“Holy God,” whispered Hockenberry.

“Yes, exactly,” said Helen. “And then Zeus disappeared in a crack of the loudest thunder yet, louder even than his voice that had deafened hundreds, and the wind howled into the place where giant Zeus had been, ripping up the Achaean tents and swirling them thousands of feet into the air, swirling strong Trojan stallions from their stalls and over our highest walls.”

Hockenberry looked to the west where the armies of Troy had surrounded the diminished army of the Argives. “That was almost two weeks ago. Have the gods returned at all? Any of them? Zeus?”

“No, Hock-en-bear-eeee. We have seen no immortals since that day.”

“But that was two weeks ago,” said Hockenberry. “Why has it taken so long for Hector to besiege the Argive army? Surely with the deaths of Diomedes, Big Ajax, and Menelaus, the Achaeans must have been demoralized.”

“They were,” agreed Helen. “But both sides were in shock. Many of us could not hear for days. As I said, those on the wall or those Argives too close to the opening pit of Tartarus were little more than drooling idiots for a week. A truce was called without either side declaring it. We gathered our dead—for we had suffered terribly during Agamemnon’s assaults, you remember—and for almost a week, corpse fires burned both here in the city and along the miles of shore where the terrified Argives still had their camps. Then, in the second week, when Agamemnon ordered men to the forests at the base of Mount Ida to begin felling trees—to make new ships, of course—Hector began the assault. The fighting has been slow and heavy work. With their backs to the sea and no ships for their flight, the Argives fight like cornered rats. But this morning, you see, the few thousands left are encircled there at the edge of the water and today Hector will unleash our final assault. Today ends the Trojan War, with Ilium still standing, Hector the hero of all heroes, and Helen free.”

For a while the man and woman just sat on their respective great stones and stared out to the west, where sunlight glinted on armor and spears and where horns were sounding.

Finally Helen said, “What will you do with me now, Hock-en-bear-eeee?”

He blinked, looked at the knife still in his hand, and set it in his belt. “You can go,” he said.

Helen looked at his face but she did not move.

“Go!” said Hockenberry.

She left slowly. The sound of her slippers came up the circular staircase—he remembered the same soft sound from when he lay dying here two and a half weeks ago.

Where do I go now?

Trained as a scholic in his second life, he had the loyal urge to report these variances from the Iliad to the Muse, and thence to all the gods. This thought made him smile. How many of the gods still existed in that other universe where Olympus Mons on Mars had been turned into Olympos? How extensive had Zeus’s wrath really been? Had there been a genocidal deicide up there? He might never know. He didn’t have the courage to quantum teleport to Olympos again.

Hockenberry touched the QT medallion under his tunic. Back to the ship? He wanted to see the Earth—his Earth, even one three thousand years or so in his future—and he wanted to be with the moravecs and Odysseus when they saw it. He had no duty or role here in this Ilium-universe now.

He brought the QT medallion out and ran his hand over the heavy gold.

Not back to the Queen Mab. Not yet. He might not be a scholic any longer—the gods may have abandoned him just as he had betrayed them—but he was still a scholar. Decades of teaching the Iliad, all those memories of wonderful dusty classrooms and very young college students, all those faces—pale, pimply, healthy, tanned, eager, indifferent, inspired, insipid—came flowing back now, filling in the gaps. How could he not see the last act in this new and absurdly revised version?

Twisting the medallion, Dr. Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., quantum teleported to the center of the besieged and doomed Achaean encampment.

Later, Daeman wasn’t sure when he decided to steal one of the eggs.

It wasn’t while he was sliding down the rope to the floor of the dome-crater, since he was too busy hanging on and trying not to be seen to plan anything then.

It wasn’t while he was scurrying across the hot, cracked floor of the crater, since his heart was pounding too loudly during that sprint to allow him to think of anything except reaching the fumarole where he’d seen the eggs. Twice he saw groups of calibani scuttling along beyond the nearest smoking vents and both times Daeman threw himself down and lay still until they had hurried off on their business toward the main Setebos nest. The floor of the crater was hot enough that it would have burned his hands if he hadn’t been wearing the thermskin under his regular clothes. As it was, a minute lying on his belly caused his shirt and trousers to singe. He sprinted forward and reached the side of the fumarole, crouching and panting in the heat—the walls of the fumarole were about twelve feet high, but rough, made of the same blue-ice as everything else. Daeman found enough fingerholds and footholds to climb it without using his ice hammers.

The fumarole—a hissing crater within the larger crater, one of dozens inside the dome-cathedral—was filled with human skulls. These were so heated that some glowed red even while sulfurous vapors hissed around them and rose into the stinking air. At least the steam and vapors gave Damean some cover as he dropped onto the mound of skulls and looked at the Setebos eggs.

Oval, gray-white, each pulsing with some internal energy or life, the things were each about three feet long. Daeman counted twenty-seven in this nest. Besides the cradling heap of hot skulls, the eggs themselves were surrounded by a ring of sticky, blue-gray mucus. Daeman crawled closer, fingers and feet scrabbling on skulls, and looked at the tall heap of eggs from as close as he could get without lifting his head above the level of the fumarole crater rim.

The shells were thin, warm, almost translucent. Some already glowed brightly, others had only a white gleam at their center. Daeman reached out and gingerly touched one—a mild heat, a strange sense of vertigo as if some instability in the egg itself flowed through his thermskinned finger. He tried to lift one and found it weighed about twenty pounds.

Now what?

Now he had to beat a retreat, get up the rope, out through the tunnels, back to the Avenue Daumesnil crevasse, and back to the Guarded Lion faxnode. He had to report all this to everyone at Ardis as soon as possible.

But why come all this way and risk exposure on the crater floor without taking a souvenir?

By dumping everything out of his rucksack except the extra crossbow bolts, he made room for the egg. At first it wouldn’t fit, but by pushing gently but insistently he managed to get the broad end of the oval through the opening and wedge the bolts in around the side of the egg. What if it breaks? Well, he’d have a messy pack, he thought, but at least he’d know what was inside the damned things.

I don’t want to break one of the eggs here, so close to Setebos and the calibani. We’ll inspect it back at Ardis.

Amen, thought Daeman. He was finding it very hard to breathe. He’d had his osmosis mask on all this time, but the sulfurous vapors from the fumarole vent and the overwhelming heat made him dizzy. He knew that if he’d come into the dome without the thermskin and mask, he would have lost consciousness long ago. The air in here was poisonous. Then how do the calibani breathe?

To hell with the calibani, thought Daeman. He waited until the steam and vapors were thick as a smoke screen and slid down the side of the fumarole, dropping the last five feet. The egg shifted heavily in his rucksack, almost causing him to fall.