Sunset of the Gods (13 page)

“I am Franco, Category Five, Seventy-Sixth Degree.”

Jason stared. “But that’s a—”

“Yes. I am a genetically upgraded agent of the Transhuman Dispensation.”

“What are you trying to put over on us?” demanded Mondrago, now fully awake. “The Transhuman movement was wiped out a generation before Weintraub discovered temporal energy potential.”

“So you Pugs think.” From history lessons, Jason recognized the Transhumanist acronym for
products of uncontrolled genetics
—their term for the human race in its natural form. “You truly believe you successfully stood in the way of evolutionary destiny. You merely delayed it. Our inner circles withdrew into concealment, in various hidden places all around Earth and the Solar System, where we have secretly continued our great work.”

“Too bad,” remarked Jason. “We really did think the universe had been cleansed of the Transhuman abomination.”

Franco leaned forward, and his amber eyes glowed as though fervor burned like a flame behind them. “It is you who are the abomination: a form of life that has outlived its time but refuses out of mere parochialism and nostalgia to step aside and get out of the way of its successors. Humanity is clinging to its primordial state—a race of randomly evolved apes—when for centuries it has had the technology to transform itself into a consciously, rationally self-created race of gods—”

“—And monsters.” Jacob shook his head irritably. “Why am I wasting my breath talking to you? I have no idea who you really are, but you’re obviously a liar in addition to being a raving lunatic. The fact that you’re here and now proves that. The Authority has never sent any diehard Transhumanist fanatics into the past, and it never will.”

Franco took on an infuriatingly complacent look. “Who said anything about the Authority?”

“Talk sense! The Authority operates the only temporal displacer in existence.”

“So it pleases the Authority to think. Shortly after Weintraub’s initial experiments, we stole his data—it was pathetically easy, and we were
very
interested in its potentialities. Our research ran parallel to, but in advance of, Fujiwara’s. She and Weintraub were brilliant, for Pugs, but they followed several false trails. The result was a ‘brute force’ approach to temporal displacement, requiring a titanic installation and a lavish expenditure of energy. We soon spotted the flaws in their mathematics. O
ur
displacer is relatively compact and energy-efficient, and therefore concealable.”

“Are you saying,” said Jason, thunderstruck, “that there are
two
displacers on Earth in our era?” He wanted to believe it was a lie, because it removed the foundations of his accustomed structure of assumptions. But, try as he might, he could see no other way to account for the presence of unauthorized time travelers with proscribed equipment.

“Only since the Authority’s came into operation,” said Franco, amused. “Ours was the first. We’ll probably build more, as the one we have is getting somewhat overworked. As I mentioned, we have been intensely interested in time travel ever since Weintraub demonstrated that it was a theoretical possibility.”

“Why? I’ve never heard that the Transhumanists had any interest in historical research.”

“We don’t.” Once again Franco leaned forward avidly. “We look to the future, not the past. We don’t want to study history. We want to change it.”

For a heartbeat or two, Jason stared openmouthed. Then he burst out laughing.

“Now I
know
you’re a lunatic!” he finally gasped. “History
can’t
be changed! But please don’t let me stop you. I hope you try—I really do. In fact, I hope you try very, very hard!”

“I never said we thought we could change
observed
history. But have you ever considered how much of the human past is unobserved and unrecorded? There are vast empty stretches of territory and time in which we are constantly changing the past, filling up those stretches with what will, in the end, turn out to have been humanity’s secret history—a history inevitably leading to our eventual triumph at a date which . . . I don’t believe I’ll reveal to you. We call it, simply,
The Day.
”

“And how, precisely, are you doing that?” Jason inquired, unable to keep a reluctant and horrified fascination out of his voice. In one corner of his mind, he wondered why Franco was telling him all this. Probably the Transhumanist simply felt a need for someone besides his own underlings to brag to. Jason had known enough blowhards, in his own time and others, to be able to recognize the type.

Of course, there was another, more unsettling explanation: Franco thought his revelations could do no possible harm because he had no intention of letting his listeners live.

“We have various techniques. For example, we plant genetic flaws in the unmodified human population by infecting populations with gengineered retroviruses, which by The Day will have rendered those populations vulnerable to a biochemical warfare using tailored proteins or polysaccharides. Another approach is to plant retroactive plagues, spreading mutagens whose genetic time-clocks result in the poisoning of certain vital food supplies on The Day. And there are even more subtle ‘time bombs’ that we plant, some of a purely psychological nature.”

“But,” said Jason with an incredulous headshake, “things like that would be extremely long-term, and require repeated visits to various eras in succession.” Inwardly, he fought to hold at bay an obscene vision of Earth as a rotten apple, seemingly sound on the outside but a writhing mass of worms inside the skin, waiting to break through it.

“To repeat, our temporal displacement technology is less expensive than yours by orders of magnitude. We are therefore less constrained in how far into the past we can go, and how often. This is particularly helpful in my own work: the establishment of cults and secret societies, which we nurture over the centuries by repeated visits from the same, seemingly ageless agent at prophesied times. At those times the agent foretells the next visit, dazzles the faithful with technological ‘magic,’ and gives them enough foreknowledge of the future to confirm the succeeding generations in their faith. As the ages pass and the scientific worldview takes hold, we will begin to reveal the truth to them. By then their loyalty will be practically hereditary, and we will offer them suitable rewards in the new order.”

“A promise which naturally won’t be kept,” Mondrago stated rather than asked.

“Naturally. Promises to Pugs mean nothing. By the time The Day arrives, Earth will be riddled with such cadres, not knowing of each other’s existence. Like all our other projects, it will not contradict recorded history. But recorded history will turn out to have been a mere ornamental façade, behind which
real
history has been building all along toward a Transhumanist future.”

“And,” Jason said slowly, “I imagine it helps to no end when you have some kind of pre-existing cult to build on.” He wanted to keep Franco talking as long as possible, revealing as much information as possible.

“You’re surprisingly perceptive. Yes, my first appearance in this region was in the late Bronze Age—the thirteenth century b.c. Pan, you see, is a very ancient god. And, since we are not limited by the irrational restrictions you labor under, my genetic code was resequenced by nanotechnological means, altering my appearance to godlike standards, as you’ve doubtless noticed.”

“Actually I hadn’t.”

Franco’s eyes narrowed a few microns and chilled a few degrees, but otherwise he showed no reaction to Jason’s jab.

“At the same time,” Jason went on, “it must limit you that you can’t send any of your radically specialized—and unhuman-looking—gengineered castes back in time. Nor can you send those of your servitors with blatantly obvious bionics. They couldn’t exactly blend, could they?”

“It is a handicap,” Franco acknowledged. “But this was one of those cases in which we were able to make use of recorded history, rather than merely avoiding it. We knew, of course, of the later belief that Pan had intervened at Marathon. It was the perfect opportunity to reinforce our cult’s fervor.”

“And, of course, you’ve been able to show them their god Pan in the flesh. Another of your gene-twisted obscenities, of course—although I didn’t realize that even you were able to produce anything so grotesquely divergent from the human norm.”

“We’re not, at least not without great difficulty. We had help. You see, in the course of my earlier visits to Greece, we acquired allies.” Before Franco could elaborate, a door opened and a handsome but relatively nondescript man came in and whispered to him. He nodded, said “Bring him in,” and turned back to Jason with a dazzling smile. “By a most fortunate coincidence, the leader of those allies is here now.” He stood up and, to Jason’s amazement, went to his knees.

“Greetings, Lord,” he said, oozing a reverence that would not have deceived a child. But it seemed to satisfy the figure who entered, bending low to get through the door and unable to stand up straight without brushing his gold-shot silvery hair against the ceiling. His huge, disturbingly alien eyes stared at Jason, empty of recognition.

“Hi,” said Jason in the Teloi tongue, eliciting a satisfyingly startled reaction from Franco. “It’s been a long time. Well, actually it hasn’t been all that long for me. But for you it’s been almost eleven hundred and forty years.”

Zeus looked puzzled.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“You seem somehow familiar,”
said the Teloi, with a frown, stroking the beard he shared with some but not all males of his race. His deep voice held the indefinably disturbing quality Jason remembered.

“Let me refresh your memory,” said Jason. “Do you recall your ‘son’ Perseus? It was at the time Santorini—or Kalliste, as it was called then—exploded. Surely you must remember that.” While waiting for a reply, he glanced around and saw that Mondrago was staring, wide-eyed, in spite of having seen video imagery of the Teloi.

“Oh, yes,” Zeus finally nodded, a little vaguely. “Perseus was one of the superior strain that we created for the purpose of leading the ordinary human masses into a proper state of submission to their creators. They were a great disappointment to us, from Gilgamesh on. But Perseus was better than most. He kept his word and established my worship at Mycenae after I had imprisoned the Old Gods forever.”

Wait a minute!
thought Jason, speechless.
What’s this?
You
imprisoned them?

“And now I remember you,” Zeus continued. “You were one of the time travelers who appeared around that time. You were of some assistance to me.” He turned to Franco. “He must be spared, for I pay my debts to mortals.”

He’s gone senile
, Jason realized.
He really believes it. He thinks he really
is
a god. And he’s forgotten how the senior Teloi got permanently trapped in their pocket universe. The myths and legends that his human worshipers have woven around what happened have become more real for him than the truth.

And why should I be surprised? For almost eleven and a half centuries he and his faction of younger-generation Teloi—the ones who
didn’t
get trapped—have been stranded on low-technology Earth without their extradimensional hidey-hole and with none of their advanced technology except what they happened to have with them when Santorini blew up and their tame human empire based on Crete was wrecked by the tsunami and other side effects. All that time, they’ve been running a bluff with the aid of whatever flashy displays of techno-magic they could manage.

All things considered, I suppose it’s surprising he’s retained any vestige of sanity at all.

Franco broke into his thoughts. “So you already know about the Teloi?”

Jason saw no point in evasion or denials. “We encountered them on an expedition to observe the Santorini explosion.”

“Ah, yes . . . that expedition had departed from the twenty-fourth century shortly before we did. So you must be Jason Thanou. I hadn’t realized we had such a distinguished guest. By the time we encountered the Teloi, four centuries after you did, they had forgotten about you.”

“But now I remember,” Zeus broke in. “Yes, you were useful to me. And now new time travelers have arrived.” He indicated Franco, who inclined his head graciously. “And they too recognize true divinity—not to be confused with a silly legend like ‘Pan’! We helped them produce a living image of that legend, with which to gull the local human cattle, who deserve no better. In exchange, they will help restore my worship to this disrespectful city!”

“What?” Jason managed.

Zeus’s voice had been steadily rising. Now he was almost raving. “Yes! Athens has sought the patronage of my daughter Athena, while neglecting me!” Familial affection, Jason recalled, was not a trait of the vastly long-lived Teloi, who produced children but rarely. In fact, the being Oannes who had told Jason the story of the Teloi on Earth had been of the opinion that their second generation, including Zeus, were infertile. Jason wondered if, in his increasing dementia, Zeus had come to believe the local mythology’s version of his relationship to Athena. “At least the tyrant Hippias, son of Pisistratus, began building a suitable temple to me. But then the Athenians drove him out and failed to complete it. Instead they have left it standing unfinished, as though wishing to flaunt their impiety!

“But now, thanks to Franco—a member of an improved human stock called the
Transhumans
who have returned to the worship of us, the true gods, as he assures me—matters will be set right. The Persians are coming, and bringing Hippias back with them. Franco will enable them to win the coming battle, conquer Athens, and restore Hippias as tyrant. And then Hippias will put the Athenians to work completing his great temple, thus atoning for their ingratitude to me!”

Behind Zeus and out of the Teloi’s range of vision, Jason saw Franco smile.

“What has this Transhumanist pimp been telling you about time travel?” Mondrago suddenly burst out. “He’s lying. It doesn’t work that way. History is fixed—and it says that the Athenians are going to kick the Persian army’s ass up between the ears and then pull it out through the nose!”