Sunset of the Gods (14 page)

“And even if Franco could prevent that,” Jason added, “he wouldn’t, because it’s precisely what he’s promised his cult of Pan-worshipers is going to happen, thanks to their ‘god.’”

“Lies!” Zeus was truly raving now. He loomed up, standing as straight as he could, shaking with the extremity of his passion. His right hand grasped Jason’s throat with choking force, half-lifting him from the chair. “All lies! Franco warned me to expect this. He told me you would be jealous of him as a more highly evolved form of life.”

“Can’t you see?” croaked Jason desperately. “He’s just using you—making a fool of you!”

“No! He is my true worshiper. It is all clear to me now. But,” Zeus continued, with the abrupt tone-change of the insane, “you served me well, long ago. Franco, this man and his follower must be spared.” He released Jason, who sagged back down in his bonds, gasping for breath.

“Yes, Lord,” said Franco smoothly. Zeus gave a vague nod, and departed. As he stooped to get through the door, there was, in spite of everything, a quality about him that could only be called pathetic.

“You heard him,” Jason wheezed to Franco through his bruised throat. “About not killing us, that is.”

“He’ll get over it.” Franco’s smile was charming. He shook his head with what Jason would have sworn was sincere regret. “We really would have preferred to just let you complete your studies and go home, ignorant of us. As it is. . . .”

“If you cut our TRDs out—TRDs that nobody in this era is supposed to be able to detect—and we don’t reappear in our time on schedule, a lot of questions are going to be asked. The Authority isn’t stupid, you know.” Jason wasn’t absolutely certain of the last part, but saw no useful purpose to be served by sharing his skepticism with Franco.

“Oh, we won’t do that. We’ll simply kill you in some acceptably ‘in-period’ way, and your corpses will appear on the Authority’s displacer stage. Very sad. But we all know that human history is a violent place.”

Without moving his head, Jason turned his eyes as far to the right as he dared and met Mondrago’s. The latter nodded imperceptibly. He understood. Chantal and Landry, about whom the Transhumanists might be ignorant, must not be mentioned.

Franco seemed to read his mind, or at least read the byplay correctly. “And as for the other two members of your party, we will deal with them in due course. Oh, yes, we know about them. Since capturing you, we have brought certain intelligence sources to bear, and we’ve learned about Themistocles’ Macedonian guests, and where they are lodging now.” His eyes took on the unfocused look of one sending a command via direct neural induction through an implant communicator of a sort prohibited even to someone in Jason’s position, involving as it did a proscribed melding of mind and computer.

Taking advantage of Franco’s distraction, Jason mentally activated his map-display, with its red dots representing the party’s TRDs. Chantal and Landry were still at the house. He forced himself not to let his relief show.

Presently, four of Franco’s underlings entered the room. “Take them back to separate cells,” he ordered.

The goons cut Jason’s and Mondrago’s bonds with unemotional efficiency and hoisted them to their feet. It took some hoisting, for they were horribly stiff, and Jason realized for the first time how hungry he was—they must have been unconscious for at least the better part of a day. As they were being led out of the room, a sudden impulse made Jason twist out of the grip of one of his two handlers and turn to face Franco. He had no time to try and understand his own motivations—what was the point of arguing with a Transhumanist?—but he looked into those large, perfectly shaped amber eyes and waved his one free hand at the door through which Zeus had passed.

“That thing that just left this room is the inevitable end product of the Transhuman movement’s vision of humanity’s future! Is that really what you want?”

Franco’s face showed no resentment or anger, or anything at all except the certitude of the true ideologue. “Oh, no. You’re wrong. Don’t confuse us with the Teloi. We won’t repeat their mistakes. Remember what you said earlier about gods and monsters? The Teloi sought to turn themselves into gods. They neglected the monsters. We won’t.”

The goons tightened their grip and marched the two prisoners through the door, into a corridor even more dimly lit than the room they had departed. As they proceeded, a short figure appeared from a side corridor to the right.

It took a heartbeat for it to register on Jason’s mind, as his eyes met the brown ones of Pan. From Mondrago’s direction, he heard a non-verbal growl.

Without consciously formulating a plan, he used a basic release technique: he went limp, ceasing to resist the two men holding him. By an instinctive reaction, they relaxed their grip.

With a Judo-like wrenching motion he freed himself and forced his still-stiff muscles to propel him forward. He grasped the startled Pan from behind, locking one arm around the hirsute throat. With his other hand, he grasped one of the horns. He took the creature halfway to the floor and pressed his right leg behind the creature’s knees to prevent a backward kick of its cloven hooves.

“If you cry out,” he snapped at the guards, “I’ll break his neck. And then where will your ‘god’ be?”

He was betting that the guards didn’t have implant communicators like Franco’s. He recognized their sort from history disks. They were nondescript-looking, low-grade Transhumanists, doubtless with high but very specialized intelligence and little initiative. His intuition seemed to be paying off, for they stood seemingly paralyzed with indecision.

“I’ll also break his neck,” he continued, pressing his advantage, “if you don’t release my companion.”

They released Mondrago, who hurried to join Jason behind Pan.

“Don’t hurt me.”

It took a second for Jason to realize the voice was Pan’s. It had an odd timbre to it, and was unexpectedly high-pitched, and it was difficult to sort out the emotions behind it. But he found himself thinking it was an undeniable—if odd—
human
voice. And it was pleading.

“I won’t hurt you if you do as you’re told,” Jason said. “Show us to the nearest exit from this building.”

With Jason still holding him in the same potentially neck-snapping grip, Pan moved in a cautious sidewise gait back along the corridor from which he had emerged. The four guards followed closely but cautiously, making no moves that might precipitate the death of the god the cult-worshipers expected. The corridor was a very short one, terminating in a door.

And here Jason faced a dilemma. They couldn’t take Pan with them out into the city, where he would have been conspicuous to say the least.

“Kill it now!” hissed Mondrago, seeming to read his mind. “We don’t need it as a hostage anymore—they won’t be able to pursue us once we’re outside in public. Kill it just before we bolt out the door. And that will be the end of their little scheme for a cult of the ‘Great God Pan’.”

“No,” Jason heard himself saying. “We’re not murderers.”

If telepathy had been a reality, Mondrago’s searing contempt could have been no more obvious. “‘Murderers’? This thing isn’t human. It isn’t even a decent animal. It’s just a filthy, obscene mutant! Have you gone soft in the head?”

“We don’t kill any sentient being without a reason! Remember that. And get ready to move . . .
now.
” With a sudden movement, Jason thrust Pan back into the narrow corridor. The four guards rushed, but got in each other’s way in the confined space even before stumbling over Pan. Jason and Mondrago hit the door with their shoulders. It burst open, and they were out, into one of the crooked streets of Athens.

While running, Jason summoned up his map-display and saw that the red dots of his and Mondrago’s TRDs were in the area south of the Agora, on the terraced lower slopes of the Areopagus hill—the vicinity of their rented house, where the dots of Chantal’s and Landry’s TRDs still glowed reassuringly.

Good!
Jason thought as they sprinted through the winding, uneven alleyways.
Even in this maze, it won’t take us long to find it. We’ll get Chantal and Landry out of it before Franco can “deal with them in due course” . . . and find a new address.

There were no such things as apartment blocks in fifth-century b.c. Athens. But there were blocks of houses—as many as six houses. Their quarters were in such a block. All the houses had the inward-looking design of Athenian residences, organized around miniscule courtyards and having upstairs rooms. A narrow street-front door in the mud-brick wall gave access to the courtyard.

It was ajar.

Off to the left, out of the corner of his eye, Jason barely glimpsed a figure hurrying around a corner of the block, seeming to push another figure ahead. He was about to investigate when he heard shouting from within, in Landry’s voice. Without waiting for Mondrago, he plunged through the open door.

The shouting was coming from one of the small rooms opening off the courtyard. Jason rushed in, to see one of the goon-class Transhumanists grasping Landry by on arm and holding a dagger in his other hand.

Without thinking, Jason sprang forward, reaching out to seize the wrist of the dagger arm.

With the strength of desperation, Landry broke the Transhumanist’s grip and rushed frantically forward. He succeeded only in tripping himself and Jason. The Transhumanist grasped him from behind, under the chin, and brought his dagger-edge across the historian’s throat. With a gurgling shriek, Landry fell across Jason. Mondrago, desperately trying to get into the room, stumbled over the fallen body. The Transhumanist, with the quickness of his unnatural kind, shoved him aside and plunged out the door.

Mondrago got to his feet and gave chase. By the time Jason could get out from under the body atop him, it was too late. That which had been Bryan Landry, Ph.D., lay in a pool of blood and excreta, his slit throat like a ghastly, grinning second mouth—an ‘in-period’ death.

Of Chantal Frey there was no sign. Jason checked his map-display again. It was unchanged, still showing both Landry’s and Chantal’s TRDs right here.

Mondrago returned. “The bastard got away,” he gasped. “Where’s Chantal?”

“She ought to be here.” Jason began to look around frantically.

“Look,” Mondrago said expressionlessly, pointing at the floor in a corner of the room. The small smear of blood was barely noticeable. So was the tiny metallic sphere that had been cut out of Chantal’s arm.

Jason clamped calmness down on himself. “They can’t have gotten too far with her. Let’s go!”

As they reemerged onto the street, they heard a roar of voices from the direction of the Agora, like a disturbed sea with an undertow of terror. People were running along the street, wild-eyed.

Jason grabbed one such passerby. “What has happened?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”

“You haven’t heard? The news has just arrived. The Persians have sacked Eretria! Burned it to the ground and enslaved the people!”

Eretria
, thought Jason, frantically summoning up information from his implant.
The one Greek city, other than Athens, that aided the Ionian rebels and therefore was marked for destruction by the Great King. Located on the island of Euboea, just across a narrow strait from Attica—within sight of Attica at its narrowest point, in fact.

“The Eretrians resisted,” the man went on. No Greek could resist recounting a story. “For five days they defended their walls. But then they were betrayed. Two members of an aristocratic faction sold out, opened the gates, and let the Persians in.”

Uh-huh!
thought Jason, remembering what Themistocles had said.
That’s all the Athenians need to hear at this point.

“And they’ll be here next!” The man must have suddenly remembered just how close Eretria was, for he grew wild-eyed and fled.

Jason consulted his implant for the calendar. It was still late July.

Well, I suppose we’ve settled the question of whether the Battle of Marathon took place in August or September. Kyle Rutherford will be interested.

It didn’t seem terribly important at the moment.

CHAPTER TWELVE

There was no sign of Chantal.
And no one was in a position to help find her, under the circumstances in which Athens now found itself.

“It’s a shame about Lydos,” Themistocles said distractedly as they hurried across the Agora. “I was glad to have the body taken care of, and of course I’ll do what I can to find the murderer later. And I wish I could help organize a search for Cleothera. But now there’s no time. The Assembly is about to bring the question of our strategy against the Persians to a final vote.”

Jason saw that the Agora crowd was moving steadily southwestward, in the direction of the Pnyx hill where the
Ekklesia
, or Assembly of all citizens, had met since the establishment of the democracy. They were being herded in that direction by the exotically costumed “Scythian” police force of Athens. Some of these men were really Scythians; most were merely dressed up to resemble those famously fearsome barbarians from north of the Black Sea. But all were public slaves, and Jason had a feeling they relished any opportunity to ram it to the free citizens. This was such an opportunity, as they advanced through the Agora toward the Pnyx in a line, holding a long rope daubed with red powder. Any citizen found outside the meeting area with red marks on his clothing was fined. Athenian democracy was not just participatory; it was compulsory.

“Miltiades mentioned that the debate had been going on even before the news from Eretria,” Jason remarked.

“Yes, and now we no longer have the luxury of time. A little time, true: the north coast of Attica, just across the strait from Eretria, is too rugged for a landing. They have to sail back down the strait. But we can’t afford to let the debate drag on any further. The Assembly has got to act now and approve Miltiades’s proposal.”

“What proposal is that?” asked Jason, who already knew.

“The Eretrians made a big mistake: they took shelter within their walls and let the Persians land and deploy unopposed. A lot of fools in the Assembly want us to repeat that mistake. Miltiades—and he’s got Callimachus and most of the
strategoi
behind him—argues that we should march out and meet them. And,” Themistocles added grimly, “it’s not as though there was much question about where they’re going to land.”