by Dan Simmons
“We’re dead if it breaks down here as well,” said Daeman. He touched Hannah’s shoulder as the young woman seemed to slump. “You’ve done an amazing job keeping it working, Hannah, but this is a technology we just don’t understand.”
“What technology do we understand?” muttered Boman.
“Crossbows,” said Edide. “We were getting damned good at building crossbows.”
No one laughed. After a few minutes, Elian said, “Tell me again why the voynix can’t get into the habitation part of this bridge at Machu Picchu.”
“The habitation bubbles are like grapes on a vine,” said Hannah, who had spent more time there than any of them. “But linked together. Clear plastic or something. It’s late Lost Era technology, maybe even post-human technology—some sort of forcefield just above the surface of the glass. Voynix just slide off.”
“We had something similar on the windows of the crawler Savi drove us in from Jerusalem into the Mediterranean Basin,” said Daeman. “She said it was a frictionless field to keep the rain off. But it worked for voynix and calibani too.”
“I’d enjoy seeing one of these calibani,” said Elian. “And also the Caliban thing you described.” The bald man’s mouth and other facial features seemed always set to a show of strength and curiosity.
“No,” Daeman said softly, “you wouldn’t enjoy seeing either one. Especially the real Caliban. Trust me on this.”
In the silence that followed, Greogi said what they had all been thinking. “We’re going to have to draw straws…something. Fourteen get to go to the Bridge. They can carry weapons, water, and minimum rations, hunt along the way perhaps, so a full sky-raft load of fourteen can go. The rest of us stay.”
“Fourteen out of fifty-four get to live?” said Edide. “Doesn’t seem right.”
“Hannah will be one of those who goes,” said Greogi. “She flies the sky-raft back if the fourteen get to the Bridge on the first trip.”
Hannah shook her head. “You can fly the thing as well as I can, Greogi. We can teach anyone here how to fly it as well as I can. I’m not automatically on the first trip and you know…you know…there won’t be a second trip. Not with the shape the sky-raft is in. Not with the voynix continuing to mass out there in the dark. Not with the Setebos thing getting stronger every hour. Those fourteen short straws, long straws, whichever, will have a chance to live. The rest will die here.”
“Then we’ll decide as soon as it’s light,” said Ada.
“There may be fighting,” said Elian. “People are angry, hungry, resentful. They may not want to draw straws to see who lives and who dies. They may rush the raft right away, or after they don’t get a seat.”
Ada nodded. “Daeman, take ten of your best people and have them surround the sky-raft—protect it—even before I call the council together. Edide, you and your friends quietly try to collect as many of the loose weapons as possible.”
“Most people sleep with their flechette rifles now,” said the blond woman. “They don’t let them out of their hands.”
Ada nodded again. “Do what you can. I’ll talk to everyone. Explain why this is the only hope.”
“The losers will want to be ferried to the island,” said Greogi. “At the very least.”
Boman nodded. “I would. I will if I don’t get the right-sized straw.”
Ada sighed. “It won’t do any good. I’m convinced that the island is just another place to die…the voynix will be there minutes after we are if the Setebos thing isn’t there to protect us. But we can do that. Ferry those who want to go, then let the fourteen head for the Bridge.”
“It will waste time,” said Hannah. “Put more stress on the sky-raft.”
Ada held her hands out, palms upward. “It may keep our people from killing each other, Hannah. It gives fourteen people a chance. And the rest get to choose where they stand and die. That’s something—an illusion of choice if nothing else.”
No one had anything else to say. They broke up to head toward their own sleeping tents and lean-tos.
Hannah followed Ada and touched her arm in the dark before they reached Ada’s sleeping tent.
“Ada,” whispered the younger woman, “I have this feeling that Harman is still alive. I hope you’re one of the fourteen.”
Ada smiled—her white teeth visible in the ringlight. “I have this feeling that Harman is alive, too, my dear. But I’m not going to be one of the fourteen. I’ve already decided that I’m not going to take part in the drawing of straws. My baby and I are staying at Ardis.”
In the end, none of their planning mattered.
Just after sunrise, Ada jerked awake to cold hands in her mind and within her womb.
Mommy—I have your little boy here. He’s going to stay inside for a few months while I teach him things—wonderful things—but I’m coming out to play!
Ada screamed as she felt the mind in the Pit touching the developing mind of the fetus inside her.
She was on her feet and running, carrying two flechette rifles, before anyone else could fully awaken.
The Setebos baby had bent the bars of the grill back and was squeezing its gray brain-girth through the bent mesh and bars. Already the thing had tentacles flung out fifteen feet to a side, three-fingered hands sunk deep in the dirt. Three of its feeding orifices were open and the long, fleshy, trunklike appendages there were already drinking grief and terror and history from the soil of Ardis. Its many yellow eyes were very bright and as it rose out of the Pit, the many fingers on its large pink hands were waving like sea anemones in a strong current.
Mommy, it’s all right, hiss-thought the thing as it pulled itself free of the Pit. All I’m going to do is…
Ada heard Daeman and others running behind her, but she did not look over her shoulder as she stopped, jerked down the flechette rifle from her shoulder, and fired a full clip into the Setebos thing.
It spun as thousands of crystal darts shredded part of its left lobe. Tentacles lashed toward her.
Ada dodged, slapped in a second magazine, emptied it into the writhing brain.
Mommmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Ada dropped the first flechette rifle when the second magazine was empty, raised the second rifle, clicked it to full automatic, stepped three paces closer between the clawing tentacles, and fired the full magazine of flechettes between the yellow eyes at the front of the brain.
The Setebos spawn screamed—screamed with its real many mouths—and fell backward into the Pit.
Ada strode to the edge of the Pit, slammed in a new magazine and fired, ignoring the shouts and screams behind her. When that flechette magazine was empty, she slapped in another, aimed at the bleeding gray mass in the pit, and fired again. Again. Again. The brain split along its hemispheres and she blasted each pulped hemisphere as if smashing a pumpkin. The pink hands and long stalks spasmed, but the Setebos spawn was dead.
Ada felt it die. Everyone did. Its last mental scream—in no language except pain—hissed away to silence in their minds like filthy water going down a drain.
Everyone except sentinels came out from their shelters and stood grouped around the Pit, staring down, feeling the absence but not yet believing.
“Well, I guess I don’t have to go gather straws after all,” said Greogi to Ada, leaning close and almost whispering into her ear amidst the stunned silence.
Suddenly there came a noise from all around them—a whirring, whistling, humming, terrifying noise, distant yet growing louder, the whir and scrabbling noise echoing through the forest and from the surrounding hills.
“What in the hell…” began Casman.
“The voynix,” said Daeman. He took Ada’s rifle from her, slapped in a fresh magazine of flechettes, and handed it back to her. “They’re all coming at once.”
81
Here I am watching and listening as a god goes mad.
I don’t know what help I thought I could get up here on Olympos for my besieged and dying Achaeans, but
now I’ve trapped myself, just as surely as the Greeks on their beach with the Trojans closing in are trapped to the death, me standing here in my sweaty chameleon suit, cheek by jowl with a thousand immortals, trying to hold my breath to keep from giving myself away while watching and listening as Zeus, already king of the gods, declares himself the one and only Eternal God Almighty.
I shouldn’t worry about being noticed. The gods around me are staring with their immortal jaws hanging slack, their godlike mouths hanging open, and their divine Olympian eyes bugging out.
Zeus has gone mad. And his dark eyes seem to be boring into me as he spittles on about his new ascendance to ultimate Godhood. I’m sure he can see me. His eyes have the self-pleasuring patience of a cat with a mouse between its paws.
I put my thick-suited hand on the QT medallion against my chest under the sticky chameleon suit.
But where to go? Back to the beach with the Achaeans means certain death. Back to Ilium to see Helen means pleasure and survival, but I will have betrayed…betrayed who? The Greeks haven’t even noticed when I’ve walked among them, at least not since Achilles and Odysseus both disappeared on the wrong side of the closing Brane Hole. Why should I feel loyalty to them when they don’t….
But I do.
Speaking of Odysseus—and X-rated images pop into my mind when I do think of him—I know that I can QT back to the Queen Mab. That might be the safest place for me, although I really have no place there among the moravecs.
Nothing feels right. No move feels better than a cowardly betrayal.
Betrayal of whom, for Gods’ sake? I ask myself, taking the Lord’s name in vain even as the universe’s new Lord and only Almighty God stares me in the eye and finishes his fist-pounding, spittle-flying rant.
Lord God Zeus did not end his speech with “ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS?”—but he might as well have, based on the thickness of silence that now falls over the Great Hall of the Gods.
Then, suddenly, inexplicably—given the real-time terror of the situation—the undying pedant in me, the would-be scholar rather than the has-been scholic, is struck by a Miltonic line by Lucifer: I will exalt my throne above the stars of God…
Something rips the roof and upper floors of the Great Hall of the Gods clean away, revealing naked sky and a shapeless form. Wind and voices roar.
The wall crashes inward. Huge shapes, some vaguely human, smash in masonry, tumble pillars, flow down from the sky, and attack the assembled gods. Every immortal with any sense QT’s away or takes off running. I am frozen in place.
Zeus leaps to his feet. His golden armor and weapons are stacked not twenty feet from where he stands, but that is too far away. Too many forms are closing too quickly for the Father of the Gods to arm himself.
He raises and pulls back his muscled arm to fling lightning, to guide the thunder.
Nothing happens.
“Ai! Ai!” cries Zeus, staring at his empty right hand as if it has disobeyed him. “The elements obey me not!”
“NO REFUGE! NO APPEAL!” booms a voice from the shifting thundercloud mass looming over the disassembled building and the warring gods and shapes. “COME DOWN WITH ME NOW, USURPER. THOSE WHO REMAIN, LOVE NOT THRONES, ALTARS, JUDGMENT-SEATS, AND PRISONS, ALL THOSE FOUL SHAPES ABHORRED BY TRUE GOD AND MAN. COME, USURPER, TYRANT OF THE WORLD, COME TO YOUR NEW HOME STRANGE, SAVAGE, GHASTLY, DARK, AND EXECRABLE.”
For all its booming volume, the terrible voice is more terrible because of its calmness.
“No!” cries Zeus and quantum teleports away.
I hear the immortals fighting near me shout “Titans!” and “Kronos!” and then I run, praying that I remain invisible in my moravec chameleon suit, running out through the tumbling pillars, past the fighting forms, through literal lightning, out under the fire-rent blue skies of the Olympos summit.
Already some of the Olympian gods have taken to their flying chariots, and already they have been met and joined in battle by larger, stranger chariots and their indescribable drivers. All around the shores of the Caldera Lake, gods are fighting Titans—I see a form that can only be Kronos taking on both Apollo and Ares—while monsters are fighting gods and gods are fleeing.
Suddenly I am seized. A powerful hand jerks me to a stop, pins my right arm before I can reach for my QT medallion, and strips the chameleon suit off me like someone ripping Christmas wrap from a poorly wrapped package.
I see that it is Hephaestus, the bearded dwarf-god of fire, Chief Artificer to Zeus and the gods. Behind him on the grass are what looks to be a series of iron cannonballs and a goldfish bowl.
“What are you doing here, Hockenberry?” snarls the unkempt god. Dwarfish as he is to other Olympians, he’s still taller than me.
“How did you see me?” is all that I can manage. Fifty yards away, it appears as if Kronos has killed Apollo with a huge cudgel. The stormcloud-being hovering above the roofless Great Hall of the Gods seems to be dissipating on the high winds that blow around the summit of Olympos.
Hephaestus laughs and taps a glass and bronze lens-thing dangling from his vest amidst a hundred other tiny gizmos. “Of course I could see you. So could Zeus. That’s why he had me build you, Hockenberry. It was all supposed to lead to his ascension to the Godhead today being observed—observed by someone who could fucking well write it down. We’re all postliterate here, you know.”
Before I can move or speak, Hephaestus grabs the heavy QT medallion, rips it off me—breaking the chain—and crushes it in his massive, blunt-fingered, filthy hand.
Oh Jesus God Almighty no I manage to think as the god of fire opens his fist just enough to drop the crumbs of gold into a vest pocket he pulls out wide.
“Don’t shit your pants, Hockenberry,” laughs the god. “This thing never worked. See—there’s no fucking mechanism! Just the dial you could ratchet around. This has always been your Dumbo Feather.”
“It worked…it’s always…I came from…I used it to…”
“No, you didn’t,” says Hephaestus. “I built you with the nanogenes necessary to quantum teleport—just like the big boys. Just like us gods. You just weren’t supposed to know about it until the proper time came. Aphrodite jumped the gun—gave you the fake medallion to use you in her plot to kill Athena.”
I look around wildly. The Great Hall of the Gods has collapsed. Flames lick up through the tumbled pillars. Fighting is spreading everywhere, but the summit is emptying out as more and more gods are flicking away to hide on Ilium Earth. Brane Holes are opening here and there and the Titans and monstrous entities are following the fleeing gods. The Thundercloud Being that had ripped the roof and top three floors off the Great Hall is gone.
“You need to help me save the Greeks,” I say, my teeth actually chattering.
Hephaestus laughs again, rubs the back of his sooty hand across his greasy mouth. “I’ve already vacuumed up all the other humans on that fucking Ilium-history Earth,” he says. “Why should I save the Greeks? Or even the Trojans for that matter? What have they done for me recently? Plus, I’ll need some humans down there to worship me when I take this throne of Olympos in a few days…”
I can only stare at him. “You vacuumed up the people? You put the population of Ilium Earth in the blue beam rising from Delphi?”
“Who the hell do you think did it? Zeus? With all his technical prowess?” Hephaestus shakes his head. The Titan brothers Kronos, Iapetos, Hyperion, Krios, Koios, and Okeanos are walking this way. They are covered with the golden-ichor blood of gods.
Suddenly Achilles appears from the burning ruins. He is fully clad in his gold armor, his beautiful shield also besmirched by immortal blood, his long sword out, his eyes staring almost madly from the slits of his streaked and sooted golden helmet. The apparition ignores me and shouts at Hephaestus. “Zeus has fled!”
“Of course,” replies the god of fire. “Did you expect him to wait around for the Demogorgon to drag him down to Tartarus?”
“I can’t find Zeus’s location anywhere o
n the holographic pool locator!” shouts Achilles. “I forced Aphrodite’s mother, Dione, to help me with the locator. She said it would find him anywhere in the universe. When she failed, I cut her to ribbons. Where is he?”
Hephaestus smiles. “You remember, fleet-footed mankiller, the one place Zeus had hidden from all eyes when Hera wanted to fuck him into an eternity of sleep?”
Achilles grabs the fire god’s shoulder and almost lifts him off the ground. “Odysseus’ home! Take me there! At once.”
Hephaestus’ eyes crinkle into unamused slits. “You do not command the future Lord of Olympos such, mortal. Singularity that you are, you must treat your betters with more respect.”
Achilles releases his grip on Hephaestus’ leather vest. “Please. Now. Please.”
Hephaestus nods and then looks at me. “You come, too, Scholic Hockenberry. Zeus wanted you here for this day. Wanted you as witness. Witness ye shall be.”
82
The moravecs aboard the Queen Mab received all the following live, in real-time—Odysseus’ nano-imagers and transmitters were working well—but Asteague/Che decided not to relay it down to Mahnmut and Orphu of Io where they were working there beneath the ocean of Earth. The two ’vecs were six hours into their twelve-hour job of cutting free and loading the seven hundred sixty-eight critical black-hole warheads and no one on the Mab wanted to distract them.
And what was occurring now could qualify as distracting.
The lovemaking—if that was what the near-violent copulation between Odysseus and the woman who had identified herself as Sycorax—was in one of its temporary states of pause. The two were sprawled naked on the tousled cushions, drinking wine from large two-handled mugs and eating some fruit, when a monstrous creature—amphibian gills, fangs, claws, webbed feet—pushed aside curtains and flip-flop-walked its way into Sycorax’s chambers.
“Dam, thinketh he yes that he must announce that as he was readying to melt a gourd-fruit into mash, when so Caliban did hear the airlock cycling. Something there is which has come to see you, Mother. Saith, it has all flesh-meat on its nose and fingers like blunt stones. Saith, Mother, and in His name I shall rend this work’s tasty flesh from its soft-chalk bones.”