“Precisely,” said Savi. “Everyone knows. But there is no mechanism to count the population.”
“But when someone ascends to the rings . . .” continued Hannah, showing her confusion.
“Another child is allowed to be born,” finished Savi. “Yes. So I have noticed during the last millennium or so. But there is no population of a million of you. Far fewer.”
“Why would the posts lie to us?” asked Daeman.
Savi raised one eyebrow. “The posts. Ah, yes . . . the posts. Have you spoken to a post-human recently, Daeman Uhr?”
Daeman must have considered that question rhetorical; he did not answer.
“I have spoken to post-humans,” Savi said quietly.
This carried the others into silence. They waited silently. Such an idea was—at least to Harman and Ada—literally breathtaking.
“But that was a long time ago,” the old woman said, speaking so softly that the other leaned closer to hear. “A long, long time ago. Before the final fax.” Her eyes, a startling gray-blue a second before, now looked clouded, distracted.
Harman shook his head. “I was the one who heard the story about you—the Wandering Jew, the last of your Lost Age—but I don’t understand. How can you live beyond your Fifth Twenty?”
Ada blinked at Harman’s rudeness, but Savi did not seem to mind. “First of all, this hundred-year life span is a relatively recent addition to humankind, my dears. It is something the posts came up with only after the final fax. Only after they botched everything—our future, the Earth’s future—in that disastrous final fax. Only centuries after my nine thousand one hundred and thirteen post-rubicon fellow humans were faxed into the neutrino stream—never to be returned, although the posts promised them they would be—only after that . . . genocide . . . did your precious post-humans rebuild the core population of your ancestors and come up with this idea of one hundred years and a theoretical herd population of a million people . . .”
Savi stopped and took a breath. She was obviously agitated. She took another breath and gestured to the pitchers on the table. “I have tea here, if you are interested. Or a very strong wine. I am going to take some wine.” She did so, pouring with slightly shaking hands. She gestured to their goblets. Daeman shook his head. Hannah and Ada took tea. Harman accepted a goblet of red wine.
“Harman,” she began again, more composed now, “you asked two questions before I digressed from my answer. First, why have I noticed you. Second, how have I survived for so long.
“The answer to your first question is that I am interested in what the voynix are interested in and alarmed by, and they are interested in and alarmed by your behavior over the past decades . . .”
“But why would the voynix notice or care about me . . . “ began Harman.
Savi held up one finger. “To your second question, I can say that I stay alive over these past centuries by sleeping much of the time and by hiding when I am awake. When I move, it is either by sonie—you enjoyed a ride in one today—or through walking, hiking between the faxnode pavilions.”
“I don’t understand,” said Ada. “How can you hike between faxnodes?”
Savi stood. The others stood with her. “I understand it’s been a busy day for you, my young friends, but much lies ahead if you choose to follow me. If not, the sonie will return you to the nearest faxnode pavilion . . . in what used to be Africa, I believe. It is your choice.” She looked at Daeman. “Each of you must choose.”
Hannah drank the last of her tea and set the goblet down. “And what are you going to show us if we follow you, Savi Uhr?”
“Many things, my child. But first of all, I will show you how to fly and to visit places you’ve never heard of . . . places you’ve never dreamt of.”
The four looked at each other. Harman and Ada nodded to each other, agreeing that they would follow the woman. Hannah said, “Yes, count me in.”
Daeman seemed to be pondering the choice for a silent moment. Then he said, “I’ll go. But before I go, I want some of that strong wine after all.”
Savi filled his goblet.
14
Low Mars Orbit
Mahnmut reset his systems and did a quick damage assessment. Nothing disabling to either his organic or cybernetic components. The explosion had caused rapid depressurization of three forward ballast tanks, but twelve remained intact. He checked internal clocks; he had been unconscious for less than thirty seconds before reset and he was still connected virtually to his submersible across the usual bandwidths. The Dark Lady was reporting wild tumbling, some minor hull breach, monitoring-system overloads, hull temperatures above boiling, and a score of other complaints, but there was nothing that demanded Mahnmut’s immediate attention. He rebooted video connections, but all he could see was the red-hot glowing interior of the spacecraft’s hold, the open bay doors, and—through those doors—tumbling starfields.
Orphu?
There was no response on the common band or on any of the tightbeam or maser channels. Not even static.
The airlock was still open. Mahnmut grabbed a personal reaction pack and coils of unbreakable microfilament rope and pulled himself out the airlock doors, fighting the vector forces of the tumbling by grabbing handholds he knew from decades of deep-sea work. On his own hull, he checked that the sub’s payload-bay doors were fully opened, estimated how much room he would need, and then grabbed some of Koros’s carefully folded machines at random and jetted them out of his sub, out of the disintegrating spacecraft, tumbling away through the blobs of molten ship metal and glowing plasma. Mahnmut didn’t know if he was jettisoning the weapons of mass destruction that Koros had been planning to bring to the surface—on my ship! thought Mahnmut with the same outrage he’d felt earlier—or if he was jettisoning gear that he would need for survival if he ever reached Mars. At that moment, he didn’t care. He needed the space.
Tying the rope off to brackets on The Dark Lady’s hull, Mahnmut jetted out into space, taking care not to collide with the shattered ship-bay doors.
Once outside and a safe hundred meters from the tumbling ship, he rotated to get his first view of the damage.
It was worse than he’d thought. As Orphu had described, the entire bow of the spacecraft was gone—the control room and everything ten meters aft of where the control room had been. Sheared off as if it had never existed. Only a glowing and dissipating cloud of plasma around the bow showed where Koros III and Ri Po had been.
The rest of the ship’s fuselage had cracked and fragmented. Mahnmut could only guess the catastrophic results if the fusion engines, hydrogen tanks, Matloff/Fennelly scoop, and other propulsion devices had not been jettisoned long before this attack. The secondary explosions would certainly have vaporized Orphu and him.
Orphu? Mahnmut was using radio now as well as tightbeam, but the reflector antennae had been slagged off the hull for the maser relay. There was no response.
Trying to avoid the flying shrapnel, blobs of glowing metal, and the worst of the expanding plasma cloud while keeping slack in the line so that the tumbling wouldn’t fling him around the dying ship, Mahnmut used the reaction thrusters to come up and over the hull of the ship. The tumbling was so fierce now—stars, Mars, stars, Mars—that Mahnmut had to shut down his eyes and use the pack’s radar feed to find his way around the hull.
Orphu was still in his cradle. For a second, Mahnmut was joyous—the radar signature showed his friend intact and in place—but then he activated his eyes and saw the carnage.
The blast that had sheared off the bow had also scorched and fractured the upper hull of the ship all the way back to Orphu’s position and—as the Ionian had reported—had cracked and blackened his heavy carapace for a third of his length. Orphu’s forward manipulators were gone. His forward comm antennae were missing. His eyes were gone. Cracks ran the last three meters of Orphu’s upper shell.
“Orphu!” called Mahnmut on direct tightbeam.
Nothing.
Using ever
y meg of his computational abilities, Mahnmut gauged the vectors involved and jetted over to the upper hull, all ten jets firing in microbursts to adjust his dangerous trajectory, until he was within a meter of the hull. He pulled the k-tool from the pack’s belt and fired a piton into the hull, then looped his line around it, making sure to keep it from getting tangled. He would have to pull free in a minute.
Pulling the line tight, swinging like a pendulum arm, Mahnmut arced aft to Orphu’s cradle—although scorched crater seemed a better description of the indentation in the hull now.
Hanging on to Orphu’s carapace, his short legs swinging wildly above him, Mahnmut slapped a hardline stick-on against his friend’s body just aft of where his eyes had been. “Orphu?”
“Mahnmut?” Orphu’s voice was cracked but strong. Mostly, it was surprised. “Where are you? How are you reaching me? All my comm is down.”
Mahnmut felt the kind of joy that only a few of Shakespeare’s characters ever achieved. “I’m in contact with you. Hardline. I’m going to get you out of here.”
“That’s idiotic!” boomed the Ionian’s voice. “I’m useless. I don’t . . .”
“Shut up,” explained Mahnmut. “I have a line. I need to tie you on. Where . . .”
“There’s a tie-on bracket about two meters aft of my sensor bundle,” said Orphu.
“No, there isn’t.” Mahnmut hated the idea of firing a piton into Orphu’s body, but he would if he had to.
“Well . . .” began Orphu and stopped for a terrible few seconds of silence as the extent of his own injuries obviously sank in. “Aft then. Farthest from the blast. Just above the thruster cluster.”
Mahnmut didn’t tell his friend that the external thrusters were also gone. He kicked back, found the tie-on, and tied the microfilament line with an unbreakable knot. If there was one thing that moravec Mahnmut had in common with the human sailors who had preceded him on Earth’s seas for millennia, it was knowing how to tie a good knot.
“Hang on,” said Mahnmut over the hardline. “I’m going to pull you out. Don’t worry if we lose contact. There are a lot of vector forces right now.”
“This is insane!” cried Orphu his voice still scratchy on the hardline. “There’s no room in The Dark Lady and I can’t do you any good if you get me there. I don’t have anything left to hang on with.”
“Quiet,” said Mahnmut, his voice calm. He added, “My friend.”
Mahnmut triggered all the reaction-pack jets, tugging loose the piton line as he did so.
The jets got Orphu up and out of his hull cradle. The tumbling of the ship did the rest, swinging both moravecs a hundred meters out and away from the ship.
Delta-v computations clouding his vision field, Mars and stars still exchanging places every two seconds, Mahnmut let the line go taut and then he fired the thrusters—using up energy at a fearsome rate—matching tumble velocities and reeling himself up the long line to The Dark Lady.
Orphu’s mass was considerable, its pull made the worse by the tumbling, but the line was unbreakable and so was Mahnmut’s will at the moment. He ratcheted them closer to the open bay of the waiting submersible.
The spacecraft began breaking up from the stresses, pieces of the stern snapping off and flying past Mahnmut where he clung to Orphu’s carapace, two tons of metal missing the smaller moravec’s head by less than five meters. Mahnmut pulled them in.
It was no use. The ship was coming apart around The Dark Lady, explosions further rending the hull as trace reaction gases and internal pressurized chambers gave way. Mahnmut would never get to the sub before it was torn apart.
“All right,” muttered Mahnmut. “The mountain has to come to Mohammed.”
“What?” cried Orphu, sounding alarmed for the first time.
Mahnmut had forgotten the hardline was still operative. “Nothing. Hang on.”
“How can I hang on, my friend? My manipulators and hands are all gone. You hang on to me.”
“Right,” said Mahnmut and fired every thruster he had, using up the pack’s energy supplies so quickly that he had to go to emergency reserve.
It worked. The Dark Lady emerged from the dark ship’s bay only seconds before the belly of the spacecraft began to come apart.
Mahnmut thrusted further away, seeing blobs of molten metal splatter on Orphu’s poor battered carapace. “I’m sorry,” whispered Mahnmut as he used the last of his fuel to tug the tumbling submersible farther from the dying spaceship.
“Sorry for what?” asked Orphu.
“Never mind,” panted Mahnmut. “Tell you later.”
He tugged, shoved, thrust, and generally moravec-hauled the huge Ionian into the almost-empty payload bay. It was better in the darkness of the bay—the wildly spinning stars/planet/stars/planet no longer gave Mahnmut vertigo. He crammed his friend into the main payload niche and activated the adjustable clamps.
Orphu was secure now. It was probable that all three of them—The Dark Lady and the two moravecs—were doomed, but at least they’d end their existence together. Mahnmut attached the sub’s comm leads to the hardline port.
“You’re safe for now,” gasped Mahnmut, feeling the organic parts of his body nearing overload. “I’m going to cut my hardline comm now.”
“What . . .” began Orphu but Mahnmut had cut the portable line and pulled himself hand over hand to the payload bay airlock. It still cycled.
With the last of his strength, he pulled himself up the vacuum-filled internal corridor to the enviro-niche, dogged the hatch, but did not pressurize the chamber, connecting to life-support lead instead. O2 flowed. Comm hissed static. The ship’s systems reported ongoing but survivable damage.
“Still there?” said Mahnmut.
“Where are you?”
“In my control room.”
“What’s the status, Mahnmut?”
“The ship’s essentially spun itself to bits. The sub’s more or less intact, including the stealth wrapping and the thrusters fore and aft, but I don’t have any idea how to control them.”
“Control them?” Then it obviously dawned on Orphu. “You’re still going to try to enter Mars’ atmosphere?”
“What choice do we have?”
There was a full second or two of silence while Orphu thought about that. Finally, he said, “I agree. Do you think you can fly this thing into the atmosphere?”
“No chance in hell,” said Mahnmut, sounding almost cheerful. “I’m going to download what control software Koros put in and let you fly us in.”
There came that rumbling-sneezing noise over the hardline, although Mahnmut found it very hard to believe that his friend was laughing at this particular moment. “You have to be joking. I’m blind—not just eyes and cameras missing, but my whole optical network burned out. I’m a mess. Essentially, I’m a bit of a brain in a broken basket. Tell me you’re joking.”
Mahnmut downloaded the programming the sub’s banks had on the external add-on thrusters, parachutes—the whole cryptic smash. He activated all the sub’s hull cameras but had to look away. The tumbling was as terrible and vertigo-producing as before. Mars filled the view now—polar cap, blue sea, polar cap, blue sea, bit of black space, polar cap—and watching it made Mahnmut sick. “There,” he said as the download ended. “I’ll be your eyes. I’ll give you whatever navigational data the sub can crib from the reaction software. You get us stabilized and fly us in.”
This time there was no mistaking the rumbling laughter. “Sure, why not,” said Orphu. “Hell, the fall alone will kill us.”
The rings of thrusters on The Dark Lady began to fire on Orphu’s command.
15
The Plains of Ilium
Diomedes, literally driven into battle by war-geared, cloud-cloaked, horse-handling Athena, rushes to attack Ares.
I’ve never seen anything like this. First Aphrodite is wounded by the enhanced Argive, Tydeus’ son, and now the war god himself has been called to single combat with Diomedes. Aristeia with a god.
Incredible.
Ares, in his usual fashion, had promised Zeus and Athena only this morning that he would help the Greeks and now, spurred on by the taunts of Apollo and his own treacherous nature, he has begun attacking the Argives without quarter. Minutes ago, the god of war slaughtered Periphas—Ochesius’ son, the best fighter the Aetolian contingent of the Greeks had to offer—and is in the act of stripping Periphas naked when he looks up to see the chariot driven by Athena bearing down on him. The goddess herself is hidden now by a stealth cloak of darkness. Ares must know that some god or goddess is driving the chariot, but he does not take time to try to see through the stealth cloud; he is too eager to kill Diomedes.
The god strikes first, casting his spear with the accuracy only a god can command. The spear flies up and over the edge of the chariot, straight at Diomedes’ heart, but Athena reaches out from her cloud of darkness and slaps it aside. For an instant, all Ares can do is stare with incredulity as his god-wrought spear goes flying off to embed its tungsten-alloy tip in rocky soil.
Now, as the chariot clatters by, it is Diomedes’ turn; he leans far out and lunges with his own energy-enhanced bronze spear. Pallas Athena’s shared sheath of Planck field allows the human weapon to penetrate first the war god’s forcefield, then the war god’s ornate belt, then the war god’s divine bowels.
Ares’ scream of pain, when it comes, makes Aphrodite’s earlier world-shaking howl seem a whisper. I remember that Homer described this noise as “a shriek, roaring, thundering loud as nine, ten thousand combat soldiers . . . when massive armies clash.” That, it turns out, is an understatement. For the second time this bloody day, both armies freeze in the grim business of their slaughter out of mortal fear at such divine noise. Even noble Hector, intent now on nothing more noble than hacking his way through Argive flesh to murder the retreating Odysseus, halts his assault and turns his head toward the patch of bloody ground where Ares has been wounded.
Diomedes jumps from his Athena-driven chariot to finish the job on Ares, but the war god, still writhing in divine pain, is shifting, growing, changing, losing human form. The air around Diomedes and the other milling Greeks and Trojans fighting over Periphas’ now-forgotten corpse is suddenly filled with dirt, debris, bits of cloth and leather, as Ares abandons his god-human shape and becomes . . . something else. Where the tall god Ares had stood a minute before, now rises a twisting, cyclone of black plasma-energy, its static electricity discharging in random lightning bolts which strike Argive and Trojan alike.