilochus’ taller and more handsome brother, Thrasymedes.
A hundred more captains are here this day, each carrying his proud name and his father’s proud name, together leading tens of thousands more men, each of those men holding noble names and complex histories, each man carrying their fathers’ proud names into battle to glory and life, or taking those names down with them to the House of Death this day.
To the right of the massed Achaeans, spread out along the shore in no particular order, standing silent and green, are several thousand zeks—Little Green Men who have poured out of their barges and feluccas and flimsy sailing ships from Ocean Tethys and the Valles Marineris Inland Sea and who stand witness here this day for reasons known only to themselves, and perhaps to their avatar Prospero or the unmet god called Setebos. They stand mute along the softly crashing line of surf, and neither the Greeks nor the Trojans nor the immortal gods have yet interfered with them.
A half mile or so out to sea behind the zeks, sails catching the rosy Martian sunset and oars reflecting the golden sea glow, range more than a hundred Achaean ships of the line. Now the sails are slackened, the oars are shipped, and shields and spears line the ships’ sides. Crests of yellow, red, purple, and blue and the gleaming tops of helmets are all that can be seen of the more than 3,000 Achaean fighters on those ships. In the space between the massed ships, barbed black fins are cutting through the sun-gilded seas. Hinted at now only by their periscopes and the tops of their black-metal sails, three Belt moravec ballistic missile submarines cruise through the Martian sea.