Olympos

88

One week after the Fall of Ilium:

Achilles and Penthesilea appeared on the empty ridgeline that rose between the Plain of the Scamander and the Plain of the Simois. As Hephaestus promised, there were two horses waiting—a powerful black stallion for the Achaean and a shorter but even more muscular white mare for the Amazon. The two mounted to inspect what was left.

There was not much left.

“How can an entire city like Ilium disappear?” said Penthesilea, her voice as contentious as always.

“All cities disappear,” said Achilles. “It is their fate.”

The Amazon snorted. Achilles had already noted that the blonde human female’s snort was similar to that of her white mare’s. “They aren’t supposed to disappear in a day … an hour.” The comment sounded like a complaint, a lament. Only two days after Penthesilea’s resurrection from the Healer’s tanks, Achilles was getting used to that constant tone of complaint.

For half an hour they allowed their horses to pick their way through the jumble of rock that stretched for two miles along the ridgeline that once had held mighty Troy. Not a single foundation stone was left. The divine magic that had taken Troy had sheared it off almost a foot beneath the earliest stones of the city. Not so much as a dropped spear or rotting carcass had been left behind.

“Zeus is powerful indeed,” said Penthesilea.

Achilles sighed and shook his head. The day was warm. Spring was coming. “I’ve told you, Amazon. Zeus did not do this. Zeus is dead by my own hand. This is the work of Hephaestus.”

The woman snorted. “I’ll never believe that little bumbuggering bad-breathed cripple could do something like this. I don’t even believe he’s a real god.”

“He did this,” said Achilles. With Nyx’s help, he mentally added.

“So you say, son of Peleus.”

“I told you not to call me that. I am no longer son of Peleus. I was Zeus’s son, no credit to him or me.”

“So you say,” said Penthesilea. “Which would make you a father-killer if your boasts are true.”

“Yes,” said Achilles. “And I never boast.”

Both Amazon and her white mare snorted in unison.

Achilles kicked the ribs of his black stallion and led them down off the ridge, along the rutted south road that had led from the Scaean Gate—the stump of the great oak tree that had always grown there since the creation of the city remained, but the great gates were gone—and then right again onto the Plain of the Scamander that separated the city from the beach.

“If this sad Hephaestus is now king of the gods,” said Penthesilea, her voice as loud and irritating as fingernails on a flat, slate rock, “why was he hiding in his cave the whole time we were on Olympos?”

“I told you—he’s waiting for the war between the gods and the Titans to end.”

“If he’s the successor to Zeus, why in Hades doesn’t he just end it himself by commanding the lightning and the thunder?”

Achilles said nothing. Sometimes, he had discovered, if he said nothing, she would shut up.

The Scamander Plain—worn smooth over its eleven years as a bat-tlefield—looked as if the ground had not been sheared, there were still the prints of thousands of sandaled men here, and blood dried on the rocks—but all living human beings, horses, chariots, weapons, corpses, and other artifacts had disappeared even as Hephaestus had described it to Achilles. Even the tents of the Achaeans and the burned hulks of their black ships were gone.

Achilles allowed their horses to rest on the beach for a few minutes and both man and Amazon watched the limpid waves of the Aegean roll up on the empty sand. Achilles would never tell the wolf-bitch next to him this, but his heart ached at the thought that he would never see his comrades in arms again—crafty Odysseus, booming big Ajax, the smiling archer Teucer, his faithful Myrmidons, even stupid, red-headed Menelaus and his scheming brother—Achilles’ nemesis—Agamemnon. It was strange, Achilles thought, how even one’s enemies become so important when they are lost to you.

With that, he thought of Hector and of the things Hephaestus had told him about the Iliad—about Achilles’ own other future—and this caused the despair to rise in him like bile. He turned his horse’s head south and drank from the goatskin of wine tied to the pommel.

“And don’t think I will ever believe that the bearded cripple god actually had the ability to make us married,” groused Penthesilea from behind him. “That was a load of horse cobblers.”

“He’s king of all gods,” Achilles said tiredly. “Who better to sanctify our wedding vows?”

“He can sanctify my ass,” said Penthesilea. “Are we leaving? Why are we heading southeast? What’s this way? Why are we leaving the battlefield?”

Achilles said nothing until he reined his horse to a halt fifteen minutes later.

“Do you see this river, woman?”

“Of course I see it. Do you think I’m blind? It’s just the lousy Scamander—too thick to drink, too thin to plow—brother of the River Simois which it joins just a few miles upstream.”

“Here, at this river we call the Scamander and which the gods call the holy Xanthes,” said Achilles, “here according to Hephaestus who quotes my biographer Homer, I would have had my greatest aristeia—the combat that would have made me immortal even before I slew Hector. Here, woman, I would have fought the entire Trojan army single-handed—and the swollen, god-raised river itself!—and cried to the heavens, ‘Die, Trojans, die!… till I butcher all the way to sacred Troy!’ Right there, woman, do you see where those low rapids run? Right there I would have slain in a blur of kills Thersilochus, Mydon, Astyplus, Mnesus, Thrasius, Aenius, and Ophelestes. And then the Paeonians would have fallen on me from the rear and I would have killed them all as well. And there, across the river on the Trojan side, I would have killed the ambidexterous Asteropaeus, my one Pelian-ash spearcast to his two. We both miss, but I hack the hero down with my sword while he’s trying to wrest my great spear from the riverbank to cast again….”

Achilles stopped. Penthesilea had dismounted and gone behind a bush to urinate. The crude sound of her making water made him want to kill the Amazon then and there and leave her body to the carrion crows that roosted on the creosote bush’s branches near the river. The vultures’ daily feed of dead flesh evidently had disappeared and Achilles hated to leave them disappointed.

But he could not hurt the Amazon. Aphrodite’s love spell still worked on him, leaving his love for this bitch coiling in his guts, as nausea-making as a bronze-tipped spear through the bowels. Your only hope is that the pheromones may wear off in time, Hephaestus had said when they were both drunk on wine that last night in the cave, toasting each other and everyone they knew, raising the big two-handled cups and confiding in each other in the way only brothers or drunks can do.

When the Amazon was remounted, Achilles led the way across the Scamander, the horses stepping carefully. The water was no more than knee deep at its deepest. He turned south.

“Where are we going?” demanded Penthesilea. “Why are we leaving this place? What do you have in mind? Do I get a vote on this or will it always be the mighty Achilles deciding every little thing? Don’t think I’ll follow you blindly, son of Peleus. I may not follow you at all.”

“We’re hunting for Patroclus,” Achilles said without turning in his saddle.

“What?”

“We’re hunting for Patroclus.”

“Your friend? That queer-boy fruit friend of yours? Patroclus is dead. Athena killed him. You saw it and said so yourself. You started a war with the gods because of it.”

“Hephaestus says that Patroclus is alive,” said Achilles. His hand was on the hilt of his sword, his knuckles white, but he did not draw the weapon. “Hephaestus says that he did not include Patroclus in the blue beam when he gathered up all the others on earth, nor when he sent Ilium away forever. Patroclus is alive and out there somewhere over the sea and we shall find him. It shall be my quest.”

“Oh, well, Hephaestus says,” jeered the Amazon. “Whatever Hephaestus says has to be true now, doesn’t it? The runty crippled bastard couldn’t be lying to you, now could he?”

Achilles said nothing. He was following the old road south along the coast, this road that had been trod by so many Trojan-bred horses over the centuries and followed north more recently by so many of the Trojan allies he’d helped to kill.

“And Patroclus out there alive somewhere over the sea,” parodied Penthesilea. “Just how in Hades’ name are we supposed to get over the sea, son of Peleus? And which sea, anyway?”

“We’ll find a ship,” said Achilles without turning to look back at her. “Or build one.”

Someone snorted, either the Amazon or her mare. She’d obviously stopped following him—Achilles heard only his own horse’s shoes on stone—and she raised her voice so that he could hear her. “What are we now, bleeding shipbuilders? Do you know how to build a ship, O fleet-footed mankiller? I doubt it. You’re good at being fleet-footed and at killing men—and Amazons who are twice your better—not at building anything. I bet you’ve never built anything in your useless life… have you? Have you? Those calluses I see are from holding spears and wine goblets, not from… son of Peleus! Are you listening to me?”

Achilles had ridden fifty feet on. He did not look back. Penthesilea’s huge white mare stood where she had reined her in, but it now pawed the ground in confusion, wanting to join the stallion ahead.

“Achilles, damn you! Don’t just assume that I’m going to follow you! You don’t even know where you’re going, do you? Admit it!”

Achilles rode on, his eyes fixed on the hazy line of hills on the horizon line near the sea far, far, far to the south. He was getting a terrible headache.

“Don’t just take it for granted that… gods damn you!” shouted Penthesilea as Achilles and his stallion kept moving slowly away, a hundred yards now. The bastard son of Zeus did not look back.

One of the vultures on the shrub-tree by the holy Xanthes flapped its way into the sky, circling the now-empty battlefield once, its kin-of-the-eagle eye noting that not even the ashes of the corpse fires—usually a place to find a midday morsel—remained.

The vulture flapped south. It circled three thousand feet over the two living horses and human beings—the only ground-living things visible as far as the far-seeing carrion bird could see—and, ever hopeful, it decided to follow them.

Far below, the white horse and its human burden remained unmoving while the black horse and its man clopped south. The vulture watched, hearing but ignoring the unpleasant noises the rearward human was making as the white horse was suddenly spurred into motion and galloped to catch up.

Together, the white horse trailing only slightly, the two horses and two humans headed south along the curve of the Aegean and—lazing easily on the strong thermals of the warming afternoon—the vulture followed hopefully.

89

Nine days after the Fall of Ilium:

General Beh bin Adee personally led the attack on Paris Crater, using the dropship as his command center while more than three hundred of his best Beltvec troopers roped and repellored down into the blue-ice-hive city from six hornet fighters.

General bin Adee had not been in favor of joining this fight on Earth—his advice had been to choose no one’s side—but the Prime Integrators had decided and their decision was final. His job was to find and destroy the creature named Setebos. General bin Adee’s advice then had been to nuke the blue-ice cathedral above Paris Crater from orbit—it was the only way to be sure to get the Setebos thing, he’d explained—but the Prime Integrators had rejected his advice.

Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo led the primary assault team. After the other ten teams had roped down and blasted through the outer surface of the blue-iced city, establishing a perimeter and confirming it over tactical comm—the thing could not escape now—Mep Ahoo and his twenty-five picked rockvec troopers jumped from the primary hornet hovering at three thousand meters, activated their repellors at just the last second, used shaped charges to blow a hole in the roof of the blue-ice cathedral dome, and roped in—their fastlines anchored from pitons driven into the blue ice itself.

“It’s empty,” radioed Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo. “No Setebos.”

General bin Adee could see that himself on the images sent back from the twenty-six troopers’ nanotransmitters and suitcams. “Grid and search,” he commanded on the prime tactical band.

Reports were coming in now from all perimeter teams. The blue-ice itself was rotten—a fist could collapse an entire tunnel wall. The tunnels and corridors had already begun to collapse.

Mep Ahoo’s team returned to repellor flight and flew their grid search in the cavernous central place over the ancient black hole crater itself. They started high—making sure that nothing was hiding in one of the blue-ice balconies or high crevices—but soon were swooping low over the fumaroles and abandoned secondary nests.

“The main nest has collapsed,” reported Mep Ahoo on the common tactical channel. “Fallen into the old black hole crater. I’m sending images.”

“We see them,” replied General Beh bin Adee. “Is there any chance the Setebos creature could be in the black hole vent itself?”

“Negative, sir. We’re deep radaring the crater now and it goes all the way to magma. No side vents or caverns. I think it’s gone, sir.”

Cho Li’s voice came over the common band. “It confirms our theory that the quantum event of four days ago was an opening of a final Brane Hole in the blue-ice cathedral itself.”

“Let’s be sure,” said General Beh bin Adee. On the tactical command tightbeam, he sent to Mep Ahoo—Check all nests.

Affirmative.

Six rockvecs from Mep Ahoo’s primary assault force checked the collapsed ruins of Setebos’s central nest, then fanned out, repelloring above the collapsing cathedral floor to look at each decaying fumarole and sagging nest.

Suddenly there was a cry from one of the perimeter teams that had just penetrated to the central dome. “Something written here, sir.”

Half a dozen other troopers, including Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo, converged on the point high on the south wall of the dome. There was a terrace there where the largest corridor entered the dome, and in the wall of the dome where the corridor widened into the so-called cathedral, something or someone had written in the blue ice, using what appeared to be fingernails or claws—Thinketh, the Quiet comes. His dam holds that the Quiet made all things which Setebos vexes only, but He holds not so. Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex. But thinketh, why then is Setebos here then vexed to flight? Thinketh, can Strength ever be vexed to Flight by Weakness? Thinketh, is He the only One after all? The Quiet comes.

“Caliban,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che from the Queen Mab in its new geosynchronous orbit.

“Sir, tunnels and caverns all checked and reported empty,” came a Centurion Leader’s report on the common tactical channel.

“Very good,” said General Beh bin Adee. “Prepare to use the thermite charges to melt the whole blue-ice complex down to the original Paris Crater ruins. Make sure none of the original structures will be damaged. We’ll search them next.”

Something here, said Mep Ahoo on the tactical tightbeam. The images flowing into the dropship monitors showed the troopers’ chest searchlights falling on a tumbled fumarole nest. All of the eggs in that nest had burst open or collapsed inward… all except one. The Millennion Leader repellored down, crouched next to the egg, set his black-gloved hands on the thing, then set his head against it, actually listening.

I think there’s something still alive in here, sir, reported Mep Ahoo. “Orders?”

Stand by, barked General Beh bin Adee. On his tightbeam to the Queen Mab, he said, Orders?

“Stand by,” said the bridge officer speaking for the Prime Integrators.

Finally Prime Integrator Asteageu/Che came on the line. “What is your advice, General?”

“Burn it. Burn everything there… twice.”

“Thank you, General. One second, please.”

There was a silence broken only by slight static. Bin Adee could hear the breathing of his three hundred and ten troopers over their suit microphones.

“We would like the egg to be collected,” Prime Integrator Asteague/Che said at last. “Use one of the stasis-cubes if feasible. Hornet Nine should shuttle it up. Have Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo stay with the egg on Hornet Nine. We shall use the Queen Mab itself as a quarantine laboratory. The Mab has divested itself of all weapons and fissionable material… the stealthed attack cruisers will monitor our study of the egg.”

General Beh bin Adee was silent a few seconds and then said, “Very well.” He opened the tightbeam to Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo and relayed the orders. The team in the blue-ice cathedral already had a stasis-cube ready.

Mep Ahoo sent, Are you sure about this, sir? We know from Ada and the Ardis survivors what their Setebos baby was capable of. Even the unhatched egg had some power. I doubt if Setebos left one viable egg behind by accident.

“Implement the orders,” said General Beh bin Adee on the common tactical band. Then he opened his private tightbeam to Mep Ahoo and sent—“And good luck, son.”

90

Six months after the Fall of Ilium, on the Ninth of Av:

Daeman was in charge of the raid on Jerusalem. It had been carefully planned.

One hundred fully functioned old-style humans freefaxed in at the same second, arriving three minutes before four moravec hornets carrying a hundred more volunteers from Ardis and other survivor-communities. The moravec soldiers had offered their services for this raid months earlier, but Daeman had vowed a year ago that he would free the old-style humans locked in Jerusalem’s blue beam—all of Savi’s ancient friends and Jewish relatives—and he still felt it was a human responsibility to do so. They had, however, accepted the long-term loan of combat suits, repellor backpacks, impact armor, and energy weapons. The hundred men and women in the hornets—piloted by moravecs who would not otherwise join the fight—were bringing in the weapons too heavy to carry in during freefax.

It had taken Daeman and his team—humans and moravecs alike—more than three weeks to check and double-check the specific GPS coordinates of the old city streets, avenues, plazas, and junctions down to the inch in order to plot the hundred freefax arrival areas and designated landing sites for the hornets.

They waited until August, until the Jewish holiday of the Ninth of Av. Daeman and his volunteers freefaxed in ten minutes after sunset, when the blue beam was at its brightest.

As far as the Queen Mab’s surveillance and aerial reconnaissance could tell them, Jerusalem was unique of all places on Earth in that it was inhabited by both voynix and calibani. In the Old City, which was their target tonight, the voynix occupied the streets north and northwest of the Temple Mount, in areas roughly equivalent to the ancient Muslim and Christian Quarters, and the calibani filled the tight streets and buildings to the southwest of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque in areas once called the Jewish Quarter and the Armenian Quarter.

From the spy images—including deep radar—they estimated there were about twenty thousand combined voynix and calibani in Jerusalem.

“Hundred to one odds,” Greogi had said with a shrug. “We’ve had worse.”

They faxed in almost silently, a mere disturbance in the air. Daeman and his team appeared in the narrow plaza in front of the Kotel… the Western Wall. It was still light enough to see, but Daeman used his thermal imaging and deep radar in addition to his eyes to find targets. He estimated that there were around five hundred calibani lounging, sleeping, standing, and milling just in the space and on the walls and rooftops immediately west of the plaza. Within seconds, all of his ten squad commanders had checked in over the combat suit intercoms.

“Fire at will,” he said.

The energy weapons had been programmed to disrupt only living tissue—calibani or voynix—but not to destroy real estate. As Daeman targeted and fired, watching the running, leaping long-clawed calibani go down or erupt into thousands of fleshy pieces, he was glad for that. They didn’t want to destroy this particular village in order to save it.

The Old City of Jerusalem became a maelstrom of blue energy flashes, calibani screams, shouted radio calls, and exploding flesh.

Daeman and his squad had killed every target they could see when he saw by his visor chronometer that it was time for the hornets to arrive. He triggered his repellor pack and rose to the level of the Temple Mount—Daeman was alone, this was no time to have the air full of people—and watched as the first two hornets swept in, landed, disgorged their people and cargoes, and then swooped out. Thirty seconds later, the last two hornets had arrived and the combat-suited men and women were spilling across the stones of the Mount, carrying their heavy weapons on tripods and repellor blocks. The two hornets swooped away.

“Temple Mount secured,” Daeman radioed to all his squad leaders. “You may fly when ready. Stay out of the set lines of fire from the Mount.”

“Daeman?” sent Elian from his position above Bab al-Nazir in the old Muslim Quarter. “I can see masses of voynix coming up the Via Dolorosa and bunches of calibani coming your way east on King David Street.”

“Thanks, Elian. Deal with them as they arrive. The larger guns may engage as…”

Daeman was deafened by heavy weapons’ fire from the Mount just beneath his feet. The humans all along the walls and rooftops there were firing in all directions toward the advancing gray and green figures. Between the vertical blue beam and the thousands of blue-flashes of energy weapon fire, all of Old Jerusalem was bathed in an arc-welding blue glow. The filters on Daeman’s combat suit goggles actually dimmed a bit.

“All squads, fire at will, report any penetration in your sectors,” said Daemon. He tilted on the hovering backpack repellors and then slid through the air to the northeast to where the taller, more modern blue-beam building rose just behind the Dome of the Rock. He was interested to find that his heart was pounding so wildly that he had to concentrate on not hyperventilating. They’d practiced this five hundred times over the past two months, freefaxing into the mock-up of Jerusalem that the moravecs had helped them build not far from Ardis. But nothing could have prepared Daeman for a fight of this magnitude, with these weapons, in this city of all cities.

Hannah and her squad of ten were waiting for him when he arrived at the beam building’s sealed door. Daeman landed, nodded at Laman, Kaman, and Greogi, who were there in the soft twilight with Hannah, and said, “Let’s do it.”

Laman, working quickly with his undamaged left hand, set the plastic explosive charge. The twelve humans stepped around the side of the metal-alloy building while the explosion took the entire door off.

The inside was not much larger than Daeman’s tiny bedroom back at Ardis and the controls were—thank whatever God might be out there—almost as they’d surmised from reviewing all Shared data available from the Taj Moira’s crystal cabinet.

Hannah did the actual work, her deft fingers flying over the virtual keyboard, tapping in the seven-digit codes whenever queried by the blue-beam building’s primitive AI.

Suddenly a deep hum—mostly subsonic—rattled their teeth and bruised their bones. All of the displays on the AI wall flashed green and then died.

“Everyone out,” said Daeman. He was the last one to leave the beam-building’s anteroom, and not a second too soon—the anteroom, the metal wall, and that entire side of the building folded into itself twice and disappeared, becoming a black rectangle.

Daeman, Hannah, and the others had backed down onto the stones of the Temple Mount itself, and now they watched as the blue beam dropped from the sky, the hum growing deeper as it died—painfully so. Daeman found himself shutting his eyes and gripping his hands into fists, feeling the dying subsonics through his gut and testicles as well as his bones and teeth. Then the low noise stopped.

He pulled his combat suit cowl off, earphones and microphone still in place, and said to Hannah, “Defensive perimeter here. As soon as the first person is out, call in the hornets.”

She nodded and joined the others where they were facing and firing outward from the high Temple Mount.

At some time during the preparation for this night, someone—it might have been Ada—had joked that it would only be polite that Daeman and the other raiders should memorize the faces and names of all of the 9,113 men and women captured in that blue beam fourteen hundred years ago. Everyone laughed, but Daeman knew it would have been technically possible; the crystal cabinet in the Taj Moira had given Harman much of that data.

So over the past five months since they’d decided how and when to do this, Daeman had referred to those stored images and names. He hadn’t memorized all 9,113 of them—he, like all the survivors, had been far too busy for that—but he was not surprised when he recognized the first man and woman to come stumbling out of that black-rectangle door from the neutrino-tachyon beam reassembler.

“Petra,” said Daeman. “Pinchas. Welcome back.” He grabbed the slim man and woman before they could fall. Everyone emerging from the black door, two by two like the animals from Noah’s ark Daeman had time to notice, looked more stunned than sensible.

The dark-haired woman named Petra—a friend of Savi’s, Daeman knew—looked around in a drugged way and said, “How long?”

“Too long,” said Daeman. “Right this way. Toward that ship, please.”

The first hornet had landed, carrying another thirty old-styles whose job was just to accompany and help load the long lines of returning human beings. Daeman watched as Stefe came up and led Petra and Pinchas across the ancient stones toward the hornet ramp.

Daeman greeted everyone coming down the ramp from the beam building, recognizing many on sight—third was the man named Graf, his partner who was also named Hannah, one of Savi’s friends named Stephen, Abe, Kile, Sarah, Caleb, William… Daeman greeted them all by name and helped them the few steps to those others waiting to help them to the hornets.

The voynix and calibani kept attacking. The humans kept killing them. In the rehearsals, it had taken them more than forty-five minutes—on a good evening—to load 9,113 people onto hornets, even given only seconds between one hornet being loaded and leaving and the next arriving—but this evening, while under attack, they did it in thirty-three minutes.

“All right,” said Daeman on all channels. “Everyone off the Temple Mount.”

The heavy-weapons teams lugged their equipment into the last two hornets where they hovered near the east edge of the Mount. Then those hornets were gone—following the dozens of others to the west—and it was just Daeman and his original squads.

“Three or four thousand fresh voynix coming from the direction of the Church of the Sepulchre,” reported Elian.

Daeman pulled his cowl on and chewed his lip. It would be harder to kill the things with the heavy weapons gone. “All right,” he said over the command channel. “This is Daeman. Fax out… now. Squad leaders, report when your squads have freefaxed away.”

Greogi reported his squad gone and faxed away.

Edide reported and faxed away from her position on Bab al-Hadid Street.

Boman reported his squad gone from their position on Bab al-Ghawanima and then Boman was gone.

Loes reported from near the Lions Gate and flicked out.

Elle reported from the Garden Gate and was gone.

Kaman reported his squad successfully faxed away—Kaman seemed to be enjoying this military stuff too much, Daeman thought—and then Kaman redundantly requested permission to freefax home.

“Get your ass out of here,” radioed Daeman.

Oko reported her squad gone and followed them.

Caul reported in from below the Al-Aksa Mosque and flicked out.

Elian reported in, squad freefaxed home, and faxed himself away.

Daeman got his squad together, Hannah included, and watched as they flicked away, one at a time, from the growing shadows of the Western Wall Plaza.

He knew that everyone was gone, that the beam building had been emptied, but he had to check.

Tapping the repellor-pack’s controls on his palm with his middle finger, Daeman flew up, circled the beam building, looked in the empty beam building’s doorway to emptiness beyond, circled the empty Dome of the Rock and empty plaza, and then flew lower, wider circles, checking all the points in all four quarters of the Old City where his squads had held the perimeter while not losing a single human to the voynix and calibani attacks.

He knew he should go—the voynix and calibani were rushing in through the ancient, narrow streets like water into a holed ship—but he also knew why he was staying.

The thrown rock almost took his head off. The combat suit’s radar saved him—picking up the hurled object, invisible in the twilight gloom, and overriding the backpack’s controls, sending Daeman dipping legs and feet over ass, righting him just yards above the pavement of the Temple Mount.

He landed, activating all of his impact armor and raising his energy rifle. All of his suit senses and all of his human senses told him that the large, not-quite-human shape standing in the black doorway of the Dome of the Rock was no mere calibani.

“Daemannnnnn,” moaned the thing.

Daeman walked closer, rifle raised, ignoring the suit’s targeting system’s imperative to fire, trying to control his own breathing and thoughts.

“Daemannnnn,” the oversized amphibious shape in the doorway sighed. “Thinketh, even so, thou wouldst have Him misconceive, suppose this Caliban strives hard and ails no less, would you have him hurt?”

“I would have him dead,” shouted Daeman. His body was quivering with old rage. He could hear the rasp and scrape of thousands of voynix and calibani scuttling and scurrying beneath the Mount. “Come out and fight, Caliban.”

The shadow laughed. “Thinketh, human hopes the while that evil sometimes must mend as warts rub away and sores are cured with slime, yessssss?”

“Come out and fight me, Caliban.”

“Conceiveth, will he put his little rifle down and meet the acolyte of Him in fair fight, hand and claw to hand and claw?”

Daeman hesitated. He knew there would be no fair fight. A thousand voynix and calibani would be up here on the Temple Mount in ten seconds. He could hear the scrabbling and scratching in the Western Wall Plaza and on the steps already. He raised the rifle and clicked the targeting to Auto, hearing the target-confirmed tone in his earphones.

“Thinketh, Daemannnnnn will not shoot, noo,” moaned Caliban in the Dome of the Rocks’ doorshadows. “He loveth Caliban and his lord Setebos as enemies too much to draw—O! O!—a curtain o’er their world at once, yesss? Nooo? Daeman must wait for another day to let the wind shoulder the pillared dust, to meet death’s house o’ the move and…”

Daeman fired. He fired again.

Voynix leaped to the walls of the Temple Mount in front of him. Calibani scrambled up the steps of the Temple Mount behind him. It was dark now in Jerusalem, even the blue beam’s glow—constant for one thousand four hundred and twenty-one years—had gone out. The monsters owned the city once again.

Daeman didn’t have to look through the rifle’s thermal sites to know that he had missed—that Caliban had quantum teleported away. He would have to face the thing some other day or night, in a situation much less advantageous to him than today’s.

Strangely, secretly, in his heart of hearts, Daeman was happy at this thought.

Voynix and calibani both leaped across the ancient stones of the Temple Mount at him.

A second before their claws could reach him, Daeman freefaxed home to Ardis.

91

Seven and a half months after the Fall of Ilium:

Alys and Ulysses—his friends called him Sam—told their parents they were going to the Lakeshore Drive-in to watch the double feature of To Kill a Mockingbird and Dr. No. It was October and the Lakeshore was the only drive-in movie theater still open since it had portable in-car heaters on the stands as well as speakers, and usually, or at least in the four months since Sam had gotten his solo driver’s permit, the drive-in movie had sufficed for their passion, but tonight, this special night, they drove out through fields of harvest-ready corn to a private place at the end of a long lane.

“What if Mom and Dad ask me about the plot of the movies?” asked Alys. She was wearing the usual white blouse, tan sweater loose over her shoulders, dark skirt, stockings, and rather formal shoes for a drive-in movie date. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail.

“You know about the book To Kill a Mockingbird. Just tell them that Gregory Peck is good as Atticus Finch.”

“Is he Atticus Finch?”

“Who else could he be?” said Sam. “The Negro?”

“What about the other movie?”

“It’s a spy movie about some British guy… James Bond, I think the guy’s name is. The president likes the book the movie is based on. Just tell your dad that it was exciting, full of shooting and stuff.”

Sam parked his dad’s 1957 Chevy Bel Air at the end of the lane, beyond the ruins and in sight of the lake. They’d driven past the Lakeshore Drive-in and around the oversized pond that provided the “lake” for the theater’s name. Far across the water, Sam could see the small rectangle of white that was the drive-in movie screen and beyond that the glow of their little town’s lights against the low October sky, and much farther beyond that, the brighter glow of the real city to and from which their fathers commuted each day. Once upon a time, probably back during the Depression, there’d been a farm at the end of this lane, but now the house was gone—only overgrown foundations remaining, those and the trees lining the driveway in. The trees were losing their leaves. It was getting chilly as it got closer to Halloween.

“Can you leave the motor on?” asked Alys.

“Sure.” Sam started the engine again.

They began kissing almost immediately. Sam pulled the girl to him, set his left hand on her right breast, and within seconds their mouths were warm and open and wet, their tongues busy. They’d discovered this pleasure only this summer.

He fumbled with the buttons of her blouse. The buttons were too small and they went the wrong way. She let the loose sweater fall and helped him with the most troublesome button, the one under her soft, curved collars. “Did you watch the president’s speech tonight on TV?”

Sam didn’t want to talk about the president. Leaving the lowest buttons on her blouse buttoned, breathing rapidly, he slipped his hand inside her loose blouse and cupped her breast in its rather stiff little brassiere.

“Did you?” asked Alys.

“Yeah. We all did.”

“Do you think there’s going to be war?”

“Naw,” said Sam. He kissed her again, trying to bring her back to the passion at hand, but her tongue had gone into hiding.

When they broke apart long enough for her to pull the tails of her blouse out of her skirt, dropping the shirt behind her—her body and bra pale in the dim reflected light from the sky and in the yellow glow of the dashboard radio and dials—she said, “My father says it could mean war.”

“It’s just a lousy quarantine,” said Sam, both arms around her, his fingers fumbling with the still-strange hooks and eyes of her brassiere. “It’s not like we’re invading Cuba or anything,” he added. He couldn’t get the damned thing loose.

Alys smiled in the soft light, put her hands behind her, and the bra miraculously fell free.

Sam began nuzzling and kissing her breasts. They were very young breasts—larger and firmer than an adolescent girl’s little bud breasts, but still not fully formed. The areolae were as puffy as the nipples; Sam noticed this in the light from the radio dial, and then he lowered his flushed face to nuzzle and suck again.

“Easy, easy!” said Alys. “Not so rough. You’re always so rough.”

“Sorry,” said Sam. He began kissing her again. This time her lips were warm, her tongue was present… and busy. He felt himself getting more excited as he pressed her back toward the passenger door of the Bel Air. The front seat was wider and deeper and softer than the davenport in their parlor at home. He had to wiggle to get out from under the giant steering wheel and he had to be careful—even here at the end of Miller’s Lane, he didn’t want to accidentally honk the horn.

Lying half atop her, his erection pressing against her left leg, his hands busy on her breasts and his tongue busy finding her tongue, Sam became so excited that he almost ejaculated the first instant she set her long fingers on his corduroyed thigh.

“But what if the Russians do attack?” Alys whispered when he raised his face for a moment to breathe. The car was too damned hot. He turned off the ignition with his left hand.

“Stop that,” he said. He knew what she was doing. She’d chosen the track and line. She wanted him thinking about which one it might be. He wanted only to appreciate what the boy-Sam was thinking and feeling.

“Ouch,” said Alys. He had pressed her back so that her shoulders were against the large door handle. He was lowering his face toward her for more kissing when she whispered, “Do you want to get in the backseat?”

Sam could hardly breathe. That phrase had been their signal the last weeks for the serious stuff—not just getting to third base, which he had several times now with Alys, but going all the way, which they’d come close to twice but not quite achieved.

Alys went around her side—prissily pulling her blouse on, but not buttoning it again, he noticed—and Sam went around the driver’s side. The overhead light came on until they’d secured both the rear doors. Sam rolled his window down a bit so that he could have some air—he still seemed to be having a problem breathing normally—and also so he could hear any car approaching down Miller’s Lane in case Barney happened to come down here in his old black-and-white police cruiser left over from before the War.

The two had to get reintroduced all over again, but within moments, he had his shirt open to feel her breasts against his chest and Alys sprawled lengthwise on the wide seat, him half on her, half falling off, her legs partially raised and his bent strangely because they were both taller than the backseat was wide.

He slipped his right hand up her leg, feeling her own warm breath come more quickly on his cheek when he paused in kissing her. She was wearing stockings. Sam had never felt anything so soft. He felt the garter where the nylon stockings attached to the…

“Oh, come on,” said Ulysses, laughing and speaking through the boy despite himself. “This has to be an anachronism.”

Alys smiled up at him and he saw the real woman through the girl’s dilated pupils. “It’s not,” she whispered, giving him the full length of her tongue now and sliding her hand down, rubbing his erection through the slightly dampened corduroy. “Honest,” she said, still rubbing him. “It’s called a panty girdle and it’s what she wears. Pantyhose haven’t been invented yet.”

“Shut up,” said Sam, closing his eyes as he kissed her and pressed his lower body against her playing hand. “Shut up, please.”

He couldn’t get the metal ring out from around the round snap-stud that she later explained was called the “garter”—it just wouldn’t move. Sam kept moving his hand from between her legs—where the fabric was wet, he was sure he could feel her warming to him through the fabric—back to the goddamned sonofabitching garter thing.

Alys giggled. “I can take the whole thing off,” she whispered.

As she did so, Sam realized that they needed more room. He opened his driver’s side rear door—the light blinded them—

“Sam!”

He reached up and switched off the overhead light. For a minute neither of them moved, two deer blinded in headlights, but when he could hear the wind through the late-autumn leaves over the pounding of his heart, he leaned over her again.

The distraction had kept him from coming too soon. He tasted her lips, lowered his face to her breasts, and licked softly. She pulled his head closer. Her hand went lower, expertly undid his belt, unsnapped the top snap, and tugged the zipper down too quickly for his piece of mind.

He emerged unscathed and throbbing.

“Sam?” she whispered as he levitated into position above her. Her stockings and underpants were in a bunch under his knee. He almost panted as he shoved her skirt higher.

“What?”

“Did you bring… you know… a thing?”

“Oh, fuck that,” he snapped through the boy’s voice, not even pretending to be in character.

She giggled but he stopped that noise with an openmouthed kiss. His heart threatened to break through his ribs as he shifted his weight and she opened her legs to him. He caught a glimpse of her dark skirt riding up almost to her bare breasts, of her pale thighs, of the vertical rather than triangular floss of darkness there between her thighs…

“Easy,” whispered Alys as she reached down and found him. She cupped his scrotum expertly, ran her fingers up the length of his penis, captured the glans with her fingertips. “Easy, Odysseus,” she purred.

“I am… Noman,” he whispered between pants. She was positioning him. The preseminal fluid at the tip of his penis was dampening her thighs as she maneuvered him to the best angle. He could feel the heat flow out of her.

She squeezed him—hard enough to make him gasp but not hard enough to make the sixteen-year-old him come. “How can you say that,” she whispered into his mouth, “when this proves otherwise?”

Alys set the swollen head of his penis against her moist and tight labia, then moved her hand up against his cheek. Sam caught the scent of her excitement on her own fingers and that alone almost made him come. He hesitated this perfect second before continuing.

The flash came from directly ahead of the car, beyond the drive-in movie screen, and it was not brighter than a thousand suns, it was brighter than ten thousand suns. It turned everything in the musky darkness into a photographic negative—all black-blacks and pure whites. There was no noise, not yet.

“You have to be kidding,” he said, poised above Alys as if he was doing push-ups, with only the tip of his erection touching her right now.

“The city’s forty miles away,” whispered Alys, pulling him down, trying to pull him. “We have a long time until the shock wave gets here. A long time.” She gave him her mouth and set her hands solidly on his back and butt, pulling him closer.

He considered resisting. To what purpose? This boy-Sam was so excited that two or three thrusts in his beloved’s perfect, virginal cunt would probably be all he could take before he exploded anyway. The incinerating shock wave and their youthful orgasms would probably arrive at the same instant. Which, he realized, was almost certainly just as his ageless beloved had planned it.

The light was fading some, still bright, bright enough to illuminate sixteen-year-old Alys’s slight dusting of purple eye shadow, and seeing that made him lower his face to hers for a final hot kiss as he began thrusting forward and in.

92

One year after the Fall of Ilium:

Helen of Troy awoke just after dawn to a dream-memory of the sound of air raid sirens. She felt along the cushions of her bed, but her lover Hockenberry was gone—had been gone for more than a month now—and it was only the memory of his warmth that made her hunt for him each morning. She had yet to take another lover, although half the Trojans and Argives left here in New Ilium wanted her.

She had her slave-women, Hypsipyle included, bathe and perfume her. Helen took her time. These apartments in the rebuilt section near the Pillar House near the fallen Scaean Gate were no comparison to her former palace, but the amenities of life were beginning to return. She used the last of her well-rationed scented soap in the bath. Today was a special day. The Joint Council would be deciding on the expedition to Delphi. She had the slave girls dress her in her finest green silk gown and gold necklaces for the morning Council meeting.

It was still strange to see the Argives, Achaeans, Myrmidons, and other invaders in the Trojan council house. Both the Temple of Athena and the larger Temple of Apollo had crumbled that day of the Fall, but the Trojan and Greek masons had erected a new palace where the rubble of Athena’s temple had once been, just north of the main avenue and not far from where Priam’s palace had stood with its proud porches and pillars before the gods had bombed it into oblivion.

This new palace—they had no other name for their central civic building—still smelled of fresh wood, cold stone, and paint, but it was bright and sunny this early spring day. Helen slipped in and took her place near the royal family, next to Andromache, who gave her a brief smile and then turned her attention back to her husband.

Hector was getting some gray in his dark-brown curly hair and beard. Everyone had noticed it. Most of the women, Helen knew, thought it made him look even more distinguished, if such a thing were possible. It was Hector’s place to open the meeting and he did so now, welcoming all the Trojan dignitaries and Achaean guests by name.

Agamemnon was here, still strange, occasionally giving everyone that long, unfocused gaze he had worn for so many months after the Fall, but he was lucid enough now to be heeded in the Joint Council discussions. And his tents were still full of treasure.

Nestor was here, but he had to be carried to the city—carried up from the tent-city of the Achaeans, undefended now on the beach—on a portable chair toted by four slaves. Wise old Nestor had never recovered the use of his legs after that final day of terrible battle on the beach. Also here from the Achaean camp—sixty thousand Greek warriors still lived, enough to demand a vote—were Little Ajax, Idomeneus, Polyxinus, Teucer, and the acknowledged, if not yet publicly acclaimed, leader of the Greeks—handsome Thrasymedes, Nestor’s son. With the Greeks were several men whom Helen did not recognize, including a tall, gangly young man with curly hair and beard.

At his introduction and welcome by Nestor, Thrasymedes glanced in the direction of Helen and Helen lowered her eyes in modesty while allowing herself to blush slightly. Some habits died hard, even here on a different world and in a different time.

Finally Nestor introduced their emissary from Ardis—not Hockenberry, who had not yet returned from his trip west, but a tall, thin, quiet man named Boman. No moravecs were present this morning.

Having finished the welcomings, unnecessary introductions, and ritual words of assembly, Hector established the reasons for this council and what needed to be decided before they could adjourn.

“So today we must decide whether to launch the expedition to Delphi,” concluded noble Hector, “and, if we do so, who shall go and who shall stay. We also have to decide what to do if it is possible to interdict the blue beam there and bring so many of the Argives’ relatives back. Thrasymedes, your people were in charge of building the long ships. Would you tell the Council what progress has been made?”

Thrasmymedes bowed, his knee raised slightly on a step and his golden helmet on his leg. He said, “As you know, our best surviving shipbuilder, Harmonides—literally ‘Son of the Fitter’—has been in charge of the construction. I shall let him report.”

Harmonides, the curly-bearded youth Helen had spotted a minute earlier, now stepped forward a few paces and then quickly looked down at his feet as if he wished he hadn’t made himself so conspicuous. He had a slight stammer as he spoke.

“The… thirty long ships are … ready. Each can… carry… fifty men, their armor, and provisions adequate for… reaching Delphi. We are also close to… to completing… the twenty other ships… as commanded by the Council. These ships are… broader of beam… than the long ships, perfect for… for transporting goods and people should we find such… goods and people.”

Harmonides quickly stepped back into the group of Argives.

“Very good work, noble Harmonides,” said Hector. “We thank you and the Council thanks you. I’ve inspected the ships and they are beautiful—tight, firm, made with precision.”

“And I wish to thank the Trojans for knowing where to find the best wood on the slopes of Mount Ida,” spoke up the blushing Harmonides, but with pride this time, and no hint of a stammer.

“So we now have ships to make the voyage,” said Hector. “Since the missing families on the mainland are Achaean and Argive, not Trojan, Thrasymedes has volunteered to lead the expedition back to Delphi. Would you tell us, Thrasymedes, your plans for that voyage?”

Tall Thrasymedes lowered his leg, holding his heavy helmet easily in one palm, Helen noticed.

“We propose to sail in the next week when the spring winds bless our voyage,” said Thrasymedes, his low, strong voice carrying to the far ends of the large, pillared Council chamber. “All thirty ships and fifteen hundred picked men—Trojan adventurers are still invited if they want to see the world.”

There was some chuckling and good humor in the room.

“We shall sail south along the coast past empty Colonae,” continued Thrasymedes, “then to Lesbos, then across dark waters to Chios, where we shall hunt and lay in fresh water. Then west-southwest across the deep sea, past Andros, and into the Genestius Strait between Catsylus on the peninsula and the isle of Ceos. Here, five of our ships will break away and sail upriver toward Athens, the men crossing on foot for the last way. They will hunt for human life there, and if they find none—they shall march to Delphi on foot, their ships returning and sailing past the Saronic Gulf after us.

“The twenty-five ships remaining to me shall sail southwest past Lacedaemonia, circumnavigating the entire Peloponnese, braving the straits between Cytherea and the mainland if the weather allows. When we spot Zacynthros off our port bows, we will approach the mainland once again, then east-northeast and east again deep into the Corinthian Gulf. Just past Cyolain Locrians and before we reach Boeotia, we shall sail into harbor, beach our boats, and walk to Delphi, where the moravecs and our Ardis friends assure us the blue-beam temple holds the living remnants of our race.”

The person named Boman stepped into the center of the open space. His Greek was horribly accented—much more so even than old Hockenberry’s had been, thought Helen—and he sounded as much the barbarian as he dressed, but he made himself understood despite syntactical errors that would make the mentor of a three-year-old blush.

“It is a good time of year for this,” said Boman, the tall Ardisian. “The problem is—if you do follow our procedures for bringing back the people trapped in the blue beam, what do you do with them? It’s possible that the entire population of Ilium-Earth was coded there—up to six million people—including Chinese, Africans, American Indians, pre-Aztecs…”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Thrasymedes. “We do not understand these words, Boman, son of Ardis.”

The tall man scratched his cheek. “Do you understand the idea of six million?”

No one did. Helen wondered if this Ardisian was fully sane.

“Imagine thirty Iliums, when its population was at its height,” said Boman. “That is how many people may come out of the Temple of the Blue Beam.”

Most in the Council chambers laughed. Helen noticed that neither Hector nor Thrasymedes did.

“This is why we’re going to be there to help,” said Boman. “We believe that you can repatriate your own people—the Greeks—with little problem. Of course, the houses and cities, temples and animals are gone, but there’s much wild game and you can breed the domesticated animal population up again in no time…”

Boman paused because most of the people were laughing or tittering again. Hector gestured for the Ardisian to continue, without explaining his error. The tall man had used the word for “fuck,” as it applies only to humans, when he had talked of breeding up the number of domesticated animals. Helen found herself amused.

“Anyway, we’ll be there and the moravecs will provide transport home for those… foreigners.” He used the proper word, “barbarians,” but he obviously wanted another one.

“Thank you,” said Hector. “Thrasymedes, if all your many peoples are there—from the Peloponnese, from the many islands such as Odysseus’ little Ithaca, from Attica and Boeotia and Molossi and Obestae and Chaldice and Bottiaei and Thrace, all the other areas your far-flung Greeks call home, what will you do then? You will have all those people in one place, but no cities, oxen, homes, or shelters.”

Thrasymedes nodded. “Noble Hector, our plan will be to dispatch five ships back to New Ilium immediately to inform you of our success. The rest of us shall stay with those freed from the blue beam at Delphi, organizing safe trips for families back to their homelands, finding a way to feed and shelter everyone until order is established.”

“That might take years,” said Deiphobus. Hector’s brother had never been a fan of the Delphi Expedition.

“It may well take years,” agreed Thrasymedes. “But what else is there to do but attempt to free our wives, mothers, grandfathers, children, slaves, and servants? It is our duty.”

“The Ardisian could fax there in a minute and free them in two,” came the resentful voice from the couch where he sat. Agamemnon.

Boman stepped back into the open space. “Noble Hector, King Agamemnon, nobles and worthies of this Council, we could do as Agamemnon says. And someday you will also fax… not freefax as we … Ardisians … do, but fax through places called faxnodes. You’re not near one here, but you will discover one or more back in Greece. But I digress… we could fax to Delphi and free the Greeks in hours and days, if not minutes, but you will understand when I say it is not right for us to do this. They are your people. Their future is your concern. Some months ago, we freed a mere nine thousand-some of our own people from another blue beam, and while we were grateful for the extra population, we found it difficult to care for even that few without much planning in anticipation. The world has too many voynix and calibani roaming in it, not to mention dinosaurs, Terror Birds, and other oddities you will discover when you leave the safety of New Ilium.

“We and our moravec allies will help you disperse the non-Greek population, if there is such in this blue beam, but the future of the Greek-speaking peoples must remain in your hands.”

This short speech, although barbaric in its grammar and syntax, was eloquent enough to earn the tall Ardisian a round of applause. Helen joined in. She wanted to meet this man.

Hector stepped into the center of the open area and turned in a full circle, meeting almost every individual’s gaze. “I call now for a vote. Simple majority rule. Those who agree that Thrasymedes and his expedition volunteers should leave for Delphi on the next good wind and tide, raise your fists. Those against the expedition, hold your palms down.”

There were a little more than a hundred people in the Joint Council meeting. Helen counted seventy-three raised fists—including her own—and only twelve palms down, including Deiphobus’ and, for some reason, Andromache’s.

There was much celebration inside and when the heralds announced the outcome to the tens of thousands in the central plaza and marketplace outside, the cheers echoed back off the new, low walls of New Ilium.

It was outside on the terrace that Hector came up to her. After a few words of greeting and comments on the chilled wine, he said, “I want so badly to go, Helen. I can’t stand the thought of this expedition leaving without me.”

Ah, thought Helen, this is the reason for Andromache’s no vote. Aloud she said, “You cannot possibly go, noble Hector. The city needs you.”

“Bah,” said Hector, swallowing the last of his wine and banging the cup down on a building stone that had not yet been set in place. “The city is under no threat. We’ve seen no other people in twelve months. We spent this time rebuilding our walls—such as they are—but we shouldn’t have bothered. There are no other people out there. Not in this region of the wide Earth, at least.”

“All the more reason for you to remain and watch over your people,” said Helen, smiling slightly. “To protect us from these dinosaurs and Terrible Birds our tall Ardisian tells us about.”

Hector caught the mischief in her eye and smiled back. Helen knew that she and Hector had always had this strange connection—part teasing, part flirting, part something deeper than a husband and wife’s connection. He said, “You don’t think your future husband will be adequate to protect our city from all threat, noble Helen?”

She smiled again. “I esteem your brother Deiphobus above most other men, my dear Hector, but I have not agreed to his marriage proposal.”

“Priam would have wished it,” said Hector. “Paris would have been pleased at the thought.”

Paris would have puked at the thought, thought Helen. She said, “Yes, your brother Paris would be happy to know that I married Deiphobus… or any noble brother in Priam’s line.” She smiled up at Hector again and was pleased to see his discomfort.

“Would you keep a secret if I tell you?” he asked, leaning close to her and speaking almost in a whisper.

“Of course,” she whispered back, thinking, If it is in my interest to do so.

“I plan to go with Thrasymedes and his expedition when it sails,” Hector said quietly. “Who knows if any of us will ever return? I will miss you, Helen.” He awkwardly touched her shoulder.

Helen of Troy set her smooth hand over his rough one, squeezing it between her soft shoulder and her soft palm. She looked deeply into his gray eyes. “If you go on this expedition, noble Hector, I will miss you almost as much as will your lovely Andromache.”

But not quite so much as Andromache will, thought Helen, since I will be a stowaway on this voyage if it costs me the last diamond and the last pearl of my sizeable fortune.

Still touching hands, she and Hector walked to the railing of the Council palace’s long stone porch. The crowds in the marketplace below were going mad with happiness.

In the center of the plaza, exactly where the old fountain had stood for centuries, the mob of drunken Greeks and Trojans, milling together like brothers and sisters, had pulled in a large wooden horse. The artifact was so large that it wouldn’t have fit through the Gaean Gate, if the Scaean Gate still stood. The lower, wider, topless gate, hastily erected near the place where the oak tree had stood, had no problem swinging wide for this effigy.

Some wag in the mob had decided that this horse was to be the symbol for the Fall of Ilium and today, on the anniversary of that Fall, they planned to burn the thing. Spirits were high.

Helen and Hector watched, their hands still touching lightly—silently but not without communication to each of them—as the mob set the torch to the giant horse and the thing, made mostly of dried driftwood, went up in seconds, driving the mob back, bringing the constables running with their shields and spears, and causing the noblemen and women on the long porch and balconies to murmur in disapproval.

Helen and Hector laughed aloud.

93

Seven years and five months after the Fall of Ilium:

Moira quantum teleported into the open meadow. It was a beautiful summer’s day. Butterflies hovered in the shade of the surrounding forest and bees hummed above clover.

A black Belt soldier moravec approached her carefully, spoke to her politely, and led her up the hill to where a small, open tent—more a colorful canvas pavilion on four poles, actually—flapped gently in the breeze from the south. There were tables in the shade of the canvas and half a dozen moravecs and men bent over them, studying or cleaning the scores of shards and artifacts laid out there.

The smallest figure at the table—he had his own high stool—turned, saw her, jumped down, and came out to greet her.

“Moira, what a pleasure,” said Mahnmut. “Please do come in out of the midday sun and have a cold drink.”

She walked into the shade with the little moravec. “Your sergeant said that you were expecting me,” she said.

“Ever since our conversation two years ago,” said Mahnmut. He went over to the refreshment table and came back with a glass of cold lemonade. The other moravecs and men there looked at her with curiosity, but Mahnmut did not introduce her. Not yet.

Moira gratefully sipped the lemonade, noticed the ice that they must QT or fax in from Ardis or some other community every day, and looked down and over the meadow. This patch ran a hilly mile or so to the river, between the forest to the north and the rough land to the south.

“Do you need the moravec troopers to keep away rubberneckers?” she asked. “Curious crowds?”

“More likely to interdict the occasional Terror Bird or young T-Rex,” said Mahnmut. “What on earth were the post-humans thinking, as Orphu likes to say.”

“Do you still see Orphu much?”

“Every day,” said Mahnmut. “I’ll see him this evening in Ardis for the play. Are you coming?”

“I might,” said Moira. “How did you know that I was invited?”

“You’re not the only one who speaks to Ariel now and again, my dear. More lemonade?”

“No, thank you.” Moira looked at the long meadow again. More than half of it had its top several layers of soil removed—not haphazardly, as from a mechanical earthmover, but carefully, lovingly, obsessively—the sod rolled back, strings and tiny pegs marking every incision, small signs and numbers everywhere, trenches ranging from a few inches in depth to several meters. “So do you think you’ve found it at last, friend Mahnmut?”

The little moravec shrugged. “It’s amazing how difficult it is to find precise coordinates for this little town in the records. It’s almost as if some… power… had removed all references, GPS coordinates, road signs, histories. It’s almost as if some … force … did not want us to find Stratford-on-Avon.”

Moira looked at him with her clear gray-blue eyes. “And why would any power… or force… not want you to find whatever you’re looking for, dear Mahnmut?”

He shrugged again. “It’d be just a guess, but I would say because they—this hypothetical power or force—didn’t mind human beings loose and happy and breeding on the planet again, but they have second thoughts about having a certain human genius back again.”

Moira said nothing.

“Here,” said Mahnmut, drawing her over to a nearby table with all of the enthusiasm of a child, “look at this. One of our volunteers found this yesterday on site three-oh-nine.”

He held up a broken slab of stone. There were strange scratches on the dirty rock.

“I can’t quite make that out,” said Moira.

“We couldn’t either at first,” said Mahnmut. “It took Dr. Hockenberry to help us know what we were looking at. Do you see how this forms IUM and here below US and AER and here ET?”

“If you say so,” said Moira.

“It does. We know what this is now. It’s part of an inscription below a bust—a bust of him—that, according to our records, once read—‘JUDICO PYLIUM, GENIO SCORATUM, ARTE MARONEM: TERRA TEGIT, POPULUS MAERET, OLYMPUS HABET.’ ”

“I’m afraid I’m a bit rusty on my Latin,” said Moira.

“Many of us were,” said Mahnmut. “It translates—THE EARTH COVERS ONE WHO IS A NESTOR IN JUDGEMENT; THE PEOPLE MOURN FOR A SOCRATES IN GENIUS; OLYMPUS HAS A VIRGIL IN ART.”

“Olympus,” repeated Moira as if musing to herself.

“It was part of an inscription under a bust the townspeople had made of him, and set in stone in the chancelry of Trinity Church after he was interred there. The rest of the inscription is in English. Would you like to hear it, Moira?”

“Of course.”

“STAY PASSENGER, WHY GOEST BY SO FAST?

READ IF THOU CANST, WHOM ENVIOUS DEATH HATH

PLAST,

WITH IN THIS MONUMENT SHAKSPEARE: WITH

WHOME.

QUICK NATURE DIDE: WHOSE NAME DOTH DECK YS

TOMBE, FAR MORE THEN COST: SIEH ALL, YtHE HATH WRITT, LEAVES LIVING ART, BUT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.”

“Very nice,” said Moira. “And quite helpful for your search, I would imagine.”

Mahnmut ignored the sarcasm. “It’s dated the day he died, the twenty-third of April, 1616.”

“But you haven’t found the actual grave.”

“Not yet,” admitted Mahnmut.

“Wasn’t there some headstone or inscription there, as well?” she asked innocently.

Mahnmut studied her face for a moment. “Yes,” he said at last. “Something cut into the actual grave slab set over his bones.”

“Didn’t it say something about—oh …’Stay away, moravecs. Go home?’ ”

“Not quite,” said Mahnmut. “The grave slab is supposed to have read—

“GOOD FRIEND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE,

TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOSED HEARE:

BLESTE BE YE MAN TY SPARES THESE STONES,

AND CURST BE HE TY MOVES MY BONES.”

“Doesn’t that curse worry you a little?” asked Moira.

“No,” said Mahnmut. “You’re confusing me with Orphu of Io. He’s the one who watched all those Universal flatfilm horror movies from the Twentieth Century… you know, Curse of the Mummy and all that.”

“Still …” said Moira.

“Are you going to stop us from finding him, Moira?” asked Mahnmut.

“My dear Mahnmut, you must know by now that we don’t want to interfere with you, the old-styles, our new guests from Greece and Asia… with none of you. Have we thus far?”

Mahnmut said nothing.

Moira touched his shoulder. “But with this… project. Don’t you sometimes feel as if you’re playing God. Just a little bit?”

“Have you met Dr. Hockenberry?” asked Mahnmut.

“Of course. I spoke to him only last week.”

“Odd, he didn’t mention that,” said Mahnmut. “Thomas volunteers here at the dig at least a day or two every week. No, but what I meant to say was that the post-humans and the Olympian gods certainly ‘played God’ when they re-created Dr. Hockenberry’s body and personality and memories from bits of bone, old data files, and DNA. But it worked out all right. He’s a fine person.”

“He certainly seems to be,” said Moira. “And I understand he’s writing a book.”

“Yes,” said Mahnmut. The moravec seemed to have lost his train of thought.

“Well, good luck again,” said Moira, holding out her hand. “And do give my best to Prime Integrator Asteague/Che when you see him next. Do tell him that I so enjoyed the tea we had at the Taj.” She shook the little moravec’s hand and began to walk toward the line of trees to the north.

“Moira,” called Mahnmut.

She paused and looked back.

“Did you say you were coming to the play tonight?” called Mahnmut.

“Yes, I think I will.”

“Will we see you there?”

“I’m not sure,” said the young woman. “But I’ll see you there.” She continued walking toward the forest.

94

Seven years and five months after the Fall of Ilium:

My name is Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., Hockenbush to my friends. I have no friends alive who call me that. Or rather, the friends who once might have called me that—Hockenbush, a nickname from my undergraduate days at Wabash College—have long since turned to dust on this world where so many things have turned to dust.

I lived fifty-some years on that first good Earth, and have been gifted with a bit more than twelve rich years in this second life—at Ilium, on Olympos, in a place called Mars although I didn’t know it was Mars until my last days there, and now back here. Home. On sweet Earth again.

I have much to tell. The bad news is that I have lost all the recordings I have made over the past twelve years as both scholic and scholar—the voice stones I handed to my Muse with each day’s observation of the Trojan War, my own scribbled notes, even the moravec recorder I used to describe the last days of Zeus and Olympos. I lost them all.

It doesn’t matter. I remember it all. Every face. Every man and woman. Every name.

Those who know say that one of the wonderful things about Homer’s Iliad is that no man died nameless in his telling. They all fell heavily, those heroes, those brutal heroes, and when they fell they went down, as another scholar said—I’m paraphrasing here—they went down heavily, crashing down with all their weapons and their armor and their possessions and their cattle and their wives and their slaves going down with them. And their names. No man died nameless or without weight in Homer’s Iliad.

If I tried to tell my tale, I would try to do as well.

But where to start?

If I am to be the Chorus of this tale—willing or unwilling—then I can start wherever I choose. I choose to start it here, by telling you where I live.

I enjoyed my months with Helen in New Ilium while that city rebuilt itself, the Greeks helping after the agreement with Hector that the Trojans would help them build their long ships in return, once the city’s walls were up again. Once the city lived again.

It never died. You see, Ilium—Troy—was its people… Hector, Helen, Andromache, Priam, Cassandra, Deiphobus, Paris… hell, even that ornery Hypsipyle. Some of those people died, but some survived. The city lived as long as they did. Virgil understood that.

So I can’t be Homer for you and I can’t even be Virgil telling the tale from the time of the fall of Troy… not enough time has passed for that part to become much of a story, although I hear that might be changing. I’ll be watching and listening as long as I am living.

But I live here now. In Ardis Town.

Not Ardis. A big house has gone back up on the broad meadow far up the hill a mile and a half from the old fax pavilion, a big house very near where Ardis Hall once rose, and Ada lives there yet with her family, but this place is Ardis Town, no longer Ardis.

There are a few more than twenty-eight thousand of us here in Ardis Town now, according to the last tax census—taken just five months ago. There is a community up on the hill, scattered around Ada’s new home of Ardis House, but most of the town is down here, spread along the new road that runs from the fax pavilion down along the river. Here is where the mills are, and the real marketplace, and the tanners’ smelly buildings, and the printing press and paper, and too many bars and whorehouses, and two synagogues, and one church that might best be described as the First Church of Chaos, and some good restaurants, and the stockyards—which smell almost as bad as the tannery—and a library (I helped bring that into being) and a school, although most of the children still live in or around Ardis House. Most of the students in our Ardis Town are adults, learning to read and write.

About half our residents are Greek and half are Jewish. They tend to get along. Most days.

The Jews have the advantage of being fully functioned; that is, they can freefax wherever the hell they want to go whenever the hell they want to do it. (I can do that as well… not fax, but QT. It’s in my cells and DNA, you know, written there by whoever or Whoever designed me. But I don’t QT as much any more. I like slower forms of transportation.)

I do help Mahnmut with his Find Will project, at least once a week if I can. You’ve already heard about that. I don’t think he ever will find his Will, and I suspect he believes that also. It’s become a sort of hobby for him and Orphu of Io, and I help out in the same spirit of “what the hell.” None of us—not even Mahnmut, I think—believes that Prospero, Moira, Ariel, any of the Powers That Be… even this Quiet we keep hearing so much about… are going to allow our little moravec to find and recombine the bones and DNA of William Shakespeare. I don’t blame the Powers That Be for feeling threatened.

The play is going on up at Ardis this evening. You’ve heard about that as well. Many of us in Ardis Town are going up the hill to it, although I confess the hill is steep, the road and stairs are dusty, and I may pay fivepence to ride up in one of the steam coaches that Hannah’s company runs. I just wish the damned things weren’t so noisy.

Speaking of finding and not finding someone, I don’t believe I’ve told you how I found my old friend Keith Nightenhelser.

The last I’d seen of my friend, he’d been with a prehistorical Indian tribe in the wilderness of what would once be Indiana—say in three thousand more years. It was a hell of a place for him and I felt guilty because I’d put him there. The idea was to keep him safe during the war between the heroes and the gods, but when I went back to look for old Nightenhelser, the Indians were gone and so was he.

And Patroclus—a very pissed-off Patroclus—was wandering around there somewhere as well, and I suspected that Nightenhelser had not survived.

But I freefaxed to Delphi three and a half months ago when Thrasymedes, Hector, and his crowd of adventurers interdicted the Delphi blue beam and lo and behold, in about the eighth hour of people emerging stunned from that little building—it reminded me of the old circus act where a tiny little car would drive up and fifty clowns would climb out—about eight hours into the people, mostly Greeks, emerging from that building, here comes my friend Nightenhelser. (We always called each other by our last names.)

Nightenhelser and I bought this place where I’m sitting and writing this now. We’re partners. (Please note—I mean business partners, and good friends, of course, but not partners in the strange Twenty-first Century use of that word when it came to two men. I mean, I didn’t go from Helen of Troy to Nightenhelser of Ardis Town. I have problems, but not in that particular arena of confusion.)

I wonder what Helen would think of our tavern? It’s called Dombey & Son—the name was Nightenhelser’s suggestion, far too cute for my taste—and it gets a lot of business. It’s fairly clean compared to the other places strung along the riverbank here like shingles overhanging an old roof. Our barmaids are barmaids and not whores (at least not here or on our time or in our tavern). The beer is the best we can buy—Hannah, who is, I’m told, Ardis’s first millionaire of the new era, owns another company that makes the beer. Evidently brewing was something she learned about when studying sculpture and metal pouring. Don’t ask me why.

Do you see why I hesitate to tell this epic tale? I can’t keep my storytelling on a straight line. I tend to wander.

Perhaps I’ll bring Helen here someday and ask her what she thinks of the place.

But rumor has it that Helen cut her hair, dressed up like a boy, and went off on the Delphi adventure with Hector and Thrasymedes, with both men following her around like puppies after a bone. (Another reason I hesitate to begin telling this epic tale—I was never worth a damn with metaphors or similes. As Nightenhelser once said—I’m trope-ically challenged. Never mind.)

Rumor has it, hell. I know Helen is with the Delphi Expedition. I saw her there. She looks good in short hair and with a tan. Really good. Not like my Helen, but healthy and very beautiful.

I could tell you more about my place and more about Ardis Town—what politics looks like when it’s in its infancy (just about as useless and smelly as an infant) or what the people are like here, Greeks and Jews, functioned and non-functioned, believers, and cynics… but that’s not part of this tale.

Also, as I will discover later this evening, I’m not the real teller. I’m not the chosen Bard. I know that makes no sense to you now, but wait just a while here, and you’ll see what I mean.

These last eighteen years have not been easy for me, especially not the first eleven. I feel as scarred and pitted psychologically and emotionally as old Orphu of Io’s shell is physically. (He lives up the hill at Ardis most of the time. You will see him a little later, too. He’s going to the play tonight, but he always has an appointment with the kids each afternoon. That’s what tipped me off to the fact that even all my years as scholar and scholic did not make me the chosen one to tell this particular tale when the time comes to tell it.)

Yes, these last eighteen years, expecially the first eleven, have been tough, but I guess I feel richer for them. I hope you do when you hear the tale. If you don’t, it’s not my fault—I abdicate in the telling, although my memories are free for anyone who wants to borrow them.

I apologize. I have to go now. The afterwork crowd is coming in—the daytime tannery shift is just getting off, can you smell them? One of my barmaids is sick and another has just eloped with one of the young Athenians who chose to come here after Delphi and… well… I’m shorthanded. My bartender comes in for the evening shift in forty-five minutes, but until then, I’d better draw the beers and slice the roast beef for the sandwiches myself.

My name is Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., and I think the “Ph.D.” stands for “Pouring His Draft.”

Sorry. Humor never was, except for a few literary puns and belabored jokes, my strong point.

I’ll see you at the afternoon storytelling, before the play.

95

Seven years and five months after the Fall of Ilium:

On the day of the play, Harman had business in the Dry Valley. After lunch, he dressed in his combat suit and thermskin, borrowed an energy weapon from the Ardis House armory, and freefaxed down there.

The excavation of the post-humans’ stasis dome was going well. Walking between the huge excavation machines, avoiding the down-blast of a transport hornet hauling things north, it was hard for Harman to believe that eight and a half years earlier he’d come to this same dry valley with young Ada, the incredibly young Hannah, and the pudgy boy-man Daeman in search of clues about the Wandering Jew—the mystery woman he discovered was named Savi.

Actually, part of the blue stasis dome had been buried directly under the boulder where Savi had left her scratched clues leading them to her home on Mount Erebus. Even then, Savi had known that Harman was the only old-style human on Earth who could read those scratches.

The two supervisors on the stasis-dome excavation here were Raman and Alcinuous. They were doing a good job. Harman went down the checklist with them to make sure they knew which gear was destined for which community—the bulk of the energy weapons were destined for Hughes Town and Chom; the thermskins were going to Bellinbad; the crawlers were promised to Ulanbat and the Loman Estate; New Ilium had made a strong bid for the older flechette rifles.

Harman had to smile at this. Ten more years and the Trojans and Greeks would be using the same technology as the old-styles, even using the pavilion nodes to fax everywhere. Some of the Delphi group had already discovered the node near Olympus… the ancient town where the Games were held, not the mountain.

Well, he thought, the only solution was to stay ahead of them—in technology and everything else.

It was time to go home. But first Harman had one stop he wanted to make. He shook hands with Alcinuous and Raman and freefaxed away.

Harman had come back to the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu, the place where he had been given his life back seven and a half years earlier. He freefaxed not to the Bridge itself, but to a ridgeline across the valley from the bridge and the high ruins on the terrace of Machu Picchu. He never tired of looking at the ancient structure, the green habitation globules hardly visible from this distance, but he’d come back not just out of sentiment.

He was to meet someone here.

Harman watched the early afternoon clouds shift up the valley from the direction of the waterfall. For a while, the sunlight turned the mists to gold, half obscuring the ruins of Machu Picchu, making them appear as half-glimpsed stepping-stones there beyond the old Bridge’s span. Everywhere Harman looked, life was winning its anti-entropic battle against chaos and energy loss—the grass on the hillsides, the canopy of trees in the mist-shrouded valley, the condors circling slowly on thermals, the tatters of blowing moss on the suspension cables of the Bridge itself, even the rust-colored lichen on the rocks near Harman.

As if to distract him from thoughts about life and living things, a very artificial spaceship rocketed from south to north across the sky, its long contrail slowly breaking up in the jet steam high above the Andes. Before Harman could be sure of the make and model of the ship, the gleaming speck was gone over the northern horizon behind the ruins, trailed by three sonic booms. It had been too large and too fast to be one of the hornets hauling gear north from the Dry Valley. Harman wondered if perhaps it was Daeman, returning from one of their joint expeditions with the moravecs, plotting and recording the decreasing quantum disturbances between Earth-system and Mars.

We have our own spacecraft now, thought Harman. He smiled at his own hubris at even thinking such a thing. But the thought still made him warm inside. Then he reminded himself that we have our own spacecraft, but we can’t yet build our own spacecraft.

Harman hoped he would live long enough to see that. This led his thoughts to the search for the rejuvenation vats in the polar and equatorial rings

“Good afternoon,” said a familiar voice behind him.

Harman raised the energy weapon out of habit and training, but lowered it even before he’d fully turned. “Good afternoon, Prospero,” he said.

The old magus stepped out of a niche in the rocks. “You’re wearing a full combat suit, my young friend. Did you expect to find me armed?”

Harman smiled. “I’ll never find you without weapons.”

“If one counts wit as a weapon,” said Prospero.

“Or guile,” said Harman.

The magus moved his veined old hands as if in defeat. “Ariel said you wished to see me. Is it about the situation in China?”

“No,” said Harman, “we’ll deal with that later. I came to remind you about the play.”

“Ah,” said Prospero, “the play.”

“You’ve forgotten? Or decided not to come?” said Harman. “Everyone will be disappointed except your understudy if you’re not coming.”

Prospero smiled. “So many lines to learn, my young Prometheus.”

“Not so many as you gave us,” said Harman.

Prospero opened his hands again.

“Shall I tell the understudy that he has to go on?” asked Harman. “He’ll be thrilled to do so.”

“Perhaps I would like to attend after all,” said the magus. “But must it be as a performer, not as a guest?”

“For this play, it must be as a performer,” said Harman. “When we do Henry IV, you can be our honored guest.”

“Actually,” said Prospero, “I’ve always wanted to play Sir John Falstaff.”

Harman’s laugh echoed off the crags and cliff face. “So I can tell Ada that you’ll be there and will stay for refreshments and conversation afterward?”

“I look forward to the conversation,” said the solid hologram, “if not to the stage fright.”

“Well …” said Harman, “break a leg.” He nodded and freefaxed away.

At Ardis House, he checked in his weapon and the combat suit, pulled on canvas jeans and a tunic, slipped on light shoes, and walked out to the north meadow where final preparations were going on at the playhouse. Men were rigging the colored lights that would hang over the rows of freshly sawed wooden seats and over the beer gardens and in the trellises. Hannah was busy testing the sound system from the stage. Some of the volunteers were slapping a final coat of paint on backdrops and someone kept drawing the curtain to and fro.

Ada saw him and tried walking with their two-year-old, Sarah, but the toddler was tired and fussy, so Ada swept her up and carried her up the grassy hill to her father. Harman kissed both of them, and then kissed Ada again.

She looked back at the stage and rows of seats, pulled a long strand of black hair out of her face, and said, “The Tempest? Do you really think we’re all ready for this?”

Harman shrugged, then put his arm around her shoulders. “It was next.”

“Is our star really coming?” she asked, leaning back against him. Sarah whimpered and shifted position a little bit so that her cheek was touching both her parents’ shoulders.

“He says he is,” said Harman, not believing it himself.

“It would have been nice if he’d rehearsed with the others,” said Ada.

“Well… we can’t ask for everything.”

“Can’t we?” said Ada, giving him the look that had typed her as the dangerous sort to Harman more than eight years ago.

A sonie rocketed low over the trees and houses, sweeping low toward the river and the town. “I hope that was one of the idiot adult males and not one of the boys,” said Ada.

“Speaking of boys,” said Harman. “Where’s ours? I didn’t see him this morning and I want to say hello.”

“He’s on the porch, getting ready for story time,” said Ada.

“Ah, story time,” said Harman. He turned to walk toward the dell in the south meadow where story time usually took place, but Ada gripped his arm.

“Harman…”

He looked at her.

“Mahnmut arrived a while ago. He says that Moira may be coming to the play tonight.”

He took her hand. “Well, that’s good… isn’t it?”

Ada nodded. “But if Prospero is here, and Moira, and you said you invited Ariel, although he wouldn’t play the part… what if Caliban comes?”

“He’s not invited,” said Harman.

She squeezed his hand to show that she was serious.

Harman pointed to the sites around the playhouse, trellised beer gardens, and house where the guards would be posted with their energy rifles.

“But the children will be at the play,” said Ada. “The people from the town…”

Harman nodded, still holding her hand. “Caliban can QT here any time he wants, my love. He hasn’t done so yet.”

She nodded slightly but she did not release his hand.

Harman kissed her. “Elian has been rehearsing Caliban’s moves and lines for five weeks,” he said. “Be not afeard. This isle is full of noises,/Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.”

“I wish that were always so,” said Ada.

“I do, too, my love. But we both know—you better than I—that it’s not the case. Shall we go watch John enjoy story hour?”

Orphu of Io was still blind, but the parents were never afraid he’d bump into something or hit anyone, even as the eight or nine boldest children of Ardis piled on his huge shell, climbing barefoot to find a perch. The tradition had become for the kids to ride Orphu down to the dell for the story hour. John, at a little over seven one of the oldest, sat at the highest point on that shell.

The big moravec proceeded slowly on its silent repellors, moving almost solemnly—except for the explosion of giggles from the children riding and the shouts from the other children trailing behind—carrying them from the porch down past the old elm to the dell between the bushes and the new houses.

In the shallow depression, magically out of sight of the houses and other adults except for the parents of some of those here, the children clambered off and sprawled on the banks of the grassy bowl. John sat the closest to Orphu, as he usually did. He looked back, saw his father, and waved but did not come back to say hello. The story came first.

Harman, still standing with Ada, Sarah snoring in his arms now—Ada’s arm having almost fallen asleep—noticed Mahnmut standing near the line of hedges. Harman nodded but the small moravec’s attention was on his old friend and the children.

“Tell the Gilgamesh story again,” shouted one of the bolder six-year-old boys.

The huge crab-monster slowly moved its carapace back and forth, as if shaking its head no. “That story’s finished for now,” rumbled Orphu. “Today we start a new one.”

The children cheered.

“This one is going to take a long time to tell,” said Orphu, his rumble sounding reassuring and engaging even to Harman.

The children cheered again. Two of the boys tumbled and rolled down the little hill together.

“Listen carefully,” said Orphu. One of his long, articulated manipulators had carefully separated the boys and set them gently on the slope, a few feet apart. Their attention turned immediately to the big moravec’s booming, mesmerizing voice.

“Rage—Sing, Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down into Hades’ Dark House so many sturdy souls, great fighters’ souls, heroes’ souls, but also made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, even as Zeus’s will was done. Begin, O Muse, when the two first argued and clashed, the Greek king Agamemnon, lord of men, and the brilliant, godlike Achilles…”