sound, scent, even heartbeat is muffled by the medallion, the gods’ senses are beyond your understanding. Stay close to me in the next few minutes. Tread lightly. Say nothing. Breathe as lightly and shallowly as possible. If you are detected, neither I nor your divine patroness can protect you from the wrath of Zeus.”
How do you breathe lightly and softly when you’re terrified? But I nod, forgetting the Muse cannot see me now. When she waits, still staring slightly askance as if seeking me with her divine vision, I croak, “Yes, Goddess.”
“Put your hand on my arm,” she orders brusquely. “Stay with me. Do not lose contact with me. If you do, you will be destroyed.”
I put my hand on her arm like a timid debutante being escorted at a coming-out party. The Muse’s skin is cold.
I was once in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. The guide said that clouds sometimes formed under the roof hundreds of feet above the concrete floor. You could take the VAB and set it in one corner of this immense room we find ourselves in now and you’d never notice it sitting there like a cast-off child’s toy block in a cathedral.
One says “gods” and you think of the meat-and-potato gods, the main gods—Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and a few others—but there are hundreds of gods in this room and most of the room is empty. Seemingly miles above us, a gold dome—the Greeks had not discovered the principles of a dome, so this was in contrast to the classically conservative architecture of the other great buildings I have seen on Olympos—acoustically directs conversation to all corners of the breathtaking space.
The floor looks to be made of hammered gold. Gods lean on marble railings and look down from circling mezzanines. The walls everywhere sport hundreds upon hundreds of arched niches, each holding a white marble sculpture. The statues are of the gods present here now.
Holograms of Achaeans and Trojans flicker here and there, many of them showing life-sized, full-color, three-dimensional images of the men and women as they argue or eat or make love or sleep. Near the center of the room, the gold floor steps down to a recess larger than any combination of Olympic-sized swimming pools, and in this space flickers and floats more real-time images from Ilium—broad aerial views, close-ups, panning shots, multiple images. One can hear the dialogue as if the Greeks and Trojans were in this very room. Around this vision pool, sitting in stone thrones and lounging on plush couches and standing in their cartoonlike togas, are the gods. The important gods. The meat-and-potato, known-by-grade-schoolers gods.
Lesser gods move aside as the Muse approaches this center pool, and I hurry to stay with her, my invisible hand tremulous on her golden arm, trying not to squeak my sandals or trip or sneeze or breathe. None of the deities seem to notice me. I suspect that I will know very quickly if any of them do.
The Muse stops a few yards from Pallas Athena and I stay so close to her that I feel like a three-year-old child hugging his mother’s skirt.
There is a fierce argument under way, even as Hebe—one of the minor goddesses—moves among the others, pouring some sort of golden nectar into their gold goblets. Zeus sits on his throne and it is obvious to me at a glance that Zeus is the king here, he who drives the storm clouds, god among gods. No cartoon image, this Zeus, but an impossibly tall reality whose bearded, oiled, and palpably regal presence makes my blood turn to frightened sludge.
“How can we control the course of this war?” he demands of all the gods even while he stares daggers at his wife, Hera. “Or the fate of Helen? If goddesses such as Hera of Argos and Athena, guardian of her soldiers, keep intervening—such as this stopping Achilles’ hand in the act of drawing the blood of the son of Atreus?”
He turns his storm-cloud gaze on a goddess lounging on purple cushions.
How do you breathe lightly and softly when you’re terrified? But I nod, forgetting the Muse cannot see me now. When she waits, still staring slightly askance as if seeking me with her divine vision, I croak, “Yes, Goddess.”
“Put your hand on my arm,” she orders brusquely. “Stay with me. Do not lose contact with me. If you do, you will be destroyed.”
I put my hand on her arm like a timid debutante being escorted at a coming-out party. The Muse’s skin is cold.
I was once in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. The guide said that clouds sometimes formed under the roof hundreds of feet above the concrete floor. You could take the VAB and set it in one corner of this immense room we find ourselves in now and you’d never notice it sitting there like a cast-off child’s toy block in a cathedral.
One says “gods” and you think of the meat-and-potato gods, the main gods—Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and a few others—but there are hundreds of gods in this room and most of the room is empty. Seemingly miles above us, a gold dome—the Greeks had not discovered the principles of a dome, so this was in contrast to the classically conservative architecture of the other great buildings I have seen on Olympos—acoustically directs conversation to all corners of the breathtaking space.
The floor looks to be made of hammered gold. Gods lean on marble railings and look down from circling mezzanines. The walls everywhere sport hundreds upon hundreds of arched niches, each holding a white marble sculpture. The statues are of the gods present here now.
Holograms of Achaeans and Trojans flicker here and there, many of them showing life-sized, full-color, three-dimensional images of the men and women as they argue or eat or make love or sleep. Near the center of the room, the gold floor steps down to a recess larger than any combination of Olympic-sized swimming pools, and in this space flickers and floats more real-time images from Ilium—broad aerial views, close-ups, panning shots, multiple images. One can hear the dialogue as if the Greeks and Trojans were in this very room. Around this vision pool, sitting in stone thrones and lounging on plush couches and standing in their cartoonlike togas, are the gods. The important gods. The meat-and-potato, known-by-grade-schoolers gods.
Lesser gods move aside as the Muse approaches this center pool, and I hurry to stay with her, my invisible hand tremulous on her golden arm, trying not to squeak my sandals or trip or sneeze or breathe. None of the deities seem to notice me. I suspect that I will know very quickly if any of them do.
The Muse stops a few yards from Pallas Athena and I stay so close to her that I feel like a three-year-old child hugging his mother’s skirt.
There is a fierce argument under way, even as Hebe—one of the minor goddesses—moves among the others, pouring some sort of golden nectar into their gold goblets. Zeus sits on his throne and it is obvious to me at a glance that Zeus is the king here, he who drives the storm clouds, god among gods. No cartoon image, this Zeus, but an impossibly tall reality whose bearded, oiled, and palpably regal presence makes my blood turn to frightened sludge.
“How can we control the course of this war?” he demands of all the gods even while he stares daggers at his wife, Hera. “Or the fate of Helen? If goddesses such as Hera of Argos and Athena, guardian of her soldiers, keep intervening—such as this stopping Achilles’ hand in the act of drawing the blood of the son of Atreus?”
He turns his storm-cloud gaze on a goddess lounging on purple cushions.
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