Now, dazzling from head to foot, Hera paused by the reflecting wall at the door to her bath chamber, considered the reflection for a silent moment, and said softly, “You still have it.”
Then she left her chambers and entered the echoing marble hall, touched her left breast, and quantum teleported away.
Hera found Aphrodite, goddess of love, walking alone on the grassy south-facing slopes of Mount Olympos. It was just before sunset, the temples and gods’ homes there on the east side of the caldera were limned in light, and Aphrodite had been admiring the gold glow on the Martian ocean to the north as well as on the icefields near the summit of three huge shield volcanoes visible far to the east, toward which Olympos threw its huge shadow for more than two hundred kilometers. The view was slightly blurred because of the usual forcefield around Olympos, which allowed them to breathe and survive and walk in near Earth-normal gravity here so close to the vacuum of space itself above terraformed Mars, and also blurred because of the shimmering aegis that Zeus had set in place around Olympos at the beginning of the war.
The Hole down there—a circle cut out of Olympos’ shadow, glowing within from a sunset on a different world and filled with lines of busy lights from mortal fires and moving moravec transports—was a reminder of that war.
“Dear child,” Hera called to the goddess of love, “would you do something for me if I asked, or would you refuse it? Are you still angry at me for helping the Argives these ten mortal years past while you defended your beloved Trojans?”
“Queen of the Skies,” said Aphrodite, “Beloved of Zeus, ask me anything. I will be eager to obey. Whatever I can do for one so powerful as yourself.”
The sun had all but set now, casting both goddesses into shadow, but Hera noticed how Aphrodite’s skin and ever-present smile seemed to glow of their own accord. Hera responded sensually to it as a female; she couldn’t imagine how the male gods felt in Aphrodite’s presence, much less the weak-willed mortal men.
Taking a breath—since her next words would commit her to the most dangerous scheme the scheming Hera had ever devised—she said, “Give me your powers to create Love, to command Longing—all the powers you use to overwhelm the gods and mortal men!”
Aphrodite’s smile remained, but her clear eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Of course I will, Daughter of Kronos, if you so request—but why does someone who already lies in the arms of mighty Zeus require my few wiles?”
Hera kept her voice steady as she lied. As most liars do, she gave too many details in her lie. “This war wearies me, Goddess of Love. The plotting and scheming among the gods and among the Argives and Trojans hurts my heart. I go now to the ends of the generous other earth to visit Okeanos, that fountain from which the gods have risen, and Mother Tethys. These two kindly raised me in their own house and took me from Rhea when thundering Zeus, he of the wide brows, drove Kronos deep beneath the earth and the barren salt seas and built our new home here on this cold, red world.”
“But why, Hera,” Aphrodite asked softly, “do you need my poor charms to visit Okeanos and Tethys?”
Hera smiled in her treachery. “The Old Ones have grown apart, their marriage bed grown cold. I go now to visit them and to dissolve their ancient feud and to mend their discord. For too long have they stayed apart from each other and from their bed of love—I would lure them back to love, back to each other’s warm bodies, and no mere words of mine will suffice in this effort. So I ask you, Aphrodite, as your loving friend and one who wishes two old friends to love again, loan me one of the secrets of your charms so that I can secretly help Tethys win back Okeanos to desire.”
Aphrodite’s charming smile grew even more radiant. The sun had set now behind the edge of Mars, the summit of Olympos had been plunged into shadow, but the love goddess’s smile warmed them both. “It would be wrong of me to deny your warmhearted request, O Wife of Zeus, since your husband, our lord, commands us all.”
With that, Aphrodite loosed from beneath her breasts her secret breastband, and held the thin web of cloth and microcircuits in her hand.
Hera stared at it, her mouth suddenly dry. Dare I go forward with this? If Athena discovers what I’m up to, she and her fellow conspirators among the gods will attack me without mercy. If Zeus recognizes my treachery, he will destroy me in a way that no healing vat or alien Healer will ever hope to restore to even a simulacrum of Olympian life. “Tell me how it works,” she whispered to the goddess of love.
“On this band are all the beguilements of seduction,” Aphrodite said softly. “The heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the sibilant slidings of sex, the urgent lover’s cries, and the whispers of endearment.”
“All on that little breastband?” said Hera. “How does it work?”
“It has in it the magic to make any man go mad with lust,” whispered Aphrodite.
“Yes, yes, but how does it work?” Hera heard the impatience in her own words.
“How do I know?” asked the goddess of love, laughing now. “It was part of the package I received when… he … made us gods. A broad spectrum of pheromones? Nano-kindled hormone enactors? Microwaved energy directed directly at the sex and pleasure centers of the brain? It doesn’t matter… although this is only one of my many tricks, it works. Try it on, Wife of Zeus.”
Hera broke into a smile. She tucked the band between and under her high breasts, so that it was barely concealed by her gown. “How do I activate it?”
“Don’t you mean how will you help Mother Tethys activate it?” asked Aphrodite, still smiling.
“Yes, yes.”
“When the moment comes, touch your breast just as you would to activate the QT nanotriggers, but instead of imagining a far place to teleport, let one finger touch the circuited fabric in the breastband and think lustful thoughts.”
“That’s it? That’s all?”
“That is all,” said Aphrodite, “but it will suffice. A new world lies in this band’s weaving.”
“Thank you, Goddess of Love,” Hera said formally. Laser lances were stabbing upward through the forcefield above them. A moravec hornet or spacecraft had come through the Hole and was climbing for space.
“I know you won’t return with your missions unaccomplished,” said Aphrodite. “Whatever your eager heart is hoping to do, I am sure it will be fulfilled.”
Hera smiled at that. Then she touched her breast—careful not to touch the breastband nestled just beneath her nipples—and teleported away, following the quantum trail Zeus had made through folded space-time.
7
At dawn, Hector ordered the funeral fires quenched with wine. Then he and Paris’s most trusted comrades began raking through the embers, taking infinite care to find the bones of Priam’s other son while keeping them separate from the ashes and charred bones of dogs, stallions, and the weakling god. These lesser bones had all fallen far out near the edge of the pyre, while Paris’s charred remains lay near the center.
Weeping, Hector and his battle-comrades gathered Paris’s bones in a golden urn and sealed the urn with a double layer of fat, as was their custom for the brave and noble-born. Then, in solemn procession, they carried the urn through the busy streets and marketplaces—peasants and warriors alike stepping aside to let them pass in silence—and delivered the remains to the field cleared of rubble where the south wing of Priam’s palace had stood before the first Olympian bombing run eight months earlier. In the center of the cratered field rose a temporary tomb made from stone blocks scattered during the bombing—Hecuba, Priam’s wife, queen, and mother to Hector and Paris, had her few recovered bones in that tomb already—and now Hector covered Paris’s urn with a light linen shroud and personally carried it into the barrow.