“You mean, will I die if you leave me here alone?” asks Nightenhelser . . . Keith.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. Probably. But I suspect my chances are a hell of a lot better here than back on the plains of Ilium. At least while the Muse is on the warpath . . .”
I guess that Keith is fixated on Indians right now as well.
“Plus I have all my little scholic tech-toys and gear. I can make fire, use the levitation harness to fly if I have to, morph into an Indian if necessary, even use the weapon taser. So I guess you should QT back to wherever you have to go and do whatever you have to do,” says Nightenhelser. “Fill me in later on the details . . . if there is a later.”
I nod and stand. It seems strange . . . wrong . . . to leave the other scholic here alone, but I don’t see any choice.
“Can you find your way back?” he asks. “Here, I mean. To fetch me.”
“I think so.”
“Think so? Think so?” Nightenhelser rubs his hand through his wild hair. “I hope you weren’t the chairman of your department, Hockenberry.”
I guess the era of first names is over.
There’s no place in the universe that I’d less rather be than Olympos. When I arrive, the inhabitants of this mountaintop are gathered in the Great Hall of the Gods. Making sure that the cowl of the Hades Helmet is pulled on tight and that I throw no shadow, I slip into the huge Parthenon-style building.
In my nine-plus years as scholic, I’ve never seen so many gods in one place. On one side of the long hologram pool sits Zeus, high on his golden throne, larger than I have ever seen him. As I’ve mentioned, the gods are usually eight or nine feet tall except when they take mortal form, and Zeus usually towers over them by three or four feet, a divine adult to their cosmic children. But today Zeus is twenty-five feet tall or taller, each of his muscled forearms as long as my torso. I fleetingly wonder what this does to that conservation of mass and energy the other scholic tried to teach me about years ago, but that’s not important now. Staying back against the wall, away from the milling gods, and not making any noise or movement or sneeze that will betray me to all these refined superhero senses—that’s important.
I thought that I knew all the gods and goddesses by name, but there are scores here that I don’t recognize. Those that I do know, the gods and goddesses who have been most involved in the fighting at Troy, stand out in the crowd like movie stars at a meeting of minor politicians, but even the least of these gods is taller, stronger, handsomer, and more perfect than any human movie star I remember from my other life. Nearest Zeus, opposite him across the hologram pool—which divides the room like a long moat now—I can see Pallas Athena, the war god Ares (obviously out of his healing tank, which was not damaged when I destroyed Aphrodite’s), Zeus’s younger brothers—the sea god Poseidon (who rarely comes to Olympos), and Hades, ruler of the dead. Zeus’s son, Hermes, stands near the pool, and the guide and giant killer is as lean and beautiful as statues I’ve seen of him. Another son of Zeus, Dionysus, the god of ecstatic release, is talking to Hera and—contrary to his public image—he has no goblet of wine in his hand. For a god of ecstatic release, Dionysus looks pale, feeble, and dour—like a man in only the third week of a twelve-step program. Beyond them, looking older than time, is Nereus, the true sea god, the Old Man of the Sea. His fingers and toes are webbed and there are gills visible below his armpits.
The Fates and the Furies are here in force, milling by accident or design between the gods and the goddesses. These are gods—of sorts—yet sometimes they have regulatory power over the other gods. They are not as human in appearance as the regular gods and goddesses, and I confess I know almost nothing about them except that they don’t live on Olympos, but on one of the three volcanoes far to the southeast, near where the muses reside.
My Muse, Melete, is here, standing with her sisters, Meneme and Aoide. The more “modern” muses are also in the crowd—the real Kalliope, Polymnia, Ourania, Erato, Kleis, Euterpe, Melpomene, Terpsichore, and Tahleia. Just beyond the muses are the A-list goddesses. Aphrodite is not among them—that is the first thing I notice. If she were, I would be as visible to her as these divinities are to me. But her mother, Dione, is in attendance, speaking to Hera and Hermes and looking very serious indeed. Near that group are Demeter—the goddess of crops—and her daughter Persephone, Hades’ wife. Behind them I can see Pasithea, one of the Graces. Farther back, as befits their lesser place, are the Nereids, nude to the waist, lovely, and treacherous-looking.
The meta-goddess called Night stands alone. Her gown and veil are of a purple so dark as to be black, and even the other gods and goddesses give her a wide berth. I know nothing about Night, except rumors that even Zeus is afraid of her, and I’ve never seen her on Olympos before.
I feel like a gawking movie fan in the crowd outside the Academy Awards, trying to separate the superstars from the lesser gods. Hebe there, for instance, standing near the males—she is the goddess of youth, Zeus and Hera’s child, but only a servant to the gods—and there, red hair like flames, is Hephaestus, the great artificer, talking to his wife, Charis, who is only one of the Graces. Pecking order among gods and goddesses I realize, not for the first time, is complicated stuff.
Suddenly the goddess Iris, Zeus’s messenger, flies forward—yes, flies—and claps her hands. “The Father will speak,” she says, her voice as clear and crisp as a flute solo.
Immediately the scores of soft conversations cease and the great, echoing hall goes silent.
Zeus stands. His gold throne and the gold steps leading up to it exude a glow that bathes him in divine light.
“Hear me, all you gods, and goddesses, too,” says Zeus, his voice soft but so strong that I feel the vibration of it off the high marble walls. “Some god or goddess this day has tried to hurt Aphrodite, now healing in our hall of healing, and—while she will live—it was a close thing and she will need many more days to heal again. Some god or goddess tried to kill an immortal this day—tried to kill one of us who is not fated for death. ”
The muttering and shocked conversation start as a buzz and rise to a roar in the huge room.
“SILENCE!!” roars Zeus, and this time his voice is so loud that it knocks me down and slides me across the marble floor like a tumbleweed in a tornado. Luckily, I hit none of the gods or goddesses in my slide, and the noise I make is drowned out by the echoes of Zeus’s shout.
“Hear me now, oh gods and goddesses,” he continues, his voice amplified as if from the ultimate public address system. “Let no beautiful goddess, nor no god either, attempt to defy my strict decree. You will submit to my will—NOW!”
This time I am ready for the hurricane force of his voice and I cling to a column until the energy of it has passed.
“Listen to me,” says Zeus, almost whispering now, the sense of his power even more terrible for the soft tone. “Any god who violates my decree by helping the Trojans or Achaeans the way I have seen this month, back that god or goddess comes to Olympos, whipped on by my lightning and scourged by my thunder, eternally disgraced, banned henceforth from Olympos. Defy me, and find what it is like to be cast down to the murk of Tartarus half a universe away in space and time, in the deepest gulf that yawns beneath our quantum selves.”
As he speaks, the long hologram pit boils and bubbles, turns pitch-black, and then becomes something other than a hologram; the rectangular pit—looking like a dozen Olympic-sized swimming pools laid end to end, now broiling and filled with bubbling black oil—suddenly lets loose with a roar of its own, and becomes a hole opening on someplace dark and fiery and terribly deep. The stench of sulfur roils up and the gods and goddesses near the edge back away.