“Something like that,” said Prospero with a smile. “Savi never really met Ariel. All their communications were through the allnet. The old woman always thought that Ariel’s persona was male, when most frequently the sprite chooses a female avatar.”
Who gives a shit? thought Daeman. Aloud, he said, “Can we take the sonie back to Earth?”
“I would think so,” said Prospero. “I think Ariel sent it pre-programmed to return the three of you to Ardis Hall. Another deus ex machina. I’m not happy with the machine being here.”
“Why not?” said Harman, but then he nodded. “Caliban.”
“Yes,” said Prospero. “Even my erstwhile goblin would grind his joints with dry convulsions and shorten up his sinews with aged cramps should he try hard vacuum without a suit or thermskin. But he forgot, and bit through poor Savi’s.”
“There were two more suits he could have had the last month,” said Daeman, his voice so low it fell below the whisper of ventilation. The room left the curve-slice of Earth above and rotated into starlight. There was a half-moon rising above Prospero.
“And he would have, but Caliban is no god,” said the magus. “Savi did not kill the beast with her full salvo of flechettes to its chest, but she hurt it sore. Caliban has been bleeding and recovering, gone deep sometimes to his deepest grotto where he packs the wounds with mud muck and drinks lizard blood for strength.”
“We’ve been drinking and eating the same,” said Daeman.
“Yes,” said Prospero, showing an old man’s yellow smile. “But you don’t enjoy it.”
“How do we get to the sonie?” asked Harman. “And do you have food in here?”
“No, to your second question,” said Prospero. “No one but Caliban has eaten here on this stony isle for the last five hundred years. But yes to your first. There is a membrane on the tower glass high up that will let you pass out to the launch terrace. Your suits may . . . may . . . protect you long enough to charge up the sonie and activate its guidance program. Do you remember how to fly the thing?”
“I think . . . I watched Savi . . . I mean . . .” stammered Harman. He shook his head as if brushing away cobwebs. His eyes looked as weary as Daeman felt. “We’ll have to. We will.”
“You’ll have to pass the firmary and Caliban again to reach the far tower,” said Prospero. The old man’s little eyes moved from Harman to Daeman and the gaze was judicial. “Do you have anything else you must do before you flee this place?”
“No,” said Harman.
“Yes,” said Daeman. He managed to stand and stagger over to the curved window-wall. The reflection there was thin, gaunt, and bearded, but there was something new in its eyes. “We have to destroy the firmary,” he said. “We have to destroy this whole damned place.”
52
Ilium and Olympos
For some reason, I flee with the Trojans on Thicket Ridge toward and through the smaller man-gates of the Scaean Gates, main entrance to Ilium. The wind still howls and we’re all partially deaf from the nuclear explosion to the south. My last glimpse of the mushroom cloud before entering the city with the shoving mob of Trojan soldiers shows me that the column of smoke and ash is already beginning to bend southeast with the prevailing wind. There’s still a hint of Zeus’s face in the coiled cloud at the top, but the wind and the cloud’s own infolding is breaking up that visage as well.
Scores are crushed at the man-gates, so Hector orders the guards to throw wide the central Scaean Gates, something that hasn’t been done for more than nine years. The thousands flock inside.
The Argives have run for their ships. Just as Hector is trying to rally his panicked troops here, I catch a glimpse of Achilles trying to hold back the fleeing Greeks. In the Iliad, in Achilles’ rampage after Patroclus’ death, Homer tells of the man-god fighting a flooding river—and winning, damming it with the bodies of his Trojan enemies—but now Achilles can’t stop this tsunami of fleeing Achaeans without killing hundreds, and this he will not do.
I’m swept into the city, already sorry that I ran. I realize that I should have fought my way through the milling mob on the ridge to where I saw the little robot, Mahnmut, sheltering behind the boulders atop the Amazon Myrine’s mounded tomb. Does the robot—what did he call his type? moravec?—does the moravec know that Zeus’s weapon was nuclear, possibly thermonuclear? Suddenly a memory emerges from my other life, as so many have in the past week or so—Susan trying to drag me to a talk at IU’s science hall during some multidisciplinary week at the university. A scientist named Moravec was speaking about his autonomous artificial intelligence theories. Fritz? Hans? I hadn’t gone, of course—of what interest would some scientist’s theories be to a classical scholar?
Well, it doesn’t matter now.
As if to underline this point, five chariots appear from the north—I know the QT point they translated in through up there—and begin circling the city at an altitude of three or four thousand feet. Even with optical amplification, I can’t make out the little figures in the gleaming machines, but it looks as if there are both gods and goddesses up there.
Then the bombardment begins.
The shafts scream down into the city like slender, silver, ballistic missiles, and where each one strikes, there is an explosion, dust and smoke rising, screams. Ilium is a large city by ancient standards, but the arrows come fast—from Apollo’s bow, I realize, although I think I can make out Ares doing the shooting when the chariot swoops low to assess the damage—and soon the explosions and screams are coming from every quarter of the walled metropolis.
I realize that I’ve not only lost control of everything, I’ve lost sight of everyone I should be talking to, helping, conferring with. Achilles is probably three miles away down the hill already, back with his men, trying to keep them from sailing away in panic. Hearing more explosions—conventional, not nuclear—coming from the direction of the Achaean camp, I don’t see how Achilles can succeed in rallying his men. I’ve also lost sight of Hector, and see that the huge Achaean Gates have been swung shut again—as if that can keep out the gods. Poor Mahnmut and his silent pal, Orphu, are probably destroyed out there on the ridge already. I don’t see how anything can survive this bombardment.
More explosions from the central marketplace. Red-crested Trojan soldiers rush to reinforce the walls, but the danger’s not outside the walls. The golden chariot swings above again, outside of even archer shot, and five silver arrows rain down like Scud missiles, exploding near the south wall, near the central well, and apparently right on Priam’s Palace. This is beginning to remind me of CNN images from the second war with Iraq right before I became ill with cancer.
Hector. The hero is probably rallying his men, but since there’s nothing to rally them for except to duck and cover, it’s possible that Hector has gone to his home to check on Andromache. I think of that empty, bloodstained nursery and grimace even here in the smoke and noise of the bombed city street. The royal couple hasn’t had time to bury their baby yet.
Jesus, God, is all this my doing?
A flying chariot swoops low. An explosion breaches the ramparts along the main wall and throws a dozen red-caped figures into the air. Body parts rain into the streets and patter on rooftops like fleshy hail. Suddenly another memory returns, a similar horror, three thousand two hundred years in this world’s future, two thousand and one bloody years after the birth of Christ. In my mind’s eye, I see bodies hurling down into the street and a wall of dust and pumice chasing the fleeing thousands, just as I see down Ilium’s main street this moment. Only the buildings and modes of dress are different.
We’ll never learn. Things will never change.
I run for Hector’s home. More missiles rain down, blasting the plaza just inside the gate from where I’ve just come. I see a small child staggering into the street from rubble that was a two-story home just minutes before. I can’t tell if the toddler’s a little boy or girl, but the child’s face is bloody, its curly hair covered with plaster dust. I stop running and go to one knee to gather the child in—where can I take it? There’s no hospital in Ilium!—but a woman with a red scarf over her head runs to the infant and scoops it up. I wipe rivulets of sweat out of my eyes and stagger on toward Hector’s house.