“It is a spell put on you by the witch goddess of lust, Aphrodite,” says Athena, moving around him and the fallen horse and Amazon so that he can see her without moving his head. “It was always Aphrodite and her incestuous brother Ares who confounded your will, killed your friends, and murdered your joys, Achilles. It was Aphrodite who killed Patroclus and carried away his body these eight months past.”

“No… I was there… I saw…”

“You saw Aphrodite take my form,” interrupts Pallas Athena. “Do you doubt that we gods can take any form we wish? Shall I make myself into the form and shape of the dead Penthesilea so you can slake your lust with a living body rather than a dead one?”

Achilles stares up at her, his jaw hanging slack. “Aphrodite …” he says after a minute, his tone that of a deadly curse. “I will kill the cunt.”

Athena smiles. “An act most worthy and long overdue, fleet-footed mankiller. Let me give you this …” She hands him a small jewel-encrusted dagger.

Still cradling Penthesilea in his right arm, he accepts the thing with his left hand. “What is it?”

“A knife.”

“I know it’s a knife,” snarls Achilles, his tone showing no respect for the fact that he’s speaking to a goddess, third-born of all the gods sired by Zeus. “Why in Hades’ name would I want this girl’s toy of a blade when I have my own sword, my own gutting knife? Take this back.”

“This knife is different,” says the goddess. “This knife can kill a god.”

“I’ve cut down gods with my regular blade.”

“Cut them down, yes,” says Athena. “Killed them, no. This blade does for immortal flesh what your mere human sword does for your puny fellow mortals.”

Achilles stands, easily shifting the body of Penthesilea to his right shoulder. He holds the short blade in his right hand. “Why would you give me such a thing, Pallas Athena? We have opposed each other across this battlefield for months now. Why would you aid me now?”

“I have my reasons, son of Peleus. Where is Hockenberry?”

“Hockenberry?”

“Yes, that former scholic who became Aphrodite’s agent,” says Pallas Athena. “Does he still live? I have business with this mortal, but do not know where to seek him out. The moravec forcefields have clouded our godly vision of recent.”

Achilles looks around him, blinking as if noticing for the first time that he is the only living human being left on the red Martian plain. “Hockenberry was here only a few minutes ago. I spoke to him before I slew… her.” He begins weeping again.

“I look forward to meeting this Hockenberry again,” says Athena, muttering as if to herself. “Today is a time of reckonings, and his is long overdue.” She reaches out and takes Achilles’ chin in her powerful, slender hand, raising his face, locking her gaze to his. “Son of Peleus, do you wish this woman… this Amazon… alive again, to be your bride?”

Achilles stares. “I wish to be released from this spell of love, noble goddess.”

Athena shakes her golden-helmeted head. The red sun glints every where on her armor. “There is no release from this particular spell of Aphrodite—the pheromones have spoken and their judgment is final. Penthesilea will be your only love for this life, either as a corpse or as a living woman… do you want her alive?”

“Yes!!” cries Achilles, stepping closer with the dead woman in his arms and bright madness in his eyes. “Return her to life!”

“No god or goddess can do that, son of Peleus,” Athena says sadly. “As you once said to Odysseus—‘Of possessions cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting, and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses, but a man’s life—nor a woman’s, Achilles—cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the teeth’s barrier. Not even Father Zeus has this power of resurrection, Achilles.”

“Then why the fuck did you offer it to me?” snarls the mankiller. He feels the rage flow in next to the love now—oil and water, fire and… not ice—but a different form of fire. He is very aware of both his rage and the god—and goddess-killing knife in his hand. To keep himself from doing something rash, he sets the blade in his broad warbelt.

“It is possible to return Penthesilea to life,” says Athena, “but I do not have that power. I will sprinkle her with a form of ambrosia which will preserve her from all decay. Her dead body will forevermore carry the blush on her cheeks and the hint of fading warmth you feel now. Her beauty will never depart.”

“What good does that do me?” snarls Achilles. “Do you really expect me to celebrate my love with an act of necrophilia?”

“That’s your personal choice,” says Pallas Athena with a smirk that almost makes Achilles pull the dagger from his belt. She continues, “But if you are a man of action, I expect you to carry your love’s body to the summit of Mount Olympos. There, in a great building near a lake, is our godly secret—a hall of clear, fluid-filled tanks where strange creatures tend to our wounds, repairing all damage, assuring that we return—as you put it so well—across the teeth’s barrier.”

Achilles turns and stares up at the endless mountain catching the sunlight. It rises forever. The summit is not in sight. The vertical cliffs at its base, a mere beginning to the giant massif, are more than fourteen thousand feet tall. “Climb Olympos …” he says.

“There was an escalator… a staircase,” says Pallas Athena, pointing with her long lance. “You see the ruins there. It is still the easiest way up.”

“I’ll have to fight my way up, every foot of the way,” says Achilles, grinning horribly. “I am still at war with the gods.”

Pallas Athena also grins. “The gods are now at war with each other, son of Peleus. And they know the Brane Hole has closed forever. Mortals no longer threaten the halls of Olympos. I would guess that you will climb undetected, unopposed, but once you are there they will surely sound the alarm.”

“Aphrodite,” whispers the fleet-footed mankiller.

“Yes, she will be there. And Ares. All the architects of your personal hell. You have my permission to kill them. I ask you only one favor in return for my ambrosia, my guidance, and my love.”

Achilles turns back to her and waits.

“Destroy the healing tanks after they have brought your Amazon love back to life. Kill the Healer—a great monstrous centipede thing with too many arms and eyes. Destroy everything in the Healer’s Hall.”

“Goddess, would that not destroy your own immortality?” asks Achilles.

“I will worry about that, son of Peleus,” says Pallas Athena. She extends her arms, palms downward, and golden ambrosia falls on the bloody, pierced body of Penthesilea. “Go now. I must return to my own wars. The issue of Ilium will be decided soon. Your fate will be settled there, on Olympos.” She points to the mountain rising endlessly above them.

“You goad me as if I have the power of a god, Pallas Athena,” whispers Achilles.

“You have always had the power of a god, son of Peleus,” says the goddess. She raises her free hand in benediction and QT’s away. The air rushes into the vacuum with a soft thunderclap.

Achilles lays Penthesilea’s body down among the other corpses only long enough to wrap it in clean white cloth retrieved from his battle tent. Then he seeks out his own shield, lance, helmet, and a single bag of bread and wineskins he’d brought along so many hours earlier. Finally, his weapons securely lashed to him, he kneels, lifts the dead Amazon, and begins walking toward Mount Olympos.

“Holy shit,” says Daeman, pulling the turin cloth away from his face. Long minutes have passed. He checks his proxnet palm—no voynix nearby. They could have deboned him like a fish while he lay under the turin’s spell. “Holy shit,” he says again.

There is no reply except for the low waves lapping along the beach.