by William Tenn
Eventually, they made peace with their approaching racial death, and set themselves to cheat it by passing their knowledge and achievements on to another creature. This was not easy to find. First, they tended to look within the ranks of the reptiles for a successor, but they had depleted the vital energies of the best nonintelligent species as badly as they had their own. They had a brief success with the serpents and pythons but, despite increased intelligence, no amount of selective breeding or indoctrination could persuade these creatures to live communally. Second, they tried the amphibians; then, the birds—
After many trials and many errors, the Gorgons settled at last on the mammalian primate. Here, with much difficulty and heartache because of the creature's fundamentally alien orientation, they achieved success. Slowly, over the unhurried centuries, the Gorgon selected this stock, discarded that one, gently stimulated and educated, until a civilization of sorts had been achieved. A little longer and they could throw aside the mantle of godhood and teach their charges directly.
But the Olympians came.
It was true, as Hermes had told Professor Gray, that a weakness in the subspatial fabric between universes had made it possible for them to enter. He had neglected to mention that they were the first and only ones to invade this universe, they and the assorted monsters, that a completely different corpus of natural law made it possible.
Originally, they poured into Earth from almost every spot on her surface. They conquered and enslaved, killed and looted, but their chief object was land. The available space on their own highly crowded world was very limited.
And there were only a handful of Gorgons to defend mankind against them. Hurriedly, these ancient reptiles turned to their forgotten and hoary armories, brought out the weapons they had sworn never to use and plunged into combat to save, not themselves—for this they were now psychologically incapable of doing through warfare—but the infant race they guarded. And slowly over the years—while liquid fire rained upon one land and floods swept through another—the invaders were driven back and the exits sealed one by one.
The Gorgon losses had been small numerically, but devastating in proportion to their total strength. There were only three females who escaped being mortally wounded; two badly crippled males had hung on for a century before dying without viable offspring. The three remaining intelligent reptiles saw no alternative but to concentrate in the Eastern Mediterranean and provide at least a section of the human race with an accelerated course of instruction.
Then, five hundred years ago, the outsiders were heard from again. This was a remnant which, cut off on this planet by the Gorgon victory, had returned to the sealed-off Mount Olympus exit and secretly rebuilt its strength. They had attacked one awful night and wiped out Cnossus, the capital city. Wearily, the Gorgons turned back to combat. They drove the Olympians off and crushed them for the time, but were no longer strong enough themselves to wipe out completely the golden-skinned race. A degenerate fragment remained which was now, like humanity's protectors, a constantly dwindling species.
Before this had been achieved, however, every large city in Crete had been gutted and Sthenno and Euryale, Medusa's sisters, had been killed. She worked desperately now at her double task: to pass on as much of the Gorgon knowledge as humanity was capable of absorbing and to rebuild enough of the ancient weapons to prevent the one remaining danger—an Olympian attempt to break through the subspatial fabric once more and regain contact with their parent universe.
To this end, she had been preparing a multitude of weapons which men of this time, under her direction, could use against the Olympians. Unfortunately, the entire orientation of the Gorgon educational process had been opposed to war and weapons. This generation of Cretans, while superior in brains and breeding to most twentieth-century humans, were decidedly not warriors and were having great difficulty developing the martial spirit.
Medusa had been sending the priestesses through whom she governed to nearby lands in search of a people who, while possessing the requisite belligerence, were sufficiently advanced intellectually that they still could be persuaded of the necessity of joining the last campaign against the Olympians. The concept of forcing people to fight—even for themselves—was anathema to a Gorgon.
But she had been anticipated. The Olympians had evidently managed to receive some sort of message from their own world and believed that, by operating on both sides of the subspatial barrier, they could effect another breakthrough. It was probably one of the last attempts that could be made (possibly the civilization in the other universe was beginning to dissolve under the continual corrosion of war as the Gorgons' had), and they considered it essential to remove the last of the ancient reptiles to insure that they would not be interrupted.
Knowing that they were far too weak and backward now to carry off a frontal attack with any success, they must have developed the idea of using Percy as a catspaw. Probably, the head mused, one of their number—scouting among ordinary people for crumbs of information Medusa might have dropped—happened upon a superstitious myth-prophecy and decided to develop it into fact. The arrival of a young man from a previous space-time universe worked in perfectly, since no human of this period could be persuaded or frightened into attacking a Gorgon.
—|—
And, at the reason why a human assassin was needed by the Olympians, Percy's knees almost buckled.
For no Gorgon, my son, is capable of injuring a human being without committing immediate mental suicide. It would have been like a mother stabbing her crawling infant for me to have killed you, as I could have, when your harpe sang at my throat.
"Listen," he said desperately to the tired, dying head in the black bag, "you may not want to force people to fight for their world, but I don't have any such compunctions. I've certainly been forced to do enough things in my own life that I most definitely didn't like! Now, I know a place where there's a bunch of plenty belligerent characters—and I know a way of getting them to volunteer for the forward echelons. I want to do what I can to fix up this terrible thing I did!"
Medusa considered. He could feel her holding on to her vital energies with more and more difficulty, despite the enormous psychosomatic control practiced by the Gorgons. Her life was seeping away.
Yes, the faint thought came at last. Yes, it might save the planet. It must be tried. Call Athena, young man. Call her with your voice.
He hesitated for just a moment. He licked his lips. It would be kind of nasty if this was just another trap. "Athena!" he called.
Almost immediately, an old priestess hobbled down the hall to the balcony. She clapped her hands to her ears and her mouth distended in horror at what she saw, but at a rapidly telepathed order from Medusa, she controlled the scream in time.
This is no time for sorrow or anger. Weeping must come later, in its proper time and place. Meanwhile, the Olympians prepare to tear down once more the barrier between the worlds. If they succeed, there will be none of my race to stand between them and you. They must be stopped! All else must be subordinated to that necessity. So, go, call your sisters together and make ready for the things I have prepared for this day. And hurry, Athena, hurry!
An efficient nod, and the old woman had gone back down the hall calling her subordinates.
What are you going to do? the thought came.
Percy told her. There was a pause. Then, Let it be done, then. But remember, my son, no matter what the circumstances may be, I cannot injure a human being!
Athena returned with a dozen or so wide-eyed, frightened young priestesses whom she organized and ordered so efficiently that they had no time to do more than bite their lips occasionally at the thought of what the kibisis contained. Even so, they made Percy feel terrible. He had killed not merely their deity, but their wise teacher and gentle friend. And why? Because he was a sucker.
Well, he was through with that from now on, he vowed. He knew what the score was—and from here on out, he would be acting on what he knew r
ather than on what others told him.
Each priestess was standing on a wide metallic rug piled high with shimmering weapons that looked like spears and battle-axes, but that he knew must be disguised as such merely to be credible to the people of the period. Athena beckoned, and he stepped onto her rug. She pulled a tiny switch set in a corner box and turned a small wheel. The rug rose and soared from the huge balcony with no feeling of motion.
"The island of Seriphos," he said to Athena in reply to her questioning glance. Behind him, he could see the other priestesses, each on her flying metal carpet, strung out across the sky.
They flew over the waves at a much greater speed than he had when traveling with Hermes. This was a tremendous science he had killed, Percy thought wistfully. All these millennia of working and nurturing, and along comes a stumblebum named Percy Sactrist Yuss who has listened to a good smart line and—
Had it happened the same way in his own previous space-time universe, he wondered? Well, there was no way of knowing. Right now, he was operating completely outside the framework of the legend—at least as Professor Gray had told it to him. Anything could happen.
They came down directly in the village square, as Percy had intended they should for maximum effect. And, while the townsfolk stood around with mouths hanging as slack as their hands, he strode toward the palace with Athena hurrying along on his right.
"I wonder," he said, out of the corner of his mouth to the black bag. "This harpe's getting heavier. I can't walk with as much dignity as I'd like to. Could you try some of that hypnosis stuff, perhaps..."
He strode into the pillared hall with clanking boots. He stopped against the massive column where he had been placed upon being brought to this hall as a prisoner. King Polydectes was having lunch. He rose from the long, crude wooden table at Percy's entrance and started to wipe his lips with a nearby wife's hair.
"Welcome home, Perseus, welcome home!" he said with a creaking, somewhat laborious enthusiasm. "We've been waiting for you to return!"
"Have you now?"
"Oh, certainly my boy, certainly! Ever since that tragic mistake out at the theater, we've known for certain you were really Perseus. I've punished that zookeeper horribly, I assure you! Why, he was supposed to have a hundred dancing flower-decked maidens greet you and the girl. Somehow or other, he got confused and rang in that scylla. I have absolutely no idea how he made such—"
"Can it. I'm here on business. Call everybody in who can get here fast."
Polydectes nodded vehemently and waved at Dictys with both hands. As his brother obediently sped out of the hall, the king, his eyes fastened warily on the black bag that swung at Percy's side, asked in what he evidently considered was a winning voice: "Aren't you going to say hello to your mother?"
Percy stepped back. "My—my mother?"
"Yes, she arrived this morning. When she told us her name, we realized how completely the legend had been fulfilled. We've been making her as happy as possible since, even though it has been a little—eh, a little—expensive."
He pointed to a spot halfway down the table. Percy gasped, then let it roll out into unbelieving laughter. Mrs. Danner sat in her dirty flowered housedress, her arms bent around a huge wine-skin.
"Poor little Marybelle Danner," she was mourning between slobbers. "It's all weak stuff, the best they got's like a baby's slap. And they mix it with water, yet!"
So even this much of the myth was fulfilled, too! Not a Danae but a Danner had arrived to be associated with him. And the fact that she wasn't really his mother? "'She's somebody's mother, boys,' he said."
Obviously, if someone was needed to round out the generalities of a legend, they too "fell through," parchment or no parchment. Although he'd like very much to question Mrs. Danner on the exact mechanics of her arrival. It might be important and useful...
"Take good care of her," he ordered. "And, Dictys!"
"Yes, sir," the king's brother inquired as he reentered the hall with a substantial and highly uneasy section of the population behind him. He too kept throwing anxious glances at the kibisis: everyone seemed very well educated in the legend on this point. "Anything I can do for you? Anything at all? Just name it, that's all I ask, just—"
"Somewhere on the southern tip of the island," Percy told him, "you'll find an old man, together with the girl who escaped from the arena with me. I want you to find them and make them as comfortable as you can. Concentrate on nothing but making life pleasant for them until I return. If you get slack anywhere along the line, you'll hear from me. Understand?"
"I'm on my way," Dictys assured him. "Hey, Menon, Bupalus, Pataikion! This way. We've got to run. Favor for a hero, a man we all admire!"
Percy grinned as the three violently nodding men followed Dictys out of the hall. It was fun to unsucker. But he had business, important business, as the sight of the grim priestess at his back reminded him.
"Polydectes," he said, "you are about to start the first draft in the military history of Seriphos. I'm on my way to attack the Olympians, and I'd like you to furnish about fifty good fighting men to assist me in the project."
The king stilled the crowd and turned nervously back to the young man before him. "Uh... my people like to stay out of other people's fracases. That's why they call me—"
"I know," Percy told him. "I know. Only this is urgent. I want those fifty men very badly indeed. We'll give them powerful weapons such as they've never dreamed of before—and teach them their use. But this is your chance to cut down on that surplus population you're always talking about. And, as I said, it's very important to me." He patted the kibisis delicately as he spoke.
"Oh, in that case," said King Polydectes. "If it's urgent! Why, certainly. Captain of the Guard! Detail all twenty-eight members of the army, the ten policemen, and any twelve members of the Citizens' Reserve for duty with this famous and spectacular hero. If anyone grumbles, tell him he can choose between that and being cooked over a slow fire."
"I see you've repaired the execution pot," Percy commented.
The king shook his head unhappily. "No, it was a dead loss. And we can't get any kind of decent replacement anywhere. But we've been experimenting with barbecue recently. The results, while not perfect as yet, show a good deal of promise. I'm very hopeful."
Percy walked outside to watch the fifty men being assembled. The priestesses had broken them into very small groups and were explaining the functions of the strange new weapons to them. The men looked half-dazed and half-resentful; the fact that women were teaching them how to fight seemed especially confusing. But the presence of "the hero," and the young women's business-like approach successfully kept their attention from wandering.
The head of Medusa stirred in the open kibisis. Hurry, my son. The time of my last weakness draws near.
"One last thing," Percy assured her. He turned back to the palace entrance where Polydectes stood munching on the dripping leg of a sheep and watching the whole scene with friendly interest. I've done my part, his attitude suggested. I've given of the flower of my country. The best I have. No sacrifice can be too great...
He stared from the king to the weeping women bidding their husbands and sons goodbye, the nervous male conscripts trying to understand their instructors and obviously wondering how they had gotten into a war with Olympians, and back to the chewing monarch.
"There's one thing you haven't been told," he announced. "King Polydectes has volunteered to lead his troops into combat. King Polydectes isn't afraid of the Olympians, so long as he has our weapons to use against them. King Polydectes says, 'Damn the thunderbolts, full speed ahead!'"
"I d-do?" The chunk of mutton dropped to the ground, the sound of its fall obscured by the cheer that went up.
"You most certainly do," Percy told him. He grabbed the quivering monarch with one hand and, stroking the black bag suggestively with the other, drew him gently onto the metallic rug which Athena operated. The other priestesses followed suit with their charges. "Thi
s is why," he said in a voice that echoed back and forth across the square, "they call you Brave King Polydectes!"
They took off to the accompaniment of another wildly rattling cheer.
Once they were scudding along the curve of the Greek mainland, Athena began explaining one of the weapons to the ruler of Seriphos.
"You sight your target in the holes running lengthwise through these spears—like this. See that rock? Then, as soon as you've made your sight, you press this little button in the rear. After that, all you have to do is let go of the spear. It won't miss."
"I'm an old man," Polydectes muttered. "Toothless, worn, and feeble. In the bleak winter of my life, all I want to do is lie by the fire and watch the youths frolic and fight. Ah, youth, youth!"
Percy walloped his back heartily. "Well, we're giving you a new lease on life! You might as well pay attention, because when we come down, we'll come down fighting. And there's no turning back!"
They passed two great peaks near the coast. "Mount Pelion," Athena said, nodding at the first. "And that's Mount Ossa. Olympus is next."
My son, came the hurried thought. I am dying fast. Grasp my head by the long hairy spines on its back and hold it in front of you when you attack. And, if you are about to be overcome, throw it at your enemies. But you must move rapidly! Already can I sense the dissolution of the impermanent interspace that keeps one world from disturbing another. Our enemies will pour through and overwhelm the pitiful striving. Remember your strength! Remember that it is greater now than when the false Olympian led you to the balcony of my temple in New Cnossus. Feel it, my son, feel it leap through you; feel your mightiness!
And, as they neared the majestic mountain and swung into a circle of carpets for the attack, Percy felt the strength boil in his muscles. He wouldn't have any trouble wielding the harpe now!
