The King waved off this suggestion disdainfully. "Who cares about Acrisius? He grabbed the old man's kingdom; I grabbed half of it back with my father-in-law's lousy mercenaries. I fucked his daughter once, as I'm sure Anteia told you; he'll do the same to one of mine if he can still get it up when they're old enough. We bushwhack each other's shepherds and rustle sheep back and forth across the border. It's a way of life by now; neither of us takes it seriously any more. Never mind my brother; it's a certain bastard son of mine I want killed." He winked. "By little Danaë herself, believe it or not. Don't swallow that line about a rain of gold in a brass tower: Acrisius locked her up because I'd knocked her up, and he had to invent some cover-story for the reporters. Kill Perseus for me, friend: I'll give you Acrisius's kingdom and your choice of my daughters."
Appalled, I asked him why he wanted Perseus killed.
"Why in Hades d'you think?" Proetus said impatiently. "You call yourself a hero, and you never heard of oracles? The bastard's scheduled to kill me and Acrisius both! With his goddamn Gorgon's-head! Father and maternal grandfather, right? You think I want to be a frigging statue?"
"I understand your concern, sir," I said carefully. "But believe me, I've done considerable homework in the oracle field, and if yours was the usual You-will-be-killed-by-your-own-son thing, it seems to me you don't have much to worry about from my cousin. If he really were your son by Danaë, he wouldn't be a bona-fide mythic hero; however, the fact that he tricked the Gray Ladies and killed Medusa, et cetera, proves he is a mythic hero; therefore he can't be your son — he has to be the son of a god. But if he's not your son, the oracle doesn't apply. It's a simple sorites, actually."
The King's face set. "You won't kill him?"
"Not unless Athene tells me to. But as she's Perseus's advisor also, I can't imagine her doing that."
"And you expect me to let you use my temple, diddle my wife. ."
I replied that I expected nothing. If Pegasus should be granted me, I stood still ready to perform for my host any legitimate extraordinary services up to the number of, say, five; if in return for such services he chose to enrich me with half a kingdom and, upon her arrival at nubility, one of his daughters, I had no objection, that being the customary honorarium for hero-work. But my real objective and true reward was immortality, which was not Proetus's to bestow. As for the unhappy Queen, I'd be doubly obliged if he'd post a guard to prevent another interruption of my vision from that quarter. Finally, it was no doubt disagreeable to realize that one was fated to be killed by one's own son, legitimate, illegitimate, or putative: the overwhelming evidence, unfortunately, argued that such fates, once oracled, were inescapable — indeed (witness Glaucus), that attempts to avert them by homicidal or other means were as likely to precipitate as to delay their fulfillment. But except for that tiny minority of us destined for the stars, we must all expire in any case, and surely there must be some small compensation in dying at the hands of such a splendid chap as Perseus. That was itself a kind of immortality: were not the adversaries, human and monstrous, of great heroes almost as celebrated as heroes themselves? Petrifaction, particularly, struck me as a far from miserable end, assuming it overtook one reasonably well along in years: it was reported to be quick and apparently painless; it was in no way disfiguring; it spared the survivors the expense of an elaborate funeral-barrow, not to mention embalmment, and it furnished them and the general citizenry, free of charge, with an accurate and touching memorial of their late lord — provided the subject be not overtaken in an expression of panic, or eating, defecating, picking his nose, et cetera, which embarrassment a moderate alertness should render unlikely. Next to outright estellation, take it all in all, petrifaction by the Gorgon's gaze in a dignified position toward the evening of an honorable reign seemed to me as near an approach to immortality as any merely mortal monarch could be blessed with.
By my speech's end, speechless Proetus sat fixed and glassy, as if the anticipation of Medusa did for half her glance. I excused myself, strolled the city to kill the day, fed lucky pigeons peanuts from park benches when faintness overtook me from my fasting, turned in early and unsuppered.
Flicker, focus, fine-tune; a little bit of the old scratch and static; then a high hum and bright Athene, clear, appeared in the form of Polyeidus's daughter. But she was Sibyl with a difference! Gray-eyed, calm, reproachless, tall, she stood chastely off some meters from my bed and spoke more plainly than ever in Aphrodite's grove:
"That took a while. So it's Bellerophon now, is it?"
I strove to speak, for although it was quite clear in my vision that Sibyl was the goddess in disguise, I understood also that such masks had their own reality — Polyeidus, in manuscript form, could be read, revised, annotated — and I much desired to apologize for my past behavior and its distressing consequences. But my own voice failed as Athene's came clear.
"Poor Anteia," Sibyl said: "she's doing hippomanes up on the hill, out of desperation. Too bad she wasn't in the grove that night, instead of me. But you've certainly exercised restraint, if not human sympathy, and Restraint seems to be the name of this particular game. Here's the bridle." She tossed me the light gold chain. "You'll find Pegasus out back. I don't envy your life to come: I'd rather be dead, like your brother. One day you'll wish that too. 'Bye."
"No!" I found my voice, sat up to implore her to stay, I had so many things to ask, explain.
"Neigh!" Anteia whinnied madly about the pallet, full-moon-dappled, her weighty body bare; finally came at me hind-foremost and bent over, waggling her buttocks. The bridle was in my hand; I fled.
Why? What? Why. Why? So Philonoë sometimes asked, when I'd pained her to this point. "You had what you needed, and my poor sister was strung out. Why'd you run?" And being Philonoë, she'd offer reasons: respect for Proetus and the rules of hospitality; reluctance to offend Athene; concern that precious Pegasus might fly off; overwhelmment by the memory of those wild mares in the grove. . Well? Well, in keeping with my ongoing project to disaffect Philonoë I'd say, "Who could make it with a forty-year-old pickup? Especially one going to fat?" To which, herself late-thirtyish, she'd reply, "Some people can't admit to an honorable motive. You were shy with me too at first, remember?"
Being Amazon, Melanippe is torn between admiration for her lover's dead wife's large-heartedness and a great desire to bark her submissive shins. At least Anteia had spirit enough to call you a gelding, holler Rape, and do her best to have you killed; in Amazonia you'd have lost your balls for Sexual Refusal of the needy. It's a serious offense.
Bellerophon had his reasons — which you must know, if you know what happened before I tell it.
Why were you timid at first with Philonoë? You said you were a lusty youngster, Aphrodite's pet, but for the past three dozen pages you've been cunt-shy.
You don't see, then; I feared you were becoming Polyeidus, as people in this telling tend to do. All of Philonoë's reasons applied; others also; but mainly, I swear, I was out to be on with it: Anteia had no place in my hero-work, the only thing that mattered. If she'd been Melanippe herself, I'd've done the same thing.
You know how to disarm an Amazon. When you raped "Melanippe," then, a few months later, that was hero-work?
It was true rape, in any case, of a true Amazon, which even this Bellerophoniad will sog its way to sooner or later. As for the false rape of the false, Anteia cried it to the temple-tops; the palace guards, never there when I needed them, appeared now everywhere: some I directed in to aid the Queen, others to the rear of the temple, where I said I'd seen someone run, others off to summon Proetus. Thus for one moment I was alone in the marble forecourt, by a chuckling fountain: at once vast wingbeats came, and the horse of heaven. Heart near bursting, I lightly slipped the bridle over Brother, seized his great (near) pinion, swung astride, was off before the guards re-swarmed.