Chicks in Chainmail (8 page)

Do you suppose Wotan budgeted enough for disaster relief? I'm
sorry!
But all I want to do is get out of here
.

Thor whistled and raised his hand. The hammer flew back to him, and he brandished it at her.

But Hillary was drunk on adrenaline. "Co ahead," she challenged him. "Make my day."

To her astonishment, she heard footsteps, felt the support of the Valkyries at her back Post-feminism be damned, she thought. Sisterhood
was
powerful.

"I told you before," she said to Wotan, "you have
fine
daughters, and you don't deserve to have custody of them."

"Enough!" Thor roared. "You get her out of here, Allfather, or so help me, when Naglfar sets sail and Ragnarok begins, you're going to be fighting without your chief of staff."

Unmistakably, Wotan's eye closed at Hillary in a wink. She thought of her own father, of his pride in her. She thought of how she and Bill went rushing to
Chelsea's defense in anything from a gang of reporters tormenting Socks to
Saturday Night Live
making jokes about her. And here was Wotan, facing up to his own mistakes as he faced up to the end of his world It was too late for Brunnhilde, just as it had been too late for Sieglinde and probably a host of other women he had lost. But these girls might yet have their chance.

"Are you going to let your generals boss around the commander in chief?" Hillary demanded. "Truman fired MacArthur when he tried that."

"Get her
out
of here! Out! Out!"

"He sounds like the Fenris-wolf, yelping," whispered Rossweise. She giggled. Thor turned the red of imminent apoplexy.

Wotan stood up. He swirled his cloak back from shoulders that, despite his age, were still massive. Unerringly, he reached behind him for his spear and banged upon the floor for attention and order. The ravens mantled, then subsided.

"Where shall I send her?" Wotan asked his son. "The girls brought her here, and you know what that means."

"Send her to Niflheim for all I care."

"You know I can't do that to Hela, son. And have you thought what might happen if the two of them liked each other?"

"Then send her
back
."

"You know that breaks the pattern. And anything that breaks the pattern…"

"… brings Twilight closer."

The fires sank in the central firepit of
Valhalla. Outside, the light seemed to diminish as if the Twilight of the Gods advanced like sunset in December. A wind blew about the great hall's eaves, picking up volume until it rose into a howl.

"That's right," said Wotan. "If I send her back, it brings…
it
just so much closer. I'll need my best warriors with me then. In that case, are you with me, or are you going to go off again and sulk?"

"Get her out of here," Thor pleaded, "and I'll do anything you say."

"Your daughters too." Well, she and Bill had always wanted more than one child. Hillary caught Wotan's eye and held it.
Their last chance, old man. For once in your life, make the right choice. In the name of

"Well, girls?" Thor raised his hands in holy horror as Wotan actually asked the Valkyries their opinion.

"Get them
all
out of here!" he wailed.

"I'll make sure someone grooms the horses," Wotan promised his daughters. Then he banged his spear thrice upon the floor of
Valhalla.

Smoke swirled up, then clouds, then more smoke.

And before Hillary or the Valkyries could sing "hoi-otoho" (which Hillary couldn't, not even on her good-voice days), she found herself lying beside a buckled railroad track somewhere between
Wilmington and
Philadelphia.

She had the mother of all headaches, especially with those ambulances shrieking like the winds of Ragnarok in her ears. But her heart sang, even if she couldn't. She had survived. She had made it back home. She'd be able to hug
Chelsea again. She would even pet Socks, no matter if he made her sneeze or not.

Secret Service and aides clustered about her, barely letting the doctors through.

"There are others in the train," Hillary murmured. "Young, innocent girls." And a tear that Peggy Noonan would have envied slid down her face. Someone raced down the track and into a car, then emerged to shout in a voice that that wretched Thor would have envied, that the Scandinavian tourist group was just fine, and so was everyone else.

She thought, before she allowed herself to yield to the painkiller, that that made even better news than "I, William Jefferson Clinton, do solemnly swear…"

Hillary never did get to hear
Das Rheingold
. She had talked under influence of the painkillers, and her near-death experience and some truly godawful photographs filled the tabloids and prompted a whole rash of "I saw an angel" stories. It even had the Christian Coalition inviting her to testify at prayer breakfasts. The White House had to hire more staff just to handle the cards and letters; and bulletin board service providers suffered temporary crashes as people started flame wars about what
really
happened.

Here is what is known for certain. The picture of the First Lady, bravely leaning on an aide's shoulder and asking about the health of the Norwegian exchange students as a doctor tended to her chased all other pictures from page one of the leading papers. Even the
Washington Times
carried a human interest story dealing with how often she visited the students, how she invited them to the White House to meet her daughter, and how she made herself responsible for their education.

Here is what else is known for pretty certain. The soccer and field hockey coaches at Sidwell Friends and
Wellesley
College
are ecstatic, and the First Lady's approval ratings have never been higher.

the end

This story is for Trent Telenko, who has only himself to blame for giving me the idea of writing it.

 This really happened. No. honestly, it did Well, most of it. You could look it up.

GODDESS FOR A DAY

Harry Turtledove

«
^
»

The driver held the horses to a trot hardly faster than a walk. Even so, the chariot jounced and pitched and swayed as it rattled down the rutted dirt track from, the country
village
of
Paiania
to
Athens.

Every time a wheel jolted over a rock, Phye feared she'd be pitched out on her head. She couldn't grab for the rail of the car, not with a hoplite's spear in one hand and a heavy round shield on the other arm. The shield still had the olive-oil smell of fresh paint. Before they'd given it to her, they'd painted Athena's owl over whatever design it had borne before.

Another rock, another jolt. She staggered again. Peisistratos, who rode in the car with her, steadied her so she didn't fall. She was almost big enough to make two of the
tyrannos
, but he was agile and she wasn't. "It will be all right, dear," he said, grinning at her like a clever monkey. "Just look divine."

She struck the pose in which he'd coached her: back straight so she looked even taller than she was (the Corinthian helmet she wore, with the red-dyed horsehair plume nodding above it, added to the effect), right arm out straight with the spear grounded on the floorboards of the chariot (like an old man's stick, it helped her keep her balance, but not enough), shield held in tight against her breast (that took some of the weight. off her poor arm—but, again, not enough). She stared straight ahead, chin held high.

"It's all so
uncomfortable
," she said.

Peisistratos and the driver both laughed. They'd really fought in hoplite's panoply, not just worn it on what was essentially a parade. They knew what it was like.

But they didn't know everything there was to know. The bell corselet they'd put on Phye gleamed; they'd polished the bronze till you could use it for a mirror. That corselet would have been small for a man her size. Mashed against hard, unyielding metal, her breasts ached worse than they did just before her courses started. The shield she carried might have been made of lead, not wood and bronze. One of her greaves had rubbed a raw spot on the side of her leg. And of course she stared straight ahead; the cheekpieces and noseguard on the helmet gave her no other choice. The helm was heavy, too. Her neck ached.

She itched everywhere.

A couple of people—a man with a graying beard and a younger woman who might have been his daughter or his wife—stood by the side of the track, staring at the oncoming chariot. Phye envied them their cool, simple mantles and cloaks. A river of sweat was pouring down her face.

Peisistratos waved to the couple. He tapped Phye on the back. They couldn't see that. She couldn't feel it, either, but she heard his nails rasp on the corselet. "The gods love Peisistratos!" she cried in a loud voice. "The gods ordain that he should rule once more in
Athens!"

"There! You see?" the man said, pointing at Phye. "It is Athena, just as those fellows who went by the other day said it would be."

"Why, maybe it
is
." The woman tossed her head to show she thought he was right. "Isn't that something?" She raised her voice as the chariot clattered by: "Hurrah for Peisistratos! Good old Peisistratos!"

"It's going to work," the driver said without looking over his shoulder.

"Of course it will." Peisistratos was all but capering with glee. "We have ourselves such a fine and lovely goddess here." He patted Phye on a bared thigh, between the top of her greave and the bottom of the linen tunic she wore under the corselet.

She almost smashed him in the face with her shield. Exposing her legs to the eyes of men felt shockingly immodest. Having that flesh out there to be pawed showed her why women commonly covered it.

She didn't think she'd given any sign of what was passing through her mind, but Peisistratos somehow sensed it. He was no fool: very much the reverse. "I crave pardon," he said, and sounded as if he meant it. "I paid your father a pound of silver for you to be Athena, not a whore. I shall remember."

The village lads made apologies, too, and then tried to feel her up again whenever they got the chance. After that once, Peisistratos kept his hands to himself. Whenever the chariot passed anyone on the road—which happened more and more often now, for they were getting close to Athens—Phye shouted, out the gods' love for the returning
tyrannos
.

Some of those people fell in behind the chariot and started heading into
Athens themselves. They yelled Peisistratos' name. "Pallas Athena, defender of cities!" one of them called out, a tagline from the Homeric hymn to the goddess. Several others took up the call.

Phye had not thought she could get any warmer than she already was under helm and corselet and greaves. Now she discovered she was wrong. These people really believed she was Athena. And why not? Had she been walking along the track instead of up in the chariot, she would have believed it was truly the goddess, too. To everyone in Paiania, the Olympians and other deities were as real and close as their next-door neighbors. Her brother, for instance, swore he'd seen a satyr in the woods not far from home, and why would he lie?

But not to Peisistratos and his driver. They joked back and forth about how they were tricking the—
unsophisticated
was the word Peisistratos used, but Phye had never heard it before, and so it meant nothing to her—folk of the countryside and of the city as well. As far as they were concerned, the gods were levers with which to move people in their direction.

That attitude frightened Phye. More and more, she wished her father had not accepted Peisistratos' leather sack full of shiny drachmai, even if that pound of silver would feed the whole family for a year, maybe two, no matter how badly the grapes and olives came in. Peisistratos and his friend might imagine the gods were impotent, but Phye knew better.

When they noticed what she was doing, what would
they
do—to her?

She didn't have much time to think about that, for which she was grateful. The walls of
Athens drew near. More and more people fell in behind the chariot. She was shouting out the gods' will—or rather, what Peisistratos said was the gods' will—so often, she grew hoarse.

The guards at the gate bowed low as the chariot rolled into the city. Was that respect for the goddess or respect for the returning
tyrannos
? Phye couldn't tell. She wondered if the guards were sure themselves.

Now the road went up to the akropolis through hundreds upon hundreds of houses and shops. Phye didn't often come in to
Athens: when you used a third of the day or more walking forth and back between your village and the city, how often could you afford to do that? The sheer profusion of buildings awed her. So did the city stink, a rich, thick mixture of dung and sweat and-animals and stale olive oil.