Ilium (51 page)

Harman looked dubious but concentrated. An aerial representation of Ardis filled Harman’s oval, then a diagram of the layout of Ardis Hall. A stylized female figure was standing with a group of stylized men and women on the front porch of the manor.

“Ada,” said Daeman. “You were thinking of Ada.”

“Incredible,” said Harman. He stared at the image for a moment. “I’m going to visualize Odysseus,” he said.

The image shifted, changed magnitude, searched, but came up with nothing.

“Farnet doesn’t have a lock on Odysseus, according to Savi,” said Daeman. “But go back to Ada. Look where she is.”

Harman frowned but focused. The stylized cartoon of Ada was in a field a hundred yards or so behind Ardis Hall. There were scores of other human figures represented seated in front and around a void. Ada joined the crowd.

Daeman looked at Harman’s palm image. “I wonder what’s going on there. If Odysseus is in that empty spot, it looks as if the old barbarian’s addressing a crowd.”

“And Ada’s listening to him or watching him perform,” said Harman. He looked away from the palm oval. “What does this have to do with my question, Savi? Who are the
calibani
? Why are the voynix trying to kill us? What’s going on?”

“A few centuries before the final fax,” she said, folding her hands together, “the post-humans got too clever by half. Their science was impressive. To all intents and purposes, they’d fled the Earth to their orbital rings during the terrible rubicon epidemic. But they were still masters of the earth. They thought they were masters of the universe.

“The posts had rigged the whole Earth with the limited form of energy-data transmission and retrieval that you call faxing, and now they were experimenting—playing really—with time travel, quantum teleportation, and other dangerous things. A lot of their playing around was predicated on ancient sciences from as far back as the Nineteenth Century—black-hole physics, wormhole theory, quantum mechanics—but what they relied on most was the Twentieth Century discovery that, at its heart, everything is information. Data. Consciousness. Matter. Energy. Everything is information.”

“I don’t understand,” said Harman. He sounded angry.

“Daeman, you’ve shown Harman the farnet function. Why don’t you show him the allnet?”

“Allnet?” repeated Daeman, alarm in his voice.

“You know, four blue triangles above three red circles above four green triangles.”

“No!” said Daeman. He thought off his own palm function. The blue glow winked out.

Savi looked at Harman. “If you want to begin to understand why we’re here tonight, why the post-humans left Earth forever, and why the
calibani
and voynix are around, visualize four blue triangles above three red circles above four green triangles. It gets easier with practice.”

Harman looked suspiciously at Daeman, but then he closed his eyes and concentrated.

Daeman concentrated on
not
visualizing those shapes. He forced himself to remember Ada naked as a teenager, to remember the last time he had sex with a girl, to remember his mother scolding him . . .

“My
God
!” cried Harman.

Daeman looked at the other man. Harman had stood, stumbling out of his chair, and was whirling, moving his head in jerks, staring open-mouthed at everything.

“What do you see?” Savi asked softly. “What do you hear?”

“God . . . God . . .” moaned Harman. “I see . . . Jesus Christ. Everything. Everything. Energy . . . the stars are singing . . . the corn in the fields is speaking, to each other, to the Earth. I see . . . the crawler’s full of little microbes, repairing it, cooling it . . . I see . . . my God, my hand!” Harman was studying his hand with a look of total horror and revelation.

“Enough for the first time,” said Savi. “Think the word ‘off.’ “

“Not . . . yet . . .” gasped Harman. He stumbled against the glass wall of the passenger sphere and clawed at it weakly as if trying to get out. “It’s so . . . so beautiful . . . I can almost . . .”

“Think
off!
” roared Savi.

Harman blinked, fell against the wall, and turned a pale, staring face in their direction.

“What
was
that?” he said. “I saw . . . everything. Heard . . .
everything.
”

“And understood nothing,” said Savi. “But neither do I when I’m on allnet. Perhaps even the post-humans didn’t understand it all.”

Harman staggered to his chair and collapsed into it. “But where did it come from?”

“Millennia ago,” said Savi, “the real old-style humans had a crude information ecology they called the Internet. Eventually they decided to tame the Internet and created a thing called Oxygen—not the gas, but artificial intelligences floating in and over and above the Internet, directing it, connecting it, tagging it, leading humans through it when they went hunting for people or information.”

“Proxnet?” said Daeman. His hands were shaking and he hadn’t even accessed farnet or allnet tonight.

Savi nodded. “What led to proxnet. Eventually, Oxygen evolved into the noosphere, a logosphere, a planet-wide datasphere. But that wasn’t enough for the post-humans. They connected this super-Internet noosphere with the biosphere, the living components of the Earth. Every plant and animal and erg of energy on the planet, which—when connected to the noosphere—created a complete and total information ecology touching everything on, above, and within the Earth, a sort of sentient omnisphere that lacked only self-awareness and identity. Then the post-humans foolishly gave it that self-awareness—not just designing an overriding artifical intelligence, but allowing it to evolve its own persona. This super-noosphere called itself Prospero. Does that name mean anything to either of you?”

Daeman shook his head and looked at Harman, but even though the older man knew how to read books, he also shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Savi. “Suddenly the post-humans had an . . . opponent . . . that they couldn’t control. And it wasn’t over yet. The post-humans were using self-evolving programs and projects of other sorts as well, allowing their quantum computers to pursue their own goals. As impossible as it is to believe, they achieved stable wormholes, they achieved time travel, and they transported people—old-style humans as guinea pigs, since they’d never risk their own immortal lives—through timespace gates via quantum teleportation.”

“What does that have to do with the
calibani
?” persisted Harman, obviously still shaking the images from the allnet out of his head.

Savi smiled. “The Prospero noosphere entity either has an advanced set of irony or none at all. The sentient biosphere, he christened it Ariel—a sort of Earth spirit—and together, Ariel and Prospero created the
calibani
. They evolved a strain of humanity—not old-style, not post, not
eloi
—into that monster you saw on the cross tonight.”

“Why?” asked Daeman. He barely choked the single syllable out.

Savi shrugged. “Enforcers. Prospero is a peaceful entity, or so it likes to think. But its
calibani
are monsters. Killers.”

“Why?” This time it was Harman asking the question.

“To stop the voynix,” said the old woman. “To chase the post-humans off the Earth before they could do more harm. To enforce whatever whim the Prospero and Ariel points of the noosphere trinity wish enforced.”

Daeman tried to understand this. He failed. Finally he said, “Why was the thing on a cross?”

“It wasn’t
on
the cross,” said Savi. “It was
in
the cross. Recharging cradle.”

Harman looked so pale that Daeman thought the other man might be ill. “Why did the posts create the voynix?”

“Oh, they didn’t create the voynix,” said Savi. “The voynix came from somewhere else, serving someone else, with their own agenda.”

“I always thought they were machines,” said Daeman. “Like the other servitors.”

“No,” said Savi.

Harman looked out into the night. The rain had stopped and the lightning and thunder had moved over the horizon. A few stars were appearing between cloud tatters. “The
calibani
keep the voynix out of the Basin here,” he said.

“They’re one of the things that keeps the voynix away,” agreed Savi. She sounded pleased, her voice holding a teacher’s tone, as if one of her students had turned out not to be a total moron.

“But why haven’t the
calibani
killed us?” asked Harman.

“Our DNA,” said Savi.

“Our what?” said Daeman.

“Never mind, my darlings. Suffice it to say that I borrowed a snippet of each of your hair and that, along with a lock of my own, has saved us all. I made a deal with Ariel, you see. Allow us to pass this once, and I promised to save the soul of the Earth.”

“You’ve met the Ariel Earth-entity?” asked Harman.

“Well, not
met
him exactly,” said Savi. “But I’ve chatted with him across the noosphere-biosphere interface. We made a deal.”

Daeman knew then that the old woman was truly mad. He caught Harman’s eye and saw the same conclusion there.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Savi. She plumped her pack like a pillow and lay back and closed her eyes. “Get some sleep, my young darlings. You need to be rested tomorrow. Tomorrow, with any luck, we fly up, up, up to the orbitside layer.”

She was asleep and snoring before Harman and Daeman could exchange another worried glance.

37

As it turns out, I can’t do it. I don’t have the guts or balls or ruthlessness or—perhaps—courage. I can’t kidnap Hector’s child, even to save Ilium. Even to save the child himself. Even to save my own life.

It isn’t dawn yet when I QT to Hector’s huge home in Ilium. I was here just two evenings before when—morphed then as the now-decapitated spearman Dolon—I followed Hector home in search of his wife and son. Since I know the layout from that visit, I QT directly to the nursery, not far from Andromache’s sleeping chamber. Hector’s son, less than a year old, is in a wonderfully carved cradle with mosquito netting draped over it. Nearby sleeps the same nurse who was on the battlements of Troy with Andromache that evening when Hector accidentally frightened his son with the reflection in his polished war helmet. She’s also fast asleep, reclining on a nearby couch, wearing a thin, diaphanous gown draped with all the complexity of an Aubrey Beardsley print. Even this sleeping gown is sashed under her breasts in the Greek and Trojan manner, showing how large and white the nurse’s bosom is, visible in the reflected light from the guardsmen’s fire tripods on the terrace beyond. I’d guessed earlier that she’s a wet nurse for the baby. This is relevant, actually, because my plot hinges on being able to kidnap the baby
with
the nurse, leaving Andromache behind—after “Aphrodite” appears to her and tells her that the child is being kidnapped by the gods, as punishment for unnamed failings on the part of the Trojans, and that if Hector wants the child, he can damned well come to Olympos to get him, blah, blah, blah.

First I have to gather up the baby and then grab the nurse—I suspect that she might be stronger than me, and almost certainly more adept at fighting, so I’ll taser her if I have to, although I don’t want to—and then QT the two of them to that rapidly populating hill in ancient Indiana, find Nightenhelser—I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with Patroclus—and convince the scholic to watch over the infant and his nurse until I come back for them.

Will Nightenhelser be up to the task of riding herd on this Trojan nurse for the days, weeks, or months until all this is over? Given the matchup of a Twentieth Century male classics professor versus a Trojan wet nurse circa 1200 b.c., I’d put my money on the nurse. And give my opponents good odds. Well, that’s Nightenhelser’s problem. My job is to find leverage against Hector, a way to convince him that he
has
to fight the gods—just as Patroclus’ “death” was my best shot to enroll Achilles into this suicidal crusade—and that leverage is sleeping in front of me right now.

Little Scamandrius, whom the people of Ilium lovingly call “Astyanax, Lord of the City,” mewls slightly in his sleep and rubs tiny fists against his reddened cheeks. Even though invisible under the Hades Helmet, I freeze and watch the nurse. She sleeps on, although I know that an actual cry from the baby will almost certainly wake her.

I don’t know why I pull off the cowl of the Hades Helmet, but I do, becoming visible to myself. There’s no one else here except my two victims, and they’ll be 10,000 miles away from here in a few seconds, unable to give my description to any Trojan police sketch artist.

I tiptoe closer and remove the mosquito netting from above the infant. A breeze blows in from the distant sea and flutters both the terrace curtains and the gauzier material around the crib. Without a sound, the baby opens his blue eyes and looks right at me. Then he smiles at me, his kidnapper, although I thought little pre-toddlers were afraid of strangers, much less of strangers in their bedroom in the middle of the night. But what do I know about kids? My wife and I never had any, and all the students I taught over the years were actually partially or poorly formed adults, all gangly and bumpy and hairy and socially awkward and goofy looking. I couldn’t even have told you that babies less than a year old
could
smile.

But Scamandrius is smiling at me. In a second he’s going to start making noise and I’ll have to grab him, grab the nurse, QT us the hell out of here—can I QT two other people along with me? We’ll find out in a second. Then I have to come back and use my last three minutes of morphing time to steal Aphrodite’s form and give my ultimatum to Andromache.

Will Hector’s wife be hysterical? Will she weep and scream? I doubt it. After all, in recent years she’s seen Achilles kill her father and her seven brothers, she’s watched her mother become Achilles’ plunder and then die trying to give birth to her rapist’s bastard, she’s watched her home occupied and defiled, and still she’s borne up—not only borne up, but bore a healthy son to her husband, Hector. And now she has to watch Hector go out to battle every day, knowing in her heart that her beloved’s fate has already been sealed by the cruel will of the gods. No, this is no weak woman. Even morphed as Aphrodite, I’d better keep a keen eye on Andromache’s sleeves to make sure she doesn’t have any daggers with which to greet the goddess’s news of the kidnapping.

I actually reach for the baby, my fingers with their dirty nails just inches away from his pink flesh, before drawing back.

I can’t do it.

I can’t
do
it.

Stunned by my own impotence even in the face of doom—everyone’s doom, for even the Greeks will be punished through their victory—I stagger out of the nursery, not even bothering to pull the Hades Helmet back on.

I put my hand on the QT medallion, but pause. Where do I go? Whatever Achilles is doing, it doesn’t really matter now. He can’t conquer Olympos on his own, or even with the Achaean army if the Trojans are still at war with them. In fact, my little charade with the man-killer may have been for nothing—Hector and his hordes may beat the Achaeans this very morning while Achilles is still ripping his hair out and screaming in grief over Patroclus’ apparent murder. Achilles doesn’t give a damn about the Trojans right now. And when Hector and the mystery man Athena promised Achilles—to lead him to Hector, she said, to show him how to get to Olympos—don’t come to him, will he know that my act was only an act? Probably. Then the real Athena will visit Achilles to see what’s wrong and will protest her innocence to the fleet-footed man-killer, and perhaps—just perhaps—the
Iliad
will get back on track.

It doesn’t matter.

This whole idiot plan is finished. So is Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D. Past time, probably.

But where to go until the violent Muse or the reawakened Aphrodite finally find me? Go visit Nightenhelser and pissed-off Patroclus? See how long it takes the gods to track my quantum trail once they understand what I’ve done . . . tried to do?

No. That would just bring doom down on Nightenhelser. Let him stay there in 1200 b.c. Indiana and procreate with the lovely Indian maidens, perhaps start a university and teach classics—although most of the classical tales haven’t happened yet—and good luck to him about Patroclus, whom I have no urge to taser again just to drag back to Achilles’ tent. “April fool!” I could have my three-minute-morph Athena say. “Here’s your friend back, Achilles. No hard feelings?”

No, I’ll leave them alone there in Indiana.

Where to go? Olympos? The thought of the Muse hunting for me there, of Zeus and his radar eyes returning, of Aphrodite awakening . . . well, not to Olympos. Not tonight.

I think of one place and visualize it and touch the QT medallion and twist it and go there before I can change my mind.

I’m visible and Helen sees me at once in the soft light of candles. She rises on one arm on her cushions and says, “Hock-en-bear-eeee?”

I stand in her bedchamber and say nothing. I don’t know why I’m here. If she calls her guards or even comes toward me with that dagger, I feel too tired to fight, too tired even to flee on the QT. I don’t even think to wonder why her bedchamber is illuminated by candles at four-thirty in the morning.

She comes toward me, but not with the dagger. I’d forgotten how beautiful Helen of Troy is—her svelte, soft figure in the transparent gown making Scamandrius’ busty nurse look just lumpy and squat by comparison. “Hock-en-bear-eeee?” she says softly, with that sweet pronunciation of my name, so difficult to say in Ancient Greek. I almost weep as I realize that she’s the only human being on Earth, except for Nightenhelser—who may be dead by now—who knows my name. “Are you hurt, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”

“Hurt?” I manage. “No. I’m not hurt.”

Helen leads me into the bathing room adjoining her bedchamber. This is where I first saw her that night. Candles are lighted here as well, there is water in a basin, and I see my reflection—red-eyed, stubble-cheeked, exhausted. I realize that I haven’t really slept for . . . how long? I can’t remember. “Sit,” says Helen, and I collapse onto the ledge of a marble bathtub. “Why have you come, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”

Stumbling with words, I say, “I tried to find the fulcrum,” and go on to explain my useless charade with Achilles, the kidnap of Patroclus, my plan to turn the heroes of the war against the gods to save . . . everyone, everything.

“But you did not kill Patroclus?” says Helen, her dark eyes intense.

“No. I just took him . . . elsewhere.”

“Using the gods’ method of travel,” says Helen.

“Yes.”

“But you could not spirit away Astyanax, Hector’s son, this way?”

I shake my head dumbly.

I see Helen thinking, her beautiful dark eyes lost in reverie. How can she believe my explanations? Who in the hell does she think I am? Why had she befriended me before—“befriended” being somewhat of a euphemism for that long night of passion—and what will she do with me now?

As if to answer that last question, Helen rises with a grim look in her eye and goes out of the bathing room. I hear her calling names in the hallway and know that the guards will be back with her in less than a minute, so I raise my hand to the heavy QT medallion.

I can’t think of anywhere to go.

I have charge left in my taser baton, but I don’t reach for it as Helen returns with several others. But not guards—serving girls. Slaves.

A minute later they are undressing me, stacking my filthy garments by the wall as other young women bring in tall pitchers of steaming hot water for the bath. I let them take the morphing bracelet off me, but I cling to the QT medallion. I shouldn’t get it wet, but I don’t want it out of my reach.

“You are going to bathe, Hock-en-bear-eeee,” says Helen of Troy. She lifts a short, gleaming razor blade. “And then I am going to shave you myself. Here, drink this. It will restore your energy and spirits.” She hands me a goblet with a thick liquid inside.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nestor’s favorite drink,” laughs Helen. “Or it was when the old fool used to visit my husband, Menelaus. It restores.”

I sniff it, knowing that I’m being boorish. “What’s in it?”

“Wine, grated cheese, and barley,” says Helen, lifting the goblet closer to my lips by moving my cupped hands upward. Her fingers look very white against my sun-darkened and dirty skin. “But I also add honey to sweeten it.”

“So does Circe,” I say, laughing stupidly.

“Who, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”

I shake my head. “Never mind. It’s in the
Odyssey
. Doesn’t matter. Irreli . . . irrele . . . irrelevant and immaterial.” I drink. The liquid has the punch of a Missouri mule. I wonder idly if there any mules in Missouri circa 1200 b.c.

The young servant girls have stripped me naked, having me stand to pull off my tunic and underthings. I don’t even think to be embarrassed. I’m too tired and the drink has given my brain a distinct buzz.

“Bathe, Hock-en-bear-eeee,” says Helen and offers me her arm to hold as I step into the deep and steaming bath. “I will shave you in the bath.”

The water’s so hot that I cringe like a child, lowering myself carefully, hesitating to let the steaming water touch my scrotum. But I do—I’m too tired to fight gravity—and when I lean back against the slanted marble back of the tub, Helen’s servants lathering my whisker-stubbled cheeks and neck, I don’t even worry about Helen handling the razor’s blade so close to my eyes and jugular. I trust her.

Feeling Nestor’s drink giving me energy again, deciding that if Helen offers me her bed I’ll definitely ask her to share it with me in this last hour or so before dawn, I close my eyes for just a moment. Just a few seconds.

When I awake it’s mid-morning, at least, with heavy light coming through small windows high on the wall. I’m shaved and clean, even perfumed. I’m also lying on a cold, stone floor in an empty room, not in Helen’s high bed. And I’m naked—completely naked, not even the QT medallion in sight. As real awareness flows into my brain like reluctant water into a leaky basin, I notice that I’m tied with multiple leather straps to iron rings in the wall and floor. Leather restraints run from my wrists—knotted together over my head—to the wall. Straps from my bound ankles, legs spread apart, run a few inches to two other iron rings in the floor.

This posture and situation would be embarrassing and alarming even if I were alone, but I’m not. Five women are standing over me, staring down at me. None of them look amused. I tug at the leather reins as I instinctively try to cover my genitals, but the straps are short and my hands don’t even lower to the level of my shoulders. Nor do the straps on my ankles allow me to close my legs. I see now that all of the women are carrying daggers, although some of the blades seem long enough to be called swords.