Ilium

Mahnmut couldn’t be killed in literal terms—although part organic, he “existed” rather than “lived,” and he was designed tough—but he definitely did not want to become part of a fountain or a frozen chunk of an abstract sculpture for the next thousand e-years. For a minute he forgot both the kraken and So

Unless something had blocked the lead ahead. Or unless another submersible was coming out-lead from Central. That would be embarrassing for the few seconds before Mahnmut and The Dark Lady were destroyed.

At least the kraken would no longer be a factor. The critters refused to rise closer than five klicks to the surface cap.

Having entered all the commands and knowing that he’d done everything he could think of to survive and arrive at the base on time, Mahnmut went back to his so

Mahnmut’s submersible—which he had long ago named The Dark Lady—cruised the last twenty kilometers to Conamara Chaos Central down a kilometer-wide lead, riding on the surface of the black sea beneath a black sky. A three-quarters Jupiter was rising, clouds bright and cloud bands roiling with muted colors, while a tiny Io skittered across the rising giant’s face not far above the icy horizon. On either side of the lead, striated ice cliffs rose several hundred meters, their sheer faces dull gray and blunted red against the black sky.

Mahnmut was excited as he brought Shakespeare’s so

Over the decades he had come to hate this so

But finding microrecords of critical writings by a woman named Helen Vendler—a critic who had lived and written in one of those centuries, the Nineteenth or Twentieth or Twenty-first (the record time-stamps were vague)—had given Mahnmut a key to translating this so

Mahnmut went back through his notated “key words” for support. There they were from each line—“not, not, no, never, not, not, not” and then in line fourteen—“never, nor,” and “no”—echoing King Lear’s nihilistic “never, never, never, never, never.”

It was definitely a poem of refutation. But refutation of what?

Mahnmut knew that So

Shakespeare had structured a drama in his so

No one would ever know—Mahnmut was sure the Bard was too clever, too cynical, too stealthy ever to show his true feelings. But in play after play, Shakespeare had shown how strong feelings—including love—turned people into fools. Shakespeare, like Lear, loved his Fools. Romeo had been Fortune’s Fool, Hamlet Fate’s Fool, MacBeth Ambition’s Fool, Falstaff . . .well, Falstaff was no one’s Fool . . . but he became a fool for the love of Prince Hal and died of a broken heart when the young prince abandoned him.

Mahnmut knew that the “poet” in the so

Mahnmut liked this approach. He knew that Shakespeare’s “marriage of two minds” between the older poet and the youth was not a homosexual liaison, but a true sacrament of sensibilities, a facet of love honored in days long preceding Shakespeare’s. On the surface, So

Mahnmut suddenly saw where it fit. Like so many great poets, Shakespeare began his poems before or after they began. But if this was a poem of refutation, what was it refuting? What had the youth said to the older, love-besotted poet that needed such vehement refutation?

Mahnmut extended fingers from his primary manipulator, took up his stylus, and scribbled on his t-slate—

Dear Will—Certainly we’d both like the marriage of true minds we have—since men ca