Ilium

15 The Plains of Ilium

Diomedes, literally driven into battle by war-geared, cloud-cloaked, horse-handling Athena, rushes to attack Ares.

I’ve never seen anything like this. First Aphrodite is wounded by the enhanced Argive, Tydeus’ son, and now the war god himself has been called to single combat with Diomedes. Aristeia with a god. Incredible.

Ares, in his usual fashion, had promised Zeus and Athena only this morning that he would help the Greeks and now, spurred on by the taunts of Apollo and his own treacherous nature, he has begun attacking the Argives without quarter. Minutes ago, the god of war slaughtered Periphas—Ochesius’ son, the best fighter the Aetolian contingent of the Greeks had to offer—and is in the act of stripping Periphas naked when he looks up to see the chariot driven by Athena bearing down on him. The goddess herself is hidden now by a stealth cloak of darkness. Ares must know that some god or goddess is driving the chariot, but he does not take time to try to see through the stealth cloud; he is too eager to kill Diomedes.

The god strikes first, casting his spear with the accuracy only a god can command. The spear flies up and over the edge of the chariot, straight at Diomedes’ heart, but Athena reaches out from her cloud of darkness and slaps it aside. For an instant, all Ares can do is stare with incredulity as his god-wrought spear goes flying off to embed its tungsten-alloy tip in rocky soil.

Now, as the chariot clatters by, it is Diomedes’ turn; he leans far out and lunges with his own energy-enhanced bronze spear. Pallas Athena’s shared sheath of Planck field allows the human weapon to penetrate first the war god’s forcefield, then the war god’s ornate belt, then the war god’s divine bowels.

Ares’ scream of pain, when it comes, makes Aphrodite’s earlier world-shaking howl seem a whisper. I remember that Homer described this noise as “a shriek, roaring, thundering loud as nine, ten thousand combat soldiers . . . when massive armies clash.” That, it turns out, is an understatement. For the second time this bloody day, both armies freeze in the grim business of their slaughter out of mortal fear at such divine noise. Even noble Hector, intent now on nothing more noble than hacking his way through Argive flesh to murder the retreating Odysseus, halts his assault and turns his head toward the patch of bloody ground where Ares has been wounded.

Diomedes jumps from his Athena-driven chariot to finish the job on Ares, but the war god, still writhing in divine pain, is shifting, growing, changing, losing human form. The air around Diomedes and the other milling Greeks and Trojans fighting over Periphas’ now-forgotten corpse is suddenly filled with dirt, debris, bits of cloth and leather, as Ares abandons his god-human shape and becomes . . . something else. Where the tall god Ares had stood a minute before, now rises a twisting, cyclone of black plasma-energy, its static electricity discharging in random lightning bolts which strike Argive and Trojan alike.

Diomedes halts his attack and cringes back, his bloodlust temporarily blunted by the cyclone’s fury.

Then Ares is gone, QTing away with his bowels held in only by his own ichor-bloodied hands, and the battlefield remains almost as frozen as if the gods have stopped time again. But no—the birds still fly, dust still settles, the air still moves. This motionlessness now is awe; nothing more, nothing less.

“Have you ever seen anything like that, Hockenberry?” Nightenhelser’s voice startles me. I’d forgotten he was there.

“No,” I say. We stand in silence a moment until the mortal battle begins anew, until Athena’s cloaked form disappears from Diomedes’ charging chariot, and then I begin to walk away from the other scholic. “I’m going to morph and see how the royal family on the walls of Ilium is taking this,” I tell Nightenhelser before disappearing from his sight.

I morph all right, but it is only a ruse to cover my real disappearance. Hidden by dust and confusion in the Trojan ranks, I lift Death’s Helmet over my head and, activating the medallion, QT after the wounded Ares, following his quantum trail through twisted space to Olympos.

I emerge from quantum shift not on the grassy swards of Olympos nor in the Hall of the Gods, but in some vast space that looks more like the control room of a late Twentieth Century medical clinic than any structure or interior space I’ve seen on Olympos. There are clusters of gods and other creatures visible in the sterile-looking space, and for half a minute after phase-shifting I hold my breath—yet again—heart pounding as I wait to see if these gods and their minions are able to detect my presence.

Evidently not.

Ares is on some sort of medical examination table with three humanoid but not-quite-human entities or constructs hovering around him and offering care. The creatures may be robots—although sleeker and more organic-looking and alien in appearance than any robots dreamt of in my day—and I see that one has started an IV drip while another is passing a glowing ultraviolet ray over Ares’ torn belly.

The god of war is still holding his guts in with his bloodied hands. Ares looks pained and frightened and angry. He looks, in other words, human.

Along the long white wall, giant vats rise twenty feet or more and are filled with a bubbling violet fluid, various umbilicals and filaments, and . . . gods: tall, tanned, perfect human forms in various stages of what could be either reconstruction or decomposition. I see open organ cavities, white bone, striated red flesh, the sickening flash of bare skull. I don’t recognize the other god-forms, but in the next-to-closest tank floats Aphrodite, naked, eyes closed, hair floating, body perfect except for her perfect wrist and hand almost severed from her perfect arm. A roiling cluster of green worms is spiraling around the ligaments and tendons and bones there, either devouring or suturing or both. I look away.

Zeus enters the long room and sweeps across the space between medical monitors with no dials, past robots wrapped in what looks to be synthetic flesh, between gods who bow their heads and stand back to honor him. For an instant, the great god’s head swivels my way, the startling eyes under gray brows look directly into me, and I know I have been discovered.

I wait for the Zeus-boom and lightning blast. None comes. Zeus turns away—is he smiling?—and stops in front of Ares, who still sits hunched on the examination table between hovering machines and flesh-tending robotic things.

Zeus stands in front of the wounded god with his arms crossed, toga draped, head lowered, all trimmed gray beard and untrimmed gray brows, his bare chest radiating bronze light and strength, his expression fierce—more irritated school principal than concerned father, I would say.

Ares speaks first. “Father Zeus, doesn’t it infuriate you to see such human violence, such bloody work? We’re the everlasting, immortal gods, but god damn, we suffer injuries and insults—thanks to our own divine arguments and conflicting wills—every time we show these stinking mortals a bit of kindness. And it’s bad enough we have to fight these nano-crazed mortal sons of bitches, Lord Zeus, but we also have to fight you .”

Ares takes a breath, grimaces in pain, and waits. Zeus says nothing, but continues to glower as if pondering the war god’s words.

“And Athena,” gasps the injured god. “You’ve let that girl go too far, O Son of Kronos. Ever since you gave birth to her from your own head—that child of chaos and destruction—you’ve always let her have her way, never blocked her reckless will. And now she’s turned the mortal Diomedes into one of her weapons, spurred him on to ravage against us gods.”