Ilium (40 page)

Mahnmut shrugged despite the fact that his friend, invisible under the tarp rigged on the mid-deck, couldn’t see him. “Well, it didn’t have propellers,” he said. “I’ll download you the data, but it looked to me like the awkward thing was surfing on a curl of quantum distortion.”

“Peculiar,” said Orphu. “But even a thousand such flying machines couldn’t explain the locus of quantum distortion Ri Po recorded on Olympus Mons.”

“No,” agreed Mahnmut. “At least this . . . god . . . didn’t see us.”

There was a pause in the conversation and Mahnmut listened to the crash of the felucca’s bow against the waves and the flap of the lateen-rigged canvas as the big sails filled with wind again. There was a soft wind-strum through the rigging up where Mahnmut was, and he enjoyed the sound of it. He also enjoyed the less-than-gentle pitch and roll of the ship as it tacked, even while he compensated for it easily as he clung to the mast with one hand, his other hand on a taut line. They were deep into the widest section of the flooded rift valley now, in an area called Melas Chasma, with the huge, radiating sub-sea of Candor Chasma opening up to the north and the seabed more than eight kilometers beneath them, but there were cliffs belonging to huge islands—some several hundred kilometers long and thirty or forty kilometers across—visible on the horizon to the south.

“Perhaps he saw you and just radioed back to Olympus for reinforcements,” suggested Orphu.

Mahnmut sent the radio static equivalent of a sigh. “Always the optimist,” he said.

“Realist,” amended Orphu. But the tone of the next broadcast was serious. “You know, Mahnmut, that you’ll have to talk to the little green men again soon. We have too many questions that need answering.”

“I know,” said Mahnmut. The thought made him vaguely ill in a way that the pitching and rolling of the felucca never could.

“Perhaps we should inflate and launch the balloon sooner rather than later,” Orphu suggested again. Mahnmut had spent several days cobbling together a wider, broader gondola from the bamboo-three of the first one and some borrowed planks from one of the felucca’s less essential bulkheads. The LGM had not seemed to mind his borrowing their boards.

“I still don’t think we should launch yet,” said Mahnmut. “We’re not even sure about the prevailing winds this month, and the pulse-thrusters won’t give us much steering once the balloon gets up into the Martian jetstream. We’d better get as close to Olympus as we can before we risk the balloon.”

“I agree,” said Orphu after a silence, “but it is time we talked to the LGM again. I have a theory that it’s not telepathy that they’re using—either when they communicate with you or pass information among themselves.”

“No?” said Mahnmut, looking down at a dozen of the little green men as they came up from the oardecks and began working efficiently on the forward rigging. “I can’t imagine what else it could be. They certainly don’t have mouths or ears, and they’re not transmitting data on any radio, tightbeam, maser, or light frequency.”

“I think the information is in the particles in their bodies,” said Orphu. “Nanopackets of encoded information. That’s why they insist you use your hand to grasp that internal organ—it’s a sort of telegraph-central—and your hand, as opposed to, say, your general manipulators, is organic. Living molecular machines can pass into your bloodstream via osmosis and travel to your organic brain, where the same nanobytes help translate.”

“Then how do they communicate among themselves?” asked Mahnmut, dubious. He’d liked the telepathy theory.

“The same way,” said Orphu. “Touch. Their skins are semipermeable, probably with data passing to and fro with every casual contact.”

“I don’t know,” said Mahnmut. “Remember how this crew seemed to know everything about us when the felucca arrived? Where we were going? I had the feeling that our presence had been broadcast telepathically all along the little green man psychic network.”

“Yes, it appeared that way to me as well,” said Orphu, “but besides the fact that neither human nor moravec science has ever established even a theoretical framework for telepathy, Occam’s razor would dictate that the felucca crew learned of us through simple physical contact with the LGM at our landing site—or from others who had been there.”

“Nanopackets of data in the bloodstream, eh?” said Mahnmut, allowing the skepticism to be audible in his tone. “But one of these individuals still has to die if I’m going to ask more questions.”

“Regrettably,” said Orphu, not bringing up his earlier arguments that individual LGM probably had no more autonomous personality than did human skin cells.

Several of the little men were clambering on the forward mast near Mahnmut now, tying off lines and sliding down the lateen sail with the ease of acrobats. They nodded their green heads amicably as they passed on their way up or down.

“I think I’ll wait until later to ask them,” said Mahnmut. “There’s a huge brown-red cloud on the southern horizon right now, and they’ll need all hands to get the ship ready for the coming storm.”

27

The Trojans are massacring the Greeks. My students in my other life would have said that they’re “decimating” the Greeks, using that term for total destruction so loved by late Twentieth and early Twenty-first Century lazy journalists and illiterate TV anchorpersons, but since “to decimate” was a precise term—the Romans killing every tenth man in a village in response to uprisings—and that would only result in 10 percent casualties, it’s fair to say that they’re doing much worse than decimating the Greeks.

The Trojans are
massacring
the Greeks.

After Zeus’s ultimatum to the other gods, he QT’s to Earth in his golden chariot and lands on the slopes of Mount Ida, the tallest mountain within easy god-view of Ilium, and assumes his oversized throne on the mountaintop there, gazing down and out at the high walls of the city and the hundreds of Achaean warships on the beach and at anchor offshore. The other gods are too intimidated to come down to play after Zeus’s demonstration of raw power, so the Father of the Gods holds out his golden scales and weighs the fates of death for the men below—one weight molded in the form of a Trojan horseman, the other an Argive spearman armored in bronze.

Zeus raises high the sacred scales, holding the beam mid-haft, and down goes the Achaeans’ day of doom while the fortunes of Troy go lifting skyward. Zeus smiles at this, and I’m close enough to see that the old bastard had his thumb on the scales.

The Trojans come broiling out of their city gates like hornets out of a disturbed hive. The sky is low, gray, seething with dark energy, and Zeus’s thunderbolts strike the battlefield frequently—and always among the Argives and long-haired Achaeans. Clearly seeing the signs of the displeasure of the King of the Gods, the Greeks still surge forward to fight—what else can they do?—and the plains of Ilium echo to the crash of shields pounded hide to hide, the scrape of pike, the rumble of chariots, and the screams of dying men and horses.

It goes badly for the Achaeans from the start. Lightning strikes among them, frying men like bronze-clad chickens on a rotisserie. Hector charges forward like a force of nature, and the quiet man I admired on the walls of Ilium with his wife and child is gone, replaced by a bloodied berserker cutting men down like stalks of grass and screaming to his followers for more blood, more carnage. His followers obey, the entire Trojan army and allies shouting as if from a single throat and surging forward en masse, rolling over the retreating Achaeans like a bronze-and-leather tsunami.

Paris—whom I dismissed as a fop in my description of his meeting with Hector only the day before and then proceeded to cuckold—rides near Hector and also comes on like some demon-possessed killing machine. Paris’s killing expertise is archery, and on this day his long arrows never seem to miss. Achaeans and Argives drop with Paris’s long-shaft arrows in their throats, hearts, genitals, and eyes. Every shot is a hit.

Hector slashes his way through every pocket of Greek resistance, hacking necks like daisy stems, offering no quarter and hearing no pleas for mercy in the deafness of his killing frenzy. When Achaeans manage to rally against the Trojan onslaught in a brave clump of resistance here or there, a bolt of blue energy from the roiling clouds explodes among them like a cosmic grenade and the thunder that follows mixes with the cries of dying men.

Ideomeneus and the great king Agamemnon cut and run. Then Big and Little Ajax, campaigners of a thousand battles, lose heart and flee the field. Odysseus, the “long-enduring,” can’t endure this slaughter and decides that the greater part of valor must reside in the safety of his ships back on the beach. He runs damned fast for a short-legged man. The only man who doesn’t turn and flee is old Nestor, and that’s only because Helen’s husband has put an arrow through the skull of Nestor’s lead horse, tangling the other steeds in their panic. Nestor cuts the traces clear with his sword, obviously with every intent of vacating the battlefield as fast as he can, but Hector’s chariot surges forward, the men around Nestor fall dead with Paris’s arrows protruding from their chests and necks, and the horses flee even faster than the departed Greek heroes, leaving old Nestor standing in his horseless chariot with Hector fast approaching.

When Odysseus sprints by, not even giving the old man a glance, Nestor cries, “Where are you going in such a hurry, son of Laertes, O cool tactician . . .” but his sarcasm is wasted. Odysseus disappears in the dust cloud of panicked retreat without slowing for his old friend.

Diomedes, always more afraid of being called a coward than he is of pain or death, drives his chariot back into the fray, obviously intent on rescuing Nestor and driving back Hector. He swoops Nestor up like a wrinkled bag of laundry and the old charioteer seizes the reins in both hands, driving Diomedes’ chariot not
away
from the charging Hector, but
toward
him. Diomedes gets close enough to cast his spear at Hector, but the heavy shaft kills Hector’s driver, Eniopeus, son of Thebaeus, and for a moment, as the driver’s corpse flies backward into the surprised foot soldiers and Hector’s horses rear out of control, everything changes.

I’ve read that there is a moment like this in many battles, where everything hangs in the balance. As Hector fights to regain control of his horses and the Trojans with him pause in confusion, the Greeks see a possible reversal of fortune and rush into the gap, loping after old Nestor and Diomedes. For an instant the Achaeans have the initiative again, shouting their defiance and hacking down the men leading the Trojan assault.

Then Zeus intervenes again. Thunder booms. Lightning splits the earth and horses disappear in a flash of light and the stink of sulfur and burning hooves. Achaean chariots near Diomedes and Nestor explode in a tumble of horseflesh and flying bodies. Bronze melts and leather shields burst into flame. It’s obvious even to the thick-skulled Diomedes that Zeus is not pleased with him this day.

Nestor tries to drag the rearing horses around but they have the metaphorical bit in their very real mouths and can’t be managed. Their chariot—all alone now since the other Achaeans have turned tail and fled—bounces toward ten thousand angry Trojans.

“Quick, Diomedes, grab the reins and help me swing these stallions around!” cries Nestor. “To fight more today is to die today!”

Diomedes grabs the reins from the old man but does not turn the chariot. “Old Soldier, if I run today, Hector will brag to his troops—‘Diomedes ran for his ships, and I drove him back!’ “

Nestor grabs Diomedes by his muscled throat. “What are you, six years old? Turn the fucking chariot, you asshole, or Hector will be wearing both our guts for garters before it’s teatime in Troy!”

Or some words to that effect. I am a hundred yards across the battlefield when this occurs, and the shotgun mike on my baton might not be working correctly. Also, since I am morphed into the shape of a Trojan foot soldier, I’m running with the rest, watching all this over my shoulder as Paris’s arrows fall around us and among us.

Diomedes wrestles with his dilemma for two or three seconds and then wrestles the horses instead, turning their heads, driving the chariot back toward the black ships and safety.

“Hah!” screams Hector over the din. He has a new driver—Archeptolemus, Iphitus’ handsome son—and is coming on again with the renewed vigor of a man truly enjoying his work. “Hah! Diomedes—made you run! You coward! You girly girl! You glittering little puppet! You quavering sparrowfart!”

Diomedes turns again in the chariot, glowering with fury and embarrassment, but Nestor has the reins now and the horses themselves have figured out which way safety lies. The chariot rolls over boulders, ruts, and fleeing Greek foot soldiers in the horses’ wild gallop toward the beach and safety, and the only way Diomedes can fight Hector now is by leaping off the chariot and fighting the thousands of Trojans on foot. He chooses not to do this.

“If you want to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum,” Helen had said that morning.

She’d asked me then about my knowledge of the
Iliad
—although she thought of it as my oracle-sense of the future—and pressed me to find the fulcrum of events, the single point in the ten-year war on which everything pivoted. Fate’s hinge, as it were.

I’d hemmed and hawed that morning, distracting her and myself with a final bout of lovemaking, but I’d thought about that question in the crazy hours since.

If you want to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum.

I’d bet my tenure as a Homerian scholar that the fulcrum of this particular tragic tale was fast approaching—the embassy to Achilles.

So far, events continue—more or less—to follow the poem, even with Aphrodite and Ares sidelined by wounds. Zeus has laid down the law and intervened on the side of the Trojans. I have no intention of QTing back to Olympos unless I have to, but I can guess that Homer’s narrative is being played out there as well—Queen Hera fretting that her Argives are getting pummeled and trying to persuade Poseidon to intervene on their behalf, but the “god who rocks the earth” being shocked by the suggestion—he has no desire to battle Zeus. Then, when the Greeks are really routed later today, Athena will strip naked, then dress in her best battle armor and glistening breastplate—well, I confess that it might be worth QTing to Olympos for
that
—but is stopped cold by Zeus’s messenger, Iris. Zeus’s message will be succinct—

“If you and Hera come to oppose me by clash of arms, my gray-eyed girl, I’ll maim your racers from beneath their yokes, hurl both you goddesses down from your chariot, smash your car, and rend both of you so terribly with my lightning bolts that you’ll be in the healing vats ten slow wheeling years before the green worms can stitch you together again.”

Athena will stay on Olympos. The Greeks, after a few hours of successful counterattack, will suffer heavier losses and fall back behind their own fortifications—a trench dug ten years ago shortly after landing, a thousand sharpened stakes, all the defenses recently deepened and built back up at Agamemnon’s order—but even behind their own wall, the panicked Achaeans will lose hope and vote to sail for home.

Agamemnon will try to rally them by throwing a great feast for his commanders—even as Hector and his thousands organize for the final charge that they know will end in the burning of the Achaeans’ black ships and the settling of this war for once and all—and at the Greek king’s feast, Nestor will argue that their only hope lies in Agamemnon making up with Achilles.

Agamemnon will agree to pay Achilles a king’s ransom—
more
than a king’s ransom—seven fire tripods, ten bars of gold, twenty burnished cauldrons, a dozen stallions, seven beautiful woman, and I can’t remember what else—a partridge in a pear tree, perhaps. Most important, the bribe will include Briseus’ daughter Briseis—the slave wench who was at the center of this whole argument. To wrap this gift in a red ribbon, Agamemnon will also swear that he’s never bedded Briseis. As a final incentive, he also throws in seven citadels, Greek kingdoms—Cardamyle, Enope, Hire, Anthea, Pherae, Aepea, and Pedasus. Of course, Agamemnon doesn’t own or rule these citadels—he’s giving away his neighbors’ lands—but I suppose it’s the thought that counts.

The one thing Agamemnon will not offer Achilles is his apology. The son of Atreus is still too proud to bow. “Let him bow down to me!” he’ll shout at Nestor, Odysseus, Diomedes and the other captains in a few hours. “I am the greater king, I am the elder born, and, I claim, the greater man.”

Odysseus and the other will see a way out despite Agamemnon’s arrogance. They realize that if they bring the message of Briseis’ return and all these other marvelous gifts—and just happen to leave out the “I’m the greater man” bit—there’s a chance that Achilles might rejoin the fight. At least this embassy to Achilles offers a ray of hope.

But here the complicated part begins—here the fulcrum may yet be found.

As a scholar, I know in my soul that the embassy to Achilles is the heart and pivot of the
Iliad
. Achilles’ decisions upon hearing the embassy’s entreaties will determine the flow of all future events—the death of Hector, the subsequent death of Achilles, the fall of Ilium.

But here’s the tricky part. Homer chooses his language
very
carefully—perhaps more carefully than any other storyteller in history. He tells us that Nestor will name five men for the embassy to Achilles—Phoenix, Big Ajax, Odysseus, Odios, and Eurybates. The last two are mere heralds, decorations for the sake of protocol, and will not walk to Achilles’ tent with the real ambassadors nor take part in the discussion there.

The problem here is that Phoenix is an odd choice—he hasn’t appeared in the story before, he’s more of a Myrmidon tutor and retainer to Achilles than a commander, and it makes little sense that he would be sent to persuade his master. To top that off, when the ambassadors are walking along the ocean’s edge—“where the battle line of breakers crash and drag”—on their way to Achilles’ tent, the verb form that Homer uses is a dual form—a Greek verb set between singular and plural always relating to
two people
—in this case, Ajax and Odysseus. Homer uses seven other words that, in the Greek of his day—this day—relate to
two
men, not three.