“Addicts all,” says Zeus, his roar more bearable now. “I should have made them all sign up for Ilium Anonymous five years ago and avoided this terrible reckoning which now must come. Hera and her allies have gone too far.”

Achilles is watching the carnage on the wall. The image is so deep, so three-dimensional, that it is as if the wall has opened onto the crowded killing fields of Ilium itself. The Achaeans under Agamemnon’s clumsy leadership are visibly falling back—Apollo of the Silver Bow is obviously the most lethal god on the field, driving the flying chariots of Ares, Athena, and Hera back toward the sea—but it is not a rout, not yet, neither in the air nor on the ground. The view of the fighting gets Achilles’ blood up and makes him want to rush into the fighting, leading his Myrmidons in a swath of counterattack and killing that would end only with Achilles’ chariot and horses scarring the marble in Priam’s palace, preferably with Hector’s body being dragged behind it, leaving a bloody smear.

“WELL??” roars Zeus. “Speak up!”

“About what, O Father of All Gods and Men?”

“What is this… boon… you want from me, son of Thetis?” Zeus has been pulling on his garments as he’s watched the events on the vision wall.

Achilles steps closer. “In exchange for finding you and awakening you, Father Zeus, I would ask that you restore the life of Penthesilea in one of the Healing vats and…”

“Penthesilea?” booms Zeus. “That Amazon tart from the north regions? The blond bitch who murdered her sister Hippolyte to gain that worthless Amazon throne? How did she die? And what does she have to do with Achilles or Achilles with her?”

Achilles ground his molars but kept his gaze—now murderous—turned downward. “I love her, Father Zeus, and…”

Zeus bellows in laughter. “Love her, you say? Son of Thetis, I’ve watched you on my vision walls and floors and in person since you were a baby, since you were a snot-nosed youth being tutored by the patient centaur Chiron, and never have I seen you love a woman. Even the girl who fathered your son was left behind like excess baggage whenever you felt the urge to go off to war—or whoring and rape. You love Penthesilea, that brainless blond pussy with a spear. Tell me another tale, son of Thetis.”

“I love Penthesilea and wish her restored to health,” grits Achilles. All he can think of at this second is the god-killing blade in his belt. But Athena has lied to him before. If she lied about the abilities of that knife, he would be a fool to move against Zeus. Achilles knows that he is a fool at any rate, coming here to beseech the Father for this gift. But he perseveres, eyes still lowered but his hands balled into powerful fists. “Aphrodite gave the Amazon queen a scent to wear when she went into combat with me …” he begins.

Zeus roars laughter again. “Not Number Nine! Well, you are well and truly screwed, my friend. How did this Penthesilea twat die? No, wait, I will see for myself…”

The Lord Father moves his right hand again and the wallscreen blurs, shifts, leaps back across time and space. Achilles looks up to see the doomed Amazon charge against him and his men on the red plains at the base of Olympos. He watches Clonia, Bremusa, and the other Amazons fall to men’s arrows and blades. He watches again as he casts his father’s unfailing spear completely through Queen Penthesilea and the thick torso of her horse behind her, pinning her on her fallen steed’s horse like some wriggling insect on a dissecting tray.

“Oh, well done,” booms Zeus. “And now you want her brought back to life again in one of my Healer’s vats?”

“Yes, Lord,” says Achilles.

“I don’t know how you know about the Hall of Healing,” says Zeus, pacing back and forth again, “but you should know that even the Healer’s alien arts cannot bring a dead mortal back to life.”

“Lord,” says Achilles, his voice low but urgent, “Athena cast a spell of no corruption, of no encroaching death, over my beloved’s body. It might be possible to…”

“SILENCE!!” roars Zeus and Achilles is physically driven back to the holowall by the blast of noise. “NO ONE IN THE ORIGINAL PANTHEON OF IMMORTALS TELLS ZEUS THE FATHER WHAT IS POSSIBLE OR WHAT SHOULD BE DONE, MUCH LESS SOME MERE MORTAL, OVERMUSCLED SPEARMAN.”

“No, Father,” says Achilles, raising his gaze to the giant, bearded form, “but I hoped that…”

“Silence,” says Zeus again, but at a level that allows Achilles to remove his hands from his ears. “I’m leaving now—to destroy Hera, to cast down her accomplices into the bottomless pit of Tartarus, to punish the other gods in ways they will never forget, and to wipe out this invading Argive army once and for all. You Greeks—with your arrogance and your oily ways—really get on my tits.” Zeus begins to stride for the door. “You’re on Ilium-Earth here, son of Thetis. It may take you many months, but you can find your way home by yourself. I would not recommend you return to Ilium—there will be no Achaeans left alive there by the time you reach that place.”

“No,” says Achilles.

Zeus whirls. He is actually smiling through his beard. “What did you say?”

“I said no. You must grant my wish.” Achilles unlimbers his shield and sets it in place on his forearm, as if he is heading to the front. He pulls his sword.

Zeus throws his head back and laughs. “Grant your wish or… what, bastard son of Thetis?”

“Or else I will feed Zeus’s liver to that starving dog of Odysseus’ in the courtyard,” Achilles says firmly.

Zeus smiles and shakes his head. “Do you know why you are alive this very day, insect?”

“Because I am Achilles, son of Peleus,” says Achilles, stepping forward. He wishes he had his throwing spear. “The greatest warrior and noblest hero on Earth—invulnerable to his enemies—friend of the murdered Patroclus, slave and servant to no man… or god.”

Zeus shakes his head again. “You’re not the son of Peleus.”

Achilles stops advancing. “What are you talking about, Lord of Flies? Lord of Horse Dung? I am the son of Peleus who is the son of Aeacus, son of the mortal who mated with the immortal sea goddess Thetis, a king myself descended from a long line of kings of the Myrmidons.”

“No,” says Zeus and this time the giant god is the one who steps closer, towering over Achilles. “You are the son of Thetis, but the bastard son of my seed, not the seed of Peleus’.”

“You!” Achilles tries to laugh but it comes out a hoarse bark. “My immortal mother told me in all truth that…”

“Your immortal mother lies through her seaweed-crusted teeth,” laughs Zeus. “Almost three decades ago, I desired Thetis. She was less than a full goddess then, although more beautiful than most of you mortals. But the Fates—those accursed bean counters with the DNA-memory abacuses—warned me that any child I spawned with Thetis could be my undoing, could cause my death, could bring down the reign of Olympos itself.”

Achilles stares hate and disbelief through his helmet eyeholes.

“But I wanted Thetis,” continues Zeus. “So I fucked her. But first I morphed into the form of Peleus—some common mortal boy-man with whom Thetis was mildly infatuated at the time. But the sperm that conceived you is Zeus’s divine seed, Achilles, son of Thetis, make no mistake about that. Why else do you think your mother took you far away from that idiot Peleus and had you raised by an old centaur?”

“You lie,” growls Achilles.

Zeus shakes his head almost sadly. “And you will die in a second, young Achilles,” says the Father of All Gods and Men. “But you will die knowing that I told you the truth.”

“You can’t kill me, Lord of Crabs.”

Zeus rubs his beard. “No, I can’t. Not directly. Thetis saw to that. When she learned that I had been the lover who knocked her up, not that dickless worm Peleus, she also knew of the Fates’ prediction and that I would kill you as surely as my father, Kronos, ate his offspring rather than risk their revolts and vendettas when they grew up. And I would have done that, young Achilles—eaten you when you were a babe—had not Thetis conspired to dip you in the probability flames of the pure quantum celestial fire. You are a quantum freak unique unto the universe, bastard son of Thetis and Zeus. Your death—and even I do not know the details of it, the Fates will not share them—is absolutely appointed.”