“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.

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.

“Here, Brother, I leave your bones for now,” said Hector in front of the men who’d followed him, “allowing the earth here to enfold you until I enfold you myself in the dim halls of Hades. When this war is over, we will build you and our mother and all those others who fall—most likely including myself—a greater tomb, reminiscent of the House of Death itself. Until then, Brother, farewell.”

Then Hector and his men came out and a hundred waiting Trojan heroes covered over the temporary stone tomb with dirt and piled more rubble and rocks high upon it.

And then Hector—who had not slept for two nights—went in search of Achilles, eager now to re-engage in combat with the gods and hungrier than ever to spill their golden blood.

Cassandra awoke at dawn to find herself all but naked, her robe torn and in disarray, her wrists and ankles tied with silken ropes to the posts of a strange bed. What mischief is this? she wondered, trying to remember if she had once again gotten drunk and passed out with some kinky soldier.

Then she remembered the funeral pyre and fainting into the arms of Andromache and Helen at its fiery conclusion.

Shit, thought Cassandra. My big mouth’s got me in trouble again. She looked around the room—no windows, huge stone blocks, a sense of underground damp. She might well be in someone’s personal underground torture chamber. Cassandra struggled and thrashed against the silken cords. They were smooth, but they were tight and well tied and remained firm.

Shit, Cassandra thought again.

Andromache, Hector’s wife, came into the room and looked down on the sybil. Andromache’s hands were empty, but Cassandra could easily imagine the dagger in the sleeve of the older woman’s gown. For a long moment, neither woman spoke. Finally, Cassandra said, “Old friend, please release me.”

Andromache said, “Old friend, I should cut your throat.”

“Then do it, you bitch,” said Cassandra. “Don’t talk about it.” She had little fear, since even within the kaleidoscope of shifting views of the future in the past eight months since the old futures had died, she had never foreseen Andromache killing her.

“Cassandra, why did you say that about the death of my baby? You know that Pallas Athena and Aphrodite both came into my tiny son’s chamber eight months ago and slaughtered him and his wet nurse, saying that his sacrifice was a warning—that the gods on Olympos had been ill pleased at my husband’s failure to burn the Argive ships and that little Astyanax, whom his father and I had called Scamandrius, was to be their yearly heiffer chosen for sacrifice.”

“Bullshit,” said Cassandra. “Untie me.” Her head hurt. She always had a hangover after the most vivid of her prophecies.

“Not until you tell me why you said that I had substituted a slave baby for Astyanax in that bloodied nursery,” said cool-eyed Andromache. The dagger was in her hand now. “How could I do that? How could I know that the goddesses were coming? Why would I do that?”