Ilium

20 The Tethys Sea on Mars

“I think it’s Falstaff that made me fall out of love with the Bard.”

“What’s that?” said Mahnmut over the hardline. He was preoccupied, driving the dying submersible toward the still-out-of-sight coastline at a weakening eight knots, trying to keep the ship-functions on line, watching the skies for enemy chariots through the periscope buoy, and generally brooding about the improbability of their continued survival. Orphu had been silent down there in The Dark Lady’ s hold for more than two hours. Now this. “What was that about Falstaff?” said Mahnmut.

“I was just saying that it was Falstaff that drove me away from Shakespeare and toward Proust,” said Orphu.

“I would have thought that you’d love Falstaff,” said Mahnmut. “He’s so funny.”

“I did love Falstaff,” said Orphu. “Hell, I identified with Falstaff. I wanted to be Falstaff. For a while, I thought I looked like Falstaff.”

Mahnmut tried to imagine this. He couldn’t. He returned his attention to ship’s functions and perusing the periscope. “What made you change your mind?” he asked.

“Do you remember the scene in Henry IV, Part 1 where Falstaff finds the body of Henry Percy—Hotspur—on the battlefield?”

“Yes,” said Mahnmut. The periscope and radar showed the skies clear of chariots. He had been forced to shut down the failing reactor during the night and battery reserves were down to 4 percent, giving them only six knots now, and the power was still dropping. Mahnmut knew that he’d have to take The Dark Lady up to the surface again soon: every time they surfaced he brought in Martian air for his own survival, storing it in his enviro-crèche and breathing it until it got foul, funneling all the ship-produced air down to Orphu. The submersible had never been designed to open itself to Europan “atmosphere,” and he’d had to override a dozen safety protocols to let the Martian air in.

“Falstaff stabs Hotspur’s corpse in the thigh just to make sure he’s dead,” said Orphu. “Then carries Hotspur’s body on his back, trying to take credit for killing him.”

“Right,” said Mahnmut. The MPS said that they were within thirty kilometers of the coast, but there was no sign of it in the periscope, and he didn’t want to direct the radar toward land. He prepared to blow the ballast tanks and surface again, but had the dive planes ready for an emergency dive if anything showed on the radar. “The better part of valor is discretion, in which better part I have saved my life,” he quoted. “All the Shakespearean commentary I read—Bloom, Goddard, Bradley, Morgann, Hazlitt, and even Emerson—says that Falstaff may be one of the greatest characters Shakespeare ever created.”

“Yes,” said Orphu and stayed silent a minute while the submersible shook and rumbled to the ballast tanks being blown. When the ship was silent again except for the ocean rushing over the hull, he said, “But I find Falstaff despicable.”

“Despicable?” The sub broke the surface. It was just after dawn and the sun—so much larger than the point-star sun Mahnmut had grown up with on Europa—was just breaking free of the horizon. He opened the vents and breathed in fresh salt air.

“Wherein cunning but in craft? Wherein crafty but in villainy? Wherein villainous but in all things,” said Orphu.

“But Prince Hal was joking when he said that.” Mahnmut decided to run on the surface. It was far more dangerous—radar had picked up a flying chariot every hour or two while they were submerged—but they could make eight knots on the surface, and stretch out their dwindling power reserves.

“Was he?” said Orphu. “He rejects the old blowhard in Henry IV, Part 2.”

“And Falstaff dies from it,” said Mahnmut, breathing in the clean air and thinking of Orphu down in the black and flooded hold, connected to life only by the O2 line and the intercom. The first time they had surfaced, Mahnmut had realized it would be impossible to get the big Ionian out of the hold until they reached land. “ The King has killed his heart,” he said, quoting Hostess Quickly.

“I’ve decided he deserved to be rejected,” said Orphu. “When he was ordered to recruit soldiers for the war with Percy, Falstaff took bribes to let the good ones off and recruited only losers. Men he called ‘food for powder.’ “

Feeling The Dark Lady surging ahead faster through the low waves, Mahnmut kept monitoring the sonar, radar, and periscope. “Everyone says that Falstaff is a much more interesting character than Hal,” he said. “Funny, realistic, antimilitary, witty—Hazlitt wrote that ‘The bliss of freedom gained in humour is the essence of Falstaff.’ “

“Yes,” said Orphu. “But what kind of freedom is it? The freedom to mock everything? The freedom to be a thief and a coward?”

“Sir John was a knight,” said Mahnmut. Suddenly his attention focused on what Orphu was saying—Orphu the cynic and humorous commentator on the folly of moravec existence. “You sound more like Koros III,” he said.

This made Orphu rumble. “I’ll never be a warrior.”

“Was Koros a warrior? Do you think he killed moravecs during his mission to the Belt?” Mahnmut was curious.

“We’ll never know what happened in the Belt,” said Orphu, “and I doubt that Koros had any more eagerness to fight than do the rest of us peaceable moravecs. But he was trained to leadership and duty—things that Falstaff mocked even in his beloved Prince Hal.”

“And you’re thinking that we’ve been called to duty here,” said Mahnmut. There was a haze to the south.

“Something like that.”

“And you think you might need to be more Hotspur than Falstaff?”

Orphu of Io rumbled again. “It may be too late for that. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. ”

“That’s not Falstaff.”

“Richard the Second,” came the voice from the hold.

“You think you’re too old for what lies ahead?” asked Mahnmut, wondering himself what might lie ahead.

“Well, I feel a little old, sans eyes, sans legs, sans hands, sans teeth, and sans shell,” said the Ionian.

“You never had teeth,” said Mahnmut. Koros’s mission had been to carry out reconnaissance near the big volcano, Olympos, and to deliver the Device in the cargo bay as close to the summit of Olympos as possible. But The Dark Lady was close to death and Orphu might also be dying. Even if Orphu survived, he would not be able to see or move or take care of himself if they managed to reach land. How could Mahnmut possibly deliver the Device across more than three thousand kilometers of landmass while keeping himself and his friend from being detected and destroyed by the chariot people?

Worry about that when you get the Lady to land and Orphu out of the hold, he thought. One thing at a time. The blue sky was empty of threat, but he felt terribly exposed as the submersible continued to wallow southward through the waves. To Orphu, he said, “Does your friend Proust have any advice?”

Orphu cleared his throat with a rumble:

“You can’t convince me that’s Proust,” said Mahnmut. The haze to the south was resolving itself.

“No,” said Orphu. “That’s Tennyson’s Ulysses .”

“Who’s Ulysses?”

“Odysseus.”

“Who’s Odysseus?”

There was a shocked silence. Finally, Orphu said, “Ah, my friend, this gap in your otherwise excellent education calls out for repair. We may well need to know as much as we can about . . .”

“Wait,” said Mahnmut. And a minute later, “Wait!”

“What is it?”

“Land,” said Mahnmut. “I can see land.”

“Anything else? Any details?”

“I’m changing magnification,” said Mahnmut.

Orphu waited, but finally said, “And?”

“The stone faces,” said Mahnmut. “I see the stone faces—on the cliff tops mostly—stretching as far to the east as I can see.”

“Just to the east? None to the west?”

“No. The line of faces ends almost where we’d reach land. I can see movement there. Hundreds of people—or things—moving along the cliffs and beach.”

“We’d better dive,” said Orphu. “Wait for dark before we make landfall. Find an ocean cave or something where you can bring the Lady in unseen, where . . .”

“Too late,” said Mahnmut. “The ship doesn’t have more than forty minutes of life support and propulsion left in her. Besides, the shapes—the people—have given up their work moving the stone faces west. They’re coming down to the beach by the hundreds. They’ve seen us.”