Sunset of the Gods (21 page)

“You’ll learn in a moment. But, to resume, it must be at your house in Athens or, more likely, the house of your friend Themistocles.” Jason tried to keep his features immobile and not confirm Franco’s supposition. From the latter’s expression, he saw that he had failed. “We’ll retrieve it—sonic stunners will take care of his servants, and we have sensors that can detect it. We also have some field dermal regeneration equipment among our first-aid supplies. It will be a simple matter to re-implant it in her arm and restore the tissue.”

“That will never get past a careful examination.”

“But why should there be such an examination? There will be no reason for anyone to suspect her. At the same time, there will be a tendency to want to spare the single survivor of the expedition any further distress.”

“So there will. It’s called ordinary human decency.”

“Yes—an obsolete concept that continues to serve a useful purpose simply because we have always been able to exploit it. She’ll be welcomed back with open arms after she arrives accompanied by her companions’ corpses, and receive a great deal of sympathy for the harrowing experience she has been through. She will therefore be in an excellent position to be a useful agent of ours.”

Jason shook his head as though to clear it of a fog of unreality. “Chantal . . .
why
?”

“Jason . . . I’m sorry. I know what you’re thinking. But he’s made me understand—made me see things clearly for the first time. Remember our conversation in the lounge the night before our departure? I’d always wondered, but now, thanks to him, I
know
. Our society is trying to stand in the way of destiny—the destiny that the Transhumanists represent. It’s . . . it’s as though we’re like the Persians at Marathon, unconsciously fighting to prevent a better world from being born. The human race can transcend itself, become something
better.
”

“Chantal, I can’t believe I’m hearing this claptrap! Surely you can’t believe it—not after he murdered Bryan and did
that
to you!” Jason pointed at her left arm.

A convulsive shudder went through her. “He’s explained to me that they never intended to kill Bryan. They were just going to take him as a hostage, like me. You
forced
them to kill him, by interfering. And as for me . . . he had to do that. He didn’t know yet that he could trust me. He had no choice. But he truly regretted it—he’s told me so.” She looked up into Franco’s face.

Jason saw the look she gave Franco, and Franco’s smile. And all at once he understood.

A plain, shy, insecure girl
, he thought.
Attracted to the study of aliens because she’s always found them easier to cope with than her fellow humans—especially the male ones. And suddenly, at a time of special vulnerability, she’s exposed to a man whose genes were tailored to maximize his charisma. He must have really turned on the charm, and the flattery. . . .

“Chantal,” he burst out desperately, “can’t you see he’s just using you? He’s lying to you. He’s not capable of love. And even if he was . . . to him you’re nothing but a Pug!”

Jason’s consciousness exploded into a spasm of sickening pain as the guard punched him from behind, hard, in the right kidney. He fell to his knees, gasping. When he finally looked up he saw Franco examining the contents of the satchel he had dropped.

“Very ingenious,” said Franco, holding up one of the laboriously inscribed potsherds. He dropped it on the ground, and poured all the others out to join it. Then, with his foot, he crushed them into fragments.

“Chantal told us your message drop was up here on this mountain,” he explained. “But of course she didn’t know the exact location. We have patrolled the area periodically in the hope of encountering you. But it was just good fortune that we happened to be up here today on . . . other matters.”

“You still don’t know the message drop’s exact location,” Jason reminded him.

“No. But it would be useful to us—we could leave whatever messages we want, to be found by your superiors. That—and also the location of the aircar you stole—is information we will now obtain from you.”

“You can try.”

“And succeed. I don’t have access to any high-tech means of torture, but I won’t need them. To tell you the truth, I’ve always considered them overelaborate. Come, Chantal,” Franco said offhandedly, turning on his heel and striding off without waiting for her. “And,” he called out over his shoulder to the guard, “bring him.”

Chantal, her face still working as though she was on the verge of an emotional collapse and her body moving as though it could barely remain upright, turned slowly and followed Franco like a sleepwalker. Jason, responding to a prod by the guard’s sword, fell in behind her.

They were walking along the ledge when Chantal abruptly swayed, lost her balance, and began to crumple to the flat rock, near its edge.

The guard automatically reached out past Jason to catch and steady her. But his position was awkward, and she continued to fall, pulling him down.

Jason had only a split second to react, and he was not in a good position to do it. The best he could manage was a kick that caught the guard in his ribs and sent him sprawling over the ledge to the ground a few feet below. He bellowed in rage, but kept his grip on his sword and sprang back to his feet almost immediately. From up ahead, Franco was roaring with rage and running back toward them. All Jason could do was spin around and, without even a backward glance at Chantal, sprinted for his aircar.

He was around the bend in the path and in the aircar before his pursuers could see it. He activated the invisibility field just before the guard, with Franco behind him, came around the cliffside. In the murky grayness of the outside world, they looked around in bewilderment. Jason smiled grimly as he took off, blowing a satisfying amount of dust into their faces.

Once in the air, he released a long-pent-up breath, sank back into the seat cushion, and tried to sort out his swirling thoughts.

She looked like she was fighting off a nervous breakdown
, he told himself.
It was just a lucky break that she collapsed when she did.

Or . . . was that a deliberate stunt on her part, to let me escape?

I may never know.

Back in the camp that night, in the light of the full moon that had enabled him to scramble down the now-familiar slope of Mount Agriliki from his concealed aircar, Jason related the story to Mondrago, who muttered something about the Stockholm Syndrome. “And now,” he concluded, “I’ve got to get back to Athens, go to Themistocles’ house, and retrieve that jar containing Chantal’s TRD.”

“Back to Athens? Now? Are you crazy?” Mondrago shook his head. “It’s just lucky you got back here no later than you did.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Haven’t you noticed all the commotion around here?” Jason hadn’t, in his emotional uproar. “Well,” Mondrago continued, “it seems that after sunset some unusual noises were heard from the direction of the Persian camp. Then, just before you got here, there were some comings and goings in and out of the Grove of Heracles over there to our right.”

“Miltiades’ Ionian spies!”

“Good guess. Anyway, there hasn’t been any official announcement but the word has spread: the Persians are beginning their embarkation, starting with the cavalry. And we’re going out there to attack them at dawn.”

Jason hadn’t looked at his calendar display in a while—he’d had other things on his mind. Now he did. It was August 11.

The Battle of Marathon would take place on August 12, as Rutherford had assumed on the basis of an increasing consensus among historians starting in the early twenty-first century. Kyle would doubtless be interested. Jason, at the moment, didn’t give a damn.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

No one got much sleep that night,
under the light of the full moon that meant the Spartans were starting to march. The slaves were kept busy burnishing the shields and armor, the generals went over the plan repeatedly as they moved among their tribes with whatever pre-battle encouragement they could give . . . and everyone could hear the distant tramping of tens of thousands of feet as the Persians moved forward onto the plain, and the more distant sounds of the embarking cavalry.

The Greeks were not great breakfast eaters—a crust of bread dipped in honey or wine, at most—but before the afternoon battles that were customary in their interminable internecine wars they were wont to take a midmorning “combat brunch” including enough wine to dull fear. Not this time. This army mustered before dawn, sorting itself out into the tribal groupings. There was surprisingly little confusion, given that the light was limited now that the full moon had passed.

“At least we won’t have to fight in the heat,” old Callicles philosophized grumpily.

Jason, standing beside the elderly hoplite with the rest of the Leontis tribe, saw Aeschylus and his brother Cynegeirus, hurrying to the right flank to join the Aiantis. The playwright waved to Callicles—he must, Jason thought, have a good memory for faces. Then, with the help of slaves and each other, they began the task of donning the panoply that was never put on any earlier than necessary before battle, such was its miserable discomfort.

The greaves were the least bad: rather elegant bronze sheaths that protected the legs from kneecap to ankle, so thin as to be flexible and so well shaped that they needed no straps—they were simply “snapped on,” with the edges nearly meeting behind the calves. But despite their felt inner linings they were apt to chafe with the movement of the legs and lose their snug fit. They were put on first, while the hoplite could still stoop over.

Next, over his chiton, came that which prevented him from stooping: a bronze corselet of front and back segments, laced at the sides and connected over the shoulders by curved plates. Jason had been given a choice from Themeistocles’ stock and had found one that seemed to fit him reasonably well—an absolute necessity. But the weight and inflexibility of the thing, and its efficiency as a heat-collector in the August sun, made him understand why later generations of hoplites in the Peloponnesian Wars would abandon it in favor of a cuirass made from layers of linen. Feeling his chiton already begin to grow sweat-soaked even before sunrise, he decided he didn’t need to worry about the Persians; heat prostration would get him first. The skirt of leather strips hanging from the lower edge was the only protection the groin had.

Even more uncomfortable was the bronze “Corinthian” helmet, covering the neck and with cheek pieces and nose guard, practically encasing the entire head and face. It had no interior webbing or other suspension, only a soft leather lining; its five-pound weight rested on the neck and head. Jason now understood why hoplites grew their hair as long and thick as possible, despite the problem of lice, and he wondered what it must be like for older, balding men. With no real cushion between helmet and cranium, blows to the head—such as those dealt by the axes favored by the Persians’ Saka troops—were often fatal. And, of course, the heat and stuffiness inside such a bronze pot were stifling. Given all this, it was easy to understand why Classical Greek art usually showed the helmet propped back on the head; it was worn this way until the last possible moment before battle, at which time it was finally lowered over the face. At this point, the hoplite became semi-deaf (there were no ear-holes) and able to see only directly ahead. But, Jason reflected, in a phalanx that was really the only direction you needed to see. And it occurred to him that this was one more bit of cement for a phalanx’s unique degree of unit cohesion. A hoplite need not worry about his blind zones as long as the formation held; but alone, he was locked into a world of terrifying isolation.

At least, Jason consoled himself, his helmet was not one of those with a horsehair crest, intended to make the wearer look taller and more fearsome but adding to the helmet’s weight and awkwardness. He had made sure to draw one of the plain, crestless versions, whose smooth curved surface would have a better chance of deflecting a Saka axe.

Then the slave handed Jason his most important piece of defensive equipment: the shield, or
hoplon
, that gave the hoplite his name. It was circular, three feet in diameter, made of hardwood covered with a thin sheet of bronze that didn’t add much to its protective strength but which, when highly polished as it was now, could dazzle the enemy. Its handgrip (
antilabe
) and arm grip (
porpax
) distributed its weight along the entire left forearm, making it usable. But there was no getting around the fact that the thing weighed sixteen pounds, and was damned awkward. Fortunately, its radical concavity made it possible to rest most of its weight on the left shoulder. Of course, carried that way, the
hoplon
couldn’t possibly protect the right side of the man carrying it. For that, he was utterly dependent on the man to his right in the formation keeping
his
sixteen-pound shield up. Again, solidarity was survival.

Finally, Jason was handed his primary offensive weapon, far more important than the short leaf-shaped sword at his side: a seven-and-a-half-foot thrusting spear, carried shouldered while the phalanx was advancing, then held underhand for the final change, but afterwards generally gripped overhand for stabbing. It was made of ash with an iron spearhead and, at the other end, a bronze butt spike. The latter was useful because the spear, only an inch thick, often shattered against hardwood shields and bronze armor in the thunderous clash of two phalanxes; a man deprived of his spearhead could reverse what was left of the spear and stab with the spike. Also, the ranks behind, still carrying their spears upright, could jab downward into any enemy wounded lying at their feet as the phalanx advanced.

Speaking of feet, there was one thing Jason could not understand, and never would. The human foot, as he knew from painful experience on his last extratemporal expedition, was a vulnerable thing composed of numerous small and easily-broken bones. Hoplites went into brutal, stamping, stomping battles with nothing on their feet but sandals. Why men already wearing and carrying fifty to seventy pounds of bronze, wood, iron, and leather didn’t go one step further and avail themselves of the fairly sturdy boots their society was quite capable of producing was a mystery he was never to solve. He had, with careful casualness, put the question to Callicles, and had gotten a blank look for his pains. Evidently, it was just the way things were done—which, as Jason already knew, was more often than not the answer to questions about the seemingly irrational practices of preindustrial societies.