Hannah shrugged. “My mother remembered old tales about forging metal. She played with fire and open hearths when she was younger. I continue the experiments.” She swung the sword overhand, chopping down.
“You’ve seen us fight in your turin cloth,” said Odysseus.
Hannah nodded. “So?”
“You’re using the sword properly, girl. Hacking rather than stabbing. This tool is made for severing limbs and spilling guts, nothing more refined.”
Hannah grimaced and handed the weapon back. “Is this the sword you used on the plains of Ilium?” she asked softly. “And in your adventure to steal the Pallodian?”
“No.” He lifted the blade vertically until some of the light spilling down between the high branches danced on its surface. “This particular sword was a gift to me, from . . . a female . . . during my travels.”
Hannah waited for more explanation, but instead of telling another story, Odysseus said, “Would you like to see what makes this sword different?”
Hannah nodded.
Odysseus used his thumb to tap at the hilt guard twice, and suddenly the sword seemed to shimmer slightly. Hannah leaned closer. Yes, there was a subtle but persistent hum coming from the blade. She lifted one hand toward the metal but Odysseus’ hand shot out quickly, grabbing her wrist.
“If you touched it now, girl, you’d lose all your fingers.”
“Why?” She didn’t struggle to pull her wrist away, and after a few seconds Odysseus released it.
“It’s vibrating,” said Odysseus, holding the sword blade flat just below eye level. Hannah noticed again that she was exactly the same height as Odysseus. The night before, she had heard him in the green bubble hall on the bridge after the others had turned in, joined him for a walk, returned to his domi to talk for hours, and had gone to sleep on the floor next to his cot. Hannah knew that Ada thought they’d become lovers; she didn’t mind and couldn’t think of a reason to disabuse her friend of the notion.
“It’s almost as if it’s singing,” said Hannah, turning slightly better to hear the high-pitched hum.
Odysseus laughed loudly at this, although Hannah didn’t know why. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It wasn’t tossed to me by some Lady of the Lake, although that’s not too far from the truth of it.” He laughed again.
Hannah looked at the bearded man. She had no clue as to what he was talking about. She wondered if he did. “Why does it vibrate?” she asked.
“Stand back,” said the barrel-chested man.
Most of the sequoia around them were six to ten feet thick, some thicker, but a smaller pine—perhaps a ponderosa or Douglas fir—was growing in a sunny patch a few yards to their left. The tree was probably thirty or forty years old, about fifty feet tall, with a trunk perhaps eighteen inches thick.
Odysseus planted his feet, gripped the sword in one hand, and swung idly at the trunk in an effortless backhand stroke.
The blade moved so smoothly through its arc that it appeared that he’d missed completely. There was no noise of impact. A few seconds later, the tall pine tree shivered, shifted, and fell noisily to the ground.
Odysseus thumbed the hilt again and the faint vibration hum ceased.
Hannah stepped closer to inspect the chest-high stump and the fallen tree. The trunk sections looked as if they had been surgically separated, not sawed. She laid her palm on the top of the severed stump. There was no sap, no shavings. The wood was so smooth it felt as if it had been sealed in plastic, cauterized somehow. She turned back to Odysseus.
“That must have come in handy during the siege of Troy,” she said.
“You weren’t listening, girl,” said Odysseus. He slipped the weapon back in its sheath and strung it to his broad belt. “This was a gift some years after I’d left the war and begun my travels. If I’d had this at Ilium . . .” Odysseus grinned horribly. “There wouldn’t be a Trojan, god, or goddess left with a head on his or her shoulders, girl. I promise you that.”
Hannah found herself grinning back at the old man. They weren’t lovers—not yet—but Hannah was planning to stay at Ardis Hall while Odysseus was visiting there, and who knew what might happen?
“There you are,” said Savi, striding down the slope toward them. She closed her fist and what looked like a palm finder-field blinked out.
“Time to go on?” asked Odysseus, speaking to Savi but glancing toward Hannah as if they were old conspirators.
“Time to go on,” said Savi.
26
Between Eos Chasma and Coprates Chasma in East-Central Valles Marineris
Three weeks into the voyage west up the river—inland sea, really—of Valles Marineris, and Mahnmut was close to losing his moravec mind.
Their felucca, crewed by forty little green men, was just one of many ships plying their way east or west in the flooded rift valley or north-south up or down the estuary opening onto the Chryse Planitia Sea of the Northern Tethys Ocean. In addition to a score of other LGM-crewed feluccas, they had passed at least three 100-meter-long barges each day, each hauling four great, uncarved stones for heads, all headed east from the cliff quarry on the south side of Noctis Labryinthus at the west end of Valles Marineris, still some 2,800 kilometers ahead of Mahnmut’s west-bound felucca.
Orphu of Io had been rolled aboard and secured on the lower mid-deck, hidden from aerial view by a raised tarp, tied down next to the major pieces of cargo and other items recovered from The Dark Lady. Even the thought of his submersible—left behind in the shallow sea cavern along the Chryse Planitia coastline some 1,500 kilometers behind them—depressed Mahnmut.
Until this voyage, Mahnmut hadn’t known that he was capable of depression—capable of feeling such a terrible emotional malaise and sense of hopelessness that could leave him with almost no will and even less ambition—but the violent separation from his sub had shown him just how low he could feel. Orphu—blinded, crippled, hauled aboard like so much useless ballast—seemed in good spirits, although Mahnmut was learning how carefully and rarely his friend showed his true feelings.
The felucca had arrived, as promised, early that next Martian morning after their arrival on the coast, and while the LGM were man-hauling poor Orphu aboard, Mahnmut had gone down into the flooded sub several times, pulling out all the removable power units, solar cells, communication equipment, log disks, and all the navigation gear that he could haul.
“You swam naked out to the wreck and stuffed your pockets with biscuits before swimming back, eh?” Orphu had said that morning after Mahnmut told him about the salvage efforts.
“What?” Mahnmut wondered if the battered Ionian had finally lost his mind.
“Little continuity error in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe,” rumbled Orphu. “I always enjoy continuity errors.”
“I never read it,” Mahnmut said. He was in no mood for banter. Leaving The Dark Lady behind was tearing him apart.
They discussed his reaction during the first three weeks of their voyage, since they had little to do aboard the felucca except discuss things. The short-range radio receiver transmitter that Mahnmut had grafted onto Orphu’s commline jack worked well.
“You’re suffering from agoraphobia as much as from depression,” said Orphu.
“How so?”
“You were designed, programmed, and trained to be part of the sub, hidden under Europan ice, surrounded by darkness and crushing depths, comfortable in your tight spaces,” said the Ionian. “Even your short forays on the ice surface of Europa didn’t prepare you for these vast vistas, distant horizons, and blue skies.”
“The sky’s not blue right now,” was all that Mahnmut said in response. It was early morning, and, like most mornings, Valles Marineris was filled with low clouds and thick fog. The LGM had furled the felucca’s sails and were moving ahead by oars alone—thirty of the little green men rowed, fifteen on a side, seemingly indefatigable—whenever the wind didn’t move the two-masted, lateen-rigged sailing ship. Lanterns glowed on the bow, forward mast, both sides, and stern, and the felucca was barely moving. This section of the Valles Marineris was more than 120 kilometers wide and the section they would soon be entering would be 200 kilometers across—an inland sea rather than river, where, even on clear days, the high cliffs of the north or south banks of the waterway would be invisible in the distance—but there was enough LGM ship traffic along these channels to justify such caution in the fog.