“Not sigling,” said Moira, “but eating them.”
“Eating them,” repeated Harman, thinking, Was she mad before she entered the time coffin or have the centuries of being replicated there, cell by cell, neuron by neuron, made her mad?
“Eating them,” agreed Moira. “In the sense that the Talmud spoke of eating books—not reading them, but eating them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you know what the Talmud is?” asked Moira.
“No.”
Moira pointed toward the apex of the dome again, some seventy stories above them. “Up there, my young friend, in a tiny little cupola made of the clearest glass, there is a cabinet formed of gold and pearl and crystal and I have the golden key. Within, it opens into a world and a little lovely moony night.”
“Like your sarcophagus?” asked Harman. His heart was pounding.
“Nothing like my sarcophagus,” laughed Moira. “That coffin was just another node on your faxing merry-go-round, replicating me through the centuries until it was time to wake and go to work. I’m talking about a machine that will allow you to read all these books in depth before the eiffelbahn car leaves the Taj station in …” She glanced at her palm. “Fifty-eight minutes.”
“Do not do this, Moira,” said Prospero. “He will do us no good in the war against Setebos if he is dead or a drooling moron.”
“Silence, Prospero,” snapped Moira. “Look at him. He’s already a moron. It’s as if his entire race has been lobotomized since Savi’s day. He might as well be dead. This way, if the cabinet works and he survives, he may be able to serve himself and us.” She took Harman’s hand again. “What do you most want in this universe, Harman Prometheus?”
“To go home to see my wife,” said Harman.
Moira sighed. “I can’t guarantee that the crystal cabinet—the knowledge and nuance of all these books that my poor, dead Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo accumulated over his centuries—will allow you to freefax home to your wife… what is her name?”
“Ada.” The two syllables made Harman want to weep. It made him want to weep twice—once for missing her, again for betraying her.
“To Ada,” said Moira. “But I can guarantee that you will not get home alive to see her unless you take this chance.”
Harman stood and stepped out onto the railingless marble ledge three hundred feet above the cold marble floor below. He looked up at the center of the dome almost seven hundred feet above but could see nothing except a sort of haze there where the last of the metal catwalks converged like black and almost invisibly thin spiderwebs.
“Harman, friend of Noman …” began Prospero.
“Shut up,” Harman said to the magus of the logosphere.
To Moira he said, “Let’s go.”
57
“I quantum teleported us here according to your directions,” says Hephaestus, “but where in Hades’ Hell are we?”
“Ithaca,” says Achilles. “A rugged, rocky isle, but a good nurse to boys who would be men.”
“It looks and smells more like a hot, stinking shithole to me,” says the god of fire, limping along the dusty, rock-strewn trail that leads up a steep slope past meadows filled with goats and cattle to where the red tiles of several buildings glare in the merciless sun.
“I’ve been here before,” says Achilles, “the first time when I was a boy.” The hero’s heavy shield is strapped to his back, his sword secure in its scabbard on a belt hanging over his shoulder. The blond young man is not sweating from the climb or heat, but Hephaestus, limping along behind him, is huffing and pouring sweat. Even the immortal Artificer’s beard is wet with sweat.
The steep but narrow trail ends on top of the hill and in sight of several large structures.
“Odysseus’ palace,” says Achilles, jogging the last fifty yards.
“Palace,” gasps the god of fire. He limps into the clearing in front of the high gates, sets both hands on his crippled leg, and bends over as if he is going to be sick. “It’s more like a fucking vertical pigsty.”
The remnant of a small, abandoned fortress rises like a squat stone stump fifty yards to the right of the main house on the promontory overlooking the cliff. The home itself—Odysseus’ palace—is made of newer stone and newer wood, although the main doors—open—are comprised of two ancient stone slabs. Terra-cotta paving tiles on the terrace are made of expensive tile set neatly in place, obviously the work of the best craftsmen and stone masons—although equally obviously not dusted or swept recently—and all the outside walls and columns are brightly painted. Faux painted vines filled with images of birds and their nests spiral around the white columns on either side of the entry, but real vines have also grown there, their tangle inviting real birds and becoming home to at least one visible nest. Achilles can see colorful frescoes gleaming from the walls of the shadowy vestibule beyond the main doors, which have been left ajar.
Achilles starts forward but halts when Hephaestus grabs his arm. “There’s a forcefield here, son of Peleus.”
“I don’t see it.”
“You wouldn’t until you walked into it. I’m sure it would kill any other mortal man, but even though you’re the fleet-footed mankiller with what Nyx called your singularity probability quotient, the field would knock you on your ass. My instruments measure at least two hundred thousand volts in it and enough amperage to do real damage. Stand back.”
The bearded dwarf-god fiddles with boxes and corkscrewed metallic shapes hanging from the various leather straps and chest bands on his heavy vests, checks little dials, uses a short wand with alligator clip jaws to attach something that looks like a dead metallic ferret to some terminus in the invisible field, then links four rhomboid devices together with colored wire before pushing a brass button.
“There,” says Hephaestus, god of fire. “Field’s down.”
“That’s what I like about high priests,” says Achilles, “they do nothing and then brag about it.”
“You wouldn’t have fucking thought it was fucking nothing if you’d walked into that forcefield,” growls the god. “It was Hera’s work based on my machines.”
“Then I thank you,” says Achilles and strides through the archway, between the stone slabs of the open doorway, and into the vestibule and Odysseus’ home.
Suddenly there is a growling noise and a dark animal lunges snarling from the shadows.
Achilles’ sword is in his hand in an instant, but the dog has already collapsed on the dusty tiles.
“This is Argus,” says Achilles, patting the head of the prostrate and panting animal. “Odysseus trained this hound from a pup more than ten years ago, but told me that he had to leave for Troy before he ever took Argus hunting for boar or wild deer. Our crafty friend’s son, Telemachus, was supposed to be his master in Odysseus’ absence.”
“No one’s been his master for weeks,” says Hephaestus. “The mutt has all but starved to death.” It is true; Argus is too weak to stand or move his head. Only his large, imploring eyes follow Achilles’ hand as the hero pets the animal. The dog’s ribs stand out against his slack, lusterless hide like the hull timbers of an unfinished ship against old canvas.
“He can’t get outside Hera’s forcefield,” mutters Achilles. “And I’ll wager that there was nothing to eat inside. He’s probably had water from the rains and gutters, but no food.” He pulls several biscuits from the small bag he’s been carrying with his shield—biscuits purloined from the Artificer’s home—and feeds two to the dog. The animal can just barely chew them. Achilles sets three more biscuits next to the dog’s head and stands.
“Not even a corpse to feed on,” says Hephaestus. “What with the humans gone everywhere on your Earth now except around Ilium… just disappeared like fucking smoke. “