Olympos by Dan Simmons

Author:Dan Simmons
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Mars (Planet), Fantasy, Gods, Greek, Fiction, Science Fiction, Imaginary wars and battles, Mythology, General, subject
ISBN: 9780380817931
Publisher: HarperTorch
Published: 2006-03-15T07:01:55+00:00

The Healer’s Hall was empty. No immortals were posted as guards. More surprising—even to Hephaestus—was that the many glass cylinders were empty. No gods were being healed and resurrected here tonight. In the huge space, lighted by only a few low-burning braziers and the violet light of the bubbling tanks themselves, nothing moved except the shuffling Hephaestus and the fleet-footed Achilles, shield held high.

Then the Healer emerged from the shadows of the bubbling vats.

Achilles raised his shield higher.

Athena had said to him over the corpse of Penthesilea—“Kill the Healer—a great, monstrous, centipede thing with too many arms and eyes. Destroy everything in the Healer’s Hall”—but Achilles had assumed that Athena was calling the healer a centipede out of insult, not as a literal description.

This thing had the segmented body of a centipede, but it rose thirty feet high, its segmented body swaying, its body-circling rings of black eyes on the top segment locked on Achilles and Hephaestus. The Healer had feelers and segmented arms—too many—and spindly hands with spidery fingers on the ends of half a dozen of those upper arms. One body segment near the top wore a vest of many pockets, bulging with tools, and there were straps and bands and black belts holding other tools on other segments of the swaying torso.

“Healer,” called Hephaestus, “where is everybody?”

The huge centipede swayed, waggled arms, and erupted in a stutter of noise from unseen mouths.

“Did you understand that?” Hephaestus asked Achilles.

“Understand what? It sounded like a boy running a stick along the rib cage of a skeleton.”

“It’s all good Greek,” said Hephaestus. “You just have to slow it down in your mind, listen more carefully.” To the Healer, the dwarf-god cried, “My mortal friend did not understand you. Could you repeat that, O Healer?”

“Lord God Zeus’s Orders Are That No Mortal Shall Ever Be Placed In One Of The Regeneration Tanks Without His Express Command. The Lord God Master Zeus Is Now here To Be Found. And Since His Command Only On Olympos Does The Healer Obey I Cannot Allow A Mortal To Pass Until Zeus Returns To His Throne On Olympos.”

“Did you understand that?” the artificer asked Achilles.

“Something about this thing obeying only Zeus and not allowing Penthesilea to be put into one of the vats without Zeus’s express command?”

“Precisely.”

“I can kill this big bug,” said Achilles.

“Perhaps so,” said Hephaestus. “Although the Healer is whispered to be even more immortal than we johnny-come-lately gods. But if you kill it, Penthesilea will never be brought back to life. Only the Healer knows how to operate the machinery and command the blue and green worms that are part of the healing process.”

“You’re the Artificer,” said Achilles, tapping his sword against the rim of his golden shield. “You must know how to operate this machinery.”

“The fuck I do,” growled Hephaestus. “This isn’t simple technology like we used when we were mere post-humans. I could never figure out the Healer’s quantum machines…and if I did, I still couldn’t order the blue worms to work.

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