“Daeman?” Ada had stopped and was looking at him.
He stopped and returned her gaze, knowing that the young woman would love Harman forever and somehow feeling happy about it. Maybe it was the wounds and fatigue, but Daeman no longer wanted to have sex with every female he met. Of course, he realized, he hadn’t met many new females since the meteor storm.
“Daeman, how did you do it?” asked Ada.
“Do what?”
“Kill Caliban.”
“I’m not sure I killed him,” said Daeman.
“But you beat him,” said the young woman, her voice almost fierce. “How?”
“I had a secret weapon,” said Daeman. He saw the truth of what he was saying even as he said it.
“What?” asked Ada. The evening shadows were long and soft on the sloping lawn around them, the evening sky gentle above Ardis Hall, but Daeman could see dark clouds gathering on the horizon behind her.
“Rage,” he said at last. “Rage.”
65
Indiana, 1200 b.c.
About three weeks after the start of the war to end all wars—no kidding—I use my gold medallion to QT to the opposite side of the world. I had promised Nightenhelser I’d come back for him and I like to keep my promises when I can.
I’d left in the middle of the night Ilium–Olympos time, stepping out of a conference in one of the new blastproof tents where Achilles now meets with his surviving captains, and then just QTing away on a whim—knowing that all such personal quantum teleportation will be a memory soon—and it’s a shock when I pop onto a grassy hillside on a sunny morning in prehistoric North America. There isn’t much grass growing around Ilium these days and none on the bloody plains of Mars.
I wander down the hill to the stream, then cross over into the woods, blinking at the sunlight and relative silence here. There are no explosions, no shouts of dying men, no gods teleporting in amid the violence of screaming men and horses. For a minute or so, I worry about any Indians that might be around, but then I laugh at myself. I don’t boast impact armor these days, nor do I have a magical Hades Helmet or a morphing bracelet, but the bronze and duraplast armor I’m wearing has been tested. And I know how to use the sword on my belt and the bow over my shoulder now. Of course, if I meet Patroclus, and if he’s managed to arm himself, and if he holds a grudge—and which of these Achaean heroes doesn’t?—I wouldn’t wager a lot of money on my chances.
Fuck it. As Achilles—or maybe it’s Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo—likes to say, “No guts, no glory.”
“Nightenhelser!” I shout into the forest. “Keith!”
For all my bellowing, it takes me an hour to find him, and I do so only by blundering into the Indian village in a clearing about half a mile from where I’d QT’d in. There are no tipis in this village, only rough huts made of bent branches, leaves, and what looks to be sod. A campfire is burning in the center of the six-wigwam village. Suddenly dogs are barking, women are shouting and scooping up kids, and six male Native Americans are drawing primitive bows and nocking arrows at me.
I draw my beautiful cedar bow, handcrafted by artisans in distant Argos, nock my beautiful handmade arrow in one fluid, well-practiced move, and aim at them, ready to bring them all down with my shafts in their livers while their silly sharpened sticks bounce off my armor. Unless they get me in the face or eye. Or throat. Or . . .
The ex-scholic Nightenhelser, dressed in the same animal skins as the leaner Indian warriors, rushes between us and shouts syllables at the men. The Indians look sullen but lower their bows. I lower mine.
Nightenhelser stalks up to me. “God damn it, Hockenberry, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Rescuing you?”
“Don’t move,” he orders. He barks more odd syllables at the men and then says to them in classic Greek, “And please wait for me before serving the roast dog. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He takes my elbow and walks me back toward the stream, out of sight of the village.
“Greek?” I say. “Roast dog?”
He answers only the first part of the question. “Their language is complex, hard for me to learn. I’m finding it easier to teach them all Greek.”
I laugh then, but mostly at the sudden image I have of archaeologists three or four or five thousand years from now, digging up this prehistoric Native American village in Indiana and finding potsherds with Greek images from the Trojan War etched on them.
“What?” says Nightenhelser.
“Nothing.”
We sit on some less-than-comfortable boulders on the far side of the stream and talk for a few minutes.
“How goes the war?” asks Nightenhelser. I notice that he’s lost some weight. He looks healthy and happy. I realize that I must look as tired and grimy as I feel.
“Which war?” I say. “We have a whole new one.”
Always a man of few words, Nightenhelser raises his eyebrows and waits.
I tell him a bit about the ultimate war, leaving out some of the worst things. I don’t want to cry or start shaking in front of my old fellow scholic.
Nightenhelser listens for a few minutes and then says, “Are you shitting me?”
“I shit thee not,” I say. “Would I make this up? Could I make this up?”
“No, you’re right,” says Nightenhelser. “You’ve never shown the imagination to make up something like this.”
I blink at that but stay quiet.
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
I shrug. “Rescue you?”
Nightenhelser chuckles. “It sounds like you need rescuing more than I do. Why would I go back to what you just described?”
“Professional curiosity?” I suggest.
“My specialty was the Iliad,” says Nightenhelser. “It sounds as if you’ve left all that far behind.” He shakes his head and rubs his cheeks. “How can anyone lay siege to Olympos?”
“Achilles and Hector found a way,” I say. “I need to get back. Are you coming with me? I can’t promise I’ll ever be able to QT this way again.”
The big scholic shakes his head. “I’ll stay here.”
“You realize,” I say slowly, shifting to Greek in case his English has gotten rusty, “that you’re not safe here. From the war, I mean. If things go badly, the entire Earth will . . .”
“I know. I was listening,” says Nightenhelser. “I’ll stay here.”
We both stand. I touch the QT medallion, then drop my hand. “You’ve got a woman here,” I say.
Nightenhelser shrugs. “I did a few tricks with my morphing bracelet, the taser, and other toys. It impressed the clan. Or at least they pretended to be impressed.” He smiles in his ironic way. “It’s a small group here and a big empty country, Thomas. No other bands for miles and miles. They need new DNA in their little gene pool here.”
“Well, go to it,” I say and clap him on the shoulder. I touch the medallion again but think of something else. “Where is your morphing bracelet? The taser baton?”
“Patroclus took all of that stuff,” says Nightenhelser.
I actually look over my shoulder and set my hand on the hilt of my sword.
“Don’t worry, he’s long gone,” says Nightenhelser.
“Gone where?”
“He said something about heading back to Ilium to join his friend Achilles,” says Nightenhelser. “Then he asked me which direction Ilium was. I pointed east. He walked off in that direction . . . and let me live.”
“Jesus,” I whisper. “He’s probably swimming the Atlantic as we speak.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.” Nightenhelser holds out his hand and I take it. It’s strange to shake hands palm to palm with a man, after these intense weeks of forearm grips. “Good-bye, Hockenberry. I don’t expect we’ll meet again.”
“Probably not,” I say. “Good-bye, Nightenhelser.”
My hand is on the QT medallion, ready to turn its dial, when the other scholic—ex-scholic—touches my shoulder.
&n
bsp; “Hockenberry?” he says, pulling his hand away quickly so that he doesn’t accidentally teleport with me if I QT away. “Does Ilium still stand?”
“Oh, yes,” I say, “Ilium still stands.”
“We always knew what was going to happen,” says Nightenhelser. “Nine years and we always knew—within a small margin of error—what was going to happen next. Which man or god would do what. Who was going to die and when. Who was going to live.”
“I know.”
“It’s one of the reasons I have to stay here, with her,” says Nightenhelser, looking me in the eye. “Every hour, every day, every morning, I don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s wonderful.”
“I understand,” I say. And I do.
“Do you know what’s going to happen next there?” asks Hockenberry. “In your new world?”
“Not a clue,” I say. I realize that I’m grinning fiercely, joyously, and probably frighteningly, all signs of a civilized scholic or scholar in me gone now. “But it’s going to be damned interesting to find out what happens next.”
I twist the QT medallion and disappear.
Dramatis Personae for Ilium
ACHAEANS (Greeks)
Achilles son of Peleus and the goddess Thetis, most ferocious of the Achaean heroes, fated at birth to die young by Hector’s hand at Troy and receive glory forever, or to live a long life in obscurity.
Odysseus son of Laertes, lord of Ithaca, husband of Penelope, crafty strategist, a favorite of the goddess Athena
Agamemnon son of Atreus, supreme commander of the Achaeans, husband of Clytemnestra. It is Agamemnon’s insistence on seizing Achilles’ slave girl, Briseis, that precipitates the central crisis of the Iliad.
Menelaus younger son of Atreus, brother of Agamemnon, husband to Helen
Diomedes son of Tydeus, captain of the Achaeans, and such a ferocious warrior that he receives aristeia (a tale within the tale showing individual valor in battle) in the Iliad, second only to Achilles’ final wrath
Patroclus son of Menoetus, best friend to Achilles, destined to die by Hector’s hand in the Iliad
Nestor son of Neleus and the oldest of the Achaean captains, “the clear speaker of Pylos,” given to long-winded rants in council
Phoenix son of Amyntor, older tutor and longtime comrade of Achilles, who inexplicably has a central role in the important “embassy to Achilles”
TROJANS (defenders of Ilium)
Hector son of Priam, leader and greatest hero of the Trojans, husband to Andromache and father to the toddler Astyanax (the child also known as “Scamandrius” and “Lord of the City” to the citizens of Ilium)
Andromache wife of Hector, mother of Astyanax; Andromache’s royal father and brothers were slain by Achilles
Priam son of Laomedon, elder king of Ilium (Troy), father of Hector and Paris and many other sons
Paris son of Priam, brother of Hector, gifted as both fighter and lover; it is Paris who brought about the Trojan War by abducting Helen, Menelaus’ wife, from Sparta and bringing her to Ilium
Helen wife of Meneleus, daughter of Zeus, victim of multiple abductions because of her fabled beauty
Hecuba Priam’s wife, queen of Troy
Aeneas son of Anchises and Aphrodite, leader of the Dardanians, destined in the Iliad to be the future king of the scattered Trojans
Cassandra daughter of Priam, rape victim, tortured clairvoyant
GODS ON OLYMPOS
Zeus king of the gods, husband and brother to Hera, father to countless Olympians and mortals, son of Kronos and Rhea—the Titans whom he overthrew and cast down into Tartarus, the lowest circles of the world of the dead
Hera wife and sister of Zeus, champion of the Achaeans
Athena daughter of Zeus, strong defender of the Achaeans
Ares god of war, a hothead, ally of the Trojans
Apollo god of the arts, healing, and disease—“lord of the silver bow”—and prime ally of the Trojans
Aphrodite goddess of love, ally of the Trojans, a schemer
Hephaestus god of fire, artificer and engineer to the gods, son of Hera; lusts after Athena
OLD STYLE HUMANS
Ada a few years past her First Twenty, mistress of Ardis Hall
Harman ninety-nine years old and thus one year away from his Final Twenty; the only man on Earth who knows how to read
Daeman approaching his Second Twenty, a pudgy seducer of women and a collector of butterflies
Savi the Wandering Jew, the only old-style human not gathered up in the final fax 1,400 years earlier
MORAVECS*
(*autonomous, sentient, biomechanical organisms seeded throughout the outer solar system by humans during the Lost Age)
Mahnmut explorer under the ice-capped seas of Jupiter’s moon Europa; skipper of The Dark Lady submersible; amateur scholar of Shakespeare’s sonnets
Orphu of Io eight-ton, six-meter-long, crab-shaped, heavily armored hard-vac moravec who works in the sulfur-torus of Io; Proust enthusiast
Asteague/Che Europan, prime integrator of the Five Moons Consortium
Koros III Ganymedan, buckycarbon-sheathed, humanoid in design, fly’s eyes, commander of the Mars expedition
Ri Po Callistan, non-humanoid in design, ship’s navigator
Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo Rockvec soldier from the Asteroid Belt
OTHER ENTITIES
Voynix mysterious bipedal creatures, part servants, part watchdogs, not of Earth
LGM Little Green Men, also known as zeks; chlorophyll-based workers on Mars, tasked with erecting thousands of Great Stone Heads
Prospero avatar of the evolved and self-aware Earth logosphere
Ariel avatar of the evolved and self-aware Earth biosphere
Caliban Prospero’s pet monster
calibani lesser clones of Caliban, guardians of the Mediterranean Basin
Sycorax a witch, Caliban’s mother; according to Prospero, she is also known as Circe
Setebos Caliban’s violent, arbitrary god, the “many-handed as a cuttlefish,” not from Earth’s solar system
The Quiet Prospero’s god (maybe), Setebos’ nemesis, an unknown entity
Acknowledgments
While many translations of the Iliad were referred to in preparation for the writing of this novel, I would specifically like to acknowledge the following translators—Robert Fagles, Richmond Lattimore, Alexander Pope, George Chapman, Robert Fitzgerald, and Allen Mandelbaum. The beauty of their translations is manifold and their talent is beyond this writer’s comprehension.
For ancillary poetry or imaginative Iliad-related prose which helped shape this volume, I would especially like to acknowledge the work of W. H. Auden, Robert Browning, Robert Graves, Christopher Logue, Robert Lowell, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
For research and commentary on the Iliad and Homer, I would like to acknowledge the work of Bernard Knox, Richmond Lattimore, Malcolm M. Willcock, A.J.B. Wace, F. H. Stubbings, C. Kerenyi, and members of the Homeric scholia too numerous to mention.
For insightful commentary on Shakespeare and Browning’s “Caliban upon Setebos,” I gratefully acknowledge the writings of Harold Bloom, W. H. Auden, and the editors of the Norton Anthology of English Literature. For an insight into Auden’s interpretation of “Caliban upon Setebos” and other aspects of Caliban, I refer readers to Edward Mendelson’s Later Auden.
“Mahnmut’s” insights into the sonnets of Shakespeare were largely guided by Helen Vendler’s wonderful The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Many of “Orphu of Io’s” comments on the work of Marcel Proust were inspired by Roger Shattuck’s Proust’s Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time.
To readers interested in emulating Mahnmut’s Bardolotous love of Shakespeare, I would recommend Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Herman Gollob’s Me and Shakespeare: Adventures with the Bard, and Shakespeare: A Life by Park Honan.
For detailed maps of Mars (before the terraforming), I owe a
great debt of gratitude to NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Uncovering the Secrets of the Red Planet, published by the National Geographic Society, edited by Paul Raeburn, with forward and commentary by Matt Golombeck. Scientific American has been a rich source of detail, and acknowledgment should go to such articles as “The Hidden Ocean of Europa,” by Robert T. Pappalardo, James W. Head, and Ronald Greeley (October 1999), “Quantum Teleportation” by Anton Zeilinger (April 2000), and “How to Build a Time Machine” by Paul Davies (September 2002).
Finally, my thanks to Clee Richeson for details on how to build a homemade casting furnace with a wooden cupola.
About the Author
Dan Simmons is the Hugo Award-winning author of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion and their sequels, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. He has written the critically acclaimed suspense novels Darwin’s Blade and The Crook Factory, as well as other highly respected works including Summer of Night, its sequel A Winter Haunting, and Song of Kali, Carrion Comfort, and World’s Enough & Time. Simmons makes his home in Colorado.
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Credits
Jacket design by Ervin Serrano
Jacket illustration by Gary Ruddell
By Dan Simmons
Song of Kali
Phases of Gravity
Carrion Comfort
Hyperion
The Fall of Hyperion
Prayers to Broken Stones
Summer of Night
The Hollow Man
Children of the Night
Summer Sketches
Lovedeath
Fires of Eden
Endymion
The Rise of Endymion
The Crook Factory
Darwin’s Blade
A Winter Haunting
Hardcase
Hard Freeze
Worlds Enough & Time
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.