“Try me. Perhaps I can learn…”
But he shook his head, more vigorously this time. “Orion, you can’t visualize the universes. When you freed Ahriman and allowed him to tear down that continuum, you never thought that a new continuum would establish itself out of all that liberated energy, did you?”
His words struck a dim chord of memory in me. “I freed Ahriman,” I said slowly. “After tracking him down in the time before the Ice Age.”
“Before, after, it makes little difference,” Zeus said impatiently. “Ahriman’s people now live peacefully in their own continuum, safely out of the stream that we are trying to protect. But you…”
“The Golden One — Apollo — did he truly create me?”
Zeus nodded. “And the entire human race. There were five hundred of you, originally.”
Faint images were shimmering in my mind like ghosts, blurred and indistinct, but almost within touch. “We were sent to destroy Ahriman’s race, to prepare the Earth for our own kind.”
He waved a hand impatiently. “That’s of little consequence now. That’s all been resolved.” He did not like to think about our task of genocide. He had agreed to it, obviously, but did not want to be reminded of it.
“And a few of us survived to establish the human race on Earth.”
“That is true,” said Zeus.
“And we evolved, over the millennia, to eventually produce…” I remembered now, “to eventually produce you, a race of advanced humans, so advanced that you seem like gods.”
“And we created you,” Zeus said. “The one you call Apollo headed that project. Then we sent you back in time to make the Earth habitable for us.”
“By killing off its original inhabitants: Ahriman’s race.”
“They’re safe enough,” he said, showing that trace of irritability again. “Thanks to you.”
“And Ahriman now has the same powers you do.”
“Virtually.”
I saw it all now. Or most of it. “But what’s Troy got to do with this?” I asked.
Zeus smiled thinly, as if savoring his superior knowledge. “Once you begin altering the continuum, Orion, you create all sorts of side effects that must either be deliberately controlled or allowed to run their natural course until they damp down of themselves. Apollo seeks to control events, to make deliberate adjustments to the continuum wherever and whenever they can be altered to our advantage. Others among us feel that this is self-defeating, that every change we make engenders more side effects and makes it more difficult to protect the continuum.”
I almost understood. “He sent me to Troy, then, to help the Trojans win.”
“Yes. Most of us wanted the war to run its natural course, without our interference. Apollo defied us and sent you to that spot in the continuum. I believe his plan was to have you slay the Achaian leaders in their camp.”
Almost, I laughed. But then a wisp of memory made me blurt, “He said something about dangers from beyond the Earth, and even you spoke of universes — plural.”
Zeus made an effort to control the surprise and fear that my words struck in him. He controlled his face and made it almost expressionless, but not quickly enough to totally mask his emotions.
“There are others, elsewhere in the universe?” I asked. “Other universes?”
“That was something we had not expected,” he admitted. “Our continuum impinges on others. When we make changes in this space-time, it affects other universes. And their manipulations affect us.”
“And what does this mean?”
He made a deep sighing breath. “It means that we must struggle not only to maintain this continuum, but to protect it against outsiders who would manipulate it for their own purposes.”
“And I? Where do I fit in?”
“You?” He regarded me with frank puzzlement, as if a sword or a computer or a starship had asked what its purpose might be. “You are a tool of ours, Orion, to be used where and when we see fit. But you are a stubborn tool; you disregarded Apollo’s commands, and now he seeks to destroy you.”
“He killed the woman I loved. She was one of you: the one I call Athene.”
“Don’t blame him for that, Orion.”
“I do blame him.”
Zeus shook his head. “It’s sad that you should blame the gods and regard us as the source of your troubles. It was your own actions that have brought you worse sufferings than any you were intended to bear.”
“Yet you protect me from Apollo’s anger.”
“You may still be useful to us, Orion. It is wasteful to destroy a tool that can still be used.”
I felt the anger rising in me. His cool smugness, his air of superiority, was beginning to infuriate me. Or was I seething because I knew he was superior, far more powerful than I could ever hope to be?
“Give the golden Apollo a message for me,” I said. “Tell him that I am learning. My memories are coming back to me. One day, whatever he knows, I will know. Whatever he can do, I will be able to do. And on that day I will destroy him.”
Zeus smiled at me, pityingly, the way a father smiles at a naughty child. “He will destroy you long before that day arrives, Orion. You are living on borrowed time.”
I wanted to reply, but he faded into nothingness. The distant city, the golden aura all around me, they all disappeared like the thread of smoke from a candle. I was in my tent again, and the sun was rising on the day when the spoils of Troy would be divided, and the gods would receive their sacrifices of beasts and men.
Chapter 22
THE day dawned gray and dreary. The Achaians, aching and sick from their revelries of the night, were quiet and solemn as the sun climbed slowly behind banks of scudding clouds. The wind from the sea hinted rain, and the chill of approaching autumn.
Neither I nor my Hatti band took part in the sacrifices. Poletes was puzzled at that.
“But you serve the goddess,” he said.
“She is dead. Regardless of what they offer, she won’t be able to receive it.”
Muttering “sacrilege,” Poletes wandered off toward the tall pyres of driftwood and timber that the slaves and thetes were piling up in the center of the camp. I remained near our own fire, close by Odysseus’s boats, and watched.
Nestor led the priests in a procession around the camp, followed by Agamemnon and the other chiefs — all in their most splendid armor and carrying long glittering spears that seemed to me more ornamental than battle weapons.
While they paraded through the camp, singing hymns of praise to Zeus and all the other immortals, the sacrificial victims were being assembled by the pyres. There was a regular herd of goats and bulls and sheep, hundreds of them, kicking up enough dust to obscure the blackened remains of Troy up on the bluff. Their bleatings and bellowings made a strange counterpoint to the chanting and singing of the Achaians.
Standing off to one side of them were the human sacrifices, every man over the age of twelve who had been captured alive, their hands tightly bound behind their backs, their ankles hobbled. Even from the distance where I stood, I could recognize the old courtier who had escorted me in the palace. They stood silently, grimly, knowing full well what awaited them but neither begging for mercy nor bewailing their fate. I suppose they each knew that nothing was going to alter their destiny.
The whole long day was spent in ritual slaughter. First the animals, from a few doves to raging, bellowing bulls that thrashed madly even though their hooves were firmly lashed together, arching their backs and tossing their heads until the priest’s stone ax cut through their throats with a shower of hot blood. Even horses were sacrificed, dozens of them.