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Title: Heel
Author: Philip Jose Farmer
Release Date: December 7, 2019 [EBook #60871]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEEL ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
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HEEL
By PHILIP JOSE FARMER
_Great cast! Stupendous show!
If this didn't make history,
nothing ever would!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Call me Zeus," said the Director.
"Zeus?" said his wife, a beautiful woman not over a thousand years old.
"What an egomaniac! Comparing yourself to a god, even if he is the god
of those--those savages!"
She gestured at the huge screen on the wall. It showed, far below, the
blue sea, the black ships on the yellow beach, the purple tents of the
Greek army, the broad brown plain, and the white towers of Troy.
The Director glared at her through hexagonal dark glasses and puffed on
his cigar until angry green clouds rolled from it. His round bald head
was covered by a cerise beret, his porpoise frame by a canary yellow
tunic, and his chubby legs by iridescent green fourpluses.
"I may not look like a god, but as far as my power over the natives of
this planet goes, I could well be their deity," he replied.
He spoke sharply to a tall handsome blond youth who wore a crooked
smile and bright blue and yellow tattoo spiraling around his legs and
trunk. "Apollo, hand me the Script!"
"Surely you're not going to change the Script again?" said his wife.
She rose from her chair, and the scarlet web she was wearing translated
the shifting micro-voltages on the surface of her skin into musical
tones.
"I never change the Script," said the Director. "I just make the slight
revisions required for dramatic effects."
"I don't care what you do to it, just so you don't allow the Trojans to
win. I hate those despicable brutes."
Apollo laughed loudly, and he said, "Ever since she and Athena and
Aphrodite thought of that goofy stunt of asking Paris to choose the
most beautiful of the three, and he gave the prize to Aphrodite, Hera's
hated the Trojans. Really, Hera, why blame those simple, likable people
for the actions of only one of them? I think Paris showed excellent
judgment. Aphrodite was so grateful she contrived to get that lovely
Helen for Paris and--"
"Enough of this private feud," snapped the Director. "Apollo, I told
you once to hand me the Script."
* * * * *
Achilles at midnight paced back and forth before his tent. Finally, in
the agony of his spirit, he called to Thetis. The radio which had been
installed in his shield, unknown to him, transmitted his voice to a
cabin in the great spaceship hanging over the Trojan plain.
Thetis, hearing it, said to Apollo, "Get out of my cabin, you heel, or
I'll have you thrown out."
"Leave?" he said. "Why? So you can be with your barbarian lover?"
"He is not my lover," she said angrily. "But I'd take even a barbarian
as a lover before I'd have anything to do with you. Now, get out. And
don't speak to me again unless it's in the line of business."
"Any time I speak to you, I mean business," he said, grinning.
"Get out or I'll tell my father!"
"I hear and obey. But I'll have you, one way or another."
Thetis shoved him out. Then she quickly put on the suit that could bend
light around her to make her invisible and transport her through the
air and do many other things. Out of a port she shot, straight toward
the tent of her protégé. She did not decelerate until she saw him
standing tall in the moonlight, his hands still raised in entreaty. She
landed and cut the power off so he could see her.
"Mother, Mother!" cried Achilles. "How long must I put up with
Agamemnon's high-handedness?"
Thetis took him by the hand and led him into the tent. "Is Patroclos
around?" she asked.
"No, he is having some fun with Iphis, that buxom beauty I gave him
after I conquered the city of Scyros."
"There's a sensible fellow," said Thetis. "Why don't you forget this
fuss with King Agamemnon and have fun with some rosy-cheeked darling?"
But a painful expression crossed her face as she said it.
Achilles did not notice the look. "I am too sick with humiliation and
disgust to take pleasure in anything. I am full up to here with being a
lion in the fighting and yet having to give that jackal Agamemnon the
lion's share of the loot, just because he has been chosen to be our
leader. Am I not a king in Thessaly? I wish--I wish--"
"Yes?" said Thetis eagerly. "Do you want to go home?"
"I _should_ go home. Then the Greeks would wish they'd not allowed
Agamemnon to insult the best man among them."
"Oh, Achilles, say the word and I'll have you across the sea and in
your palace in an hour!" she said excitedly. She was thinking, _The
Director will be furious if Achilles disappears, but he won't be able
to do anything about it. And the Script can be revised. Hector or
Odysseus or Paris can play the lead role._
* * * * *
"No," Achilles said. "I can't leave my men here. They'd say I had run
out on them, that I was a coward. And the Greeks would call me a yellow
dog. No, I'll allow no man to say that."
Thetis sighed and answered sadly, "Very well. What do you want me to
do?"
"Go ask Zeus if he will give Agamemnon so much trouble he'll come
crawling to me, begging for forgiveness and pleading for my help."
Thetis had to smile. The enormous egotism of the beautiful brute!
Taking it for granted that the Lord of Creation would bend the course
of events so Achilles could salvage his pride. Yet, she told herself,
she need not be surprised. He had taken it calmly enough the night
she'd appeared to him and told him that she was a goddess and his true
mother. He had always been convinced divine blood ran in his veins. Was
he not superior to all men? Was he not Achilles?
"I will go to Zeus," she said. "But what he will do, only he knows."
She reached up and pulled his head down to kiss him on the forehead.
She did not trust herself to touch the lips of this man who was far
more a man than those he supposed to be gods. The lips she longed
for ... the lips soon to grow cold. She could not bear to think of it.
She flicked the switch to make her invisible and, after leaving the
tent, rose toward the ship. As always, it hung at four thousand feet
above the plain, hidden in the inflated plastic folds that simulated
a cloud. To the Greeks and Trojans the cloud was the home of Zeus,
anchored there so he could keep a close eye on the struggle below.
It was he who would decide whether the walls of Troy would stand or
fall. It was to him that both sides prayed.
* * * * *
The Director was drinking a highball in his office and working out the
details of tomorrow's shooting with his cameramen.
"We'll give that Greek Diomedes a real break, make him the big hero.
Get a lot of close-ups. He has a superb profile and a sort of flair
about him. It's all in the Script, what aristocrats he kills, how many
narrow escapes, and so on. But about noon, just before lunch, we'll
wound him. Not too badly, just enough to put him out of action. Then
we'll see if we can whip up a big tearjerker between that Trojan and
his wife--what's her name?"
He looked around as if he expected them to feed him the answer. But
they were silent; it was not wise to know more than he.
He snapped his fingers. "Andromache! That's it!"
"What a memory! How do you keep all those barbaric names at your
tongue's tip? Photographic!" and so on from the suckophants.
"O.K. So after Diomedes leaves the scene, you, Apollo, will put on a
simulacrum of Helenos, the Trojan prophet. As Helenos, you'll induce
Hector to go back to Troy and get his mother, the Queen, to pray for
victory. We can get some colorful shots of the temple and the local
religious rites. Meantime, we'll set up a touching domestic scene
between Hector and his wife. Bring in their baby boy. A baby's always
good for ohs and ahs. Later, after coffee break, we'll...."
Apollo drifted through the crowd toward the Director's wife. She was
sitting on a chair and moodily drinking. However, seeing Apollo, she
smiled with green-painted lips and said, "Do sit down, darling. You
needn't worry about my husband being angry because you're paying
attention to me. He's too busy shining down on his little satellites
to notice you."
Apollo seated himself in a chair facing her and moved forward so their
knees touched.
"What do you want now?" she said. "You only get lovey-dovey when you're
trying to get something out of me."
"You know I love only you, Hera," he said, grinning. "But I can't meet
you as often as I'd like. Old Thunder-and-Lightning is too suspicious.
And I value my job too much to risk it, despite my overwhelming passion
for you."
"Get to the point."
"We're way over our budget and past our deadline. The shooting should
have been finished six months ago. Yet Old Fussybritches keeps on
revising the Script and adding scene after scene. And that's not all.
We're not going home when Troy does fall. The Director is planning to
make a sequel. I know because he asked me to outline the Script for it.
He's got the male lead picked out. Foxy Grandpa Odysseus."
* * * * *
Hera sat upright so violently she sloshed her drink over the edge
of her glass. "Why, my brother means to kill Odysseus at the first
opportunity! My brother is mad, absolutely mad about Athena, but he
can't get to first base with her. She's got eyes only for Odysseus,
though how she could take up with one of those stupid primitives, I'll
never understand."
"Athena claims he has an intelligence equal to any of us," said Apollo.
"However, it's not her but Thetis I meant to discuss."
"Is my stepdaughter interfering again?"
"I think so. Just before this conference I saw her coming out of the
Director's room, tears streaming from her big cow eyes. I imagine she
was begging him again to spare Achilles. Or at least to allow the
Trojans to win for a while so Agamemnon will give back to Achilles the
girl he took from him, that tasty little dish, Briseis."
"You ought to know how tasty she is," said Hera bitterly. "I happen to
know you drugged Achilles several nights in a row and then put on his
simulacrum."
"A handy little invention, that simulacrum," said Apollo. "Put one on
and you can look like anybody you want to look like. Your jealousy is
showing, Hera. However, that's not the point. If Thetis keeps playing
on her father's sympathies like an old flute, this production will last
forever. Frankly, I'd like to shake the dust of this crummy planet from
my feet, get back to civilization before it forgets what a great script
writer I am."
"What do you propose?"
"I propose to hurry things up. Eventually, Achilles is supposed to
quit sulking and take up arms again. So far, the Director has been
indefinite on how we'll get him to do that. Well, we'll help him
without his knowing it. We'll fix it so the Trojans will beat the
Greeks even worse than the Director intends. Hector will almost run
them back into the sea. Agamemnon will beg Achilles to get back into
the ring. He'll give him back the loot he took from him, including
Briseis. And he'll offer his own daughter in marriage to Achilles.
"Achilles will refuse. But we'll have him all set up for the next
move. Tonight a technician will implant a post-hypnotic suggestion in
Achilles that he send his buddy Patroclos, dressed in Achilles' armor,
out to scare the kilts off the Trojans. We'll generate a panic among
the Trojans with a subsonic projector. Then we'll arrange it so Hector
kills Patroclos. That is the one thing to make Achilles so fighting mad
he'll quit sulking...."
"Patroclos? But the Director wants to save him for the big scene when
Achilles is knocked off. Patroclos is supposed to put Achilles' armor
on, storm the Scaian gate, and lead the Greeks right into the city."
"Accidents will happen," said Apollo. "Despite what the barbarians
think, we are not gods. Or are we? What do you say to my plan?"
"If the Director finds out we've tampered with the Script, he'll
divorce me. And you'll be blackballed in every studio from one end of
the Galaxy to the other."
Apollo winked and said, "I'll leave it to you to make Old Stupe think
Patroclos' death was his own idea. You have done something like that
before, and more than once."
She laughed and said, "Oh, Apollo, you're such a heel."
He rose. "Not a heel. Just a great script writer. Our plan will give me
a chance to kill Achilles much sooner than the Director expects. And
it'll all be for the good of the Script."
* * * * *
That night two technicians went into the Greek camp, one to Achilles'
tent and one to Agamemnon's. The technician assigned to the King of
Mycenae gave him a whiff of sleep gas and then taped two electrodes to
the royal forehead. It took him a minute to play a recording and two to
untape the electrodes and leave.
Five minutes later, the King awoke, shouting that Zeus had sent him a
dream in the shape of wise old Nestor. Nestor had told him to rouse the
camp and march forth even if it were only dawn, for today Troy would
fall and his brother Menelaos would get back his wife Helen.
Agamemnon, though, who had always been too clever for his own good,
told the council of elders that he wanted to test his army before
telling them the truth. He would announce that he was tired of this
war they could not win and that he wanted to go home. This news would
separate the slackers from the soldiers, his true friends from the
false.
Unfortunately, when he told this to the assemblage, he found far
less men of valor than he had expected. The entire army, with a few
exceptions, gave a big hurrah and stampeded toward the ships. They had
had a bellyful of this silly war, fighting to win back the beautiful
tart Helen for the King's brother, spilling their guts all over foreign
plains while their wives were undoubtedly playing them false with the
4-Fs, the fields were growing weeds, and their children were starving.
In vain, Agamemnon tried to stop the rush. He even shouted at them what
they had only guessed before, that more was at stake than his brother's
runaway wife. If Troy was crushed, the Greeks would own the trading
and colonizing routes to the rich Black Sea area. But no one paid any
attention to him. They were too concerned with knocking each other over
in their haste to get the ships ready to sail.
At this time, the only people from the spaceship on the scene
were some cameramen and technicians. They were paralyzed by the
unexpectedness of the situation, and they were afraid to use their
emotion-stimulating projectors. By the flick of a few switches
the panic could be turned into aggression. But it would have been
aggression without a leader. The Greeks, instead of automatically
turning to fight the Trojans, would have killed each other, sure that
their fellows were trying to stop them from embarking for home.
The technicians did not dare to waken the Director and acknowledge they
could not handle a simple mob scene. But one of them did put a call
through to one of the Director's daughters, Athena.
Athena zipped down to Odysseus and found him standing to one side,
looking glum. He had not panicked, but he also was not interfering.
Poor fellow, he longed to go home to Penelope. In the beginning of this
useless war, he had pretended madness to get out of being drafted. But,
once he had sworn loyalty to the King, he would not abandon him.
Athena flicked off her light-bender so he could see her. She shouted,
"Odysseus, don't just stand there like a lump on a bog! Do something or
all will be lost--the war, the honor of the Greeks, the riches you will
get from the loot of Troy! Get going!"
Odysseus, never at a loss, tore the wand of authority from the King's
numbed hand and began to run through the crowd. Everybody he met he
reproached with cowardice, and backed the sting of his words with the
hard end of the wand on their backs. Athena signaled to the technicians
to project an aggression-stimulating frequency. Now that the Greeks
had a leader to channel their courage, they could be diverted back to
fighting.
There was only one obstacle, Thersites. He was a lame hunchback with
the face of a baboon and a disposition to match.
Thersites cried out in a hoarse, jeering voice, "Agamemnon, don't you
have enough loot? Do you still want us to die so you may gather more
gold and beautiful Trojan women in your greedy arms? You Greeks, you're
not men. You're women who will do anything this disgrace to a crown
tells you to do. Look what he did to Achilles. Robbed him of Briseis
and in so doing robbed us of the best warrior we have. If I were
Achilles, I'd knock Agamemnon's head off."
"We've put up with your outrageous abuse long enough!" shouted
Odysseus. He began thwacking Thersites on the head and the back until
blood ran. "Shut up or I'll kill you!"
At this the whole army, which hated Thersites, roared with laughter.
Odysseus had relieved the tension; now they were ready to march under
Agamemnon's orders.
Athena sighed with relief and radioed back to the ship that the
Director could be awakened. Things were well in hand.
* * * * *
And so they were--until a few days later when Apollo and Hera, waiting
until the Director had gone to bed early with a hangover from the night
before, induced Hector to make a night attack. The fighting went on all
night, and at dawn Patroclos ran into Achilles' tent.
"Terrible news!" he cried. "The Trojans have breached the walls around
our ships and are burning them! Diomedes, Agamemnon, and Odysseus are
wounded. If you do not lead your men against Hector, all is lost!"
"Too bad," said Achilles. But the blood drained from his face.
"Don't be so hardhearted!" shouted Patroclos. "If you won't fight, at
least allow me to lead the Myrmidons against the enemy. Perhaps we can
save the ships and drive Hector off!"
Achilles shouted back, "Very well! You know I give you, my best friend,
anything you want. But I will not for all the gold in the world serve
under a king who robs me of prizes I took with my own sword. However, I
will give you my armor, and my men will march behind you!"
Then, sobbing with rage and frustration, he helped Patroclos dress in
his armor.
"Do you see this little lever in the back of the shield?" he said.
"When an enemy strikes at you, flick it this way. The air in front
of you will become hard, and your foe's weapon will bounce off the
air. Then, before he recovers from his confusion, flick the lever the
other way. The air will soften and allow your spear to pass. And the
spearpoint will shear through his armor as if it were cheese left in
the hot sun. It is made of some substance harder than the hardest
bronze made by the hand of man."
"So this is the magic armor your divine mother, Thetis, gave you," said
Patroclos. "No wonder--"
"Even without this magic--or force field, as Thetis calls it--I am
the best man among Greek or Trojan," said Achilles matter-of-factly.
"There! Now you are almost as magnificent as I am. Go forth in my
armor, Patroclos, and run the Trojans ragged. I will pray to Zeus that
you come back safely. There is one thing you must not do, though, no
matter how strong the temptation--do not chase the Trojans too close
to the city, even if you are on the heels of Hector himself. Thetis
has told me that Zeus does not want Troy to fall yet. If you were to
threaten it now, the gods would strike you down."
"I will remember," said Patroclos. He got into Achilles' chariot and
drove off proudly to take his place in front of the Myrmidons.
* * * * *
The Director was so red in the face, he looked as if his head were one
huge blood vessel.
"How in space did the Trojans get so far?" he screamed. "And what is
Patroclos doing in Achilles' armor? There's rank inefficiency here or
else skullduggery! Either one, heads will roll! And I think I know
whose! Apollo! Hera! What have you two been up to?"
"Why, Husband," said Hera, "how can you say I had anything to do with
this? You know how I hate the Trojans. As for Apollo, he thinks too
much of his job to go against the Script."
"All right, we'll see. We'll get to the bottom of this later.
Meanwhile, let's direct the situation so it'll end up conforming to the
Script."
But before the cameramen and technicians could be organized, Patroclos,
leading the newly inspired Greeks, slaughtered the Trojans as a lion
kills sheep. He could not be stopped, and when he saw Hector running
away from him, he forgot his friend's warning and pursued him to the
walls of Troy.
"Follow me!" yelled Patroclos to the Greeks. "We will break down the
gates and take the city within an hour!"
* * * * *
It was then Apollo projected fury into Hector so that he turned to
battle the man he thought was Achilles. And Apollo, timing to coincide
with the instant that Patroclos flicked off his force field, struck
him a stunning blow from behind. At the same time a spear thrown by a
Trojan wounded Patroclos in the back. Dazed, hurt, the Greek started
back toward his men. But Hector ran up and stabbed him through the
belly, finding no resistance to his spear because Patroclos had not
turned the force field back on. Patroclos hit the ground with a crash
of armor.
"No, no, you fool, Apollo!" shouted the Director into the radio. "He
must not die! We need him later for the Script. You utter fool, you've
bumbled!"
Thetis, who had been standing behind the Director, burst into tears and
ran into her cabin.
"What's the matter with her?" asked the Director.
"You may as well know, darling," said Hera, "that your daughter is in
love with a barbarian."
"Thetis? In love with Patroclos? Impossible!"
Hera laughed and said, "Ask her how she feels about the planned death
of Achilles. That is whom she is weeping for, not Patroclos. She
foresees Achilles' death in his friend's. And I imagine she will go to
comfort her lover, knowing his grief when he hears that Patroclos is
dead."
"That's ridiculous! If she's in love with Achilles, why would she tell
Achilles she is his mother?"
"For the very reason she loves him but doesn't want him to know. She at
least has sense enough to realize no good could come from a match with
one of those Earth primitives. So she stopped any passes from him with
that maternal bit. If there is one thing the Greeks respect, it is the
incest taboo."
"I'll have him knocked off as soon as possible. Thetis might lose her
head and tell him the truth. Poor little girl, she's been away from
civilization too long. We'll have to wind up this picture and get back
to God's planet."
Hera watched him go after Thetis and then switched to a private
channel. "Apollo, the Director is very angry with you. But I've thought
of a way to smooth his feathers. We'll tell him that killing Patroclos
was the only way to get Achilles back into the fight. He'll like that.
Achilles can then be slain, and the picture will still be saved. Also,
I'll make him think it was his idea."
"That's great," replied Apollo, his voice shaky with dread of the
Director. "But what can we do to speed up the shooting? Patroclos was
supposed to take the city after Achilles was killed."
"Don't worry," said Athena, who had been standing behind Hera.
"Odysseus is your man. He's been working on a device to get into the
city. Barbarian or not, that fellow is the smartest I've ever met. Too
bad he's an Earthman."
* * * * *
During the next twenty-four hours, Thetis wept much. But she was also
very busy, working while she cried. She went to Hephaistos, the chief
technician, an old man of five thousand years. He loved Thetis because
she had intervened for Hephaistos more than once when her father had
been angry with him. Yet he shook his head when she asked him if he
could make Achilles another suit of armor, even more invulnerable than
the first.
"Not enough time. Achilles is to be killed tomorrow."
"No. My father has cooled off a little. He remembered that the Script
calls for Achilles to kill Hector before he himself dies. Besides, the
government anthropologist wants to take films of the funeral games for
Patroclos. And he overrules even Father, you know."
"That'll give me a week," said Hephaistos, figuring on his fingers. "I
can do it. But tell me, child, why all the tears? Is it true what they
say, that you love a barbarian, that magnificent red-haired Achilles?"
"I love him," she said, weeping again.
"Ah, child, you are a mere hundred years or so. When you reach my age,
you'll know that there are few things worth tears, and love between
man and woman is not one of them. However, I'll make the armor. And
its field of force will cover everything around him except an opening
to the outside air. Otherwise, he'd suffocate. But what good will all
this do? The Director will find some means of killing him. And even if
Achilles should escape, you'd be no better off."
"I will," she said. "We'll go to Italy--and I'll give him perpetuol."
Thetis went to her cabin. Shortly afterward, the doorbell rang. She
opened the door and saw Apollo.
Smiling, he said, "I have something here you might be interested in
hearing." He held in his hand a small cartridge.
Seeing it, her eyes widened in surprise.
"Yes, it's a recording," he said, and he pushed past her into the
room. "Let me put it in your playback."
"You don't have to," she replied. "I presume you had a microphone
planted in Hephaistos' cabin?"
"Correct. Won't your father be angry if somebody sends him a note
telling him you're planning to ruin the Script by running off to Italy
with a barbarian? And not only that but inject perpetuol into the
barbarian to increase his life span? Personally, if I were your father,
I'd let you do it. You'd soon grow sick of your handsome but uncouth
booby."
Thetis did not answer.
"I really don't care," he said. "In fact, I'll help you. I can arrange
it so the arrow that hits Achilles' heel will be a trick one. Its head
will just seem to sink into his flesh. Inside it will be a needle that
will inject a cataleptic agent. Achilles will seem to be dead but will
actually be in a state of suspended animation. We'll sneak his body at
night from the funeral pyre and substitute a corpse. A bio-tech who
owes me a favor will fix up the face of a dead Trojan or Greek to look
like Achilles'. When this epic is done and we're ready to leave Earth,
you can run away. We'll not miss you until we're light-years away."
"And what do you want in return for arranging all this? My thanks?"
"I want you."
Thetis flinched. For a moment she stood with her eyes closed and her
hands clenched. Then, opening her eyes, she said, "All right. I know
that is the only way open for me. It's also the only way you could have
devised to have me. But I want to tell you that I loathe and despise
you. And I'll be hating every atom of your flesh while you're in
possession of mine."
He chuckled and said, "I know it. But your hate will only make me
relish you the more. It'll be the sauce on the salad."
"Oh, you heel!" she said in a trembling voice. "You dirty, sneaking,
miserable, slimy heel!"
"Agreed." He picked up a bottle and poured two drinks. "Shall we toast
to that?"
* * * * *
Hector's death happened, as planned, and the tear-jerking scene in
which his father, King Priam, came to beg his son's body from Achilles.
Four days later, Achilles led the attack on the Scaian gate. It was
arranged that Paris should be standing on the wall above the gate.
Apollo, invisible behind him, would shoot the arrow that would strike
Achilles' foot if Paris' arrow bounced off the force field.
Apollo spoke to Thetis, who was standing beside him. "You seem very
nervous. Don't worry. You'll see your lovely warrior in Italy in a few
weeks. And you can explain to him that you aren't his mother, that you
had to tell him that to protect him from the god Apollo's jealousy. But
now that Zeus has raised him from the dead, you have been given to him
as a special favor. And all will end happily. That is, until living
with him will become so unbearable you'd give a thousand years off your
life to leave this planet. Then, of course, it'll be too late. There
won't be another ship along for several millennia."
"Shut up," she said. "I know what I'm doing."
"So do I," he said. "Ah, here comes the great hero Achilles, chasing a
poor Trojan whom he plans to slaughter. We'll see about that."
He lifted the airgun in whose barrel lay the long dart with the trick
head. He took careful aim, saying, "I'll wait until he goes to throw
his spear. His force field will be off.... Now!"
Thetis gave a strangled cry. Achilles, the arrow sticking from the
tendon just above the heel, had toppled backward from the chariot onto
the plain, where dust settled on his shining armor. He lay motionless.
"Oh, that was an awful fall," she moaned. "Perhaps he broke his neck.
I'd better go down there and see if he's all right."
"Don't bother," said Apollo. "He's dead."
Thetis looked at him with wide brown eyes set in a gray face.
"I put poison on the needle," said Apollo, smiling crookedly at her.
"That was my idea, but your father approved of it. He said I'd redeemed
my blunder in killing Patroclos by telling him what you planned. Of
course, I didn't inform him of the means you took to insure that I
would carry out my bargain with you. I was afraid your father would
have been very shocked to hear of your immoral behavior."
Thetis choked out, "You unspeakable ... vicious ... vicious ... you ...
you...."
"Dry your pretty tears," said Apollo. "It's all for your own good. And
for Achilles', too. The story of his brief but glorious life will be a
legend among his people. And out in the Galaxy the movie based on his
career will become the most stupendous epic ever seen."
* * * * *
Apollo was right. Four thousand years later, it was still a tremendous
box-office attraction. There was talk that now that Earth was civilized
enough to have space travel, it might even be shown there.
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