Blood of the Heroes

by Steve White

  “There’s no point in denying it,” he said carefully, “inasmuch as you’ve already obtained one of the devices that enables us to travel in time, by chopping it out of our companion Deirdre.” He risked a quick side-glance at Nagel, with a glare he hoped the historian would correctly interpret as Shut up and let me do the talking. Fortunately, Nagel still seemed too listless to blurt anything out.

  “Yes,” Hyperion nodded. Jason wondered if the Teloi did that naturally, or if they had picked it up from humans. “She has admitted to being a time traveler. We only need for you to verify certain elements of her story.”

  Classic interrogation technique , thought Jason, with his law enforcement background. “Where is she, by the way?” he temporized.

  “With the genetically modified specimen known as Perseus. He, like most of his kind, has proven unsatisfactory in various ways.” Hyperion gave Zeus a supercilious glance, which the latter stonily ignored. “We had already intended to use her as breeding stock. Being from several thousand years in the future, she is presumably a more evolved specimen than is currently available. Now, since she and Perseus have evidently formed a sexual attraction, we have decided to let them breed without any genetic manipulation, thus producing a ‘control.’ Later, there will be plenty of time to use the two of them in a program of artificial insemination and germ-line genetic engineering in our ongoing efforts to produce a useful, worthwhile variety of your species—a variety worthy of the honor of being our worshipers and servitors, the role we created you for.”

  Don’t do us any favors , Jason thought. It was a mental defense mechanism, enabling him to maintain his self-control and not give way to the various emotions he was feeling—one of which was a suicidal urge to spring across the table and lock his hands around Hyperion’s throat.

  Nagel abruptly came out of his torpor. He leaned forward and spoke in a reckless rush, his tongue stumbling over the unpracticed phonemes. “This is insanity! What do you hope to accomplish? Doesn’t the fact that we’ve come from the far future of this world—a future that our race rules, a future in which you’re nothing but dimly remembered mythological figures from religions thousands of years dead—tell you that you’re going to fail?”

  “Not necessarily. You come from one possible future. Now that we know of it, we can forestall it. So you see, you blundered badly in coming back to this era. We are going to change destiny itself, and wipe out the perverted future that spawned you! And the final irony is that your world of feral humans will have served a purpose, by providing us with something we have lacked. We have the female’s time-travel device; we will have yours, as soon as we extract them from you. Eventually, we will learn their secret, and then we will be able to roam at will through the eons!”

  Nagel’s mouth hung open. “But … but … that’s not the way it …”

  Jason suddenly knew what he had to do.

  “You sniveling little prick!” he yelled at Nagel, who stared in shock. “You were always in love with Deirdre! And when she wouldn’t have you, you conspired with Perseus!” He flung himself sideways, wrestling Nagel to the floor and locking an arm around his throat. The historian gasped for air.

  “Eos! Helios! Separate them!” he heard Hyperion command.

  “Sidney!” he whispered harshly into the historian’s ear. “Don’t tell them the truth about time travel! Deirdre must have been misleading them. Their ignorance is the only weapon we’ve got.”

  He felt Nagel’s chin bob up and down as he nodded, just before two Teloi pulled them apart.

  “Enough of this nonsense,” Hyperion said coldly. “Such behavior is only to be expected of feral humans. If you cannot control yourselves, we will continue this on our arrival at Crete.”

  “Crete?” Even at this moment, Nagel looked transfigured.

  “Yes. Most of our fellows—including the most senior among us—are already on the island of Kalliste, where the chief temple of our worshipers is located. But we will go to Crete first—the political center. Certain formalities must be observed. So that is where the pirates are even now transporting the dimensional anchor for this habitat.”

  Jason thought about it. It was, to say the least, an interesting mode of transportation: a ship carrying the gateway which defined your universe’s location relative to the larger universe. Only … “What if the ship sinks?” he couldn’t resist asking.

  Hyperion looked disgusted. “Naturally we have an aircar aloft in case of emergencies. But why am I wasting time talking to such as you?” He made an impatient gesture. “Take them back to the holding area.”

  “I’ll take them,” Zeus said quickly.

  Hyperion gave a wave of indifference. Zeus gestured with his paralyzer and they preceded him through the door.

  “Why don’t you transport the portal device to Crete in one of your aircars?” Jason asked Zeus, breaking the silence as the Teloi conducted them through the labyrinthine corridors. “Why wait for the pirates to row a galley there?”

  Zeus looked puzzled by the question. It occurred to Jason that a race with lifespan measured in millennia might well be in less of a rush. Zeus’ words seemed to confirm it, for he didn’t even address the question of travel time. “We let the priests deliver it to the Minos on Crete because performing such a function enhances their prestige, and hence their usefulness to us.”

  “But,” Nagel wondered, “is the Minos willing to accept anything from outlaws?”

  “Why, of course.” Again the Teloi seemed surprised at having to explain anything so obvious. “The Echinadian pirates accept his ultimate religious authority. And they have many ways of making themselves useful to him—for example, keeping the coastal communities in a proper state of fear.”

  Jason found himself nodding. He didn’t pretend to Nagel’s knowledge of this era, but he had a good grounding in various later periods of history—like the late twentieth century, when terrorists had been the shock troops of totalitarianism, a relationship which many in the West had been strangely unable or unwilling to recognize.

  They passed through a final door, and were in what Hyperion had called the “holding area”—a term of which Jason had taken note. The ceiling was in place above their heads, which gave Jason an excuse for looking up. What he was really looking for was some evidence of surveillance equipment. He completed his quick survey, satisfied that there were no cameras or audio pickups in the chamber.

  Zeus stood by the door as a robotic servitor floated almost silently in with food and water. “Here you will remain,” explained the Teloi. “I am in charge of you, and I will see you are not made unnecessarily uncomfortable, as long as you cause no trouble.”

  “Thank you,” said Jason. “Will we be allowed to see our companion Deirdre? And your … son Perseus?”

  Zeus went expressionless. “That is out of the question. Their fate is now distinct from yours. Accept this.” He seemed about to say more, but then turned abruptly and was gone. The door slid shut behind him.

  Nagel slumped to the floor.

  Jason sat beside him. “Sorry about what I had to do, back there,” he said in a low voice. “But I couldn’t let you reveal the truth.”

  A flicker of puzzled interest awoke in Nagel. “But why are you talking about it now? Aren’t you afraid—?”

  “No. I’m reasonably sure there are no surveillance devices in here. It makes sense. Remember Hyperion called it a ‘holding area,’ not a ‘prison’ or a ‘detention area’ or anything like that. We’re the first intruders to ever get into this pocket universe. They’ve never needed a prison before. I don’t know what they normally use this chamber for, but it’s just a makeshift cell. Also, from every thing I’ve seen and heard about the Teloi, I doubt if they’d be willing to trust any of their number with the authority to emplace bugs here in their private universe. So as long as we don’t yell, we can talk with some freedom. That, by the way, was why I was willing to try goading Zeus the way I did.”

  “But … why goad him at a
ll?”

  “Because I think he’s the weak link in the Teloi chain. Some of the things I’ve seen … things about his relationship to Hyperion and the rest of the Old Gods. But most of all, there’s what he didn’t give away to them.”

  Nagel was clearly lost. “Give away to them?”

  “Remember how Perseus blabbed to him about Oannes? But Hyperion never asked us about that. Zeus must not have told him. Otherwise, he surely would have been concerned about one of their old enemies being on the loose in here.”

  “No doubt,” came a third voice.

  They swung in the direction from which the sound had come, just in time to see a wavering in the air resolve itself into Oannes, looking somewhat the worse for wear.

  “You are correct about the lack of viewing and listening devices here,” he said into the stunned silence. “I have verified it with instruments. And now … may I trouble you for some of your food? I have not eaten in a while.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  So,” said Jason after the famished Nagom had taken the edge off his hunger, “I suppose you’re going to tell us you have some invisibility device that lets you vanish from sight.”

  “Actually, I do.” Oannes pointed to one of the devices hanging from his harness. “It bends light around.” This could be said in Achaean, and it made neither more nor less sense than it did in any other human language. Only in Jason’s era had generating a field such as the one the Nagom was describing become a theoretical possibility. But in fact, they were using the Teloi language. Ironically, Jason and Nagel now knew it better than Oannes. But the Nagom could get by in it.

  “So how can you see while using it?” asked Jason, interested.

  “The device compensates. Imperfectly, to be sure. But one can view the outside world in blurred shades of gray.” Oannes paused to take another bite. At this rate, Jason reflected sourly, Oannes would leave Nagel and himself on short rations. But, he had to admit, Oannes had been without food quite a lot longer than they, if he’d been skulking around in the corners since they had lost sight of him.

  “I gather you also have something in that handy tool kit that shields you from a capture field.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t. But as soon as I detected that platform approaching, I knew what was going to happen. I immediately activated the invisibility field and stepped away. You didn’t notice my disappearance, as you were … otherwise occupied.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” said Jason dryly.

  Nagel was less inclined to take matters philosophically. “You might have included us in your invisibility field!”

  “As you may note, this is a very small model. It only works for a single individual. That individual’s living flesh is the basis for the field, which conforms to the shape of the body. An area-effect field generator such as you are visualizing cannot be miniaturized to this level.”

  Nagel refused to be mollified. “You could at least have told us what you were going to do.”

  “There was no time. I had to act instantly, or I would have been captured. This way, at least one of us is at liberty—for now, at any rate.”

  “You don’t sound too optimistic,” Jason observed. “Do the Teloi have sensors that can detect an operating invisibility field?”

  “They do. But such sensors are short-range, and directional in nature. Still, I was listening when Perseus blurted out the fact that I was present—and that I had vanished, a feat whose explanation the Teloi know quite well. I’m only surprised that I was able to slip into this chamber so easily while the two of you were gone. I’m sure an organized search for me is afoot, even though I have seen no signs of it.”

  “In fact, it almost certainly isn’t.” Jason briefly described their interview with Hyperion and his fellows. “They never asked us about you,” he concluded. “Zeus must have kept his knowledge to himself.”

  Oannes went absolutely silent and motionless for several heartbeats. Human ones, anyway. “This is … curious,” he finally said. “I must think on it.”

  “While you’re thinking on it, let me tell you what Hyperion did say. Their tame pirates are transporting the dimensional interface-cum -idol to Crete.” The Teloi, of course, had used the current name Keftiu for the island, but mentally translating it had become automatic for Jason. “He also mentioned that most of the other Teloi are already on Kalliste, but that the pirates are going to observe the proprieties and take us to Crete first.”

  “So,” said Oannes softly, “a major gathering of the Teloi on Kalliste …” He seemed to withdraw into deep thought, ignoring the humans.

  “Uh … this might make it a little more complicated to get to your cache of Nagom tech on Kalliste, mightn’t it?” Jason offered, in an attempt to bring Oannes out of his trance.

  “Also,” Nagel chimed in, “Hyperion said something about the ‘most senior’ of the Teloi being there. What did he mean by that?”

  “What?” Oannes’ nictitating membranes shuttered back and forth a few times, and he seemed to remember where he was. “Oh, yes. These Teloi have no rigidly structured organization, you understand. Such things do not come naturally to their race, and least of all to individuals like these who took up residence on this planet. And their interrelationships are in a constant state of flux due to their incessant intriguing among themselves, barely restrained by their consciousness of a common interest. But certain of their number possess more prestige than others. One in particular: the one known in this culture as Cronus.”

  “Zeus’ father,” Nagel breathed.

  “Why, yes. How did you know?”

  “The relationship is remembered in mythology even in our time.”

  “Well, he is the most powerful of the lot—the first among equals. The one to whom all the others defer.” The big enchilada , Jason thought, summoning up a very old expression. “But they are going to be in the personal territory of Rhea, who has made Crete and the nearby islands her particular field of operations. Kalliste is something of a neutral meeting ground for them, but socially they are her guests when they are there.”

  “Our legends remember her as the wife of Cronus,” said Nagel.

  “There they are wrong. I daresay the later mythmakers will superimpose the family patterns they know onto their gods. But in fact the Teloi have no institution comparable to marriage. They are the ultimate atomic individuals, held together only by self-interest. And they practice absolute gender equality. It is only because childbirths are so very rare among them that the father is known with certainty.”

  Deirdre should approve , Jason reflected wryly. He was opening his mouth to ask a question when one of the small devices hanging from Oannes’ harness began to beep in time with a flashing light. The Nagom hastily switched it off.

  “You are about to receive visitors,” he explained to Jason. Without another word, he touched another device, and faded into invisibility.

  Jason barely had enough time to raise his lower jaw back into position when the door slid open to admit a Teloi—Jason thought he recognized the one called Helios—and one of the quietly floating servo-robots. Jason wondered if the robot’s energy output was what Oannes’ sensor had detected. It gathered up the dishes under Helios’ watchful eye … and the hungry eyes of the humans, who couldn’t admit that they hadn’t been the ones to consume the food. After it had floated away, the Teloi turned to them.

  “The portal device has arrived in Crete. Zeus will come for you soon. Prepare yourselves for departure.”

  All at once Jason’s hunger was forgotten. He stared at Helios, waiting for something further that would cause what the Teloi had just said to make sense. But Helios only turned to go.

  “Wait!” Jason called out. “Even if the pirates loaded that ‘idol’ onto a ship and started out the instant we were captured—”

  Helios cut him off in a tone of puzzled contempt. “Of course they didn’t. A ship had to be provisioned. And there are lengthy ritual observances that must be performed whene
ver the object is moved.”

  “But …” Desperately, Jason wondered if the brute-force imposition of the Teloi language on his brain’s speech centers had left him with an even more imperfect understanding than he’d thought. “But … we can’t be in Crete already!”

  Helios gave him a look of uncomprehending irritation, and was gone. Jason was left staring at the closed door. Presently Oannes shimmered back into visibility.

  “Did you hear?” Jason demanded.

  “Yes. The field has no effect on atmospheric vibrations. There is another device which does in fact interfere with sound waves, by a process of—”

  Jason wasn’t in the mood. “Then what was all that nonsense about us already being in Crete?”

  Oannes looked at him oddly. “You really don’t understand, do you? Well, within an artificially created pocket dimension like this one, the time rate relative to the larger universe is entirely arbitrary. The Teloi prefer to arrange matters so that less time passes here than on the outside. Remember I mentioned that they are not really immortal. Of late, they have begun to suffer from intimations of mortality … especially their first generation. This is one way they can prolong the time in which they seem unchanged in the eyes of their human worshipers.”

  But Jason had stopped listening before the last two sentences.

  As though from a great distance, he heard Nagel’s voice. The historian had grasped one point at least. “Oannes, this is very important: How much time has passed in the outside world while we’ve been here? “

  “I cannot possibly answer that question. As I have explained, it depends entirely on the time rate the Teloi have set—which I have no way of knowing.”

  “Well,” Nagel spluttered, “how much time can have passed?”

  “An interesting question. I do not know if there is a theoretical upper limit on the time-rate differential. However, there is no reason why such an upper limit would be approached in this case. At most, the pirates and their priests were probably allowed a relatively leisurely schedule to prepare for a visit to their overlords in Crete. I would be very surprised if the elapsed time has been more than a matter of weeks, or perhaps months.”