Ilium (7 page)

“We will not wait for chaos to decide this contest,” she says, her voice shedding all sound of amusement. “You saw Achilles withdraw from the fray this day?”

“Yes, Goddess.”

“You know that the man-killer has already prayed to Thetis to punish his fellow Achaeans for the shame that Agamemnon has heaped on him?”

“I have not witnessed this prayer, Goddess, but I know that it follows the path of the . . . the poem.” This is safe to say. The event is in the past. Besides, the sea goddess Thetis is Achilles’ mother and everyone on Olympos
knows
that he has called for her intervention.

“Indeed,” says Aphrodite. “That roundheeled bitch with the wet breasts has already been here to the Great Hall, throwing herself at Zeus’s knees as soon as the old fool returned from his debauching with the Aethiopians at the Ocean River. She begged him, for Achilles’ sake, to grant victory after victory to the Trojans, and the old sod agreed, thus putting him on a collision course with Hera, chief champion of the Argives. Thus the scene you just witnessed.”

I stand upright with my arms down, palms forward, head slightly bowed, all the while watching Aphrodite as if she were a cobra, but still knowing that if she chooses to strike me, the strike will come much faster and more lethally than any cobra’s.

“Do you know why you have survived longer than any other scholic?” snaps Aphrodite.

Unable to speak without condeming myself, I shake my head ever so slightly.

“You are still alive because I have foreseen that you can perform a service for me.”

Sweat trickles down my brow and stings my eyes. More sweat forms rivulets on my cheek and neck. As scholics, our sworn duty—my duty for the last nine years, two months, and eighteen days—is to observe the war on the plains of Ilium without ever intervening, observing without ever committing any act whatsoever that might change the outcome of the war or the behavior of its heroes in any way.

“Did you hear me, Hockenberry?”

“Yes, Goddess.”

“Are you interested in hearing what this service will be, scholic?”

“Yes, Goddess.”

Aphrodite rises from her couch and now I do bow my head, but I can hear the rustle of her silken gown, hear even the gentle friction of her smooth white thighs rubbing softly as she walks closer; I can smell the perfume-and-clean-female scent of her as she stands so close. I had forgotten for a moment how tall a goddess is, but I’m reminded of our respective heights as she towers over me, her breasts inches from my downturned face. For an instant I must fight the urge to bury my face in the perfumed valley between those breasts, and although I know well that this would by my last act before a violent death, I suspect at this moment that it might be worth it.

Aphrodite sets her hand on my tense shoulder, touches the rough leather embroidery of the Helmet of Death, and then moves her fingertips to my cheek. Despite my fear, I feel a powerful erection stirring, rising, standing firm.

The goddess’s whisper, when it comes, is soft, sensual, slightly amused, and I am sure that she knows the state I am in, expects it as her due. She lowers her face and leans so close that I can feel the heat of her cheek radiating against mine as she whispers two simple commands in my ear.

“You are going to spy on the other gods for me,” she says softly. And then, barely audible above the pounding of my heart, “And when the time is right, you are going to kill Athena.”

7

Counting Mahnmut, there were five Galilean moravecs in the pressurized gathering chamber atop the slab zone. The Europan construct was familiar to him—Pwyll-based prime integrator Asteague/Che—but the other three were more alien than krakens to the provincial Mahnmut. The Ganymedan moravec was tall, elegant as all Ganymedans, atavistically humanoid, sheathed in black buckycarbon and staring through his fly’s eyes; the Callistan was more Mahnmut’s size and design—about a meter long, only vaguely humanoid, showing synskin and even some real flesh under clear polymide coating, massing only thirty or forty kilograms; the Ionian construct was . . . impressive. A heavy-use moravec of ancient design, built to withstand plasma torus and sulfur geysers, the Io-based entity was at least three meters tall and six meters long, shaped rather like a terrestrial horseshoe crab—heavily armored, with an untidy myriad of morphable appendages, thrusters, lenses, flagella, whip antennae, broad-spectrum sensors and facilitators. The thing was obviously used to hard vacuum; its surface was pitted and sanded and repolished, then repitted again so many times that it looked as pockmarked as Io itself. Here in the pressurized conference room it used powerful source-repellers to keep from gouging the floor. Mahnmut kept his distance from the Ionian, taking a place across the communion slab from it.

None of the others introduced themselves via either infrared or tightbeam, so Mahnmut followed suit. He connected to nutrient umbilicals at his slab niche, sipped, and waited.

As much as he enjoyed breathing when he had the luxury of doing so, Mahnmut was surprised that the room was pressurized to 700 millibars—especially with the nonbreathing Ganymedan and Ionian in attendance. Then Asteague/Che began communicating through micro-modulation of pressure waves in the atmosphere—speech, Lost Age English no less—and Mahnmut realized that the room was pressurized for privacy, not for their comfort. Sound-speech was the most secure form of communication in the Galilean system, and even the armored, hard-vac Io worker had been retrofitted to accommodate it.

“I want to thank each of you for interrupting your duties to come here today,” began the Pwyll prime integrator, “especially those who traveled from offworld to be present. I am Asteague/Che. Welcome, Koros III of Ganymede, Ri Po of Callisto, Mahnmut of the south polar prospect survey here on Europa, and Orphu of Io.”

Mahnmut cycled in surprise and immediately opened a private tightbeam contact.
Orphu of Io? Are you then my longtime Shakespearean interlocutor, Orphu of Io?

Indeed, Mahnmut. It is a pleasure to meet you in person, my friend.

How strange! What are the odds of us encountering each other in person this way, Orphu?

Not so strange, my friend. When I heard that you were going to be invited on this suicide expedition, I insisted on being included.

Suicide expedition
?

“. . . after more than fifty Jovian years without contact with the post-humans,” Asteague/Che was saying, “some six hundred Earth years, we’ve lost track of what the pH’s are up to. It makes us nervous. It is time to send an expedition in-system, toward the campfire, and to find out what the status of these creatures has become and to assess if they are a direct and immediate threat to Galileans.” Asteague/Che paused a moment. “We have reason to suspect that they are.”

The wall behind the Europan integrator had been transparent, showing the bulk of Jupiter above the starlit icefields, but now it opaqued and then displayed the various moons and worlds moving in their stately dance around the distant sun. The image zoomed on the Earth-Moon-rings system.

“For the last five hundred Earth years, there has been less and less activity on the modulated radio, gravitonic, and neutrino spectrums from the post-humans’ polar and equatorial habitation rings,” said Asteague/Che. “For the last century, none at all. On the Earth itself, only residual traces—possibly due to robotic activity.”

“Does the small group of original humans still exist?” asked Ri Po, the small Callistan.

“We don’t know,” said Asteague/Che. The integrator passed his hand across the allboard and an image of Earth filled the window. Mahnmut felt his breathing stop. Two-thirds of the planet was in sunlight. Blue seas and a few traces of brown continents were visible under moving masses of white clouds. Mahnmut had never seen Earth before, and the intensity of color was almost overwhelming.

“Is this a real-time image?” asked Koros III.

“Yes. The Five Moons Consortium has constructed a small optical deep-space telescope just outside the bow-shock front of the Jovian magnetodisk. Ri Po was involved in the project.”

“I apologize for its lack of resolution,” said the Callistan. “It has been over a Jovian century since we’ve resorted to visible light astronomy. And this project was rushed.”

“Are there signs of the originals?” asked Orphu of Io.

The descendents of your Shakespeare,
Orphu said on tightbeam to Mahnmut.

“Unknown,” said Asteague/Che. “The greatest resolution is just under two kilometers and we’ve seen no sign of original-human life or artifacts, other than previously mapped ruins. There is some neutrino fax activity, but it may be automated or residual. In truth, the humans are of no concern to us right now. The post-humans are.”

My
Shakespeare? You mean
our
Shakespeare!
Mahnmut tightbeamed to the big Ionian.

Sorry, Mahnmut. As much as I love the sonnets—and even your Bard’s plays—my own concentration has been on Proust.

Proust! That aesthete! You’re joking!

Not at all
. There came a rumble on the subsonic spectrum of the tightband which Mahnmut interpreted as the Ionian’s laughter.

The integrator brought up images of some of the millions of orbital habitations moving in their stately ring-dance around Earth. Many were white, others silver. As brilliant as they looked in the heavy light so close to the sun, they also looked strangely cold. And empty.

“No shuttles. No evidence of ring-to-Earth neutrino faxing. And the convoy-bridge of heavy materials being accelerated between the rings and Mars—observed as recently as twenty Jovian years ago, two hundred forty-some Earth/pH ring years ago—is gone.”

“You think the post-humans are gone?” asked Koros III. “Died off somehow? Or migrated?”

“We know there was a sea change in their energy use, chronoclastic, quantum, and gravitational,” said the integrator. The unit was taller and a bit more humanoid than Mahnmut, sheathed in bright yellow surface-shield materials. His voice was soft, calm, carefully modulated. “Our interest now turns to Mars.”

The image of the fourth planet filled the window.

Mahnmut’s interest in Mars was marginal at best, and his images of it were from the Lost Age. This world looked nothing like the photos and holos from that era.

Instead of a rust-red world, this recent image of Mars revealed a blue sea covering most of the northern hemisphere, the Valles Marineris river valley showing a ribbon of blue many kilometers wide connecting to that ocean. Much of the southern hemisphere remained reddish-brown, but there were also large splotches of green. The Tharsis volcanoes still ran southwest to northeast in dark procession—one with a visible smoke plume—but Olympus Mons now rose within twenty kilometers or so of a huge bay arcing in from the northern ocean. White clouds clumped and grouped across the sunlit half of the image and bright lights glowed somewhere near Hellas Basin beyond the dark edge of the terminator. Mahnmut could see a hurricane spiraling north of the Chryse Planitia coastline.

“They terraformed it,” Mahnmut said aloud. “The posts terraformed Mars.”

“How long ago?” asked Orphu of Io. None of the Galileans had any special interest in Mars—in any of the Inner Worlds, for that matter (except for their literature)—so this could have happened any time in the twenty-five hundred terrestrial years since the break between moravecs and humanity.

“In the last two hundred years,” said Asteague/Che. “Perhaps in the last century and a half.”

“Impossible.” Koros III’s statement was flat and final. “Mars could never be terraformed in so short a time.”

“Yes, impossible,” agreed Asteague/Che. “But it was.”

“So the posts migrated there,” said Orphu of Io.

Little Ri Po answered. “We think not. Resolution on our observation of Mars has been a bit better than that of Earth. For instance, along the coastlines . . .”

The window showed an area along a twisting peninsula north of where the broad Valles Marineris rivers—more of a long inland sea, actually—emptied into a bay, flowed through an isthmus, and then opened into the northern ocean. The image zoomed. All along the coast where the land came down to the sea—sometimes showing red-desert hills, elsewhere green and heavily forested plains—tiny black specks followed the shoreline. The image zoomed a final time.

“Are those . . . sculptures?” asked Mahnmut.

“Stone heads, we think,” said Ri Po. The image shifted and the shadow of one of the blurry images suggested a brow, a nose, a bold chin.

“This is ridiculous,” said Koros III. “There would have to be millions of these Easter Island heads to border the entire northern ocean.”

“We count four million, two hundred three thousand, five hundred and nine,” said Asteague/Che. “But the construction is incomplete. Note this photograph taken some months ago during Mars’s closest approach.”

A myriad of tiny, blurry forms pulled what might be a great stone head on rollers. The stone face was looking skyward, its shadow-eyes staring straight into the space telescope. The tiny figures appeared to be attached to the heads by mutliple cables, pulling them along, Mahnmut thought, like Egyptian slaves hauling a pyramid block.

“Human workers?” said Orphu. “Or robots?”

“We think neither,” said Ri Po. “The size is wrong. And you notice the coloring of the figures on the spectral analysis bands.”

“Green?” said Mahnmut. He liked literary puzzles, not real-life ones. “Green robots?”

“Or a species of small green humanoids not previously encountered,” Asteague/Che said seriously.

Orphus of Io rumbled subsonic laughter. “LGM,” he said aloud.

[
?
] sent Mahnmut.

Little Green Men,
Orphu of Io sent on the common band and rumbled again.

“Why were we called here?” Mahnmut asked Asteague/Che. “What does this terraforming have to do with us?”

The integrator returned the window to transparency. The bands of Jupiter and plains of Europan ice in the evening light looked dull and muted after all the vibrant inner-system blues and whites. “We’re sending a team to Mars to investigate this and report back,” said Asteague/Che. “You’ve been chosen. You can say ‘no’ now.”

The four remained silent on all communications spectra.

“I said ‘report back,’ “ continued the prime integrator, “but not necessarily ‘come back.’ We have no sure way of returning you to the Jovian system. Please signal if you would like to be replaced on this mission.”

All four remained silent.

“All right,” said the Europan integrator. “You’ll download the specifics of the expedition in a few minutes, but let me cover the high points. We will use Mahnmut’s submersible for the actual surveillance on the planet. Ri Po and Orphu will map from orbit while Mahnmut and Koros III go to the surface. We’re especially interested in activity on and around Mons Olympos, the largest volcano. Quantum-shift activity there has been massive and inexplicable. Mahnmut will deliver Koros III to the coastline, and our Ganymedan friend will carry out reconnaissance.”

Mahnmut knew from his records and readings that Lost Age humans had signaled pending interruption by clearing their throats. He made a throat-clearing noise. “You have to excuse my stupidity, but how do we get
The Dark Lady
—my submersible—to Mars?”

“That’s not a stupid question,” said the integrator. “Orphu of Io?”

The giant armored horseshoe crab shifted on its repellors so that various black lenses looked at Mahnmut. “It’s been centuries since we’ve sent anything in-system. And anything delivered the old-fashioned way would take half a Jovian year. We’ve decided to use the scissors.”

Ri Po shifted in his slab niche. “I thought the scissors were going to be used only for interstellar exploration.”

“The Five Moons Consortium has decided that this takes precedence,” said Orphu of Io.

“I presume there will be some sort of spacecraft,” said Koros III. “Or are you going to fling us one after the other, naked, like so many chickens fired from a trebuchet?”

Orphu’s subsonic rumble shook the slab. He obviously liked Koros’ image.

Mahnmut had to access the common net. A
trebuchet
was a Lost Age human siege engine from their Level Two civilizations—pre-steam—mechanical but much more powerful than a mere catapult, able to launch huge boulders more than a mile.

“A spacecraft exists,” said Asteague/Che. “It has been designed to reach Mars in a few days and configured to hold Mahnmut’s submersible. The spacecraft has an atmospheric entry package for Mahnmut’s subermisible—
The Dark Lady
.”