Finally, after what must have been hours—the strip of sky was darkening toward evening—Harman activated the function to query his own biomonitors.
As he’d suspected, the dosage he’d received had been lethal. The dizziness he felt now would only grow worse. The vomiting and dry retching would soon return. Blood was already pooling under his skin. Within hours—the process had already begun—the cells in his bowels and guts would begin sloughing off by the billion. Then would come the bloody diarrhea—intermittent at first but then constant as his body began literally to shit his dissolved guts out into the world. Then the bleeding would become primarily internal, cell walls breaking down completely, entire systems collapsing.
He’d live long enough to see and feel all this, he knew. Within a day he’d be too weak even to stagger along between the episodes of diarrhea and vomiting. He’d be prostrate in the Breach, his stillness broken only by involuntary seizures. Harman knew that he wouldn’t even be able to look at the blue sky or stars as he died—the biomonitors already reported the radiation-induced cataracts building on the surface of both his eyes.
Harman had to grin. No wonder Prospero and Moira had given him only a few days’ worth of food bars. They must have known he wouldn’t need even that many.
Why? Why make me Prometheus for the human race with all these functions, all this knowledge, all this promise to give Ada and my species, only to let me die alone here…like this?
Harman was still sane and conscious enough to know that billions of human beings no more elect than himself had hurled similar final thoughts toward the unanswering skies in the hours and minutes before their death.
He was also wise enough now to be able to answer his own question. Prometheus stole fire from the gods. Adam and Eve tasted of the fruit of knowledge in the Garden. All the old creation myths told versions of the same tale, exposed the same terrible truth—steal fire and knowledge from the gods and you become something more than the animals you evolved from, but still something far, far below any real God.
Harman at that second would give anything to rid himself of the twenty-six last personal and religious testaments by the madmen who crewed The Sword of Allah. In those impassioned farewells he felt the full weight of the burden he had been about to bring back to Ada, to Daeman, to Hannah, to his friends, to his species.
He realized that all of the last year—the turin-cloth story of Troy that had been Prospero’s little joke-gift to the old-humans, passed on through Odysseus and Savi, their various mad quests, the deadly masque on Prospero’s Isle up in the e-ring, his escape, the Ardis Manor people’s discovery of how to build weapons, fashion some crude beginnings to society, discover politics, even grope toward some religion…
It had all made them human again.
The human race had returned to Earth after more than fourteen hundred years of coma and indifference.
Harman realized that his and Ada’s child would have been fully human—perhaps the first real human being to be born after all those comfortable, inhuman, watched-over-by-false-post-human gods’ centuries of stasis—confronted by danger and mortality at every turn, forced to invent, pressured to create bonds with other human beings just to survive the voynix and the calibani and Caliban himself and the Setebos thing…
It would have been exciting. It would have been terrifying. It would have been real.
And it all would have led, could have led, might have led, back to The Sword of Allah.
Harman rolled to one side and vomited again. This time the vomitus consisted mostly of blood and mucus.
More rapid than I thought.
Eyes closed against the pain—all the varieties of pain, but most especially against the pain of this new knowledge—Harman felt on his right hip. The pistol was still secure there.
He undid the strap, pulled the weapon free of the stick-tite pad, used his other hand to rack the chamber the way Moira had shown him—chambering one of the shells—clicked off the safety, and held the muzzle to his temple.
75
The Demogorgon fills half of the flame-filled sky. Asia, Panthea, and the silent sister Ione continue to cower. The rocks and ridges and volcanic summits nearby are filling with gigantic, looming shapes—Titans, Hours, monster steeds, monster-monsters, Healer-type giant centipedes, inhuman Charioteers, more Titans, all coming to their positions like jurors showing up for a trial on the steps of a Greek temple. The thermskin goggles allow Achilles to see everything and he almost wishes they didn’t.
The monsters of Tartarus are too monstrous; the Titans too shaggy and titanic; the Charioteers and the things the Demogorgon had called the Hours aren’t really possible to bring into full focus at all. They make Achilles think of the time he cleaved a Trojan’s belly and chest open with a sword stroke and found a small human homunculus staring out at him, blue eyes seeming to blink at him through the shattered ribs and spilled entrails. It had been the only time he’d ever vomited on the battlefield. These Hour and Charioteer things were equally as difficult to look at.
As the Demogorgon waits for the monstrous jurors to sort themselves out and gather, Hephaestus pulls a slim cord from the helmet bubble of his absurd suit and clips the end of the line into the cowl of Achilles’ thermskin.
“Can you hear me now?” asks the crippled dwarf-god. “We have a few minutes to talk.”
“Yes, I hear you, but can’t the Demogorgon also? He did before.”
“No, this is a hardline. That Demogorgon is a lot of things, but not J. Edgar Hoover.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Listen, son of Peleus, we have to coordinate what we’re going to say to this giant rabble and the Demogorgon. A lot depends on it.”
“Don’t call me that,” growls Achilles with a glare that has frozen battlefield enemies in their tracks.
The god Hephaestus actually takes an alarmed step back, accidentally pulling tight the communications cord between them. “Call you what?”
“Son of Peleus. I never want to hear that phrase again.”
The god of artifice holds up his heavily gauntleted hands, palms outward. “Fine. But we still have to talk. We only have a minute or two before this kangaroo court commences.”
“What is a kangaroo?” Achilles is growing tired of this mini-god’s double-talk. The fleet-footed mankiller’s sword is in his hand. He has a strong suspicion that all he has to do to kill this so-called immortal is slash a gash in the bearded fool’s metal suit, and then step back to watch the god of fire choke to death on the acid air. Then again, Hephaestus is an Olympian immortal, even without the big bug’s Healing tanks back on Olympos. So perhaps, as Achilles had, the impudent bearded cripple, exposed to Tartarus’ acid air, would just cough, gag, retch, and sprawl around in pain for an eternity until one of the Oceanids ate him. It is a powerful impulse in Achilles to find out.
He resists the urge.
“Never mind,” says Hephaestus. “What are you going to say to the Demogorgon? Shall I do all the talking for us?”
“No.”
“Well, we need to get our stories straight. What are you going to ask the Demogorgon and the Titans to do other than kill Zeus?”
“I am not going to ask this Demogorgon thing to kill Zeus,” Achilles says firmly.
The bearded dwarf-god looks surprised behind the glass of his head-bubble. “You’re not? That’s why I thought we were here.”
“I am going to kill Zeus myself,” says Achilles. “And feed his liver to Argus, Odysseus’ dog.”
Hephaestus sighs. “All right. But for me to sit on the throne of Olympos—the deal you offered me and which Nyx agreed to—we still need to convince the Demogorgon to intercede. And the Demogorgon is insane.”
“Insane?” says Achilles. Most of the monstrous shapes seem to be in position now among the ridgelines, cindercones, and lava flows.
“You heard the thing going on about the God supreme, didn’t you?” says Hephaestus.
“I don’t know which god D
emogorgon speaks of, if not Zeus.”
“Demogorgon is speaking of some single, supreme god of the entire universe,” says Hephaestus, his already raspy voice rasping even more over the communications line. “One god with a capital ‘G’ and no others at all.”
“That’s absurd,” says Achilles.
“Yes,” agrees the god of fire. “That’s why the Demogorgon’s race exiled him to this prison world of Tartarus.”
“Race?” says Achilles incredulously. “You mean there’s more than one of these Demogorgons?”
“Of course. Nothing living comes in complete sets of one, Achilles. Even you must have learned that. This Demogorgon is as crazy as a Trojan shithouse rat. He worships some single all-powerful capital-G god and sometimes refers to him as ‘the Quiet.’”
“The Quiet?” Achilles tries to imagine any god being a silent god. The concept is certainly something out of his experience.
“Yes,” growls Hephaestus over the cowl earphones. “Only this ‘the Quiet’ isn’t all of the single all-powerful capital-G god, but is just one of many manifestations of Him…capital H there.”
“Enough with the capitals,” says Achilles. “So the Demogorgon does believe in more than one god.”
“No,” insists the god of fire and artifice. “This big God just has many faces or avatars or forms, sort of like Zeus when he wants to screw a mortal woman. You remember once Zeus turned into a swan to…”
“What the fuck does all this have to do with the hearing that’s going to start in about thirty fucking seconds?” shouts Achilles over his thermskin microphones.
Hephaestus claps his hands over his glass bubble where his ears should be. “Hush,” hisses the dwarf-god over the intercom. “Listen, this has everything to do with our argument to convince the Demogorgon to release the Titans and the others here to attack Zeus, wipe out the current Olympians, and install me as the new king on Olympos.”
“But you just said the Demogorgon is a prisoner here.”
“I did. But Nyx—Night—opened the Brane Hole from Olympos to here. We can go back that way unless it closes before this goddamned hearing, trial, town meeting, whatever it is, gets under way. Besides, I think the Demogorgon can leave whenever it wants to.”
“What kind of prison is it that allows you to leave whenever you want to?” asks Achilles. He’s beginning to think that it’s the bearded dwarf-god who’s the lunatic here.
“You have to know a little about the Demogorgon’s race,” says the bubble-head on top of the iron-bubbled body. “Which is all anyone knows about them…very little. This Demogorgon is imprisoning himself here because he was told to. He can quantum teleport anywhere, any time…if he thinks it’s important enough to. We just have to convince him it’s important enough to.”
“But we have the Brane Hole,” says Achilles. “And what is Nyx getting out of this? You told me at Odysseus’ home before I woke Zeus that Night would open the Hole and I believed you, but why? What’s in it for her?”
“Survival,” says Hephaestus and looks around. All the monstrous shapes seem to be in position. The court is in session. Everyone is waiting for the Demogorgon to speak.
Achilles can see this as well. “What do you mean, survival?” he hisses over the interphone. “You told me yourself that Nyx is the one goddess whom Zeus fears. Her and her goddamned Fates. He can’t hurt her.”
The glass bubble moves back and forth as Hephaestus shakes his head. “Not Zeus. Prospero and Sycorax and…the people…the beings who helped create Zeus, me, the other gods, even the Titans. And I don’t mean Ouranos god of the sky mating with Gaia, mother Earth. Before them.”
Achilles tries to wrap his mind around this concept of someone other than Earth and Night creating the Titans and the gods. He can’t.
“They trapped a creature named Setebos on Mars and your Ilium-Earth for ten years,” continues Hephaestus.
“Who did?” says Achilles. He is totally confused by now. “What is a Setebos? And what relevance can this have to what we have to say to the Demogorgon in one minute?”
“Achilles, you must know enough of our history to know how Zeus and the other young Olympians defeated his father Kronos and the other Titans, even though the Titans were more powerful?”
“I do,” says Achilles, feeling like a child again, being tutored by Chiron, the centaur who raised him. “Zeus won the war between the gods and the Titans by enlisting the aid of terrible creatures against whom the Titans were powerless.”
“And which was the most terrible of these terrible creatures?” asks the bearded dwarf-god through the intercom. His teacherly tone makes Achilles want to gut him on the spot.
“The hundred-armed,” he answers, exerting the last of his patience. The Demogorgon will be speaking any second and none of this gibberish has helped Achilles know what to say. “The monstrous many-handed thing which you gods called Briareous,” he adds, “but which early men called Aigaion.”
“The thing called Briareous and Aigaion is really named Setebos,” hisses Hephaestus. “For ten years this creature has been distracted from its hungry intentions, left to feed on your puny human war between Trojans and Achaeans. But now it is loose again and the quantum underpinnings of the entire solar system are coming unhinged. Nyx is worried that they’ll destroy not only their Earth, but the new Mars and her entire dark dimension. Brane Holes connect everything. They’re being too reckless, this Sycorax and Setebos, Prospero and their ilk. The Fates predict total quantum destruction if someone or something does not intercede. Nyx would prefer me—the crippled dwarf—on the throne of Olympos rather than risk such total quantum meltdown.”
Since Achilles has not the least fucking clue as to what the dwarf-god is babbling about, he remains silent.
The Demogorgon seems to be clearing his non-throat to silence the last of the murmurs and movements in the crowd of Titans, Hours, Charioteers, Healers, and other malformed shapes.
“The best news,” hisses Hephaestus over his intercom, whispering now as if the huge shapeless and veiled mass above them can hear them despite the comm cord, “is that the Demogorgon and his god—the Quiet—eat Seteboses for snacks.”
“The Demogorgon is not the insane one here,” Achilles whispers back. “It’s you who’s crazy as a Trojan shithouse rat.”
“Nonetheless, will you let me speak for us?” Hephaestus whispers, urgency in every syllable.
“Yes,” says Achilles. “But if you say something I don’t agree with, I’m going to hack your cute little suit into separate iron balls and then cut your real balls off and feed them to you through that glass bowl.”
“Fair enough,” says Hephaestus and jerks the comm line free.
“YOU MAY BEGIN YOUR APPEAL,” booms the Demogorgon.
76
They decided to vote on whether Noman could borrow the sonie. The meeting was scheduled for noon, when the minimum number of sentries were posted and the bulk of the day’s necessary chores were done, so that most of the Ardis survivors—including the six newcomers and Hannah, bringing their number up to fifty-five—could attend, but already the nature of Odysseus/Noman’s request had got out to even the farthest-posted sentry and already the consensus was dead set against it.
Hannah and Ada spent the rest of the morning catching up with events. The younger woman was all but inconsolable over the loss of their friends and Ardis Hall itself, but Ada reminded her that the Hall could be rebuilt—at least some crude version of it.
“Do you think we’ll live to see that?” asked Hannah.
Ada had no answer. She squeezed Hannah’s hand.
They talked about Harman, about the details of his odd disappearance from the Golden Gate with the thing called Ariel and about Ada’s sense that Harman was still alive somewhere.
They talked about small things—how food was being prepared these days and Ada’s hopes to enlarge the camp before the voynix began massing as they had.
“Do you know why this Setebos baby keep
s them away?” asked Hannah.
“None of us have a real clue,” said Ada. She led the young sculptor to the Pit. The Setebos-thing—Noman had called it a form of louse—was at the bottom, hands and tendrils curled under it, but its yellow eyes stared up with an inhuman indifference much worse than mere malevolence.
Hannah grabbed her temples. “Oh my…oh God…it’s clawing at my mind, wanting to get in.”
“It does that,” Ada said softly. She had carried a flechette rifle to the Pit and now she aimed it casually at the mass of blue-gray tissue and pink hands a few yards below.
“What if it…takes over?” asked Hannah.
“Begins to control us, you mean?” said Ada. “Turns us against one another?”
“Yes.”
Ada shrugged. “We half expect that to begin every day, every night. We’ve discussed it. So far, we all can vaguely hear this Setebos baby calling to us—like a bad smell in the background—but when it comes strongly, as it just did with you, it’s just one person at a time. If the rest of us hear it and feel it, it’s like an…I don’t know…an echo.”
“So you think that if it takes control,” said Hannah, “you think it’ll be one of you at a time.”
Ada shrugged again. “Something like that.”
Hannah looked at the heavy flechette rifle in Ada’s hand. “But if the thing starts controlling you right now, you could kill me—kill a lot of us—before…”
“Yes,” said Ada. “We’ve discussed that as well.”
“Did you come up with some plan?”
“Yes,” Ada said again, very quietly, as she stood above the Pit. “We’re going to kill this abomination before it comes to that.”
Hannah nodded. “But you’ll have to get all your people out of here before you can do that. I see why you don’t want to loan Odysseus the sonie.”
Ada had to sigh. “Do you know why he wants it, Hannah?”
“No. He won’t tell me. There’s so much he won’t tell me.”
“Yet you love him.”