“My name is Asteague/Che,” said the small moravec. “I’m Europan, like your friend Mahnmut.”
“European?” Hockenberry repeated stupidly. He’d been to France once on vacation and once to Athens for a classics conference, and while the men and women in both places had been… different… none of them resembled this Asteague/Che: taller than Mahnmut, at least four feet tall, and more humanoid—especially around the hands—but still covered with the same plasticky-metallic material as Mahnmut, although Asteague/Che was mostly a brilliant, slick yellow. The moravec reminded Hockenberry of a slick yellow-rubber raincoat he’d had and loved when he was a kid.
“Europa,” said Asteague/Che with no hint of impatience. “The icy, watery moon of Jupiter. Mahnmut’s home. And mine.”
“Of course,” said Hockenberry. He was blushing and knowing he was blushing made him blush again. “Sorry. Of course. I knew Mahnmut was from some moon out there. Sorry.”
“My title… although ‘title’ is too formal and ostentatious a word, perhaps ‘job function’ would be a more appropriate translation,” continued Asteague/Che, “is Prime Integrator for the Five Moons Consortium.”
Hockenberry bowed slightly, realizing that he was in the presence of a politician. Or at least a top bureaucrat. He had no clue as to what the other four moons might be named. He’d heard of Europa in his other life and he seemed to recall that they were finding a new Jovian moon every few weeks—or so it seemed—back at the end of the Twentieth Century, beginning of the Twenty-first—but the names escaped him. Maybe they hadn’t been named by the time he’d died, he couldn’t remember. Also, Hockenberry had always preferred Greek over Latin and thought that the solar system’s largest planet should have been called Zeus, not Jupiter… although in current circumstances that might be confusing.
“Allow me to reintroduce my colleagues,” said Asteague/Che.
The moravec’s voice had been reminding Hockenberry of someone and now he realized who—the movie actor James Mason.
“The tall gentleman to my right is General Beh bin Adee, commander of the Asteroid Belt contingent of combat moravecs.”
“Dr. Hockenberry,” said General Beh bin Adee. “A pleasure to meet you at last.” The tall figure did not offer his hand to shake, since he had no hand—only barbed pincers with a myriad of fine-motor manipulators.
Gentleman, thought Hockenberry. Rockvec. In the last eight months, he’d seen thousands of the soldier rockvecs on both the plains of Ilium and the surface of Mars around Olympos—always tall, about two meters as this one was, always black, as the general was, and always a mass of barbs, hooks, chitinous ridges, and sharp serrations. They obviously don’t breed them… or build them… for beauty in the Asteroid Belt, thought Hockenberry.
“My pleasure, General… Beh bin Adee,” he said aloud, and bowed slightly.
“To my left,” continued Prime Integrator Asteague/Che, “is Integrator Cho Li from the moon Callisto.”
“Welcome to Phobos, Dr. Hockenberry,” said Cho Li in a voice so soft it sounded absolutely feminine. Do moravecs have genders? wondered Hockenberry. He’d always thought of Mahnmut and Orphu as male robots—and there was no doubt about the testosteronic attitudes of the rockvec troopers. But these creations had distinct personalities, so why not genders?
“Integrator Cho Li,” repeated Hockenberry and bowed again. The Callistan—Callistoid? Callistonian?—was smaller than Asteague/Che but more massive and far less humanoid. Less humanoid even than the absent Mahnmut. What disconcerted Hockenberry a bit were the glimpses of what looked to be raw, pink flesh between panels of plastic and steel. If Quasimodo—the Hunchback of Notre Dame—had been assembled out of bits of flesh and used car parts, with boneless arms, a wandering multitude of eyes in assorted sizes, and a narrow maw that looked like a mail slit, and then miniaturized—he might have been a sibling of Integrator Cho Li. Because of the names, Hockenberry wondered if these Callistoidonal moravecs had been designed by the Chinese.
“Behind Cho Li is Suma IV,” said Asteague/Che in its, his, smooth, James Mason voice. “Suma IV is from the moon Ganymede.”
Suma IV was very human in height and proportion, but not so human in appearance. Somewhere over six feet tall, the Ganymedan had properly proportioned arms and legs, a waist, a flat chest, and the proper number of fingers—all sheathed in a fluid, grayish, oil-like coating that Hockenberry had once heard Mahnmut refer to as buckycarbon. But that had been on the hull of a hornet. Poured over a person… or a person-shaped moravec… the effect was disconcerting.
Even more disconcerting were this moravec’s oversized eyes with their hundreds upon hundreds of shining facets. Hockenberry had to wonder if Suma IV or his ilk had landed on Earth in his day … say at Roswell, New Mexico? Did Suma IV have some cousin on ice in Area 51?
No, he reminded himself, these creatures aren’t aliens. They’re robotic-organic entities that human beings designed and built and scattered in the solar system. Centuries and centuries after I died.
“How do you do, Suma IV,” said Hockenberry. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Dr. Hockenberry,” said the tall Ganymedan moravec. No James-Masony or little-girl tones here… the shiny black figure with the glittering fly’s eyes had a voice that sounded like boys pelting a hollow boiler with cinders.
“May I introduce our last representative from the Consortium,” said Asteague/Che. “Retrograde Sinopessen from Amalthea.”
“Retrograde Sinopessen?” repeated Hockenberry, stifling a sudden urge to laugh until he wept. He wanted to go lie down, take a nap, and wake up in his study in the old white house near Indiana University.
“Retrograde Sinopessen, yes,” said Asteague/Che, nodding.
The thrice-identified moravec skittered forward on silver-spider legs. Hockenberry observed that Mr. Sinopessen was about the size of a Lionel train transformer, although much shinier in a polished-aluminum sort of way, and his eight legs were so thin as to be almost invisible. Eyes or diodes or tiny little lights glowed at various points on and in the box.
“A pleasure, Dr. Hockenberry,” said the shiny little box in a voice so deep it rivaled Orphu of Io’s near-subsonic rumble. “I’ve read all of your books and papers. All that we have in our archives, at least. They’re brilliant. It’s an honor to meet you in person.”
“Thank you,” Hockenberry said stupidly. He looked at the five moravecs, at the hundreds more working on other incomprehensible machines in the huge pressurized bubble, looked back at Asteague/Che, and said, “So now what?”
“Why don’t we sit down around that table and discuss this imminent expedition to Earth and your possible participation in it,” suggested the Europan Prime Integrator of the Five Moons Consortium.
“Sure,” said Thomas Hockenberry. “Why not?”
12
Helen was alone and unarmed when Menelaus finally cornered her.
The day after Paris’s funeral started bizarrely and grew only more bizarre as the day wore on. There was a smell of fear and apocalypse on the winter wind.
Early that morning, even as Hector was bearing his brother’s bones to their barrow, Helen was summoned by Andromache’s messenger. Hector’s wife and a female servant, a slave from the isle of Lesbos, her tongue torn out many years earlier, now sworn to serve the secret society once known as the Trojan Women, were holding wild-eyed Cassandra prisoner in Andromache’s secret apartments near the Scaean Gates.
“What’s this?” asked Helen as she came into the apartment. Cassandra did not know about this house. Cassandra was supposed to never know about this house. Now Priam’s daughter, the mad prophetess, sat sunk-shouldered on a wooden couch. The servant, whose slave name was Hypsipyle after Euneus’ famous mother by Jason, held a long-bladed knife in her tattooed hand.