Barbarians. I’m among barbarians. Even the gods here are barbarians. One thing is sure—I won’t be going to talk to Odysseus tonight.
But why does Patroclus have to die?
Because I was right the first time—Achilles is the key, the fulcrum through which I can shift the fates of everyone, gods and men alike.
I don’t think that Achilles will leave in a few hours when Dawn stretches forth her rosy fingertips. Uh-uh. I think Achilles will stay and observe, just as he does in Homer’s tale, taking pleasure in further misfortune for the Greeks. “I think now that the Achaeans will come crawl at my knees,” Achilles will say after the next bad day, when all the great captains—Agamemnon, Menelaus, Diomedes, and Odysseus—are hurt. And this is after last night’s embassy to Achilles, where they’ve already groveled to get him back. Achilles will take pleasure in the defeat of his fellow Argives and Achaeans, and it’s only Hector’s murder of his friend Patroclus, snoring now in the next room, that will bring the man-killer back to the battlefield.
So Patroclus has to die to turn the direction of events now.
I stand and take inventory of the things I’m wearing and carrying. A short sword, yes, to blend in with the troops, but I’ve never used the damned thing and know it doesn’t even have an edge. The Muse gave it to me as a prop, not a weapon. For real defense these past nine years, I’ve been equipped with the lightweight layer of impact armor—enough to stop a sword thrust or errant spear or arrow, we were told in the scholics barracks, although I have never had to test it—and the 50,000-volt taser tucked into the end of the shotgun mike baton we all carry. That weapon was designed only to stun an aggressor long enough for us to escape to a QT portal. Other hardware includes the lenses that enhance my vision, filters that boost my hearing, the stolen, cowl-like Hades Helmet furled around my shoulders, the QT medallion on its chain around my neck, and the morphing bracelet on my wrist.
Suddenly a plan—or at least part of a plan—begins to form in my tired mind.
I act before I can lose my nerve. Pulling up the Hades Helmet, disappearing from mortal and divine sight, feeling like Frodo or Bilbo or the gollum slipping on the ring that binds them all, I tiptoe from the sleeping annex where they laid out Phoenix’s cushion to Achilles’ bedchamber.
Achilles and Patroclus are sleeping together naked, the slave girls long gone, Patroclus’ arm flung across the man-killer’s shoulders.
This sight in the dim light stops me in my tracks. Achilles is gay? That means that stupid gay- and lesbian-obsessed junior professor in the department was right—his ranting papers correct—all that politically correct babble true!
I shake this out of my head. It means nothing except that I’m three thousand years away from Twenty-first Century Indiana and that I don’t know what I’m seeing. These two men have just fornicated with slave girls for two hours and fell asleep where they lay. And besides, who cares about the secret love life of Achilles?
I trigger the morphing band and bring up the scan I’d made two days earlier in the hall of the gods on Olympos. I don’t know if this will work—the other scholics used to laugh at the idea.
Probability waves shift through quantum layers I can’t perceive. The air seems to quiver, stand still, then quiver again. I slip the soft Hades Helmet off my head and become visible.
Visible as Pallas Athena, Tritogenia, Third Born of the Gods, Daughter of Zeus, defender of the Achaeans. Nine feet tall, radiating my own divine light, I step closer to the bed as both Achilles and Patroclus awake with a start.
I can feel the instability in every atom in this morphed form. The morphing bracelet was not designed for us to take the form of gods, but although my shape hums like a hardstruck harp, I use the short time this quantum substitution will give me. I work to ignore the sensation not only of suddenly having breasts and a vagina—I’ve never morphed into the form of a woman before—but also ignore the sensation of being a goddess.
The form is unstable. I know in my heart that I haven’t assumed the powers of Athena, just borrowed her quantum shell for these few seconds. Feeling as if there’s going to be some nuclear reaction, a morphing meltdown, if I don’t shed the quantum waveform of Athena quickly, I speak fast.
“Achilles! Wake! On your feet!”
“Goddess!” cries the fleet-footed man-killer, rolling from the cushions to the floor. “What brings you here in the middle of the night, Child of Zeus?”
Rubbing his eyes, Patroclus also struggles to his feet. Both men are naked, their bodies more sculpted and beautiful than the finest Greek statues, their uncircumcised penises dangling against their muscled and tanned thighs.
“BE QUIET!” I bellow. Athena’s voice comes out amplified, superhuman. I know that I’m waking the others in Achilles’ tent and probably alarming the guards outside. I have less than a minute. As if to prove my point, Athena’s golden arm quivers, shifts to Professor Thomas Hockenberry’s pale and hairy forearm, and then morphs back to Athena’s. I see that Achilles’ eyes are downcast and that he hasn’t noticed. Patroclus stares wide-eyed, confused.
“Goddess, if I have offended you . . .” begins Achilles, raising his eyes but keeping his head bowed.
“SILENCE!!” I bellow. “CAN AN ANT CRAWLING IN THE DIRT OFFEND A MAN? CAN THE LOWEST AND UGLIEST FISH IN THE SEA OFFEND THE SAILOR WHOSE THOUGHTS ARE ON OTHER THINGS?”
“An ant?” repeats Achilles, his handsome, sculpted face showing a rebuked child’s confusion.
“YOU’RE ALL LESS THAN ANTS TO THE GODS,” I roar, taking a step closer so that Athena’s radiance flickers over them like radioactive light. “YOU’VE AMUSED US WITH YOUR DEATHS, ACHILLES . . . SON OF PELEUS AND IDIOT CHILD OF THETIS.”
“Idiot child,” repeats Achilles, red rising to his high cheekbones. “Goddess, how have I . . .”
“SILENCE, COWARD!” I’ve amplified Athena’s voice until they could hear this insult in Agamemnon’s camp almost a mile down the beach. “WE CARE NOTHING FOR YOU. NOTHING FOR ANY OF YOU. YOUR DEATHS AMUSE US . . . BUT YOUR COWARDICE DOES NOT, SWIFT-RUNNING ACHILLES!” I sneer these last few words, turning the poet’s honorific into a demeaning insult.
Achilles balls his fists and takes a half step forward, as if approaching a foe. “Goddess, Pallas Athena, Defender of Achaeans, I have always offered you the finest sacrifices . . .”
“A COWARD’S SACRIFICE MEANS NOTHING TO US ON OLYMPOS,” I roar. I feel the probability wave that is the real goddess Athena approaching critical collapse. I have only seconds in this half-morphed form.
“WE’LL TAKE AND BURN OUR OWN SACRIFICE FROM THIS MOMENT ON,” I say and Athena’s arm extends toward Patroclus, the baton hidden under my forearm, my finger on the activator. “IF YOU WANT YOUR BOYFRIEND’S CORPSE, FIGHT YOUR WAY TO THE HALLS OF OLYMPOS TO GET IT, COWARD ACHILLES!”
I taser Patroclus in the center of his tanned, hairless chest, the near-invisible electrodes and invisible wires carrying 50,000 volts into him.
Patroclus seizes his chest as if struck by a lightning bolt, cries out, twitches and writhes as if in the throes of an epileptic fit, pisses himself, and collapses.
Before Achilles can react—the swift-footed warrior stands there naked with his hands balled into fists and his eyes bugging out, too shocked to move—I have Athena take two steps forward, grab the collapsed and apparently dead Patroclus by his hair, and drag him roughly across the floor.
Achilles unfreezes, snarls, and pulls his sword from its scabbard on the chair.
Still dragging the limp Patroclus by his hair, Athena’s form quivering out of quantum morph stability now and as static-lashed as a bad TV picture, I touch the medallion at my throat and quantum teleport Patroclus and me the hell out of Achilles’ tent.