by Dan Simmons
“All right,” said Daeman on all channels. “Everyone off the Temple Mount.”
The heavy-weapons teams lugged their equipment into the last two hornets where they hovered near the east edge of the Mount. Then those hornets were gone—following the dozens of others to the west—and it was just Daeman and his original squads.
“Three or four thousand fresh voynix coming from the direction of the Church of the Sepulchre,” reported Elian.
Daeman pulled his cowl on and chewed his lip. It would be harder to kill the things with the heavy weapons gone. “All right,” he said over the command channel. “This is Daeman. Fax out…now. Squad leaders, report when your squads have freefaxed away.”
Greogi reported his squad gone and faxed away.
Edide reported and faxed away from her position on Bab al-Hadid Street.
Boman reported his squad gone from their position on Bab al-Ghawanima and then Boman was gone.
Loes reported from near the Lions Gate and flicked out.
Elle reported from the Garden Gate and was gone.
Kaman reported his squad successfully faxed away—Kaman seemed to be enjoying this military stuff too much, Daeman thought—and then Kaman redundantly requested permission to freefax home.
“Get your ass out of here,” radioed Daeman.
Oko reported her squad gone and followed them.
Caul reported in from below the Al-Aksa Mosque and flicked out.
Elian reported in, squad freefaxed home, and faxed himself away.
Daeman got his squad together, Hannah included, and watched as they flicked away, one at a time, from the growing shadows of the Western Wall Plaza.
He knew that everyone was gone, that the beam building had been emptied, but he had to check.
Tapping the repellor-pack’s controls on his palm with his middle finger, Daeman flew up, circled the beam building, looked in the empty beam building’s doorway to emptiness beyond, circled the empty Dome of the Rock and empty plaza, and then flew lower, wider circles, checking all the points in all four quarters of the Old City where his squads had held the perimeter while not losing a single human to the voynix and calibani attacks.
He knew he should go—the voynix and calibani were rushing in through the ancient, narrow streets like water into a holed ship—but he also knew why he was staying.
The thrown rock almost took his head off. The combat suit’s radar saved him—picking up the hurled object, invisible in the twilight gloom, and overriding the backpack’s controls, sending Daeman dipping legs and feet over ass, righting him just yards above the pavement of the Temple Mount.
He landed, activating all of his impact armor and raising his energy rifle. All of his suit senses and all of his human senses told him that the large, not-quite-human shape standing in the black doorway of the Dome of the Rock was no mere calibani.
“Daemannnnnn,” moaned the thing.
Daeman walked closer, rifle raised, ignoring the suit’s targeting system’s imperative to fire, trying to control his own breathing and thoughts.
“Daemannnnn,” the oversized amphibious shape in the doorway sighed. “Thinketh, even so, thou wouldst have Him misconceive, suppose this Caliban strives hard and ails no less, would you have him hurt?”
“I would have him dead,” shouted Daeman. His body was quivering with old rage. He could hear the rasp and scrape of thousands of voynix and calibani scuttling and scurrying beneath the Mount. “Come out and fight, Caliban.”
The shadow laughed. “Thinketh, human hopes the while that evil sometimes must mend as warts rub away and sores are cured with slime, yessssss?”
“Come out and fight me, Caliban.”
“Conceiveth, will he put his little rifle down and meet the acolyte of Him in fair fight, hand and claw to hand and claw?”
Daeman hesitated. He knew there would be no fair fight. A thousand voynix and calibani would be up here on the Temple Mount in ten seconds. He could hear the scrabbling and scratching in the Western Wall Plaza and on the steps already. He raised the rifle and clicked the targeting to Auto, hearing the target-confirmed tone in his earphones.
“Thinketh, Daemannnnnn will not shoot, noo,” moaned Caliban in the Dome of the Rocks’ doorshadows. “He loveth Caliban and his lord Setebos as enemies too much to draw—O! O!—a curtain o’er their world at once, yesss? Nooo? Daeman must wait for another day to let the wind shoulder the pillared dust, to meet death’s house o’ the move and…”
Daeman fired. He fired again.
Voynix leaped to the walls of the Temple Mount in front of him. Calibani scrambled up the steps of the Temple Mount behind him. It was dark now in Jerusalem, even the blue beam’s glow—constant for one thousand four hundred and twenty-one years—had gone out. The monsters owned the city once again.
Daeman didn’t have to look through the rifle’s thermal sites to know that he had missed—that Caliban had quantum teleported away. He would have to face the thing some other day or night, in a situation much less advantageous to him than today’s.
Strangely, secretly, in his heart of hearts, Daeman was happy at this thought.
Voynix and calibani both leaped across the ancient stones of the Temple Mount at him.
A second before their claws could reach him, Daeman freefaxed home to Ardis.
91
Seven and a half months after the Fall of Ilium:
Alys and Ulysses—his friends called him Sam—told their parents they were going to the Lakeshore Drive-in to watch the double feature of To Kill a Mockingbird and Dr. No. It was October and the Lakeshore was the only drive-in movie theater still open since it had portable in-car heaters on the stands as well as speakers, and usually, or at least in the four months since Sam had gotten his solo driver’s permit, the drive-in movie had sufficed for their passion, but tonight, this special night, they drove out through fields of harvest-ready corn to a private place at the end of a long lane.
“What if Mom and Dad ask me about the plot of the movies?” asked Alys. She was wearing the usual white blouse, tan sweater loose over her shoulders, dark skirt, stockings, and rather formal shoes for a drive-in movie date. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail.
“You know about the book To Kill a Mockingbird. Just tell them that Gregory Peck is good as Atticus Finch.”
“Is he Atticus Finch?”
“Who else could he be?” said Sam. “The Negro?”
“What about the other movie?”
“It’s a spy movie about some British guy…James Bond, I think the guy’s name is. The president likes the book the movie is based on. Just tell your dad that it was exciting, full of shooting and stuff.”
Sam parked his dad’s 1957 Chevy Bel Air at the end of the lane, beyond the ruins and in sight of the lake. They’d driven past the Lakeshore Drive-in and around the oversized pond that provided the “lake” for the theater’s name. Far across the water, Sam could see the small rectangle of white that was the drive-in movie screen and beyond that the glow of their little town’s lights against the low October sky, and much farther beyond that, the brighter glow of the real city to and from which their fathers commuted each day. Once upon a time, probably back during the Depression, there’d been a farm at the end of this lane, but now the house was gone—only overgrown foundations remaining, those and the trees lining the driveway in. The trees were losing their leaves. It was getting chilly as it got closer to Halloween.
“Can you leave the motor on?” asked Alys.
“Sure.” Sam started the engine again.
They began kissing almost immediately. Sam pulled the girl to him, set his left hand on her right breast, and within seconds their mouths were warm and open and wet, their tongues busy. They’d discovered this pleasure only this summer.
He fumbled with the buttons of her blouse. The buttons were too small and they went the wrong way. She let the loose sweater fall and helped him with the most troublesome button, the one under her soft, curved collars. “Did yo
u watch the president’s speech tonight on TV?”
Sam didn’t want to talk about the president. Leaving the lowest buttons on her blouse buttoned, breathing rapidly, he slipped his hand inside her loose blouse and cupped her breast in its rather stiff little brassiere.
“Did you?” asked Alys.
“Yeah. We all did.”
“Do you think there’s going to be war?”
“Naw,” said Sam. He kissed her again, trying to bring her back to the passion at hand, but her tongue had gone into hiding.
When they broke apart long enough for her to pull the tails of her blouse out of her skirt, dropping the shirt behind her—her body and bra pale in the dim reflected light from the sky and in the yellow glow of the dashboard radio and dials—she said, “My father says it could mean war.”
“It’s just a lousy quarantine,” said Sam, both arms around her, his fingers fumbling with the still-strange hooks and eyes of her brassiere. “It’s not like we’re invading Cuba or anything,” he added. He couldn’t get the damned thing loose.
Alys smiled in the soft light, put her hands behind her, and the bra miraculously fell free.
Sam began nuzzling and kissing her breasts. They were very young breasts—larger and firmer than an adolescent girl’s little bud breasts, but still not fully formed. The areolae were as puffy as the nipples; Sam noticed this in the light from the radio dial, and then he lowered his flushed face to nuzzle and suck again.
“Easy, easy!” said Alys. “Not so rough. You’re always so rough.”
“Sorry,” said Sam. He began kissing her again. This time her lips were warm, her tongue was present…and busy. He felt himself getting more excited as he pressed her back toward the passenger door of the Bel Air. The front seat was wider and deeper and softer than the daven-port in their parlor at home. He had to wiggle to get out from under the giant steering wheel and he had to be careful—even here at the end of Miller’s Lane, he didn’t want to accidentally honk the horn.
Lying half atop her, his erection pressing against her left leg, his hands busy on her breasts and his tongue busy finding her tongue, Sam became so excited that he almost ejaculated the first instant she set her long fingers on his corduroyed thigh.
“But what if the Russians do attack?” Alys whispered when he raised his face for a moment to breathe. The car was too damned hot. He turned off the ignition with his left hand.
“Stop that,” he said. He knew what she was doing. She’d chosen the track and line. She wanted him thinking about which one it might be. He wanted only to appreciate what the boy-Sam was thinking and feeling.
“Ouch,” said Alys. He had pressed her back so that her shoulders were against the large door handle. He was lowering his face toward her for more kissing when she whispered, “Do you want to get in the backseat?”
Sam could hardly breathe. That phrase had been their signal the last weeks for the serious stuff—not just getting to third base, which he had several times now with Alys, but going all the way, which they’d come close to twice but not quite achieved.
Alys went around her side—prissily pulling her blouse on, but not buttoning it again, he noticed—and Sam went around the driver’s side. The overhead light came on until they’d secured both the rear doors. Sam rolled his window down a bit so that he could have some air—he still seemed to be having a problem breathing normally—and also so he could hear any car approaching down Miller’s Lane in case Barney happened to come down here in his old black-and-white police cruiser left over from before the War.
The two had to get reintroduced all over again, but within moments, he had his shirt open to feel her breasts against his chest and Alys sprawled lengthwise on the wide seat, him half on her, half falling off, her legs partially raised and his bent strangely because they were both taller than the backseat was wide.
He slipped his right hand up her leg, feeling her own warm breath come more quickly on his cheek when he paused in kissing her. She was wearing stockings. Sam had never felt anything so soft. He felt the garter where the nylon stockings attached to the…
“Oh, come on,” said Ulysses, laughing and speaking through the boy despite himself. “This has to be an anachronism.”
Alys smiled up at him and he saw the real woman through the girl’s dilated pupils. “It’s not,” she whispered, giving him the full length of her tongue now and sliding her hand down, rubbing his erection through the slightly dampened corduroy. “Honest,” she said, still rubbing him. “It’s called a panty girdle and it’s what she wears. Pantyhose haven’t been invented yet.”
“Shut up,” said Sam, closing his eyes as he kissed her and pressed his lower body against her playing hand. “Shut up, please.”
He couldn’t get the metal ring out from around the round snap-stud that she later explained was called the “garter”—it just wouldn’t move. Sam kept moving his hand from between her legs—where the fabric was wet, he was sure he could feel her warming to him through the fabric—back to the goddamned sonofabitching garter thing.
Alys giggled. “I can take the whole thing off,” she whispered.
As she did so, Sam realized that they needed more room. He opened his driver’s side rear door—the light blinded them—
“Sam!”
He reached up and switched off the overhead light. For a minute neither of them moved, two deer blinded in headlights, but when he could hear the wind through the late-autumn leaves over the pounding of his heart, he leaned over her again.
The distraction had kept him from coming too soon. He tasted her lips, lowered his face to her breasts, and licked softly. She pulled his head closer. Her hand went lower, expertly undid his belt, unsnapped the top snap, and tugged the zipper down too quickly for his piece of mind.
He emerged unscathed and throbbing.
“Sam?” she whispered as he levitated into position above her. Her stockings and underpants were in a bunch under his knee. He almost panted as he shoved her skirt higher.
“What?”
“Did you bring…you know…a thing?”
“Oh, fuck that,” he snapped through the boy’s voice, not even pretending to be in character.
She giggled but he stopped that noise with an openmouthed kiss. His heart threatened to break through his ribs as he shifted his weight and she opened her legs to him. He caught a glimpse of her dark skirt riding up almost to her bare breasts, of her pale thighs, of the vertical rather than triangular floss of darkness there between her thighs…
“Easy,” whispered Alys as she reached down and found him. She cupped his scrotum expertly, ran her fingers up the length of his penis, captured the glans with her fingertips. “Easy, Odysseus,” she purred.
“I am…Noman,” he whispered between pants. She was positioning him. The preseminal fluid at the tip of his penis was dampening her thighs as she maneuvered him to the best angle. He could feel the heat flow out of her.
She squeezed him—hard enough to make him gasp but not hard enough to make the sixteen-year-old him come. “How can you say that,” she whispered into his mouth, “when this proves otherwise?”
Alys set the swollen head of his penis against her moist and tight labia, then moved her hand up against his cheek. Sam caught the scent of her excitement on her own fingers and that alone almost made him come. He hesitated this perfect second before continuing.
The flash came from directly ahead of the car, beyond the drive-in movie screen, and it was not brighter than a thousand suns, it was brighter than ten thousand suns. It turned everything in the musky darkness into a photographic negative—all black-blacks and pure whites. There was no noise, not yet.
“You have to be kidding,” he said, poised above Alys as if he was doing push-ups, with only the tip of his erection touching her right now.
“The city’s forty miles away,” whispered Alys, pulling him down, trying to pull him. “We have a long time until the shock wave gets here. A long time.” She gave him her mouth and set he
r hands solidly on his back and butt, pulling him closer.
He considered resisting. To what purpose? This boy-Sam was so excited that two or three thrusts in his beloved’s perfect, virginal cunt would probably be all he could take before he exploded anyway. The incinerating shock wave and their youthful orgasms would probably arrive at the same instant. Which, he realized, was almost certainly just as his ageless beloved had planned it.
The light was fading some, still bright, bright enough to illuminate sixteen-year-old Alys’s slight dusting of purple eye shadow, and seeing that made him lower his face to hers for a final hot kiss as he began thrusting forward and in.
92
One year after the Fall of Ilium:
Helen of Troy awoke just after dawn to a dream-memory of the sound of air raid sirens. She felt along the cushions of her bed, but her lover Hockenberry was gone—had been gone for more than a month now—and it was only the memory of his warmth that made her hunt for him each morning. She had yet to take another lover, although half the Trojans and Argives left here in New Ilium wanted her.
She had her slave-women, Hypsipyle included, bathe and perfume her. Helen took her time. These apartments in the rebuilt section near the Pillar House near the fallen Scaean Gate were no comparison to her former palace, but the amenities of life were beginning to return. She used the last of her well-rationed scented soap in the bath. Today was a special day. The Joint Council would be deciding on the expedition to Delphi. She had the slave girls dress her in her finest green silk gown and gold necklaces for the morning Council meeting.
It was still strange to see the Argives, Achaeans, Myrmidons, and other invaders in the Trojan council house. Both the Temple of Athena and the larger Temple of Apollo had crumbled that day of the Fall, but the Trojan and Greek masons had erected a new palace where the rubble of Athena’s temple had once been, just north of the main avenue and not far from where Priam’s palace had stood with its proud porches and pillars before the gods had bombed it into oblivion.