Olympos

by Dan Simmons

  “No, thank you, Caliban, my darling,” said the naked woman with the purple-colored eyebrows. “Show our visitor in.”

  The amphibian thing called Caliban stepped aside. An older version of Odysseus entered.

  All of the moravecs—even those who sometimes had trouble telling one human being from another—could see the resemblance. The young Odysseus sprawled naked on the silk cushions stared dumbly at the older Odysseus. This older version had the same short stature and broad chest, but more scars, gray hair and gray in his thicker beard, and bore himself with much more gravity than their passenger on the Mab’s voyage had.

  “Odysseus,” said Sycorax. As well as the moravecs’ human emotion auditory analysis circuits could deduce, she sounded truly surprised.

  He shook his head. “My name is Noman now. I’m pleased to see you again, Circe.”

  The woman smiled. “We have both changed, then. I am Sycorax to the world and myself now, my much-scarred Odysseus.”

  The younger Odysseus started to rise, his hands bunched into fists, but Sycorax made a motion with her left hand and the young Odysseus collapsed back onto the cushions.

  “You are Circe,” said the man who called himself Noman. “You were always Circe. You will always be Circe.”

  Sycorax shrugged very slightly, her full breasts jiggling. Young Odysseus was sprawled to her left. She patted the empty cushions on her right. “Come sit next to me, then…Noman.”

  “No, thank you, Circe,” said the man dressed in tunic, shorts, and sandals. “I will stand.”

  “You will come and sit next to me,” said Sycorax, her voice intense. She made a complicated motion with her right hand, her different fingers moving not at random.

  “No, thank you, I will stand.”

  Again the woman blinked in surprise. Deeper surprise this time, the moravec facial-emotion analysts thought.

  “Molü,” said Noman. “I think you know of it. A substance made from a rare black root which bears a milk-white bloom out of the earth once each autumn.”

  Sycorax nodded slowly. “My, you have traveled far. But haven’t you heard? Hermes is dead.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Noman.

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t. How did you get here, Odysseus?”

  “Noman.”

  “How did you get here, Noman?”

  “I used Savi’s old sonie. It took me almost four full days, creeping from one orbital lump to the next, always hiding from these robotic intruder destroyers of yours or outrunning them in stealth mode. You need to get rid of those things, Circe. Or sonies need to include toilet facilities.”

  Sycorax laughed softly. “And why on earth would I get rid of the interceptors?”

  “Because I ask you to.”

  “And why on earth would I do anything you ask, Odys…Noman?”

  “I’ll tell you when I finish with my requests.”

  Behind Noman, Caliban snarled. The human ignored the noise and the creature.

  “By all means,” said Sycorax. “Continue with your requests.” Her smile showed how very little attention she was prepared to pay to these requests.

  “First, as I say, eliminate the orbital interceptors. Or at least reprogram them so that spacecraft can move safely within and between the rings again…”

  Sycorax’s smile did not waver. Nor did her violet-eyed, purple-painted gaze warm.

  “Secondly,” continued Noman, “I would like you to remove the interdiction field above the Mediterranean Basin and to drop the Hands of Hercules fields.”

  The witch laughed softly. “What an odd request. The resulting tsunami would be devastating.”

  “You can do it gradually, Circe. I know you can. Refill the basin.”

  “Before you go on,” she said coldly, “give me one reason I should do this thing.”

  “There are things in the Mediterranean Basin which the old-style humans should not have soon.”

  “The depots, you mean,” said Sycorax. “The spacecraft, weapons…”

  “Many things,” said Noman. “Let the wine-dark sea refill the Mediterranean Basin.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t noticed since you’ve been traveling,” said Sycorax, “but the old-style humans are on the verge of extinction.”

  “I’ve noticed. I still ask you to refill the Mediterranean Basin—carefully, slowly. And while you’re at it, eliminate that folly that is the Atlantic Breach.”

  Sycorax shook her head and lifted the two-handled cup to sip wine. She did not offer Noman any. The young Odysseus lay back glazed on the cushions, apparently unable to move.

  “Is that all?” she said.

  “No,” said Noman. “I’ll also ask you to reactivate all faxnodes for the old-style humans, all function links, and the rejuvenation tanks remaining on both the polar and equatorial rings.”

  Sycorax said nothing.

  “Finally,” said Noman, “I want you to send down your tame monster here to tell Setebos that the Quiet is coming to this Earth.”

  Caliban hissed and snarled. “Thinketh, time has come to pluck the mankin’s sound legs off and leaveth stumps for him to ponder. Think-eth, He is strong and Lord and this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, nay, two worms, for using His name in vain.”

  “Silence,” snapped Sycorax. She stood, looking more regal in her nakedness than other queens could in full regalia. “Noman, is the Quiet coming to this Earth?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  She seemed to relax. Lifting a clump of grapes from the bowl on the cushions, she carried them to Noman, offered them. He shook his head.

  “You ask much of me, for an old and non-Odysseus,” she said softly, pacing the space between the cushioned bed and the man. “What would you give me in return?”

  “Tales of my travels.”

  Sycorax laughed again. “I know your travels.”

  “Not this time, you don’t. This has been twenty years, not ten.”

  The witch’s beautiful face twisted in something the moravecs’ interpreted as a sneer. “Always seeking the same thing…your Penelope.”

  “No,” said Noman. “Not this time. This time when you sent the young me through the Calabi-Yau doorway my travels in space and time—twenty years for me—were all in search of you.”

  Sycorax stopped her pacing and stared at him.

  “You,” repeated Noman. “My Circe. We loved each other well and have made love well many times these twenty years. I’ve found you in your iterations as Circe, Sycorax, Alys, and Calypso.”

  “Alys?” said the witch.

  Noman only nodded.

  “Did I have a slight gap between my front teeth then?”

  “You did.”

  Sycorax shakes her head. “You lie. In all lines of reality it is the same, Odysseus-Noman. I save you, pull you from the sea, succor you, feed you honeyed wine and fine food, tend your wounds, bathe you, show you physical love of a sort you have only dreamed of, offer you immortality and eternal youth, and always you leave. Always you leave me for that weaving bitch Penelope. And your son.”

  “I’ve seen my son this twenty years past,” said Noman. “He is grown into a fine man. I do not need to see him again. I wish to stay with you.”

  Sycorax returns to her cushions and drinks two-handed from the large goblet. “I am thinking of turning all your moravec mariners into swine,” she said at last.

  Noman shrugged. “Why not? You did that to all my other men in all these other worlds.”

  “What kind of swine do you think moravecs will make?” asked the witch, her tone merely conversational. “Will they resemble a row of plastic piggybanks?”

  Noman said, “Moira is awake again.”

  The witch blinked. “Moira? Why would she choose to waken now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Noman, “but she’s in Savi’s young body. I saw her on the day I left Earth, but we didn’t speak.”

  “Savi’s body?” repeated Sycorax. “What is Moira up to? And why no
w?”

  “Thinketh,” said Caliban behind Noman, “He made the old Savi out of sweet clay for His son to bite and eat, add honeycomb and pods, chewing her neck until froth rises bladdery, quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain.”

  Sycorax rose and paced again, coming close to Noman and raising one hand as if to touch his bare chest, then veering away. Caliban hissed and crouched, his palms on granite, his back hunched, his arms straight down between his crouched and powerful legs, his yellow eyes baleful. But he remained where she had told him to stay.

  “You know I can’t send my son down to tell his father Setebos about the Quiet,” she said softly.

  “I know this…thing…is not your son,” said Noman. “You built him out of shit and defective DNA in a tank of green slime.”

  Caliban hissed and began to speak again in his terrible lisping rant. Sycorax waved him silent.

  “Do you know your moravec friends are lifting more than seven hundred black holes into orbit even as we speak?” she asked.

  Noman shrugged. “I didn’t know that, but I hoped they would be.”

  “Where did they get them?”

  “You know where they must have come from. Seven hundred sixty-eight black-hole warheads? There is only one place.”

  “Impossible,” said Sycorax. “I sealed that wreck off inside a stasisegg almost two millennia ago.”

  “And Savi and I unsealed it more than a century ago,” said Noman.

  “Yes, I watched as you and that bitch hurried around with your hopeless little schemes,” said Sycorax. “What in the hell did you hope to accomplish with those turin-cloth connections to Ilium?”

  “Preparation,” said Noman.

  “For what?” laughed Sycorax. “You don’t believe those two races of the human species will ever meet, do you? You can’t be serious. The Greeks and Trojans and their ilk would eat your naïve little old-style humans here for breakfast.”

  Noman shrugged. “Call off this war with Prospero and let’s see what happens.”

  Sycorax slammed down the wine goblet onto a nearby table. “Leave the field while that bastard Prospero remains on it?” she snapped. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am,” said Noman. “The old entity called Prospero is quite mad. His days are over. But you can leave before the same madness claims you. Let’s leave this place, Circe, you and I.”

  “Leave?” The witch’s voice was very low, incredulous.

  “I know this rock has fusion-drive engines and Brane Hole generators that could send us to the stars, beyond the stars. If we get bored, we step through the Calabi-Yau door and make love across the whole, rich universe of history—we could meet at different ages, wear our different bodies at different ages as easily as changing clothes, travel in time to join ourselves making love, freeze time itself so that we can take part in our own lovemaking. You have enough food and air here to keep us comfortable for a thousand years—ten thousand if you please.”

  “You forget,” said Sycorax, rising and pacing again. “You’re a mortal man. In twenty years I’ll be changing your soiled underwear and feeding you by hand. In forty years you’ll be dead.”

  “You offered me immortality once. The rejuvenation tanks are still here on your isle.”

  “You rejected immortality!” screamed Sycorax. She picked up the heavy mug and threw it at him. Noman ducked but did not move his feet from where they were planted. “You rejected it again and again!” she screamed, tearing at her hair and cheeks with her nails. “You threw it in my face to return to your precious…Penelope…over and over again. You actually laughed at me.”

  “I’m not laughing now. Come away with me.”

  Her expression was wild with fury. “I should have Caliban kill you and eat you right here in front of me. I’ll laugh while he sucks the marrow from your cracked bones.”

  “Come away with me, Circe,” said Noman. “Reactivate the faxes and functions, drop the old Hands of Hercules and other useless toys, and come away with me. Be my lover again.”

  “You’re old,” she sneered. “Old and scarred and gray-haired. Why should I choose an old man over a vital younger one?” She stroked the thigh and flaccid penis of the seemingly hypnotized and motionless younger Odysseus.

  “Because this Odysseus will not be leaving through the Calabi-Yau door in a week or month or eight years as that young one will,” said Noman. “And because this Odysseus loves you.”

  Sycorax made a choked noise that sounded like a snarl. Caliban echoed her snarl.

  Noman reached under his tunic and took a heavy pistol from where he had hidden it under his broad belt in the back.

  The witch stopped pacing and stared. “You can’t possibly think that thing can hurt me.”

  “I didn’t bring it to hurt you,” said Noman.

  She flicked her violet gaze to the frozen younger Odysseus. “Are you mad? Do you know what mischief that would do on the quantum level of things? You’re courting kaos by even contemplating such a thing. It would destroy a cycle that has been going on in a thousand strands for a thousand…”

  “Going on for too long,” said Noman. He fired six times, each explosion seemingly louder than the last. The six heavy bullets tore into the naked Odysseus, tearing his rib cage apart, pulping his heart, striking him in the middle of the forehead.

  The younger man’s body jerked to the impacts and slid to the floor, leaving red streaks on the silk cushions and a growing pool of blood on the marble tiles.

  “Decide,” said Noman.

  83

  I don’t know if I teleported here via my own, medallion-less ability, or just came along with Hephaestus because I was touching his sleeve when he QT’d. It doesn’t matter. I’m here.

  Here is Odysseus’ home. A dog barks madly at us as Hephaestus, Achilles, and I pop into existence, but one glance from bloody-helmeted Achilles sends the mutt whining back out to the courtyard with its tail between its legs.

  We’re in an anteroom looking into the great dining hall of Odysseus’ home on the isle of Ithaca. Some sort of forcefield hums over the house and courtyard. There are no impudent suitors lounging in the long room at the long table, no Penelope dithering, no impotent young Telemachus plotting, no servants hustling to and fro dispensing the absent Odysseus’ food and wine to indolent ne’er-do-wells. But the room looks as if the Slaughter of the Suitors has already taken place—chairs are overturned, a huge tapestry has been ripped off the wall and now lies thrown over table and floor, soaking up spilled wine, and even Odysseus’ greatest bow—the one that only he alone could pull, according to legend, a bow so wonderful and rare that he decided not to take it to Troy with him—now lies on the stone floor, amidst a clutter of Odysseus’ famous barbed and poisoned hunting arrows.

  Zeus whirls. The giant wears the same soft garments he had been wearing on the Throne of Olympos, but he is not so gigantic now. Yet even shrunken to fit this space, he is still twice as tall as Achilles.

  Beckoning us to stand back, the fleet-footed mankiller raises his shield, readies his sword, and steps into the dining hall.

  “My son,” booms the God of Thunder, “spare me your childlike anger. Would you commit deicide, tyrannicide, and patricide in one terrible stroke?”

  Achilles advances until he is across the span of the broad table from Zeus. “Fight, old man.”

  Zeus continues smiling, apparently not the least bit alarmed. “Think, fleet-footed Achilles. Use your brain for once rather than your muscles or your dick. Would you have that useless cripple sit on the golden throne of Olympos?” He nods toward where Hephaestus stands silent in the doorway next to me.

  Achilles does not turn his head.

  “Just think for once,” repeats Zeus, his deep voice causing crockery to vibrate in the nearby kitchen. “Join with me, Achilles, my son. Become one with the penetrating presence that is Zeus, Father of All Gods. Thus joined, father and son, immortal and immortal, two mighty spirits, mingling, shall make a third, might
ier than either alone—triune together, Father and Son and holy will, we shall reign over heaven and Troy and send the Titans back down to their pit forever.”

  “Fight,” said Achilles. “You old pigfucker.”

  Zeus’s broad face turns several shades of red. “Detested prodigy! Even thus, deprived of my control of all elements, I trample thee!”

  Zeus grabs the long table by its edge and flips it into the air. Fifty feet of heavy wood planks and posts flies tumbling through the air toward Achilles’ head. The human ducks low and the table smashes into the wall behind him, destroying a fresco and sending splinters flying everywhere.

  Achilles takes two steps closer.

  Zeus opens his arms, opens his hands to show his palms. “Would you kill me as I am, oh man? Unarmed? Or shall we grapple barehanded like heroes in the arena until one fails to rise and the other takes the prize?”

  Achilles hesitates only a second. Then he pulls off his golden helmet and sets it aside. He removes the circular shield from his forearm, lays the sword in its cusp, adds his bronze chest armor and greaves, and kicks all that to our doorway. Now he is clad only in his shirt, short skirt, sandals, and broad leather belt.

  Eight feet from Zeus, Achilles opens his arms in a wrestler’s opening stance and crouches.

  Zeus smiles then and—in a motion almost too fast for me to perceive—crouches and comes up with Odysseus’ bow and a poisoned black-feathered arrow.

  Get away! I have time mentally to shout at Achilles but the blond and muscled hero does not budge.

  Zeus goes to full pull, easily bending the bow that no one on Earth except Odysseus was supposed to be able to bend, aims the broad-bladed poison arrow right at Achilles’ heart eight feet away, and lets fly.

  The arrow misses.

  It cannot miss—not at that distance—the shaft appears straight and true, the black feathers full—but it misses by a full foot or more and buries itself deep in the smashed table angled against the wall. I can almost feel the terrible venom, rumored to be originally gathered from the most deadly of serpents by Hercules, as it drains into the wood of the table.