“BE QUIET!” I bellow. Athena’s voice comes out amplified, superhuman. I know that I’m waking the others in Achilles’ tent and probably alarming the guards outside. I have less than a minute. As if to prove my point, Athena’s golden arm quivers, shifts to Professor Thomas Hockenberry’s pale and hairy forearm, and then morphs back to Athena’s. I see that Achilles’ eyes are downcast and that he hasn’t noticed. Patroclus stares wide-eyed, confused.

“Goddess, if I have offended you . . .” begins Achilles, raising his eyes but keeping his head bowed.

“SILENCE!!” I bellow. “CAN AN ANT CRAWLING IN THE DIRT OFFEND A MAN? CAN THE LOWEST AND UGLIEST FISH IN THE SEA OFFEND THE SAILOR WHOSE THOUGHTS ARE ON OTHER THINGS?”

“An ant?” repeats Achilles, his handsome, sculpted face showing a rebuked child’s confusion.

“YOU’RE ALL LESS THAN ANTS TO THE GODS,” I roar, taking a step closer so that Athena’s radiance flickers over them like radioactive light. “YOU’VE AMUSED US WITH YOUR DEATHS, ACHILLES . . . SON OF PELEUS AND IDIOT CHILD OF THETIS.”

“Idiot child,” repeats Achilles, red rising to his high cheekbones. “Goddess, how have I . . .”

“SILENCE, COWARD!” I’ve amplified Athena’s voice until they could hear this insult in Agamemnon’s camp almost a mile down the beach. “WE CARE NOTHING FOR YOU. NOTHING FOR ANY OF YOU. YOUR DEATHS AMUSE US . . . BUT YOUR COWARDICE DOES NOT, SWIFT-RUNNING ACHILLES!” I sneer these last few words, turning the poet’s honorific into a demeaning insult.

Achilles balls his fists and takes a half step forward, as if approaching a foe. “Goddess, Pallas Athena, Defender of Achaeans, I have always offered you the finest sacrifices . . .”

“A COWARD’S SACRIFICE MEANS NOTHING TO US ON OLYMPOS,” I roar. I feel the probability wave that is the real goddess Athena approaching critical collapse. I have only seconds in this half-morphed form.

“WE’LL TAKE AND BURN OUR OWN SACRIFICE FROM THIS MOMENT ON,” I say and Athena’s arm extends toward Patroclus, the baton hidden under my forearm, my finger on the activator. “IF YOU WANT YOUR BOYFRIEND’S CORPSE, FIGHT YOUR WAY TO THE HALLS OF OLYMPOS TO GET IT, COWARD ACHILLES!”

I taser Patroclus in the center of his tanned, hairless chest, the near-invisible electrodes and invisible wires carrying 50,000 volts into him.

Patroclus seizes his chest as if struck by a lightning bolt, cries out, twitches and writhes as if in the throes of an epileptic fit, pisses himself, and collapses.

Before Achilles can react—the swift-footed warrior stands there naked with his hands balled into fists and his eyes bugging out, too shocked to move—I have Athena take two steps forward, grab the collapsed and apparently dead Patroclus by his hair, and drag him roughly across the floor.

Achilles unfreezes, snarls, and pulls his sword from its scabbard on the chair.

Still dragging the limp Patroclus by his hair, Athena’s form quivering out of quantum morph stability now and as static-lashed as a bad TV picture, I touch the medallion at my throat and quantum teleport Patroclus and me the hell out of Achilles’ tent.

33

Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Basin

Savi led Daeman and Harman off the roof, down the ladders and steps, and into one of the narrow alleys. The starlight and blue glow from the neutrino beam on the Temple Mount gave just enough illumination for them not to crash into walls or fall into wells as they ran, although shadows were a solid black in the doorways and empty windows. Daeman soon fell behind, gasping. He’d never run, even as a child. It was an absurd thing to do.

Closer now, less than a short block away in the maze of flat-topped buildings and labrynthine alleys, came the scrabbling of the hundreds of hurrying voynix.

Itbah al-Yahud! rasped the voice from those loudspeakers Savi had called muezzin.

Savi led them across a cobblestoned street, down another dark, narrow alley, across a small clearing strewn with glowing human bones, and into an interior courtyard that was even darker than the alley. The pad-thump and manipulator-scratch of voynix running at high speed along walls was closer now.

Itbah al-Yahud! The amplified cry seemed more urgent.

Only Savi here is a Jew, whatever that is, thought Daeman, his lungs burning, staggering to keep up. If Harman and I let her go on by herself, the voynix will leave us alone, probably even help us get home. There’s no reason we should share her fate.

Harman was running hard behind the old woman as she crossed the courtyard and ducked through a low arch into the ruins of an ancient building. Or I can take care of myself, thought Daeman. Harman can stay with her if he wants.

Daeman slid to a stop on the dusty cobblestones. Harman paused in the black rectangle of a doorway and waved him on. Daeman looked over his shoulder toward the sounds behind them—like claws or hollow bones rattling against stone—and, in the light of the blue beam, saw the first of a dozen voynix running in the street they had just crossed.

Daeman felt his heart lurch—he wasn’t used to the emotion of fear and found the thought of doing anything alone right now as the most terrifying option—and then he ran into the dark doorway behind Harman and the old woman.

Savi led the way down a series of increasingly narrow staircases, each flight of steps older and more worn than the one above. Four flights down, she tugged a flashlight from her backpack and flicked it on as the last of the reflected light disappeared from the dim blue glow above. The narrow beam illuminated a wall at the bottom of the narrowest flight of steps and Daeman’s heart lurched again. Then he saw what looked like a flap of dirty burlap hung over a hole he was sure was too small to allow him through.

“Hurry,” whispered Savi. She pulled the gunny sack material aside and slipped through the hole. Daeman heard echoes as if from a well. Harman quickly followed the old woman into the blackness.

Daeman heard scrabblings from the ruined house above, but no voynix footsteps sounded on the stairs. Not yet at least.

He leaned into the little hole, squeezed his narrow shoulders through, found that he was hanging over a bottomless black circle less than four feet across, and then his flailing hands found iron rungs in the wall opposite and he grunted as he pulled his torso and hips through the opening, scraping skin against ancient plaster until his legs were free and dangling. Then his feet found purchase on the rusty metal rungs and he began clambering down toward the muted sounds of Savi and Harman descending below him.

Cold air flowed up past his face. Daeman’s fingers and feet shifted uncertainly downward from cold rung to cold rung, he heard whispers below, and suddenly there were no rungs under his feet and he dropped four or five feet onto a brick floor.

Harman’s hands steadied him. He could see the circle of Savi’s flashlight illuminating a round tunnel made of ancient stones or bricks.

“This way,” she whispered and began running again, bent over to avoid the low ceiling. Harman and Daeman scrambled along behind, trying to avoid the irregular bricks in the curved floor by watching the circle of her flashlight rather than their own feet.

They came to a junction of tunnels. Savi checked her glowing palm function and they followed the left passage.

“I don’t hear the voynix behind us,” said Harman. He’d spoken softly, but his voice still echoed from the curved brick. The tallest of the three, Harman had to bend the most to walk.

“They’re above us,” said Savi. “Following us on the streets.”

“Are they using proxnet?” asked Daeman.

“Yes.” She paused at another junction, chose the center of three smaller passages. They all had to bend low here.