Ilium (60 page)

47

It was on the morning of Hannah’s First Twenty, after riding with her young friend to the faxnode and watching her be escorted into the pavilion by two servitors and a voynix, that Ada began worrying in earnest.

She’d begun to worry about Harman on the second day after he’d flown away with Daeman and Savi. She didn’t really expect him to come swooping by to pick her up on a spaceship as he’d promised—that was a childish fantasy that she didn’t think even Harman believed in—but she did expect the three of them back with the sonie in two or three days. After four days, her worry turned to anger. After a week, the emotion had resolved itself into worry again—a deeper, more gnawing worry than she’d ever experienced—and she began to have trouble sleeping. After two weeks, Ada didn’t know what to think.

On the fourteenth morning after the trio’s departure, with no word of the three from visiting friends—and hundreds upon hundreds of people were certainly visiting Ardis Hall now—Ada had a voynix take her on the short carriole ride to the faxportal, and after only a minute’s hesitation—what could be harmful about faxing?—she stepped through to Paris Crater and visited Daeman’s mother’s domi there.

The young man’s mother was beside herself with worry. Daeman stayed at parties for weeks sometimes—and had even gone butterfly hunting for a full month when he was one year short of his First Twenty—but he always got word to his mother about where he was and when he would be home. For the past two weeks—nothing.

“I wouldn’t worry,” consoled Ada, patting the older woman’s arm. “Our friend Harman will watch over Daeman, and the woman we met—Savi—will watch over both of them.” Saying that helped Daeman’s mother, but it made Ada more anxious than ever.

Now, two weeks after her visit to Paris Crater, missing Hannah already but knowing that the girl must be safe in the firmary, Ada found herself lost in thought during the carriole ride over the hills to home.

Ardis Hall had been invaded during the last month. Her return from Paris Crater two weeks ago had been at night, so this morning’s ride was the first time in the past four weeks that Ada had actually seen the changes from the high road approaching the manor, and now the sight made her gasp.

Scores of colored tents surrounded the old white estate on the hill. At first, ten and twenty visitors—mostly men—had come to hear Odysseus speak in the great sloping meadow behind the house, but the dozens turned to hundreds, and by now thousands had made the fax trip. Ardis Hall had only a dozen carrioles and droshkies, and these were being worn out—as were the oddly sullen voynix—in transporting the constant stream of visitors between faxnode and house all hours of the day and night, so some of the volunteers from the first days of Odysseus’ teaching took turns staying at the fax portal and urging the constant line of visitors to walk the incredible mile and a quarter to the manor. They did. And they walked back to fax out, returning days or even hours later with more visitors—again mostly men.

Now, as Ada’s droshky rolled to a stop in the crowded circle lane in front of Ardis Hall, she realized that her isolated estate had become merely one part of an expanding city. The score of tents, erected by voynix but now looked after by men and women, included cook tents, eating pavilions, privy tents—Odysseus had showed the men how to dig a latrine away from the other tents—and sleeping tents. Ada’s mother had visited once during this madness, had been overwhelmed by the scores of people wandering into Ardis Hall as if it were a public market, and she’d immediately faxed to her domi in Ulanbat and had not returned.

Ada accepted a cold drink from one of the permanent volunteers—a young man named Reman who was growing a beard, as so many of the disciples were—and she wandered back to the field where Odysseus spoke and answered questions four or five times a day, for ever larger crowds. Ada had half a mind to interrupt the arrogant barbarian’s useless lectures to ask him—in front of everyone—why he, Odysseus, hadn’t bothered to say good-bye to the young woman who worshiped him.

Last night, at Hannah’s First Twenty party—the celebrations were always thrown the day before the actual birthday, the day before someone actually faxed to the firmary—Odysseus had barely made an appearance at the dinner. Ada knew that Hannah had been hurt. The young woman still thought she was in love with Odysseus, even though the man seemed indifferent to Hannah’s feelings. After returning from their trip, Hannah had been Odysseus’ shadow, but he barely seemed to notice. When he had eschewed Ada’s hospitality and chosen to build a camp for himself in the forest, Hannah had tried to accompany him there, but Odysseus had insisted that she sleep in the big house. During the course of each day, as Odysseus ran, exercised, and, later, wrestled with his male disciples, Hannah was always nearby—running, climbing on the obstacle course ropes, even volunteering to wrestle. Odysseus never agreed to wrestle the beautiful young girl.

At the First Twenty party, each of the dozen or so guests around the table set under the giant oak had made the traditional speeches—congratulations to Hannah for her first visit to the firmary, wishes for lifelong good health and happiness—but when it came to Odysseus’ turn, the old man had said simply, “Don’t go.” Hannah had wept later in Ada’s bedroom—had even considered
not
going, of somehow hiding from the servitors who even then were embroidering her ceremonial Twenty gown—but of course she had to go. Everyone went. Ada had gone. Harman had gone four times. Even the absent Daeman had been to the firmary twice—once on his First Twenty and again after the accident with the allosaurus. Everyone went.

So this morning, when Hannah had come down from her room dressed in only the ceremonial cotton robe, ornamented by just the small, traditional embroidered image of the caduceus—two blue snakes of healing twined around a staff—Odysseus had not been there to say good-bye to his young friend.

Ada had been furious as the two rode in one of Ardis’s droshkies to the fax pavilion. Hannah had wept a bit, turning her face away so that Ada wouldn’t see. Hannah had always been the toughest young woman Ada’d known—the artist and athlete, the risk-taker and sculptor—but this morning she’d seemed a lost little girl.

“Maybe he’ll pay attention to me after I return from the firmary,” Hannah had said. “Maybe I’ll seem like more of a woman to him tomorrow.”

“Maybe,” said Ada, but she was thinking that all men seemed to be self-serving, selfish, insensitive pigs, just waiting for an opportunity to act like
greater
self-serving, selfish, insensitive pigs.

Hannah had looked so fragile as the two servitors floated out of the fax pavilion, each taking one of Hannah’s arms, and led her to the faxportal. It was a beautiful day, clear blue sky, soft winds from the west, but it might as well have been raining so far as Ada’s mood would have dictated. She had no idea why she had this sense of doom—she’d seen scores of friends off to their various Twenty trips to the firmary and had gone herself, remembering only hazy images of floating in a warm liquid—but Ada had wept when Hannah had raised her hand and waved in that second before the faxportal whisked her away and out of sight. The ride back to Ardis Hall alone had simply deepened Ada’s anger at Odysseus, at Harman, and at men in general.

So Ada felt like anything but a loving disciple as she wandered up the hill behind Ardis Hall to listen to Odysseus’ lecture to the faithful and the curious.

The short, bearded man was dressed in his tunic and sandals, sword by his side, sitting against a fallen dead tree that Odysseus had cut down himself, while all around him and stretching down the hill toward the house sat and stood several hundred men and women. Several of the men were wearing tunics similar to Odysseus now, belted by the same kind of broad leather belt. Most seemed to be growing beards, which had not been in style in Ada’s lifetime.

Odysseus was answering questions at the moment. Ada knew that his usual schedule was to speak for about ninety minutes one hour after sunrise, then to go off by himself for hours, answer questions in the hour before lunch, speak again without interruption in the mid-afternoon, and entertain questions in the long twilight hour after the sun set. This was the pre-lunch gathering.

“Teacher, why must we find out who our fathers are? It’s never been important before.” It was a new young man who had held up his hand.

When Odysseus spoke, Ada had noticed over the past month, he usually held his hands straight out, thrusting his short, strong fingers at the air as if driving home the points of what he said. His arms and legs were tanned and powerful. For the first time, Ada noticed that some of the bearded men in the audience were also getting tanned and muscled. Odysseus had set up an obstacle course—all ropes and logs and muddy pits—in the forest up the hill, and demanded that anyone who listened to him more than twice must exercise at least an hour a day on the course. Many of the men—and some of the female disciples—had laughed at the idea the first time they tried it, but now they were spending long hours on the course, or running, each day. It made Ada wonder.

“If you don’t know your father,” Odysseus was answering in that low, calm, but fiercely firm voice of his that always seemed to carry as far as it had to, “how can you know yourself? I am Odysseus, son of Laertes. My father is a king, but also a man of the soil. When I saw him last, the old man was down on his knees in the dirt, planting a tree where an old giant of a tree had fallen—cut down by his hand finally—after being struck by lightning. If I do not know my father, and his father before him, and what these men were worth, what they lived for and were willing to die for, how can I know myself?”

“Tell us again about
arete
” came a voice from the front row. Ada recognized the man speaking as Petyr, one of the earliest visitors. Petyr was no boy—Ada thought he was in his fourth Twenty—but his beard was already almost as full as Odysseus’. Ada didn’t think the man had left Ardis since he’d first heard Odysseus speak that second or third day, when the visitors could be counted on two hands.

“
Arete
is simply excellence and the striving for excellence in all things,” said Odysseus. “
Arete
simply means the act of offering all actions as a sort of sacrament to excellence, of devoting one’s life to finding excellence, identifying it when it offers itself, and achieving it in your own life.”

A newcomer ten rows up the hill, a heavyset man who reminded Ada a bit of Daeman, laughed and said, “How can you achieve excellence in all things, Teacher? Why would you want to? It sounds terribly tiring.” The heavy man looked around, sure of laughter, but the others on the hill looked at him silently and then turned back to Odysseus.

The Greek smiled easily—strong white teeth flashing against his tanned cheeks and short, gray beard—and said, “You can’t
achieve
excellence in all things, my friend, but you have to
try
. And how could you
not
want to?”

“But there are so many things to do,” laughed the heavy man. “One can’t practice for them all. One has to make choices and concentrate on the important things.” The man squeezed the young woman next to him, obviously his companion, and she laughed loudly, but she was the only one to laugh.

“Yes,” said Odysseus, “but you insult all those actions in which you do not honor
arete
. Eating? Eat as if it were your last meal.
Prepare
the food as if there were no more food! Sacrifices to the gods? You must make each sacrifice as if the lives of your family depended upon your energy and devotion and focus. Loving? Yes, love as if it were the most important thing in the world, but make it just one star in the constellation of excellence that is
arete
.”

“I don’t understand the
agon,
Odysseus,” said a young woman in the third row. Ada knew that her name was Peaen. She was intelligent, a skeptic of all things, but this was her fourth day here.

“The
agon
is simply the comparison of all like things, one to the other,” Odysseus said softly but clearly, “and the judgment of those things as equal to, greater than, or lesser than. All things in the universe take part in the dynamic of
agon
.” Odysseus pointed to the dead tree he was sitting on. “Was this tree greater than, lesser than, or simply equal to . . .
that
tree?” He pointed to a tall living tree up the hill, at the edge of the forest there. Voynix stood under the shadows of the branches. The voynix would not come close to Odysseus.

“That tree is living,” called the heavy man who had spoken earlier. “It must be superior to the dead tree.”

“Are all living things superior to all dead things?” asked Odysseus. “Many of you have gone under the turin cloth and seen the battle there. Is a dung merchant alive today a better man than Achilles was then, even if Achilles is dead now?”

“That’s comparing unlike things,” cried a woman.

“No,” said Odysseus. “Both are men. Both were born. Both will die. It matters little if one still breathes and the other resides only in the impotent shades of Hades. One must be able to compare men—or women—and that is why we need to know our fathers. Our mothers. Our history. Our stories.”