Thundercloud Being that had ripped the roof and top three floors off the Great Hall is gone.

“You need to help me save the Greeks,” I say, my teeth actually chattering.

Hephaestus laughs again, rubs the back of his sooty hand across his greasy mouth. “I’ve already vacuumed up all the other humans on that fucking Ilium-history Earth,” he says. “Why should I save the Greeks? Or even the Trojans for that matter? What have they done for me recently? Plus, I’ll need some humans down there to worship me when I take this throne of Olympos in a few days…”

I can only stare at him. “You vacuumed up the people? You put the population of Ilium Earth in the blue beam rising from Delphi?”

“Who the hell do you think did it? Zeus? With all his technical prowess?” Hephaestus shakes his head. The Titan brothers Kronos, Iapetos, Hyperion, Krios, Koios, and Okeanos are walking this way. They are covered with the golden-ichor blood of gods.

Suddenly Achilles appears from the burning ruins. He is fully clad in his gold armor, his beautiful shield also besmirched by immortal blood, his long sword out, his eyes staring almost madly from the slits of his streaked and sooted golden helmet. The apparition ignores me and shouts at Hephaestus. “Zeus has fled!”

“Of course,” replies the god of fire. “Did you expect him to wait around for the Demogorgon to drag him down to Tartarus?”

“I can’t find Zeus’s location anywhere on the holographic pool locator!” shouts Achilles. “I forced Aphrodite’s mother, Dione, to help me with the locator. She said it would find him anywhere in the universe. When she failed, I cut her to ribbons. Where is he?”

Hephaestus smiles. “You remember, fleet-footed mankiller, the one place Zeus had hidden from all eyes when Hera wanted to fuck him into an eternity of sleep?”

Achilles grabs the fire god’s shoulder and almost lifts him off the ground. “Odysseus’ home! Take me there! At once.”

Hephaestus’ eyes crinkle into unamused slits. “You do not command the future Lord of Olympos such, mortal. Singularity that you are, you must treat your betters with more respect.”

Achilles releases his grip on Hephaestus’ leather vest. “Please. Now. Please.”

Hephaestus nods and then looks at me. “You come, too, Scholic Hockenberry. Zeus wanted you here for this day. Wanted you as witness. Witness ye shall be.”

The moravecs aboard the Queen Mab received all the following live, in real-time—Odysseus’ nano-imagers and transmitters were working well—but Asteague/Che decided not to relay it down to Mahnmut and Orphu of Io where they were working there beneath the ocean of Earth. The two ‘vecs were six hours into their twelve-hour job of cutting free and loading the seven hundred sixty-eight critical black-hole warheads and no one on the Mab wanted to distract them.

And what was occurring now could qualify as distracting.

The lovemaking—if that was what the near-violent copulation between Odysseus and the woman who had identified herself as Sycorax—was in one of its temporary states of pause. The two were sprawled naked on the tousled cushions, drinking wine from large two-handled mugs and eating some fruit, when a monstrous creature—amphibian gills, fangs, claws, webbed feet—pushed aside curtains and flip-flop-walked its way into Sycorax’s chambers.

“Dam, thinketh he yes that he must announce that as he was readying to melt a gourd-fruit into mash, when so Caliban did hear the airlock cycling. Something there is which has come to see you, Mother. Saith, it has all flesh-meat on its nose and fingers like blunt stones. Saith, Mother, and in His name I shall rend this work’s tasty flesh from its soft-chalk bones.”

“No, thank you, Caliban, my darling,” said the naked woman with the purple-colored eyebrows. “Show our visitor in.”

The amphibian thing called Caliban stepped aside. An older version of Odysseus entered.

All of the moravecs—even those who sometimes had trouble telling one human being from another—could see the resemblance. The young Odysseus sprawled naked on the silk cushions stared dumbly at the older Odysseus. This older version had the same short stature and broad chest, but more scars, gray hair and gray in his thicker beard, and bore himself with much more gravity than their passenger on the Mab’s voyage had.

“Odysseus,” said Sycorax. As well as the moravecs’ human emotion auditory analysis circuits could deduce, she sounded truly surprised.

He shook his head. “My name is Noman now. I’m pleased to see you again, Circe.”

The woman smiled. “We have both changed, then. I am Sycorax to the world and myself now, my much-scarred Odysseus.”

The younger Odysseus started to rise, his hands bunched into fists, but Sycorax made a motion with her left hand and the young Odysseus collapsed back onto the cushions.

“You are Circe,” said the man who called himself Noman. “You were always Circe. You will always be Circe.”

Sycorax shrugged very slightly, her full breasts jiggling. Young Odysseus was sprawled to her left. She patted the empty cushions on her right. “Come sit next to me, then… Noman.”

“No, thank you, Circe,” said the man dressed in tunic, shorts, and sandals. “I will stand.”

“You will come and sit next to me,” said Sycorax, her voice intense. She made a complicated motion with her right hand, her different fingers moving not at random.

“No, thank you, I will stand.”

Again the woman blinked in surprise. Deeper surprise this time, the moravec facial-emotion analysts thought.

“Molü,” said Noman. “I think you know of it. A substance made from a rare black root which bears a milk-white bloom out of the earth once each autumn.”

Sycorax nodded slowly. “My, you have traveled far. But haven’t you heard? Hermes is dead.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Noman.

“No, I suppose it doesn’t. How did you get here, Odysseus?”

“Noman.”

“How did you get here, Noman?”

“I used Savi’s old sonie. It took me almost four full days, creeping from one orbital lump to the next, always hiding from these robotic intruder destroyers of yours or outrunning them in stealth mode. You need to get rid of those things, Circe. Or sonies need to include toilet facilities.”

Sycorax laughed softly. “And why on earth would I get rid of the interceptors?”

“Because I ask you to.”

“And why on earth would I do anything you ask, Odys… Noman?”

“I’ll tell you when I finish with my requests.”

Behind Noman, Caliban snarled. The human ignored the noise and the creature.

“By all means,” said Sycorax. “Continue with your requests.” Her smile showed how very little attention she was prepared to pay to these requests.

“First, as I say, eliminate the orbital interceptors. Or at least reprogram them so that spacecraft can move safely within and between the rings again…”

Sycorax’s smile did not waver. Nor did her violet-eyed, purple-painted gaze warm.

“Secondly,” continued Noman, “I would like you to remove the interdiction field above the Mediterranean Basin and to drop the Hands of Hercules fields.”

The witch laughed softly. “What an odd request. The resulting tsunami would be devastating.”

“You can do it gradually, Circe. I know you can. Refill the basin.”

“Before you go on,” she said coldly, “give me one reason I should do this thing.”

“There are things in the Mediterranean Basin which the old-style humans should not have soon.”

“The depots, you mean,” said Sycorax. “The spacecraft, weapons…”

“Many things,” said Noman. “Let the wine-dark sea refill the Mediterranean Basin.”

“Perhaps you haven’t noticed since you’ve been traveling,” said Sycorax, “but the old-style humans are on the verge of extinction.”

“I’ve noticed. I still ask you to refill the Mediterranean Basin—carefully, slowly. And while you’re at it, eliminate that folly that is the Atlantic Breach.”