Glancing around to make sure he was alone, Daeman stripped naked and pulled on the thermskin, allowing the hood to lie loose at his neck and the osmosis mask to hang on a strap beneath his tunic. Then he pulled on his trousers, tunic, and shoes, stuffing his underwear into his pack.

He checked the other items in his rucksack-strips of yellow cloth he'd cut up at Ardis, the two crude clawhammers he'd had Reman forge-Reman was the best ironworker at Ardis when Hannah was gone. Coils of rope. Extra crossbow quarrels.

He wanted to go back to Paris Crater first, but it was the middle of the night there and to see what he had to see, Daeman needed daylight. He knew that he had about seven hours before sunrise at Paris Crater and he was pretty sure that he could visit most of his other twenty-nine nodes by then. Some of those on his list were the ones he'd faxed to after fleeing from Paris Crater last time-Kiev, Bellinbad, Ulanbat, Chom, Loman's Place, Drid, Fuego, Cape Town Tower, Devi, Mantua, and Satle Heights. Only Chom and Ulanbat had been infected with the blue ice then, and he hoped it would still be that way. Even if it took a full twelve hours to warn the people in the other cities and nodes, it would be full daylight when he faxed last to Paris Crater.

And Paris Crater is where he planned to do what he had to do.

Daeman tugged on his heavy pack, lifted the crossbow, walked back to the pavilion, said a silent goodbye to the tropical breezes and rustle of palm fronds, and tapped in the first code on his list.

33.

Achilles has carried the dead but perfectly preserved corpse of the Amazon Penthesilea more than thirty leagues, almost ninety miles, up the slope of Mount Olympos and is prepared to carry her another fifty leagues more-or a hundred more if it comes to that, or a thousand-but somewhere on this third day, somewhere around the altitude of sixty thousand feet, the air and warmth disappear completely.

For three days and nights, with only short breaks for rest and cat-naps, Achilles, son of Peleus and the goddess Thetis, grandson of Aeacus, has climbed within the glass-shrouded tube of the crystal escalator that rises to the summit of Olympos. Shattered on the lower slopes in the first days of fighting between the forces of Hector and Achilles and the immortal gods, most of the escalator had retained its pressurized atmosphere and its heating elements. Until the sixty-thousand-foot level. Until here. Until now.

Here some lightning bolt or plasma weapon has severed the escalator tube completely, leaving a gap of a quarter mile or more. It makes the crystal escalator on the red volcanic slope look like nothing so much as a snake chopped in half with a hoe. Achilles presses through the force-field on the open end of the tube and crosses that terrible openness, carrying his weapons, his shield, and the body of Penthesilea-the Amazon's corpse anointed in Pallas Athena's preserving ambrosia and bound in once-white linen he'd taken from his own command tent-but when he does reach the other side, his lungs bursting, eyes burning and ears bleeding from the low pressure, his skin scored by the burning cold, he sees that the tube beyond is shattered for miles more, the wreckage rising up over the ever-receding curving slope of Olympos, its interior without air or heat. Instead of a staircase he can climb, the escalator is now a series of shattered shards showing jagged metal and twisted glass for as far as he can see. Airless, freezing, it does not even offer shelter from the howling jet-stream winds.

Cursing, gasping, Achilles staggers back down the open slope, presses back through the humming forcefield at the opening to the crystal tube, and collapses on the metal steps, setting his wrapped burden gently on the stairs. His skin is raw and cracked from the cold-How can it be cold cold this close to the sun? this close to the sun? he wonders. Fleet-footed Achilles feels sure that he has climbed higher than Icarus flew, and the wax on the wings of the boy-who-would-be-bird had melted from the heat of the sun. Had it not? But the mountaintops in the land of his childhood-Chiron's land, the country of the centaurs-were cold, windy, inhospitable places where the air grew thinner the higher one climbed. Achilles realizes that he expected more from Olympos. he wonders. Fleet-footed Achilles feels sure that he has climbed higher than Icarus flew, and the wax on the wings of the boy-who-would-be-bird had melted from the heat of the sun. Had it not? But the mountaintops in the land of his childhood-Chiron's land, the country of the centaurs-were cold, windy, inhospitable places where the air grew thinner the higher one climbed. Achilles realizes that he expected more from Olympos.

He takes a leather bag from his cape, removes a small wineskin from the pouch, and squirts the last of his wine between his parched and cracked lips. Achilles ate the last of his cheese and bread ten hours earlier, confident that he would soon reach the summit. But Olympos seems to have no summit.

It seems now like months since the morning of the day he'd begun this quest three days earlier-the day he'd killed Penthesilea, the day the Hole closed, sealing him away from Troy and his fellow Myrmidons and Achaeans, not that he cared that the Hole was gone, since he had no intention of going back until Penthesilea lived again and was his bride. But he hadn't planned this expedition. On that morning three days earlier when Achilles had set out from his tent on the battlefield near the base of Olympos, he'd carried only a few scraps of food into the battle with the Amazons, not planning to be gone for more than a few hours. His strength that morning had seemed as limitless as his wrath.

Now Achilles wonders if he has the strength to descend the thirty leagues of metal staircase.

Maybe if I leave the woman's corpse behind.

Even as the thought slides through his exhausted mind, he knows that he won't do it...he can't do it. What had Athena said? "There is no release from this particular spell of Aphrodite-the pheromones have spoken and their judgment is final. Penthesilea will be your only love for this life, either as a corpse or as a living woman..." "There is no release from this particular spell of Aphrodite-the pheromones have spoken and their judgment is final. Penthesilea will be your only love for this life, either as a corpse or as a living woman..."

Achilles, son of Peleus, has no idea what pheromones might be, but he knows that Aphrodite's curse is real enough. The love for this woman he so brutally killed chews at his guts more fiercely than the hunger pangs that make his belly growl. He'll never turn back. Athena had said that there were healing tanks at the summit of Olympos, the gods' secret, the source of their own physical repair and immortality-a secret path around the inviolate line between the light and dark that is Death's teeth's barrier. The healing tanks...this is where Achilles will take Penthesilea. When she breathes again, she will be his bride. He defies the Fates themselves to oppose him on this mission.

But now his exhaustion makes his powerful, tanned arms shake and he leans forward, resting those arms on his bloodied knees just above his greaves. He looks out through the crystal roof and sides of the enclosed metal staircase and-for the first time in three days-really takes in the view.

It is almost sunset and the shadow of Olympos stretches far out over the red landscape below. The Hole is gone and there are no longer any battlefield campfires visible on the red plain below. Achilles can see the winding line of the crystal escalator for much of the thirty leagues he has climbed, its glass catching more light than the dark slopes beneath it. Farther out, the shadow of the mountain falls across shoreline, distant hills, and even the blue sea that rolls in so tepidly from the north. Farther to the east now, Achilles can see the white summits of three other tall peaks, rising above low clouds, catching the red sunset glow. The edge of the world is curved. This strikes Achilles as a very strange thing, since everyone knows that the world is either flat or saucer-shaped, with the far walls curving upward, not downward as the edge of this world is now in the evening light. This is obviously not the Mount Olympos in Greece, but Achilles has been aware of this for many months. This red-soil, blue-sky world with this impossibly tall mountain is the true home of the gods, and he suspects that the horizon can curve downward here or do anything else it pleases.

He turns to look back uphill just as a god QT's into sight.

He's a small god by Olympian standards, a dwarf-just six feet tall-bearded, ugly, and, as he staggers around viewing the damage to his escalator-Achilles can see that he is crippled, almost hunchbacked. As familiar with the Olympian Pantheon as the next Argive hero, Achilles knows at once who this is-Hephaestus, god of fire and chief artificer to the gods.

Hephaestus appears to be almost finished surveying the damage to his artificing-standing out there in the freezing cold and howling jet stream, his back to Achilles, scratching his beard and muttering while he surveys the wreckage-and it looks as if he hasn't noticed Achilles and his linen-wrapped bundle.

Achilles doesn't wait for him to turn. Running through the forcefield at top speed, the fleet-footed mankiller tackles the god of fire and uses his favorite wrestling moves on him-first using the famous "body hold" that has won Achilles countless prizes in wrestling games, grabbing the god by his burly waist, flipping him upside down, and hurling him headfirst into the red rock. Hephaestus howls a curse and tries to rise. Achilles grabs the gnome-god by his burly forearm and uses the "flying mare" move-hurling Hephaestus over his shoulder in a complete flip and slamming him to the ground on his back.

Hephaestus moans and shouts a truly obscene curse.

Knowing that the god's next move will be to teleport away, Achilles throws himself on the shorter, bulkier figure, wrapping his legs around Hephaestus's waist in a rib-crunching scissors hold, setting his left arm around the bearded god's neck, and pulling the short god-killing knife from his belt and holding it under the fire god's chin.

"You fly away, I go with you and kill you at the same time," hisses Apollo in the artificer's hairy ear.

"You...can't...kill...a fucking...god," gasps Hephaestus, using his blunt, calloused god-fingers to try to pry Achilles' forearm away from his throat.

Achilles uses the Athena-blade to draw a three-inch cut-long but shallow-under Hephaestus' chin. Golden ichor spills onto the ratty beard. At the same instant, Achilles closes his legs tighter around the god's creaking ribs.

The god shoots electricity through his body and into Achilles' thighs. Achilles grimaces at the high voltage but does not release his grip. The god exerts superhuman strength to escape-Achilles counters with even more superhuman strength and holds him tight, increasing the pressure of his scissoring legs. Achilles brings the blade up more sharply under the red-faced god's chin.

Hephaestus grunts, woofs, and goes limp. "All right...enough," he gasps. "You win this match, son of Peleus."

"Give me your word that you will not flick away."

"I give you my word," gasps Hephaestus. He groans as Achilles tightens his powerful thighs.

"And know that I will kill you when you break your word,"growls Achilles. He rolls away, aware that the air is too thin for him to stay conscious more than a few more seconds. Grabbing the fire god by his tunic and tangled hair, he drags him through the forcefield into the warmth and thick air of the enclosed crystal staircase.

Once inside, Achilles throws the god down on the metal steps and wraps his legs around Hephaestus' ribs again. He knows through watching Hockenberry and the gods themselves that when they QT away to wherever they're going, they transport with them anyone who is in physical contact.

Wheezing, moaning, Hephaestus glances at the linen-wrapped body of Penthesilea and says, "What brings you up to Olympos, fleet-footed Achilles? Bringing your laundry up to be washed?"

"Shut up," gasps Achilles. The three days without food and the exertions of climbing sixty thousand feet on an airless mountain have taken too much out of him. He can feel his superhuman strength ebbing like water out of a sieve. Another minute and he'll have to release Hephaestus-or kill him.

"Where did you get that knife, mortal?" asks the bearded and ichor-bleeding god.

"Pallas Athena entrusted me with it." Achilles sees no reason to lie and unlike some-crafty Odysseus for one-he never lies anyway.

"Athena, eh?" grunts Hephaestus. "She is the goddess I love above all others."

"Yes, I have heard this," says Achilles. Actually, what Achilles has heard is that Hephaestus pursued the virgin goddess for centuries, trying to have his way with her. At one point he came close enough that Athena was batting Hephaestus' turgid member away from her thighs-and Greeks coyly used the word for "thighs" to mean a woman's pudenda-when, dry humping for all he was worth, the bearded cripple of a god ejaculated all over her upper legs just as the more powerful goddess shoved him away from her. As a child, Achilles' stepfather, the centaur Chiron, had told him many tales in which the wool, erion, erion, that Athena used to wipe away the semen, or the dust in which that semen fell, all played interesting roles. As a man and the world's greatest warrior, Achilles had heard the poet-minstrels sing of "bridal dew"- that Athena used to wipe away the semen, or the dust in which that semen fell, all played interesting roles. As a man and the world's greatest warrior, Achilles had heard the poet-minstrels sing of "bridal dew"-herse or or drosos drosos in the language of his home isle-but these words also meant a newborn child itself. It was said that various human heroes-some included Apollon-had been born of this semen-impregnated wool or dust. in the language of his home isle-but these words also meant a newborn child itself. It was said that various human heroes-some included Apollon-had been born of this semen-impregnated wool or dust.

Achilles decides not to mention either tale right now. Besides, he's almost out of strength-he needs to conserve his breath.

"Release me and I will be your ally," says Hephaestus, gasping again. "We are like brothers anyway."

"How are we like brothers?" manages Achilles. He has decided that if he has to release Hephaestus, he will drive the god-killing Athena dagger up through the god's underjaw and into his skull, skewering the artificer's brain and pulling it free like spearing a fish from a stream.

"When I was flung into the sea not long after the Change, Eurynome, daughter of Okeanos, and your mother, Thetis, received me on their laps," gasped the god. "I would have drowned had not your mother-dearest Thetis, daughter of Nereus-caught me up and cared for me. We are like brothers."

Achilles hesitates.

"We are more than brothers," gasps Hephaestus. "We are allies."

Achilles does not speak because to do so would be to reveal his approaching weakness.

"Allies!" cries Hephaestus, whose ribs are snapping one after the other, like saplings in the cold. "My beloved mother, Hera, hates the immortal bitch Aphrodite, who is your enemy. My adored beloved, Athena, sent you on this task, you say, so it is my will to aid you in your quest."

"Take me to the healing tanks," manages Achilles.

"The healing tanks?" Hephaestus breathes deeply as Achilles relinquishes the pressure a bit. "You'll be found out there now, son of Peleus and Thetis. Olympos is in the thrall of kaos kaos and civil war this day-Zeus has disappeared-but there are still guards at the healing tanks. It is not yet dark. Come to my quarters, eat, drink, refresh yourself, and I will then take you directly to the healing tanks in the dead of night, when only the monstrous Healer and a few sleepy guards are there." and civil war this day-Zeus has disappeared-but there are still guards at the healing tanks. It is not yet dark. Come to my quarters, eat, drink, refresh yourself, and I will then take you directly to the healing tanks in the dead of night, when only the monstrous Healer and a few sleepy guards are there."

Food? thinks Achilles. It's true, he realizes, that he will hardly be able to fight-much less command others to bring Penthesilea back to life-unless he gets something to eat soon. thinks Achilles. It's true, he realizes, that he will hardly be able to fight-much less command others to bring Penthesilea back to life-unless he gets something to eat soon.

"All right," grunts Achilles, pulling his legs from around the bearded god's middle and pushing the Athena-blade back in his belt. "Take me to your quarters on the summit of Olympos. No tricks, now."

"No tricks," growls Hephaestus, scowling and feeling his bruised and broken ribs. "But it is an ill day when an immortal can be treated this way. Take hold of my arm and we will QT there now."

"A minute," says Achilles. He can barely lift Penthesilea's body to his shoulder, he is so weak. "All right," he says, grabbing the god's hairy forearm, "we can go now."

34.

The voynix attacked a little after midnight.

After helping to make and serve dinner to the Ardis Hall multitudes, Ada had joined in the evening heavy outside work of reinforcing Ardis's defenses. Despite requests from Peaen, Loes, Petyr, and Isis-all of whom knew she is pregnant-she stayed outside in the cold and light snow, helping to dig the ditches about a hundred feet inside the fences of the palisade. It had been Harman and Daeman's idea-fire ditches, filled with their precious lantern oil and ignited if the voynix managed to break through the palisade-and Ada wished that Harman and Daeman were there that night to help dig.

The earth was frozen and Ada found that she was too weary to break through the soil, even though she had one of the sharper shovels. This frustrated her so much that she had to wipe away the tears and snot as she waited for Greogi and Emme to break through the frozen dirt before she could lift and shovel it away. Luckily, it was dark and no one was looking at her. The embarrassment of being seen crying would have made her blubber harder. When Petyr came from where he was working in the hall to finish first-floor defenses and asked her again to come in the house, at least, she told him truthfully that she loved working on the line out here with the hundreds of other laborers. The manual labor and the proximity of so many made her feel better and kept her from thinking about Harman, she said. It was the truth.

Some time after ten p.m., the ditches were finished. They were crude things, at best-five feet across, less than two feet deep, lined with plastic bags scavenged from Chom in previous weeks. Cans of the precious lamp oil-kerosene, Harman had called it-were in the hallway, ready to be carried out, poured, and ignited if the palisade defenders had to fall back.

"What happens after we use a year's worth of lighting fuel in a few minutes?" Anna had asked.

"We sit in the dark," had been Ada's response. "But we'll be alive."

In truth, she had reservations about that assessment. If the voynix got past the outer perimeter, she doubted if a little wall of flame-if they even had time to ignite it-could hold them back. Harman and Daeman had helped draw up the plans for reinforcing Ardis's doorways and attaching the heavy shutters on the inside of all the first-and second-floor windows-the work had been going on for three days and was almost completed, according to Petyr-but Ada had her doubts about that line of defense as well.

When the ditches were finished, guards doubled on the palisades, cans of kerosene set in the outer hall and people assigned to deliver them to the trenches in case of attack, the new flechette rifles and pistols distributed-there were enough to arm one out of every six persons at Ardis, a far cry from the two flechette rifles they'd had before-and Greogi was circling overhead in the sonie, keeping watch, Ada went inside to help Petyr with the interior defenses.

The heavy shutters were almost finished-large, solid planks of wood set deep into the ancient oak frames of Ardis Hall's windows and ready to be swung shut and latched with iron locks forged in Hannah's cupola out back. It looked so ugly that Ada just nodded her approval and then turned away to weep.

She remembered how beautiful and gracious Ardis Hall had been less than a year ago-part of a tradition that stretched back almost two thousand years. It had always been a wonderful place to live and to entertain-sophisticated, gracious, elegant. Less than a year ago they had celebrated Harman's ninety-ninth birthday here in comfort with a huge feast out under the spreading elm and oak trees-lighted lanterns in the trees, food from all over the planet being served by floating servitors, docile voynix pulling carrioles and droshkies up the crushed-stone drive to the lighted front porch, with men and women from everywhere showing up in their finest robes and linens and elegant hairdos. Looking around at the scores of people in rough tunics milling in the cluttered main parlor, lanterns hissing and spitting in the dark, bedrolls on the floor and flechette rifles and crossbows stacked close to hand, fires burning in the fireplace not for ambience but for survival warmth with a score of exhausted and grimy men and women snoring near the hearth, muddy bootprints everywhere and heavy wooden shutters where her mother's beautiful drapes once hung, Ada thought Has it come to this? Has it come to this?

It had.

There were four hundred people living in and around Ardis now. It was no longer Ada's home. Or rather, now it was the home to everyone willing to live here and fight for it.

Petyr showed her the shutters and other additions-slits cut into the first-and second-floor window shutters through which the defenders could continue to fire arrows, crossbow bolts, and flechettes at the voynix if they made it through the palisade, into the grounds-boiling water in huge vats on the third floor and raised by winches to the high gable terraces above, from which last-ditch defenders could pour the hot liquid down on the voynix. Harman had sigled that idea from one of his old books. Now the large vats of water and oil bubbled and boiled on makeshift stoves hauled up into Ada's family's former private quarters. It was all ugly, but it looked as if it might work.

Greogi came in.

"The sonie?" asked Ada.

"Up on the jinker platform. Reman and the others are preparing to take it up with archers."

"What did you see?" asked Petyr. They'd quit sending reconnaissance parties out into the forest after sunset-the voynix could see better than humans in the dark and it was just too risky on such a cloudy night without moonlight or ringlight-so the sonie forays had become their eyes.

"It's hard to see in the dark and sleet," said Greogi. "But we dropped flares into the woods. There are voynix everywhere-more than we've ever seen before..."

"Where do they come come from?" asked the older woman named Uru, rubbing her own elbows as if cold. "They're not from?" asked the older woman named Uru, rubbing her own elbows as if cold. "They're not faxing faxing in. I was on guard duty yesterday and..." in. I was on guard duty yesterday and..."

"That's not our worry right now," interrupted Petyr. "What else did you see, Greogi?"

"They're still carrying rocks up from the river," said the short, redheaded man.

Ada winced at this. The foot patrols had reported that as early as midday, voynix were seen carrying heavy stones and stacking them in the woods. It was a behavior the people of Ardis had never seen before, and any new behavior from the voynix made Ada sick with anxiety.

"Do they seem to be building something?" asked Casman. His voice sounded almost hopeful. "A wall or something? Shelters?"

"No, just stacking the rocks in rows and heaps near the edge of the woods," said Greogi.

"We have to assume they'll use them as missiles," Siris said quietly.

Ada thought of all the years-centuries-that the voynix were powerful but passive, silent servants, doing all the tasks that old-style humans had abandoned-herding and slaughtering their animals for them, standing guard against ARNied dinosaurs and other dangerous replicant creatures, pulling droshkies and carrioles like beasts of burden. For centuries before the Final Fax fourteen hundred years earlier, it was said that voynix were everywhere but were immobile, unresponsive-simply headless statues with leathery humps and metal carapaces. Until the Fall nine months earlier, when Prospero's Isle came flaming down from the e-ring in ten thousand meteoric pieces, no one in living memory had ever seen a voynix do something unexpected, much less act on its own initiative.

Times had changed.

"How do we defend against thrown rocks?" asked Ada. Voynix had powerful arms.

Kaman, one of Odysseus' earliest disciples, stepped forward, closer to the center of the circle that had formed here in the second-floor parlor. "I sigled a book last month that told of ancient siege engines and preLost Era machines that could fling huge rocks, boulders, for miles."

"Did the book have diagrams?" asked Ada.

Kaman chewed a lip. "One. It wasn't all that clear how it worked."

"That's not a defense anyway," said Petyr.

"It would allow us to throw rocks back at them," said Ada. "Kaman, why don't you find that book and get it to Reman, Emme, Loes, Caul, and some of the others who help Hannah with the cupola and who are especially good at building things..."

"Caul's gone," said the woman with the shortest hair at Ardis, Salas. "He left today with Daeman and that group."

"Well, get it to everyone left good at building things," Ada said to Kaman.

The thin, bearded man nodded and jogged toward the library.

"We going to throw their rocks back at them?" asked Petyr with a smile.

Ada shrugged. She wished Daeman and the nine others weren't gone. She wished Hannah had come back from the Golden Gate. Most of all, she wished Harman were home.

"Let's go finish our work, people," said Petyr. The group broke up with Greogi leading some people upstairs to the jinker platform to re-launch the sonie. Others went off to bed.

Petyr touched Ada's arm. "You have to get some sleep."