Mercury Begins (Mercury Trilogy) (4 page)

A light
went on
in Mercury’s brain.
No wonder no one else had volunteered for this
assignment
. What he had seen as an opportunity for a cushy permanent position with the Apocalypse Bureau was actually a one-way ticket to humiliation and a century or more of menial labor.
He’d be lucky to be handling baggage at the
planeport
after this debacle.
“
Oh, man,
I’m screwed,” Mercury moaned.

“Pull yourself together,” snapped Venus. “
Uzziel
is a moron.
We’re going to pull off this assignment in spite of his mismanagement. Got it?”

Mercury nodded.

“OK,” she said. “I’ve already located
Aeneis
. We just have to make sure…”

“Who?”
Mercury asked.

Venus stared at him in disbelief.
“
Aeneis
!
” she exclaimed.
“
The Trojan who is supposed to sur
vive the Greek sack!
”

Greek sack, thought Mercury,
trying to suppress a giggle.

“Wow, you’re
a real pro, aren’t you?” Venus said coldly.
“
Aeneis
.
Trojan hero.
The guy who is supposed to escape the destruction of Troy and found Rome?
Uzziel
must have covered this in the briefing.”

“Oh,
Aeneis
!
” said Mercury, smacking his forehead with the heel of his palm. “Sure. It’s right here in my notes,” he said, holding out the sheet of parchment.

“That looks like it says ‘Anus,’” said Venus.

“Shorthand,” Mercury said. “I leave
out unnecessary vowels. And sometimes insert other unnecessary vowels. It’s a complex system.
”

The man who had climbed the other man’s shoulders was now dangling from the horse’s mouth, trying to peer inside. “It smells funny,” the man said.
“Like somebody’s cooking rancid beef in olive oil
over a rubber tree fire
.”
Mercury winced. That was one problem with having a hundred sweaty Greeks crammed inside a wooden horse: the smell was a bit overwhelming, even on the outside.

“As I was saying,” Venus continued, “I’ve located
Aeneis
, and I think I can convince him to leave the city once the destruction of the city starts.
That’s where you come in.
So what does the horse do exactly, shoot fire from its mouth?”

“Actually,” said Mercury, “that feature didn’t make it into version one point oh. We decided to scale back the feature set after our initial alpha testing indicated that…”

“You don’t really have men hiding inside the horse, do you?”

“Why do people keep saying that?”
exclaimed
Mercury.
“Of course there are no men hiding inside the horse!” He leaned in and whispered, “Actually, there may be a few men inside the horse.”

“Oh, for the love of Zeus,” Venus muttered, regarding the horse dubiously. She looked like she was on the verge of bailing out of the whole operation.

“I think I see something moving!” cried the man who was peering into the horse’s mouth.
Mercury waved his hand and the man’s fingers slipped. He fell to the rocky ground, his left leg bending unnaturally underneath him. The man howled in pain.

“Serves him
right,” muttered Mercury. “That’s
a gift horse.”

“OK, here’s what we’re going to do,” said Venus, a determined look in her eyes. “I hate to do it, but I’m going to call in a favor. We need a major miracle to salvage this operation. Let me make a few calls.” Venus stepped away and pulled her hood over her face. Mercury could only assume she was communing with her superiors on the
interplanar
communication channel known as Angel Band.

“Is that some kind of latch?” a man asked, staring up at the horse’s belly.

Mercury waved his hand and th
e latch disappeared.

“I don’t see anything,” said another man.

“We should cut it open,” said the first man. “Somebody get a saw.” Discussion ensued about whether to cut into the belly of the horse or cut two of its legs off so that it would topple over and smash into pieces.

“No, we shall burn it!” cried
Laocoön
. “I don’t want one piece of this accursed likeness to remain
uncharred
. Burn it!”

Cries of “Burn it!
Burn it!” went up from the crowd. Mercury observed the scene nervously. Venus
stood several paces away, gesturing wildly as she addressed
someone unseen.

“OK, everybody get away from the horse!” Mercury yelled.

“Why?” asked
Laocoön
, regarding Mercury bemusedly
. “Are you afraid we’ll find the door and discover a hundred Greeks hiding inside?”

“No!” cried Mercury, a bit too loudly. “It’s just bad luck, is all. You know what happened to the last guy who messed with Minerva’s horse?”

“No, what?” asked another man.

“Well,” said Mercury. “Let me tell you. First,
he had this sort of foreboding feeling, you know, like when you’re in bed and you think you remembered to close the gate
to the sheep pen
, but you’re not a hundred percent sure, and it just bugs you like crazy? And then, after a few hours of that,
he
had the worst case of acid reflux you can imagine.
Just awful.
You know how it just burns at the base of your throat. Not heartburn, but just this burning up here, in the esophageal region.
And then…”

“You’re stalling,” said
Laocoön
. He turned to the men. “Continue stacking wood under the horse. When it’s up to the horse’s knees, douse it with oil and light it on fire.”
King
Priam
nodded his approval.

Do horses have knees? Mercury wondered. Their leg joints bend backwards. What qualifies as a knee anyway?
Does there have to be a kneecap?
Focus! “And then,” Mercury went on, “there was this high-pitched noise that only he could hear, and he was going around, like, ‘Do you hear that?’, and everybody was like, ‘Um, what are you talking about?’, and he was like…”

But nobody was listening anymore.
The pile of wood was almost up to… the joint between the ankle and the hip. When the fire was lit, it would become the funeral pyre for a hundred very brave and uncomfortable Greeks.

“What then,
Sinon
?” jeered
Laocoön
. “Did the man stub his little toe? Did he get a hangnail?
What other tortures did the man who defiled the horse suffer?
”
The men were pouring jars of oil on the pyre, and an acolyte was approaching with a lit torch.

“Snakes!”
Mercury exclaimed.

“Snakes?” remarked
Laocoön
. “Well, that’s a step up from acid reflux. What kind of snakes?”

Mercury’s eyes widened in horror.
“Giant sea snakes!”

“Ooh, sea snakes!” exclaimed
Laocoön
in mock excitement. “I have to hand it to you,
that
’
s
…”

Screams went up from some of the men closest to the shore.
“What in the name of Zeus…” murmured King
Priam
.
Laocoön
turned
, puzzled. To his amazement, he saw the heads of two gigantic snakes zipping through the water toward them.

“Everybody stay away from the horse!” Mercury cried again.
“And
Laocoön
!”

“Me?” asked
Laocoön
. “What did I do, other than point out the completely obvious fact that this horse is…
Gaaahhh
!”

The snakes had emerged from the water and were slithering up the shore, straight toward
Laocoön
. Men were running willy-nilly, trying to get out of the snakes’ path.
Laocoön
froze, staring in horror as the snakes bore down on him. Each of them was a good twenty feet long and as thick around as
Laocoön’s
thigh. They twisted around him
, choking off his breath. He flailed for maybe half a minute and then it was over. The snakes left
Laocoön’s
corpse, slithering off into the rocks. The men gaped at the scene.

“So,” said Mercury
to the king
, rubbing his hands
, “
Are we going
to torch
this baby or what
?”

King
Priam
shook his head slowly, aghast at the sight.
The man with the torch doused it in a bucket of water.
Mercury sighed in relief, looking around to thank Venus, but she seemed to have disappeared.

Fervent discussion ensued during
which
several of the men loudly argued
that the best thing would be to leave the horse alone. But
a few jabs at the Trojans’ masculinity from Mercury, along with some hints about what Minerva would do to the Greeks if the Trojans
took possession of
the horse,
convinced King
Priam
that
the only acceptable course of action was to move the horse inside the city walls. The king ordered his men to build a platform and cut down several
large pine trees to be used as rollers.
The pile of firewood was cleared and w
ith great difficulty the horse was lifted onto the platform. Ropes were tied to the knees (?) and neck, and
men strained with all their strength against the horse. It barely moved.

“Pull, damn you!” King
Priam
commanded. The men strained again, and the ropes went taut. The horse creaked and the platform slid forward maybe an inch. The city walls were a good half-mile away.
Over rocky terrain.
Uphill.

“Fetch more pullers!” commanded the king. A messenger ran to the city and returned with several hundred more people. More ropes were attached to the horse, and every rope was pulled by thirty or more men. The event turned into a spectacle, with vendors selling food and children dancing around the horse singing songs. Occasionally the horse would jerk to a halt and Mercury
would hold
his breath as there was a great clashing of metal from within, but the Trojans, enraptured of the idea of getting
the horse inside the walls of Troy, were deaf to the ominous sounds. It took
most of the day
, but at last they were successful. The great wooden horse stood inside the walls of Troy.

As Mercury stood regarding the massive beast and reflecting
o
n the seemingly unlimited human capacity for self-delusion, an elderly man approached him, followed by a group of young children. “Sir,” said the man, “the children of Troy have made something for you, to express their appreciation for this gift.”
He held out a metal rod around which two pieces of wire had been wrapped in a coiling pattern.
“They spent all day making it. It was something of a class project. I’m their teacher.”

“Oh, uh, thanks,” said Mercury
, looking the thing over
. “I don’t have
…
one of these.”

“It’
s a caduceus,” explained the man. “
A herald’s staff, because you came to us with news of the end of the war with Greece. See, these wires represent the two snakes
that
came to punish the
false prophet
Laocoön
.”

Mercury smiled weakly.
“Yeah, well, what
do you
expect from a guy with two dots in his name?”
he said,
regarding the children who were beaming up at him. He leaned heavily on the staff as the world started to spin. What was going to happen to these kids when the Greeks laid waste to the city? For the first time, Mercury stopped thinking about how he was going to bring about the sack of Troy and started thinking about
why
he was doing it. To further some vaguely defined “Divine Plan”?
Or worse, because it was a good career move?

“Are you OK,
Sinon
?” asked the old man.

“Yeah, just… the heat is getting to me. Need to sit down for a bit. Thanks for the kabuki.”
Mercury
wa
ndered off into an alley and sunk to the ground in the
shade of a clay brick building, laying the caduceus across his lap.
The
keeyaah
had pretty much gone away, but somehow he felt even worse than before. The throbbing in his head had been replaced by a gnawing sensation in his gut. What was this?
Guilt?
Weren’t angels supposed to be immune to such feelings? And why should he feel guilty about doing his job, especially when doing his job meant advancing the Divine Plan? Wasn’t that what he had been created to do?