Zeus enters the long room and sweeps across the space between medical monitors with no dials, past robots wrapped in what looks to be synthetic flesh, between gods who bow their heads and stand back to honor him. For an instant, the great god’s head swivels my way, the startling eyes under gray brows look directly into me, and I know I have been discovered.

I wait for the Zeus-boom and lightning blast. None comes. Zeus turns away—is he smiling?—and stops in front of Ares, who still sits hunched on the examination table between hovering machines and flesh-tending robotic things.

Zeus stands in front of the wounded god with his arms crossed, toga draped, head lowered, all trimmed gray beard and untrimmed gray brows, his bare chest radiating bronze light and strength, his expression fierce—more irritated school principal than concerned father, I would say.

Ares speaks first. “Father Zeus, doesn’t it infuriate you to see such human violence, such bloody work? We’re the everlasting, immortal gods, but god damn, we suffer injuries and insults—thanks to our own divine arguments and conflicting wills—every time we show these stinking mortals a bit of kindness. And it’s bad enough we have to fight these nano-crazed mortal sons of bitches, Lord Zeus, but we also have to fight you .”

Ares takes a breath, grimaces in pain, and waits. Zeus says nothing, but continues to glower as if pondering the war god’s words.

“And Athena,” gasps the injured god. “You’ve let that girl go too far, O Son of Kronos. Ever since you gave birth to her from your own head—that child of chaos and destruction—you’ve always let her have her way, never blocked her reckless will. And now she’s turned the mortal Diomedes into one of her weapons, spurred him on to ravage against us gods.”

Ares is excited and furious now. Spittle flies. I can still see the blue-gray coils of his intestines in what appears to be golden blood.

“First she incited that . . . that . . . mortal to lunge at Aphrodite, stabbing her wrist, spilling her divine blood. The Healer’s attendants tell me that she’ll be in the vat for a full day, recovering. Then Athena spurs on Diomedes to charge me—me, the god of war—and his nano-augmented body was fast enough that he would have had me in the vats myself for days or weeks, perhaps even to need resurrection, if I hadn’t been faster still. If he had taken my heart on his spear point, I’d still be writhing among the human corpses down there, feeling more pain than I do, trying to soldier on but being beaten down by mere mortal bronze, weak as some breathless ghost from our old Earth days and . . .”

“ENOUGH!!” bellows Zeus and not only stops Ares’ diatribe, but freezes every god and robot in the place. “I’ll hear no more whining prattle from you, Ares, you lying, two-faced, treacherous sparrowfart, you miserable excuse for a man, much less for a god.”

Ares blinks at this, opens his mouth, but—wisely, I think—does not choose to interrupt.

“Listen to you whining and whimpering here from your little cut,” sneers Zeus, unfolding his mighty arms and holding one giant hand out as if preparing to will the war god out of existence with a command. “You—I hate you most of all the maggots chosen to become gods when it came time for our Change, you miserable hypocrite. You coward-hearted lover of death and grim battles and the bloody grist-mill of war. You have your mother’s meanness, Ares, and her rage—I confess that I can barely keep Hera in her place, especially when she decides on some little pet project close to her heart, such as slaughtering the Achaeans to a man.”

Ares doubles over as if Zeus’s words are hurting him, but I suspect the cause of pain is really the hovering spherical robot-thing stitching the lining of his abdomen shut with what looks to be an industrial-strength portable sewing machine.

Zeus ignores the ministrations of the medics and paces back and forth, coming within two yards of me before turning and walking back to stand in front of the hunched and grimacing Ares.

“I hope it’s your mother’s promptings, Hera’s urgings, that have made you suffer like this, O God of War . . .” I can hear the godly sarcasm in Zeus’s voice. “I’d just as soon have you die . . .”

Ares looks up in real shock and terror now.

Zeus laughs at the war god’s expression. “You didn’t know that we can die? Die beyond vat reconstruction or recom resurrection? We can, my son, we can.”

Ares looks down in confusion. The machine is almost finished tucking the divine bowels back in and stitching up the last of the muscle and flesh.

“Healer!” booms Zeus and something tall and very not-human emerges from behind the bubbling vats. The thing is more centipede than machine, with multiple arms, each with multiple joints, and fly-like red eyes set fifteen feet high on its segmented body. Straps and devices and odd organic bits hang from harnesses strung around the Healer’s giant bug-body.

“You are still my son,” Zeus says to the grimacing war god. The Lord of Thunder’s voice is softer now. “You are my son as I am Kronos’s son. To me your mother bore you.”

Ares reaches up his bloodied hand as if to grasp Zeus’s forearm, but the older god ignores the gesture. “But trust me, Ares. If you had sprung from the seed of another god and still grown into such a shit-eating disappointment, believe me when I say that I’d long since have dropped you into that deep, dark pit below where the Titans writhe to this day.”

Zeus waves the Healer forward and then turns and strides out of the hall.

I step back—so do the other gods in attendance—as the giant Healer lifts Ares in five of its arms, carries him to the empty tank, attaches various fibers and tentacles and umbilicals, and drops him into the bubbling violet liquid. As soon as his face is under the surface, Ares closes his eyes and the green worms flock out of apertures in the glass and go to work on the war god’s ravaged gut.

I decide it’s time to leave.

I am learning the rhythm of quantum teleportation with this medallion device. Clearly picture the place you want to go, and the device QT’s you there. I clearly picture my college campus in Indiana in the last years of the Twentieth Century. The device does nothing. Sighing once, I picture the scholic dormitory at the base of Olympos.

The medallion phase-shifts me there at once. I blink into existence—although not visibility because of the Hades Helmet—just outside the red steps in front of the green doors of the red-stone barracks building.

It’s been a damned long day and all I want to do is find my bunk, get out of all this gear, and take a nap. Let Nightenhelser report to the Muse.

As if my thought had summoned her, I see the Muse flick into existence just two yards from me and swing aside the barracks’ doors. I’m amazed. The Muse has never come to the barracks before; we always ride the crystal elevator to her.

Secure in whatever Hades-technology conceals me, I follow her into the common room.

“Hockenberry!” she yells in her powerful goddess voice.

A younger scholic named Blix, some Homer scholar from the Twenty-second Century who has been assigned the night shift at Ilium, comes from his first-floor room, knuckling his eyes and looking stunned.

“Where is Hockenberry?” demands my Muse.

Blix shakes his head, his mouth sagging open. He sleeps in boxer shorts and a stained undershirt.

“Hockenberry!” demands the impatient Muse. “Nightenhelser says that he went to Ilium, but he’s not there. He hasn’t reported to me. Have you seen any of the day-shift scholics come through here?”

“No, Goddess,” says poor Blix, bowing his head in some sort of approximation of deference.

“Go back to bed,” the Muse says disgustedly. She strides outside, looks downhill toward the shore where the green men strain hauling their stone heads from the quarry, and then she QT’s away with a soft clap of inrushing air.