Ilium (61 page)

“Well, that tree you’re sitting on is still dead, Teacher,” said Petyr. This time people up and down the hill did laugh.

Odysseus joined in the laughter. He pointed to a sparrow that had just landed on one of the few branches Odysseus hadn’t hacked away from the fallen tree. “It is not only
still
dead,” he said, “it is
newly
dead. But already the usefulness of the tree—in usefulness terms of the
agon
—have surpassed the
agon
usefulness of that living tree up the hill. For that bird. For the insects even now burrowing into the bark of this fallen giant. For the mice and voles and larger creatures who will soon come to inhabit this dead tree.”

“Who is to be the final judge of the
agon
then?” asked a serious, older man in the fifth row. “Birds, bugs, or men?”

“All,” answered Odysseus. “Each in his turn. But the only judge who counts is you.”

“Isn’t that arrogant?” demanded a woman Ada recognized as a friend of her mother’s. “Who elected
us
judge? Who gave us the right to be judgmental?”

“The universe elected you through fifteen billions years of evolution,” said Odysseus. “It gave you eyes with which to see. Hands with which to hold and weigh. A heart with which to feel. A mind to learn the rules of judgment. And an imagination with which to consider the bird’s and bug’s—and even other trees’—judgment in this matter. And you must approach this judgment with
arete
to guide you—trust me that the bugs and birds and trees already do. They have no time for mediocrity in their world. They do not worry about the arrogance of judging, whether it is in choosing a mate, an enemy—or a home.”

Odysseus pointed to where the sparrow had hopped into a hole in the fallen trunk, disappeared into the hollow there.

“Teacher,” said a young man far back in the crowd, “why do you ask us men to wrestle at least once a day?”

Ada had heard enough. She took the last of her cold drink and walked back up to the house, pausing on the porch to look down the long grassy yard to where dozens more of the visitors—disciples—walked and talked together. Silk on the tents stirred to the warm breeze. Servitors shuffled from one visitor to the other, but few accepted offers of food or drink. Odysseus had asked that anyone staying to hear him speak more than once not allow the servitors to work for them, or the voynix to serve them. That had initially driven many away, but more and more were staying.

Ada looked up at the blue sky, noted the pale circles of the two rings orbiting there, and thought about Harman. She’d been so
angry
at him when he’d talked about women choosing among men’s sperm months or years or decades after intercourse—it was simply not discussed, except between mothers and daughters, and then only once. And that nonsense about a moth’s genes being involved, as if human women had not chosen the fathers of their allowed babies like that since time immemorial. That had been so . . .
obscene
. . . of Harman to bring that up.

But it was her new lover’s statement that he wanted to be the father of Ada’s child . . . not only
be
the one whose seed was chosen at some future date, but be
around,
be
known
as the father . . . that had so nonplussed and infuriated Ada that she’d sent Harman away on his harmless adventure with Savi and Daeman without so much as a kind word. In fact, with hostile words and glances.

Ada touched her lower belly. The firmary had not notified her through servitors that her time for pregnancy had arrived, but then, she had not asked to be put on the list. She was glad that she didn’t soon have to choose between—what had Harman called them?—sperm packets. But she thought of Harman—his intelligent, loving eyes, his gentle and then firm touch, his old but eager body—and she touched her belly again.

“Aman,” she whispered to herself, “son of Harman and Ada.”

She shook her head. Odysseus’ prattle the last weeks was beginning to fill her head with nonsense. Yesterday, fed up, after dark, after the scores and scores of disciples had wandered off to the fax pavilion or sleeping tents—more to the tents than to the pavilion—she had bluntly asked Odysseus how much longer he planned to stay at Ardis Hall.

The old man had smiled at her almost sadly. “Not much longer, my dear.”

“A week?” pressed Ada. “A month? A year?”

“Not so long,” said Odysseus. “Just until the sky begins falling, Ada. Just until new worlds appear in your yard.”

Furious at his flippancy, tempted to order the servitors to evict the hairy barbarian at once, Ada had stalked up to her bedroom—her last place of privacy in this suddenly public Ardis Hall—where she had lain awake being angry at Harman, missing Harman, worrying about Harman, instead of ordering servitors to do anything about old Odysseus.

Now she turned to go into the house, but a strange motion caught at the edge of her vision made her turn back. At first she thought it was just the rings rotating, as always, but then she looked again and saw another streak—like a diamond scratching a line across the perfect blue glass of the sky. Then another scratch, broader, brighter. Then yet another, so bright and so clear that Ada could clearly see flames stretching behind the streak of light. A few seconds later, three dull booms echoed across the lawn, made strolling disciples pause and look up, and caused even the servitors and voynix to freeze in their duties.

Ada heard screams and shouts from the hill behind the house. People on the lawn were pointing skyward.

There were scores of lines marring the azure sky now—bright, flaming, roiling red lines slashing and crisscrossing, falling west to east, some with plumes of color, others with rumbles and terrifying booms.

The sky was falling.

48

The ultimate war begins here in a murdered child’s nursery.

The gods must have quantum teleported down to talk with mortals this way a thousand times before—Athena, arrogant in her divinity, Apollo, secure in his power, and my Muse, probably brought along to identify the rogue scholic, Hockenberry. But this day, instead of encountering deference and awe, instead of conversing with the foolish mortals eager to be cajoled into more interesting ways of slaughtering one another, they are attacked on sight.

Apollo lifts his bow in my direction, the Muse pointing and saying “There he is!” but before the god can nock one of his silver arrows, Hector leaps, swings his sword, hacks down the bow, steps closer, and thrusts his sword deep into Apollo’s belly.

“Stop!” shouts Athena, throwing up a forcefield, but too late. Fleet-footed Achilles has already stepped inside the circle of the forcefield and slashes the goddess from shoulder to hip with a single mighty swing.

Athena screams and the jet roar is so loud that most of the mortals in this room—myself included—go to one knee in pain with hands over our ears. Not Hector. Not Achilles. The two must be deaf to anything but the internal roar of their own rage.

Apollo shouts some amplified warning even as he raises his right arm—either to warn off Hector or to unleash some godly lightning—but Hector doesn’t wait to discover the god’s intentions. Swinging his heavy sword in a two-handed backhand that reminds me of Andre Agassiz in his prime, Hector slices off Apollo’s right arm in a spray of golden ichor.

For the second time in my life, I watch a god writhe in agony and change shape—losing his godlike human form and becoming a whirlpool of blackness. From that blackness comes a bellow that sends the servants running from the nursery and drops me to both knees. The five Trojan women—Andromache, Laodice, Theano, Hecuba, and Helen—pull daggers from their robes and turn on the Muse.

Athena, her shape also quivering and unstable, stares down at her slashed breasts and bleeding belly and then raises her right hand, firing a beam of coherent energy that should have turned Achilles’ skull to plasma, but the Achaean ducks with superhuman speed—his DNA is nanocell enriched, tailored by the gods themselves—and swings his sword at the goddess’s legs even as the wall behind him bursts into flame. Athena levitates—rising off the floor and hovering—but not before Achilles’ sword slashes through divine muscle and bone, leaving her left leg dangling in two pieces.

This time the scream is too loud to bear, and I lose consciousness for a minute, but not before I see my Muse—the terror of my days—so panicked that she forgets her power to teleport and simply runs from the room, my five Trojan women chasing her with daggers in hand.

I come to a few seconds later. Achilles is shaking me.

“They fled,” he snarls. “The shit-eating cowards fled to Olympos. Take us there, Hockenberry.” He picks me up with one hand, his fist tight around the strap that holds my breastplate in place, shakes me at arm’s length, and sets the tip of his god-blooded sword under my chin. “
Now!
” he snarls.

I know that to resist will mean death—Achilles’ eyes are mad, pupils contracted to black pinpricks—but at that moment Hector grabs Achilles’ arm and forces it down until my feet touch the floor. Achilles drops me and turns toward his short-lived Trojan ally, and for an instant I’m sure that Fate will reassert itself—that fleet-footed Achilles will slaughter Hector here and now.

“Comrade,” says Hector, holding his empty palm straight. “Fellow enemy of the ruthless gods!”

Achilles checks his attack.

“Hear me!” snaps Hector, every inch the field marshal now. “Our shared desire is to follow these wounded gods to Olympos and there die in glorious combat, trying to bring down Zeus himself.”

Achilles’ wild expression does not change. His eyes show mostly white. But he’s listening. Barely.

“But our glorious deaths now will mean our peoples’ destruction,” continues Hector. “To avenge ourselves properly, we must rally our armies to our side, lay siege to Olympos, and bring down
all
the gods. Achilles, see to your people!”

Achilles blinks and turns to me. “You,” he snaps. “Can you carry me straight back to the Achaean camp with your magic?”

“Yes,” I say shakily. I see Helen and the other women returning to the death nursery, their daggers unstained by golden god-blood. Evidently the Muse has escaped.

Achilles turns to Hector. “Speak to your men. Kill any captains who resist your will. I shall do the same with my Argives and meet you in three hours at that sharp ridge that rises out of Ilium—you know the one I mean, man. You locals call it Thicket Ridge. The gods and we Achaeans think of it as the leaping Amazon Myrine’s mounded tomb.”

“I know it,” says Hector. “Bring a dozen of your favorite generals with you to this conference, Achilles. But leave your armies a half a league behind until we agree on strategy.”

Achilles shows his teeth in what could be a snarl or grin. “You don’t trust me, son of Priam?”

“Our hearts are joined in boundless anger and bottomless sorrow at this moment,” says Hector. “You for Patroclus, me for my son. We are brothers in madness at the moment, but three hours is enough for even the fires of common cause to cool. And you have the world’s ablest tactician with you—Odysseus, whose craft and cleverness all Trojans fear. If the son of Laertes counsels you to betrayal, how will I know?”

Achilles shakes his head impatiently. “Two hours then. I’ll bring my most trustworthy generals. And any Achaeans who will not follow me in war against the gods today will be shades in Hades by nightfall.”

He swings away from Hector and grasps my forearm so tightly that I almost cry out. “Take me to my camp, Hockenberry.”

I fumble for the QT medallion.

The wind has blown the levitating Orphu-thing a quarter of a mile down the beach and into the surf between two long black Achaean ships, and I have to leave Achilles and his captains to retrieve the Device. Because of the levitation harness, there’s no friction, and I borrow a rope from the watching Greeks, hitch it around one of the levitation belts, and drag the cracked and cratered shell out of the water and back up the beach in front of the staring heroes of the
Iliad
.

It’s obvious that there has been much argument in the Achaean camp. Diomedes is telling Achilles that half the men are preparing their ships for sail, while the other half are readying themselves for death. The idea of resisting the gods—much less attacking them—is not only madness but blasphemy to all these men who’ve seen the gods in action. Diomedes himself comes close to defying Achilles here in council.

Speaking with the fine rhetoric he’s famous for, Achilles reminds them of his hand-to-hand combat with Agamemnon and Menelaus and his legal assumption of command of the Achaean armies. He reminds them of the murder of Patroclus. He praises their courage and their loyalty. He tells them that the loot of Ilium is nothing compared to the riches they’ll have when they loot Olympos. He reminds them that he can and will kill all of them if they resist. All in all, it’s a convincing speech but not a happy conference.

This is all screwed up. My plan had been for the heroes to defy the gods and end the war, for the Achaeans to sail home and for the Trojans to resume their lives with the great gates of their walled city open once again to travelers and merchants. I’d imagined the City at Peace as illustrated near the center of Achilles’ shield. And I’d thought—hoped—that Achilles and Hector would meekly sacrifice themselves for the greater good, not enlist tens upon tens or hundreds of thousands of others in their battle.

And even my plan to get Hector and Achilles to Olympos for their fatal
aristeia
is doomed. I’d planned to take the two warriors up there one at a time, the gods all unaware that danger existed until it descended on them like a Greek and Trojan lightning storm. But the attack on Apollo and Athena in Scamandrius’ nursery has lost us even this small element of surprise.

So now what?

I check my watch. I’d promised the little robot that I’d pick him up. But the Great Hall of the Gods and all of Olympos must be a hornet’s nest now. The odds of my QTing in and getting out undetected seem low to zero.
What will Hector and Achilles do if I don’t come back here?

That’s their problem. I reach up to lift my Hades Helmet over my head, remember that I loaned it to Mahnmut, sigh, visualize the coordinates for the west side of the Caldera Lake on the Olympian summit, and QT out.

It
is
a hornet’s nest. The sky is filled with chariots zipping back and forth above the lake. I can see scores of gods standing along the shoreline, some pointing, some firing lances of pure energy into the lake. The water is boiling for miles out into the caldera. Other gods are shouting with amplified voices, declaring that Zeus commands everyone to gather in the Great Hall. No one’s noticed me yet—there’s too much confusion—but it’s just a matter of a minute or less before someone spots a non-god on their exclusive country club turf.

Suddenly the boiling water erupts just yards from where I stand and a vague shape emerges, visible only because of water cascading off its invisible surface. Then the dark little robot snicks into view, pulling the Hades Helmet off and handing it to me.

“It would be best if we left quickly,” Mahnmut says in English. After I dumbly take the leather helmet, he keeps one arm extended for me to grasp so that he can be included in the QT field. I grab his forearm and then scream and release it. The metal or plastic or whatever it is that makes up his skin is red hot. Already the palm of my right hand is red and beginning to blister.

Two chariots swoop our way. Lightning flashes. The air smells of ozone.

I grab the robot’s shoulder and twist the medallion again, knowing that none of us are going to get out of this alive, but telling myself that at least I came back for the little machine as promised. At least I did that.