Ilium

  “Harman.”

  Ada’s heart thudded in her chest. She had been hoping, silently wishing, that Harman would join her tonight. “Door open,” she whispered, stepping back, noting in the wall’s reflection how milky her arms and thin gown looked in the moonlight.

  Harman stepped just inside and paused as Ada whispered the door closed again. Harman was wearing only blue silk sleep garb. She waited for him to embrace her, to lift her in his arms and carry her to the soft bed against the clear, curved wall. What would it be like, she wondered, to make love as if one were floating above these clouds, these mountains?

  “I needed to talk to you,” Harman said softly.

  Ada nodded.

  “I think it’s important that Odysseus be in the right place the next few weeks,” he said. “And I don’t think that Hannah’s mother’s cubbie is the right place.”

  Feeling foolish, Ada folded her arms across her breasts. She imagined that she could feel the cold night air of the high mountains through the glass under her feet. “You don’t know what Odysseus wants to do or why,” she whispered.

  “No, but if he’s really Odysseus, it may be very important. And Savi’s right . . . Ardis Hall is the perfect place for him to meet people.”

  Ada felt anger coil in her. Who was this man to tell her what to do? “If you think it’s so important that he be hosted somewhere,” she said, “why don’t you invite him to your home as your guest?”

  “I don’t have a home,” said Harman.

  Ada blinked at this, trying to understand. She couldn’t. Everyone had a home.

  “I’ve been traveling for many years,” said Harman. “I own only what I carry, except for the books I’ve collected, which I store in an empty cubby in Paris Crater.”

  Ada opened her mouth to speak but could think of nothing to stay. Harman took a step closer, so close that Ada could smell the male and soap scent of him. He had also showered before coming to her room. Will we make love after this conversation? thought Ada, feeling her anger slip away as quickly as it came.

  “I need to go to the Mediterranean Basin with Savi,” said Harman. “I’ve been hunting for a way to get to the e- and p-rings for more than sixty years, Ada. To be so close . . . well, I have to go.”

  Ada felt the anger flare again. “But I want to go with you. I want to see this Basin . . . find a spaceship, go to the rings. It’s why I’ve helped you the last few weeks.”

  “I know,” whispered Harman. He touched her arm. “And I want you to go with me. But this thing with Odysseus may be important.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “And Hannah just doesn’t know that many people. Or have the space to host visitors.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “And Ardis Hall would be perfect,” whispered Harman. He released his soft hold on Ada’s arm but still held her in the grip of his gaze. Ada was aware of the stars beyond the clear, curved ceiling above them.

  “I know Ardis Hall would be perfect,” said Ada. She felt sad and torn between imperatives and people. “But we don’t even know what this Odysseus wants . . . or who he really is.”

  “True,” whispered Harman. “But the best way to find out would be for you to host him while I hunt for a spaceship in the Mediterranean Basin. I promise you that if I find one that can get us to the rings, I’ll come get you before I go there.”

  Ada hesitated before speaking again. Her face was raised slightly toward Harman’s, and she had the feeling that if they did not speak, he would kiss her.

  Suddenly lightning flashed and thunder from the receding storm shook the green-glass structure. “All right,” Ada whispered. “I’ll host Odysseus and have Hannah as my helper at Ardis Hall for three weeks. But only if you promise to take me to the rings if you find a way to get there.”

  “I promise,” said Harman. He did kiss her then, but only on the cheek, and only the way her father might have, Ada thought, if she had ever known her father.

  Harman turned as if leaving, but before Ada could command the door to iris open, he turned back toward her. “What do you think of Odysseus?” he asked.

  “What do you mean? You mean, do I think he’s really Odysseus?” Ada was confused by the question.

  “No. I mean what do you think of him? Are you interested in the man?”

  “Interested in his story, you mean?” said Ada. “He’s intriguing. But I’ll have to hear what he says before I decide whether he’s telling the truth about things.”

  “No, I . . .” Harman stopped and rubbed his chin. He seemed embarrassed. “I mean, do you find him interesting? Are you attracted to him?”

  Ada had to laugh. Somewhere to the east, the receding thunder echoed the sound. “You idiot,” she said at last and, waiting no longer, walked to Harman, put her arms around him, and kissed him on the lips.

  Harman responded passively for a few seconds and then embraced her and kissed her back. Through the thin silk that separated them, Ada could feel his excitement rise. Moonlight flowed over the skin of their faces and arms like spilled white milk. Suddenly a powerful gust of wind struck the bridge and the bubble of the sleeping cubbie swayed underfoot.

  Harman lifted Ada and carried her to the bed.

  20

  The Tethys Sea on Mars

  “I think it’s Falstaff that made me fall out of love with the Bard.”

  “What’s that?” said Mahnmut over the hardline. He was preoccupied, driving the dying submersible toward the still-out-of-sight coastline at a weakening eight knots, trying to keep the ship-functions on line, watching the skies for enemy chariots through the periscope buoy, and generally brooding about the improbability of their continued survival. Orphu had been silent down there in The Dark Lady’s hold for more than two hours. Now this. “What was that about Falstaff?” said Mahnmut.

  “I was just saying that it was Falstaff that drove me away from Shakespeare and toward Proust,” said Orphu.

  “I would have thought that you’d love Falstaff,” said Mahnmut. “He’s so funny.”

  “I did love Falstaff,” said Orphu. “Hell, I identified with Falstaff. I wanted to be Falstaff. For a while, I thought I looked like Falstaff.”

  Mahnmut tried to imagine this. He couldn’t. He returned his attention to ship’s functions and perusing the periscope. “What made you change your mind?” he asked.

  “Do you remember the scene in Henry IV, Part 1 where Falstaff finds the body of Henry Percy—Hotspur—on the battlefield?”

  “Yes,” said Mahnmut. The periscope and radar showed the skies clear of chariots. He had been forced to shut down the failing reactor during the night and battery reserves were down to 4 percent, giving them only six knots now, and the power was still dropping. Mahnmut knew that he’d have to take The Dark Lady up to the surface again soon: every time they surfaced he brought in Martian air for his own survival, storing it in his enviro-crèche and breathing it until it got foul, funneling all the ship-produced air down to Orphu. The submersible had never been designed to open itself to Europan “atmosphere,” and he’d had to override a dozen safety protocols to let the Martian air in.

  “Falstaff stabs Hotspur’s corpse in the thigh just to make sure he’s dead,” said Orphu. “Then carries Hotspur’s body on his back, trying to take credit for killing him.”

  “Right,” said Mahnmut. The MPS said that they were within thirty kilometers of the coast, but there was no sign of it in the periscope, and he didn’t want to direct the radar toward land. He prepared to blow the ballast tanks and surface again, but had the dive planes ready for an emergency dive if anything showed on the radar. “The better part of valor is discretion, in which better part I have saved my life,” he quoted. “All the Shakespearean commentary I read—Bloom, Goddard, Bradley, Morgann, Hazlitt, and even Emerson—says that Falstaff may be one of the greatest characters Shakespeare ever created.”

  “Yes,” said Orphu and stayed silent a minute while the submersible shook and rumbled to the ball
ast tanks being blown. When the ship was silent again except for the ocean rushing over the hull, he said, “But I find Falstaff despicable.”

  “Despicable?” The sub broke the surface. It was just after dawn and the sun—so much larger than the point-star sun Mahnmut had grown up with on Europa—was just breaking free of the horizon. He opened the vents and breathed in fresh salt air.

  “Wherein cunning but in craft? Wherein crafty but in villainy? Wherein villainous but in all things,” said Orphu.

  “But Prince Hal was joking when he said that.” Mahnmut decided to run on the surface. It was far more dangerous—radar had picked up a flying chariot every hour or two while they were submerged—but they could make eight knots on the surface, and stretch out their dwindling power reserves.

  “Was he?” said Orphu. “He rejects the old blowhard in Henry IV, Part 2.”

  “And Falstaff dies from it,” said Mahnmut, breathing in the clean air and thinking of Orphu down in the black and flooded hold, connected to life only by the O2 line and the intercom. The first time they had surfaced, Mahnmut had realized it would be impossible to get the big Ionian out of the hold until they reached land. “The King has killed his heart,” he said, quoting Hostess Quickly.

  “I’ve decided he deserved to be rejected,” said Orphu. “When he was ordered to recruit soldiers for the war with Percy, Falstaff took bribes to let the good ones off and recruited only losers. Men he called ‘food for powder.’ “

  Feeling The Dark Lady surging ahead faster through the low waves, Mahnmut kept monitoring the sonar, radar, and periscope. “Everyone says that Falstaff is a much more interesting character than Hal,” he said. “Funny, realistic, antimilitary, witty—Hazlitt wrote that ‘The bliss of freedom gained in humour is the essence of Falstaff.’ “

  “Yes,” said Orphu. “But what kind of freedom is it? The freedom to mock everything? The freedom to be a thief and a coward?”

  “Sir John was a knight,” said Mahnmut. Suddenly his attention focused on what Orphu was saying—Orphu the cynic and humorous commentator on the folly of moravec existence. “You sound more like Koros III,” he said.

  This made Orphu rumble. “I’ll never be a warrior.”

  “Was Koros a warrior? Do you think he killed moravecs during his mission to the Belt?” Mahnmut was curious.

  “We’ll never know what happened in the Belt,” said Orphu, “and I doubt that Koros had any more eagerness to fight than do the rest of us peacable moravecs. But he was trained to leadership and duty—things that Falstaff mocked even in his beloved Prince Hal.”

  “And you’re thinking that we’ve been called to duty here,” said Mahnmut. There was a haze to the south.

  “Something like that.”

  “And you think you might need to be more Hotspur than Falstaff?”

  Orphu of Io rumbled again. “It may be too late for that. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”

  “That’s not Falstaff.”

  “Richard the Second,” came the voice from the hold.

  “You think you’re too old for what lies ahead?” asked Mahnmut, wondering himself what might lie ahead.

  “Well, I feel a little old, sans eyes, sans legs, sans hands, sans teeth, and sans shell,” said the Ionian.

  “You never had teeth,” said Mahnmut. Koros’s mission had been to carry out reconnaissance near the big volcano, Olympos, and to deliver the Device in the cargo bay as close to the summit of Olympos as possible. But The Dark Lady was close to death and Orphu might also be dying. Even if Orphu survived, he would not be able to see or move or take care of himself if they managed to reach land. How could Mahnmut possibly deliver the Device across more than three thousand kilometers of landmass while keeping himself and his friend from being detected and destroyed by the chariot people?

  Worry about that when you get the Lady to land and Orphu out of the hold, he thought. One thing at a time. The blue sky was empty of threat, but he felt terribly exposed as the submersible continued to wallow southward through the waves. To Orphu, he said, “Does your friend Proust have any advice?”

  Orphu cleared his throat with a rumble:

  Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

  Death closes all: but something ere the end,

  Some work of noble note, may yet be done . . .

  ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world . . .

  Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

  We are not now that strength which in old days

  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

  One equal temper of heroic hearts,

  Made weak in time and fate, but strong in will

  To strive, to seek, and not to yield.

  “You can’t convince me that’s Proust,” said Mahnmut. The haze to the south was resolving itself.

  “No,” said Orphu. “That’s Tennyson’s Ulysses.”

  “Who’s Ulysses?”

  “Odysseus.”

  “Who’s Odysseus?”

  There was a shocked silence. Finally, Orphu said, “Ah, my friend, this gap in your otherwise excellent education calls out for repair. We may well need to know as much as we can about . . .”

  “Wait,” said Mahnmut. And a minute later, “Wait!”

  “What is it?”

  “Land,” said Mahnmut. “I can see land.”

  “Anything else? Any details?”

  “I’m changing magnification,” said Mahnmut.

  Orphu waited, but finally said, “And?”

  “The stone faces,” said Mahnmut. “I see the stone faces—on the cliff tops mostly—stretching as far to the east as I can see.”

  “Just to the east? None to the west?”

  “No. The line of faces ends almost where we’d reach land. I can see movement there. Hundreds of people—or things—moving along the cliffs and beach.”

  “We’d better dive,” said Orphu. “Wait for dark before we make landfall. Find an ocean cave or something where you can bring the Lady in unseen, where . . .”

  “Too late,” said Mahnmut. “The ship doesn’t have more than forty minutes of life support and propulsion left in her. Besides, the shapes—the people—have given up their work moving the stone faces west. They’re coming down to the beach by the hundreds. They’ve seen us.”

  21

  Ilium

  I could tell you what it’s like to make love to Helen of Troy. But I won’t. And not just because it would be totally ungentlemanly of me to do so. The details are just not part of my story here. But I can say truthfully that if the vengeful Muse or maddened Aphrodite had found me a moment after Helen and I ended our first bout of lovemaking, say, a minute after we rolled apart on the sweat-moistened sheets to catch our breath and feel the cool breeze coming in ahead of the storm, and if the Muse and the goddess had crashed in and killed me then—I can tell you without fear of contradiction that the short second life of Thomas Hockenberry would have been a happy one. And at least it would have ended on a high note.

  A minute after that instant of perfection, the woman was holding a dagger to my belly.

  “Who are you?” demanded Helen.

  “I’m your . . .” I began and stopped. Something in Helen’s eyes made me abort my lie about being Paris before I could vocalize it.

  “If you say you are my new husband, I will have to sink this blade into your bowels,” she said evenly. “If you are a god, that shouldn’t matter. But if you aren’t . . .”

  “I’m not,” I managed. The point of the knife was close enough to draw blood from the skin above my belly. Where did this knife come from? Had it been in the cushions while we were making love?

  “If you aren’t a god, how have you taken Paris’s shape?”

  I realized that this was Helen of Troy—the mortal daughter of Zeus—a woman who lived in a universe where gods and goddesses had sex with mortals all the time; a world where shapechangers, divine and otherwise, walked among mere humans; a world where the concep
t of cause and effect had completely different meanings. I said, “The gods gave me the ability to mor . . . to change appearances.”

  “Who are you?” she asked. “What are you?” She did not seem angry, nor even especially shocked. Her voice was calm, her beautiful features undistorted by fear or fury. But the blade was steady against my belly. The woman wanted an answer.

  “My name is Thomas Hockenberry,” I said. “I’m a scholic.” I knew that none of this would make sense. My name sounded strange even to me, hard-edged in the smoother tones of their ancient language.

  “Tho-mas Hock-en-bear-reeee,” she mouthed. “It sounds Persian.”

  “No,” I said. “Dutch and German and Irish, actually.”

  I saw Helen frown and knew I was not only not making sense to her with these words, but was sounding actively deranged.

  “Put on a robe,” she said. “We will talk on the terrace.”

  Helen’s large bedroom had terraces on both sides, one looking down into the courtyard, the other looking out south and east over the city. My levitation harness and other gear—except for the QT medallion and morphing bracelet I had worn to bed—were hidden behind the curtain on the courtyard terrace. Helen led me to the outside terrace. We each wore thin robes. Helen kept her short, sharp knife in her hand as we stood at the railing in the reflected light from the city and from the occasional storm flash.

  “Are you a god?” she asked.

  I almost answered “yes”—it would be the easiest way to talk her out of putting that blade in my belly—but had the sudden, inexplicable, overwhelming urge to tell the truth for a change. “No,” I said. “I’m not a god.”

  She nodded. “I knew you were not a god. I would have gutted you like a fish if you had lied to me about that.” She smiled grimly. “You don’t make love like a god.”

  Well, I thought, but there was nothing else to say to that.

  “How is it,” she asked, “that you can take the shape and form of Paris?”