“You are still my son,” Zeus says to the grimacing war god. The Lord of Thunder’s voice is softer now. “You are my son as I am Kronos’s son. To me your mother bore you.”
Ares reaches up his bloodied hand as if to grasp Zeus’s forearm, but the older god ignores the gesture. “But trust me, Ares. If you had sprung from the seed of another god and still grown into such a shit-eating disappointment, believe me when I say that I’d long since have dropped you into that deep, dark pit below where the Titans writhe to this day.”
Zeus waves the Healer forward and then turns and strides out of the hall.
I step back—so do the other gods in attendance—as the giant Healer lifts Ares in five of its arms, carries him to the empty tank, attaches various fibers and tentacles and umbilicals, and drops him into the bubbling violet liquid. As soon as his face is under the surface, Ares closes his eyes and the green worms flock out of apertures in the glass and go to work on the war god’s ravaged gut.
I decide it’s time to leave.
I am learning the rhythm of quantum teleportation with this medallion device. Clearly picture the place you want to go, and the device QT’s you there. I clearly picture my college campus in Indiana in the last years of the Twentieth Century. The device does nothing. Sighing once, I picture the scholic dormitory at the base of Olympos.
The medallion phase-shifts me there at once. I blink into existence—although not visibility because of the Hades Helmet—just outside the red steps in front of the green doors of the red-stone barracks building.
It’s been a damned long day and all I want to do is find my bunk, get out of all this gear, and take a nap. Let Nightenhelser report to the Muse.
As if my thought had summoned her, I see the Muse flick into existence just two yards from me and swing aside the barracks’ doors. I’m amazed. The Muse has never come to the barracks before; we always ride the crystal elevator to her.
Secure in whatever Hades-technology conceals me, I follow her into the common room.
“Hockenberry!” she yells in her powerful goddess voice.
A younger scholic named Blix, some Homer scholar from the Twenty-second Century who has been assigned the night shift at Ilium, comes from his first-floor room, knuckling his eyes and looking stunned.
“Where is Hockenberry?” demands my Muse.
Blix shakes his head, his mouth sagging open. He sleeps in boxer shorts and a stained undershirt.
“Hockenberry!” demands the impatient Muse. “Nightenhelser says that he went to Ilium, but he’s not there. He hasn’t reported to me. Have you seen any of the day-shift scholics come through here?”
“No, Goddess,” says poor Blix, bowing his head in some sort of approximation of deference.
“Go back to bed,” the Muse says disgustedly. She strides outside, looks downhill toward the shore where the green men strain hauling their stone heads from the quarry, and then she QT’s away with a soft clap of inrushing air.
I could follow her trail through phase-shift space, but . . . why? She obviously wants the helmet and the medallion back. With Aphrodite in the vat, I’m a loose cannon to her—it is my bet that besides Aphrodite, only the Muse knows that I’ve been outfitted as a spy with these gadgets.
And perhaps even the Muse does not know how Aphrodite plans to use me—
To spy on Athena and then to kill her.
Why? Even if Zeus’s harsh words to his son, Ares, are true—that gods can die the True Death—is it possible for a mere mortal to do them in? Diomedes had done his best this day to kill two gods.
And did manage to put two of the gods out of action, floating in vats with green worms working on them.
I shake my head. Suddenly I’m very tired and very confused. My effort to defy the gods, only twenty-fours old now, has all but ended. Aphrodite will have me terminated by this time tomorrow.
Where to go?
I can’t hide from the gods for very long, and if it becomes obvious that I’m trying, Aphrodite will have my guts for garters that much sooner. As soon as the Goddess of Love is back in action tomorrow, she’ll see me—find me.
I can QT back to the battlefield below Ilium and allow myself to be found by the Muse. It may be my best chance. Even if she appropriates my gear, she will probably allow me to live until Aphrodite is devatted. What do I have to lose?
One day. Aphrodite will be in the vat for one day, and none of the other gods can see me or find me until she’s back. One day.
Effectively, I have one day left to live.
With that in mind, I finally decide where I am going.
16
South Polar Sea
The four travelers decided to eat after all.
Savi disappeared into one of her lighted tunnels for a few minutes and returned with warmer dishes—chicken, heated rice, curried peppers, and strips of grilled lamb. The four had munched on their food in Ulanbat hours earlier, but now they ate with enthusiasm.
“If you’re weary,” said Savi, “you can sleep here tonight before we head off. There are comfortable sleeping areas in some of the nearby rooms.”
Each said he or she was not that tired—it was only late afternoon Paris Crater time. Daeman looked around, swallowed some of the grilled lamb he was chewing, and said, “Why do you live in a . . .” He turned to Harman. “What did you call it?”
“An iceberg,” said Harman.
Daeman nodded and chewed and turned back to Savi. “Why do you live in an iceberg?”
The woman smiled. “This particular home of mine might be the result of . . . let’s say . . . an old woman’s nostalgia.” When she saw Harman looking at her intently, she added, “I was on a sort of sabbatical in a ‘berg much like this when the final fax went on without me fourteen of your allotted life spans ago.”
“I thought that everyone was stored during the final fax,” said Ada. She wiped her fingers on a beautiful tan linen napkin. “All the millions of old-style humans.”
Savi shook her head. “Not millions, my dear. There were just a few more than nine thousand of us when the posts carried out their final fax. As far as I can tell, none of those people—many of them my friends—were reconstituted after the Hiatus. All of us survivors of the pandemic were Jews, you know, because of our resistance to the rubicon virus.”
“What are Jews?” asked Hannah. “Or what were Jews?”
“Mostly a theoretical race construct,” said Savi. “A semi-distinct genetic group brought about by cultural and religious isolation over several thousand years.” She paused and looked at her four guests. Only Harman’s expression suggested that he might have the slightest clue to what she was talking about.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Savi said softly. “But it’s why you heard of me referred to as ‘the Wandering Jew,’ Harman. I became a myth. A legend. The phrase ‘Wandering Jew’ survived after the meaning was lost.” She smiled again, but with no visible humor.
“How did you miss the final fax?” asked Harman. “Why did the post-humans leave you behind?”
“I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that question for centuries. Perhaps so that I could serve as . . . witness.”
“Witness?” said Ada. “To what?”
“There were many strange changes in heaven and Earth in the centuries before and after the final fax, my dear. Perhaps the posts felt that someone—even if just one old-style human being—should bear witness to all these changes.”
“Many changes?” said Hannah. “I don’t really understand.”
“No, my dear, you wouldn’t, would you? You and your parents and your parents’ parents’ parents have known a world that does not seem to change at all, except for some of the individuals—and there only at a steady pace of a century per person. No, the changes I’m talking about were not all visible, to be sure. But this is not the Earth that the original old-styles or the early posts once knew.”