Rated NC-17.

The characters belong to Tribune and Renaissance, and there is an astronomer at Michigan State University who I should give credit for BD+17 3248. This story is part of a story arc with the others I have written on this website, and I think you would enjoy it a lot more if you read the others first, especially the Tyr/Ares stories and EVERYONE WATCHES ANYWAY..

Ares had had it all explained to him once. A cute little blond astro-physicist with wire-rimmed glasses and a pierced right nipple had gone through the whole process in great detail, which should have ended the mystery. Ares was much more interested in the fun the two of them were having rolling around in the dorm-room bed, so he couldn’t remember any of the details. Something to do with atoms breaking apart, flowing in a stream faster than light, and then reconnecting. Of course, the physicist was describing the process used to beam people into space ships, and not the movements of gods.

The only difference with gods, and he had so carefully neglected identify himself to his little friend as one, was that they could also do it through time. Gods could move through actual time; not the “light year” time of the slipstream which was really distance. Sometimes he wished he had listened more closely. . . no he didn’t; he got more satisfaction the acts they performed than he ever would from complete understanding.

When he had been younger, in his prime and a true worshiped god, there had been rules to keep him in line. Those rules were gone now, but then again so was a great deal of his power. It seemed ironic that the use of the same time/space travel that could have been used to save Xena now allowed him return to Earth to buy the proto-drugs of the 1960’s, to drink fine wines at their maturity, or even engage in safe-unprotected sex. He could now use for personal pleasure, the very thing had he had been forbidden to use to prevent personal pain.

Of course he had safe, known, pleasurable fallbacks, like where he was today.

He stood invisibly behind a pillar in the hall of the palace and bit his lip with anticipation of his appearance. He pictured the hair first; he always had a fascination with hair, that long, wavy, copper-bronze mane that surrounded the wonderfully soft, expressive face. He pictured the muscular body clad not in leather, or even royal velvet, but naked under him. It was just a matter of time until King Iphicles would come walking down the hall, expecting nothing, and find his god standing there. All the powers of a king would evaporate, as he would fall on his knees and worship the god-of-war in his own personal way.

He waited. Even when they had been invented and time was relevant, he had rarely worn a watch. Sure time passed, but he could wait. He was immortal. So he waited. He watched the floor grow scuffed and unpolished. He watched the marble pillars oxidize until they looked like limestone. He watched the roof begin to leak and then fall into the hallway. He realized that the time that he had spent waiting was more than a few minutes or even days, and he realized that the man he was waiting for was not going to come.

He waited and eventually the pillars crumbled, but with their decay came teams of archeologists on their hands and knees digging in the sand. He watched, knowing that shortly groups of students and tourists would descend upon the site. People who would never read a history book would travel halfway around the world to visit ruins. It was as if they could, by walking the decaying halls, touch and communicate with those who had been there in the past and possibly share their souls. Little did they know.

He could change his clothes, become that tourist in gabardine and suede, and find some attractive blond with long hair and short shorts -- male or female it didn’t matter much -- who would heap upon him the attention he deserved. It was all so simple, so predictable, and so unsatisfying.

A trail of photons. . protons… proteins… something like that still existed and allowed him to return to the place he had then called “now”. If you really thought about it, it made no sense; he had come here, waited a couple of thousand years, and could go back to the same place and time he had left. Was he really going back to “now“, or was he going to the place and time he left possibly 2000 years before? His head throbbed liked it had when he had ingested far too much wine during the short periods in his long life he had lived as a mortal. It was all too confusing, too depressing and absolutely no fun.

Even as a stream of disengaged sub-atomic particles, he was haunted by thoughts. If Iphicles wasn’t there, where was he? Was he “here” somewhere, in the future? Because he had always been able to return to the past they had had together, he had never looked for him in the present. Once in a while he would catch a quick glance out of the corner of his eye of hair that color, or lips that soft, but most of the time it was too preoccupied with the present and the person he was with to follow up. Suddenly, he found it troublesome.

* * * * *

Libra X, two weeks after Ares return to the present.

“What do YOU want?” Evan Hopewell looked up from the huge leather bound book he had been carefully going through page by thin-yellowed page. He relished the printed word, even when what it contained was only a collection of mistruths. Unless you understood those who wrote such things, and learned how to deal with them, someone might try to use those lies on you or your loved ones and you wouldn’t recognize them. Sometimes he had to laugh at the pictures of the devils and demons, but he knew people other laughed at the pictures of gods.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend?” His visitor had left his dark leather in the closet and was dressed in a generic khaki uniform that could have belonged to a soldier from any of three hundred different worlds. His hair was short and he was clean shaved. This was a new look for Ares.

“Is that what you call yourself now, a friend? I never thought. . .”

“How did you want me to identify myself? An old enemy or maybe a casual fuck? Didn’t think your brethren would be too fond of that description, especially on this celibate planet.”

“If that is what you want, you might as well leave now. I’m not going to have sex with you, not here, not ever. . .again. Whatever we had to settle, we settled that night.” A period of silence followed while Evan thought about what more he could say “I guess we might call ourselves friends, now. Time changes a lot doesn’t it?”

“I guess we did, you can‘t say you didn‘t enjoy our negotiations. What is it again, Edward?”

“Evan.”

“That‘s right I remember now.”

“Surprise you remember anything after I fucked your loving brains out.”

“Now, now. You were good, I have to admit it. But now I am here to ask you a favor.”

“A favor of me?”

“Maybe just a question. . .or two. . .and if the answer to the first one is ‘no‘ just one.”

“Ask.”

“Are there more like us?”

* * * * * *

Tarn Vedra, four hundred years earlier.

The small plastic card in his pocket once contained the equivalent of the gross national product of a small-industrialized nation and it was his to buy books. Evan had been sent to this planet, the ruling center of the commonwealth, to purchase books for the collection of Libra X. He had spent the last two weeks buying the best of rare book collections from seven different libraries. Most were excited about exchanging the dusty, withering, yellow tomes for cold hard cash. Evan was a welcomed buyer. He consulted the database contained in the small hand held device he carried with him and concluded that he had enough money remaining to go on his own to search for undiscovered treasure in bookstores.

It was hard for him to believe that such stores still existed on Tarn Vedra, but then there were also candle stores, ice cream shops and even apothecaries. Right now the bookstore was calling out to him to come and find . . .he wasn’t sure what, but it certainly was a strange feeling.

One look at the tall woman working the front counter brought a rumbling to his loins. Even though, as always, he had had sex every night since leaving Libra X, the thought of spending time with a woman who actually knew and loved books was extremely exciting.

“Hello, I am Evan Hopewell from Libra X.”

“The library planet, I’ve always wanted to go there. I cannot believe that it is an all male planet.”

“I know, you’d think they were still living in Medieval Europe. But I just live and work there, don’t make the rules. I am here on Tarn Vedra to buy books. I am looking in a variety of categories: history, religion, economics, folklore, home arts, fine art, photography. . .”

“What, no porn?” She laughed at him with her light brown eyes behind her huge, dark-framed glasses.

“Oh, that too. I forgot.” He let out a little giggle and his blue eyes lit up.

“Up the stairs, first door on the right.”

As he slowly climbed the stairs, he looked back at the woman and thought of how a slight overpayment on a found book would probably result in her willingness to discuss it over dinner and later in his bed. The second floor was a warren of little rooms that were accessed both from the hall and through connecting doors. A person could get lost in here. A librarian from Libra X could spend the rest of his life, except for food and calls of nature, just moving from room to room trying to locate books not already in the permanent on-site collection. Bypassing the recent collections from a variety of different planets --, sex between insects and/or cephalopods had no interest to him -- Evan headed directly to the collection brought to Tarn Vedra by the first settlers from Earth. His prime area of expertise were private, hand-printed books from just after the invention of the printing press, especially those involving the more sensual aspects of the human spirit. Shit, he liked old porn.

There was no reason to suspect that he was not alone. It was early in the day, the store was expensive, and rare books were not an impulse purchase item. It was a shock to round a corner and see someone else in the stacks. It was even more of a shock to see what he was doing. The man had propped a book open at his eye level and was masturbating while he looked at the engravings.

“Do you have any idea how expensive that book is?” Evan realized it was a stupid thing to say.

“I was gonna buy it.” His eyes relayed a mock seriousness and looked vaguely familiar.

“This isn’t the place. . .”

Both men were shocked at the recognition that passed between them. They knew each other. Not from back rooms of bookstores, not from library planets, not from bars or bathhouses, but for a long, long. .

“Are you really. . .?” The question appeared on both their lips at exactly the same time and for both there was no point in lying because they already knew the other‘s true identity.

“Yes. I call myself Evan Hopewell. I am a librarian on Libra X.”

“I can’t fucking believe it. Larry Liszt.”

“Well, if you tuck it back in your pants, Larry, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and we can discuss how out of all the backwater places in this universe, the two of us are here.” All thoughts of a pleasant night with the book lady suddenly left Evan’s head.

* * * *

“Did you ever think there would come a time when an old enemy would be as welcome as a new friend?” Evan asked as he looked into the dark eyes of Mr. Liszt.

“Never did, but then I didn’t give it much thought.”

“Never much for thinking were you, Larry?”

“Actually I think a lot more now. Just not about that. Thinking is about all that is left for me to do. The only powers I seem to have left I use to get everything I always wanted, including sex, but I even have to think about that.”

“Sounds pleasant, but if you can get anything you want, then why were you jerking off in a bookstore?”

“Let’s say I have these compelling memories. I have some other commitments tonight, and didn’t want to flash myself back to that whore house pictured in the book, a place I visited often. . .”

“You can really do that? Go back and forth in time?”

“Just back. Can’t go into the future, as far as I know, and I always come back to the spot from which I left, no matter how long I stay in the past. Crazy isn‘t it? But I want to know about you. How did you get to be so damn. . .how should I put it, immortal?”

“Not a clue, Larry. Nada. Pretty damn ironic for someone who was the charter member of the death-of-the-month club. Maybe the paperwork got lost one of those deaths, don’t know. All I know is I have been bouncing around the universe for about as long as you, except I don’t get to flash from place to place and don’t get to go back. Except through books.”

“Probably takes a lot of the fun out of it.”

“A little. Easier now, with longer life spans, good health, slipstream travel and all that. I really got tired of having to move every ten-fifteen years because I wasn’t aging. Got really old after a couple of millenniums. But I’ve been in the same place for the last hundred years and probably am not going to leave. Libra X. Those librarian guys are so hung up with their books that they don’t notice a thing. It’s great.”

“So it’s guys now. Always thought. . .” Harry commented with a smile and what appeared to be a wink.

“You know me, Larry, draw the line at sheep . . .and rare books. But Libra X is a celibate planet . So I store it up for trips like this.”

“So you’re pretty -- shall we say stored up.” Evan recognized the look on his coffee companion’s face.

“Been here a couple of weeks, so let’s say that I’ve had enough merry making so that I don’t jerk-off in bookstores.”

“You know, Evan, “ Larry seemed to have a rather contemplative look on his face. “Remember that commitment I said I had this evening. I lied.”

“Would I err if I took that as a dinner invitation.”

“No, or if you took it as a proposition.”

Evan smiled a wide smile, it had been over two-thousand years since he had fucked a god.

* * * * *

When they returned to Larry’s apartment, both men quickly undressed. Ares was a little disappointed that decades on a dark library planet had faded the golden glow he remembered on Evan’s skin, but when he closed his eyes it was returned in his memory. The curly blond hair was still there, both on his head and encircling his uncut cock. It was amazing that such a small man could have such a large penis. It was almost as big as his; but on a man so much smaller, it looked enormous. They exchanged a few perfunctory kisses and caresses and he pushed the blond head toward his already erect organ.

“No, you have to do it to me first.” Evan had a look of defiance in his blue eyes.

“Excuse me?”

“First, you are going to have to suck me off, not here on the bed, but by the window, with me looking passively out at the street while you will do your damnest to make me cum. Then I get to fuck you . . hard and un-lubricated with you standing up against the wall. You‘re lucky I don‘t make you go outside. I’m sure you’ll remember it by then. It was probably the best blow-job you ever bought.”

“This is a game, right? You’re playing some sort of fuck game. I usually don’t play games. “ Ares seemed a little concerned.

“If that’s what you want to call it, go ahead; but don’t, please don’t, tell me you don’t play games. Everything’s a fucking game to you, Ares. Always was, always will be, nothing you like better than a good game.”

“Standing up, looking out at the street. It sounds like it could be interesting. Is that something the librarians do?”

“Not librarians, you’re going to have to go further back to find the source of this game. But my guess is that if you were jerking off in a bookstore, you’re so fucking horny, you‘re not thinking about much at all, except sex.”

“Yup. That‘s what happens when there are no wars.” The look might have been called sheepish, but as Evan drew the line at sheep, he thought of Ares’s look as puppy-dog.

Ares was good, there was no denying that. He played the role of hungry street urchin with great skill. He must have sometimes watched the moves of the young men he purchased more carefully than Evan had suspected. At least he had the good fortune to get to kneel on the soft carpet and not the rough cobbles of a city street. His knees would not bleed the next day, nor probably would his asshole. But then, he wouldn’t have five denars to spend on trinkets, drinks and cute girls.

“You’re not really going to make me lean against the wall while you fuck me, are you, Iolaus?” Ares asked, calling him by his real name, after he had swallowed the small man’s cum and cleaned his cock with his tongue.

“Nah, Ares, you done good. I bet you remember that night now. I was a little angry you didn‘t remember it back in Greece.”

When he thought about it now, Ares remembered that night, when the man he knew then as Iolaus had come pleading to him to help his friend Hercules who had been suffering from horrible dreams and fits of madness. The god tried to explain that he could not erase memories selectively, the best he could do was to cast a pall over Hercules’s mind so that the memories would be softer, gentler, and seem ancient. The memories would still be there; they would just be less threatening. Iolaus was willing to accept the conditions, and repaid him with a night of mind numbing sex. He remembered nothing that night when they had met earlier that day, but it returned to him in detail now as he sucked the little man’s cock, and he also remembered another night, when Iolaus was just a boy, purchased on the dark streets of Thebes.

“I’m supposed to remember everyone I fuck. I was supposed to connect some dirty, long-haired street-waif who earned his living by stealing and selling his body, with the heroic, golden hunter that had been cheerfully accompanying with my half-brother on his legendary journeys for twenty years. I’m sorry. I’m not the god on mnemonics”

“So you finally remember, good for you Ares. You should really take your sex more seriously.”

“This from you. I don’t need a lecture on sexual gamesmanship.”

“You don’t need to listen, but it wouldn‘t hurt. I read about it all the time.”

“And you fuck a different person every night when you are on vacation from your celibate planet. Tell me how you are different, and don’t for gods sake say, skill level.”

“Probably not, except that I realize what I am doing. Someday you are going to meet someone with whom sex is going to be more than a game. It was like that with me and Hercules. You’re going to need to…a forget it Ares, I’m just wasting my precious breath. Now what do you want to do next?”

“How about you fucking me, on the bed.”

“Ares?”

“Let’s say it is a continuing partial repayment for past wrongs.”

“If I didn’t know better I’d say we have a kinder and gentler Ares.”

“Not quite, just hornier, and I have always liked your style.”

“But you realize, that first I am going to have to make you beg for it.”

“I realize that, Iolaus, let the games begin.”

The first step in getting a god to beg is skilled use of fingers and tongue. Iolaus knew and explored spots that few lovers had ever had the patience or inclination to find: running his tongue along the outlines of Ares’s cut muscles, placing probing fingers at the base of Ares’s cock and behind his balls, and softly licking a strip of sensitive flesh on the inside of his thigh. He not only tweaking his dusky nipples, but sucked them until they were hard with blood and then ran his tongue softly along the bottom of the bud. A gentle prod and Ares was on his stomach and the self same tongue was rimming the most sensitive areas of his ass.

“Please, fuck me Iolaus.”

“That’s not a beg.”

“What’s a beg?”

“A real beg goes something like this. . . Please, o’please golden warrior from ancient Greece, consort of gods and goddesses, demi-gods, men and women. . .

Hailed throughout ancient times for your gigantic pulsating love muscle and for your adroit use of the same… please o’please…impart upon my aching rosebud some of the fresh soothing ambrosia that…”

“Shut the fuck up and shove it up my ass!”

“That, my dear god, is a proper beg.”

* * * * *

“Why are you asking me this now, when you didn’t when we first met?” Evan asked.

“As I said, I’ve been thinking a lot more.” Ares was somewhat contemplative.

“My guess is you went back to visit your favorite all time fuck and he wasn’t there. Right?”

“How did you know?”

“Cause I know where he is.”

“You do? How? Where?”

“Everything is here in the libraries. Just happened to be going through some current stuff and saw his picture. Couldn’t believe it. Thought it was one of those one in a hundred-billion genetic things, then I saw his name. King Iphicles. He’s a king even.”

“Where?”

“Some planet orbiting a star on the halo of the Milky Way. BD+17 3248 was its designation on Earth. Don’t know what the star is called, but the planet is Seolfor V.”

“Huh?”

“Were you listening at all or just thinking about your precious little fuck toy. I wouldn’t salivate too much, because from what I read he has six wives, and over 50 children, living on a planet of silver.”

“He doesn’t?”

“Just kidding. About the wife and kids anyway. I like to make you squirm.”

“Well if you are serious about that, it can be arranged.”

“Not here, it can’t.”

“You really are serious about those celibacy rules aren’t you.”

“Keeps me young.”

“The youth you didn’t mind losing, if I remember correctly, the last time I saw you.”

“That night I had a three thousand year old debt to have repaid, and I have to say, thanks, for doing that with interest. I just know this time it wouldn‘t be me you‘d be concentrating on, you’d be too busy thinking of your favorite king, and I don‘t enjoy being a surrogate fuck. Maybe another time.”

“That is why you, Iolaus, have always been one of my favorites. Keep up the good work.”

“I hope you find him, and I hope he’s what you want.”

* * * * *

Twenty years later, Starship Andromeda Ascendant

“Beka,” Dylan Hunt addressed his first officer, “Tyr and I have been invited, as former co-regents of King Erik, to go with him when he meets with another king who might be interesting in joining the Commonwealth. I was wondering if you would like to accompany us?”

“Isn’t my job usually to fly the Andromeda in your absence? And you know how I hate planets.”

“Actually, I am going to leave Harper and Rommie in charge of the ship. I don’t think Rommie and Tyr are getting along all that well right now.”

“Noticed that, there is something about him that makes her nervous, and something about her that makes you seem a little nervous, too.” She gave her captain a sly wink. “So where are we going, Dylan? Where is this king?”

“A planet called Seolfor V. Ever been there?”

“Don’t think so. But then, I‘ve been most everywhere. I can’t differentiate all the places I have been. Does it matter?”

“Not if you don’t remember. It is in the system of BD+17 3248 a sun has been known to contain precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum for several thousand years. It was only upon actual visitation to the planets, that it was discovered that these metals had been used by inhabitants much in the same way we use iron, aluminum and titanium. Except of course for the weight differences. These differences manifest themselves in both the architecture and the technology. Most famous of the architectural features being the Balcony of the Silver Stars, a two walkway…” It was the usual Dylan drone, containing much more information than Beka could possibly want or need.

“Actually Dylan, I was more concerned about things like atmospheres, climate, population make-up. The other details can come later.”

“Earthlike, slightly more oxygen, temperate and humanoid. Does that satisfy you, Captain Valentine?”

“Very nicely, Captain Hunt, glad to see you can be succinct when you need to be.”

“I can be lots of things, when I need to be, Captain Valentine. We leave in three hours, be ready, and wear a uniform but . . . bring a nice dress.”

She smiled back at him as she made her way down the hall to her room to begin packing. It was obvious that Dylan had not told her everything she needed to know about this visit, and she wondered if he had told Tyr. Something told her he had shared even less with the Nietzschean.

Dylan looked down at the printed message he had received announcing the meeting and read it through again slowly. The invitation was clearly issued to him, Tyr and any other accompanying party, and most of it contained the usual diplomatic boilerplate. However, it was the signature line that had caught his eye, and caused him to worry; it was signed King Iphicles, VI. Perhaps it was just another of those silly “ancient memories”, but this one seemed particularly problematic.
 
 
 

Part Two

Back to fanfic