The Age of Zeus

34. LAKESIDE ENCOUNTER

S am uncoupled her helmet from her gorget and took it off. Then she knelt down by the lake's edge and splashed a handful of water onto her face. The water was alpine-cold, icily invigorating. She scooped up some more to dampen her head with. Suit microclimate notwithstanding, it got hot inside the helmet and her scalp itched with sweat. Having long hair didn't help. The other female Titans had taken to cutting theirs short — Hamel's was so close-cropped now it was more pelt than hair — but Sam had always liked the feel of her own locks brushing her shoulders. Always liked how long hair looked on her, too. Vain, but there you go. Ade had dubbed her his "Pre-Raphaelite angel" and she wasn't sure he'd known precisely what he was talking about — she herself thought that, being auburn, she was more a "Titian" than anything — but he'd meant it as the highest of compliments and he would usually say it while stroking her head lovingly, in a voice husky with postcoital contentment, and the aftermath of a bout of vigorous sex was not the moment to start challenging a man on his grasp of art history terminology.

The lake was near the top of the tree line, a slender finger of water whose surface mirrored the oaks and pines around it and the snowy peaks above. On the advice of the Resistenza, the Titans were venturing up into the mountains in their search for the Minotaur. Galetti had said the monster often retreated to the higher altitudes between attacks. Why? How should he know? To get away from people, was his guess. People seemed to plague it as much as it plagued them. Maybe even monsters needed to be on their own from time to time.

The op, in its present incarnation, was pure reconnaissance. The Titans and twenty-plus RCDC members were combing the area singly, spaced out at one-kilometre intervals in order to cover as much ground as possible. Once the Minotaur was located, all forces would reconvene and an attempt would be made to herd the beast downhill. So far the Corsicans had been diligent collaborators and Sam had had little reason to worry about them. They were a taciturn lot, surly their default setting, all of them fond of a cigarette and a good throaty expectoration and all of them sporting a motley selection of bad heavy metal band T-shirts and even worse moustaches. But their hatred of the Minotaur was palpable, as was their enthralment with the Titans and their battlesuits. Furthermore, Galetti appeared to have them fully under his control and would keep them honest, and his obvious infatuation with Sam herself would, she thought, keep him honest.

She drenched her head a final time, then settled back against a rock, lifted her face to the sun, and closed her eyes. Just a few moments' rest. She deserved it. Needed it, too. Last night had been her and Ramsay's second night together. Sober this time, they had been less rushed, nowhere near as frantic as before. They had taken longer, savouring the intimacy, and it had been good. Very good. And afterwards Sam had returned to her tent, because they were agreed that no one should know, they were going to be professional about this; and she'd lain in the chilly cocoon of her own sleeping bag, awake into the small hours, wondering why she felt so guilty. Was it because she felt she was betraying Ade? But how could you betray a lover who'd been dead nearly three years? He was a memory, that was all, and you couldn't cheat on a memory. Unless the memory was as vivid as hers was of Ade. Then perhaps you could.

The solution had come to her at three in the morning, just as she was lapsing into an uneasy sleep.

You have to start forgetting about him.

With the sun making dazzle-patterns behind her eyelids and her skin warming as the water evaporated, she pondered this. Forgetting about Ade — it seemed like another kind of betrayal. Realistically, though, how long could she keep on mourning him and missing him? Hadn't she done so enough?

Besides, Ramsay was no Ade. He was about as far from Ade as you could get. Where Ade had been thoughtful and consistently self-effacing, Ramsay was impulsive and at times insufferably smug. So it wasn't as if she could be said to be replacing Ade with another version of him, upgrading to Ade 2.0, as it were. Perhaps that was Ramsay's great attraction to her, that he wasn't a substitute or a surrogate, he was something else. Perhaps she liked him, and had chosen to sleep with him, because he was far outside her zone of -

A sound.

A heavy footfall.

And then… a snort of breath?

Sam's eyes snapped open.

Across the lake, some 20 metres further along its opposite bank, the Minotaur stepped out from the forest.

Sam found that all at once she couldn't inhale. Her heart seemed to be obstructing her windpipe.

The Minotaur didn't look in her direction. It didn't appear to realise she was there… yet. It halted beside the lake, then squatted on its massive haunches, reached down with cupped hands, lifted water to its bovine maw and lapped with a long, slurping, bright pink tongue.

The breeze changed direction slightly, and Sam, downwind, caught a whiff of a powerful musk coming from the creature. She couldn't help noticing, too, even as she stared in horror, that the Minotaur was prodigiously well-endowed. What looked like a black butternut squash and a pair of oranges in a black sac hung between its legs.

The Minotaur drank for several minutes, using its hands as a bowl, till its thirst was slaked. Then it gave a deep, satisfied grunt and shook its head so that droplets flew from its floppy lips and whiskery chin.

By that point Sam had recovered her wits. Her right hand was edging towards her submachine gun while her left was busy stealthily unclipping a grenade from her hip. She had no wish to tackle the Minotaur on her own, but if she had to, she had to. Everything depended on what the Minotaur itself did next.

Behind her a bird shot abruptly from the treetops with a raucous clapping of wings. The Minotaur started in surprise. It swivelled its head, scanning the other side of the lake. Its gaze roved to and fro. Sam froze. Those eyes — black pupils swimming in pools of red — swept straight over her, twice, without stopping. Had it seen her? Sam hoped not, and the hope became a conviction. A thought had occurred to her. Cattle had poor vision. Ade's father, a large-animal vet, had told her that. Cattle were near-sighted, with a huge blindspot for middle-distance objects dead ahead. That was why you approached a bull slowly and from an angle, so as not to startle it. And maybe a man-bull's vision wasn't much better.

The monster bowed its head, seeming to have found nothing to trouble it. Keeping stock-still, Sam watched as it began peering intently into the lake. She couldn't fathom what it was so fascinated by all at once. A fish? Then the penny dropped.

The Minotaur was studying its own reflection.

It tilted its head to one side then the other. One hand probed its massive horns then the contours of its heavy overhanging brow, as though these things were unfamiliar and felt wrong. The Minotaur was inspecting its features in the manner of Narcissus — but unlike Narcissus it did not like what it saw.

The monster let out a profound, dolorous bellow. Then it began pounding the water, fists scattering its reflection into a million ripples and then scattering those ripples. Finally it collapsed into a sitting position on the bank, now beating rocks rather than the lake. Its torso swayed and its mouth gaped in a soundless lament.

It knows, Sam thought, with an inward gasp. It knows it's a monster.

Her astonishment rapidly gave way to something akin to pity. Somehow this creature, this hideous half-breed thing, was aware of its own unnaturalness. It couldn't bear to look at itself. It didn't want to be what it was. Trapped inside it was some dim spark of a sentience that was more than animal — that was, could only be, human.

Unconsciously, Sam let go of grenade and gun.

At last the Minotaur clambered to its feet and stalked off into the trees, head hanging low.

Sam slipped her helmet on.

"All Titans, this, uh, this is Tethys reporting it. I have a sighting. Repeat, I have a confirmed sighting of the target."

"You OK, Tethys? You don't sound right."

"I'm fine, Hyperion. Absolutely fine. Relay the message to Galetti on the RCDC's shortwave frequency, then let's make for the rendezvous point."

She was already thinking the unthinkable, trying to work out how she could take the Minotaur alive.

It was madness.

That didn't mean it was wrong, though.