The Arms Of Hercules

by Fred Saberhagen

  Somewhere, far behind me now, the stream I had followed from the Upper World had trickled away into the rocks and disappeared. But now again there was water somewhere ahead. I could smell it. It impressed me as the same odor that arises from some deep, natural wells, not quite foul and yet not invitingly clear. One would have to be thirsty indeed to drink willingly from that fount.

  And now, with every step that I advanced, I felt more certain that my feet were on the true descending path. Here I noted that a groove perhaps a foot wide had been deeply worn into the solid rock, as if by the feet of innumerable numbers of the dead, who had come this way before me. Still, no one beside myself was using the passage now.

  There was a murmur of speech from somewhere ahead, voices rising louder now and then, as of two or three people in grim argument. Advancing a little farther, I emerged from the narrow passage into a vast, dim cavern. At a distance of a hundred yards or so, I could perceive dim shapes, as of several people standing on a shore, near a long boat bobbing in the dark and shallow water, almost at their feet.

  It seemed to me that everyone in the world must remember, from stories heard in childhood, that Charon was the boatman who ferried the newly dead across the river Styx; and I had no doubt of who this boatman was, from the moment I first saw him. My adventures since meeting the Hydra had considerably strengthened my faith in legends.

  Pacing steadily closer, I could see the boatman and his clients all more clearly. Charon was a wizened figure, wrapped in dark rags. What little I could see of his face and hands suggested that he was incredibly ancient, yet the way he waved his arms about proved him still briskly active. His boat was as dark as the water it floated on, and some thirty feet long when first I looked at it, though later it seemed shorter. He was alone in the boat now, standing in the rear, from which position he seemed to control his vessel easily with his single pole.

  I suppose I might have waded or swum the river, taking my chances with whatever dangers might lie concealed in the dark water. But I preferred to bend Charon to my will, rather than seem to be avoiding him. It was as if I sought out obstacles for the sheer raging joy of forcing my way through them.

  By now, I thought, my eyes were as well accustomed to the eternal darkness as they were ever going to be. The Styx was broad and gloomy and slow-moving, with the opposite shore visible only as a suggestion of disturbing shadows. Now and then a few bubbles from some unknown source came rising out of the depths.

  Those who stood onshore disputing with the boatman were dim, dark figures, hard to see in any detail, even when I came near them. I took them to be the shades of five or six folk who were new arrivals, like myself. Without thinking about it I at first assumed that, unlike me, they were dead and engaged in the traditional ritual of passage.

  But when I came right in among them, I could perceive these others clearly enough to see that two or three were steadily, audibly breathing, and one even seemed to be gasping in terror and exhaustion. Then they were no more dead than I was, at least not finally. I was reminded of the strange condition of Queen Alcestis when Thanatos had her in his grasp.

  Most of the legendary tales agreed that at the point where I had now arrived, it was necessary for the newly arrived soul to bargain for its passage. In fact, at the moment of my arrival, one of the men in the group was shrilly demanding to be taken across even though he could not pay.

  One of his fellows was nervously trying to calm him, calling him Menippus. I elbowed my way in among the others, stood by the arguer, and would have taken his part in the debate with Charon, except that Menippus glared at me with resentment the first time I opened my mouth on his behalf.

  Charon resented my intrusion, too.

  "I am Hercules, of Cadmia," I told the boatman when he rounded on me with hand outstretched for payment. And in the next breath I demanded: "I have come to this wretched place looking for Thanatos. Where is he?"

  Now Charon looked at me closely for the first time, and his ancient, rheumy eyes went wide. It was doubtless the first time in his miserable life that he had ever heard that question asked; and I saw by his terrified reaction to my name and question that my reputation had preceded me even into Hell. There was no room in his image of the world for any intruder like me. So I waved my club and terrified the boatman into cooperating.

  His voice was quavering, though he tried to make it brave. "Lord Hercules, there is the matter of payment—"

  I had no patience, either, with one who would ask me to pay for this kind of ride. "Payment? Payment! How do you dare to ask me such a question, you damned unhuman monster? How dare you ask such a thing of anyone?"

  "It is . . . it is the custom, sir . . ."

  "To the Underworld with your custom!" I roared out, then paused, thinking that the way I had phrased my defiance somehow did not make sense.

  Next he protested that his boat was too fragile to take the weight of living flesh and bone, but I disallowed that argument, having already seen that some of the other passengers were breathing. With the exception of Menippus, they all seemed willing to be herded along like sheep.

  At last we were off, and I had to put up with no more nonsense from our boatman about being charged for the ride. Charon drove his vessel energetically across the broad, dark river, displaying a vigor that the appearance of his crinkled form suggested was quite impossible. The moment the prow ran ashore on the Hellward bank, I stepped out onto land. As I turned my back on them all, I could hear Menippus resuming his own dispute with the boatman, even after having been ferried across. Now the unhappy passenger was demanding to be returned to the other side, and Charon was responding with abusive threats.

  Later, the legends would tell how Charon was punished with a beating by some lieutenant of Hades for allowing me, a live and breathing man, to pass unhindered. It may be so. Still, I suppose it was not the beating he would have absorbed had he tried to stop me.

  But the fate of the feckless boatman has little to do with the story I have set out to tell. From the shoreline the land sloped up gradually, inland, for thirty or forty paces, and beyond that inclined down again. As I groped and stumbled my way deeper into the Underworld I began to encounter frightening shapes, which I took to be the shades of those who were truly dead.

  Here and there across the dark landscape I became aware of slowly moving groups of faintly glowing, marching images, as well as an occasional individual in isolation. Now, in this much later epoch when I write, I realize more clearly that only a few of all the world's dead could have been represented in that place, even by such tenuous forms and shadow. And when I was there I could distinguish, at first glance, between those who moved in solid form, and the others who were only images.

  Sometimes both types of figure responded when spoken to, and sometimes the words they spoke seemed to make sense; but no real thought or feeling was behind them. They were images that moved and walked and sometimes uttered words; but when I steeled my nerves to touch one, my hand passed right through, so that my palm and fingers for a moment were brightly lighted.

  At first I was truly frightened, for the first time since I began my lonely journey. But when I looked more closely at those that were mere apparitions, I was strongly reminded of the images Atlas had shown me—sometimes these, too, were clear and brilliant, and moved in a way that was almost lifelike. Yet it seemed to me that they were much more like reflections in a fine mirror than they were like spirits who had truly been alive.

  Some of these people were trapped here—or at least their images seemed to be—in the same way Prometheus had been trapped, held by the same kind of fetters as those I had once broken. It occurred to me now that his punishment had been a form of Hell on the surface of the earth.

  * * *

  Gradually but steadily the impression kept growing on me that whoever or whatever had created Olympus seemed to have manufactured Tartarus as well. There were certain similarities, giving the impression, when I thought about it, of common construction uni
ts of some kind. Here again I saw stubby projections from the ground, with a resemblance to tree stumps, but that had an artificial look about them.

  Certain others among the frightful shapes only looked at me, and fled in terror when I tried to question them.

  Every time I thought some individual among them took notice of me, I demanded of her, or him: "I am Hercules, of Cadmia. Where is my wife, Megan? And where is our child?"

  And, when those questions failed, as they did each time, I followed with: "Where is the God of Death?"

  But never did I get a useful answer. None of those I sought were anywhere to be found.

  It was with mixed feelings of joy and fear that I encountered the shade of my own mother, dressed as I had often seen her in sunlight and in life. Almost I expected to see her sewing basket in her hand. But though the figure had come walking toward me, as if drawn by some mysterious affinity, it was only an image and, when it came within arm's length, ignored me.

  I staggered, and then for a moment I could not move at all. "Mother!" I cried out.

  But the eyes of Alcmene's shade were terribly clear and empty, and they looked through me, and then looked on, as if I had not been there at all. There was no awareness in them.

  And what wrung my heart almost beyond endurance was that I was granted one last look at the shade of Megan, and that of our babe held in her arms. I believe the only thing that saved my sanity was what I had learned from Atlas, regarding how the machinery of Olympus still made such counterfeit likenesses of many people at the point of death. How such bright shadows were created and preserved, in pursuit of some vast project whose purpose all living minds had long since forgotten. So I knew, even as I saw her, that it was not truly Megan who walked before me, but only an image, like a reflection in a pond.

  I realize that this explanation leaves uncertain the fate, the nature, of other individuals I encountered in Tartarus, those who still retained their bodies as solid and breathing as my own. But it seems to me that people in that situation have merely been drained of life force, like Alcestis. As we will see, sufficient life remained to certain dwellers in the Underworld to allow them to move and speak, behaving almost normally. I later had good evidence of the fact that when some of these were able to regain the surface of the earth, they were not much the worse for their dread experience.

  Since my visit to the Underworld, I have spoken with wise counselors and have come to understand that human bodies, when imprisoned long enough in that dark realm, change fundamentally, acquire a different nature than the one they were born with. With ordinary mortals, the transformation need not take long—but of course I was protected by my father's power, inherent in each atom of my body.

  For one thing, they became immortal, or so long-lived that they are sometimes assumed to be immune to death. Charon was an example.

  But it is possible for humans in such a situation to be restored to their original natures, if they return to the more mundane world above, where they were bom, and where they naturally die.

  Later, when I had more time to ponder these events at leisure, it occurred to me to wonder whether Charon himself might be one of these, no longer truly human. Yet what was he, if not human?

  But at the time when I was buried in the Underworld, as when I had confronted Atlas under the great bowl of the sky, my mind simply reeled under these complexities and I made no progress in unraveling them.

  The general movement of all the shades and breathing folk around me tended in a certain direction, and I took that heading, too, after pausing to eat the last remaining portion of the food I had brought with me.

  I drank from a small cold stream, right at the point where it came trickling from the rock, and hoped that it was not the beginning of Lethe, the source of all forgetfulness.

  The scattered population whose movement I had been following gradually thinned out in numbers; where the individual shapes were going, I could not say, but there were ever fewer and fewer of them, and in time I was alone.

  After descending a great distance, I was led by a burgeoning red glow to come upon an impressive archway, higher than the walls of Cadmia. This opened into what had to be the throne room of the King of Hell.

  Once I had entered this vast chamber I paused, involuntarily, to gape about me. The height of the ceiling seemed impossible, made more so by the clouds of reddish mist that concealed its true distance.

  At the far end of the great room, the length of a sports stadium from where I stood, there towered high a great black throne, which seemed of a size to seat a Giant comfortably—but the figure occupying it now was no bigger than a man.

  At this depth, the air around me was beginning to turn hot again, and the floor of rock was growing warm beneath my sandaled feet. Drawing a deep breath of the tainted atmosphere, I started the long walk to the throne.

  My hopes rose as I advanced and could see that the black throne was indeed occupied. But he who sat on it was not, to my great disappointment, my enemy Thanatos. Instead, the enthroned figure was one I would have no hope of pummeling in the way I had served Death. After all, Hades, called by some Pluto or Dis Pater, was, with Zeus and Poseidon, one of the three who ruled the universe—or so I had been taught.

  He slouched on the throne, legs crossed, watching my approach with not enough interest to cause him to sit up straight. A crown of some dull metal, formed into a jagged shape, sat crooked on his great, bearded head, and he was twirling some small object in one hand. I was within a few strides of the foot of the throne before I could feel sure of what it was. And then I knew a shock of disappointment: if the Face of Death was here in the hands of Hades, then the last avatar to wear it was surely dead, and all my hope of revenge was in vain.

  This was another god whom I had never seen before, but he knew me, for he nodded and smiled at my approach. I had no doubt that it was Hades himself who sat twirling the Face of Death, which looked like a clear, glassy mask, around his finger, stuck through one of the mask's eyeholes. The thought crossed my mind that he might be pondering which mortal ought to be invested with the powers of Thanatos next. I had no doubt there would be willing applicants.

  Hades had a booming, bellowing laugh, which sounded when I drew very near. I had heard such laughter before, on the bright surface of the earth, but only from the hopelessly insane.

  "Hail, Hercules," the voice of the Lord of the Underworld boomed out when I stood close before him. "I have been more or less expecting you for some time. But I thought you might come riding on some centaur's back. Have you run out of labors to perform in the world of the living?"

  Again it seemed my fame had run ahead of me. "Greetings to you, Lord Hades. I am looking for Thanatos."

  "Is that the real reason? Well, this is not the place to find him." In rambling and disjointed words, and with many repetitions, the Lord of the Underworld explained to me that Tartarus was actually a very poor place to look for Thanatos—the Death God spent almost all his time in the world above.

  This was not how I would have expected Hades to act. The behavior of the god before me strongly reinforced my suspicions of true madness; I wondered whether being struck by a Giant's weapon might produce that effect. I also wondered whether I should raise the question, but soon decided there was nothing to be gained by doing so.

  "Plenty of work up there to keep him busy." He gestured with a great thumb toward the rocky ceiling, and once more he laughed. "Up on the surface is where Thanatos does his work—if you can dignify what he does by that name."

  Meanwhile, another handful of ghostly, semitransparent figures trooped by, paying no attention to me, nor even to the ruler of this fantastic domain. As far as I could tell, none of these wraiths had any purpose in their movement, but wandered aimlessly.

  "Why do you stare at them, Hercules?" the Lord of the Underworld demanded. "What did you expect to find here, festivals of sunshine?"

  "I stare because I still wonder if Thanatos is among them."

  "And if h
e were?" Hades went on in his rambling, disjointed speech. "These are mere witless, lifeless shades, no more than shadows on a wall. What point is there in punishing a shadow?"

  I replied to that question with one of my own. "If these are only shadows, tell me this: What is it that casts the shadow? What of their true souls?"

  The mad god squinted at me horribly and pointed one great arm in my direction as he nodded for emphasis. "Now there is a question. There is a profound mystery. I myself have often wondered about that. But if such things still exist anywhere in the Universe, it is certainly not here."

  He paused, then added with a chilling laugh: "If you see my true soul anywhere, will you let me know? I fear that someone's stolen it away."

  He made a sudden motion with his great right arm, as of scooping up an object I could not see clearly, and putting it on his head. For just an instant, I thought he might be grabbing his true soul. And a moment later I was startled when the figure of Hades abruptly vanished from my sight. Another moment and he was back, still occupying his throne, and laughing his hideous laugh.

  It came to me that he must be putting on and taking off his famed Helmet of Invisibility, which had been resting—itself invisible, until he picked it up—beside him, on one broad arm of his throne chair.

  Great Hades shifted his weight on his royal seat and looked around, as if seeking someone who ought to be present but was not. Then, in a brief return of mental clarity, he seemed to recall his situation.

  "Where is that damned zombie who—? But no, I forget, they've all gone. I am unattended." Leaning a little forward, he fixed me with a terrible gaze. "Would you believe it? They say I have gone mad." The last words came out in a ghastly whisper.

  "I suppose I might believe that if I tried."

  That, at least, seemed to be logical. If Hades had indeed gone mad, then his consort Persephone and all his usual attendants might well have fled his presence in terror, not knowing what atrocity he might commit on them at any moment. So he sat on the black throne, all alone in the vast throne room, and seemed to pay no attention at all to the ceaseless passage of time.