Ilium (25 page)

And free myself,
thought Mahnmut, although being separated from
The Dark Lady
did not seem like freedom to him. All deep-sea Europan cryobots had carried the kernel of agoraphobia in them—true terror of open spaces—and their evolved moravec descendents had inherited it. On the second day, after their eighth chess game, Orphu said, “
The Dark Lady
has some sort of escape device, doesn’t it?”

Mahnmut had hoped that Orphu wouldn’t know this fact. “Yes,” he said at last.

“What kind?”

“A little life bubble,” said Mahnmut, in a foul mood for having to talk about this. “Not much bigger than me. Mostly meant to survive deep pressures and get me to the surface.”

“But it has a beacon, its own life support system, some sort of propulsion and navigation systems? Some water and food?”

“Yes,” said Mahnmut, “what of it?”
You wouldn’t fit in it and I can’t tow you behind it.

“Nothing,” said Orphu.

“I hate the idea of leaving
The Dark Lady,
” Mahnmut said truthfully. “And I don’t have to think about it now. Not for days and days.”

“All right,” said Orphu.

“I’m serious.”

“All
right,
Mahnmut. I was just curious.”

If Orphu had rumbled amusement at him at that moment, Mahnmut might well have crawled into the survival bubble and cast off. He was furious at the Ionian for raising this topic. “Want to play another game of chess?” Mahnmut asked.

“Not in this lifetime,” said Orphu.

At sixty-one hours after splashdown, there was only one chariot visible to radar, but it was circling just eight klicks above them and ten to the north. Mahnmut reeled in the periscope buoy as quickly as he could.

He sat listening to music over the intercom—Brahms—and, down in his flooded hold, Orphu presumably was doing the same.

Suddenly the Ionian asked, “Ever wonder why we’re both humanists, Mahnmut?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, humanists. All moravecs evolved into either us humanists with our odd interest in the old human race, or the more interactive types like Koros III. They’re the ones who forge moravec societies, Five Moon Consortiums, political parties . . . whatever.”

“I never noticed,” said Mahnmut.

“You’re kidding me.”

Mahnmut stayed silent. He was beginning to realize that in almost a century and a half of existence, he had managed to stay ignorant of almost everything important. All he knew were the cold seas of Europa—which he would never see again—and this submersible, which was hours or days away from ceasing to exist as a functioning entity. That and Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays.

Mahnmut barely resisted laughing on the hardline.
What could be more useless?

As if reading his mind again, Orphu said, “What would the Bard say about this predicament?”

Mahnmut was scanning the energy data and the consumable readouts. They couldn’t wait the seventy-three hours. They would have to try to break free in the next six hours or so. And even then, if they weren’t able to pull themselves free right away, the reactor might cease functioning altogether, overload, and . . .

“Mahnmut?”

“I’m sorry. Dozing. What about the Bard?”

“He must have something to say about shipwrecks,” said Orphu. “I seem to remember lots of shipwrecks in Shakespeare.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mahnmut. “Lots of shipwrecks.
Twelfth Night, The Tempest,
the list goes on and on. But I doubt if there’s anything in the plays to help us in this situation.”

“Tell me about some of the shipwrecks.”

Mahnmut shook his head in the vacuum. He knew that Orphu was just trying to take his mind off current realities. “Tell me about your beloved Proust,” he said. “Does the narrator Marcel ever say anything about being lost on Mars?”

“He does, actually,” said Orphu with the slightest hint of a rumble.

“You’re joking.”

“I
never
joke about
À la recherche du temps perdu,
” said Orphu in a tone that almost, not quite, convinced Mahnmut that the Ionian was serious.

“All right, what does Proust say about surviving on Mars?” said Mahnmut. In five minutes he was going to deploy the periscope buoy again and bring them up even if the chariot was hovering ten meters overhead.

“In Volume Three of the French edition, Volume Five of the English translation I downloaded to you, Marcel says that if we suddenly found ourselves on Mars and grew a pair of wings and a new respiratory system, it would not take us out of ourselves,” said Orphu. “Not as long as we have to use our same senses. Not as long as we’re stuck in our same consciousnesses.”

“You’re kidding,” said Mahnmut.

“I
never
kid about the character Marcel’s perceptions in
À la recherche du temps perdu,
” Orphu said again in a tone that told Mahnmut that he was kidding all right, but not about that particular odd Mars reference. “Didn’t you
read
the editions I sent you at the beginning of the voyage in-system?”

“I did,” said Mahnmut. “I really did. I just sort of skipped over the last couple of thousand pages.”

“Well, that’s not uncommon,” said Orphu. “Listen, here’s a passage that comes after the growing wings and new lungs on Mars bit. Do you want it in French or English?”

“English,” Mahnmut said quickly. This close to a terrible death from suffocation, he didn’t want the added torture of listening to French.

“
The only true voyage, the only Fountain of Youth,
” recited Orphu,
“would be found not in traveling to strange lands but in having different eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another person, of a hundred others, and seeing the hundred universes each of them sees, which each of them is.”

Mahnmut actually forgot about their imminent asphyxiation for a minute as he thought about this. “That’s Marcel’s fourth and final answer to the puzzle of life, isn’t it, Orphu?”

The Ionian stayed quiet.

“I mean,” continued Mahnmut, “you said that the first three failed for Marcel. He tried believing in snobbery. He tried believing in friendship and love. He tried believing in art. None of it worked as a transcendent theme. So this is the fourth. This . . .” He could not find the right word or phrase.

“Consciousness escaping the limits of consciousness,” Orphu said quietly. “Imagination outstripping the bounds of imagination.”

“Yes,” breathed Mahnmut. “I see.”

“You need to,” said Orphu. “You’re my eyes now. I need to see the universe through your eyes.”

Mahnmut sat in the umbilical O
₂
hiss silence for a minute. Then he said, “Let’s try to take
The Dark Lady
up.”

“Periscope buoy?”

“To hell with them if they’re up there waiting. I’d rather die fighting than choke to death in the mud down here.”

“All right,” said Orphu. “You said ‘try’ to take the
Lady
up. Is there some doubt that you can get us out of the slime?”

“I have no fucking idea if we can break free of this stuff,” said Mahnmut, flicking virtual switches with his mind, powering the reactor up into the red, arming the thrusters and pyros. “But we’re going to give it a good try in . . . eighteen seconds. Hang on, my friend.”

“Since my grapplers, manipulators, and flagella are gone,” said Orphu, “I presume you mean that rhetorically.”

“Hang on with your
teeth,
” said Mahnmut. “Six seconds.”

“I’m a moravec,” said Orphu, sounding slightly indignant. “I don’t have any teeth. What were you . . .”

Suddenly the comm line was drowned out by the firing of all the thrusters, the booming of bulkheads creaking and giving way, and a great moaning sound as
The Dark Lady
fought to break free of Mars’ slimy grip.

18

This city—Ilium, Troy, Priam’s City, Pergamus—is most beautiful at night.

The walls, each more than a hundred feet high, are lit with torches, illuminated by braziers on the ramparts, and backlit by the hundreds of fires of the Trojan army camping on the plain below. Troy is a city of tall towers, and most of these are lighted late into the night, windows warm with light, courtyards glowing, terraces and balconies warmed by candles and firepits and more torches. The streets of Ilium are broad and carefully paved—I once tried to slide my knifeblade between the stones and couldn’t—and most are lighted by open doorways, torches set into wall sconces, and by the cooking campfires of the thousands upon thousands of non-Trojan soldiers and their families living here now, allies to Ilium all.

Even the shadows in Ilium are alive. Young men and women of the lower classes make love in the dark alleys and on shadowy terraces. Well-fed dogs and eternally clever cats slip from shadow to shadow, narrow alley to courtyard, loping along the edges of the broad thoroughfares where fruit and vegetables, fish and meat have fallen from the day’s market carts and are theirs for the eating, and then slink back to narrow alleys’ gloom and darkness under the viaducts.

The residents of Ilium have no fear of starvation or deadly thirst. At the first alarm of the Achaeans’ approach—many weeks before the dark ships arrived more than nine years ago—hundreds of cattle and thousands of sheep were herded into the city, emptying farm fields for 400 square miles around the city. More such cattle drives happen regularly, and most of the beef gets to the city despite the Greeks’ halfhearted efforts to interdict. Vegetables and fruits flow easily into Ilium, delivered by the same shrewd farmers and traders who sell food to the Achaeans.

Troy was built where it was so many centuries ago largely because of the huge aquifer under it—the city has four giant wells that always run fresh and deep—but to be on the safe side, Priam long ago ordered a tributary of the River Simois to the north of Ilium diverted and run through easily defended canals and underground viaducts into the city proper. The Greeks have more trouble finding fresh water than do the technically besieged residents of Ilium.

The population of Ilium—easily the greatest city on Earth at this time—has more than doubled since the war began. First into the city for protection came the farmers and goatherders and fishermen and other peripatetic former denizens of the plains of Ilium. Following them came the armies of the allies of Troy—not only the fighting men, but often their wives and children and elders and dogs and cattle.

These allies include different groups: the “Trojans” not from Troy itself—the Dardanians and others from smaller cities and outlying areas far beyond Ilium, including the Trojan-loyal fighters from under Mount Ida and from as far north as Lykia. Also present now are the Adresteians and other fighters from places many leagues east of Troy, as well as the Pelasgians from Larisa in the south.

From Europe have come the Thracians, Paionians, and Kikones. From the south shores of the Black Sea have come the Halizones—dwellers near the River Halys and related to the Chalybes metalworkers of ancient legend. One can hear campfire songs and curses in the city from the Paphlagoes and Enetoi, a people from farther north along the Black Sea who may be the great-great-ancestors of the future Venetians. From north-central Asia Minor have come the shaggy Mysians—Ennomos and Nastes are two Mysian men I’ve spent time with and who will, according to Homer, be cut down by Achilles in the river battle to come—a slaughter so terrible that not only will the Scamander run red for months, but the river will be dammed up by the corpses of all the men Achilles will massacre there, including the unclaimed bodies of Nastes and Ennomos.

Also here, recognizable by their wild hair, by their oddly shaped bronze gear, and by their smell, are the Phrygians, Maionians, Karians, and Lykians.

This city is full and wonderfully alive and raucous all but two or three of its twenty-four hours each day. This is the finest and grandest and most beautiful city in the world—in this era or my era or any era in the history of all humankind.

I am thinking this as I lie naked next to Helen of Troy in her bed, the linens smelling of sex and of us, the breeze cool through billowing curtains. Somewhere thunder rumbles as a storm approaches. Helen stirs and whispers my name—“Hock-en-bear-eeee . . .”

I came into the city in late afternoon after QTing down from the hospital of the gods on Olympos, knowing that the Muse was looking for me to kill me, and that if she did not find me today, Aphrodite would when the goddess got out of her healing tank.

I had thought to blend in with the soldiers watching the last of this long day’s battles—somewhere out there in the late-afternoon sun and dust, Diomedes was still slaughtering Trojans—but when I saw Hector walking back to the city with only a few of his usual retinue, I morphed into one of the men I knew—Dolon, a spearman and trusted scout, soon to be killed by Odysseus and Diomedes—and followed Hector. The noble warrior came in through the Scaean Gates—Ilium’s main gates, made of sturdy oak planks as tall as ten men the size of Ajax—and he was immediately besieged by the wives and daughters of Troy asking about their husbands and sons and brothers and lovers.

I watched Hector’s tall red Trojan crest move through the mob of women, his head and shoulders swimming above the sea of beseeching faces, and saw him when he finally stopped to address the growing mob. “Pray to the gods, you women of Troy,” was all he said before turning on his heel and marching toward Priam’s palace. Some of his soldiers crossed tall spears and covered his retreat, holding back the wailing mass of Trojan women. I stayed with the last four of his guard and silently accompanied Hector into Priam’s magnificent palace, built wide, as Homer said, and gleaming with porches and colonnades of polished marble.

We stepped back against the wall—evening shadows already creeping into the courtyards and sleeping chambers here—and stood guard as Hector met briefly with his mother.

“No wine, Mother,” he said, waving away the cup she had ordered a servant to bring. “Not now. I’m too tired. The wine would sap what little strength and nerve I have left for the killing to come this evening. Also, I’m covered with blood and dirt and all the filth of battle—I’d be ashamed to lift a cup to Zeus with such dirty hands.”

“My son,” said Hector’s mother, a woman I had seen act with warmth and a good heart over the years, “why have you left the fighting if not to pray to the gods?”

“It’s you who have to pray,” said Hector, his helmet next to him on the couch. The warrior was indeed filthy—face grimed with layers of dirt and blood turned to a reddish mud by his sweat—and he sat as only the deeply exhausted can sit, forearms on his knees, head bent, voice dulled. “Go to Athena’s shrine, gather the most noble of Ilium’s noblest women, and take the largest, most beautiful robe you can find in Priam’s palace. Spread it across the knees of Athena’s gold statue and promise to sacrifice twelve yearling heifers in her temple if only she will pity Troy. Ask the grim goddess to spare our city and our Trojan wives and helpless children from the terror of Diomedes.”

“Has it come to that?” whispered Hector’s mother, leaning closer and taking one of her son’s bloody hands in hers. “Has it finally come to that?”

“Yes,” said Hector and struggled to his feet and lifted his helmet and left the hall.

With the three other spearmen, I followed the exhausted hero as he walked six city blocks to the residence of Paris and Helen, a large compound with its cluster of regal terraces and residential towers and private courtyards.

Hector brushed past guards and servants, pounded up steps, and flung open the door to Paris and Helen’s private quarters. I half expected to see Paris in bed with his stolen consort—Homer had sung that the horny couple had gone straight to bed hours earlier when Paris had been whisked from his showdown with Menelaus—but instead, Paris looked up from fondling his armor and battle gear as Helen sat nearby, directing female servants in their embroidery.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Hector snarled at the smaller man. “Sitting here like a woman, like a mewling infant, playing with your armor while the real men of Ilium die by the hundred, while the enemy surges around the citadel and fills our ears with his foreign battle cries? Get up, you goddamn deserter. Get up before Troy is burned to cinders around your cowardly ass!”

Instead of leaping to his feet in indignation, the royal Paris just smiled. “Ah, Hector, I deserve your curses. Nothing you say is unjust.”

“Then get off your butt and into that armor,” Hector said brusquely, but the fury in his tone had suddenly died away, either robbed of force by fatigue or by Paris’s calm refusal to defend himself.

“I will,” said Paris, “but first hear me out. Let me tell you something.”

Hector remained silent, swaying slightly on his sandaled feet. He was carrying his crested helmet under his left arm and had an extra-long throwing spear, borrowed from the sergeant of our small guard, gripped in his right hand. Now Hector used the butt of that spear to steady himself.

“I’m not keeping to my chambers for so long just out of anger or outrage,” said Paris, gesturing toward Helen and her servants as if they were part of the furniture. “But out of grief.”

“Grief?” repeated Hector. He sounded contemptuous.

“Grief,” Paris said again. “Grief at my own cowardice today—although it was the gods who carried me away from battle with Menelaus, not my own will—and grief at the fate of our city.”

“That fate isn’t written in stone,” snapped Hector. “We can stop Diomedes and his battle-maddened minions. Put on your armor. Come back to the battle with me. There’s another hour of daylight left. We can kill many Greeks in the bloody light of the setting sun and more in the cool twilight.”

Paris smiled at this and stood. “You’re right. Battle now strikes even me—the world’s greatest lover, not its greatest fighter—as the better way. Fate and victory shift, you know, Hector—now this way, now that way—like a line of unarmored men under a hail of enemy arrows.”

Hector put on his helmet and waited, silent, obviously not trusting Paris’s promise to join the fighting.

“You go on,” said Paris. “I have to don all this war gear. You go on, I’ll catch you up.”

Hector remained silent at this, still not willing to leave without Paris, but beautiful Helen—and she
was
beautiful—rose from her chair and crossed the marble floor to touch Hector’s blood-streaked forearm. Her sandals made soft sounds on the cool marble.

“My dear friend,” she said, her voice quavering with emotion, “my dear brother, dear to me—bitch that I am, vicious, scheming cunt that I am, a female horror to freeze the blood—oh, how I wish my mother had drowned me in the dark Ionian Sea the day I was born rather than be the cause of all this.” She broke down, removed her hand from Hector, and began weeping.

The noble Hector blinked at this, raised his free hand as if to touch her hair, quickly drew back his hand, and cleared his throat in embarrassment. Like so many heroes, the great Hector was awkward with women other than his wife. Before he could speak, Helen went on—still weeping, hiccuping words between racking sobs.

“Or, Noble Hector, if the gods have truly ordained all these terrible years of bloodshed for me, I wish I had been the wife of a better man—a fighter rather than a lover, a man with a will to do more for his city than take his wife to bed in the long afternoon of his city’s doom.”

Paris took a half step toward Helen then, as if to slap her, but her proximity to the tall Hector held him back. We foot soldiers near the wall stared at nothing and pretended we had no ears.

Helen looked at Paris. Her eyes were red and brimming. She still spoke to Hector as if Paris—her kidnapper and putative second husband—was not in the room. “This . . . one . . . has earned the scalding scorn of real men. He has no steadiness of spirit, no grit. Not now, not . . . ever.”

Paris blinked and a flush rose into his cheeks as if he had been slapped.

“But he’ll reap the fruits of his cowardice, Hector,” continued Helen, literally spitting out the words now, her saliva striking the marble floor. “I swear to you that he will reap the fruits of his weakness. By the gods, I swear this.”

Paris stalked out of the room.

Helen turned to the standing, grime-streaked warrior. “But come to the couch and rest next to me, dear brother. You are the one hit hardest by all this fighting—and all for me, Hector, whore that I am.” She sat on the cushioned couch and patted a place next to her. “The two of us are bound together in this fate, Hector. Zeus planted the seed of a million deaths, of the doom of our age, in each of our breasts. My dear Hector. We are mortals. We will both die. But you and I will live for a thousand generations in song . . .”

As if unwilling to hear more, Hector turned on his heel and left the room, donning his tall helmet so that it flashed in the low-slanting rays of the evening sun.

Looking one last time at Helen as she sat, head bowed, on the cushioned bench, noting her perfect pale arms and the softness of her breasts visible in her thin gown, I lifted my spear—the scout Dolon’s spear—and followed Hector and his other three loyal spearmen.