by Dan Simmons
“Does any among us doubt what would be our fate, as women, should the Achaeans have won this war?”
“No!”
“So let us not tarry and loiter here a moment longer,” shouted Hippodamia above the roar. “The Amazon queen has vowed to kill Achilles before the sun sets today, and she has come from afar to fight for a city that is not her home. Can we vow less, do less, for our home, for our men, for our children, and for our own lives and futures?”
“No!” This time the roar went on and on and women began running from the square, jumping from the steps to the wall, some almost trampling Menelaus in their eagerness.
“Arm yourselves!” screamed Hippodamia. “Toss aside your weavings and your wools, leave your looms, don armor, gird yourselves, meet me outside these walls!”
The men on the walls and watching, men who had been leering and laughing during the first part of Tisiphonus’ wife’s tirade, slunk back into doorways and alleys now, getting out of the way of the rushing mob. Menelaus did the same.
He had just turned to leave, heading for the nearby Scaean Gate—still open, thank the gods—when he saw Helen standing on a nearby corner. She was looking the other way and did not see him. He watched her kiss two women goodbye and begin walking up the street. Alone.
Menelaus stopped, took a breath, touched the hilt of his sword, turned, and followed her.
“Theano stopped this madness,” said Cassandra. “Theano spoke to the crowd and brought this mob of women to its senses.”
“Theano is dead eight months and more,” said Andromache in cold tones.
“In the other now,” said Cassandra in that maddening monotone she assumed when half in trance. “In the other future. Theano stopped this. All heeded the chief priestess of Athena’s Temple.”
“Well, Theano is worm meat. Dead as Prince Paris’s pizzle,” said Helen. “No one stopped this mob.”
Women were already returning to the square and filing out through the gate in a parody of military order. They had obviously scattered to their homes and girded themselves in whatever odd armor they could find around the house—a father’s dull bronze helmet, its crest wilted or missing horsehair, a brother’s cast-off shield, a husband’s or son’s spear or sword. All the armor was too large, the spears too heavy, and most of the women looked like children playing dress-up as they rattled and clank-banged by.
“This is madness,” whispered Andromache. “Madness.”
“Everything since the death of Achilles’ friend Patroclus has been mere madness,” said Cassandra, her pale eyes bright as with fever and their own madness. “Untrue. False. Unfirm.”
For more than two hours in Andromache’s sun-filled top-floor apartment by the wall, the women had spent time with eighteen-month-old Scamandrius, the “god-murdered” child the whole city had mourned, the babe for whom Hector had gone to war with all the Olympian gods to avenge. Scamandrius—Astyanax, “Lord of the City”—was healthy enough under the watchful eye of his new nurse, while at the door, loyal Cicilian guards brought from fallen Thebe stood twenty-four-hour watch. These men had tried to die for Andromache’s fallen father, King Eetion, killed by Achilles when the city fell, and, spared not by their own choice but by Achilles’ whims, now lived only for Eetion’s daughter and her hidden son.
The babe, babbling words and toddling up a mile these days, recognized his Aunt Cassandra after all these months, almost half his short life, and came rushing toward her with his arms outspread.
Cassandra accepted the hug, returned it, wept, and for almost two hours the three Trojan Women and the two slaves—one a wet nurse, the other a Lesbos killer—talked and played with the little boy and talked more when he was laid down to nap.
“You see why you must not speak these trance words aloud again,” Andromache said softly after the visit was done. “If the wrong ear hears them—if any ears other than ours hear this hidden truth—Scamandrius will die just as you once prophesied—thrown down from the highest point on the walls, his brains dashed out on the rocks.”
Cassandra went whiter than her usual white and wept again briefly. “I will learn how to hold my tongue,” she said at last, “even when I have no control over it. Your ever-watching servant will see to that.” She nodded toward the expressionless Hypsipyle.
Then they had heard the growing commotion and women’s screams from the nearby wall and city square and had gone out together, their veils pulled down, to see what all the fuss was about.
Several times during Hippodamia’s harangue, Helen was tempted to intervene. She realized, after it was too late—when the women had scattered by the hundreds to their homes to fetch armor and weapons, fritting to and fro like a pack of hysterical bees—that Cassandra was right. Theano, their old friend, the high priestess of the still-revered Temple of Athena, would have stopped this nonsense. With her temple-trained voice, Theano would have boomed out “What folly!” and gotten the attention of the crowd and sobered the women with her words. Theano would have explained that this Penthesilea—who had done nothing for Troy yet except make promises to its aging king and sleep—was the daughter of the war-god. Were any of these women shouting in this city square daughters of a god? Could any claim Ares as their father?
What’s more, Helen was sure Theano would have pointed out to the suddenly quieting crowd, the Greeks had not battled for almost ten years, equaling and sometimes besting such heroes as Hector, to submit this day to untrained female rabble. Unless you’ve secretly learned how to handle horses, manhandle chariots, cast spears half a league, deflect violent sword thrusts with your shield, and are prepared to separate men’s screaming heads from their sturdy bodies, go home—Theano would have said all this, Helen was sure—trade in your borrowed spears for spindles and let your men protect you and decide the outcome of their men’s war. And the mob would have dispersed.
But Theano was not there. Theano was—in Helen’s sensitive phrase—as dead as Prince Paris’s pizzle.
So the mobs of half-armored women marched out to war, heading for the Hole, going to the foothills of Olympos, sure they would slay Achilles even before the Amazon Penthesilea awoke from her beauty nap. Hippodamia rushed late through the Scaean Gates, her borrowed armor askew—it looked to be from some previous age, as from the time of the War with the Centaurs—its bronze breastplates poorly tied and clattering and banging against her large bosoms. The mob-arouser had lost control of her mob. Like all politicians, she was rushing—and fail-ing—to get ahead of the parade.
Helen and Andromache and Cassandra—with the killer-slave Hypsipyle already watching the red-eyed prophetess—had kissed goodbye and Helen had gone her way, knowing that Priam wanted to settle her marriage-date with gross Deiphobus before this day was out.
But on her way back to the palace she had shared with Paris, Helen stepped away from the mobs and went into Athena’s Temple. The place was empty of course—these days few openly worshiped the goddess who had reportedly killed Astyanax and plunged the world of mortals into war with the Olympians—and Helen paused to step into the dark and incense-rich space, breathing in the calm, and to look up at the huge golden statue of the goddess.
“Helen.”
For an instant, Helen of Troy was sure the goddess had spoken in her former husband’s voice. Then she slowly turned.
“Helen.”
Menelaus was there not ten feet from her, his legs wide, sandals firmly planted on the dark marble floor. Even by only the flickering of the vestal votive candles, Helen could see his red beard, his glowering aspect, the sword in his right hand, and a boar-tusk helmet held loose in his left hand.
“Helen.”
It was as if this was all the cuckolded king and warrior could say now that his moment of vengeance was at hand.
Helen considered running and knew it would do no good. She could never get past Menelaus to the street, and her husband had always been one of the fleetest runners in all Lacedaemon. They had always joked that when they had a son, he wo
uld be too fast for either of them to catch for a spanking. They had never had a son.
“Helen.”
Helen had thought she’d heard every sort of male groan—from orgasm to death and everything in between—but she’d never heard such a surrender to pain from a man before. Certainly not sobbed out in one familiar but totally alien word like this.
“Helen.”
Menelaus walked quickly forward, raising his sword as he came.
Helen made no move to run. In the full light of the candles and the golden goddess glow, she went to her knees, looked up at her rightful husband, lowered her eyes, and pulled her gown down, baring her breasts, waiting for the blade.
13
“To answer your last question,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che, “we have to go to Earth because it appears that the center of all this quantum activity originates on or near the Earth.”
“Mahnmut told me shortly after I met him that you’d sent him and Orphu to Mars precisely because Mars—Olympus Mons in particular—was the source of all this…quantum?…activity,” said Hockenberry.
“That was what we believed when we tapped into the Olympians’ QT ability to transit these Holes, coming from the Belt and Jupiter space into Mars and the Earth of Ilium’s day. But our technology now suggests that Earth is the source and center of this activity, Mars the recipient…or target, perhaps would be the better word.”
“Your technology has changed so much in eight months?” said Hockenberry.
“We’ve easily tripled our knowledge of unified quantum theory since we piggybacked in on the Olympians’ quantum tunnels,” said Cho Li. The Callistan seemed to be the expert on technical things. “Most of what we know about quantum gravity, for instance, we’ve learned in the last eight standard months.”
“And what have you learned?” asked Hockenberry. He didn’t expect to understand the science, but he was suspicious of the moravecs for the first time.
Retrograde Sinopessen, the transformer with spider legs, answered in his incongruous rumble. “Everything we’ve learned is terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.”
That word Hockenberry understood. “Because the quantum whatsis is unstable? Mahnmut and Orphu told me that you knew that before you sent them to Mars. Is it worse than you thought?”
“Not just that factor,” said Asteague/Che, “but our growing understanding of how the force or forces behind the so-called gods are using this quantum-field energy.”
Force or forces behind the gods. Hockenberry noted that but did not pursue it at that moment. “How are they using it?” he asked.
“The Olympians actually use ripples—folds—in the quantum field to fly their chariots,” said the Ganymedan, Suma IV. The tall creature’s multifaceted eyes caught the light in a prism of reflections.
“Is that bad?”
“Only in the sense that it would be if you used a thermonuclear weapon to power a lightbulb in your home,” said Cho Li in his/her soft tones. “The energies being tapped into are almost immeasurable.”
“Then why haven’t the gods won this war?” asked Hockenberry. “It seems that your technology has sort of stalemated them…even Zeus’s aegis.”
Beh bin Adee, the rockvec commander, answered. “The gods use only the slightest fraction of the quantum energy in play on and around Mars and Ilium. We don’t believe they understand the technology behind their power. It’s been…loaned to them.”
“By whom?” Hockenberry was suddenly very thirsty. He wondered if the moravecs had included any human-style food or drink in their pressurized bubble.
“That’s what we’re going to Earth to find out,” said Asteague/Che.
“Why use a spaceship?” said Hockenberry.
“Pardon me?” asked Cho Li in soft tones. “How else could we travel between worlds?”
“The same way you got to Mars in your invasion,” said Hockenberry. “Use one of the Holes.”
Asteague/Che shook his head in a manner similar to Mahnmut’s. “There are no quantum-tunnel Brane Holes between Mars and Earth.”
“But you created your own Holes to come from Jupiter space and the Belt, right?” said Hockenberry. His head hurt. “Why not do that again?”
Cho Li answered. “Mahnmut succeeded in placing our transponder precisely at the quincunx locus of the quantum flux on Olympos. We have no one on Earth or in near-Earth orbit to do that for us now. That is one of the goals of our mission. We’ll be bringing a similar, although updated, transponder with us on the ship.”
Hockenberry nodded, but wasn’t quite sure of what he was nodding in agreement to. He was trying to remember the definition of “quincunx.” Was it a rectangle with a fifth point in the middle? Or something to do with leaves or petals? He knew it had to do with the number five.
Asteague/Che leaned closer over the table. “Dr. Hockenberry, may I give you a hint of why this frivolous use of quantum energy terrifies us?”
“Please.” Such manners, thought Hockenberry, who had been around Trojan and Greek heroes too long.
“Have you noticed anything about the gravity on Olympos and the rest of Mars during your more than nine years shuttling between there and Ilium, Doctor?”
“Well…yeah, sure…I always felt a little lighter on Olympos. Even before I realized it was Mars, which was only after you guys showed up. So? That’s right, isn’t it? Doesn’t Mars have less gravity than Earth?”
“Very much less,” piped in Cho Li…and her voice did sound a lot like pipes to Hockenberry’s ear. Pan’s pipes. “It’s approximately three seventy-two kilometers per second per second.”
“Translate,” said Hockenberry.
“It’s thirty-eight percent of Earth’s gravitational field,” said Retrograde Sinopessen. “And you were moving—quantum teleporting, actually—between Earth’s full gravity and Olympos’ every day. Did you notice a sixty-two percent difference in gravity, Dr. Hockenberry.”
“Please, everyone, call me Thomas,” Hockenberry said while distracted. Sixty-two percent difference? I’d almost be floating like a balloon on Mars…jumping twenty yards at a leap. Nonsense.
“You didn’t observe this gravitational difference,” said Asteague/Che, not framing it as a question.
“Not really,” agreed Hockenberry. It was always a little easier walking after the return to Olympos after a long day observing the Trojan War—and not just on the mountain, but in the scholics barracks at the base of the huge massif. A little easier—a little lighter in the walking and carrying loads—but sixty-two percent difference? No way in hell. “There was a difference,” he added, “but not such a profound one.”
“You didn’t notice a profound difference, Dr. Hockenberry, because the gravity of the Mars you have been living on for the past ten years—and which we have been fighting on for the past eight Earth-standard months—is ninety-three point eight-two-one percent Earth normal.”
Hockenberry thought about this for a moment. “So?” he said at last. “The gods tweaked the gravity while they were adding the air and oceans. They are, after all, gods.”
“They’re something,” agreed Asteague/Che, “but not what they appear.”
“Is changing the gravity of a planet such a big deal?” asked Hockenberry.
There was a silence, and while Hockenberry did not see any of the moravecs turn their heads or eyes or whatever to look at any of the other moravecs, he had the sense that they were all busy communing on some radio band or the other. How to explain to this idiot human?
Finally Suma IV, the tall Ganymedan, said, “It is a very big deal.”
“Bigger even than the terraforming of a world like the original Mars in less than a century and a half,” piped in Cho Li. “Which is impossible.”
“Gravity equals mass,” said Retrograde Sinopessen.
“It does?” said Hockenberry, hearing how stupid he sounded but not caring. “I always thought it was what held things down.”
“Gravity is an effect of mass on space/time,” c
ontinued the silver spider. “The current Mars is three point nine-six times the density of water. The original Mars—the pre-terraformed world we observed not much more than a century ago—was three point nine-four times the density of water.”
“That doesn’t sound like too much of a change,” said Hockenberry.
“It is not,” agreed Asteague/Che. “It in no way accounts for an increase in gravitation attraction of almost fifty-six percent.”
“Gravity is also an acceleration,” Cho Li said in her musical tones.
Now they’d lost Hockenberry completely. He’d come here to learn about the upcoming visit to Earth and to hear why they wanted him to join them, not to be lectured like a particularly slow eighth grade science student.
“So they—someone, not the gods—changed Mars’ gravity,” he said. “And you think it’s a very big deal.”
“It is a very big deal, Dr. Hockenberry,” said Asteague/Che. “Whoever and whatever manipulated Mars’ gravity this way is a master of quantum gravity. The Holes…as they’ve come to be called…are quantum tunnels that also bend and manipulate gravity.”
“Wormholes,” said Hockenberry. “I know about them.” From Star Trek, he thought but did not say. “Black holes,” he added. Then, “And white holes.” He’d just exhausted his entire vocabulary on this subject. Even nonscience types like old Dr. Hockenberry at the end of the Twentieth Century had known that the universe was full of wormholes connecting distant places in this galaxy and others, and that to go through a wormhole, you went through a black hole and came out a white hole. Or maybe vice versa.
Asteague/Che shook his head in that Mahnmut way. “Not worm-holes. Brane Holes…as in membrane. It looks like the post-humans in Earth orbit used black holes to create very temporary wormholes, but the Brane Holes—and there is only one left connecting Mars and Ilium, you must remember; the others have lost stability and decayed away—are not wormholes.”
“You’d be dead if you tried to go through a wormhole or a black hole,” said Cho Li.
“Spaghettified,” said General Beh bin Adee. The rockvec sounded as if he enjoyed the concept of spaghettification.