Ilium

52 Ilium and Olympos

For some reason, I flee with the Trojans on Thicket Ridge toward and through the smaller man-gates of the Scaean Gates, main entrance to Ilium. The wind still howls and we’re all partially deaf from the nuclear explosion to the south. My last glimpse of the mushroom cloud before entering the city with the shoving mob of Trojan soldiers shows me that the column of smoke and ash is already beginning to bend southeast with the prevailing wind. There’s still a hint of Zeus’s face in the coiled cloud at the top, but the wind and the cloud’s own infolding is breaking up that visage as well.

Scores are crushed at the man-gates, so Hector orders the guards to throw wide the central Scaean Gates, something that hasn’t been done for more than nine years. The thousands flock inside.

The Argives have run for their ships. Just as Hector is trying to rally his panicked troops here, I catch a glimpse of Achilles trying to hold back the fleeing Greeks. In the Iliad, in Achilles’ rampage after Patroclus’ death, Homer tells of the man-god fighting a flooding river—and winning, damming it with the bodies of his Trojan enemies—but now Achilles can’t stop this tsunami of fleeing Achaeans without killing hundreds, and this he will not do.

I’m swept into the city, already sorry that I ran. I realize that I should have fought my way through the milling mob on the ridge to where I saw the little robot, Mahnmut, sheltering behind the boulders atop the Amazon Myrine’s mounded tomb. Does the robot—what did he call his type? moravec?—does the moravec know that Zeus’s weapon was nuclear, possibly thermonuclear? Suddenly a memory emerges from my other life, as so many have in the past week or so—Susan trying to drag me to a talk at IU’s science hall during some multidisciplinary week at the university. A scientist named Moravec was speaking about his autonomous artificial intelligence theories. Fritz? Hans? I hadn’t gone, of course—of what interest would some scientist’s theories be to a classical scholar?

Well, it doesn’t matter now.

As if to underline this point, five chariots appear from the north—I know the QT point they translated in through up there—and begin circling the city at an altitude of three or four thousand feet. Even with optical amplification, I can’t make out the little figures in the gleaming machines, but it looks as if there are both gods and goddesses up there.

Then the bombardment begins.

The shafts scream down into the city like slender, silver, ballistic missiles, and where each one strikes, there is an explosion, dust and smoke rising, screams. Ilium is a large city by ancient standards, but the arrows come fast—from Apollo’s bow, I realize, although I think I can make out Ares doing the shooting when the chariot swoops low to assess the damage—and soon the explosions and screams are coming from every quarter of the walled metropolis.

I realize that I’ve not only lost control of everything, I’ve lost sight of everyone I should be talking to, helping, conferring with. Achilles is probably three miles away down the hill already, back with his men, trying to keep them from sailing away in panic. Hearing more explosions—conventional, not nuclear—coming from the direction of the Achaean camp, I don’t see how Achilles can succeed in rallying his men. I’ve also lost sight of Hector, and see that the huge Achaean Gates have been swung shut again—as if that can keep out the gods. Poor Mahnmut and his silent pal, Orphu, are probably destroyed out there on the ridge already. I don’t see how anything can survive this bombardment.

More explosions from the central marketplace. Red-crested Trojan soldiers rush to reinforce the walls, but the danger’s not outside the walls. The golden chariot swings above again, outside of even archer shot, and five silver arrows rain down like Scud missiles, exploding near the south wall, near the central well, and apparently right on Priam’s Palace. This is beginning to remind me of CNN images from the second war with Iraq right before I became ill with cancer.

Hector. The hero is probably rallying his men, but since there’s nothing to rally them for except to duck and cover, it’s possible that Hector has gone to his home to check on Andromache. I think of that empty, bloodstained nursery and grimace even here in the smoke and noise of the bombed city street. The royal couple hasn’t had time to bury their baby yet.

Jesus, God, is all this my doing?

A flying chariot swoops low. An explosion breaches the ramparts along the main wall and throws a dozen red-caped figures into the air. Body parts rain into the streets and patter on rooftops like fleshy hail. Suddenly another memory returns, a similar horror, three thousand two hundred years in this world’s future, two thousand and one bloody years after the birth of Christ. In my mind’s eye, I see bodies hurling down into the street and a wall of dust and pumice chasing the fleeing thousands, just as I see down Ilium’s main street this moment. Only the buildings and modes of dress are different.

We’ll never learn. Things will never change.

I run for Hector’s home. More missiles rain down, blasting the plaza just inside the gate from where I’ve just come. I see a small child staggering into the street from rubble that was a two-story home just minutes before. I can’t tell if the toddler’s a little boy or girl, but the child’s face is bloody, its curly hair covered with plaster dust. I stop running and go to one knee to gather the child in—where can I take it? There’s no hospital in Ilium!—but a woman with a red scarf over her head runs to the infant and scoops it up. I wipe rivulets of sweat out of my eyes and stagger on toward Hector’s house.

It’s gone. The whole of Hector’s palace is missing—just rubble and a series of holes in the ground. I have to keep mopping sweat out of my eyes to see, and even when I see I can’t believe. This whole block has been pounded by the missiles raining down. Already, Trojan soldiers are digging through the rubble with their spears and makeshift shovels, their proud red-crests turned gray by the dust in the air. They create a human chain to hand bodies and body parts back to the waiting crowds in the street.

“Hock-en-bear-eeee,” says a voice. I realize that someone’s been saying my name over and over, but now has begun tugging at my arm. “Hock-en-bear-eeee!”

I turn stupidly, blink away sweat again, and look down at Helen. She’s dirty, her gown is bloodied, and her hair is unkempt. I’ve never seen anyone or anything so beautiful. She hugs me and I gather her in with both arms.

She pulls apart. “Are you badly hurt, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”

“What?”

“Are your injuries severe?”

“I’m not hurt,” I say. She touches my face then and her hand comes away red with blood. I raise my hand to my temple—a deep cut there, another in my hairline—see the bloody fingers on both of my hands, and realize that I’ve been wiping blood away, not sweat. “I’m fine,” I say. I point to the smoking rubble. “Hector? Andromache?”

“They weren’t there, Hock-en-bear-eeee,” Helen shouts over the screams and babble. “Hector sent his family to Athena’s temple. The basement is safe there.”

I look through the smoke and see the tall roof of the temple standing. Of course, I think. The gods aren’t going to bomb their own temples. Too much fucking ego.

“Theano is dead,” says Helen. “And Hecuba. And Laodice.”

I repeat the names stupidly. Athena’s priestess, the woman with the cold blade at my balls just hours ago. And Priam’s wife and daughter. Three of my Trojan Women dead already. And the bombardment’s just begun.

Suddenly I whirl around in panic. The noise is wrong. The blasts have stopped.

Men and women in the streets are pointing skyward and shouting. Four of the five chariots have already disappeared and now the fifth, Ares’ bombardment chariot, I think, flies north and winks out of existence, obviously QTing back to Olympos. All this damage—I look around at the tumbled buildings, smoking craters, bloodied bodies in the streets—from just one god’s attack with one bow and a few of Apollo’s arrows. What next? Biological attack? The Shining Archer—probably recovering up there in the healing tanks right now—is famous for firing plague into the people below.

I grab the medallion at my neck. “Where’s Hector?” I ask Helen. “I have to find Hector.”

“He went back out through the Scaean Gate with Paris, Aeneas, and his brother Deiphobus,” says Helen. “He said he has to find Achilles before all hearts flag.”

“I have to find him,” I repeat. I turn toward the main gate, but Helen pulls me back and around.

“Hock-en-bear-eeee,” she says, and pulls my face down to hers and kisses me there in the shoving, screaming street. When her lips leave mine, I can only blink stupidly, still bent to her kiss. “Hock-en-bear-eeee,” she says again. “If you must die, die well.”

Then she turns and strides back up the street without once looking back.