Sunset of the Gods

by Steve White

  The ritualistic morning confrontations continued, and Jason saw what Callimachus and Miltiades meant about the Persian formation. The Medes and Persians and their eastern ethnic relatives, the Saka, were massed in the center, with archers behind the protecting lines of infantry carrying wicker shields and armed with short spears and the short swords known as akenakes. Here as well were the lightly clad horse archers, and cavalry armed with spears and—alone among the Persian army—wearing bronze helmets. It was a typical Persian array, except that, having had to cross the sea, it contained a lower percentage of horsemen than was normal. And, just as typically, it was flanked by polyglot masses of troops from all over the empire, visibly less smart about getting into formation each morning and staying there in the baking August sun.

  “Rabble,” sniffed Mondrago with reference to the latter troops, late in the afternoon.

  “Don’t be too sure,” Jason cautioned. “Remember, this army has spent six years crushing the Ionian rebels and conquering Thrace. They’re veterans, and all that experience fighting and training together has probably given them about as high a degree of operational integration as is possible for such a multiethnic force. And they have a tradition of victory—they’ve never been defeated.” He looked around to make sure no one was observing them. “Anyway, I need to get going.”

  Jason inconspicuously gathered up the fruits of his surreptitious labor over the past two nights. Mondrago looked at the small satchel dubiously.

  “Do you really think these things are going to last over twenty-eight hundred years?”

  “Why not? Archaeologists dig them up all the time.” Jason took out one of the ceramic potsherds he had been collecting and inscribing with his report. Only a small amount of the English lettering would fit on each one, but he had numbered them; Rutherford should have no trouble puzzling them out when they appeared at the message drop.

  “So now I’m going to have to cover for you again,” Mondrago grumbled.

  “Well,” said Jason reasonably, “I have to be the one to go. Would you be able to find the message drop on Mount Pentelikon?”

  “I know, I know. You’re the one with the map spliced into his optic nerve.” This clearly didn’t sweeten it for Mondrago.

  “I’m still going to need daylight, though. So I’d better get going now.”

  Jason slipped out of back of the camp and made his way up Mount Agriliki to the ledge where he had left the Transhumanists’ aircar. It was still there, to his relief; the Transhumanists evidently had no way of locating it. He took it aloft and made his invisible way to Mount Pentelikon, rising over thirty-five hundred feet a few miles to the southwest.

  Before their departure from the twenty-fourth century, he had taken a virtual tour of the mountain, and his implant had been programmed to project a tiny white dot on his neurally activated map display where an overhanging rocky ledge sheltered the spot that had been chosen as a message drop.

  At this moment, in the linear present of the year 2380, it was empty. In a few minutes, Jason’s potsherds would be there, to be discovered in the course of the next of the inspections of the site. But no one would be there at the precise instant of the linear present when Jason put them there. Something would prevent it. He suppressed the eerie feeling that always took him at moments like these.

  He cruised about in search of a place where the aircar could rest concealed from any goatherds who might be about, finally settling for a kind of small glen. Save for being more extensively forested, all was as it would be in his era. He hefted his satchel and set off on a narrow path leading around the mountainside toward his destination. Turning a corner, he saw the flat top of the ledge under whose far end was the message drop, a few feet below.

  But he had eyes for none of that, for he was not alone. Ahead of him stood Franco, Category Five, Seventy-Sixth Degree, and one of his strong-arm men . . . and Chantal Frey.

  For a heartbeat the tableau held, as they all stood in shocked surprise. Then the low-ranking Transhumanist sprang into action, as he was genetically predisposed to, whipping out a short sword and lunging toward Jason.

  Jason dropped his satchel and let his trained reflexes react for him as he took advantage of the tendency of a lunge to put the swordsman slightly off balance. Twisting aside to his left and gripping the wrist of his assailant’s sword-arm, he pulled the man forward while bringing his right knee up, hard, into his midriff. The wind whooshed out of him as Jason pulled him forward, continuing the lunge, and his grip on the sword-hilt weakened enough for Jason to twist it out of his hand as he fell.

  Jason whirled toward Franco, who was too far away for a thrust. He knew he had only a few seconds before the swordsman recovered. His sword wasn’t designed for throwing, but it would have to do. He drew it back. . . .

  With an almost invisibly quick motion, Franco grabbed Chantal in his left arm, swung her in front of him as a shield and, with his right hand, put a dagger to her throat.

  “Drop the sword or she dies,” he said emotionlessly, in his strangely compelling voice. Chantal’s eyes were huge in her frozen face.

  A measurable segment of time passed before Jason let the sword slip from his fingers and hit the flat rock ledge with a clang. The guard retrieved it, and Franco released Chantal. She took a step toward Jason.

  “I’m sorry, Jason.” She seemed barely able to form words, and her features seemed about to dissolve in a maelstrom of conflicting emotions.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said dully. But then he looked into those enormous eyes, and began to understand what he was seeing in them.

  No, he thought as a horrible doubt began to dawn.

  Then she stepped back and stood beside Franco, half-leaning against his side as he put an arm around her shoulders.

  “No,” said Jason, aloud this time but almost inaudibly.

  “Yes,” said Franco with a smile. “This works out very well. When she returns to her own time she’ll be able to explain how you and the others met your unfortunate end.”

  “Returns to her own time? Haven’t you made that impossible?” Jason jerked his chin in the direction of Chantal’s left arm, which still had a bandage around it. She seemed to seek refuge deeper in the crook of Franco’s arm. “Why did you do that, by the way? Just sheer, random sadism?”

  “Oh, we had to, in order to keep you from being able to track her whereabouts. Oh, yes, we know about your brain implant, and the passive tracking devices incorporated in the other team members’ TRDs.” Franco pursed his lips and made a mocking tsk-tsk sound. “Whatever happened to your precious ‘Human Integrity Act’?”

  “You never told me about that, Jason,” Chantal said with a kind of weak resentment in her voice. She snuggled even closer to Franco. “He did!”

  “Chantal,” said Jason, still struggling with his bewilderment, “don’t you understand? He’s made it impossible for you to return to your own time. You’ll have to spend the rest of your life in this era!”

  “Oh, no,” Franco denied, shaking his head, before Chantal could speak. “Now that we have you, and while that thug of yours is otherwise occupied at Marathon, we’ll find her TRD.”

  “You’re lying, as usual. Why would you want to do that?”

  “You’ll learn in a moment. But, to resume, it must be at your house in Athens or, more likely, the house of your friend Themistocles.” Jason tried to keep his features immobile and not confirm Franco’s supposition. From the latter’s expression, he saw that he had failed. “We’ll retrieve it—sonic stunners will take care of his servants, and we have sensors that can detect it. We also have some field dermal regeneration equipment among our first-aid supplies. It will be a simple matter to re-implant it in her arm and restore the tissue.”

  “That will never get past a careful examination.”

  “But why should there be such an examination? There will be no reason for anyone to suspect her. At the same time, there will be a tendency to want to spare the single survivor of the
expedition any further distress.”

  “So there will. It’s called ordinary human decency.”

  “Yes—an obsolete concept that continues to serve a useful purpose simply because we have always been able to exploit it. She’ll be welcomed back with open arms after she arrives accompanied by her companions’ corpses, and receive a great deal of sympathy for the harrowing experience she has been through. She will therefore be in an excellent position to be a useful agent of ours.”

  Jason shook his head as though to clear it of a fog of unreality. “Chantal . . . why?”

  “Jason . . . I’m sorry. I know what you’re thinking. But he’s made me understand—made me see things clearly for the first time. Remember our conversation in the lounge the night before our departure? I’d always wondered, but now, thanks to him, I know. Our society is trying to stand in the way of destiny—the destiny that the Transhumanists represent. It’s . . . it’s as though we’re like the Persians at Marathon, unconsciously fighting to prevent a better world from being born. The human race can transcend itself, become something better.”

  “Chantal, I can’t believe I’m hearing this claptrap! Surely you can’t believe it—not after he murdered Bryan and did that to you!” Jason pointed at her left arm.

  A convulsive shudder went through her. “He’s explained to me that they never intended to kill Bryan. They were just going to take him as a hostage, like me. You forced them to kill him, by interfering. And as for me . . . he had to do that. He didn’t know yet that he could trust me. He had no choice. But he truly regretted it—he’s told me so.” She looked up into Franco’s face.

  Jason saw the look she gave Franco, and Franco’s smile. And all at once he understood.

  A plain, shy, insecure girl, he thought. Attracted to the study of aliens because she’s always found them easier to cope with than her fellow humans—especially the male ones. And suddenly, at a time of special vulnerability, she’s exposed to a man whose genes were tailored to maximize his charisma. He must have really turned on the charm, and the flattery. . . .

  “Chantal,” he burst out desperately, “can’t you see he’s just using you? He’s lying to you. He’s not capable of love. And even if he was . . . to him you’re nothing but a Pug!”

  Jason’s consciousness exploded into a spasm of sickening pain as the guard punched him from behind, hard, in the right kidney. He fell to his knees, gasping. When he finally looked up he saw Franco examining the contents of the satchel he had dropped.

  “Very ingenious,” said Franco, holding up one of the laboriously inscribed potsherds. He dropped it on the ground, and poured all the others out to join it. Then, with his foot, he crushed them into fragments.

  “Chantal told us your message drop was up here on this mountain,” he explained. “But of course she didn’t know the exact location. We have patrolled the area periodically in the hope of encountering you. But it was just good fortune that we happened to be up here today on . . . other matters.”

  “You still don’t know the message drop’s exact location,” Jason reminded him.

  “No. But it would be useful to us—we could leave whatever messages we want, to be found by your superiors. That—and also the location of the aircar you stole—is information we will now obtain from you.”

  “You can try.”

  “And succeed. I don’t have access to any high-tech means of torture, but I won’t need them. To tell you the truth, I’ve always considered them overelaborate. Come, Chantal,” Franco said offhandedly, turning on his heel and striding off without waiting for her. “And,” he called out over his shoulder to the guard, “bring him.”

  Chantal, her face still working as though she was on the verge of an emotional collapse and her body moving as though it could barely remain upright, turned slowly and followed Franco like a sleepwalker. Jason, responding to a prod by the guard’s sword, fell in behind her.

  They were walking along the ledge when Chantal abruptly swayed, lost her balance, and began to crumple to the flat rock, near its edge.

  The guard automatically reached out past Jason to catch and steady her. But his position was awkward, and she continued to fall, pulling him down.

  Jason had only a split second to react, and he was not in a good position to do it. The best he could manage was a kick that caught the guard in his ribs and sent him sprawling over the ledge to the ground a few feet below. He bellowed in rage, but kept his grip on his sword and sprang back to his feet almost immediately. From up ahead, Franco was roaring with rage and running back toward them. All Jason could do was spin around and, without even a backward glance at Chantal, sprinted for his aircar.

  He was around the bend in the path and in the aircar before his pursuers could see it. He activated the invisibility field just before the guard, with Franco behind him, came around the cliffside. In the murky grayness of the outside world, they looked around in bewilderment. Jason smiled grimly as he took off, blowing a satisfying amount of dust into their faces.

  Once in the air, he released a long-pent-up breath, sank back into the seat cushion, and tried to sort out his swirling thoughts.

  She looked like she was fighting off a nervous breakdown, he told himself. It was just a lucky break that she collapsed when she did.

  Or . . . was that a deliberate stunt on her part, to let me escape?

  I may never know.

  Back in the camp that night, in the light of the full moon that had enabled him to scramble down the now-familiar slope of Mount Agriliki from his concealed aircar, Jason related the story to Mondrago, who muttered something about the Stockholm Syndrome. “And now,” he concluded, “I’ve got to get back to Athens, go to Themistocles’ house, and retrieve that jar containing Chantal’s TRD.”

  “Back to Athens? Now? Are you crazy?” Mondrago shook his head. “It’s just lucky you got back here no later than you did.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Haven’t you noticed all the commotion around here?” Jason hadn’t, in his emotional uproar. “Well,” Mondrago continued, “it seems that after sunset some unusual noises were heard from the direction of the Persian camp. Then, just before you got here, there were some comings and goings in and out of the Grove of Heracles over there to our right.”

  “Miltiades’ Ionian spies!”

  “Good guess. Anyway, there hasn’t been any official announcement but the word has spread: the Persians are beginning their embarkation, starting with the cavalry. And we’re going out there to attack them at dawn.”

  Jason hadn’t looked at his calendar display in a while—he’d had other things on his mind. Now he did. It was August 11.

  The Battle of Marathon would take place on August 12, as Rutherford had assumed on the basis of an increasing consensus among historians starting in the early twenty-first century. Kyle would doubtless be interested. Jason, at the moment, didn’t give a damn.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  No one got much sleep that night, under the light of the full moon that meant the Spartans were starting to march. The slaves were kept busy burnishing the shields and armor, the generals went over the plan repeatedly as they moved among their tribes with whatever pre-battle encouragement they could give . . . and everyone could hear the distant tramping of tens of thousands of feet as the Persians moved forward onto the plain, and the more distant sounds of the embarking cavalry.

  The Greeks were not great breakfast eaters—a crust of bread dipped in honey or wine, at most—but before the afternoon battles that were customary in their interminable internecine wars they were wont to take a midmorning “combat brunch” including enough wine to dull fear. Not this time. This army mustered before dawn, sorting itself out into the tribal groupings. There was surprisingly little confusion, given that the light was limited now that the full moon had passed.

  “At least we won’t have to fight in the heat,” old Callicles philosophized grumpily.

  Jason, standing beside the elderly hop
lite with the rest of the Leontis tribe, saw Aeschylus and his brother Cynegeirus, hurrying to the right flank to join the Aiantis. The playwright waved to Callicles—he must, Jason thought, have a good memory for faces. Then, with the help of slaves and each other, they began the task of donning the panoply that was never put on any earlier than necessary before battle, such was its miserable discomfort.

  The greaves were the least bad: rather elegant bronze sheaths that protected the legs from kneecap to ankle, so thin as to be flexible and so well shaped that they needed no straps—they were simply “snapped on,” with the edges nearly meeting behind the calves. But despite their felt inner linings they were apt to chafe with the movement of the legs and lose their snug fit. They were put on first, while the hoplite could still stoop over.

  Next, over his chiton, came that which prevented him from stooping: a bronze corselet of front and back segments, laced at the sides and connected over the shoulders by curved plates. Jason had been given a choice from Themeistocles’ stock and had found one that seemed to fit him reasonably well—an absolute necessity. But the weight and inflexibility of the thing, and its efficiency as a heat-collector in the August sun, made him understand why later generations of hoplites in the Peloponnesian Wars would abandon it in favor of a cuirass made from layers of linen. Feeling his chiton already begin to grow sweat-soaked even before sunrise, he decided he didn’t need to worry about the Persians; heat prostration would get him first. The skirt of leather strips hanging from the lower edge was the only protection the groin had.

  Even more uncomfortable was the bronze “Corinthian” helmet, covering the neck and with cheek pieces and nose guard, practically encasing the entire head and face. It had no interior webbing or other suspension, only a soft leather lining; its five-pound weight rested on the neck and head. Jason now understood why hoplites grew their hair as long and thick as possible, despite the problem of lice, and he wondered what it must be like for older, balding men. With no real cushion between helmet and cranium, blows to the head—such as those dealt by the axes favored by the Persians’ Saka troops—were often fatal. And, of course, the heat and stuffiness inside such a bronze pot were stifling. Given all this, it was easy to understand why Classical Greek art usually showed the helmet propped back on the head; it was worn this way until the last possible moment before battle, at which time it was finally lowered over the face. At this point, the hoplite became semi-deaf (there were no ear-holes) and able to see only directly ahead. But, Jason reflected, in a phalanx that was really the only direction you needed to see. And it occurred to him that this was one more bit of cement for a phalanx’s unique degree of unit cohesion. A hoplite need not worry about his blind zones as long as the formation held; but alone, he was locked into a world of terrifying isolation.