A realist, says Mahnmut on the tightbeam.

“But you were talking about games,” says Hockenberry. “I’ve seen you wrestle. And win. And you’ve won camp footraces as well.”

“Yes,” says Odysseus, “more than one time I’ve carried off the cup at the running race while Ajax has had to settle for the ox. Athena has helped me there—tripping up the big oaf to let me cross the finish line first. And I’ve bested Ajax in wrestling as well, clipping the hollow of his knee, throwing him backward, and pinning him before the dull-witted giant noticed that he’d been thrown.”

“Does that make you a better man?” asks Hockenberry.

“Of course it does,” booms Odysseus. “What would the world be without the agon—the agonistics of one man against another—to show everyone the order of precedence among men, just as no two other things on earth are alike? How could any of us alive know quality if competition and personal combat did not let all the world know who embodies excellence and who merely manages mediocrity? What games do you excel in, son of Duane?”

“I went out for track my freshman year at college,” says Hockenberry. “I didn’t make the team.”

“Well, I have to admit that I’m not half bad in the world of games where men compete,” says Odysseus. “I know how to handle a well-carved, fine-polished bow and will be the first among my comrades to hit my man in a moving mass of enemies, even with my friends jostling against me, everyone trying to take aim at once. One reason I was willing to follow Achilles and Hector into a war with the gods was my eagerness to test my prowess as an archer against Apollo’s skill—although in my heart, I knew this was folly. Whenever mortal man rivals the gods in archery—look at poor Eurytus of Oechalia—that man can bet he’ll die a sudden death, not pass away from old age within the halls of his own home. And I don’t think I’d go up against the Lord of the Silver Bow unless I had my best bow with me, and I never take it to war when I sail off in the black ships. That bow is on the wall of my great hall even now. Iphitus gave me that bow as a sign of friendship when we first met—the bow belonged to his father, the archer Eurytus himself. I liked Iphitus a lot, and I’m sorry I gave him only a sword and rough-hewn spear in exchange for the finest bow on earth. Heracles murdered Iphitus before I really had time to get to know the man.

“As for spears, I can fling a lance as far as the next man can shoot an arrow. And you’ve seen me box and wrestle. As for sprinting—yes, you saw me beat Ajax, and I can run for hours without vomiting up my breakfast, but in the short sprint, many runners will leave me behind in the dust unless Athena intervenes on my behalf.”

“I could have qualified for track,” says Hockenberry, almost muttering to himself now. “Long distance was my thing. But there was this guy named Brad Muldorff—the Duck we used to call him—who squeezed me out for the last position on the team.”

“Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit,” says Odysseus. “Shame on any man who gets used to that taste.” He gulps some wine, throwing his head back to swallow, then wipes droplets from his brown beard. “I dream of talking to dead Achilles in the shaded halls of Hades, but it’s my son Telemachus whom I really want to know about. If the gods are going to send me dreams, why not dreams of my son? He was a boy when I left—timid and untested—and I’d like to know if he’s turned into a man or become one of those pantywaists who hang around better men’s halls, seeking a rich wife, buggering boys, and playing the lyre all day.”

“We never had any children,” says Hockenberry. He rubs his forehead. “I don’t think we did. Memories of my real life are mixed up and murky. I’m like a sunken ship that someone refloated for their own reasons, but didn’t bother to pump all the water out—just enough to make it float. Too many compartments are still flooded.”

Odysseus looks at the scholic, obviously not understanding and obviously not interested enough to ask a question.

Hockenberry looks back at the Greek captain-king, his gaze suddenly focused and intense. “I mean, answer me this if you can… I mean, what does it mean to be a man?”

“To be a man?” repeats Odysseus. He opens the last two gourds of wine and hands Hockenberry one.

“Yess … excuse me, yes. To be a man. To become a man. In my country, the only rite of passage is when you get the car keys… or get laid for the first time.”

Odysseus nods. “Getting laid for the first time is important.”

“But certainly that can’t be it, son of Laertes! What does it take to be a man—or a human being, for that matter?”

This should be good, Mahnmut sends to Orphu on the tightbeam. I’ve wondered this myself more than a few times—and not just when I’m trying to understand Shakespeare’s sonnets.

We’ve all wondered it, replies Orphu. All of us obsessed with things human. Which is to say, all of us moravecs, since our programming and designed DNA lead us back to studying and trying to understand our creators.

“Being a man?” repeats Odysseus, his voice serious, almost distracted. “Right now I have to piss. Do you have to piss, Hockenberry?”

“I mean,” continues the scholic, “maybe it has something to do with consistency.” He has to try the word twice before getting it right. “Consistency. I mean, look at your Olympics versus ours. Just look at that!”

“That other moravec told me how to piss in that latrine in the room, it has some sort of vacuum that sucks it in even in this floating time, but I find it damned hard not to send blobs everywhere, don’t you, Hockenberry?”

“Twelve hundred years you ancient Greeks kept your Games going,” says Hockenberry. “Five days of games, every four years, for twelve hundred years, until some pissant Christian emperor of Rome abolished them. Twelve hundred years! Through drought and famine, pestilence and plague. Every four years, the wars would be brought to a halt, and your athletes would travel from all over their world to Olympia, to pay homage to the gods and to compete in the chariot races, footraces, wrestling, discus, and javelin, and pankration—that weird mixture of wrestling and kickboxing that I’ve never seen and I bet you haven’t either. Twelve hundred years, son of Laertes! When my own people brought the Games back, they couldn’t keep them going for much more than a hundred years without three of them being canceled for war, countries refusing to show up because they were pissed off by this or that slight or offense, and we even had terrorists kill Jewish athletes…”

“Pissed off, yes,” says Odysseus, releasing the gourd on its tether and spinning around, ready to kick back to his cubby. “Have to piss. Be right back.”

“Maybe the only thing that’s really consistent is what Homer said—‘Dear to us ever is the banquet and the harp and the dance and changes of raiment and the warm bath and love, and sleep.’ ”

“Who’s Homer?” asks Odysseus, pausing in midair at the irised door to the astrogation bubble.

“No one you’d know,” says Hockenberry, drinking more wine. “But you know what…”

He stops. Odysseus is gone.

Mahnmut goes out through the medical deck airlock, tethers himself even though he has reaction-thruster fuel in his backpack, and follows catwalks, ladders, and ship lines around and up the Queen Mab. He finds Orphu of Io welding a patch on the cargo bay doors in which The Dark Lady is stored, cradled under the folding wings of the reentry shuttle.

“That could have been more enlightening,” says Mahnmut on their private radio frequency.

“Most conversations share that particular quality,” says Orphu. “Even ours.”

“But we’re not usually drunk during our conversations.”

“Since moravecs don’t ingest alcohol for stimulative or depressive purposes, you are technically correct,” says Orphu, his shell, legs, and sensors brightly illuminated by the shower of sparks from his welding. “But we’ve discussed things while you’ve been hypoxic, drugged with fatigue toxins, and—as the humans would say—scared shitless, so Odysseus’ and Hockenberry’s disjointed conversation did not sound unfamiliar to my ears… if I had ears.”