Clash of the Titans (3 page)

"Go on," said Hera, knowing what she would hear but as always, curious about the details. Her husband was famed and worshiped for many things, but marital fidelity had never been one of them.

Aphrodite continued when Thetis could not. She was not as reticent to discuss such matters, which after all fell within her province of administration.

"Zeus transformed himself into a glittering shower of gold and visited her. Visited her, and loved her as a mortal man. Father Zeus is notoriously persuasive at such times, and Danae, locked away for years, was understandably receptive to his sympathetic advances."

"Then why should I show any compassion?" wondered Hera. "Why should I care what happens now? Let her drown, and the child with her."

"But it answers your question, Hera," Thetis explained. "Do you not see the torment father Zeus is undergoing? The child Perseus is his half-mortal offspring, his son. That is why he must be saved. The threat to him is what prompted so extreme an outburst of hatred against Argos and its king. Perhaps Acrisius's crime and the consent of his people would have doomed the city anyway, but because of the child's heritage Argos's fate was sealed the moment her people voted to expose Danae and her son to the elements."

"See," murmured Aphrodite, pointing across the floor. "It begins."

Zeus had halted before a strange construct. It was a model of an amphitheater, a god-toy within which he could observe the playacting that men called their lives. With a touch here, a gesture there, the gods could alter the play, moving and shaping events from above. It amused Zeus to form his stage in the image of man's own.

Behind the shimmering metaphor were dark marbled walls filled with row on row of figures set in small niches. Those mortals whom the gods presently attended to were represented by such figures. Most men were not represented, their life-streams being of no importance to the future of the world. Occasionally a figure would be added, sometimes another would be removed. Empty niches awaited others destined to play important roles in the course of human history.

Two small statuettes stood motionless in the center of the amphitheater, facing one another on the stage of life.

Zeus had placed them there earlier. Now he stood gazing thoughtfully down at them. Events could be altered, but not fate. How then had he managed to put himself in so difficult a position? It was not the first time. But there was nothing to do now but follow fate through.

One figure, stiff and stonelike, was a simulacrum of the tyrant of Argos; the other, a young woman cuddling an infant. Zeus shook his head dolefully. He did not enjoy such moments, but he was compelled to determine their resolution.

If only men would learn to emulate the teachings of the gods. Yet they persisted in acting like men. And what of the gods, he thought? Do we not sometimes lower ourselves to act like mortals? It was a disquieting thought for one who was not supposed to show doubt.

He lifted the statuette of Danae and the baby and set it carefully in an empty, waiting niche in the near wall. It was the still formless shape of the male infant which held his attention.

What kind of future had he unwittingly set that child on? What larger part might he play in the game of life?

Well, that was for the future, a bare moment from now. For the present . . . he lifted the statuette of Acrisius.

Hades, my dark distant brother, make room in thy kingdom. Many immigrants are soon to arrive. As he thought, his fingers tightened slightly on the statuette . . .

"My lord!" The soldier looked on with concern as King Acrisius suddenly bent over in pain, his arms wrapping around his chest. The little knot of warriors halted just inside the entrance to the palace.

"Nothing . . . it's nothing, Kimosos." Then he winced again, his eyes bulging wide in surprise as another sharp pain shot through his chest.

The soldier watched helplessly as the king's face twisted in agony. Then his gaze turned to look back toward the opening on the main square.

A troop of ten guarded the palace entrance. The guard was necessary for appearance, as well as for another less publicized purpose. For while most inhabitants of Argos thought Acrisius a brave and noble leader, there were those few fanatics who believed him a vicious tyrant worthy of assassination. The guard and the populace took delight in such attempts on the king's life, for it would mean another traitor to hang by the heels in the square, swinging until dead for the amusement of casual passersby.

The guard of ten—the most brutal and insensitive men in the royal phalanx—had stepped back into the shelter of the entryway and were muttering nervously to one another. Outside, the wind had risen with unnatural speed: it howled and shrieked and tore at the marble facing of the palace while citizens scurried for cover.

Acrisius's arms moved away from his chest and he took an unsteady step forward. Immediately his arms tightened again around his ribs and this time he stumbled to his knees, howling with pain. He appeared suddenly incapable of speech, and unreason was rising in his eyes.

Terrified, his bodyguards dropped their weapons and fled in all directions.

"The vengeance of the gods!" yelled one who had mounted the cliffs that morning with uncertainty, but who had done nothing to stay the course of injustice.

"Come back!" shouted the officer Kimosos. "Come back, cowards! The decision was just. The people and the priests approved it, as did you yourselves." He waved his sword warningly at the retreating backs of the king's bodyguards.

"It's only another storm, you fools! I will see you all set on the rocks with your guts ripped open for the birds to feed upon!" But threats did not slow the pace of those running from their king. They were swallowed up by the bowels of the palace, a refuge whose strength and solidity was suddenly vanishing.

Kimosos bent to his king. "My lord, I will have them tracked down and properly dealt with. You need stronger men for your personal guard. Men who are fit to match your own . . . your own . . ."

Kimosos stumbled away, the back of one hand covering his mouth, his shield clattering to the marble floor. He had looked into the king's eyes. In them he had seen madness, and his own incipient destruction.

Wind roared through the columned buildings, tore potted plants from atop balustrades and porticos, and ripped at the friezes worked by dying slaves to immortalize their uncaring masters. Dust filled the air. Oak and olive trees began to splinter under the force of the gale while smaller bushes were uprooted and thrown through the streets.

Men and women who had thought themselves the chosen stumbled about in confusion as they sought shelter from the anger of the sudden storm.

It blew straight in off the Gulf of Argolis and from the Aegean beyond, that wind. It rose from the far stretches of the Mediterranean, nurtured by sources beyond the range of human perception.

Near the seaward side of the city, terrified soldiers fought to close the great harbor gates against the wind, as though they could shut out the storm like some mortal, but close by the water's edge the gale was too strong. The gates were thrown open, the soldiers sent tumbling like toys in the dirt.

The seas have their own private places. But man persists in searching them out, probing and peeking with his tiny devices to see what lies beyond the next overhang, beneath the next reef. There are some places never to be discovered and best left forever undisturbed.

Poseidon glided purposefully toward one such place. Ahead lay a massive underwater seamount fronted with metal worked by Hephaestus himself. Those gates, requiring a thousand mortal years to forge, had to be strong enough to hold something older than a god.

Bubbles larger than boats occasionally emerged from cracks between mountain and metal. They burst there in the dark depths or worked their buoyant way upward around unhealthy-looking sea growths: distorted corals, bloated anemones, hideous sponge things noisome with coatings of luminescent slime.

A rush of bubbles erupted from behind the massive doorway. The sea god knew the thing beyond sensed his coming. It hated him, as it hated all the gods who had destroyed its kin and taken mastery over the world. But Zeus had bound it, kept it alive for millennia, and it would do his bidding.

If it could not kill them, it would settle for killing whatever was offered.

The great bars on the doors were thick with crustacea and tangled growths, but even these odd life forms moved aside at the sea god's command. Even cleared, it required all Poseidon's inhuman strength to draw those bars aside. Among the gods only he and Zeus could master the creature, but even so, it was prudent not to challenge it unnecessarily.

It knew already what was expected, and moved impatiently inside its cage, eager to be about its task.

Poseidon slid the last bar aside, then moved away as he tugged the great doors open.

A head emerged hesitantly from the opening in the side of the seamount, a head larger than the entire figure of Poseidon. It was followed by an immense, dark body propelled by a huge scaled tail. The Kraken possessed a pair of arms and below them, a pair of cephalopodan tentacles lined with rasp-edged suckers.

It paused there a moment, enjoying its freedom. The horny crested skull turned right to left, the massive beak opening and closing.

"Go!" Poseidon finally ordered it, sickened by the sight of the grotesque aberration. "Go and be quick with it, lest I shut you back in your hole now."

The Kraken did not speak, nor could its fixed face smile, but Poseidon sensed it was not impressed by his threat. It remained a moment like that, drifting in the water. Then it turned away, the eyes moving reluctantly downward. The ancient bonds Zeus had imposed on it remained unbreakable.

It kicked once with its enormous tail and was gone, racing to the surface. Poseidon watched it depart with a mixture of disgust and relief.

The fishermen were laughing as they related once again the story of Danae and her bastard, joking about what they might do if they happened to chance upon the floating burial chest. No need, they chuckled, to waste such a fabled beauty if they happened upon her. Once they were finished with her they could always replace her in the ark-chest. No one in Argos would know, or care.

The waters beneath them erupted. A head far larger than their ship shattered vile dreams and dreamers into small bits. The Kraken hung suspended a moment above the sea before all four massive limbs and its immense upper body fell with a thunderous crash back to the surface. It had not even noticed the small fishing craft.

A wall of water fifty feet high bulged upward and raced toward the harbor at the head of the narrow inlet. The soldiers on the walls saw the angry green cloud rushing at them through the windblown dust, but had no time to flee—only time enough for final, hasty prayers, and a scream.

Tons of water swept over the city gates, sending great blocks of granite flying like grains of sand. Marble pillars that seemed thick enough to support mountains snapped like broom straws.

People repented too late and to no avail. Waves threw them against stairways and walls or sent them spinning like dolls through the river channels that had once been broad avenues. A few refugees sought shelter in Argos's largest edifice, the royal palace. Smaller, more peaceful towns and cities had given up their gold and people to raise that wonderful structure. In isolated places its marble was still stained with their blood.

Now vast, tireless ocean swells swept around the columns and through the grand rooms. The altars of the various gods were swept aside along with the pitiful reminders of a lost dominance: swords and shields, coins and vases and stolen statuary.

Acrisius lay slumped still on the floor of the main hall, ignored by his people as they ran for shelter around him. The roaring outside grew louder. Water swirled around his feet, but he was unable to rise.

Then a peculiar groaning heralded the shattering of the roof. The falling stone slabs spared him long enough so that he had a single glimpse of the awful visage of the Kraken, towering above.

With that sight came the knowledge of the source of his sudden downfall. He cried out a curse against the gods who had chosen to punish him so; then he died, crushed like a beetle beneath a section of roof weighing half a ton. To the implacable, efficient Kraken, his was merely another corpse.

That night it seemed that evening came early to the Gulf of Argolis. A thick red sun oozed slowly into the western horizon, throwing vermilion across a scene of desolation. Within the once proud city, nothing moved. Not a horse, a dog, a rat.

From nearby Navplion and Mikinai travelers arrived to view the destruction. They made large offerings for many nights thereafter to appease the anger of those they knew to be responsible for Argos's fate, lest it later lap over to consume them as well. And there was less talk in the cities bordering the gulf of taking up the mantle of conquest that had so enriched the great city.

Zeus opened his hand and blew the dust that had been Acrisius to the four winds. In his mind he saw the Kraken reluctantly return to its abyssal lair, once more to be shut in by Poseidon.

It was done.

Somewhere far below and away, far from ravaged Argos, a battered and seaworn wooden chest drifted on a calm evening sea.

Eventually it grounded gently on a white sand beach. No storm raged here, no howling wind or monstrous shape of vengeance. A small boat, skillfully guided, could not have made a better landing. For a moment, nothing could be heard save the soft lullabies of wind and surf. Then the cry of a waking child rose above the lap of the advancing tide.

Damp with the smell of his recently visited kingdom, Poseidon stood once again in the home of the gods. His expression was grim and it was clear to his fellow immortals that he wished to be elsewhere.

"It is finished," he told the figure standing next to the flickering silhouette of the amphitheater. "Argos is punished and Danae and her child have been carried safely to the island of Seriphos."