by Dan Simmons
“When?” asked Priam again. “How soon can you and your twelve Amazon warriors kill Achilles?”
“Today,” promised Penthesilea. “As I promised. Before the sun sets on either Ilium or Olympos visible through that hole in the air we passed on the way in.”
“What do you require, daughter? Weapons? Gold? Riches?”
“Only your blessing, Noble Priam. And food. And a couch for my women and me, for a short nap before we bathe, adorn ourselves again in armor, and go out to end this war with the gods.”
Priam clapped his hands. Deiphobus, the many guards, his courtiers, and the twelve Amazon women stepped back into earshot.
He ordered fine food be brought to these women, then soft couches made available for their short sleep, then warm baths to be drawn and slave women to be ready to apply oils and unguents after their baths, and massages, and finally that the thirteen women’s horses be fed and combed and resaddled when Penthesilea was ready to go forth to do battle that afternoon.
Penthesilea was smiling and confident when she led her twelve companions out of the royal hall.
10
Quantum teleportation through Planck space—a term the goddess Hera did not know—was supposed to be instantaneous, but in Planck space, such terms had little meaning. Transit through such interstices in the weave of space-time left trails, and the gods and goddesses, thanks to the nanomemes and cellular re-engineering that was part of their creation, knew how to follow such trails as effortlessly as a hunter, as easily as the goddess Artemis would track a stag through the forest.
Hera followed Zeus’s winding trail through Planck nothing, knowing only that it was not one of the regular string channels between Olympos and Ilium or Mount Ida. It was somewhere else on the ancient earth of Ilium.
She QT’d into existence in a large hall that Athena knew well. A giant quiver of arrows and the outline of a giant bow was painted on one wall and there was a long, low table set with dozens of fine goblets, serving bowls, and golden plates.
Zeus looked up in surprise from where he was sitting at the table—he had reduced his size to a mere seven feet here in this human hall—and idly scratching behind the ears of a gray-muzzled dog.
“My Lord,” said Hera. “Are you going to cut that dog’s head off as well?”
Zeus did not smile. “I should,” he rumbled. “As a mercy to it.” His brow was still furrowed. “Do you recognize this place and this dog, wife?”
“Yes. It is Odysseus’ home, on rugged Ithaca. The dog is named Argus, and was bred by the younger Odysseus shortly before he left for Troy. He trained the pup.”
“And it waits for him still,” said Zeus. “But now Penelope is gone, and Telemachus, and even the suitors who had just now begun to gather like carrion crows in Odysseus’ home, seeking Penelope’s hand and lands and wealth, have mysteriously disappeared along with Penelope, Telemachus, and all other mortals save for those few thousand at Troy. There is no one to feed this mutt.”
Hera shrugged. “You could send it to Ilium and let it dine on Dionysos, your wastrel son.”
Zeus shook his head. “Why are you so harsh with me, wife? And why have you followed me here when I want to be alone to ponder this strange theft of all the world’s people?”
Hera stepped closer to the white-bearded God of Gods. She feared his wrath—of all the gods and mortals, only Zeus could destroy her. She feared for what she was about to do, but she was resolved to do it.
“Dread majesty, Son of Kronos, I stopped by only to say goodbye for a few sols. I did not want to leave our last discussion on its note of discord.” She stepped even closer and covertly touched Aphrodite’s breast-band tucked under her right breast. Hera could feel the flow of sexual energy filling the room; sense the pheromones flowing from her.
“Where are you going for several sols when both Olympos and the war for Troy are in such turmoil, wife?” grumbled Zeus. But his nostrils flared and he looked up at her with a new interest, ignoring Argus the dog.
“With Nyx’s help, I am off to the ends of this empty earth to visit Okeanos and Mother Tethys, who prefer this world to our cold Mars, as well you know, husband.” She took three steps closer so that she was almost within touching distance of Zeus.
“Why visit them now, Hera? They’ve done well enough without you in the centuries since we tamed the Red World and inhabited Olympos.”
“I’m hoping to end their endless feud,” said Hera in her guileful way. “For too long have they held back from each other, hesitated to make love because of the anger in their hearts. I wanted to tell you where I would be so that you would not flare in godly anger at me, should you think I’d gone in secret to Okeanos’ deep, flowing halls.”
Zeus stood. Hera could sense the excitement stirring in him. Only the folds of his god-robe concealed his lust.
“Why hurry, Hera?” Zeus’s eyes were devouring her now. His look made Hera remember the feel of her brother-husband-lover’s tongue and hands upon her softest places.
“Why tarry, husband?”
“Going to see Okeanos and Tethys is a journey you can take tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or never,” said Zeus, stepping toward Hera. “Today, here, we can lose ourselves in love! Come, wife…”
Zeus swept all the goblets, cutlery, and spoiled food from the long table with a blast of invisible force from his raised hand. He ripped a giant tapestry from the wall and tossed it onto the rough-plank table.
Hera took a step back and touched her breast as if she were going to QT away. “What are you saying, Lord Zeus? You want to make love here? In Odysseus’ and Penelope’s abandoned home, with that dog watching? Who is to say that all the gods will not be watching us through their pools and viewers and holowalls? If love is your pleasure, wait until I return from Okeanos’ watery halls and we will make love in my own bedroom, made private by Hephaestus’s craft…”
“No!” roared Zeus. He was growing in more ways than one now, his gray-curled head brushing the ceiling. “Don’t worry about prying eyes. I will make a golden cloud so dense around the isle of Ithaca and Odysseus’ home that the sharpest eyes in the universe, neither god nor mortal, not even Prospero or Setebos, could pierce the mist and see us while we’re making love. Take your clothes off!”
Zeus waved his blunt-fingered hand again and the entire house vibrated with the energy of the surrounding forcefield and concealing golden cloud. The dog, Argus, ran from the room, his hair standing on end from the energies being unleashed.
Zeus grabbed Hera by the wrist and pulled her closer with his right hand, even while pulling her gown down away from her breasts with his free hand. Aphrodite’s breastband fell away with the gown Athena had made for Hera, but it did not matter—the air was so thick with lust and pheromones that the queen thought she could swim in it.
Zeus lifted her with one arm and tossed her back on the tapestry-covered table. It was a good thing, thought Hera, that Odysseus had made his long dining table of thick, solid planks pulled from the deck of a ship run aground on Ithaca’s treacherous rocks. He pulled the gown away from her legs, leaving her naked. Then he stepped out of his own robes.
As many times as Hera had seen her husband’s divine phallus standing erect, it never ceased to stop her breath in her throat. All of the male gods were…well, gods…but in their almost-forgotten Transformation to Olympians, Zeus had saved the most impressive attributes for himself. This purple-knobbed staff now pressing between her pale knees was the only scepter this King of the Gods would ever need to create awe among mortals or envy among his fellow gods, and although Hera thought that he showed it too frequently—his lust was the equal of his size and virility—she still thought of this part of her Dread Majesty as hers alone.
But, at risk of bruising or worse, Hera kept her naked knees and thighs tight closed.
“You want me, husband?”
Zeus was breathing through his mouth. His eyes were wild. “I want you, wife. Never has such a lust for goddess or mortal
woman flooded my pounding heart and prick and overwhelmed me so. Open your legs!”
“Never?” asked Hera, keeping her legs closed. “Not even when you bedded Ixion’s wife, who bore you Pirithous, rival to all the gods in wisdom and…”
“Not even then, with Ixion’s wife of the blue-veined breasts,” gasped Zeus. He forced her knees wide and stepped between her white thighs, his phallus reaching to her pale, firm belly and vibrating with lust.
“Not even when you loved Ascrisius’ daughter Danae?” asked Hera.
“Not even with her,” said Zeus, leaning far forward to suckle at Hera’s raised nipples, first the left, then the right. His hand moved between her legs. She was wet—from the breastband’s work and from her own eagerness. “Although, by all the gods,” he added, “Danae’s ankles alone could make a man come!”
“It must have more than once with you, My Lord,” gasped Hera as Zeus set his broad palm beneath her buttocks and lifted her closer. The broad, hot head of his scepter was batting at her thighs now, making them moist with his own anticipating wetness. “For she bore you a paragon of men.”
Zeus was so excited that he could not find entry, but lunged around her warmth like a boy in his first time with a woman. When he released her breast with his left hand to guide himself home, Hera seized his wrist.
“Do you want me more than you wanted Europa, Phoenix’ daughter?” she whispered urgently.
“More than Europa, yes,” breathed Zeus. He grabbed her hand and set it on himself. She squeezed, but did not guide. Not yet.
“Do you want to lie with me more than you did with Semele, Dionysos’ irresistible mother?”
“More than Semele, yes. Yes.” He set her hand more firmly around himself and lunged, but he was so engorged that it was more a ram’s head shoving than a penetration. Hera was pushed two feet up the table. He pulled her back. “And more than Alcmene in Thebes,” he gasped, “although my seed that day brought invincible Herakles into the world.”
“Do you want me more than you wanted fair-haired Demeter when…”
“Yes, yes, god damn it, more than Demeter.” He pushed Hera’s legs further apart and, with only his right palm, lifted her backside a foot off the table. She could not help opening for him now.
“Do you want me more than you wanted Leda on the day you took the shape of a swan to couple with her while you beat her down and held her with your great swan’s wings and entered her with your great swan’s…”
“Yes, yes,” gasped Zeus. “Shut up, please.”
He entered her then. Opening her like some great ram-headed battering engine would open the Scaean Gates had the Greeks ever won entrance to Ilium.
In the next twenty minutes, Hera almost swooned twice. Zeus was passionate, but not quick. He took his pleasure urgently, but waited for its climax with all the miserliness of a hedonist ascetic. The second time, Hera felt consciousness sliding away under the oiled and sweating pounding—the table shook and almost upended although it was thirty feet long, the chairs and couches tumbled away, dust fell from the ceiling, Odysseus’ ancient home almost came down around them—and Hera thought, This will not do—I must be conscious when Zeus climaxes or all my scheming is for naught.
She forced herself to stay attentive even after four orgasms of her own. Odysseus’ great quiver of arrows fell from the wall, scattering barbed and possibly poisoned arrows across tile in the last seconds of Zeus’s heavy pounding. He had to hold Hera in place with one hand under her, pressing up so fiercely that she heard her divine hipbones creak, while his other gripped her shoulder, keeping her from sliding far down the quivering, straining table.
Then he erupted inside her. Hera did scream then and swooned for a few seconds, despite herself.
When her eyelids flickered opened, she felt his great weight upon her—he’d grown to fifteen feet in his involuntary last seconds of passion—his beard scratched against her breast, the top of his head—hair soaked with sweat—lay against her cheek.
Hera raised her treacherous finger with the injection ampule set in the false nail by crafty Hephaestus. Stroking his neck curls with her cool hand, she bent the nail back and activated the injector—there was barely a hiss, unheard over his ragged breathing and the pounding of both their divine hearts.
The drug was called Absolute Sleep and it lived up to its name within microseconds.
Almost instantly, Zeus was snoring and slobbering against her rubbed-red chest.
It took all of Hera’s divine strength to shove him off, to remove his softening member from her folds, to slide out from under him.
Her unique, Athena-made gown was a torn mess. So was she, Hera realized. Bruised and scratched and pummeled in every muscle, outside and in. The divine seed from the King of the Gods ran down her thigh as she stood. Hera mopped it away with the tatters of her ruined gown.
Retrieving Aphrodite’s breastband from the torn silk, Hera went into Odysseus’ wife Penelope’s dressing room, next to the bedroom where their great marriage bed had one post made of a living olive tree and a frame inlaid with gold, silver, and ivory, with thongs of oxhide dyed crimson stretched end to end to hold soft fleeces and rich coverlets. From camphor-lined trunks set by Penelope’s bath, Hera pulled gown after gown—Odysseus’ wife had been about her size, and the goddess could morph her shape enough to finish the tailoring—finally choosing a peach-colored silk shift with an embroidered band that would hold her bruised breasts high. But before dressing, Hera made her bath as best she could from the copper kettles of cold water set out days or weeks earlier for a hot bath Penelope never had.
Later, emerging into the dining hall again, dressed, walking gingerly, Hera stared at the great, bronzed, naked hulk snoring face-down on the long table. Could I kill him now? she wondered. It was not the first time—or the thousandth—that the queen had held this thought while looking at and listening to her snoring lord. She knew she was not alone in the wondering. How many wives—goddess and mortal woman, long dead and yet unborn—had felt this thought slipping across their minds like a cloud shadow over rocky ground? If I could kill him, would I kill him? If it were possible, would I act now?
Instead, Hera prepared to quantum teleport to the plains of Ilium. So far, the plot was unfolding according to plan. Poseidon, the Earth-Shaker, should be maneuvering Agamemnon and Menelaus into action at any minute. Within hours, if not sooner, Achilles might be dead—slain by the hands of a mere woman, although Amazon, his heel pierced by poison spearpoint—and Hector isolated. And if Achilles killed the woman who attacked him, Athena and Hera had plans for him still. The mortal revolt would be over by the time Zeus awoke, if Hera ever allowed him to awake at all—Absolute Sleep needed an antidote or it would work until these high walls of Odysseus’ home would tumble down in rot. Or Hera might wake Zeus soon, if her goals were fulfilled earlier than planned, and the Lord of Gods would not even be aware that he had been felled by drugs rather than mere lust and a need to sleep. Whenever she chose to waken her husband, the war between gods and men would be over, the Trojan War resumed, that status quo restored, the fait chosen by Hera and her co-conspirators most decidedly accompli.
Turning her back on the sleeping Son of Kronos, Hera walked from Odysseus’ house—for no one, not even a queen, could QT through the concealing forcefield Zeus had set around it—pressed through the watery wall of energy like an infant fighting from its caul, and teleported triumphantly back to Troy.
11
Hockenberry didn’t recognize any of the moravecs who met him in the blue bubble inside Stickney Crater on the moon Phobos. At first, when the chair forcefield clicked off and left him exposed to the elements, he’d panicked and held his breath for a few seconds—still thinking he was in hard vacuum—but then he felt the air pressure against his skin and the comfortable temperature, so he’d taken a ragged breath just as little Mahnmut was introducing him to the taller moravecs who’d come forward like an official delegation. It was embarrassing, actually. Then Ma
hnmut had left and Hockenberry was on his own with these strange organic machines.
“Welcome, Dr. Hockenberry,” said the closest of the five moravecs facing him. “I trust your trip up from Mars was uneventful.”
For a second, Hockenberry felt a stab of something almost like nausea at hearing someone call him “Doctor.” Except for Mahnmut using the honorific, it had been a long time since…no, it had been never in this second life, unless his scholic friend Nightenhelser had used his title jokingly once or twice in the past decade.
“Thank you, yes…I mean…I’m sorry, I didn’t catch all your names,” said Hockenberry. “I apologize. I was…distracted.” Thinking I was going to die when the chair deserted me, thought Hockenberry.
The short moravec nodded. “I don’t doubt,” it said. “There’s a lot of activity in this bubble and the atmosphere certainly conveys the noise.”
That it did. And that there was. The huge blue bubble, covering at least two or three acres—Hockenberry was always poor at judging sizes and distances, a failure due to not playing sports, he’d always thought—was filled with gantry-structures, banks of machines larger than most buildings in his old stomping grounds of Bloomington, Indiana, pulsating organic blobs that looked like runaway blancmanges the size of tennis courts, hundreds of moravecs—all busy on one task or another—and floating globes shedding light and spitting out laser beams that cut and welded and melted and moved on. The only thing that looked even remotely familiar in the huge space, although completely out of place, was a round rosewood table sitting about thirty feet away. It was surrounded by six stools of varying heights.
“My name is Asteague/Che,” said the small moravec. “I’m Europan, like your friend Mahnmut.”
“European?” Hockenberry repeated stupidly. He’d been to France once on vacation and once to Athens for a classics conference, and while the men and women in both places had been…different…none of them resembled this Asteague/Che: taller than Mahnmut, at least four feet tall, and more humanoid—especially around the hands—but still covered with the same plasticky-metallic material as Mahnmut, although Asteague/Che was mostly a brilliant, slick yellow. The moravec reminded Hockenberry of a slick yellow-rubber raincoat he’d had and loved when he was a kid.