by Dan Simmons
“It must be a hard decision for such a limited mind,” Penthesilea said calmly. “I met a Molion once, but he was a Trojan, comrade to Thymbraeus. Also, that Molion was a living man, and you are a dead dog.”
Molion snarled and pulled his sword.
Without dismounting, Penthesilea swung her two-bladed axe and beheaded the man. Then she spurred her huge warhorse and rode down three others who barely had time to raise their shields before being trampled.
With an unearthly cry, her dozen Amazon comrades spurred into battle beside her, trampling, slashing, hacking, and spearing Achaeans as surely as if they were harvesting wheat with a scythe. Those men who stood to fight, died. Those who ran, died. Penthesilea herself killed the last seven men who had been stripping corpses alongside Molion and his three trampled friends.
Her comrades Euandra and Thermodoa had run down the last of the sniveling, groveling, begging Achaeans—an especially ugly, whining bastard who announced that his name was Thersites as he pleaded for mercy—and Penthesilea astounded her sisters by ordering them to let him go.
“Take this message to Achilles, Diomedes, the Ajaxes, Odysseus, Idomeneus, and the other Argive heroes I spy staring at us from yonder hill,” she boomed at Thersites. “Tell them that I, Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, daughter of Ares, beloved of Athena and Aphrodite, have come to end Achilles’ miserable life. Tell them that I will fight Achilles in single combat if he agrees, but that I and my Amazon comrades will kill all of them if they insist. Go, deliver my message.”
Ugly Thersites scampered away as fast as his shaking legs could take him.
Her good right arm, unbeautiful but totally bold Clonia, rode up next to her. “My Queen, what are you saying? We can’t fight all of the Achaean heroes. Any one of them is legend…together they are all but invincible, more than a match for any thirteen Amazons who have ever lived.”
“Be calm and resolute, my sister,” said Penthesilea. “Our victory is as much in the will of the gods as in our own strong hands. When Achilles falls dead, the other Achaeans will run—as they’ve run from Hector and mere Trojans when far lesser leaders of theirs have fallen or been wounded. And when they run, we will swing about, ride hard, pass back through that accursed Hole, and burn their ships before these so-called heroes can rally.”
“We will follow you into death, My Queen,” murmured Clonia, “just as we have followed you to glory in the past.”
“To glory again, my beloved sister,” said Penthesilea. “Look. That rat-faced dog Thersites has delivered our message and the Achaean captains are walking this way. See how Achilles’ armor gleams more brightly than any other’s. Let us meet them on the clean battlefield there.”
She spurred her huge horse and the thirteen Amazons galloped forward together toward Achilles and the Achaeans.
19
“What blue beam?” said Hockenberry.
They had been discussing the disappearance of this Ilium-era Earth’s population—all those outside a two-hundred-mile-radius of Troy—as Mahnmut guided the hornet down toward Mars, Olympos, and the Brane Hole.
“It’s a blue beam stabbing up from Delphi, in the Peloponnesus,” said the moravec. “It appeared the day the rest of the human population here disappeared. We thought it was composed of tachyons, but now we’re not sure. There’s a theory—just a theory—that all of the other humans were reduced to their basic Calabi-Yau string components, encoded, and fired into interstellar space on that beam.”
“It comes from Delphi?” repeated Hockenberry. He didn’t know a thing about tachyons or Calabi-Whatsis strings, but he knew quite a bit about Delphi and its oracle.
“Yes, I could show it to you if you have another ten minutes or so before you have to get back,” said Mahnmut. “The odd thing is that there’s a similar blue beam coming up from our present-day Earth, the one we’re headed for, but it’s coming from the city of Jerusalem.”
“Jerusalem,” repeated Hockenberry. The hornet was rocking and pitching as it nosed down toward the Hole and Hockenberry was gripping the invisible arms of the invisible forcefield chair. “The beams go up into the air? Into space? To where?”
“We don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any destination. The beams stay on for quite a long time and rotate with the Earth, of course, but they pass out of the solar system—both Earth solar systems—and neither one seems to be aimed at any particular star or globular cluster or galaxy. But the blue beams are two-way. That is, there is a flow of tachyonic energy returning to Delphi—and presumably to Jerusalem—so that…”
“Wait,” interrupted Hockenberry. “Did you see that?”
They had just passed through the Brane Hole, skimming just under its upper arc.
“I did,” said Mahnmut. “It was just a blur, but it looked as if humans were fighting humans back there where the Achaeans generally keep their front lines near Olympos. And look—up ahead.” The moravec magnified the holographic windows and Hockenberry could see Greeks and Trojans fighting outside the walls of Ilium. The Scaean Gates—open these eight months of the alliance—were closed.
“Jesus Christ,” whispered Hockenberry.
“Yes.”
“Mahnmut, can we go back to where we saw the first signs of fighting? On the Mars side of the Brane Hole? There was something strange about that.”
What Hockenberry had seen was mounted cavalry—a very small troop—apparently attacking infantry. Neither the Achaeans nor the Trojans used cavalry.
“Of course,” said Mahnmut, bringing the hornet around in a swooping bank. They accelerated back toward the Hole again.
Mahnmut, are you still copying me? came Orphu’s voice on the tight-beam, relayed through the Hole by the transponders they’d buried there.
Loud and clear.
Is Dr. Hockenberry still with you?
Yes.
Stay on tightbeam then. Don’t let him know we’re talking. Do you see anything strange there?
We do. We’re going back to investigate it. Cavalry fighting Argive hoplites on the Mars side of the Brane, Argives against Trojans on the Earth side.
“Can you cloak this thing?” asked Hockenberry as they approached about two hundred feet above the dozen or so mounted figures who were approaching fifty-some Achaean foot soldiers. The hornet was still about a mile from the apparent confrontation. “Can you camouflage it? Make us less obvious somehow?”
“Of course.” Mahnmut activated full-stealth and slowed the hornet.
No, I’m not talking about what the humans are doing, sent Orphu. Can you see anything odd about the Brane Hole itself?
Mahnmut not only looked with his eyes on broad-spectrum, but he interfaced with all of the hornet’s instruments and sensors. The Brane seems normal, he sent.
“Let’s land behind Achilles and his men there,” said Hockenberry. “Can we do that? Quietly? “
“Of course,” said Mahnmut. He brought the hornet around and set it down silently about thirty yards behind the Achaeans. More Greeks were coming toward them from the army at the rear. The moravec could see some rockvecs in the approaching group, and could make out Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo.
No, it’s not normal, sent Orphu of Io. We’re picking up wild fluctuations in the Brane Hole and the rest of the membrane space. Plus something’s going on atop Olympos—quantum and graviton readings are off the scale. We have evidence of fission, fusion, plasma, and other explosions. But the Brane Hole is our immediate worry.
What are the anomaly parameters? asked Mahnmut. He’d never bothered himself with learning much W-theory or its various historical precursors, M-theory or string-theory, while driving his submersible under the ice of Europa. Most of what he knew now he’d downloaded from Orphu and the main banks on Phobos to catch up with the current thinking about the Holes he’d accidentally helped create to connect the Belt with Mars—and with this alternate Earth—and to understand why all but one of the Branes had disappeared in the last few months.
The Stroming
er-Vafa-Susskind-Sen sensors are giving us BPS rates showing increasing disparity between the Brane’s minimum mass and its charge, sent Orphu.
BPS? sent Mahnmut. He knew the mass-charge disparity had to be bad, but wasn’t sure why.
Bogomol’nyi, Prasard, Sommerfield sent Orphu in his oh-what-a-moronbut-I-like-you-anyway voice. The Calabi-Yau space near you there is undergoing a space-tearing conifold transition.
“Great, perfect,” said Hockenberry, slipping out of the invisible chair and rushing toward the lowering ramp. “What I wouldn’t give to have my old scholic gear back—morphing bracelet, shotgun mike, levitation harness. Are you coming?”
“In a second,” said Mahnmut. Are you telling me the Brane Hole is going unstable?
I’m telling you it’s going to collapse any minute, sent Orphu. We’ve ordered the moravecs and rockvecs around Ilium and along the coast there to get the hell out. We think they have time to load up their gear, but the hornets and shuttles should be coming out of there within the next ten minutes at about Mach 3. Be prepared for sonic booms.
That’ll leave Ilium open to air attack and QT invasion from Olympos, sent Mahnmut. He was horrified at the thought. They were abandoning their Trojan and Greek allies.
That’s not our problem anymore, rumbled Orphu of Io. Asteague/Che and the other prime integrators have ordered the evacuation. If that Brane Hole closes—and it will, Mahnmut, trust me on that—we lose all eight hundred of the technicians, missile battery vecs, and others stationed on the Earth side. They’ve already been ordered out. They’re risking their lives even taking the time to pack up their missiles, energy projectors, and other heavy weapons, but the integrators don’t want those things left behind, even if disabled.
Can I help? Mahnmut looked out the open hatch to where Hockenberry was jogging toward Achilles and his men. He felt useless—if he left Hockenberry behind, the scholic might die in the fight here. If he didn’t get the hornet airborne and through the Hole immediately, other moravecs might be sealed away from their real universe forever.
Stand by, I’ll check with the integrators and General Beh bin Adee, sent Orphu. A few seconds later the tightbeam channel crackled again. Stay where you are right now. You’re the best camera angle we have on the Brane at the moment. Can you hook all your feeds to Phobos and get outside the ship to add your own imaging to the link?
Yes, I can do that, sent Mahnmut. He de-stealthed the hornet—he didn’t want the approaching mob of Achaeans and rockvecs to bump into it—and hurried down the ramp to join Hockenberry.
Walking up to the cluster of Achaeans, Hockenberry felt a growing sense of unreality tinged with guilt. This is my doing. If I hadn’t morphed myself into Athena’s form and kidnapped Patroclus eight months ago, Achilles wouldn’t have declared war on the gods and none of this would have happened. If anyone dies here today, it’s all my fault.
It was Achilles who turned his back on the approaching cavalry and greeted him. “Welcome, Hockenberry, son of Duane.”
There were about fifty of the Achaean leaders and their captains and spearmen standing there waiting for the women on horseback to arrive—from the rapidly closing distance, Hockenberry could see that they were indeed women decked out in resplendent armor—and among the top men here he recognized Diomedes, Big and Little Ajax, Idomeneus, Odysseus, Podarces, and his younger friend Menippus, Sthenelus, Euryalus, and Stichius. The former scholic was surprised to see the leering camp-lawyer Thersites standing by Achilles’ side—normally, Hockenberry knew, the fleet-footed mankiller would not have allowed the corpse-robber within a mile of his person.
“What’s going on?” he asked Achilles.
The tall, blond god-man shrugged. “It’s been a bizarre day, son of Duane. First the gods refused to come down to fight. Then a motley group of Trojan women attacked us, killing Philoctetes with a lucky spearcast. Now these Amazons approach after killing more of our men, or so this rat by my side tells us.”
Amazons.
Mahnmut came hurrying up. Most of the Achaeans were used to the little moravec now and gave the metal-plastic creature only a passing glance before returning their gazes to the fast-approaching Amazons.
“What’s happening?” Mahnmut had spoken to Hockenberry in English.
Rather than answer in the same language, Hockenberry recited—
“Ducit Amazonidum lunatis agmina peltis
Penthesilea furens, mediisque in milibus ardet,
aurea sunectens exwerta cingula mammae
bellatrix, audetque viris concurrere virgo.”
“Don’t make me download Latin,” said Mahnmut. He nodded toward the huge horses being reined to a stop not five yards in front of them all, throwing up a cloud of dust that rolled over the Achaean captains.
“Furious, Penthesilea leads a battleline of Amazons,” translated Hockenberry. “With crescent shields, and she glows in the middle of thousands, fastening golden belts around the exposed breast, female warrior, and the maiden dares run with men.”
“That’s just great,” the little moravec said sarcastically. “But the Latin…it’s not Homer, I presume?”
“Virgil,” whispered Hockenberry in the sudden silence in which the paw of a horse’s hoof sounded crashingly loud. “Somehow we’re in the Aeneid here.”
“That’s just great,” repeated Mahnmut.
The rockvec techs are almost loaded and will be ready to lift off from the Earth side in five minutes or less, sent Orphu. And there’s something else you have to know. We’re pushing up the launch time for the Queen Mab.
How soon? sent Mahnmut, his mostly organic heart sinking. We promised Hockenberry forty-eight hours to make up his mind and try to talk Odysseus into going with us.
Well, he has less than an hour now, sent Orphu of Io. Maybe forty minutes if we can get these damned rockvecs tranked and shelved and their weapons stored. You’ll have to get back up here by then or stay behind.
But The Dark Lady, sent Mahnmut, thinking of his submersible. He’d not even run the last checks on the sub’s many systems.
They’re stowing her in the hold right now, sent Orphu from the Mab. I can feel the bumps. You can do your checklist when we’re in flight. Don’t dally down there, old friend. The tightbeam went from crackle to hiss as Orphu signed off.
Only one row back from the thin front line here, Hockenberry saw that the Amazons’ horses were huge…as big as Percherons or those Bud-weiser horses. There were thirteen of them and Virgil, bless his heart, had been right—the Amazon women’s armor left each of their left breasts bare. The effect was…distracting.
Achilles took three steps in front of the other men. He was so close to the blonde Amazon’s horse that he could have stroked its nose. He didn’t.
“What do you want, woman?” he asked. For such a huge, heavily muscled man, Achilles’ voice was very soft.
“I am Penthesilea, daughter of the war god Ares and the Amazon queen Otrere,” said the beautiful woman from high on her armored horse. “And I want you dead, Achilles, son of Peleus.”
Achilles threw back his head and laughed. It was an easy, relaxed laugh, and all the more chilling to Hockenberry because of that. “Tell me woman,” Achilles said softly, “how do you find the courage to challenge us, the most powerful heroes of this age, fighters who have laid siege to Olympos itself? Most of us are sprung from the blood of the Son of Kronos himself, Lord Zeus. Would you really do battle with us, woman?”
“The others can go if they want to live,” called down Penthesilea, her voice as calm as Achilles’ but louder. “I have no fight with Ajax, son of Telamon, or with the son of Tydeus or the son of Deucalion or the son of Laertes or the others gathered here. Only with you, son of Peleus.”
The men listed—Big Ajax, Diomedes, Idomeneus, and Odysseus—looked startled for a second, glanced at Achilles, and then laughed in unison. The other Achaeans joined in the laughter. Fifty or sixty more Argive fighters were coming up from the rear, the rockvec Mep Ahoo in their
ranks.
Hockenberry didn’t notice as Mahnmut’s black-visored head swiveled smoothly around, and Hockenberry had no idea that Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo was tightbeaming the smaller moravec about the imminent collapse of the Brane Hole.
“You have offended the gods by your feeble attack on their home,” cried Penthesilea, her voice rising until it could be heard by the men a hundred yards away. “You have wronged the peaceful Trojans by your failed attack on their home. But today you die, womankiller Achilles. Prepare to do battle.”
“Oh, my,” said Mahnmut in English.
“Jesus Christ,” whispered Hockenberry.
The thirteen women screamed in their Amazon language, kicked their warhorses’ sides, the giant mounts leaped forward, and the air was suddenly filled with spears, arrows, and the clatter of bronze points slamming into armor and onto hastily raised shields.
20
Along the coast of the northern Martian sea, called the Northern Ocean or the Tethys Sea by the inhabitants of Olympos, the Little Green Men—also known as zeks—have erected more than eleven thousand great stone heads. Each of the heads is twenty meters tall. They are identical—each showing an old man’s face with a fierce beak of a nose, thin lips, high brow, frowning eyebrows, bald crown, firm chin, and a fringe of long hair streaming back over his ears. The stone for the heads comes from giant quarries gouged into the cliffs of the geologic tumble known as Noctis Labyrinthus on the westernmost end of the four-thousand-two-hundred-kilometer-long inland sea filling the rift known as Valles Marineris. From the quarries at Noctis Labyrinthus, the little green men have loaded each uncarved block of stone onto broad-beamed barges and floated them the length of Valles Marineris. Once out into the Tethys, zek-crewed feluccas with lanteen sails have guided the barges into position along the coast, where hundreds of thronging LGM unload each stone and carve the head in place as it lies on the sand. When the carving is finished except for the hair on the back of the head, the mob of zeks roll each head to a stone basepad prepared for it, sometimes having to lift the head up cliffs or transport it across bogs and marshes, and then they pull it upright using a combination of pulleys, tackle, and shifting sand. Finally they set a stone stem from the neck into the base stone niche and rock the huge head into place. Then a dozen LGM finish the carving of the wavy hair while the majority of the little beings move on to work on the next head.