Zeus glowers, grumbles, shifts in his chair, but orders the attentive Athena—“Go quickly down to the quiet killing ground between Trojans and Achaeans. I order you to see that the Trojans are the first to break the truce and do injury to the far-famed Achaeans.”

“And trample on the Argives in their triumph,” prompts Hera.

“And trample on the Argives in their triumph,” Zeus orders wearily.

Athena disappears in a QT flash. Zeus and Hera leave the room and the gods begin to disperse, speaking softly amongst themselves.

The Muse beckons me to follow with a subtle flick of her finger and leads me out of the assembly hall.

“Hockenberry,” says the Goddess of Love, reclining on her cushioned couch, the gravity—light as it is—giving emphasis to all her silky, milky-weighted voluptuousness.

The Muse had led me to this other room in the Great Hall of the Gods, this darkened room with only the double glow from a low-burning brazier and from something that looked suspiciously like a computer screen. She had whispered to me to remove the Helmet of Death and I was relieved to take the leather hood off, but terrified to be visible again.

Then Aphrodite had entered, assumed her position on the couch, and said, “That will be all until I summon you, Melete,” and the Muse had stepped out through a secret door.

Melete, I thought. Not one of the nine muses, but a name from an earlier era, where the muses were thought to be three: Melete of “practicing,” Mneme of “remembering,” and Aoide of . . .

“Hockenberry, I was able to see you in the Hall of the Gods,” says Aphrodite, blinking me out of my scholic reverie, “and if I had pointed you out to Lord Zeus, you would be something less than ashes now. Even your QT medallion would not have allowed you to escape, for I could follow your phase-shift path through time and space itself. Do you know why you are here?”

Aphrodite is my patroness. She’s the one who ordered the Muse to give me these devices. What do I do? Kneel? Prostrate myself on the floor in the presence of divinity? How do I address her? In my nine years, two months, and eighteen days here, my existence has never been acknowledged by a god before, not counting my Muse.

I decide to bow slightly, averting my eyes from her beauty, from the sight of pink nipples showing through thin silk, of that soft cusp of stomach sending shadows into that triangle of dark fabric where her thighs meet.

“No, Goddess,” I say at last, all but forgetting the question.

“Do you know why you were chosen as scholic, Hockenberry? Why your DNA was exempted from nanocyte disruption? Why, before you were chosen for reintegration, your writings on the War were factored into the simplex?”

“No, Goddess.” My DNA is exempt from nanocyte disruption?

“Do you know what a simplex is, mortal shade?”

Herpes virus? I think. “No, Goddess,” I say.

“The simplex is a simple geometric mathematical object, an exercise in logistics, a triangle or trapezoid folded on itself,” says Aphrodite. “Only combined with multiple dimensions and algorithms defining new notional areas, creating and discarding feasible regions of n-space, planes of exclusion become inevitable contours. Do you understand now, Hockenberry? Do you understand how this applies to quantum space, to time, to the War below, or to your own fate?”

“No, Goddess.” My voice does quaver this time. I can’t help it.

There is a rustling of silk and I glance up long enough to see the most beautiful female in existence rearranging her fair limbs and smooth thighs on the couch. “No matter,” she says. “You—or the mortal who was your template—wrote a book several thousand years ago. Do you remember its content?”

“No, Goddess.”

“If you say that one more time, Hockenberry, I am going to rip you open from crotch to crown and quite literally use your guts for my garters. Do you understand that?”

It is hard to speak with no saliva in your mouth. “Yes, Goddess,” I manage, hearing the dry lisp.

“Your book ran to 935 pages and it was all about one word—Menin—do you remember now?”

“No, Go . . . I’m afraid I don’t recall that, Goddess Aphrodite, but I am sure that you are correct.”

I look up long enough to see that she is smiling, her chin propped on her left hand, her finger rising along her cheek to one perfect dark eyebrow. Her eyes are the color of a fine cognac.

“Rage,” she says softly. “Menin aeide thea . . . Do you know who will win this war, Hockenberry?”

I have to think fast here. I would be a pretty poor scholic if I don’t know how the poem turns out—although the Iliad ends with the funeral rites for Achilles’ friend Patroclus, not with the destruction of Troy, and there is no mention of a giant horse except in Odysseus’ comments and that from another epic . . . but if I pretend to know how this real war will turn out, and it is obvious from the argument I have just overheard that Zeus’s edict that the gods must not be informed of the future as predicted by the Iliad is still in effect—I mean, if the gods themselves do not know what will happen next, wouldn’t I be putting myself above the gods, including Fate by telling them? Hubris has never been an attribute gently rewarded by these gods. Besides, Zeus—who alone knows the full tale of the Iliad—has forbidden the other gods from asking and all of us scholics from discussing anything except events that have already occurred. Pissing off Zeus is never a good plan for survival on Olympos. Still, it seems I’m exempt from nanocyte disruption. On the other hand, I believe the Goddess of Love completely when she says that she will wear my guts for garters.

“What was the question, Goddess?” is all I can manage.

“You know how the poem the Iliad ends, but I would be defying Zeus’s command if I ask you what happens there,” says Aphrodite, her small smile disappearing and being replaced by something like a pout. “But I can ask you if that poem predicts this reality. Does it? In your opinion, Scholic Hockenberry, does Zeus rule the universe, or does Fate?”

Oh, shit, I think. Any answer here is going to end up with me being gutless and this beautiful woman—goddess—wearing slimy garters. I say, “It is my understanding, Goddess, that even though the universe bends to the will of Zeus and must obey the vagaries of the god-force called Fate, that kaos still has some say in the lives of both men and gods.”

Aphrodite makes a soft, amused sound. Everything about her is so soft, touchable, enticing . . . .

“We will not wait for chaos to decide this contest,” she says, her voice shedding all sound of amusement. “You saw Achilles withdraw from the fray this day?”

“Yes, Goddess.”

“You know that the man-killer has already prayed to Thetis to punish his fellow Achaeans for the shame that Agamemnon has heaped on him?”

“I have not witnessed this prayer, Goddess, but I know that it follows the path of the . . . the poem.” This is safe to say. The event is in the past. Besides, the sea goddess Thetis is Achilles’ mother and everyone on Olympos knows that he has called for her intervention.

“Indeed,” says Aphrodite. “That roundheeled bitch with the wet breasts has already been here to the Great Hall, throwing herself at Zeus’s knees as soon as the old fool returned from his debauching with the Aethiopians at the Ocean River. She begged him, for Achilles’ sake, to grant victory after victory to the Trojans, and the old sod agreed, thus putting him on a collision course with Hera, chief champion of the Argives. Thus the scene you just witnessed.”

I stand upright with my arms down, palms forward, head slightly bowed, all the while watching Aphrodite as if she were a cobra, but still knowing that if she chooses to strike me, the strike will come much faster and more lethally than any cobra’s.