by Ben Bova
"I know," Achilles replied, almost smiling down at the young man. "It's not your fault," he said to Odysseus and the others. "But I'll see myself in Hades before I'll help Agamemnon again. He's not trustworthy. You should be thinking about appointing a new leader for yourselves."
Odysseus tried tact, praising Achilles's prowess in battle, downplaying Agamemnon's failures and shortcomings. Ajax, as blunt and straightforward as a shovel, flatly told Achilles that he was helping the Trojans to murder the Achaians. Old Phoenix appealed to his former student's sense of honor, and recited childhood homilies at him.
Achilles remained unmoved. "Honor?" he snapped at Phoenix. "What kind of honor would I have left if I put my spear back in the service of the man who robbed me?"
Odysseus said, "We can get the girl back for you, if that's what you want. We can get a dozen girls for you."
"Or boys," Ajax added. "Whatever you want."
Achilles got to his feet, and Patrokles scrambled to stand beside him. I was right, he was terribly small, although every inch of him was hard with sinew. Even the slender Patrokles topped him by a few inches.
"I will defend my boats when Hector breaks into the camp," Achilles said. "Until Agamemnon comes to me personally and apologizes, and begs me to rejoin the fighting, that is all that I will do."
Odysseus rose, realizing that we were being dismissed. Phoenix stood up and, after glancing around, Ajax finally understood and got up too.
"What will the poets say of Achilles in future generations?" Odysseus asked, firing his last arrow at the warrior's pride. "That he sulked in his tent while the Trojans slaughtered his friends?"
The shot glanced off Achilles without penetrating. "They will never say that I humbled myself and threw away my honor by serving a man who has humiliated me."
We went to the doorway, speaking polite formal farewells. Phoenix hung back and I heard Achilles invite his old mentor to remain the night.
Outside, Ajax shook his head wearily. "There's nothing we can do. He just won't listen to us."
Odysseus clapped his broad shoulder. "We tried our best, my friend. Now we must prepare for tomorrow's battle without Achilles."
Ajax trudged off into the darkness, followed by his men. Odysseus turned to me, a thoughtful look on his face.
"I have a task for you to perform," he said. "If you are successful you can end the war."
"And if I am not?"
Odysseus smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. "No man lives forever, Orion."
Chapter 7
In less than an hour I found myself picking my way across the trench that fronted our rampart and heading into the Trojan camp. A white cloth knotted above my left elbow proclaimed that I was operating under a flag of truce. The slim willow wand in my right hand was the impromptu symbol of a herald.
"These should get you past the Trojan sentries without having your throat slit," Odysseus had told me. He did not smile as he said those words, and I did not find his reassurances very reassuring.
"Get to Prince Hector and speak to no one else," he had commanded me. "Tell him that Agamemnon offers a solution to this war: If the Trojans will return Helen to her rightful husband, the Achaians will return to their own lands, satisfied."
"Hasn't that offer been made before?" I asked.
Odysseus smiled at my naiveté. "Of course. But always with the demand for a huge ransom, plus all the fortune that Helen brought with her. And always when we were fighting under the walls of Troy. Priam and his sons never believed we would abandon the siege without breaking in and sacking the city. But now that Hector is besieging us, perhaps they will believe that we are ready to quit, and merely need a face-saving compromise to send us packing."
"Returning Helen is nothing more than a face-saving compromise?" I blurted.
He looked at me curiously. "She is only a woman, Orion. Do you think Menalaos has been pining away in celibacy since the bitch ran off with Aleksandros?"
I blinked at him, so taken aback by his attitude that I had no reply. I wondered, though, if Odysseus felt the same way about his own wife, waiting for him back in Ithaca.
He made me repeat my instructions and then, satisfied, led me to the top of the rampart, not far from where I had gained my moment of glory earlier in the day. I gazed out into the darkness. In the silvery moonlight a mist had risen, turning the plain into a ghostly shivering vapor that rose and sank slowly like the breath of some living thing. Here and there I could make out the glow of Trojan campfires, like distant faint stars in the shrouding fog.
"Remember," said Odysseus, "you are to speak to Prince Hector and no one else."
"I understand," I said.
I scrambled down the slope of the rampart, into the inky shadows of the trench, and finally made my way through the slowly drifting tendrils of mist toward the Trojan camp, guided by the fires that flickered and glowed through the fog. The mist was cold on my skin, like the touch of death.
Peering through the moon-silvered haze, I saw one campfire that seemed larger, brighter, than all the others. That must be where Hector's tent is, I told myself. I headed toward it, tense with the expectation of being challenged by a sentry at any moment. I hoped I would be challenged, and not merely speared out of the darkness before any questions were asked. My senses were hyper-alert; I think I could have heard a dagger being drawn from its sheath, or seen a man stalking behind me out of the back of my head. But I heard and saw nothing. It was as if the fog had enveloped the whole camp, muffled every sound, mummified every man there except me.
The fire seemed to be growing, as if someone were feeding it, turning it from a dying campfire into a great welcoming beacon. But it no longer flickered like a fire. It was a steady bright glare, growing more brilliant by the moment. Soon it was so bright that I had to throw my arm across my brow to shield my eyes from its burning intensity. I felt no heat from it, but its brilliance exerted a force of its own. I felt myself pressed by that blinding glare, forced to my knees by its overpowering golden radiance.
Then I heard a man's laughter, and knew at once who it was.
"On your feet, Orion!" said the Golden One. "Or do you enjoy crawling like a worm?"
Slowly I rose to my feet. The Golden One stood bathed in a warm glow that seemed to separate us from the mist-shrouded plain. It remained night beyond us. No one in the camp stirred. No sentries saw us or heard us.
"Orion," he said, his smile mocking, "somehow you continually find ways to displease me. You saved the Achaian camp."
"That displeases you?" I asked.
He scratched at his chin, a strangely human gesture in so godlike a person. "As Apollo, the sun god, the one who brings light and beauty to these people, I seek victory for the Trojans over these barbarians from Achaia."
"And the other . . ." I groped for a word, settled on, "gods? Not all of them favor Troy, do they?"
His smile withered.
"There are others," I said. "Godlike beings like yourself?"
"There are," he admitted.
"Greater than you? Is there a Zeus, a Poseidon?"
"There are several . . . beings such as I, Orion," he said, waving a hand vaguely. "The names that these primitive people call them are irrelevant."
"But are they more powerful than you? Is there a Zeus? A king among you?"
He laughed. "You're trying to find a way of fighting against me!"
"I'm trying to understand who and what you are," I said. Which was truth, as far as it went.
The Golden One eyed me carefully, almost warily. "Very well," he said at last, "if you want to see some of the others . . ."
And gradually, like a night fog slowly burning away under the morning sun, I saw images beginning to form all around me. Slowly they emerged, materialized, took on solidity and color. Living, breathing men and women surrounded me, peered down at me, inspected me as a scientist might examine some species of insect or bacterium.
"This is rash," said one of them in a deep godly voice.
"He
is my creature," the Golden One retorted. "I can control him."
Yes, I thought. You can control me. But one day your control will slip.
I could see dozens of faces peering at me: beautiful women with flawless skin and eyes that glowed like jewels; men who radiated youth and yet spoke with the gravity and knowledge of millennia, eons, eternity itself.
I felt like a little boy in the midst of vastly wiser adults, like a child confronted by giants.
"I brought him here from the plain of Ilios," said the Golden One, almost as if daring them to complain.
"You grow bolder," said the one who had spoken first. He was dark of hair and eye, as solemn as a high craggy mountain. I thought of him as Zeus, even though there were no lightning bolts in his grip and his beard was neatly trimmed and barely touched with gray.
The Golden One laughed carelessly.
Around that circle of vast unsmiling faces I searched, looking for one that would be familiar, the goddess I had loved, or even the dark Ahriman whom I had hunted. I saw neither.
One of the women spoke. "You still intend to allow the Trojans to win their war?"
The Golden One smiled at her. "Yes, even though that displeases you."
"The Greeks have much to offer your creatures," she said.
"Pah! Barbarians."
"They will not always be so. In time they will build a beautiful civilization . . . if you let them."
With a shake of his golden mane, "The civilization of Troy will be even more beautiful, I promise you."
"I have studied the time-tracks," said one of the males. "The Greeks should be allowed to win."
"No!" shouted the Golden One. "Damn the time-tracks! I am creating a new track here, one that will please all of us, if you'd only stop interfering with my plans."
"We have as much right to manipulate these creatures as you do," said the woman. "I really have very little confidence in your plans."
"Because you don't understand," the Golden One insisted. "I want Troy to win because Troy will then become the most important nexus in this phase of human history. The city will grow into a mighty empire that spans Europe and Asia. Think of it! The energy and vigor of the Europeans combined with the wisdom and patience of the East. The wealth of both worlds will be commingled into a single, unified Ilian empire that will span from the British Isles to the Indian subcontinent!"
"What good will that do?" asked one of the other men. Like the others, he was as handsome as a human face can be, flawless in every detail. "Your creatures will still have to face the ultimate crisis. Unity among them may be less desirable than a healthy amount of competition."
"Yes," said the woman. "Remember the Neanderthal-dominated track that you sent this creature to destroy. You ended it by nearly destroying all of us."
The Golden One glared down at me. "That was a mistake that will not be repeated."
"No, not with Ahriman and his tribes safely in their own continuum now."
"That is done and we survived the crisis," said the one I called Zeus. "The question at hand is what to do about the particular nexus at Troy."
"Troy must win," insisted the Golden One.
"No, the Greeks should . . ."
"The Trojans will win," the Golden One stated flatly. "They will win because I will make them win."
"So that you can create this Ilian empire that appears to be so dear to your heart," said Zeus.
"Exactly."
"Why is that so important?" asked the woman.
"It will unify all of Europe and much of Asia," he replied. "There will be no separation of East and West, no dichotomy of the human spirit. No Alexander of Macedon with his semibarbaric lusts, no Roman Empire, no Constantinople to act as a barrier between Asia and Europe. No Christianity and no Islam to fight their twenty-century-long war against each other."
They listened and began to nod. All but the skeptical woman and the one I called Zeus.
It is a game to them, I realized. They are manipulating human history the way a chess player moves pieces across his board. And if a civilization is utterly destroyed, it means as little to them as if a pawn or a rook is captured and removed from the board.
"Does it really make that much difference?" asked one of the dark-haired men.
"Of course it does!" the Golden One replied. "I seek to unite the human race, to bring all the many facets of my creatures into harmony and unity . . ."
"So that they can help us to face the ultimate crisis," said Zeus, almost in a mutter.
The Golden One nodded. "That is my goal. We need all the help we can get."
"I am not certain that your way is the best method," Zeus said.
"I'm certain it's not," said the woman.
"I'm going ahead with it whether you approve or not," the Golden One retorted. "These are my creatures and I will bring them to the point where they can be of true assistance to us."
The others in the circle murmured and nodded or shook their heads. There was no unanimity among them. As I watched, they began to fade away, to blur and dissolve until only the Golden One and I stood facing each other against the all-pervasive glow of a place that had no location, no time, in any world that I knew.
"Well, Orion, you have met the others. Some of them, at least."
"You spoke of us as your creatures," I said. "Do the others have creatures of their own, as well?"
"Some do. Others seem more interested in meddling with my creatures than in creating their own."
"Then . . . the men and women of Earth—you created them?"
"You were one of the first of them, Orion," he answered. "And, in a sense, you then created us."
"What? I don't understand."
"How could you?"
"You created the human race so that we can help you," I said, repeating what I had heard.
"Ultimately, yes."
"But while the others think you will bring us humans to their aid, you actually plan to have us help you against them," I realized.
He stared at me.
"And that will make you the mightiest of all the gods, won't it?"
He hesitated for a moment before replying. "I am the mightiest of all the Creators, Orion. The others may not recognize that fact, but it is so."
Now I felt my lips twisting into a sardonic smile.
He knew my thought. "You think I do this out of egomania? Out of lust for worship by creatures I myself created?" He shook his head sadly. "How little you understand. Do you have any great desire for your sandals to adore you, Orion? Is it necessary for your happiness to have your sword or the knife hidden under your kilt to proclaim you as the greatest master they have ever known?"
"I don't understand . . ."
"How could you? How could you dream of the consequences that I am dealing with? Orion, I created the human race out of necessity, truly—but not the necessity to be adored! The universes are wide, Orion, and filled with dangers. I seek to protect the continuum, to keep it from being torn apart by forces that you could not even imagine. While the others dither and bicker, I act. I create. I command!"
"And to accomplish your goal it is necessary for Troy to win this war?"
"Yes!"
"And it was necessary to destroy the starship we were riding? Necessary to kill the woman I loved? The woman who loved me?"
For a moment he looked almost startled. "You recall that?"
"I remember the starship. The explosion. She died in my arms. We both died."
"I revived you. I returned you to life."
"And her?"
"She was a goddess, Orion. I can only revive creatures whom I myself have created."
"If she was a goddess, how could she die?"
"Gods and goddesses can die, Orion. Tales of our immortality are rather exaggerated. As are the pious recitations of our goodness and mercy."
I felt my heart thudding in my chest, the blood roaring in my ears. My head swam. I could barely breathe. I hated this man, this golden self-styled god, this murdere
r. Hated him with every fiber of my being. He claims to have created me, I told myself. Yet I will destroy him.
"I did not want to kill her, Orion," he said, and it almost sounded sincere. "It was beyond my control. She chose to make herself human. For your sake, Orion. She knew the risks and she accepted them for your sake."
"And died." A murderous rage was burning inside me. Yet when I tried to take a step toward him, I found I could not move. I was frozen, immobilized, unable even to clench my fists at my sides.
"Orion," said the object of my hatred, "you cannot blame me for what she did to herself."
How wrong he was!
"You must serve me whether you like it or not," he insisted. "There is no way for you to avoid your destiny, Orion." Then he added, muttering, almost to himself, "No way for either of us to avoid our destinies."
"I can refuse to serve you," I said stubbornly.
He lifted one golden eyebrow and considered me, the haughty, mocking tone back in his voice. "While you live, my angry creature, you will play your part in my plans. You cannot refuse because you can never know which acts of yours serve me and which do not. You stagger along blindly in your time-bound linearity, going from day to day, while I perceive space-time on the scale of the continuum."
"Grand talk," I spat. "You sound almost as grandiloquent as old Nestor."
His eyes narrowed. "But I speak the truth, Orion. You see time as past and present and future. I create time and manipulate it to keep the continuum from being torn asunder. And while you live, you will help me in this mighty task."
"While I live," I repeated. "Is that a threat?"
He smiled again. "I make no threats, Orion. I have no need to. I created you. I can destroy you. You have no memory of how many times you have died, do you? Yet I have revived you each time, so that you could serve me again. That is your destiny, Orion. To serve me. To be my Hunter."
"I want to be free," I shouted. "Not your puppet!"
"Pah! I waste my time trying to explain myself to you. No one is free, Orion. No creature can ever be free. Not as long as you live."
He clasped his arms together across his chest and disappeared as abruptly as a candle snuffed out by a sharp gust of wind. Suddenly I was alone in the fog-wrapped darkness of the plain before Troy.