Ilium (6 page)

I was once in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. The guide said that clouds sometimes formed under the roof hundreds of feet above the concrete floor. You could take the VAB and set it in one corner of this immense room we find ourselves in now and you’d never notice it sitting there like a cast-off child’s toy block in a cathedral.

One says “gods” and you think of the meat-and-potato gods, the main gods—Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and a few others—but there are hundreds of gods in this room and most of the room is empty. Seemingly miles above us, a gold dome—the Greeks had not discovered the principles of a dome, so this was in contrast to the classically conservative architecture of the other great buildings I have seen on Olympos—acoustically directs conversation to all corners of the breathtaking space.

The floor looks to be made of hammered gold. Gods lean on marble railings and look down from circling mezzanines. The walls everywhere sport hundreds upon hundreds of arched niches, each holding a white marble sculpture. The statues are of the gods present here now.

Holograms of Achaeans and Trojans flicker here and there, many of them showing life-sized, full-color, three-dimensional images of the men and women as they argue or eat or make love or sleep. Near the center of the room, the gold floor steps down to a recess larger than any combination of Olympic-sized swimming pools, and in this space flickers and floats more real-time images from Ilium—broad aerial views, close-ups, panning shots, multiple images. One can hear the dialogue as if the Greeks and Trojans were in this very room. Around this vision pool, sitting in stone thrones and lounging on plush couches and standing in their cartoonlike togas, are the gods. The important gods. The meat-and-potato, known-by-grade-schoolers gods.

Lesser gods move aside as the Muse approaches this center pool, and I hurry to stay with her, my invisible hand tremulous on her golden arm, trying not to squeak my sandals or trip or sneeze or breathe. None of the deities seem to notice me. I suspect that I will know very quickly if any of them do.

The Muse stops a few yards from Pallas Athena and I stay so close to her that I feel like a three-year-old child hugging his mother’s skirt.

There is a fierce argument under way, even as Hebe—one of the minor goddesses—moves among the others, pouring some sort of golden nectar into their gold goblets. Zeus sits on his throne and it is obvious to me at a glance that Zeus is the king here, he who drives the storm clouds, god among gods. No cartoon image, this Zeus, but an impossibly tall reality whose bearded, oiled, and palpably regal presence makes my blood turn to frightened sludge.

“How can we control the course of this war?” he demands of all the gods even while he stares daggers at his wife, Hera. “Or the fate of Helen? If goddesses such as Hera of Argos and Athena, guardian of her soldiers, keep intervening—such as this stopping Achilles’ hand in the act of drawing the blood of the son of Atreus?”

He turns his storm-cloud gaze on a goddess lounging on purple cushions. “Or you, Aphrodite, with your constant laughter, always standing by that pretty-boy Paris, driving away evil spirits and deflecting well-cast spears. How can the will of the gods—and more important, of Zeus—be clear, even here, if you meddling goddesses keep protecting your favorites at the expense of Fate? Despite all your machinations, Hera, Menelaus may yet lead Helen home . . . or perhaps, who knows, Ilium may prevail. It is not for a few female gods to decide these things.”

Hera folds her slender arms. So frequently in the poem is Hera referred to as “the white-armed goddess” that I half expect her arms to be whiter than the other goddesses’ arms, but although Hera’s skin is milky enough, it’s no visibly milkier than that of Aphrodite or Hera’s daughter Hebe or any of the other female gods I can see from my vantage point here near the image pool . . . except for Athena, that is, who looks strangely tanned. I know that these descriptive passages are a function of Homer’s type of epic poetry; Achilles is referred to repeatedly as “swift-footed,” Apollo as “one who shoots from afar,” and Agamemnon’s name is usually preceded by “wide ruling” or “lord of men”; the Achaeans are “strong-greaved” and their ships “black” or “hollow” and so forth. These repeated epithets met the heavy demands of dactylic hexameter more than mere description, and were a way for the singing bard to meet metric requirements with formulaic phrases. I’ve always suspected that some of these ritual phrases—such as Dawn stretching forth her rosy fingertips—were also verbal placeholders, buying the bard a few seconds to remember, if not invent, the next few lines of action.

Still, as Hera begins to retort to her husband, I am looking at her arms. “Son of Kronos—dreaded majesty,” she says, white arms folded, “what in the hell are you talking about? How dare you consider making all of my labors pointless? I’m talking
sweat
here—immortal sweat—poured out launching Achaea’s armies, stroking these male hero’s egos just to keep them from killing each other before they kill Trojans, and taking great pains—
my
pains, O Zeus—in heaping greater pains on King Priam and the sons of Priam and the city of Priam.”

Zeus frowns and leans forward on his uncomfortable-looking throne, his huge white hands clenching and unclenching.

Hera unfolds her arms and throws up her hands in exasperation. “Do what you please—you always do—but don’t expect any of us immortals to praise you.”

Zeus stands. If the other gods are eight or nine feet tall, Zeus must stand twelve feet high. His brow is more folded than furrowed now, and I am using no metaphor when I say that he thunders:

“Hera—my dear, darling, insatiable Hera! What has Priam or the sons of Priam ever done to
you
that you have become so furious, so relentless to bring down Priam’s city of Ilium?”

Hera stands silent, hands at her side. This seems only to increase Zeus’s royal fury.

“This is more appetite than anger with you, Goddess!” he roars. “You won’t be satisfied until you knock down the Trojans’ gates, breach their walls, and eat them raw.”

Hera’s expression does nothing to deny this charge.

“Well . . . well . . .” thunders Zeus, almost spluttering in a way all too familiar to husbands across the millennia, “do as
you
please. But one more thing—and remember it well, Hera—when there comes a day that
I
am bent on destroying a city and consuming its inhabitants—a city
you
love, as I love Ilium—then don’t even think about attempting to oppose my fury.”

The goddess takes three quick steps forward and I am reminded of a predator pouncing, or some chess master seeing his opening and taking it. “Yes! The three cities I love best are Argos and Sparta and Mycenae of the wide ways, its streets as broad and regal as ill-fated Ilium’s. All these you can sack to your vandal’s heart’s content, My Lord. I will not oppose you. I will not begrudge your will . . . little good it would do me anyway, since you are the stronger of us two. But remember this, O Zeus—although I am your consort, I am also born of Kronos and thus deserving of your respect.”

“I never suggested otherwise,” mutters Zeus, taking his hard seat again.

“Then let us yield one to the other on this point,” says Hera, her voice audibly sweeter now. “I to you and you to me. The lesser gods will comply. Quickly now, my husband! Achilles has left the field for now, but a mewling truce makes quiet the killing ground between Trojans and Achaeans. See that that the Trojans break this truce and do first injury, not only to their oaths, but to the far-famed Achaeans.”

Zeus glowers, grumbles, shifts in his chair, but orders the attentive Athena—“Go quickly down to the quiet killing ground between Trojans and Achaeans. I order you to see that the Trojans are the first to break the truce and do injury to the far-famed Achaeans.”

“And trample on the Argives in their triumph,” prompts Hera.

“And trample on the Argives in their triumph,” Zeus orders wearily.

Athena disappears in a QT flash. Zeus and Hera leave the room and the gods begin to disperse, speaking softly amongst themselves.

The Muse beckons me to follow with a subtle flick of her finger and leads me out of the assembly hall.

“Hockenberry,” says the Goddess of Love, reclining on her cushioned couch, the gravity—light as it is—giving emphasis to all her silky, milky-weighted voluptuousness.

The Muse had led me to this other room in the Great Hall of the Gods, this darkened room with only the double glow from a low-burning brazier and from something that looked suspiciously like a computer screen. She had whispered to me to remove the Helmet of Death and I was relieved to take the leather hood off, but terrified to be visible again.

Then Aphrodite had entered, assumed her position on the couch, and said, “That will be all until I summon you, Melete,” and the Muse had stepped out through a secret door.

Melete,
I thought. Not one of the nine muses, but a name from an earlier era, where the muses were thought to be three: Melete of “practicing,” Mneme of “remembering,” and Aoide of . . .

“Hockenberry,
I
was able to see you in the Hall of the Gods,” says Aphrodite, blinking me out of my scholic reverie, “and if I had pointed you out to Lord Zeus, you would be something less than ashes now. Even your QT medallion would not have allowed you to escape, for I could follow your phase-shift path through time and space itself. Do you know why you are here?”

Aphrodite is my patroness. She’s the one who ordered the Muse to give me these devices.
What do I do? Kneel? Prostrate myself on the floor in the presence of divinity? How do I address her? In my nine years, two months, and eighteen days here, my existence has never been acknowledged by a god before, not counting my Muse.

I decide to bow slightly, averting my eyes from her beauty, from the sight of pink nipples showing through thin silk, of that soft cusp of stomach sending shadows into that triangle of dark fabric where her thighs meet.

“No, Goddess,” I say at last, all but forgetting the question.

“Do you know why you were chosen as scholic, Hockenberry? Why your DNA was exempted from nanocyte disruption? Why, before you were chosen for reintegration, your writings on the War were factored into the simplex?”

“No, Goddess.”
My DNA is exempt from nanocyte disruption?

“Do you know what a simplex is, mortal shade?”

Herpes virus?
I think. “No, Goddess,” I say.

“The simplex is a simple geometric mathematical object, an exercise in logistics, a triangle or trapezoid folded on itself,” says Aphrodite. “Only combined with multiple dimensions and algorithms defining new notional areas, creating and discarding feasible regions of n-space, planes of exclusion become inevitable contours. Do you understand now, Hockenberry? Do you understand how this applies to quantum space, to time, to the War below, or to your own fate?”

“No, Goddess.” My voice does quaver this time. I can’t help it.

There is a rustling of silk and I glance up long enough to see the most beautiful female in existence rearranging her fair limbs and smooth thighs on the couch. “No matter,” she says. “You—or the mortal who was your template—wrote a book several thousand years ago. Do you remember its content?”

“No, Goddess.”

“If you say that one more time, Hockenberry, I am going to rip you open from crotch to crown and quite literally use your guts for my garters. Do you understand
that
?”

It is hard to speak with no saliva in your mouth. “Yes, Goddess,” I manage, hearing the dry lisp.

“Your book ran to 935 pages and it was all about one word—
Menin
—do you remember now?”

“No, Go . . . I’m afraid I don’t recall that, Goddess Aphrodite, but I am sure that you are correct.”

I look up long enough to see that she is smiling, her chin propped on her left hand, her finger rising along her cheek to one perfect dark eyebrow. Her eyes are the color of a fine cognac.

“Rage,” she says softly. “
Menin aeide thea
. . . Do you know who will win this war, Hockenberry?”

I have to think fast here. I would be a pretty poor scholic if I don’t know how the poem turns out—although the
Iliad
ends with the funeral rites for Achilles’ friend Patroclus, not with the destruction of Troy, and there is no mention of a giant horse except in Odysseus’ comments and that from another epic . . . but if I pretend to know how this
real
war will turn out, and it is obvious from the argument I have just overheard that Zeus’s edict that the gods must not be informed of the future as predicted by the
Iliad
is still in effect—I mean, if the gods themselves do not know what will happen next, wouldn’t I be putting myself above the gods, including Fate by telling them?
Hubris
has never been an attribute gently rewarded by these gods. Besides, Zeus—who alone knows the full tale of the
Iliad
—has forbidden the other gods from asking and all of us scholics from discussing anything except events that have already occurred. Pissing off Zeus is never a good plan for survival on Olympos. Still, it seems I’m exempt from nanocyte disruption. On the other hand, I believe the Goddess of Love completely when she says that she will wear my guts for garters.

“What was the question, Goddess?” is all I can manage.

“You know how the poem the
Iliad
ends, but I would be defying Zeus’s command if I ask you what happens there,” says Aphrodite, her small smile disappearing and being replaced by something like a pout. “But I can ask you if that poem predicts
this
reality. Does it? In your opinion, Scholic Hockenberry, does Zeus rule the universe, or does Fate?”

Oh, shit,
I think. Any answer here is going to end up with me being gutless and this beautiful woman—goddess—wearing slimy garters. I say, “It is my understanding, Goddess, that even though the universe bends to the will of Zeus and must obey the vagaries of the god-force called Fate, that
kaos
still has some say in the lives of both men and gods.”

Aphrodite makes a soft, amused sound. Everything about her is so soft, touchable, enticing . . . .