As Jason had predicted, he was the first to recover from displacement sickness. Deirdre was next to reestablish her sense of reality after a disorientation foreign to normal human experience. She stopped trembling in a surprisingly short time. In fact, Jason wouldn't have objected if she'd continued to need assistance just a little longer.
"All right," he said after Nagel had finally regained his composure. "Let's get started for Argos." The town to which Rutherford's probe had been taken in 1710 b.c., as the yet-unborn twenty-fourth century measured time, was the obvious place for them to make their initial appearance in this world.
As they walked, the rising sun revealed a landscape disconcertingly different from everything the word "Greece" called to mind. The hills to either side were darkly forested, and along the roadside the olive groves were generally surrounded by oak and poplar. Soon the two hills of Argos—the Apsis and the higher Larissa—became visible up ahead. The place had grown from the village of the recordings they had seen, spreading around the base of two hills. A wood-stockaded fort crowned the Larissa. Around its base clustered a town whose buildings were basically of wood construction in this well-forested milieu, though well plastered. The few early risers they passed looked no different from the ones they had viewed on film, and the looks they gave the new arrivals held no more curiosity than unfamiliar faces would normally occasion.
Security at the fort was not particularly tight, but a guard stood outside. Although the sun hadn't yet warmed the air to the heat to be expected later in this August day, he wore only a kilt and leg guards of linen. But he had a helmet constructed of overlapping hide thongs and covered with rows of boars' tusks, and carried a large, oxhide-covered, figure-eight-shaped shield. The only weapon he carried was a spear, which he hefted importantly as the strangers approached.
"Rejoice," said Jason, giving the general-purpose greeting. "We have come far, all the way from Aetolia, and ask your lord's hospitality." It was his first attempt to speak the language to a local, and he was sure he must sound heavily accented. But he had been given the correct, aristocratic idiom, so the favor he was asking was one to which he was presumptively entitled as a gentleman.
"Very well," said the guard. "Enter. You can tell your story to the wanax Acrisius."
Behind him, Jason could sense Nagel's excitement. It intensified as they crossed the compound toward a building which was larger than others they'd seen but apparently of the same kind of construction.
"That hall," Nagel whispered to him, all a-titter, "is a small-scale but inarguable ancestor of the royal megarons that will grow to sumptuous proportions in the later Mycenaean era."
"Well," Jason whispered back, "we've already learned that this Acrisius is entitled to call himself a wanax, or king." Of course, Acrisius wasn't in the same class as the proud rulers who, as he knew from his orientation, would soon establish themselves at Mycenae. Those rulers would accumulate so much treasure that they could afford to take with them into the afterlife the hoard of gold that Heinrich Schliemann would dig out of Grave Circle A thirty-four centuries from now. But most of their treasure would go as gifts to vassal warlords, in return for which they were obliged to fight for the high kingon call. On his own modest scale, Acrisius doubtless assured the loyalty of his own vassals the same way. Thus were such things done in this moneyless economy. "Is that what surprised you—hearing that title?"
"No! It was his name! It is the name of one of the mythological dynasty that supposedly ruled the city-state of Argos—and this is far earlier than the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. to which learned speculation has assigned the actual originals of the Greek heroes. I hadn't dreamed we would encounter any identifiable individuals this far back!"
"Maybe it's just a coincidence," Deirdre suggested. "An accidental similarity of names."
"Right," Jason agreed. "Maybe scholars have taken those mythic genealogies too literally. They must be a grab bag of dimly remembered names, strung together in whatever way was politically useful to the rulers under whose patronage the myths were compiled."
"There must be something to that." The admission clearly took a lot out of Nagel, for it meant paying respectful attention to an observation about his field from someone lacking the proper academic credentials. But he accepted the theory the way a shipwreck survivor accepts a floating piece of wreckage. "For example, the myths will give Acrisius a quasi-divine ancestry, making him a descendant of a refugee Egyptian prince named Danaos."
The warlord who greeted them beside the central hearth of the central hall was, of course, nothing of the kind. He seemed an affable enough semibarbarian, though, as he listened to Jason recite their well-prepared story. He was even enlightened enough to give "Deianeira" a gesture of respect on the strength of Jason's declaration that she was a princess from Aetolia, far enough to the north that they could safely be vague about details. She was, the story went, niece to a very important Cretan whose sister had been politically married to a mainland chieftain. Deianeira's own husband had died, and now she was traveling to Crete to rejoin her mother's family. She was carrying that portion of her late husband's treasure which, in accordance with her mother's original marriage contract, belonged to her under Cretan inheritance laws.
Deirdre had been delighted to have that last part confirmed in the course of their orientation. Less delightful from her standpoint was the fact that Cretan society, while matrilineal, was not matriarchal. It was as male-dominated as every other known Bronze Age society. Big surprise, Jason had carefully refrained from saying. His own persona was that of a relative on her father's side who was escorting her to Crete—a middle-ranking landless warrior. "Synon" had been harder to account for. The nit-picking bureaucracy revealed by the Linear B tablets—for which Nagel would have been a natural—was still several centuries in the future of this pristinely illiterate society. They'd decided to pass him off as a Cretan-trained steward or seneschal or something, along to manage the property transfer—and related to the family, hence socially acceptable. Acrisius seemed to buy it.
Finally that worthy leaned back and scratched the thick salt-and-pepper beard that made him seem impressively mature among the mostly late-teens-to-early-twenties bravos who otherwise filled the hall. (He was probably about fifty, but in a kind of physical condition that Jason found surprising for someone of his age in this era.) "Be welcome. I must spend most of the day inspecting the outlying holdings. But rest from your travels, and eat with me later. We will talk at greater length."
"Thank you, lord."
As a slave led them to their rooms, Jason congratulated himself on how smoothly things had gone so far. Admittedly, he hadn't had a chance to broach the topic of Rutherford's disguised probe. But there would be time for that after the feast.
"Ah, yes, the image of Hyperion." Acrisius nodded and belched solemnly. "So you have heard of it?"
"Indeed we have," Jason assured him. "Even in Aetolia."
"It appeared in the time of our grandfathers' fathers. It might well have been eighty-two winters ago, as you say." Acrisius peered curiously at his guests, clearly intrigued by people who claimed to count time to such an unheard-of degree of precision. "Yes. My grandfather Lynkeos told me about the image of Hyperion. He was only a small boy at the time. But his own father told him about the way it vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Everyone thought Hyperion had taken it back. But that was before the god himself came to ask about it."
Jason came suddenly alert. "The god himself came?"
"Oh, yes. That often happened in those days, you know. That was when the gods were still begetting Heroes on mortal women. My grandfather's father Danaos was a Hero, you know," he added parenthetically. Out of the corner of his eye, Jason saw Nagel stiffen. "But this was different," Acrisius continued. "Hyperion came demanding an accounting of our stewardship of his image. According to my grandfather, he almost seemed angry at first, on hearing it had vanished. It was puzzling. But then he assured everyone that he had, indeed, taken it back and that now it burns at the heart of the sun, an eternal offering. So everything was all right after all."
Jason made a sign of respect to the gods, as he had learned from the probe's recording. With a fraction of his consciousness, he made certain his companions were doing likewise.
It had come as no surprise to Nagel—in fact, it had been something of a vindication—that these people worshiped gods whose names, at least, corresponded to those of the Titans of classical Greek mythology: the generation of gods (six couples, or maybe seven, depending on which account you read) that had preceded the Olympians. Not that the distinction was entirely clear. In fact, there was a lot of overlap, with many of the Olympians also appearing in the rather incoherent local pantheon. Partway up the slopes of Larissa was a grotto sacred to Hera. Some of them were missing, though—like Apollo, an Asiatic deity whose worship wouldn't enter Greece until Iron Age times. At present, the job of sun god was handled by Hyperion . . . to whom the locals had decided Rutherford's bogus idol bore a resemblance.
And who, according to Acrisius, had come to look in on it.
Jason's eyes met Nagel's briefly. The historian looked as puzzled as Jason felt. He leaned forward in the flickering firelight. "We have never heard this part of the tale, Lord Acrisius. Did your grandfather tell you anything else about the god?"
"Well, he was barely walking at the time, you understand. But he got a glimpse of Hyperion. He never forgot it." Acrisius took on an expression foreign to his listeners, who came from a time when literal belief in the supernatural was no longer possible. "He had the look of the gods: very tall, with hair that was almost the color of silver, but with a golden shimmer. And he had the face of the gods: like that of men but more beautiful . . . and yet not like that of men, for its beauty is of another kind." He shivered, although the temperature was what one would expect in Greece in August, and took a deep drink. "Ah, well, that was long ago. The gods don't come among men nearly as much anymore. Let's talk about your plans, instead. Are you sure you want to go to Nauplia? Granted, you'll have no trouble getting passage there, but . . ." His voice trailed off, as though from an awkward subject.
"No, lord," Deirdre answered. Acrisius had proven enlightened enough to include "Deianeira" in the drinking. "We'll go to Lerna instead. It's no further, and a cousin of my late husband lives there." In fact, they had chosen the small seaside town on the western coast of the Gulf of Argos, across from Nauplia, for its inconspicuousness. Nauplia was literally in the shadow of Tiryns, where they'd learned a formidable warlord had established himself. Lerna, of immemorial antiquity even in this age, was a backwater whose only claim to mythological fame in later times was the Lernean Hydra that Hercules killed as one of his twelve labors. Come to think of it, Jason reflected, they would be passing the swamp on whose outskirts that nine-headed monster was supposed to have inhabited a rock outcropping that Rutherford had shown them. . . .
"Well," Acrisius said heartily, "I wish you a safe journey. You can walk it in a day." It was about ten miles, Jason thought, summoning up a map that, to him, seemed to float translucently in midair about a foot from his face. "You'll probably want to get an early start, to arrive in Lerna before nightfall. There are bandits at large in the swamps. In fact, I've heard some odd stories. . . ." Acrisius shook his head. "No. Never mind. Just be alert. Would you like me to send some men with you?"
"Thank you, lord, but that won't be necessary." Jason would have liked to ask about those "odd stories," but Acrisius was obviously disinclined to discuss the subject. They soon made their goodnights and made their way to their guest quarters. When the only reasonably safe artificial light-source was oil lamps, there were only four things to do after dark. Two—drinking and talking—they had already done. As for the third, Deirdre was still being discouragingly professional. That left sleeping.
Jason could tell from Nagel's body language that the historian wanted to talk in private. But there was no privacy in Acrisius' "palace" (at which the most impoverished resident of twenty-fourth century Earth would have turned up his nose), and standard Service procedure dictated that they use the local language at all times; paranoia was apt to rear its ugly head when strangers were overheard conversing among themselves in an unknown tongue. So he gave Nagel a cautionary gesture. It would have to wait until they were on the road.
"Something is not right," Nagel muttered the next morning, when they were out of sight of Argos.
The countryside through which they followed the road—more accurately, the well-traveled trail—to Lerna was no longer strange to them, after their earlier walk to Argos. Ahead, though, lay the swamps. From a distance, at least, it didn't look all that different from what Rutherford had showed them.
"What do you mean?" Deirdre asked Nagel. "What's not right?"
"A number of things—for example, that business about the Heroes being born of gods, as though it was something of relatively recent date. I'm still not sure what to make of that. We've always assumed that the ruling houses of much later historical times simply gave themselves divine genealogies. Now, it seems the idea of heroic demigods goes back much further than we'd imagined. Indeed, it's turning out that a good many things go back further than we'd imagined. But what really disturbs me is Acrisius' description of the god Hyperion."
"Why? He was just talking about something purely imaginary."
"Was he?" Jason inquired absently, while most of his attention was absorbed by his computer implant.
"Why, of course he was!" exclaimed Deirdre indignantly. "What do you even mean by that?"
"Well, he said he heard about it from his grandfather—"
"The unreliability of early childhood memories is well established. And why are we even talking about this . . . this—?"
"That's not the point," said Nagel. His tone stopped them by its very quietness, for he was too puzzled to summon up his usual asperity. "The point is that what Acrisius heard simply confirmed his preconceptions of what gods are supposed to look like. And it is not how the Greeks of historical times visualized their gods."
"Uh . . . you mean the platinum-blond hair? But didn't the Classical Greeks often describe the gods, and also their mortal offspring, that way?"
"In some cases." Nagel smiled tightly. "Certain racist ideologues of the early twentieth century read a great deal into that. But in fact, it merely reflected an enduring aesthetic bias. The Greeks in all eras tended to idealize the occasional blond among them. In this, as in everything else, the Greek gods were simply humans writ large. Humans—that's the operative word. Nowhere is there any suggestion that they thought of the gods as having the aspect of alienness to which Acrisius alluded. Bigger than humans, yes, and more beautiful than humans—but beautiful in a human way." Nagel frowned disapprovingly. "These people's visualizations simply don't have the right . . . flavor."
Damned disobliging of them, Jason thought. Don't they know it's their job to conform to your preconceptions? "Isn't it possible," he asked aloud, "that it wasn't until later times that they changed their beliefs, and started thinking of the gods as idealized humans?"
"Yes," Deirdre chimed in. "Didn't early civilizations tend to picture their gods as weird-looking? Sometimes even half man and half animal?"
"Yes—the Egyptians, for example," Nagel conceded. "I would have no trouble with monstrous-looking deities. But I know of no early society whose gods looked like tall, beautiful humans but not quite. Furthermore, most religious systems—for reasons too obvious for discussion—place direct physical manifestations by the gods in a safely remote past. From what we've heard, these people have no problem believing that the gods have walked among them, begetting demigods, in the last few generations . . . and still do, although with less frequency."
"So what's the answer?" asked Deirdre with a mixture of impatience and grudging interest.
"I don't know," Nagel admitted. "Oh, by the way, on the subject of mythological genealogies . . . remember Acrisius' mention of his great-grandfather Danaos, who was a 'Hero,' or demigod? Well, according to those genealogies, that was Acrisius' great-grandfather." Nagel subsided into frowning preoccupation.
As it turned out, he was so preoccupied he forgot he was not walking on a paved road. He stepped into a hole and twisted his ankle. So they had to stop by the roadside for a while and await his whining convalescence, while Jason mentally composed the piece of his mind he was going to give Rutherford on the subject of the Authority's standards of fitness for low-tech survival.Finally they were able to resume their walk, but only at Nagel's limping pace.
It will be dark before we get to Lerna, Jason muttered to himself. Already, the sun was setting, and they had only reached the swamp.
It was, he thought, the one area they had seen that would be more or less unchanged in the late twenty-fourth century: the same spur of red rock jutting out over a miasma of reedy marsh crossed by winding streams—fuller now than in Jason's lifetime—overlooked by weeping willows. The rock outcropping supported a stretch of solid ground for the road to traverse, even as Jason recalled from Rutherford's whirlwind tour.
"Come on," he called out in the twilight, unable to keep an edge of impatience out of his voice. We've got to reach Lerna before nightfall. If we're still on the road, we'll have to make camp, and you heard what Acrisius said about—"
Naturally, the bandits attacked at that moment.
They charged out from under the rock outcropping where they'd lain concealed: half a dozen of them, ragged and shaggy-maned, wielding clubs and knives and screaming so as to paralyze their victims with fear.
In Nagel's case, at least, it worked. He froze up. Jason ran between him and the oncoming bandits, bringing up his walking stick. It wasn't long enough to be a proper quarterstaff such as he had learned to use in the Middle Ages, but he gripped it that way: left hand in the middle, right hand about a quarter of its length from one end. He spun it this way and that, forcing the bandits to step back, momentarily before rushing him. One of them lifted his club high while another came in from the side with his knife. Jason slid his left hand down the shaft from the middle to meet the right hand, and smashed his staff down on top of knife-man's head There was a sickening thud and a crack of snapping teeth as the bandit's jaws were driven together by the force of the blow. He hadn't even hit the ground before Jason recovered and brought his staff around and into the belly of the club-wielder. The latter's wind whooshed out and he doubled over. As his face went down, Jason brought a knee sharply up into it, simultaneously using one end of the staff to punch him behind an ear with lethal preciseness.
Taking a split second to look around, Jason saw that Nagel had snapped out of it and was bringing his staff clumsily up. Deirdre, on the other hand, used hers to thrust at a bandit who was rushing at her, grinning. His grin disappeared, as did the center of his face, when the end of Deirdre's staff punched into it with a crunch of bone and cartilage.
The sight of a woman fighting back was evidently a shocking surprise. The remaining attackers, who hadn't reached their quarry yet—they were too stupid for a coordinated attack—hung back, mouths agape. The only sound was the squalling of Deirdre's would-be rapist. Jason decided that the sight of cold steel—oh, all right, bronze—would probably suffice to send them running, now that they'd lost their numerical advantage. He dropped his staff and reached for his sword-dagger.
"Enough of this."
The voice was deep and had an odd timbre to it. And it came from above.
At first the sheer, inexplicable wrongness of it held Jason motionless, even though the bandits had gone to their knees and dropped their weapons. A moment passed before he could look up in the direction from which that impossible voice had come.
A platform of some kind was descending with a faint humming sound Jason hadn't noticed before. It was a lovely thing of oddly curving lines and oven odder ornamentation, made of some unidentifiable metal alloy. And it was none too large even for its one passenger. As Jason watched, that passenger stood up and leaned on a low railing, clearly illuminated in the twilight by the running lights.
He was wearing robes not unlike those of the local royalty, but richer than anything they'd seen, with colors that seemed to shimmer and change. He was, Jason estimated, at least seven and a half feet tall. His hair was a shining, wavy mass of gold-shot silver, and his face was pale. That face was long, tapering to a narrow chin. His high cheekbones tilted upward in a way that was mirrored by the long eyebrows over his huge, oblique eyes. His nose was long, thin and sharp, but with flaring nostrils. His mouth was wide, thin-lipped, and set in lines of sublime haughtiness. There was something odd about his ears. . . .
And he was holding an unfamiliar-looking object. It fitted over his hand, and was fashioned to resemble a face. But to Jason, the way he held it screamed weapon.
As the three of them gaped upward, he brought the object to bear on Deirdre. It soundlessly flashed ruby light. Deirdre toppled forward to the ground.
As the tube swung toward him, Nagel's shock turned abruptly to terror. He turned and ran toward Jason. He'd almost made it when the weapon flashed again. His face was instantly leached of expression, and he fell as Deirdre had.
Jason recognized the thing for what it was, however curious its design: a neural paralyzer, its energy pulse carried on a laser guide beam which was the source of the flash. He also knew what his only possible option was. He dropped, with his legs bunched up in the direction of the weapon, and tried to roll behind Nagel's motionless form.
He didn't complete the roll before his legs went horribly numb. He gasped, unable to move them, and forced himself not to move anything else. He wanted the weapon's wielder to think he, like his companions, was unable to move a single voluntary muscle—as he would have been if that beam had struck his head or torso.
So he lay perfectly still. Fortuitously, his head was at an angle from which he could, out of the corner of his left eye, watch what now transpired.
The platform settled to the earth. The bandits bowed low, murmuring worshipfully. The tall being surveyed them with cold contempt and spoke in that disturbing voice.
"So I myself must intervene to save you from two men and a woman?"
The bandits groveled. "We are worms," moaned the one who seemed to be the leader. "Worthless worms!"
"Too true. Since you are useless for any other purpose, place the woman in my chariot. The men, and their belongings, you may have despite your bungling."
For the tiniest of instants, rebelliousness flickered in the bandits' expressions. They'd undoubtedly hoped to keep Deirdre themselves, partly for the usual reason but also to vent their feelings concerning their comrade's ruined face. But the instant passed. They meekly did as they were commanded, picking up her stiff form and transferring it to the "chariot," which then departed without another word from its occupant.
Jason continued to feign helplessness as he watched the bandits' leader order one of his followers back to their encampment with the one whom Deirdre had injured. Then the remaining two examined the sacks and whooped with delight when they discovered the windfall of treasure the sacks contained. As they did so, Jason very slowly moved his right hand atop the hilt of his sword-dagger, which he had been careful to cover with his body. He had barely finished doing so when they drew their doubtless-stolen bronze knives and turned their attention to their paralyzed captives.
As Jason had hoped, they decided to have fun with Nagel first.
His legs were starting to experience the painful tingling which presaged the wearing-off of the paralysis. But he still couldn't quite move them He would have to take two men without the use of his legs. Luckily, they stood over Nagel with their backs to him, only a few feet away. And one end of his staff lay just barely within arm's reach.
With a pouncing leopard's abruptness, his left arm shot out and grasped the staff. With all his strength, he swept it around in an arc to catch the bandit leader behind the knees. With a curse, the man went down, colliding with his companion and knocking him over as well.
Dropping the staff, Jason used his left arm to roll himself over, toward the bandits who were trying to disentangle themselves from the heap in which they had fallen. The leader staggered to his feet just as Jason rolled up to those feet—and thrust upward with his blade, between the chief's legs.
The shriek of agony was still in progress when Jason whipped his sword out and pushed the body away, into the other bandit who had stumbled erect and was rushing in. He fell over Jason, who almost choked on the sour body odor that enveloped him. But, legless though he was, he managed a wrestling hold and pulled the struggling bandit over atop himself. He got his left arm around the man's throat, pulled back on the chin, and with his right arm brought his blade across the hairy throat in a slash that left the head flopping loosely, connected to the body by little save the spinal column itself. He pushed the blood-spurting corpse away and, with another shove of his left arm, rolled himself over to the writhing body of the bandit chief, whose squalling he ended with another throat slash.
After that, he massaged his legs into sensibility, then staggered over to Nagel and worked frantically and a little roughly to bring the historian around. They had to get away, lest the bandits should return, and find a place among the swamp's fringes to make camp. Afterwards, there would be time to confront the incomprehensible nightmare from which they would not be able to awaken for another three months.
CHAPTER SIX
I
think I know what has happened," said Nagel from across the campfire. "At least I have a theory."
They sat under a rocky ledge at the base of one of the hills fringing the swamp. Jason had helped Nagel to its shelter, after which he had barely had time to gather firewood in the gathering dusk. Afterwards, they had consumed in silence the rough bread and rougher wine that Acrisius had given them for their journey. And now, Nagel was the first to broach the subject of the unthinkable. Jason had to respect him for that.
"What theory is that?" There was, of course, no need to ask what Nagel was talking about.
"I listened when Ms. Sadaka-Ramirez—"
" 'Deirdre,' Sidney," Jason broke in wearily. "I think we can be on first-name terms now. If nothing else, it will save lot of syllables."
"Very well—when Deirdre was describing those old fictional treatments of time travel she had read. All of them had to somehow deal with the Grandfather Paradox. Some of them did so by theorizing that travel into the past isn't really travel into our past at all. They postulated an infinity of alternate timelines."
"The 'many-worlds hypothesis,' " Jason nodded. "It's been flatly disproved."
"But it must be true!" Nagel leaned forward, and the firelight revealed the terrible urgency in his face. "We've proved it! Time travel really involves travel sideways as well as backwards, into a parallel world, superficially similar to ours but where our myths are real. And we're in it now! There's no other explanation. In fact," he pressed on, warming to his subject, "perhaps the peculiar qualities of this world allow occasional, uh, spontaneous transferences into ours, thus accounting for our ideas about mythical beings."
"I've been back as far as the thirteenth century C.E.," Jason reminded him. "While I was in the Middle Ages I never saw any unicorns or dragons or anything like that. Just gritty normalcy."
"Well . . . suppose the differences between the universes grow less marked with the passage of time, due to a gradual fading out of the supernatural in this world. Thus, the two worlds are effectively identical in recent times, and were pretty much so in Medieval times. But now, with this unprecedented expedition, we've gone back into an age when the gods of the ancient pantheons were real—and we've fallen afoul of one!"
Jason laughed softly. "It's an ingenious theory. There are just two problems with it. First, as I mentioned, it's been ruled out in terms of quantum physics. I'm not qualified to explain why; you'll have to ask Rutherford when we get back. And secondly, I happen to know that was no supernatural being we saw today."
"Oh?" Nagel tilted his head back, the better to peer down his nose. He must, Jason decided, be out of shock; his personality was unfortunately reasserting itself. "And what, precisely, leads you to believe you know this?"
"The weapon he used on us." Jason briefly explained the nature of the paralyzer. "It didn't look like our designs, of course. In my opinion, ours are a lot more practical. And judging from the time it took for the effect to wear off, it was pretty underpowered. Still, our culture could manufacture one just like it, if we wanted to. Likewise with his 'chariot.' It had the same overdecorated, inefficient look as the stunner, but it was an obvious application of the kind of propulsion our aircars use." He shook his head decisively. "No. I've seen nothing to compel belief in the 'many-worlds hypothesis'. Rutherford rules it out unequivocally, and that's good enough for me. You know how cautious he is."
Nagel lost some of his snippiness, but remained argumentative. "How, then, do you account for what we saw?"
"I can't account for it. He—I assume he was a 'he'—didn't belong to any nonhuman race we've encountered. If fact, we've never met any nonhumans even close to our technological level, nor any that looked even remotely similar to us. No, I have no idea who or what that being was, or what he and his advanced technology are doing in our world's past. All I'm certain of is that this is our world's past."
Nagel didn't offer the further argument Jason had expected. Indeed, he seemed relieved, as though he had hoped to be persuaded of this very conclusion. "Very well," he said briskly, "I must accept your professional judgment. It follows, then, that our expedition's original objective is as valid now as it ever was."
For a few seconds, Jason could only stare at him. "Did I just hear you correctly? You expect to simply resume your studies, on a business-as-usual basis?"
Nagel looked puzzled at the other's reaction. "But I thought I understood you to say that we are, in fact, in the actual past—the legitimate past, as it were. Therefore our findings from archaeology and other disciplines actually reflect this milieu, and our inferences from those findings can be checked against observed reality, since—"
A harsh bark of laughter escaped Jason. "Sidney, forget it! Until further notice, this expedition's original purpose is superseded. Our first and only priority is to rescue Deirdre."
Nagel blinked, as though he hadn't thought of that. "Well, er, yes. Of course I am as appalled as you are at what has happened to Ms. Sadaka-Ramirez . . . to Deirdre, I meant to say. And I would do anything to save her. But surely you must realize the futility of such an attempt. First of all, we have no idea where that being took her."
"Yes, we do—or at least I do." Jason smiled. "There are certain things we don't normally tell the non-Service members of temporal expeditions. But circumstances force me to take you into my confidence. The fact of the matter is, the TRDs implanted in you and Deirdre also incorporate a microminiaturized tracking device."
Nagel's features went blank, then grew suffused with outrage. "Do you mean to say that . . . that . . . that a cybernetic device was implanted without my consent . . . ?" He spluttered to an inarticulate halt.
"Now you understand why we don't exactly emphasize this. No point in upsetting people with things they don't need to know. If the expedition had gone as planned, we would have returned to the linear present, your implant would have been removed, and you would have been left wondering how I'd always seemed to know where you were. You see, the device is completely passive, and hooked into my computer implant. Whenever I call up a map of our surroundings to be projected directly onto my optic nerve, your location and Deirdre's appear on it as red dots. So I know where she's been taken. And that's where we're going."
Nagel's indignation was now gone, driven out by alarm verging on horror. "You can't be serious! It's hopeless. This . . . this exercise in quixotry will accomplish nothing except our own deaths—and the loss of an absolutely unique opportunity to resolve important questions about a crucial period of history. You can't—"
"Actually, I can. Which reminds me . . . Excuse me, please." Jason's eyes lost their focus, and his voice took on an uncharacteristically formal tone. "As a result of hostile action by an unidentified nonhuman entity, a member of the expedition is now in unforeseeable danger. Therefore, in accordance with Title III, Chapter Five, Section 17 of the Revised Temporal Precautionary Act of 2364, I declare that a state of extraordinary emergency exists as of the date and time of this recording." He blinked, and focused again on Nagel, who was staring wide-eyed.
"What I just said has been recorded by my computer implant," he explained. "I remind you of what you already know, or should know, from the Articles of Agreement you signed. Under conditions of extraordinary emergency—which I have the authority to declare at my sole discretion—I have equally extraordinary enforcement powers." Jason paused, and chose his next words with care. "I also remind you that I just killed four armed men—two of them while paralyzed from the waist down. I mean no reflection on you when I say that you could not stop me even if you had the legal right to try."
There was absolute, dead silence. Jason let it continue for a couple of heartbeats, then leaned forward into the firelight and spoke in a very different tone of voice.
"Listen, Sidney, I intend to bring all of us back alive. I've never lost a single member of an expedition I've led, and I see no reason to start now. Together, you and I can get Deirdre back. Whoever this bogus god is, and wherever he came from, he's accustomed to pushing around frightened primitives. He doesn't know what he's dealing with. When he finds out, he's going to be one very surprised deity. That will be our advantage."
The pep talk seemed to have an effect on Nagel. He swallowed once, and looked a little less frightened. He still wore a lost look, though. "But . . . where has Deirdre been taken?"
"Not far," Jason assured him. "Only about seven or eight miles, in fact—to Tiryns."
"Tiryns? But why there?"
"Who knows? Maybe the local wanax works for this 'god' like those bandits. We'll just have to see what the situation is when we get there—which we'll do tomorrow." Jason used the point of his blade to draw a simple map in the dirt beside the fire. "Tiryns is to the east, around the head of the Gulf of Argos. We'll go there directly, skirting the gulf. It'll mean going through more swamps, but we can make it by nightfall. How much can you tell me about what we're likely to find there?"
"Not a great deal," Nagel admitted. "What we won't find are the massive cyclopean walls for whose ruins Tiryns will be noted in our day. Those date from a period three centuries from now. There will doubtless be some kind of fortification on the summit of the rocky promontory, but it will surely be a wooden stockade like what we saw at Argos. Oh, and Tiryns is practically on the coast now; the sea, which in our century will be a mile away, is believed to have come within a hundred yards of the wall in this era." Nagel paused, then resumed reluctantly. "There is one other thing. Ordinarily, I would not give it much weight, as it is pure legend, without any archaeological verification. But now . . . after some of the things I've seen . . ."
"Yes?" Jason prompted.
"Remember what I said about Acrisius?"
"Yes. You said that the myths include a ruler of Argos by that name, who had a great-grandfather named Danaos."
"Well, according to those same stories, Acrisius had a twin brother named Proetus. The two of them were bitter enemies, and fought a succession war. It was finally resolved by an agreement under which Acrisius kept Argos while Proetus got Tiryns."
"Oho! So now we know why Acrisius was so relieved that we were going to Lerna and not to Nauplia, past Tiryns and brother dearest. I bet it also explains why he was so reticent about the bandits infesting the swamps. They probably work for Proetus, infiltrating the borders. And since they also work for this 'god,' it means that Proetus is tied in with him . . . so he naturally took Deirdre to Tiryns. Yes, it all fits."
"I caution you that this is all pure legendry, and not necessarily to be relied on." An afterthought seemed to overtake Nagel. "Oh, yes; the stories also mention that Acrisius had no sons, just a daughter named Danaë. Proetus seduced the young Danaë, his own niece—one of the reasons for the bad blood between the two brothers."
Jason nodded sagely. "That would do it."
"Afterwards, however, Danaë—"
"That's enough for tonight, Sidney," Jason yawned. "Let's get as much sleep as we can, and start out at dawn. My implant will wake me." He rolled over, wrapping his cloak around him, and composed himself for sleep. Nagel could only follow suit.
One thing at Tiryns was as per expectations: the entrance ramp that led up the eastern side of the low promontory to the fortress that sat atop the usual straggle of huts, sheds, shacks, stables, artisans' workshops, and all the refuse-strewn clutter that artists' conceptions of archaeological sites in their heyday never seemed to show
The fortress itself was the expected wooden affair; as they ascended the ramp they were not overshadowed by the massive cyclopean tower and casemated galleries that would later make this one of the most remarkable pieces of military engineering to survive from the Bronze Age world. But the stockade enclosed the same general area as the later stone citadel, Nagel observed, and the rooftops visible above it suggested that the palace occupied the same location.
Jason listened to him with only half an ear, for he was more interested in the group of guards ahead of them, at the top of the ramp outside the gate. In the August twilight—he and Nagel had taken their time, arriving from the marshes to the west and working their way around through the inner town—those guards stood dressed and equipped exactly like those Jason had seen at Argos. They also held the same kind of spears, and their leader also had a short thrusting sword not unlike Jason's. Their hands tightened on those weapons as the two strangers approached.
"Rejoice," Jason greeted them formally. "We seek the hospitality of Proetus' hall." A few conversations in the lower town had established that the local wanax indeed bore that name. "I am Jason, a warrior of Aetolia. This is Synon, a cousin of my father, who was a steward to the house of Oeneus."
The captain of the guard showed no reaction at the last name, and Jason mentally sighed with relief. Nagel had recalled Oeneus as a mythical king of Aetolia, and they had been betting that he, like Danaos here in the Argolid, had been real, and that his descendents still ruled.
"Very well, then. You may enter. But things are a little unsettled." The bearded face under the boar's-tusk helmet wore a look utterly foreign to Jason's world, but which he had come to recognize in this one. "The wanax was visited by a god last night! Eurymedon himself!"
Jason and Nagel made the appropriate signs. "A high honor for Proetus," Jason said respectfully, while making surreptitious eye contact with Nagel, who he was sure would later tell him who Eurymedon was, or was supposed to have been. At the moment, his uppermost thought was, not Hyperion. Evidently there were at least two of these beings at large on second millennium b.c. Earth, unless one was playing multiple roles.
"I myself saw the god's chariot descend," the guard captain continued as he motioned his men to open the gate. "He bore a woman with him."
"A woman?" Jason wondered how many questions he dare ask. At least he need not ask if she was still here; he knew she was. "Was she a gift for Proetus?"
"How should I know? It's not my place to ask about such things. Just be on your best behavior, that's all."
They passed through the gates and up an inner ramp, covered by its own overhanging stockade, then turned right through another gate into a courtyard opening onto an inner court beyond which was the megaron. Jason was reflecting that it was more impressive than Acrisius' establishment in Argos when he felt a tug on his tunic sleeve. It was Nagel, drawing him a little back to whisper in his ear.
"This is very similar to the palace that Schliemann will excavate in the nineteenth century! They'll build the stone walls around it later, but any rebuilding they do in here will follow the original plan closely. I could almost find my own way through here."
Jason shushed him, unable to share his archaeological enthusiasm but hopeful that he wasn't fooling himself about his knowledge of this fairly labyrinthine place—a knowledge that might prove useful. Then they traversed the porch and entered the throne room itself.
The evening's drinking by Proetus and his warriors had already commenced, presided over by the wanax from a throne set against the wall to the right of the central hearth. He was, Jason immediately decided, not really Acrisius' twin. (Come to think of it, there were an awful lot of twin brothers in Greek mythology. Maybe Nagel could explain why that was.) He wasn't quite as tall, and his features were narrower. He was also significantly younger, though still of above average age for an active man—which one got the definite impression that he was—in this era. His beard was still solid dark brown, and worn with the fashionable turned-up mustache that Jason had been trying to cultivate.
The guard captain stepped before him. "Son of Abas, Jason and Synon of Aetolia seek to serve under you." It was the standard formula for introducing strangers who were requesting the hospitality that was almost always granted in the absence of a good reason not to (for one never knew when one was going to need it oneself). But Jason wondered if Proetus might take it literally. Word in the lower town was that he was aggressively recruiting.
The wanax raised his right hand in formal greeting and gazed at them with the intense concentration of the partially drunk. "Rejoice. What brings you from the house of Oeneus?"
Jason had been expecting that. "There was a blood-feud, lord. We ourselves were not directly involved in it, but certain of our relatives were. We wished to commit no acts that would require purification—"
"Wise," Proetus nodded.
"—so we thought it best to remove ourselves to the south for the time being. Naturally we sought out the hall of a ruler known to enjoy the special favor of the gods." That was the closest Jason dared come to inquiring about last night's visit by Eurymedon. He hoped Proetus would take the cue and indulge in some tipsy self-congratulation over his intimacy with the immortals.
Unfortunately, the wanax merely gave an indulgent gesture. "Be welcome. Sit down and drink. We will talk further when—" The guard captain approached, and whispered something in Proetus' ear. The latter looked annoyed, and muttered something Jason couldn't quite make out. The captain whispered anew, with more urgency. Proetus sighed, took another pull on his wine, and addressed his new guests.
"You must pardon me. A servitor of mine—a low fellow, but not without his uses—has arrived, with a report he insists will not wait." He nodded to the captain, who turned to the door and gestured peremptorily.
Two guards led in a scruffy-looking type who looked very out of place in this hall. Jason overheard a mutter of disapproval from the aristocratic warriors behind him. Proetus silenced it with a wave and glared at the new arrival.
"Well, you miserable puddle of dog vomit, what is this news that cannot wait for my regular report from Lydos?"
"Lydos is dead, lord," the man mumbled. "All of us are dead, except me and Brasidas—and he has a ruined face. You see, Lydos sent me back to our camp with Brasidas after—"
"Talk sense, clown!" roared Proetus. The man groveled. Jason now recognized him, and he held perfectly still, and hoped Nagel was doing likewise. "Tell me what happened from the beginning."
"Eurymedon appeared to us, lord!" A gasp of indrawn breath filled the hall at the blurted declaration. "He commanded us to take a party of two men and a woman who were traveling south from Argos. They showed fight, though, and killed two of us—but then the god himself came, carrying one of the heads of the Hydra which spout flames and turn men to stone!"
Now the hall was suspended in a silence of primal fear. Jason considered trying to make a break for it, only to reject the idea. Nagel's reactions would be too slow, even if he didn't freeze up altogether.
"Afterwards," the bandit resumed, "the god departed with the woman. That was when Lydos sent me back with Brasidas. Afterwards, I returned . . . didn't want to miss my share of the loot, y'understand. But Lydos and Paralos were dead—and the two men who'd been turned to stone were gone!"
"What?" Proetus rose to his feet in a rage. "You lie, pig! You stole the loot for yourself, and now you want my protection when Lydos and the others come looking for you. Guards, beat the truth out of him!"
"No, lord! By all the gods, I speak the truth!" The bandit looked around wildly at the approaching guards . . . and his eyes bulged as he glimpsed Proetus' two new guests. "It's them, lord! The two who were with the woman!"
For an instant, Proetus stared openmouthed and the guards halted in confusion.
"Get out, Sidney!" Jason yelled, shattering the hall's stunned silence. Simultaneously, he drew his sword and, with a foot, sent a low bench skidding across the floor into two guards' legs. As they fell in a heap, he ran for the door, grabbing Nagel by the arm.
The tableau was broken, and Proetus' guests rose, bellowing and fumbling for their weapons. Jason propelled Nagel toward the door with a shove and turned on the crowd, cutting the air with a series of whistling sword slashes that made them draw back. One man dived under the sword and tackled Jason's legs. Jason brought the sword's pommel down on his head and felt the grappling arms go limp. He kicked the unconscious form away and brought his sword back up just in time to thrust it into the belly of an onrushing warrior. He withdrew it with a twist, and a string of entrails came out with it. He reversed it and stabbed another man. Then he was free of the press and sprinting for the door . . . and, out of the corner of his eye, saw a guard grasping Nagel from behind while another man punched him repeatedly in the stomach.
Muttering a curse, Jason turned away from the beckoning door and threw his sword-dagger. It wasn't intended as a throwing weapon, but it flew straight. Missing Nagel's head by inches, it pierced the eye of the guard who was holding him. At appreciably the same instant, Jason arrived, kicked the second guard in the crotch. He yanked his blade out of the already-dead guard's head and grabbed Nagel—who was moaning and trying to go into fetal position—and tugged him toward the door.
It was too late. A crush of rancid bodies landed atop the two of them, pinning Jason's sword arm to the floor and pressing his face down so that he never saw the club that descended on his head, sending him into an oblivion of exploding stars followed by darkness.