Their stay in Aeaea lasted only a day. Just long enough to take on provisions for the voyage to Egypt. On the morning after their departure, Odysseus came forward, wringing his hands.
"Alas, good Americans. If I am to go to Egypt I will need more wind."
"Wind is the one thing you're not short of, Ody," sneered Liz.
Odysseus' face registered protest at misunderstanding. The more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger expression, thought Jerry, was about as convincing as it would have been coming from a wolf.
"We do not have enough food or water for such a journey without favorable winds." Odysseus pointed somewhere in the distance. "But help is at hand. Yonder lies the Isle of Aeolus, keeper of winds. He is a generous man. He will help us."
"I wouldn't trust that son of a bitch to speak my weight," said Liz, looking at the flapping sail. "He's right, though. Without a favorable wind, undertaking that voyage in this tub is a hopeless cause."
"What he's talking about is a visit to the island of Aeolia," explained Jerry. "You can see the sun gleaming on the 'unbroken wall of bronze.' Aeolus is the 'Warden of the Gales' in the Odyssey. He gave Odysseus a fair wind for Ithaca and imprisoned the other winds in a sack. In the gospel according to the ever-truthful Odysseus, his foolish men thought it was treasure and let the winds out, which blew them all over the place. Aeolus crops up again in the Aeneid."
"Lucky old Aeolus," said Liz sourly.
Jerry's snort was every bit as sour. "Lucky, my ass. Nobody's too lucky whenever they run across Odysseus. When Odysseus' fleet visited him, Aeolus was forced to wine and dine them at his expense. He was foolish enough to let ten ships into his harbor and disgorge their crews before getting the measure of the commander. After a month of that, the keeper of the winds handed over the windsack just to see them out of there. And he was careful not to let them disembark when they came back the second time."
It was a superlative natural harbor set in an inlet in the cliff wall that surrounded the island. The island was, however, relatively stark and stony compared to the shores of Thrinicia or Circe's wooded home.
"Good defensive spot," said Cruz, giving it a professional once-over.
"According to the book," said Jerry, "it has Aeolus and his six sons and six daughters on it. That seems a small group to defend an island of this size. But perhaps there were more. It wouldn't have seemed so, because the six sons were married to the six daughters. That kind of counts out too much other available nobility, although peasants and slaves wouldn't have been part of that number."
Liz made a face. "Yuck. Nice people. Founts of modern morality."
Lamont grinned at Liz. "You don't know half of it. The ancient Greek gods were always so busy doing something nasty, or screwing around with someone, I'm surprised they had any time for blessing wombs and crops. I was quite shocked by it all."
Jerry chuckled. "True. Not to mention the Heroes. Anything you can think of from cannibalism to killing their fathers to marry their mothers, eh? But what about this place? Do you think we'll be attacked, or helped?"
Cruz looked thoughtful. "It's a good position for defense. But they're not above the ships. They can't really attack us, but they could hold out for months. Tough to hold with a handful of men though, especially if they rely on some trading. Like—who do you let in?"
Jerry shrugged. "Yeah. And I don't know what sort of welcome we'll get. Odysseus was here with the better part of five hundred men last time." Jerry looked up at the bronze walls. They appeared impenetrable.
Aeolus was there to meet them on the shore. He scowled ferociously at Odysseus. But he studied the modern folk with interest.
"Greetings, newcomers. What is it that you have done to get Zeus so spitting mad at you? Hermes has come to tell me that I am ordered to keep you here. Feed you royally and fill you with strong wine, while Olympus prepares to loose its might against you."
Four young men were staggering down to the stone quay with an enormous leather bag. Aeolus pointed to it. "Stow it carefully and row your way out before the tide changes. I'm not having that damned freebooter inside my walls again," he said, pointing at Odysseus, "and Zeus doesn't have much regard for other people's property when he tosses his thunderbolts. Get you gone. Where do you want a fair wind for?"
"Egypt. Thank you," said Jerry.
Aeolus smiled. "How fortunate. It is my gift to you. Speed you swiftly, and keep all the contrary winds trapped in the bag. I do not like whatever is afoot with Olympus."
"What? I mean, what is happening?"
Aeolus shook his head. "I do not know. But I was once a god . . . I do not like this. I will thwart it with my small power. Now go. And take care with that bag."
"I'll look after it for you," offered Odysseus. "I'll see it safely stowed. You can trust me. I'm a prince."
"You're enough of a bag of wind, without adding this one to your responsibilities," snapped Medea. "Typical damned Hellene."
"I'm an Achaean!" protested Odysseus.
Aeolus had provided the wind he'd promised, and had also provided Jerry with further food for thought.
He sat with Lamont, watching over the windsack. "Look. Every step we take we learn a fraction more. We've just got to put the pieces together. Then somehow we can break out of here, I'm sure."
Lamont pulled a face. "And we've got to stay alive. Obviously whatever the thing is, it's manipulating this place and its gods as if they were puppets."
Jerry nodded. "Rather disobedient and inefficient puppets. But still dancing according to strings that something is pulling somewhere."
"So what do we do about it?" asked Lamont.
Jerry ran his fingers through his hair. "Brace ourselves. The next problem's coming. The ancient Greek gods tended to work through intermediaries, but Zeus, for example, was quite capable of tossing thunderbolts. We've got problems, if they've got it in for us."
And problems weren't long in coming. Poseidon's minions found them at about two in the morning. It was a very rude awakening from sweet dreams.
The noise was reminiscent of a hippopotamus being sick into the big end of a tuba, which was, at the same time, being played by a very inept player. Only that description is really too mild. It sat every person on the ship bolt upright. Bolt upright and reaching for weapons in most cases. Which was just as well.
Triton was leading the charge himself, in a chariot drawn by pincer-footed white-foam horses. He was blowing like fury on an enormous trumpetlike shell. His look-alike minions showed that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. The half-human Triton-genii were very like their master. From the chest up they were human enough. Below this they were scaled and finned, the sinuous sea monster bodies ending in a predator's narrow-forked caudal fin. They carried a variety of tridents and barbed harpoons. Their musical skill carried "bad" to new depths.
Odysseus and his men had other faults, but a lack of courage in a fight for their lives wasn't one of them. The Tritons had expected panic. Instead they were thrust off. Speared. Shot. Attacked by dragons. And all the while Medea calmly walked along the central passage between the rowing benches and anointed the oars with a potion of her own. When she'd finished, she walked up to Odysseus and told him to get the oars into the water.
Medea was a former princess and a person of power. When she told Odysseus to tell the men to get the oars out, he jumped to it.
The Tritons backed off.
"They will not dare to come within twenty cubits of those oars," said Medea calmly.
The men found this comforting. Unfortunately it didn't keep the Tritons out of earshot. The Tritons took it in turns to "accompany" the ship with the blaring of their conches. And by midmorning it was painfully apparent that the Tritons weren't going to give up easily. Beeswax might shut out sirens but, for sheer volume and terrible low-frequency noise that penetrated to the very marrow of their bones, this was unbeatable. Tina Turner in competition just increased their volume.
"Merde." Henri shook a plump fist at the Tritons, who may have included a raspberry in their next arpeggio. "This is worse than German music! I think at least I should attempt to teach them some Ravel."
"How many more days to Egypt?" yelled Liz, having to bellow to make herself heard above the cacophony.
Odysseus simply held up seven fingers. And pointed to an island on the starboard horizon. He shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands.
Liz nodded. The noise was simply insupportable.
As they came inshore and water shifted from wine-dark to azure the Tritons drew off a bit, but not completely. The water was less than three fathoms deep. Dangerous sailing in uncharted waters. Hell, it wasn't even something you wanted to attempt in waters you were even slightly unfamiliar with, as Aeolus' fair wind for Egypt was moving the ship on at a good clip.
"We'll have to make a landfall and see if they'll go away."
The coastline did not look promising. There were smoke trails from distant hearth fires in the hills. But the verdant coastline, thick with wild vines and stands of poplar and pine, bore the look of a land ravaged by some mighty destructive force—as if a sequence of small cyclones had windrowed through them.
Odysseus was looking about like a cat in a dog pound. "Cyclops country," he said nervously, as they pulled the ship up. The sound of the dreadful conch was now distant enough to make speech plausible.
"Oh, great!" said Liz. "I presume the one-eyed giants won't be pleased to see you back."
"We'd better get out there again," said Mac.
Liz pulled a face. "I don't know if a blind one-eyed giant isn't better than that racket. Doesn't it bother you?"
McKenna shrugged. "I guess my ears are toughened. The volume is a bit much, but it reminds me of myself trying to play the bugle. Ma used to make me go and practice at the far side of the south forty. She said I was putting the cows off their milk."
Lamont snorted and nodded in sympathy. "Yeah. I tried the sax for a bit."
"I always wanted to be one of those really wild drummers," said Jerry with a grin. "Of course, I haven't got any sense of rhythm."
Henri looked regretfully at the ground. "It was the wish of my mother that I should become a great violinist." He shrugged. "She ran out of teachers prepared to attempt this labor, and became tired of the complaint about the mistreatment of the cat. I remain devoted to classical music, of course. But alas, I cannot play."
Cruz allowed a slight smile to crack his impassive countenance. He looked at his thick stubby fingers. "Me, I decided I was Carlos Santana's natural heir. Or Jimi Hendrix."
Jerry looked at the thick fingers and wondered how they'd ever managed to press chords. "Well, it's a good thing one of us has got some musical talent."
There was a flash of teeth. "Hey, I said I thought I was. Not like anyone else did."
Lamont looked pensive. "Do you think all of us taken are bad musicians?"
"Nah. I think the world has a lot more failed musico-wannabees than anything else," answered Cruz.
Liz stuck her nose in the air and said, in a lofty tone. "Ha. I wasn't about to tell you guys this, but seeing as you're all such musical geniuses, I was lead singer for an all-girl group at high school. We called ourselves 'The Supremes.' "
There was a moment of silence. Lamont looked at Jerry. Jerry looked at Lamont.
"And what did everyone else call you?" they asked together.
Liz pursed her lips. Her shoulders were shaking. " 'The Sub-standards.' They said they even preferred my attempt to play the bagpipes."
The laughter was stilled by a running trill of notes, liquid and gentle, yet with enormous depth and power. Goat-footed and shaggy Pan arrived, playing his syrinx. He stepped around the grape-laden wild vines. The still-green grapes darkened and swelled. They were silent as the god continued to play. Haunting and bittersweet . . . then abruptly the music shifted to a quick leaping of notes, and the shaggy Pan began to dance. Then he lowered his pipes. Looked the group over carefully.
"So this is the group which has all Olympus in a tumult." He didn't look as if that displeased him much. Especially after his eyes fell on Liz's voluptuous figure.
Jerry was determined to confront these "gods" with what he saw as the glaring inconsistency. "How come you can speak English?"
Pan looked mischievously at him. "I'm not."
Jerry realized he'd become so used to Medea's translation magic that it had never occurred to him that their latest "divine" visitor might be speaking Classical Greek.
"Okay. So why are we here and how do we get out of being here?"
Pan blew a couple of thoughtful notes on his seven-reed pipes, eyeing Liz all the while. "No wonder you disturb Olympus with your direct questioning. I think you mortals have been called into the realms of heroes and gods because we were fading away. There are things afoot that Pan wants no part of. I am a shepherd god, not a god of blood and pain."
"What is going on that you don't want any part of?"
Pan blew another trill of high wavering notes. He was silent for a while. "I don't know. Zeus, and the earth shaker, and Hermes . . . they've all been very odd. Very odd indeed. And something has been happening. Our histories are being . . . reenacted. I have been chasing the nymph Syrinx. But it felt to me as if I had done that before. And the more I thought, the surer I was, that I had chased her before, and that Ladon had transformed her into a reed. I played the pipes I made from the river reeds . . . and my mouth and hands knew how to do this. I don't like it. I don't understand it, but I do know you are a thorn in the flesh of whatever is causing this. Therefore I am determined to help you."
He scowled. "Word is out from Olympus that you must be slain. So: how can I help you? I have soothed the terrible man-eating Cyclops to sleep with sweet music. What other help can I offer?"
"Send us home? Even the U.S.A. would do," begged the hopeful Henri, treading American sensibilities like grapes.
Pan knitted his brow. Danced a few steps. Which brought him closer to Liz, Jerry was not pleased to notice. The goat-god's reputation for lasciviousness was notorious.
"I would . . . if I could. But I don't even know where your home is. It must be a place that is incredibly far from here. Tell me how you came here?"
Jerry explained. Pan looked puzzled. "Do the herdsmen of your country, those who tend the sheep and the goats in the high and lonely meadows, still worship great Pan?"
Jerry swallowed. "Er. Not much."
Pan trilled his pipes sadly. "You mean 'not at all.' Alas, then I have no presence there, and no influence."
"Well, what about some advice?" asked Lamont. "We were heading for Egypt. Is that worth doing?"
Pan wrinkled his long goaty nose. "I don't know. But in the realm of Egypt you would at least be beyond the hand of Olympus. Nowhere here would be beyond the Olympians. I would go there. The wind is set fair for the coast of Africa."
"We'd be going just as fast as it would carry us, if it wasn't for the Tritons."
Pan pulled a face. He seemed to like doing that. "Their idea of music is abominable. Unfortunately, sweet music has no charms to drive them off."
"Does bad music?" asked Lamont.
The idea seemed to shock Pan. "It is possible. It would have to be both louder and worse than their cacophony."
Lamont looked at the group of moderns. "I think we've possibly got a really talented group of failed musicians right here. If we had or could make some instruments . . . "
The goaty god jigged. "The making of musical instruments is my attribute. Allow me."
Pan worked with small pieces of metal or wood. He could, by what to Jerry appeared to be principles of cohesion, create larger things. Sprites and spirits of trees and waters danced at his command, hammering out bizarre shapes. The bagpipes and the drums were almost recognizable as such. Bagpipes were after all a shepherd's instrument, and the drum was another familiar concept. The guitar was not too wild an idea, although the device was more like a lute. However the attempts at the magical construction of a violin would have had Stradivari turning in his grave. At about 9000 rpm, at a guess. The brass instruments had totally flummoxed Pan's magical construction skills, until Jerry had mentioned a salpinx, a Greek trumpet.
The work would have gone faster, Jerry noted sourly, if Liz hadn't been there. Pan spent more time ogling her than he did assembling the instruments. It didn't help any that Liz was making no effort to make herself less visible. Rather the opposite, actually. She almost seemed to be displaying herself for the goaty creature, in a demure sort of way.
The extent to which that aroused his jealousy came as a bit of a shock to Jerry. He was even more shocked when Liz came up to him, after Pan was finally done, and chucked him lightly under the chin. "Oh, relax," she murmured. "I'm really not attracted to hairy types, Jerry, especially when they smell that much. Just keeping the help happy at their work, that's all."
With a low chuckle, she wandered off. Leaving Jerry simultaneously chagrined, confused—and quite happy.
Pan blocked his ears in horror at the testing phase. Lamont blew a note testing his mysterious and complex brass and reed instrument . . . "I think that's a B flat."
"Be flatulence, more like," said Jerry with a grin. "Now what are we going to play, guys?"
Henri lifted a sneering lip. "Parsifal. Or perhaps 'Götterdämmerung' would be more appropriate."
McKenna looked even more confused than the extra valves had any right to make him. "Huh?"
"Is that one of those old 'Abba' songs, maybe?" asked Liz with a perfectly straight face.
Pan had left them. He was not a sea god, and he was determined to gather a few like minds and try to reason with Zeus. And a brief encounter with Liz's handbag was enough to convince him that naiads were more receptive to his charms.
Besides, he said, the noise was driving him to drink. He had left them with an amplifying spell, and he wanted to be gone before they used it. . . .
In the bow of Odysseus' black ship, the new musical sensation was bickering about the really important stuff. When the gods are out to kill, you might as well be silly. The band needed a name.
Henri's New York Philharmonic had been rejected unanimously. So had McKenna's The Herb Boys. Argument now was centered on Non-serious Skews or The Gathering Moss.
The conches sounded. Debate was brought to an end with Cruz leaping to his feet. He hunched over his Pan-made instrument and struck chords. Or something approximately like chords.
"AAAH CAIN'T GET NO-WOOO . . . "
"Merde! I do not know how to play this. Is this singing or some kind of fit?"
"It's just a jam session."
The Frenchman looked puzzled.
"Just play as well as you can and try and fit in."
Henri drew the bow across the semi-violin. A shriek of tortured strings erupted from the device. "I will have to have a fit, too. This will be 'raspberry jam' no?"
But you could hardly hear him above the magically amplified shrill wail of the pipes and flatulent chorus of brass. Jerry, in his determination to give them all something to play along with, regardless of what speed they should desire to play at, thrashed away at the drums . . .
The Tritons disappeared, flinging conches.
On the shore, the Cyclops that Pan had lulled to sleep came pouring out of their scattered caves.
The first rock fortunately fell astern and surfing the wave took the black ship out of range.
"Holy Macaroni! I'm used to them throwing eggs and tomatoes. But rocks!" said Cruz.
Jerry smiled beatifically. "I always wanted to be in a rock band!"
The ship wallowed on a swell. Lamont blew a defiant flat note. "Jerry . . . This is rock and roll!"
Henri looked triumphant. "I think it was just a question of age. I was simply not ready for the violin. Now I feel it is my natural métier. Shall we give them, how do you say, another number?"
Odysseus wrung his hands. "Please. The crew says you can have all of their loot. Just no more music. Please. It is too far to swim for shore."
Cruz was sitting in the bow talking to Medea. She was looking a trifle miserable. "It wouldn't have been safe to bring the children. But I miss them terribly."
"They'll be fine," said the stocky gorilla of a paratrooper, patting her hand gently. "Your aunt and Glauce will take good care of them." He went on polishing the pair of hardwood batons linked with a short section of bespelled chain. Cruz had got the idea for the chain from Pan's altering and "stretching" a cartridge into a trumpet. The chain had once been a few links on Liz's handbag strap, before Medea had got to them.
"I know. But I can't help worrying." She looked at him with a wry smile. "You don't miss your children?"
"I haven't got any," said Cruz, feeling as if he might be stepping into deep water.
Medea shook her head and clicked her tongue sympathetically. "Your marriage is not blessed with children? Fertility magic is one my specialties. I can help you."
"I'll bet." He grinned. "Actually I'm not married. Never have been."
She gave him a skeptical enquiring look. The kind that says: yeah, tell me another one.
His copper skin darkened. "No. Honestly. I had a steady girlfriend for a while . . . but it kind of wasn't going anywhere. And she wanted to get married, settle down and have a family. I wasn't ready for that sort of commitment back then. She got married to one of my buddies, about two years back. Funny. That seems like a lifetime ago now."
She smiled devastatingly at him. "So, you don't like children?"
Anibal Cruz knew he was painting himself into a corner. "Erm. No. No, I like kids."
She backed off hurriedly. "You like goats?"
The Krim device came from a civilization that had been old and decadent before the mythology it was now exploiting had even conceived gods that were more complex than venerated trees. It possessed within it energies and devices that could turn a continent to slag. But of what value to the Krim was slag? The Krim wanted that which they had all but lost. This meant working in the Ur-Mythworlds. And despite the vast powers contained within the force-shielded pyramid, that meant working within the reality framework of each particular Ur-Mythworld too. It meant you had to hire local labor. And it was so hard to get decent help in those days. Really, you'd have thought the primitive Ur-gods would have been glad of the work. But no. Bone idle and far too independent to make good Krim servants.
But rich in anger. And credulous. Perfect for prukrin manipulation.