“Dr. Hockenberry, we didn’t expect you back,” says the little moravec who’s roughly the same shape and size as Mahnmut, but made of different-colored plastics, metals, and polymers. “I apologize for the lack of gravity. We’re not under thrust. I could arrange for the internal force-fields to exhibit a pressure differential that could simulate gravity for you—after a fashion—but the truth is we’re station-keeping near Earth’s polar ring and we do not want to exhibit a major change in internal energy uses unless we have to.”
“I’m all right,” I say, hoping that they haven’t heard my screams in the elevator shaft. “I need to talk to Odysseus.”
“Odysseus is… ah… indisposed right now,” says Asteague/Che.
“I need to speak with him.”
“I am afraid that this will not be possible,” says the moravec who’s about the same size as my friend Mahnmut, but who looks and speaks so differently. His voice actually has a soothing quality to it.
“But it’s imperative that I …” I stop in midsentence. They’ve killed Odysseus. It’s obvious that these half-robot things have done something terrible to the only other human being on their ship. I don’t know why they would have killed the Achaean, but then I’ve never understood two-thirds of the things these moravecs do or don’t do. “Where is he?” I ask, trying to sound in-control and authoritarian even while web-strapped into my little chair. “What have you done to him?”
“We’ve done nothing to the son of Laertes,” says Asteague/Che.
“Why would we harm our guest?” asks the boxlike, spiderlegged ‘vec whose name I can’t remember… no, I do recall it now, Retrograde Jogenson or Gunderson or something Scandinavian.
“Then bring Odysseus here,” I say.
“We cannot,” repeats Prime Integrator Asteague/Che. “He is not on the ship.”
“Not on the ship?” I say, but then I look at one of the holographic displays set into a niche in the hull where a window should be. Hell, for all I know it is a window. The full blue and white is turning below, filling the viewscreen.
“Odysseus went down to this Earth?” I say. “To my Earth?” Is it my Earth? I lived and died there, yes, but thousands of years ago if the gods and moravecs are to be believed.
“No, Odysseus has not gone down to the surface again,” says Asteague/Che. “He has gone to visit the Voice that contacted the ship during our transit… the Voice which asked for him by name.”
“Show Dr. Hockenberry,” says General Beh bin Adee. “He’ll understand why he can’t talk to Odysseus right now.”
Asteague/Che appears to ponder this suggestion. Then the Europan moravec turns to look at the navigator Cho Li—I suspect some sort of radio transmission has taken place between them—and Cho Li moves a tentacle arm. A six-foot-wide three-dimensional holographic window opens not two feet in front of me.
Odysseus is making love to the most sensuous woman I’ve ever seen in my life—except perhaps for Helen of Troy, of course. My male ego had thought that my lovemaking—well, sexual intercourse—with Helen had been energetic and imaginative. But thirty seconds of staring slackjawed at the coupling going on between the naked Odysseus—his body battle-scarred, tanned, barrel-chested but short, and the pale, exotic, pneumatic, sensous, and slightly hirsute woman with the incredible eye makeup—lets me know that my exertions with Helen had been tame, unimaginative, and in slow motion compared to what these erotic athletes are involved in.
“Enough,” I say, mouth dry. “Turn it off.”
The pornographic window winks out of existence. “Who is that… lady?” I manage to say.
“She says her name is Sycorax,” answers Retrograde Somebody’sson. It’s always odd to hear that solid voice coming out of that tiny metal box atop those long skinny legs.
“Let me talk to Mahnmut and Orphu of Io,” I say. I’ve known those two ‘vecs the longest and Mahnmut is the most human of all these machine-people. If I can convince anyone here on the Queen Mab, it will be Mahnmut.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, either,” says Asteague/Che.
“Why? Are they having sex with some female moravec babes or something?” I hear how stupid my attempted witticism is as it mentally echoes in the long seconds of censuring silence that follow.
“Mahnmut and Orphu have entered the Earth’s atmosphere in a dropship carrying Mahnmut’s submersible,” says Asteague/Che.
“Can’t you link up to them by radio or something?” I ask. “I mean, they could patch together radio calls like that way back in my Twentieth and early Twenty-first centuries.”
“Yes, we are in contact,” says Retrograde Whoever. “But at the moment their ship is being attacked and we do not want to distract them with unnecessary communications. Their survival is problematic at best.”
I consider asking more questions—who on Earth is attacking my friends? Why? How?—but realize that such a dialogue would only distract me from my real reason for being here.
“You need to create a Brane Hole back to the beach near Ilium,” I say.
General Beh bin Adee moves his black-thorned arms in a way that might suggest a question. “Why?” he says.
“Because the Greeks are being slaughtered to a man by the Trojans and they don’t deserve to be wiped out that way. I want to help them escape.”
“No,” says the general. “I meant why do you think we have the ability to create Brane Holes at will?”
“Because I saw you do it once. You created all those Holes that you jumped through from the Asteroid Belt to Mars, then accidentally to Ilium-Earth. More than ten months ago. I was there, remember?”
“Our technology is not adequate to the effort of creating Brane Holes to different universes,” says Cho Li.
“But you did it, goddammit.” I can hear the whine in my voice.
“No, we did not,” says Asteague/Che. “What we actually did at the time was… it is hard to describe and I am not a scientist or engineer, although we have many… what we did at the time was interdict the so called gods’ Brane Hole connections and tunnel some of our own into the quantum matrix they had created.”
“Well,” I say, “do it again. Tens of thousands of human lives depend on it. And while you’re at it, you can bring back the few million Greeks and others in the Europe of Ilium-Earth who were disappeared—shot into space in a blue beam.”
“We don’t know how to do that, either,” says Asteague/Che.
Well then, what the fuck good are you? I’m tempted to ask. I don’t.
“But you’re safe here, Dr. Hockenberry,” continues the Prime Integrator.
Again, I want to shout at these plastic-metal things, but I realize that he—it—is correct. I am safe here on the Queen Mab. Safe from the Trojans at least. And perhaps the luscious babe boinking Odysseus has a sister….
“I need to go back,” I hear myself saying. Go back where, you idiot? To the Greeks’ Last Stand? Sounds like a baklava shop in L.A.
“You’ll be killed,” says General Beh bin Adee. The large, dark, humanoid soldier-thing doesn’t sound the least bit upset at the prospect.
“Not if you can help me.”
The moravecs seem to be communicating silently with one another again. I can see one of the holographic window-monitors far across the bridge is tuned to Odysseus and the exotic woman still going at it like rabbits. The woman is on top now and I can see that she’s even more beautiful and desirable than my first glimpse had suggested. I concentrate on not getting an erection in front of these moravecs. If they notice, and they tend to notice a lot about us humans, they might take it wrong.