"I had been penitent; hearing my victim's most touching account and imagining how I'd have felt, even without the extra moral and historical resonances, if some bitter mischance (such as befell my brother) had nipped my career in the bud, I was inconsolable. I dared not turn her loose; neither could I leave her where she was or fly her to Themiscyra or back to Telmissus (where, perhaps, Philonoë's friendship would have soothed her, if not mine — but I did not trust Iobates); on the other hand, contrite as I was, I was not willing to emasculate myself for penance. Melanippe rejected angrily my offer to supply her with the genitalia of a certain dead goatherd over the hill, which she could represent back home as her violator's. At length, for want of better, though I was perishing for sleep I flew her across the Sporades and Cyclades, all the way to Corinth, binding her tightly across Pegasus's back to prevent her jumping off: we landed by night atop the royal horse-barns, astonishing two owls and the Amazon on watch — whom I recognized as fat Hippolyta, a friend of my youth, and saluted by name.
" 'No, not Prince Bellerus any longer,' I called down to her: 'Bellerophon. The Killer? I have a young sister of yours here: Lance Corporal Melanippe, Fifth Light Cavalry, a valiant soldier shamefully raped in Lycia while unconscious after a bad fall from her horse. So. Please see she doesn't harm herself, okay? And commend her to my mother and your comrades, et cetera. Also, tell Mom I'm fine and will come back to claim Corinth sooner or later. Also, that she was wrong about Polyeidus. I think. Thanks.' While amazed Hippolyta went to fetch a ladder and her comrades, I deposited Melanippe, too despondent to speak, gently on the roof; kissed her hair; reapologized. 'Best I could think of,' I said; 'you're among friends, anyhow. Subvert all you want to. Anything else I can do for you?' Why, yes, she responded: matter of fact she desired urgently to perform fellatio upon me then and there, on the roof, out of her vast gratitude for my not having killed as well as raped her. The voice was odd; and the particular phrasing of her motive. . I declined, embarrassed, and leaned over to unbind her wrists. Instantly she seized my legs and bit fiercely into my crotch; I jumped, slipped on the roof-tiles, very nearly tumbled off; she was after me, lunging as best she could with ankles still tied, clawing at my privates; I leaped clumsily onto Pegasus and dug in my heels; left her shrieking curses at me from the ridgepole.
"Shaken, I returned to the foothills of Mount Chimera, spent three days resting and recomposing myself. The blood-and-ink-stains on the lining of Melanippe's chiton were indelible, a ciphered execration. I had bad dreams. Every time I saw a snake (the woods there are infested), I imagined it a fleeing Amazon. When Solymian or Carian border scouts approached, I flew off with the jays and blackbirds; I searched out another patrol of Amazons and tried to tell them of Melanippe's courage and current circumstances; obliged to hover out of bowshot-range, I couldn't make myself heard. Much of the time I merely soared in high circles over the dead volcano like a misbegotten hawk, thinking dark thoughts about myself. Finally I returned to the plain of Xanthus and Iobates's city.
"The King was even more surprised than before, and openly displeased to see me. Polyeidus, too, appeared distressed. But Philonoë cried out for joy, hung on my neck, covered me with kisses, until she saw what black humor I was in and drew away.
" 'That took a while,' Iobates said sourly. 'Where's my Amazon?' I displayed the ruined chiton and gave it to Philonoë, whose delicate beauty and girlish ways seemed to me suddenly bizarre, affected, as if she were imitating a Phrygian faggot. 'Amazons don't permit themselves to be slaves,' I said. Iobates chuckled: 'But they're dandy captives while they last, eh?' Philonoë threw the chiton down and ran from the room; her displeasure with me put the King at once in brighter spirits. 'Seduction is for sissies,' he said; 'the he-man wants his rape. Heh heh. We used to prong 'em and then watch them kill themselves. How about lunch before you knock off King Amisidoros for me?' My repulse of the Solymians and Amazons, he declared, counted as but a single labor, especially since I'd brought him no proof at all of the former and only ambiguous evidence of the latter. Moreover, his spies in Caria reported that while Amisidoros was alarmed by the 'flying centaur' stories and the consequent weakening of his Solymian-Amazon alliance, and perhaps amenable therefore to a negotiated settlement of the boundary dispute, he was by no means frightened to the point of mere capitulation. My next task, then, proposed by Polyeidus in keeping with the classic pattern of ascending unlikelihood, was to fly directly to the Carian court, land before Amisidoros in broad daylight, and offer to destroy the capital city with everyone in it unless he ceded half of Caria to Lycia.
" 'Take the whole weekend if you need it,' he concluded. 'And save Amisidoros's queen for my Sanitation Workers' Brothel. Toodle-oo.'
"I responded: 'Nope. I'll do you one more labor — you call it the third; it's Number Five in my book, counting that special-delivery from Proetus — but it's got to be something extraordinary, not like those others. Pirates and outlaws, maybe, if they aren't in fact protesting injustices in the Lycian socioeconomic system — I wish I'd had a chat with Chimarrhus about that before I sank him. Rebels ditto, if they're mere adventurists making a power-grab. Invading armies sure. Et cetera. But no more imperialist aggression, okay? You'll have to come up with something better, or I quit. I've had my consciousness raised.'
"From the wings of the throne-room came the sound of two hands clapping. Philonoë returned, and looking at me levelly, told her father to stop pussyfooting around and send me after Chimera.
"I tried to gauge her feelings. 'The Chimera?' Polyeidus declared nervously that the definite article was optional.
" 'That's not a bad idea, Phillie,' her father said. 'Not bad at all. Then we'd still have our Flying Centaur, and Amisidoros wouldn't have his counter-monster. You say this Chimera's a sure killer, Polyeidus?'
" 'I never heard of its hurting anybody,' I said. 'For all I know, it may be minding its own business up there in the crater. Am I supposed to kill it just because it's monstrous? Besides, it's female. No more sexist aggression.'
"Polyeidus defended the monster's deadliness on genealogical grounds — both of its parents had been legendary man-killers — but acknowledged that the creature had not left its lair in Amisidoros's deadly service at least since tranquilized by the Polyeidic magic papers, and so could be said to be a threat only to vulcanologists or ignorant spelunkers, whom a posted guard could easily warn off. He agreed with me therefore that there was no particular need to kill it — or her, if I preferred.
" 'He's a chicken and you're a hustler,' Iobates hmped. 'If he wastes the Chimera you're out of the protection racket, right?'
" 'Don't kill her, then,' Philonoë suggested in a gentler tone. 'Bring her back alive for the University's Zoology Department. Okay, Bellerophon?' She grew excited at the idea: we could build Chimera an asbestos cage; her breath could be used to heat the whole zoo free of charge, maybe the poorer sections of the polis as well. 'You wouldn't have to hurt her,' she insisted, and added, blushing: 'But don't you get hurt, either.'
" 'Capital idea!' Iobates cried. 'Steal Amisidoros's secret weapon and make a public show of it for the hoi polloi, keep their minds off their troubles. Go to it, Bellerophon! If you get her, no more tasks; if she gets you — no more tasks! You can't lose. Of course, if you're afraid. .'