“No city to lay siege to?” asks Odysseus, looking at the scholic with an expression of interest for the first time since their conversation began.

“No real city, no,” says Hockenberry. “It was just one battle in a bigger war. The other side wanted to kill our people to prevent an invasion of their home island. Our side ended up killing them any way they could—they poured flame into their caves, entombed them alive. My father’s comrades killed more than a hundred thousand of the hundred and ten thousand Japanese on the island.” He takes a drink. “The Japanese were our enemies then.”

“A glorious victory,” says Odysseus.

Hockenberry makes a soft noise.

“The numbers involved—men, ships—reminds me of our war for Troy,” says the Argive.

“Yes, very similar,” says Hockenberry. “As was the ferocity of the fighting. Hand-to-hand in rain and mud, day and night.”

“Did your father return with much plunder? Slave girls? Gold?”

“He brought home a samurai sword—the sword of an enemy officer—but put it away in a trunk and never even showed it to me when I was a boy.”

“Were many of your father’s comrades sent down to the House of Death?”

“Counting both the men fighting on land and at sea, 12,520 Americans were killed,” says Hockenberry, his scholar’s mind—and his son’s heart—having no trouble recalling the figures. “There were 33,631 wounded on our side. The enemy, as I said, lost more than a hundred thousand dead, thousands and thousands burned to death and entombed in the caves and holes where they dug in to fight.”

“We Achaeans have lost more than twenty-five thousand comrades in front of the walls of Ilium,” says Odysseus. “The Trojans have built funeral pyres to at least that many of their own.”

“Yes,” says Hockenberry with a slight smile, “but that’s over a period of ten years. My father’s battle on the island of Okinawa lasted only ninety days.”

There is a silence. The Queen Mab rotates again, as smoothly and majestically as some giant marine mammal rolling over as it swims. Brilliant sunlight pours over them briefly, causing each man to raise his hand to shield his eyes, and then the stars return.

“I’m surprised I’ve never heard of this war,” says Odysseus, handing the scholic a fresh gourd of wine. “But still, you must be proud of your father, son of Duane. Your people must have treated the victors in that battle like gods. Songs will be sung of it for centuries around your hearths. The names of the men who fought and died there will be known to the grandsons of the grandsons of the heroes, and the details of every individual combat will be sung by minstrels and poets.”

“Actually,” says Hockenberry, taking a long drink, “almost everyone in my country has forgotten that battle already.”

Are you hearing this? sends Mahnmut on tightbeam. Yes. Orphu of Io is outside on the hull of the Queen Mab, scuttling around with the other hard-vac moravecs during the twenty-four hours that the ship is not under acceleration or deceleration, doing inspections and carrying out repairs on minor damage from micrometeorite hits, solar flares, or the effects of the fission bombs they have been detonating behind them. It is possible to work on the hull while the ship is under way—Orphu has been outside several times in the last two weeks, moving along the system of catwalks and ladders rigged for that purpose—but the big Ionian is already on record as saying he prefers the zero-gravity to what he’s described as working on the face of a hundred-story building while under acceleration, with an all-too-real sense of the stern and pusher plate of the ship being down.

Hockenberry sounds quite drunk, sends Orphu.

I think he is, responds Mahnmut. This wine that Asteague/Che had the galley replicate is powerful stuff, based on a sample of Medean wine from an amphora “borrowed” from Hector’s wine cellar. Hockenberry has been drinking lesser versions of this red Medean for years with the Greeks and Trojans, but almost certainly in moderation—the Greeks mix more water than wine into their cups. Sometimes they add saltwater or perfumes like myrrh.

Now that sounds barbarous, tightbeams Orphu.

At any rate, sends Mahnmut, the scholic hasn’t eaten since he was spacesick earlier today, so his empty stomach isn’t any help in keeping him sober.

It sounds as if he’ll be spacesick again later today.

If he is, sends Mahnmut, it’s your turn to bring him more spacesickness bags. I’ve held his head over them enough for one twenty-four-hour cycle.

Darn, sends Orphu of Io, I’d really love to take my turn at that, but I don’t think the doorways there in the human-cubby level of the ship are wide enough for me.

Wait, sends Mahnmut. Listen to this.

“Do you like to play games, son of Duane?”

“Games?” said Hockenberry. “What kind of games?”

“The kinds of game one would play during a celebration, or a funeral,” says Odysseus. “The games we would have had at Patroclus’ funeral, if Achilles had acknowledged his friend’s death and allowed us to put on a funeral after Patroclus’ disappearance.”

Hockenberry is quiet for a minute and then says, “You mean discus, javelin… that sort of thing.”

“Aye,” says Odysseus. “And chariot races. Footraces. Wrestling and boxing.”

“I’ve seen your boxing matches there at your camps near where the black ships are drawn up,” says Hockenberry, slurring only slightly. “The men fight with just rawhide thongs wrapped around their hands.”

Odysseus laughs. “What else should they wear on their hands, son of Duane? Great soft pillows?”

Hockenberry ignores the question. “Last summer in your camp I watched Epeus beat a dozen men bloody, smashing their ribs, breaking their jaws. He took on all comers and fought from early afternoon to late after moonrise.”

Odysseus is grinning. “I remember those matches. No one could stand up to Panopeus’ son that day, although many men tried.”

“Two men died.”

Odysseus shrugs and sips more wine. “Diomedes was training and backing Euryalus, son of Mecisteus, third in command of the Argolid fighters. He had him out running every morning before dawn, hardening his fists by slugging oxen halves fresh from the slaughter pens. But Epeus coldcocked him that evening in only twenty rounds. Diomedes had to drag his man out of the circle with poor Euryalus’ toes leaving ten furrows in the sand. But he lived to fight another day—and the next time he won’t drop his fucking guard, that’s for sure.”

“Boxing is a filthy enterprise,” quotes Hockenberry, “and if you stay in it long enough, your mind will become a concert hall where Chinese music never stops playing.”

Odysseus brays a laugh. “That’s funny. Who said it?”

“A wise man by the name of Jimmy Cannon.”

“But what is Chinese music?” asks Odysseus, still chuckling. “And what exactly is a concert hall?”

“Never mind,” says Hockenberry. “You know, in all the years of watching the war, I don’t remember your boxing champion, Epeus, ever distinguishing himself in aristeia—single combat for glory.”

“No, that’s true,” agrees Odysseus. “Epeus himself acknowledges that he’s no great man of war. Sometimes the courage it takes to face another man bare-fisted is not the kind required to run an enemy through the belly with your spearpoint, and then twist the blade out, spilling the man’s guts like so much offal in the dirt.”

“But you can do that.” Hockenberry’s voice is flat.

“Oh, yes,” laughs Odysseus. “But the gods have willed it so. I’m of a generation of Achaeans whom Zeus has decreed, from youth to old age, must wind down our brutal wars to the bitter end until we ourselves drop and die, down to the last man.”

Odysseus is quite the optimist, sends Orphu.