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On Ice Pythia Chapter Three |
"He’s crazy." Marytn closed the door to my office and leaned against it, his expression almost shell shocked. I couldn’t really blame him – or argue with his conclusion, since it was one I was busy facing myself. Our miracle – our sleeping beauty – had sounded rational enough. But after those first few tentative sentences, everything he had said had sounded like complete and utter nonsense.
"Ice dragons. Demigods. Magic." The man known to hold the wildest and most controversial theories in his field shook his head at each impossible word, refusing to accept them. "Perhaps it’s something in the translation."
"Perhaps it’s something in our view of history." I frowned, thumbing along the selection plate set into my desk until it offered up the reference I was looking for. "Maybe – " I paused to tap in the phonetic syllables of our sleeping beauty’s name so that the deskcom could run a search for it. "He believes what he’s been telling us. The references are too – easy, too immediate, to be anything other than sincere. He takes the world he talked about for granted. Oh - " I noted, frowning at the text the reading screen was now scrolling up for my attention, "I think we might find he’s got a silver tongue in that mouth of his, and we may have to consider some of what he says to be stretching the truth a little, but – I don’t get the impression that he’s deliberately lying to us."
"Neither do I." Martyn moved across to join me, sliding his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my shoulder so that he could see the screen at the same time that I did. It felt good to have his warmth at my back, and I leant into his support, accepting the intimacy without protest. "But even if he believes it – Ellen, he’s spouting nonsense, not history. We ask him why he was in Siberia and he tells us that a god sent him and his partner on a quest to capture an ice-dragon, so that a fire demon the god had accidentally unleashed could be caught and sent back to Tarterus … Madness. Delusion."
"Mythology," I capped, jabbing my finger at the screen so that the passing words froze in place. I hadn’t recognised our hero’s name when he’d offered it; I’d never heard it pronounced that way. But the reference had found it. It practically jumped off the screen at me. "He thought I was someone called Alcmene, remember?"
"Uhuh. And he called meJason. Now he was a hero. The first man to navigate the Black sea and open the trade routes to Colchis."
"They sailed to find the Golden Fleece," I corrected warmly. Martyn is a historian’s historian – forever trying to find the core of reality behind the glamour of legends and tales. "Look at the names of his crew."
I ran my finger down the list – past Autolycus, son of Hermes, past Castor and Pollux, past Deucalion, past Euralyeus, son of Cisteus, past Glaucas – and stopped at one specific name.
"Hercules, son of Zeus," Martyn read, and shrugged. "So? He turned up all over the place. Even our friend downstairs claims to have known him."
I moved my finger a little lower. "Maybe he did."
"Ea –o-lay –us, son of Iphicles. Hold a moment … Ea –o … ~Iolaus?~"
"No-one can be certain of how these names were pronounced. No-one but him, that is He was there, Martyn. Two and half thousand years ago, living in the world that created these myths. He looked at me and he saw Alcmene, the mother of the Son of Zeus. The demi-god he claims was his best friend. He looks at you and sees Jason, Captain of the Argonauts, King of Iolcus –"
"Corinth," he corrected, then, at my look, "well, that’s what - Iolaus called him."
I smiled. "Delusion?"
"Co-incidence." His denial held less conviction than before.
"Too many of them," I sighed, letting the list scroll off the screen. I turned, returning my lover’s embrace with one of my own. "We have three possibilities here, ~my lord.~" I used the formal Greek and he had the grace to blush a little. "Either we are the victims of an incredibly detailed, but ridiculously flawed hoax, twenty five centuries buried in unpolluted ice has so scrambled our guest’s memories that he’s confusing his own myths with his personal history, or …"
"Or we have a genuine, mythological hero sleeping in the Museum’s basement. Ellen – that’s too wild a theory even for me. It would mean everything we think we know about history is – well, a lie. Now – I don’t think we’re victims of a hoax. Idug him up, remember? Out of virgin ice, undisturbed for centuries. He’s the genuine article all right, but … maybe the second option is the obvious one."
"Maybe." I was unconvinced. "I’m not sure it really matters. If we talk to him long enough, we’ll find the truth, one way or the other. Besides – " I slid away from his arms, walking across the room to pick up the display slab that sat on one my book shelves. Stored within it, held forever in a timeless moment, was a fragment of the strange crystal shell that had protected and preserved the man who now slept several floor below us. We had subjected it to every test we could think of – and some we made up on the spot – but it had stubbornly refused to reveal its secrets. We didn’t even know what it was made of. "How is a man preserved like that – held at the moment of his death, as fresh as if his last breath had been taken less than a second before? We’ve already labeled it a miracle. And miracles are – "
"The gift of the gods." Martyn shook his head with bemusement. "It’s just so – bizarre."
I nodded, tilting the display so that the crystal glittered in the light. It was so delicate – and yet it had protected the treasure within it for two and half thousand years. We had asked him what had happened – what his last memory might be – and he’d had to struggle a little for the answer, dredging matter of-fact magic out of the tangle of his thoughts.
~The dragon took us by surprise. I think Herc was knocked aside. Knocked out, maybe, I’m not sure. I remember it coming straight at me. Rearing up, ready to strike. I had nowhere to run – but I did have Celesta’s veil. See - we were planning to use it to keep the beast still while we took the scales we needed. She’d said it would hold a soul between life and death, for as long as it was needed. So, given a choice between becoming dragon chow and falling several hundred feet to my death – well, I guess I did what anyone would do. I wrapped the veil around me and I jumped into the crevasse …~
It took three weeks to configure the bio-habitat. Not the technical stuff as such – that only took a couple of days. But the rest of it – force growing the plants I’d requested, fabricating the building and the artifacts –all that took time. It was time Martyn and I used to good effect, spending long hours in Iolaus’ company, gaining his trust, learning more and more about him – and about ourselves at the same time.
We’d expected him to be unwell for a while; a full re-juve will do that, even to someone who takes the treatment at an early age. But his blood and body were completely free of the many pollutants which we take for granted. The nanobots had no need to balance his metabolism or clean poisons from his system; the repair work they faced was minimal, and the fact that he was in superb physical condition to begin with simply made it easier still. He suffered two days of retro-sickness – the inevitable result of having all your built in bio-clocks reset at cellular level – and after that he was fine, waking early and eager, bright eyed and curious about everything.
I wasn’t surprised at his energy. He’d spent a thousand lifetimes and more asleep; he had a lot to make up for. A lot to learn too – the Board spent hours discussing how exposure to our modern world might ‘pollute’ the purity of his unique existence, while we were busy introducing him to such wonderful concepts as bathrooms, electric light and holo-recordings. We had too: his curiosity was insatiable and his observational skills impossible to ignore. In the early days, the technicians would deal with him through sign language and talk to each other while they were doing so; within a week, he understood enough of what they were saying to call each of them by name, ask for the things he wanted, and converse at a level sufficient to be friendly, if not particularly profound.
As a matter of fact, he picked up much more – and far more quickly – than most people ever suspected. Iolaus is nobody’s fool, and if he’d decided to play dumb while he figured out the situation he found himself in – well, there’s no harm in being cautious, and, as things turned out, it was probably a very sensible thing to do. We conversed in Greek to begin with, of course – he corrected our mispronunciations with amusement and taught us both a number of words and phrases which had no place in the writings of the poets – although it slowly became the language he resorted to only when other people were around.
The Board – most of whom thought him as an acquisition rather than a guest – came to be introduced and went away with mixed feelings. We’d had a replica of his costume fabricated (the original being kept for study and display) and – after a doubtful frown or two at some obvious discrepancies – he’d put it on, heaving a small sigh of relief at finally escaping the flimsy overgown he’d been wearing for days. Barefoot, bearded, and draped in too much silkose, he’d been an exotic enough figure; sheathed in body hugging simleather, and with far too much skin exposed to be called decent, he instantly became the barbarian the Board had warily labeled him. I rather liked the look; it had a raw honesty that tailored suits and formal gowns will never be able to reproduce. It looked even better once he’d shed the beard – the tousled savage turned into a bronzed warrior, his compact and deceptively muscular physique perfectly complimented by the impish, youthful face which emerged from beneath the tangled curls.
He’d asked about his knife when we’d brought him the clothing, but giving him a weapon like that was completely out of the question; for all his charm and undoubted personality, neither Martyn or I dared trust him to that degree. That came later; back then we – like he – preferred to err on the side of caution. Besides, the knife itself was already on display in the public galleries, along with his clothes and his jewelry. I remember challenging him as to why he wanted it – and feeling somewhat foolish when he’d explained that all he wanted to do with it was shave. Martyn laughed and took him off to the bathroom to show him how to used the clippers and the razor kit; he emerged clean shaven, and wearing a grin that would have put a cherub to shame. The difference was startling. Suddenly all the expressive lines of his face were an open book, one written with a decidedly rakish pen.
All those tales he tells – of the women he’s known and the trouble he’s gotten into because of them? I believe every word.
Not that the Board seemed to notice; although I suspect that far too many of them did - and were so mortified at their reactions to finally meeting a man who was not only at ease with his own masculinity but confidently proud of it, that they responded with wary outrage and suspicious hostility. Real men tend to make the high ranking women of my world extremely uncomfortable; they’re used to being treated with deference and obedience. I’m afraid I was just as guilty in many ways. I had taken a husband as a duty, neglected my son for my career, and lost both of them without too many regrets. I had spent long hours studying the times when men had dominated the world and the mess they had made of doing it – and considered myself fortunate to live on Earth, where sense had finally prevailed.
Until Martyn.
Until Iolaus.
One taught me that I could be loved as an equal and still be treated like a queen, and the other taught me – well, so many things, from the difference between surface deference and genuine respect, to the true value of life and how to live it, every day. We have stripped away so much, imposed so many rules and expectations that, while we have an ordered and managed society, it is one where creativity and individualism is oppressed and love struggles to find a place in which it can take root and flower. I have seen my world through fresh eyes, and I no longer like what I see.
I know, now, why my son left - and what it was that he went to seek.
No doubt many of my fellow Board members would rebuke me for being laid astray by romantic ‘notions’ – the reason so many of those old films and books had been banned from public consumption. To them, our newly awakened hero was just another interesting experiment, a specimen to be studied, assessed, and then filed away for future reference. They had little interest in who he was, just what he was – a remnant of the past, precious through rarity and valuable for just being, rather than for what he might teach us of the past. Oh, he entertained them well enough – with his eloquent Greek, which most of them hadn’t bothered to learn before they came, with the way he was dressed and the honest confidence of his body language – but those were also the things that intimidated and unsettled them the most. Savages do not speak in the poetic tongue of the early philosophers; they grunt and show fear when faced with superior technology and civilisation.
Personally, I doubt if we are any more civilised than the people who invented the concept. Iolaus confided in me afterwards that he thought the Board were just like a bunch of old Athenian women he’d run into once. The sort who thought Centaurs were ‘uncouth’ but lurked around the city fountains to catch a glimpse of one; who, he’d said with a grin, condemned the Amazons for their wicked, man hating ways and then went home to henpeck their husbands with enthusiasm. I knew exactly what he meant, although I was more concerned with how he was feeling, than I was about the impression the Board had made. I had begun to realise that Martyn might have been right when he’d questioned my intentions concerning the kind of ‘care’ which we would be taking of our hero. I had thought only of the project and what it might teach us, not how it might affect the man himself. Watching the way the Board treated him triggered the first moments of doubt in my mind - and I had a real fear that he might have resented being put on display like that, as if he were some prize bull or the latest acquisition in the Zoo.
He had expressed a little puzzlement at being locked into his room at night, although I think, to be honest, the reality of his situation hadn’t really registered with him back then. Everything was too new, too intriguing to give him time to think about what came next – and he was grateful that we had given him back the gift of his life, even if he didn’t quite grasp the enormity of what we had done. From the tales he told us, he was no stranger to miracles and - even if you only believe half of what he claims – you can see why he might have no difficulty in accepting something which took my breath away, and still does, whenever I look at him. It is to his credit that, even after he came to realise how restricted his life in the museum was expected to be, he never held it against us – against Martyn and myself, who had restored him out of curiosity and through it, became his friends.
A few days after the visit from the Board, the technicians moved him from the monitoring room into the habitat. He was asleep while they did it – an induced sleep, imposed on him without his knowledge or consent – and they transported him with anxious haste, the lift sled flanked by four armed and armored Guardians as well as the technicians and the porters. Back then I didn’t understand the reason for all that security; they’d made perfectly sure he’d be in no condition to escape, and I couldn’t think of a reason why anyone might want to steal him. He might have been the Institute’s most valuable acquisition for years, but, as far as I was concerned, his value was strictly scientific not pecuniary; there might have been someone, somewhere, prepared to pay the price of several planets to acquire such a unique addition to their personal collections, but I doubted even they would be foolish enough to risk openly raiding the Smithsonian to obtain it.
I was wrong, of course, but I had to find that out the hard way.
The Board even assigned a Guardian to watch the access to the habitat – a very ostentatious gesture, for which I would have reason to be extremely grateful as the months went by. I have never been a supporter of the Guardian initiative; I know that the process is supposed to wipe the mind completely and that the programming is foolproof, but I have never been comfortable with the idea that we put our safety into the hands of men who have previously been responsible for all kinds of atrocities. They say it is far more humane than condemning them to life imprisonment and gives back to society what they have been instrumental in taking. They say many things; the truth remains that we kill their minds and turn them into nothing more than programmed automata.
It is likely to be Martyn’s fate if they catch us now; I don’t think I could live with myself if that were to happen.
The interior of the habitat was – well, beautiful. The architect had risen to the challenge and had somehow managed to construct a small piece of Elysium in what had previously been an empty bio-dome no more than 500 centeres in diameter. There was a marble and gypsum built villa, lying at the foot of a small hill and shaded by a grove of Cedar and Cypress trees. Around it there was a garden filled with flowers, edged by a grape vine on one side and a pair of fruiting olive trees on the other. There was an elegant fountain at the garden’s heart, complete with a column of crystal clear water no more then a centere high; the stream that ran from it filled the sunken bathing pool, which nestled at the villa’s side. Colonnades led up the hill and ended at a replica of an early Grecian shrine, where a rose tree wound its way around a guardian caryatid, and another small fountain bubbled at the heart of a tiny pool. Birds winged their way across a carefully crafted azure sky, and a handful of rabbits nibbled at the grass on the hill, sharing their feast with a milk white goat and half a dozen black faced sheep. It was a setting fit for a Greek god – although if one had taken up residence there, I would have expected to see figures draped in delicate chitons stepping out of the shadows to serve him. Iolaus seemed strangely out of place in all that classical splendour, recreated from the curves of painted vases and the remnants of sculptured carvings. His clothes were too brightly coloured, his presence – even in sleep – somehow too vibrant for a setting clearly designed to contain a poet or a philosopher. I wondered if maybe I should have gone for the Yurt and the Mongolian ponies after all, but it was far too late for me to change my mind. They laid him down on the couch which was the centerpiece of the villa’s main lobby, and Martyn and I sat on the glistening marble steps while we waited for him to wake up, watching the patterns of reproduction sunlight as they painted their way over non-existent hills.
"Maxfield Parrish," he said eventually, stirring at the clean white sand of the garden path with his toe. "He used to paint places like this. You ever see any of his work?"
I shook my head. There’d been a time when I’d been a constant visitor to the art galleries – but I hadn’t been for a long time.
"I’ll send you a folio," he promised. "For your office."
I nodded my thanks, suppressing an almost overwhelming desire to reach across and hold his hand. This was a place for lovers – but I knew we were being monitored and that a great many people would want to see this particular recording. We couldn’t afford to make our personal relationship too public; while casual liaisons between management and staff do happen in the workplace they are usually frowned upon – and my standing on the Board would be uncomfortably compromised. Martyn would just get the sack. There are those who consider it an offence for a man of his position to even speak to a woman of mine outside the work environment, let alone pursue a relationship.
Such are the costs of our ‘civilisation’.
I was beginning to consider them far too high.
The tranq wore off exactly as predicted. The Institute’s latest prize display stirred, woke, and sat up, staring around with wary confusion. We watched as Iolaus got to his feet and took in his surroundings; the room first, and then the landscape outside it. Hope briefly lit his face and he half bounded, half ran, out between the supporting columns and down the steps, ignoring the two us and heading for the heart of the garden. Halfway there his steps faltered. He slowed to a halt and looked up, taking in the arch of the sky.
"~Gods~," he breathed, staring at the patterns of cloud that paraded above him – then again, a word offered with the barest hint of despair. "~Oh,* gods …*~"
His shoulders slumped. His chest heaved once – a soft sigh that came from the heart – and then he turned back towards us, his lips pressed together in wry resignation. "Clever," he observed, walking across to join us on the steps. We made a space for him between us and he dropped into it with another sigh, taking another look up at the sky as he did so. I put my hand to his shoulder; Martyn gave his knee a friendly pat. Bio-dome technology is supposed to be extremely convincing. Perhaps it is – to everyone except a hunter who has spent most of his life on the road and in the forest; who has come to know every intricate mood of the air, the way that wind and weather affects it; who has learnt to read the scents and the sounds of the world around him because his survival may depend on it. He instinctively knew the difference – and his disappointment showed.
"~You wouldn’t want to see the real sky,~" I suggested, squeezing his shoulder with sympathy. "~It’s nowhere near as pretty as this one.~"
"~That’s if you can see it,~" Martyn said thoughtfully. "~I mean - it rains a lot – and if it isn’t raining, then it’s just plain gloomy most of the time.~"
"~And it’s muggy,~" I added, as if I knew all about it. I haven’t spent time outdoors for a long time now – but it’s hard to forget what it’s like. "~Heavy, nasty air. This far south, anyway. It’s a little better up north. In the winter, anyway.~"
"~Siberia was actually rather pleasant. A little hazy maybe, but – not bad as places go these days …~" Martyn trailed off as he registered my warning frown. There are a few pieces of unspoiled wilderness left in the world – as unspoiled as the greenhouse effect allows, that it – but we were trying to make Iolaus feel comfortable in his new home, not giving him a lecture on modern ecology.
"~If you guys are trying to make me feel better,~" the hero sat between us sighed, "~you’re not helping any.~" He took another long glance around, studying the created landscape with a look of weary wisdom in his eyes. "~What you’re saying is, this is all that’s left of my world. Nothing but faded memories … Is that all I am? A misplaced memory that should have been forgotten a long time ago?~"
I shivered, hearing a whisper of truth in his assessment. Museums preserve, look back, and try to restore the vanished past as best they can; their focus is always on the event of yesterday – and that was exactly where I had persuaded the Board to put him. Neatly presented in a display case marked ‘Greece – unusual example of a pre-first century citizen.’
"~Of course not,~" Martyn denied with confidence. "~You think the Fates preserved you out of spite? You survived for a reason, and – I don’t know what that is exactly, but –I know your being here gives us an opportunity we could never even dream of before I found you.~"
Iolaus and I both threw him a sideways look. The Fates? I knew my lover had a romantic streak buried beneath his weathered exterior, but even so … I have no idea what possessed him to say such a thing. It struck a chord with Iolaus though; his expressive features creased into a thoughtful frown.
"~Why me?~" he wondered, clearly a question he’d been pondering for some time. "~Why would they save me and not Hercules? He was the Protector of mankind, the defender of the innocent. Me?~" He quirked an ironic grin – one that had very little humour in it. "~I was just his sidekick.~"
"~I’m sure that’s not true,~" I told him firmly. "~I know you miss your friend – but wouldn’t he be glad to know that you’d survived? Wouldn’t he want you to live – to make the most of this wonderful gift – with or without him?~"
It was a guess on my part – but a good one, going by the look which crossed Iolaus’ face. He glanced down towards the ground, scuffing at the sand and gravel with the toe of his boot. "~Yeah,~" he agreed reluctantly, "~I guess he would.~" He heaved another soft sigh, kicked at a piece of gravel, then looked up, forcing a determined cheerfulness onto his face. "~So - ~" he asked, using both his hands to indicate the expanse of the dome. "~Does everyone get one of these?~"
Martyn nearly choked at the idea – which got him an odd look from Iolaus, who’d asked the question in all innocence, and a decidedly wry smile from me. Even with my rank and standing I am entitled to no more than four private rooms in my community house; living space on Earth has been at a premium ever since the rise in the sea-level topped ten centeres. People have to compete with the acreage needed to produce our food – which is one of the reasons for the New Atlantis project, where they are building undersea habitats and planning to farm the ocean beds. The only way for the average citizen to own the kind of space the bio-dome took up was to move off-world and take their chances in the colonies.
Which was, of course, exactly what a lot of them had done.
"~No.~" I shook my head, considering the man beside me with a real sense of affection. He had a wisdom all his own – but when it came to our world, he was a total innocent. "~Only very special people get this kind of treatment. And you are special, Iolaus. Very special indeed.~"
"~Cool,~" he grinned, bounding to his feet and holding out his hand to help me up. "~You gonna give me the grand tour?~"
I took his hand and let him lift me to my feet, responding to his enthusiasm with a smile. Inside, my heart was breaking. Martyn had been right all along. This was wrong. We had woken him from his endless sleep, offered him friendship and promised him safety – and I had brought him here, to be nothing more than a prisoner, a curiosity to be studied and gawked at. I knew he trusted me - knew that much of that was because of the woman he had initially thought me to be – and I felt as if I had utterly betrayed that trust.
Fortunately, Iolaus had more faith in me than I had in myself. I don’t think he knew about the ‘corders back then, but he had learnt to trust his instincts and they had warned him that we were being watched. He leaned in close as I took his arm to begin the tour.
"~Tell me about your world, Ellen,~" he whispered, almost too low to catch. "~Teach me everything I need to know to make it mine.~"
I didn’t dare look at him. He was asking much more than I had the power to give. He didn’t belong in my world of formal rules and endless strictures, but he didn’t really belong in the Museum, either. He was a free spirit. He needed to be free – and I had no idea how to make that happen.
"~Ellen?~"
Could Alcmene - that strong, independent woman, who had raised the son of a god and made of him a man to be proud of – resist that look, that soft pleading tone? I certainly couldn’t. I found myself turning to him with the barest nod of agreement. All he had asked me to do was teach him – and I could do that much at least.
"~One condition,~" I whispered back, dipping down to show him the strength of the vine, the richness of the soil it had been rooted in.
"~Name it.~"
"~You tell me about your world in return.~"
He grinned. "~Done. And you can tell your farmer he’s over watering this vine. Keep it too comfortable and it’ll never fruit.~"
So that was the bargain we made, there under that faux sky. He kept his side of it – and I have kept mine, as best I could. Would I have done so, had I known where it would lead me? I like to think so.
Because if this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, it is also the noblest – and the one thing in my life I will never regret.
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