Mountain of Black Glass

  I can't believe that, he thought. The majesty of the robin's-egg skies momentarily lost their ability to charm. I can't afford to believe it. She knows me, and I know her. They've just taken those memories away from me, that's all.

  Did her multiplicity of guises have something in common with the Pankies, the bizarre couple who looked so much like the Twins, but were not? There was something to ponder there, but he did not have enough information.

  Whatever the truth, there was no questioning the sheer technical marvel created by the evil plutocrats that Nandi had described—just this spectacular journey across the ocean, more real than real, would have been top-of-the-queue news on all the tab-nets. Was Azador right—was it somehow a system built on the minds of stolen children? But even if it was, how did it work? And what was going to happen when they reached Troy?

  That last thought had been irritating him for days. He was in a simulation of The Odyssey—he was himself Odysseus!—but he had started at the end and was going backward to what should have been the beginning of his character's story, the Trojan War. Did that mean that he would reach the place and find the war had ended as it had in the epic tradition, which was what had allowed Odysseus to begin his doomed journey home? But what if someone else wanted to use the Trojan War simulation right now, one of the rich buggers who had paid for it? It seemed bizarre to think that just because Paul himself was wandering around hundreds of kilometers away pretending to be Odysseus, even the people who built the network would only be able to experience a burned and blackened wreck where the walls of Troy had once stood.

  The boy Gally had told him that in the Eight Squared, the Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass simulation, all the chesspiece people strove against each other until the game ended, then everything went back to the beginning and they started again—literally, at square one. Did that mean the simulations were cyclical? Again, it raised the question of how its owners might feel if they wanted to bring a party to Pompeii to watch the eruption, for instance, only to find the ash had just fallen and it would be days or weeks until the spectacle would happen again.

  Paul could not wrap his head around the logic. There might be simple rules behind the whole process that made it little more than a board game for the people who had built it, but he was not one of those people; he had none of their information and none of their power. And if he started to think about it as a game and forgot to take this world seriously, it would probably kill him.

  As dawn broke on the morning of the third day and the sea mists began to clear, they saw the coastline.

  Paul at first thought the line of gray on the horizon was simply more mist, then the overcast cleared, the sun broke free, and the rest of the sea warmed to turquoise-blue. As the raft drew closer and the sun mounted higher, gray became the pale gold of hills that edged the plain like sleeping lions. Although he knew it was only make-believe, Paul could not hold back an appreciative sigh. Even Azador grunted and stirred, sitting up straighter from his crouch beside the tiller.

  As the waves rolled them toward the wide, flat beach which ran for kilometers in either direction, Paul moved to the front of the raft and kneeled there, watching one of the most storied places in all the world appear before him.

  Ilium, he recalled, schoolboy swot-work suddenly come to life and shimmering in the distance. A fake, yes, but a magnificent falsehood for all that. Helen, whose face launched a thousand ships. Achilles and Hector and the wooden horse. Troy.

  The city itself stood on a promontory just before the hills, with wide, strong walls that seemed chiseled out of the naked rock, flat as the facets of huge gems. The palace loomed above all at the city's center, its columns painted red and blue, its roofs adorned with gold, but there were many other impressive buildings as well. Troy was alive; the citadel was still unbreached. Even from this distance, Paul could see sentries moving on the walls and the thin smoke trails of domestic fires.

  There were fires on the beach as well, where a river curled its way down from the plain to the all-embracing sea, where the thousand black ships of song were drawn up onto the sand, row upon row. The Greeks had surrounded their landing place with a huge enclosure built of stone and timbers, filled with countless tents and numberless inhabitants. The Greek encampment was just as much a city as was Troy, and if it had no painted columns, no glittering golden roofs, that only made its purpose more grimly clear. It was a city that existed only to bring death to the fortress on the hill.

  "Why are you here?" Azador asked suddenly.

  It took Paul a moment to draw his attention away from the scurrying, tiny shapes in the Greek camp, the distant twinkle of armor. "What?"

  "Why are you here? You said you must come to Troy. We are here." Azador scowled and gestured to the lacquered ships and the walls glaring white as teeth in the bright sun. "This is a war, here. What are you going to do?"

  Paul could not immediately think of a reply. How could he explain, especially to this brusque gypsy, about the dream-angel and the black mountain—things that made no sense even to him?

  "I'm going to have some questions answered," he said at last, and found himself hoping painfully that it was true.

  Azador shook his head in disgust. "I want nothing to do with this. These Greeks and Trojans, they are mad. All they want to do is stick a spear into you, then sing a song about it."

  "You can leave me here, then. I certainly don't expect you to endanger yourself."

  Azador frowned but did not say anything more. He might not be a representative of an ancient type, as Paul had first thought, but he was clearly of almost a different species than the chattering classes among whom Paul had spent most of his life: the man used words the way a traveler in the desert rationed his last canteen of water.

  Poling hard, they managed to turn the raft aside from the beach to the mouth of the river. When they had made their way far enough against its flow that the raft would be safe from the changeable ocean, they waded to shore and drew the salt-crusted collection of logs and rope up onto the bank. The Greek encampment was still half a kilometer away. Paul untied the feather-scarf from his wrist and knotted it around his waist, then began to walk toward the forest of leaning masts.

  Azador fell in beside him. "For a little while, only," he said gruffly, not meeting Paul's eyes. "I need food and drink before I leave again."

  A moment of wondering whether Azador truly did need food, or whether it was only a habit he had carried over into the network and was reluctant to shed, was ended by the sight of two figures coming toward them from the Greek encampment. One was slender and appeared frail, the other bulked as large as a professional strongman, and for a moment Paul felt a feverish rush of terror at the idea that the Twins might already have found him again. He hesitated, but the figures trudging toward him along the sandy ground did not give him the sense of panic he had come to expect. Reluctantly, ignoring Azador's look of irritation at this stopping and starting, he moved toward them. The smaller figure raised its hand in a kind of salute.

  If I really am Odysseus in this simulation, he thought, then the system has to fit me in somehow. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do here, but Odysseus was one of the important lads at Troy, I remember that much. I need to watch, and listen, and try not to make things awkward.

  The wind changed, bringing the scents of the Greek camp down on him, the smell of animals and men at close quarters, the raw smoke of many fires.

  But if these two were not the monsters who had been pursuing him, he suddenly thought, perhaps they were the reason that Penelope and her other incarnations had sent him here. Perhaps someone was looking for him—someone real. Perhaps someone actually wanted to help set him free from this apparently endless nightmare.

  The knee-weakening thought of rescue was almost as debilitating as the thought of the Twins; Paul pushed it away and tried to concentrate. The approaching pair were easier to see now. One was a tiny old man, his beard whitely vigorous, his thin arms nut-brown where they were expose
d by his flowing garment. The large man was dressed for battle, wearing a chestplate that looked like boiled leather trimmed with metal and a kind of metal skirt. He held a bronze helmet under his arm and carried a terrifyingly long spear.

  You could stab something with that thing without being in the same county, Paul thought uncomfortably. Azador's reluctance to get involved with these people's war suddenly seemed very sensible.

  As the strangers drew near, Paul realized that the old man wasn't little at all: it was the warrior who was huge, well over two meters tall, with a bristling beard and a brow like a rock overhang. Paul took one look at the big man's stern face and massive neck and decided he would go a long way to avoid offending him.

  "May the gods be good to you, Odysseus!" the old man called. "And may they turn their smiles on the Greeks and our venture. We have been looking for you."

  When Azador realized it was Paul being addressed, he shot him a look half of amusement, half of contempt. Paul wanted to tell him that it hadn't been his choice to be Odysseus, but the old man and the giant were already upon them.

  "And stalwart Eurylochus, too, if I remember correctly," the old man said to Azador, giving him a nod that seemed little more than perfunctory. "You will pardon an old man if I have your name wrong—it has been many years since Phoinix was in his full bloom, like you two, and my mind sometimes forgets. Now, I must speak to your liege lord." He turned to Paul as though Azador had disappeared. "We beg you to accompany us, resourceful Odysseus. Bold Ajax and I have been sent to plead with Achilles that he join us in battle, but he is prideful as always and will not come out. He feels that our leader King Agamemnon has done him a terrible wrong. We need your wits and your clever tongue."

  Well, there's a neat little summing-up, Paul thought. The system handing me what I need to go forward? I still wish I remembered all this better, though, he thought sourly. This would be bliss for a real Classics major—all except the maybe-getting-killed part.

  "Of course," he said to old Phoinix. "I'll go with you."

  Azador fell in behind them, but neither of the other two seemed to notice.

  The gate of the Greek camp was made of timber bound with heavy bronze, guarded by several armored men. The camp itself looked like something that had started out as a temporary bivouac, perhaps in the springtime of the invaders' hopes, but a decade on the Trojan plain had turned it into something far more involved, although still without any real homelike feeling. A deep ditch formed the outermost ring, with palisades of sharpened logs on either side. Inside the ditch rose a wall of piled stones twice as high as a man, reinforced by giant timbers. An ominously huge mound of dirt and sand had been raised a short distance inside the wall, as if in imitation of the distant hills. Smoke leaked from it in several places: there had been a great burning, and the remains were still smoldering. With a little thump of dismay that even the knowledge of virtuality could not entirely cushion, Paul realized what had been burned and entombed there. The slaughter must have been dreadful.

  Ajax received a great deal of attention as they made their way across the Greek settlement, respectful nods and the occasional shouted greeting, but Paul himself, as Odysseus, received no less. It was incredibly strange to walk into this archaic fortress and be greeted with cheers by ancient Greek soldiers, a returning hero who in actuality had never been here before. He supposed it was the kind of thing that the Grail Brotherhood loved, but it made him feel like an impersonator.

  Which, he supposed, was exactly what he was.

  It really was a city, Paul realized. For every single Greek warrior, and there seemed to be thousands, there were two or three others, both military and civilian, working in support. Drovers with supply sledges, grooms for the chariot horses, water-bearers, carpenters and masons working on the fortifications, even women and children—the camp bustled with activity. Paul looked up to the shining walls of Troy and wondered what it felt like to be trapped inside for years, to look down each day and see this incredible human machine working tirelessly toward your destruction. The plain had probably once been the home of livestock and herdsmen, but now all the animals were penned inside the two cities, the great and the temporary, and the people also had drained away, making their choice between besiegers and besieged. Except for carrion birds, flocks of crows like earth-hugging storm clouds, the plain was as empty as if some great broom had swept away everything that did not have deep roots.

  As they made their way through the camp, Phoinix and the massive Ajax continued to behave as though Azador were not present, but the gypsy had fallen into one of his watchful silences and seemed not to care. They walked to the water's edge, where the ships pulled onto the sand lay in a long row, hull by tilted hull, huge craft with twinned banks of oars on each side as well as a number of smaller, faster vessels. All were stained a shiny black, and many had sterns that curled high above their decks like the poised tails of scorpions.

  The foursome headed through a field of rippling tents toward a large wooden hut, which even if it had been of the same material would have stood out from the others by its ornamentation, the painted doorposts and the beaten gold on the lintel. Paul at first thought it must belong to Achilles, but Phoinix stopped before the guardian spearmen on either side of the doorway and said to Paul, "He is angry at Achilles, but he knows it was his own foolishness that began this. Still, he is highest among us and Zeus has given him the scepter. Let him say his piece and then we will hurry to the son of Peleus and see if we can calm him."

  Ajax grunted, a deep, angry, rumbling sound like a bull who had backed into a nettle. As they stepped into the building, Paul wondered which of the disputants the giant was unhappy with, and could only be glad it was not him.

  Paul had difficulty seeing at first. The smoke of a large fire clouded the air inside the cabin, despite the hole in the ceiling. There were many shapes, mostly armored men, but a few women as well. The old man made straight for a gathering at the cabin's far side.

  "Great Agamemnon, High King," Phoinix said loudly, "I have found clever Odysseus, wise and well-spoken. He will go with us to Achilles, to see if we can unknit the anger that is in that great warrior's heart."

  The bearded man who looked up at them from the bench was smaller than Ajax, but still large. His ringleted head sat low on his wide shoulders, a circlet of gold on his forehead the only mark of kingship; if he had the belly of a man who ate well, he was still muscular and imposing. His small eyes were set deep beneath his brows, but they glinted with prideful intelligence. Paul could not imagine liking such a man, but he could easily imagine being afraid of him.

  "Godlike Odysseus." The high king withdrew a broad hand from beneath his thick purple cloak and waved for Paul to sit. "Now is your wisdom needed more than ever."

  Paul took one of the rug-covered benches. Azador squatted beside him, still darkly silent, still seemingly of no more interest to the others than a housefly. Paul wondered what would happen if Azador spoke—would they continue to ignore him? It did not seem likely he would find out, since the gypsy had not uttered a word since the beach.

  There was some talk back and forth about the fortunes of the siege, to which Paul listened carefully, nodding in agreement when it seemed appropriate. Some of the details seemed different than what he remembered of The Iliad, but that wasn't suprising: he felt sure a system this complex, with characters so sophisticated as to be indistinguishable from real people, would come up with countless different variations of the original story.

  The siege was going badly, there was no question about that. The city had held strong against attack for almost ten long years, and the Trojans, especially King Priam's son Hector, had proved to be fierce fighters; at the moment they were also taking heart from the absence of the Greeks' greatest warrior, Achilles, Several times in past days they had not only pushed the Greeks away from the walls but had almost reached the Greek fortifications, with the ultimate aim of setting fire to the Greek ships and stranding Agamemnon's assembled ar
my in a hostile country. The list of the fallen on both sides was heartbreakingly long, but the Trojan warriors—led by Sarpedon and Hector's brother Paris (who had stolen the beautiful Helen in the first place, starting the war), but most especially by the powerful, seemingly unstoppable Hector—had been doing tremendous damage to the Greeks, who were beginning to lose heart.

  Paul could not help smiling inwardly as great Agamemnon and the others talked, laying out all the important points. Whoever had programmed this had taken into account that even the few folk who had actually read Homer, like Paul himself, would have done so a long time before, and perhaps without the most careful attention.

  ". . . But as you know," Agamemnon said heavily, tugging his beard in unhappiness, "in my greed I offended Achilles, taking from him a slave girl who had been given him as a prize to make up for the loss of my own prize. Whether Zeus the king of gods has turned his heart against me—everyone knows that the Thunderer watches over Achilles' destiny—I cannot say, but I do know that I feel a great doom hanging over the Greeks and their well-benched ships. If lordly Zeus has turned against us, I fear we will all leave our bones here on a strange shore, for no man can overcome the desires of the immortal Son of Time."

  Agamemnon quickly listed all the glittering, generous gifts he would give to Achilles as recompense for the stolen prize, if only the great warrior would forgive him—the girl herself returned, augmented by objects of precious metal and swift horses, and the pick of the spoils if Troy should finally be overthrown, not to mention lands and a royal daughter in Agamemnon's own Argos—then urged Paul to go with Phoinix and Ajax and win Achilles back. After they had drunk wine with him from heavy metal cups, and also spilled some as offerings to the gods, Paul and the others stepped back out onto the sand. The sun had gone behind the clouds and the plain of Troy suddenly looked dead and dreary, a gray, brown, and black marsh that had already swallowed whole armies of heroes.