by John Dolan
The bubble vanishes; his mother is gone. Akilles is back on the same old Trojan beach, where Agamemnon rules. He can see right down the beach to the big, black goat-hair tent where Agamemnon sits and drinks, where they’ve taken his favorite slave girl to be used by the man he hates most in the world.
But Thetis is already on her way to the overworld, to lobby for her doomed son. She flies straight to Zeus’ throne and clasps the Godfather’s knees with both hands before he can ward her off.
This is the approved suppliant gesture, a very serious matter. Not even the father of the gods can refuse a woman who has taken his knees in her hands.
Zeus grumbles—the thunder—and writhes—the lightning—and finally screams, “All right! I’ll do it!”
And Thetis subsides, her foam-bubble ebbing from the patriarch’s knees, flowing back into the sea.
Now her son will be avenged. Now they’ll see, and die. Many.
2
STICK TO WAR; LOVE IS TOO DANGEROUS
NOW ZEUS HAS TO KILL even more of the Greeks. His first thought, a painful, wincing one: “Hera’s not going to like this.” His wife and sister Hera always knows what he’s up to, and she’s soft on the Greeks.
She’s permanently mad at him anyway, because he’s just an old horndog pretending to be in command when he can’t even command his own penis.
These people were very down on lust. That’s one of the ways they weren’t like us. We love lust. They didn’t. It was too dangerous, and it gave women too much power. So lust is a bad thing in this story. To these people, a real man doesn’t get led around by his dick. And if he does, he’s not a man at all. A stud, to their way of thinking, is a sissy. And above all, a sissy/stud is dangerous, capable of wiping out an entire city.
The man who started this whole war was a stud, a Trojan prince named Paris, fitting for a man with the sexual ego of Pepé Le Pew. The only reason he didn’t drive a Porsche or wear Ray-Bans was because the infrastructure wasn’t there yet. He’d have defected to Malibu in a second if the airport had been ready. And this princeling, Paris, had the chance to judge a beauty contest of three female gods. And that’s what got Troy besieged.
It was all a plot by the goddess Hate. She is a great and ancient goddess around the shores of the Mediterranean, then and now. Read the news if you doubt it.
What set her off was that she got left off the guest list for an important wedding, the nuptials of Akilles’ parents, Thetis and a mortal king named Peleus.
You know how hate and weddings go together. So naturally Hate was offended. She brooded a long, long time; Hate always comes up with the best plans. She went down to her stinking cellars, where the groaning never stopped, the chains always clanked, and the fumes would have made a buzzard faint.
She smelted and hammered and filed, and at last she had a perfect gift: an apple, pure gold, inscribed in sweet cursive, “For the most beautiful.” A Hell weapon. She drops it among the dancers at Thetis’ wedding feast, who are too drunk to wonder why a golden apple has rolled onto the dance floor. Meanwhile, Hate oozes back to her lab like the shadow of a tarantula, giggling to herself.
As soon as they see it rolling across the floor, flashing, all the goddesses at the party want that apple. They’ve been eyeing that handsome Trojan prince, Paris. One of them comes up with a flirty drunk plan, a beauty contest among the top three goddesses: Hera, wife and mother, relentless virtue incarnate; Athena, her fierce, brilliant daughter, master of war, cunning, strategy; and Afroditi, sweet girl-god of love. The contest, they decided, would be judged—giggle-giggle—by, oh, let’s say, by that handsome Trojan prince, Paris.
No sane man would have accepted that job. Paris did. And if a smart man had been forced to choose one of the three, he’d have gone with Hera, Zeus’ battle-ax, the Godmother; and if not her, then Athena, the androgyne brainiac/warrior, a terror as an enemy, but the best ally a man could have.
So what does Paris, with his idiot studliness, go and do? He actually picks a winner based on looks and gives the prize to Afroditi, ditz-goddess of love and distraction, useless in a world of arranged clan marriages and endless war. And that’s why Troy will die soon, and everyone in it will die or be enslaved. Love kills.
The three goddesses tried to bribe him, of course—this is Greece, after all. And the first two, the big two, offered bribes that still make you drool. Hera told Paris he could be king of the entire world if he just gave her the damn apple. She was pretty drunk, but she’d have gone through with it. He wasn’t interested. He turned her down, the idiot! Then Athena took him aside and made him an offer no real prince would have refused: her powers, her advice, her friendship for life, in war and peace. A man named Alexander took that deal, many centuries later, and did well with it. There are cities named after him everywhere.
But Paris, the idiot, the stupid stud animal, shrugs and goes to the last and least of the goddesses, the giggly airhead Afroditi. She swings her hair back, slides her fingers down his arm, and whispers that he can have the most beautiful woman in the world if he picks her.
Which is stupid. This isn’t California, this is a world of hunger and war, where you can have each and every woman in any city you own. With Hera’s help, Paris could’ve had every city in the world, so by definition all the women would be his; with Athena’s fearsome expertise, he could have taken any city that held a woman worth having. Who needs love when you’ve got the world at spear-point?
He’s too vain to see it. He wants to have the world’s most beautiful woman fall in love with him, a sappy story. A fool’s story.
So he picks Afroditi. The two greater goddesses shawl themselves in darkness and vow hate for Paris and his people forever. Afroditi takes her apple, giggles, and gives him a thank-you kiss.
Oh, she kept her word to give him the most beautiful woman in the world. Which was the worst thing she could have done to Paris’ poor Trojan clan.
Afroditi wafted over to Sparta and blew powdered ecstasy into the nostrils of the queen, Helen, most gorgeous woman alive. Next morning she’s gone, eloped with Paris.
Disaster. See, Helen was married at the time … and not to just any fool. No, to a fool named Menelaos, who happened to be Agamemnon’s brother. And this is not a world of no-fault divorce. No-fault murder, yes; no-fault divorce, never.
Next thing you know, Paris and Helen have skedaddled, with Afroditi’s trancey dazed perfumes enclosing them in a frail bubble that pops inside the walls of Troy.
And they’ve been hiding in their doomed Trojan love-nest for nine long years, plenty of time to repent at leisure. This is what love gets you. Love will get your kin killed.
Agamemnon’s family, the house of Atreus … they’re the best haters in the world. So before Paris and Helen had wafted over the Aegean to their Trojan boudoir, Agamemnon had started making war, gathering all the clans, every man in Greece who could hold a spear. He promised them loot, he called in favors from five generations back, he threatened to visit their towns in a non-friendly manner if they hesitated.
And soon he and his shamed gelding of a brother had the biggest army Greece ever produced. Those are their ships, lined up along the beach near Troy nine years later, rotting. Many of the warriors who came over looking for loot or women are dead, but the rest are never leaving, not while Agamemnon’s pure hate still lives.
The Greeks have worked very hard for the last nine years to make sure the country around Troy will never be habitable again. They’ve killed the best men and boys in the city, chopped down every olive tree within twenty miles, made a point of shitting and pissing on every sacred shrine in the countryside, polluted the wells with dead donkeys and dogs, killed the men and raped the women of every village allied with Troy, and eaten all the livestock up and down the coast.
And sooner or later, the Greeks will get lucky and breach the walls. The Greeks only have to be lucky once; they outnumber the Trojans by three to one, so as soon as they breach the walls, it’s all over. They can wait
. Sooner or later, the Trojans will make a mistake, and they’ll all die, and their sons too. Even Hektor, Paris’ much better brother, the Trojan champion, the one man on Earth who could go three rounds with Akilles. Well, two rounds maybe.
The Trojans are doomed, and they know it. They’ll lie unburied on the dust fields outside the walls, to be gnawed by dogs. Their wives and daughters won’t die, but they’ll wish they had, as they’re sold at auction, passed from one bloody hand to another in trade for a few coins or some livestock.
Now you see why real men don’t do love. It’s too dangerous. Real men stick to killing and war. Because it’s safer.
3
MORALE
AGAMEMNON IS SLEEPING. He drinks a lot of wine, and spends most of his days sleeping it off. Tonight is no different, though a new girl is lying next to him—Briseis, the girl he grabbed from Akilles. She is reacting to her first night with the king of kings by weeping softly while Agamemnon snores. He is so different from her last master, Akilles. Belonging to Akilles had been a shock, then something else, and finally something she would never have described as pleasant, not out loud. She saw so clearly what Akilles himself would never see: He was just a good boy, in the body of Death itself. He himself never noticed his moments of decency, would have been shamed if he had; but she noticed them.
Whereas Agamemnon … ugh. All the other girls say Agamemnon killed his own daughter. She never believed it till this night. Now she knows for certain it’s true. She wishes Akilles had killed her rather than let her go to this man. If Akilles had cared for her at all, he would have killed her. She hates him now, though not as much as she hates, with every heartbeat, the mound of hairy back rising and falling beside her. It goes without saying that she hates Agamemnon more than anyone in the world.
Zeus isn’t very fond of Agamemnon either, and he’s watching the two of them, watching with his eyes closed as he sits on his great rock throne. He has a promise to keep, the one he made to Thetis, the minor but lovely, so very lovely, sea goddess. He promised to kill some Greeks to please her. To avenge her son. That’s what it is to be godfather, one favor after another, calling them in or handing them out, keeping a rough body count for future calling-in purposes.
The deal … yes, he remembers now, breathing as slowly as the tectonic plates: He is going to kill a lot of Greeks to please Thetis, to show them they need her precious son.
Well, why not? Akilles is a good boy, half-god; they all went to his mother’s wedding. Besides, everyone knows—the poor boy is not long for this world. A shame, because he’s one of the few mortal/god hybrids who bred true to the God side of the family. Zeus can think of certain full gods like Ares, so-called “God of War,” who aren’t half the god-material Akilles is. But Ares is a full-blood, and Akilles a half-breed, so Ares will live forever as a cowardly murderer, and Akilles is going to die, die, die. Zeus has it all down, the time, the place, the weapon, and it just can’t be helped. You have to have rules.
But in the meantime, it’ll be a pleasure, killing some of the Greeks who’ve offended Thetis’ brave son. Hardly even counts as a favor; more like fun. Just to see Agamemnon squirm. The Gods don’t like Agamemnon any more than Briseis does. Nobody likes him. The camp dogs don’t like him, run away when they see him.
So Zeus chuckles deeply, on the Richter scale, and decides to start with Agamemnon. Yes, let it start inside that fool’s skull. Let’s infect that little wet world and let it spread until half the Greeks are dead.
Zeus calls. Without words, it comes: A Bad Dream. It floats in mid-air before the Godfather, revolving, every point on its green sphere pulsing with tendrils eager to make a connection with you, with anyone, to infect you with terrors and lies you never even imagined, sights from Pluto’s horror-world under the earth that you can never un-see, once they’ve been squirted into your sleeping brain. One of the gods’ favorite weapons; the gods have N-space warehouses full of these things, whispering and vibrating in endless rows, waiting to be sent on a mission.
The dream’s tendrils reach out lovingly toward Zeus, but he’s immune. He invented these things. His eyes are still closed, but he is instructing the dream. A nanosecond to load, and it hums lovingly, ready to obey. He opens his eyes and says, “Go.”
Briseis has turned on her side now, away from Agamemnon, as far as the couch will allow. She sees a green flare through her eyelids and ignores it. She’s seen enough.
The Dream is humming a high keen as it probes Agamemnon, a wonderful subject—such self-love, such malice, such power and stupidity! The Dream keens its thanks to Zeus for this mission, and injects its lies.
Agamemnon dreams that Nestor is shaking him awake, shouting, “Listen, Agamemnon, my king! O noble one, your time has come at last! I come directly from the throne of Zeus with a message!”
The Bad Dream giggles to itself at this point; after all, isn’t that the truth, in a way? Didn’t Zeus, father of them all, send it to Agamemnon with this message? As so often the Bad Dream sighs that it can never reveal the funny side of its endlessly interesting job. Ah well!
For a second, it turns Nestor’s head in the dream into itself, a green pulsing sphere with jellyfish tendrils licking out toward any mental activity it senses. Agamemnon starts to wake in terror. The Bad Dream is ashamed—unprofessional!—and sends Agamemnon waves of comfort and vanity, his favorite food.
The sleeper relaxes again, and the Bad Dream, in character as the stolid, honest old baron Nestor, intones: “Hear me, Agamemnon Atreus-son! The Gods have united behind us, Hera has persuaded Zeus to take our side, all the clans are with us, and Troy will fall as soon as we advance! March on the city! Now!!”
Agamemnon murmurs, sighs, and smiles in his sleep. The Bad Dream caresses his pocked face one more time, this time for its own pleasure, and vanishes.
Agamemnon wakes, feeling odd. “Pleased,” or “happy,” one of those words people use. Strange, but never mind. He has work to do. The girl, the new one—what’s her name? Something with a B … she seems to be gone already. Strange, the way they always seem to wake early and go off. Chores, primping, who knows? He has an army to assemble.
Then, in a pure Agamemnon moment, he has himself a better idea. Agamemnon is always getting a better idea, and may the gods help anyone on his side when that happens.
He thinks, “Why attack Troy? That’s too simple! Too obvious!” Like all truly stupid people, Agamemnon hates the obvious.
“No,” he thinks, “I’ll test my army! I’ll see who’s really loyal enough to me. I’ve already got Zeus’ word, through his dream, that we’ll take Troy as soon as we advance. So why let disloyal bastards share in the booty? I’ll call an assembly—I’ll act all mopey, tell them it’s hopeless, we’ve tried for nine long years and it’s not working, blah blah blah … perfect! O god, I’m so smart I scare myself sometimes! The cowards and shirkers and traitors, who’ve always hated me—they’ll flee! So only the loyal ones will march into Troy with me! I won’t have to share the booty and the slave girls with any of them!”
He slaps his thigh at the brilliance of his plan. Then he realizes there’s yet another bonus, the sweetest of all: “Akilles will have to watch us trooping back to the ships so loaded down with loot we can barely sing a hymn of gratitude! It’ll kill ’im, seeing us like that! Beautiful!”
Zeus, not guessing quite how stupid Agamemnon can be, is waiting for the dream to take effect, for the Greek armies to march from the beach to the walls of Troy as the dream commanded. Instead, he zeroes in on the Greek camp to find Agamemnon has called … an assembly? Why an assembly? Zeus is disgusted. He says to his “cupbearer,” Ganymede, his boy, “Look at this idiot! He’s so stupid you can’t even trip him up properly! Some of these mortals are so slug-stupid you can’t even warp their brains with a tailor-made false dream! I send him a dream that he should march on Troy, and the moron calls a meeting! What is he even think—” At this point Zeus decides to find out what’s going on; he blinks his eyes shut, look
s at what’s in Agamemnon’s mind, then opens them and says, “Oooooo, I can’t even … that is the STUPIDEST plan I’ve ever …” He turns to Ganymede, who is kneeling now before his throne, as so often before, pushes the boy’s head away and says, “No, not now, I have to … can you believe it? This idiot Agamemnon has actually tried to improve on the carefully sabotaged plan I gave him. Some people you can’t even sabotage; they’re just too stupid. Apollo was right; just kill the idiots, but if I did that, Hera—you know her …” The boy nods, with feeling. He knows Hera all right.
Agamemnon is in fine form. He has all the barons filing into his tent. He has center stage and a cunning plan; he’s in heaven.
He walks up and down, excited, talking in a stage whisper:
“My noble friends, this will be the first of two meetings I’ve planned today. This one, you can see, is just us, the noble-born, the kings. After it’s finished I’ll have a big outdoor show for the spear-carriers. See, something big has happened. I had a dream last night, straight from Olympos, from Zeus Himself! He came to me in the form of Nestor—” pointing to the old fool, who blushes proudly – “… and we all know why that was: because we all trust Nestor, everybody loves Nestor! Sign of trust, reliability, and so on. So the dream is a definite valid prophecy. And in this dream, Nestor, I mean Zeus in the form of Nestor, told me this …” Dramatic pause. “Friends, we will take Troy first time out! No opposition. All the gods are with us. We’ll roll into the city like a boulder through a herd of goats.”
The nobles cheer, beginning to believe. But Agamemnon holds his hand up to quiet them, goes on: “Wait, there’s more! When I woke up, I thought, ‘Why let all the traitors and the liars and the cowards, and you know very well this horde is full of them … why let them in on the loot and the glory?’ So here’s my plan: after this meeting I call a second outdoor assembly for the commoners and tell them, ‘Woe is me, soldiers! It’s no use! These Trojans have called up all of the mainland of Asia, hordes of alien freaks! We’ll never beat them all! Let’s go home, boys, home to the wives and the kiddies!’”
