Sunset of the Gods

CHAPTER ELEVEN





“You seem somehow familiar,” said the Teloi, with a frown, stroking the beard he shared with some but not all males of his race. His deep voice held the indefinably disturbing quality Jason remembered.

“Let me refresh your memory,” said Jason. “Do you recall your ‘son’ Perseus? It was at the time Santorini—or Kalliste, as it was called then—exploded. Surely you must remember that.” While waiting for a reply, he glanced around and saw that Mondrago was staring, wide-eyed, in spite of having seen video imagery of the Teloi.

“Oh, yes,” Zeus finally nodded, a little vaguely. “Perseus was one of the superior strain that we created for the purpose of leading the ordinary human masses into a proper state of submission to their creators. They were a great disappointment to us, from Gilgamesh on. But Perseus was better than most. He kept his word and established my worship at Mycenae after I had imprisoned the Old Gods forever.”

Wait a minute! thought Jason, speechless. What’s this? You imprisoned them?

“And now I remember you,” Zeus continued. “You were one of the time travelers who appeared around that time. You were of some assistance to me.” He turned to Franco. “He must be spared, for I pay my debts to mortals.”

He’s gone senile, Jason realized. He really believes it. He thinks he really is a god. And he’s forgotten how the senior Teloi got permanently trapped in their pocket universe. The myths and legends that his human worshipers have woven around what happened have become more real for him than the truth.

And why should I be surprised? For almost eleven and a half centuries he and his faction of younger-generation Teloi—the ones who didn’t get trapped—have been stranded on low-technology Earth without their extradimensional hidey-hole and with none of their advanced technology except what they happened to have with them when Santorini blew up and their tame human empire based on Crete was wrecked by the tsunami and other side effects. All that time, they’ve been running a bluff with the aid of whatever flashy displays of techno-magic they could manage.

All things considered, I suppose it’s surprising he’s retained any vestige of sanity at all.

Franco broke into his thoughts. “So you already know about the Teloi?”

Jason saw no point in evasion or denials. “We encountered them on an expedition to observe the Santorini explosion.”

“Ah, yes . . . that expedition had departed from the twenty-fourth century shortly before we did. So you must be Jason Thanou. I hadn’t realized we had such a distinguished guest. By the time we encountered the Teloi, four centuries after you did, they had forgotten about you.”

“But now I remember,” Zeus broke in. “Yes, you were useful to me. And now new time travelers have arrived.” He indicated Franco, who inclined his head graciously. “And they too recognize true divinity—not to be confused with a silly legend like ‘Pan’! We helped them produce a living image of that legend, with which to gull the local human cattle, who deserve no better. In exchange, they will help restore my worship to this disrespectful city!”

“What?” Jason managed.

Zeus’s voice had been steadily rising. Now he was almost raving. “Yes! Athens has sought the patronage of my daughter Athena, while neglecting me!” Familial affection, Jason recalled, was not a trait of the vastly long-lived Teloi, who produced children but rarely. In fact, the being Oannes who had told Jason the story of the Teloi on Earth had been of the opinion that their second generation, including Zeus, were infertile. Jason wondered if, in his increasing dementia, Zeus had come to believe the local mythology’s version of his relationship to Athena. “At least the tyrant Hippias, son of Pisistratus, began building a suitable temple to me. But then the Athenians drove him out and failed to complete it. Instead they have left it standing unfinished, as though wishing to flaunt their impiety!

“But now, thanks to Franco—a member of an improved human stock called the Transhumans who have returned to the worship of us, the true gods, as he assures me—matters will be set right. The Persians are coming, and bringing Hippias back with them. Franco will enable them to win the coming battle, conquer Athens, and restore Hippias as tyrant. And then Hippias will put the Athenians to work completing his great temple, thus atoning for their ingratitude to me!”

Behind Zeus and out of the Teloi’s range of vision, Jason saw Franco smile.

“What has this Transhumanist pimp been telling you about time travel?” Mondrago suddenly burst out. “He’s lying. It doesn’t work that way. History is fixed—and it says that the Athenians are going to kick the Persian army’s ass up between the ears and then pull it out through the nose!”

“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.