A hundred feet above the seabed floor, the staircase ended at a black platform made out of a dull, dark metal that reflected no light. In the center of the square platform were three ancient-looking wooden chairs with high backs and red seat cushions. The chairs were equidistantly spaced around a black hole in the black platform, about ten feet apart, facing outward.
“Sit,” said Savi.
“Is this a joke?” said Daeman.
Savi shook her head and sat in the chair facing west. Harman took his seat. Daeman walked around the black platform again, returned to the single empty chair. “What happens next?” he asked. “We have to wait here for something?” He looked at the tall yellow tower thrusting up hundreds of feet nearby, the energy-material rearranging itself like a rectangular yellow cloud.
“Sit and you’ll find out,” said Savi.
Daeman took his seat gingerly. The back of the chair and the thick arms were elaborately carved. There was a white circle on the left arm of the chair and a red circle on the right arm. He touched neither.
“When I count to three,” said Savi, “depress the white button. That’s the one on your left if you’re colorblind, Daeman.”
“I’m not colorblind, goddammit.”
“All right,” said the old woman. “One, two . . .”
“Wait, wait!” said Daeman. “What’s going to happen to me if I press the white circle?”
“Absolutely nothing,” said Savi. “But we have to press it at the same time. I learned this when I came here alone. Ready? One, two, three.”
They all pressed their white circles.
Daeman leaped out of his chair and ran to the edge of the black platform and then the red platform thirty paces beyond that before turning to look back. The blast of energy behind his chair had been deafening.
“Holy crap,” he shouted, but the two still in their chairs could not hear him.
It was like lightning, he thought. A searing blast of jagged energy, just a yard or so across, emanating from the black hole in the middle of the chair-triangle and rising up into the dark sky. Rising higher, higher . . . then curving to the west like some impossible, white-hot thread, arching west until the end of it disappeared from sight above, but the thread visible and also moving, as if the lightning were connected to . . .
It was connected, Daeman realized with a flood of fear that almost made him void his bowels. Connected to the moving e-ring thousands of miles above. Connected to one of the stars, one of the moving lights, now crossing from west to east in that ring.
“Come back!” Savi was shouting above the crackle and roar of the lightning thread.
It took Daeman several minutes to come back—to walk to that empty wooden chair, shielding his eyes, his shadow and the chair’s shadow thrown out fifty feet across the black and red rooftop by the blinding, crackling light. He could never explain later, even to himself, how or why he returned to that chair, or why he did what he did next.
“On the count of three, depress the red circle,” shouted Savi. The old woman’s gray hair was standing on end, whipping around her head like short snakes. She had to scream above the energy roar to be heard. “One, two . . .”
I absolutely can’t do this was Daeman’s litany to himself. I absolutely won’t do this.
“Three!” shouted Savi. She pressed her red circle. Harman pressed his red circle.
No! thought Daeman. But pressed down hard on his red circle.
The three wooden chairs shot skyward, rotating around the crackling, shifting, chord of lighting, shooting upward so quickly that a sonic boom echoed across the seabed floor, shaking the crawler on its springs. A second later, less than a second later, the three chairs were out of sight overhead as the thread of pure white energy twisted and writhed and arched to follow the hurtling points of light on the equatorial orbital ring.
39
Olympos, Ilium and Olympos
The little robot fascinates me and I’m tempted to stay in the Great Hall of the Gods and find out what’s going on, but I’m leery of getting closer because the gods might hear me in this vast, hushed space. The dialogue between the gods and the robot has shifted to ancient Greek now—at least the gods, including Zeus, are speaking in the common language I’ve grown used to here—but I’m far enough way that I can catch only fragments of it.
“. . . little automatons . . . toys . . . from the Great Inland Sea . . . should be destroyed . . .”
Rather than try to creep closer, I remember why I’m here—Aphrodite’s comb—and the importance of my getting back to the Trojan women. The fate of hundreds of thousands of people below may depend on what I do next, so I tiptoe backward, away from the gods and the odd machines, and find my way down the long side corridor to the little suite of rooms where I first met the Goddess of Love just a few days ago. Can it just be a few days ago? Much has happened since then, to say the least.
There are voices—gods’ voices—echoing from elsewhere in the Great Hall, and I slip into Aphrodite’s pied-à-terre with my pulse pounding in my throat. The place is as I remember it from a few days ago—windowless, lighted by only a few tripod braziers, with only the couch and a few other pieces of furniture, including a softly glowing blue screen on the marble desk. I’d thought at the time that the screen was like a computer screen, and I cross to it now to look. It’s true—the glowing blue rectangle is separate from the desktop, hovering an inch or two above the marble surface, and while there’s no Microsoft Windows menu on it, a single white circle floats there as if inviting me to touch it and activate the screen.
I leave it alone.
Near the couch is where I remember some of Aphrodite’s personal items on a small round table, although I’m only hoping that there’s a comb among them. There’s not. I see a silver brooch and some silver cylinders—divine lipsticks?—and an elaborately carved silver mirror lying facedown, but no comb.
Damn it. I have no idea where Aphrodite’s home is among the estates scattered around on the broad green summit of Olympos, and I certainly can’t ask one of the gods for directions. I’d gambled and lost on Helen’s challenge to bring back the comb. But the important thing was to show them that I have the ability to travel to Olympos and back, and speed is of the essence. I have no idea how long the Trojan women will wait.
I grab the mirror without looking at it carefully, envision the basement room in Ilium’s Temple of Athena, and twist the QT medallion.
There are seven women there when I flick into existence, not the five women I’d left in the basement room a few minutes before. All of the women take a step back when I arrive, but one of them shrieks wildly and throws her hands over her face. I still have time to see that face and I recognize it—this is Cassandra, King Priam’s loveliest daughter.
“Did you bring us the comb, Hock-en-bear-eeee, as proof of your ability to travel to and from Olympos as do the gods?” asks Hecuba.
“I didn’t have time to search for it,” I say. “I brought this instead.” I hand the mirror to the nearest woman, Laodice, Hecuba’s daughter.
Helen says, “The carving on the silver handle and the back of the mirror is similar to what I remember of the goddess’s comb, but . . .”
She stops speaking as Laodice gasps and almost drops the mirror. The mirror is picked up by the priestess, Theano, who looks into it, goes white, and hands it to Andromache. Hector’s wife looks into and blushes. Cassandra grabs it from Andromache, lifts it, stares into it, and screams again.
Hecuba grabs the mirror away and frowns at Cassandra. I can tell immediately that there is no love lost between these two women, and I remember why—Cassandra, given the power of prophecy by Apollo, had urged King Priam to have Hecuba’s baby, Paris, killed upon birth. From her childhood onward, Cassandra has foreseen the disaster resulting from Helen’s capture and the ensuing war. But, according to tradition, Apollo’s gift of prophecy to the girl was accompanied by the curse that no one would ever believe her.