“Is . . . Orphu . . . alive?” I ask.
“Yes, but he has no eyes or manipulators right now,” says the little robot. “But I’m conveying what we say to Orphu via radio and he says that it is a pleasure making your acquaintance. He says that if he still had eyes, you would be the first human being he has ever laid eyes on.”
“Orphu of Io,” I repeat. “Isn’t there a moon of Saturn named Io?”
“Jupiter actually,” says the Mahnmut machine.
“Well, it’s nice meeting you,” I say, “but we have to get out of here right now and chat later. This cow is waking up. Someone’ll be looking for her in a minute or two. The gods are pretty upset right now.”
“Cow,” repeats the robot. He is looking down at Hera. “How droll.” The robot shifts his twin searchlight beams to the door. “The barn door appears to have locked behind the cow. Do you have some means of unlocking or blowing the door off its hinges?”
“No,” I say. “But we don’t have to go through the door to get out of here. Give me your hand . . . paw . . . whatever it is.”
The robot hesitates. “Are you planning to quantum teleport us out of here by any chance?”
“You know about QT?”
The little figure shifts the beams back to the inert crabshell that looms taller than my head. “Can you take both of us with you?”
It’s my turn to hesitate. “I don’t know. I suspect not. That much mass . . .” Hera is stirring and moaning at our feet—well, at my feet and at this Mahnmut’s vaguely footish-looking peds. “Give me your hand,” I say again. “I’ll QT you to safety, off Olympos, and I’ll come back for your friend.”
The little robot takes another step away. “I have to know that Orphu can be saved before I go.”
There are voices booming in the hall. Are they searching for me already? That’s likely the case. Has Aphrodite shared her seeing-through-the-Hades-Helmet technology, or are they just fanning out and searching the space as though they were hunting for an invisible man? Hera moans and turns on her side. Her eyelids are still fluttering, but she’s coming to.
“Fuck it,” I say. I tear off my cape and remove the levitation harness that’s part of my armor. “Give me some light here, please.” Should one say please to a robot? Of course, this Mahnmut didn’t say he was a robot, but a moravec. Whatever that is.
The first belt of the harness is far too short to fit around the big crabshell, but I link all three sections of the harness together, wrapping the buckles on each end to cracks in the shell. This poor Orphu bugger looks as if terrorists have been using him for target practice for years. There are craters within craters on his vaguely metallic-looking carapace.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s see if this works.” I activate the harness.
What must be tons of inert crabshell wobbles, bumps, but then levitates ten inches or so off the marble floor.
“Let’s see if this medallion can haul this much freight,” I say, not caring if the Mahnmut understands me. I hand the taser baton to the little robot. “If the cow stirs before I’m back, or if someone else comes through that door, aim and tap the baton here. It’ll stop one of them.”
“Actually,” says Mahnmut, “I have to go fetch two things they stole from us and I might be better served by that invisibility device you were using. Might it be borrowable?” He hands me the baton back.
“Shit,” I say. The voices are right outside the door now. I loosen my armor, tug off the leathery cowl, and toss it to the robot. Will Hades’ little device work for a machine? Should I tell him that Aphrodite can see him even with it on? No time now. I say, “How will I find you when I come back?”
“Come to the near side of the caldera lake any time in the next hour,” says the robot. “I’ll find you.”
The door opens. The little robot disappears.
With Nightenhelser and Patroclus, I’d simply grabbed them to include them in the QT field, although I’d been dragging the inert Patroclus with my arm around him. Now I lean against the Orphu shell, one arm thrown up over it as far as I can reach, while I visualize my destination and twist the medallion.
Bright sunlight and sand underfoot. The Orphu mass has teleported with me and now floats ten inches off the sand, which is good since there are small boulders beneath it. I don’t think it’s possible to emerge from QT into a solid object, but I’m glad we haven’t picked today to find out.
I’ve come to Agamemnon’s camp on the beach, but the tented area is mostly deserted this late morning hour. Despite the roiling storm clouds overhead, sunlight shafts down across the beach and across the bright tents, paints the long black boats with light, and shows me the Achaean guards jumping back in shock at our sudden appearance. I can hear the roar of battle a few hundred yards beyond the camp and know that the Greeks and Trojans are still fighting out there beyond the Achaean defensive trenches. Perhaps Achilles is leading a counterattack.
“This shell is sacred to the gods,” I shout at the guards who are crouching behind their spears. “Do not touch it upon pain of death. Where is Achilles? Has he been here?”
“Who wants to know?” demands the tallest and hairiest of the guards. He lifts his spear. I vaguely recognize him as Guneus, commander of the Enienes and Peraebians from Dodona. What this captain is doing standing guard in Agamemnon’s camp this day I don’t know and don’t have time to find out right now.
I taser Guneus down and look at the second in command, a bowlegged little sergeant. “Will you take me to Achilles?”
The man plants the butt of his spear in the sand, goes to one knee, and bows his head briefly. The other guards hesitate but then do the same.
I ask where Achilles is. “All this morning, godlike Achilles strode the edge of the surf, summoning sleeping Achaeans and rousing captains with his piercing cry,” says the sergeant. “Then he challenged the Atrides in combat and beat them both. Now he is with the great generals, planning a war, they say, against Olympos itself.”
“Take me to him,” I say.
As they lead me out of the camp, I glance back toward the Orphu of Io shell—it’s still floating above the sand, the remaining guards are still keeping a respectful district—and then I laugh aloud.
The little sergeant glances at me but I don’t explain. It’s simply that this is the first time in nine years that I’ve walked freely on the plains of Ilium in an unmorphed form, as Thomas Hockenberry rather than anyone else. It feels good.
43
Equatorial Ring
Just before they found the firmary, Daeman had been complaining about being starved. He was starved. He’d never gone so long between meals before. The last thing he’d eaten had been a paltry few bites of the last dried food bar almost ten hours earlier.
“There must be something to eat in this city,” Daeman was saying. The three of them were kick-swimming their way through the dead orbital city. Above them, the glowing panes had given away to clear panels and they saw now how the asteroid and its city were slowly turning. The Earth would appear, move across their field of view above them, its soft light illuminating the empty space, floating bodies, dead plants, and floating kelp. “There has to be something to eat here,” repeated Daeman. “Cans of food, freeze-dried food . . . something. ”
“If there is, it’s centuries old,” said Savi. “And as mummified as the post-humans.”
“If we find any servitors, they’ll feed us,” said Daeman, realizing that the statement was nonsense as soon as he said it.
Harman and the old woman did not bother replying. They floated into a small clearing in the wild kelpfields. The air seemed slightly thicker here, although Daeman did not lift his osmosis mask or thermskin cowl to try to breathe it. Even through the mask he could tell the little bit of cold air smelled foul.
“If we find a faxportal,” said Harman, “we’ll have to use it to get home.” Harman’s body was muscled and taut in his blue thermskin suit, but Daeman could see the beginning of wrinkles and lines around the eyes through the other man’s clear mask. He looked older than he had just a day earlier.