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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pagan Passions, by
+Gordon Randall Garrett and Laurence Mark Janifer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pagan Passions
+
+Author: Gordon Randall Garrett
+        Laurence Mark Janifer
+
+Illustrator: Robert Stanley
+
+Release Date: September 26, 2007 [EBook #22767]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGAN PASSIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Geoffrey Kidd, Stephen Blundell
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Cover Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                             PAGAN PASSIONS
+
+                         Adult Science Fiction,
+              with the supernatural making complete sense.
+
+The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Greece and Rome had returned to
+Earth--with all their awesome powers intact, and Earth was transformed
+almost overnight. War on any scale was outlawed, along with
+boom-and-bust economic cycles, and prudery--no change was more startling
+than the face of New York, where, for instance, the Empire State
+Building became the Tower of Zeus!
+
+In this totally altered world, William Forrester was an acolyte of
+Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, and therefore a teacher, in this case of a
+totally altered history--and Maya Wilson, girl student, evidently had a
+totally altered way of grading in mind--but what else would a worshipper
+of Venus, Goddess of Love, have in mind?
+
+This was just the first of the many Trials of Forrester, every bit as
+mighty and perilous as the Labors of Hercules. In love with Gerda Symes,
+like him a devotee of Athena, like him a frequenter of the great Temple
+of Pallas Athena (formerly known as the 42nd Street Library)--dedicated,
+in short, to the pleasures of the mind--Forrester was under the soft,
+compelling pressure of soft, compelling devotees of Venus, Bacchus and
+the like, and in need of all the strength that he and his Goddess, the
+beautiful and intellectual Athena, could muster to save him from the
+endless temptations of this new Earth.
+
+And into this sensuous strife strode Temple Myrmidons--religious cops
+sworn to obey orders without question or hesitation--with a pickup order
+for William Forrester.
+
+Where he was taken, what happened to him, the truly fantastic
+discoveries he made about himself and the Gods and Goddesses--here are
+the ingredients that make up this science fiction novel of suspense,
+intrigue, mystery and danger. For science fiction it is, with the
+supernatural making complete sense, and fun too, despite the Sword of
+Damocles hanging by a thread over Forrester's head!
+
+                         _by Randall Garrett and
+                             Larry M. Harris_
+
+
+
+
+ P
+ a
+ g
+ a
+ n
+
+  P
+  a
+  s
+  s
+  i
+  o
+  n
+  s
+
+
+
+
+ A GALAXY Selected Novel
+ For
+ BEACON BOOKS
+
+
+
+
+ P
+ a
+ g
+ a
+ n
+
+  P
+  a
+  s
+  s
+  i
+  o
+  n
+  s
+
+   _By
+   Randall Garrett
+   and
+   Larry M. Harris_
+
+   _Published by
+   Galaxy Publishing Corp.
+   New York 14, New York_
+
+
+
+
+ ALL CHARACTERS IN THIS WORK ARE WHOLLY
+ FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS
+ LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL
+
+ Copyright 1959 by Galaxy Publishing Corp.
+
+ _Galaxy Novels_ are sturdy, inexpensive editions of choice
+ works of imaginative suspense, both original and reprint,
+ selected by the editors of _Galaxy Magazine_ for Beacon Books.
+
+ THIS IS BEACON BOOK NO. 263
+
+ _Cover by Robert Stanley_
+
+ Printed in the U.S.A. by
+ THE GUINN COMPANY INC.
+ New York 14, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors
+have been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+
+The girl came toward him across the silent room. She was young. She was
+beautiful. Her red hair curled like a flame round her eager,
+heart-shaped face. Her arms reached for him. Her hands touched him. Her
+eyes were alive with the light of pure love. I am yours, the eyes kept
+saying. Do with me as you will.
+
+Forrester watched the eyes with a kind of fascination.
+
+Now the girl's mouth opened, the lips parted slightly, and her husky
+voice murmured softly: "Take me. Take me."
+
+Forrester blinked and stepped back.
+
+"My God," he said. "This is ridiculous."
+
+The girl pressed herself against him. The sensation was, Forrester
+thought with a kind of awe, undeniably pleasant. He tried to remember
+the girl's name, and couldn't. She wriggled slightly and her arms went
+up around him. Her hands clasped at the back of his neck and her mouth
+moved, close to his ear.
+
+"Please," she whispered. "I want you...."
+
+Forrester felt his head swimming. He opened his mouth but nothing
+whatever came out. He shut his mouth and tried to think what to do with
+his hands. They were hanging foolishly at his sides. The girl came even
+closer, something Forrester would have thought impossible.
+
+Time stopped. Forrester swam in a pink haze of sensations. Only one
+small corner of his brain refused to lose itself in the magnificence of
+the moment. In that corner, Forrester felt feverishly uncomfortable. He
+tried again to remember the girl's name, and failed again. Of course,
+there was really no reason why he should have known the name. It was,
+after all, only the first day of class.
+
+"Please," he said valiantly. "Miss--"
+
+He stopped.
+
+"I'm Maya Wilson," the girl said in his ear. "I'm in your class, Mr.
+Forrester. Introductory World History." She bit his ear gently.
+Forrester jumped.
+
+None of the textbooks of propriety he had ever seen seemed to cover the
+situation he found himself in. What did one do when assaulted
+(pleasantly, to be sure, but assault was assault) by a lovely girl who
+happened to be one of your freshman students? She had called him Mr.
+Forrester. That was right and proper, even if it was a little silly. But
+what should he call her? Miss Wilson?
+
+That didn't sound right at all. But, for other reasons, Maya sounded
+even worse.
+
+The girl said: "Please," and added to the force of the word with another
+little wriggle against Forrester. It solved his problems. There was now
+only one thing to do, and he did it.
+
+He broke away, found himself on the other side of his desk, looking
+across at an eager, wet-lipped freshman student.
+
+"Well," he said. There was a lone little bead of sweat trickling down
+his forehead, across his frontal ridge and down one cheek. He ignored it
+bravely, trying to think what to do next. "Well," he repeated at last,
+in what he hoped was a gentle and fatherly tone. "Well, well, well,
+well, well." It didn't seem to have any effect. Perhaps, he thought, an
+attempt to put things back on the teacher-student level might have
+better results. "You wanted me to see you?" he said in a grave,
+scholarly tone. Then, gulping briefly, he amended it in a voice that had
+suddenly grown an octave: "You wanted to see me? I mean, you--"
+
+"Oh," Maya Wilson said. "Oh, my goodness, _yes_, Mr. Forrester!"
+
+She made a sudden sensuous motion that looked to Forrester as if she had
+suddenly abolished bones. But it wasn't unpleasant. Far from it. Quite
+the contrary.
+
+Forrester licked his lips, which were suddenly very dry. "Well," he
+said. "What about, Miss--uh--Miss Wilson?"
+
+"Please call me Maya, Mr. Forrester. And I'll call you--" There was a
+second of hesitation. "Mr. Forrester," Maya said plaintively, "what is
+your first name?"
+
+"First name?" Forrester tried to think of his first name. "You want to
+know my first name?"
+
+"Well," Maya said, "I want to call you something. Because after all--"
+She looked as if she were going to leap over the desk.
+
+"You may call me," Forrester said, grasping at his sanity, "Mr.
+Forrester."
+
+Maya sidled around the desk quietly. "Mr. Forrester," she said, reaching
+for him, "I wanted to talk to you about the Introductory World History
+course."
+
+Forrester shivered as if someone had thrown cold water on his rising
+aspirations.
+
+"Oh," he said.
+
+"That's right," Maya whispered. Her mouth was close to his ear again.
+Other parts of her were close to other parts of him once more. Forrester
+found it difficult to concentrate.
+
+"I've _got_ to pass the course, Mr. Forrester," Maya whispered. "I've
+just _got_ to."
+
+Somehow, Forrester retained just enough control of his faculties to
+remember the standard answer to protestations like that one. "Well, I'm
+sure you will," he said in what he hoped was a calm, hearty, hopeful
+voice. He was reasonably sure it wasn't any of those, and even surer
+that it wasn't all three. "You seem like a--like a fairly intelligent
+young lady," he finished lamely.
+
+"Oh, no," she said. "I'm sure I won't be able to remember all those
+old-fashioned dates and things. Never. Never." Suddenly she pressed
+herself wildly against him, throwing him slightly off balance. Locked
+together, the couple reeled against the desk. Forrester felt it digging
+into the small of his back. "I'll do anything to pass the course, Mr.
+Forrester!" she vowed. "Anything!"
+
+The insistent pressure of the desk top robbed the moment of some of its
+natural splendor. Forrester disengaged himself gently and slid a little
+out of the way. "Now, now," he said, moving rapidly across the room
+toward a blank wall. "This sort of thing isn't usually done, Maya. I
+mean, Miss Wilson. I mean--"
+
+"But--"
+
+"People just don't do such things," Forrester said sternly. He thought
+of escaping through the door, but the picture that arose immediately in
+his mind dissuaded him. He saw Maya pursuing him passionately through
+the halls while admiring students and faculty stared after them.
+"Anyhow," he added as an afterthought, "not at the _beginning_ of the
+semester."
+
+"Oh," Maya said. She was advancing on him slowly. "You mean, I ought to
+see if I can pass the course on my own first, and _then_--"
+
+"Not at all," Forrester cut in.
+
+Maya sniffed sadly. "Oh, you just don't understand," she said. "You're
+an Athenian, aren't you?"
+
+"Athenan," Forrester said automatically. It was a correction he found
+himself called upon to make ten or twelve times a week. "An Athenian is
+a resident of Athens, while an Athenan is a worshipper of the Goddess
+Athena. We--"
+
+"I understand," Maya said. "I suppose it's like us. We don't like to be
+called Aphrodisiacs, you know. We prefer Venerans."
+
+She was leaning across the desk. Forrester, though he supposed some
+people might be fussy about it, could see no objection whatever to the
+term Aphrodisiacs. A wild thought dealing with Spheres of Influence
+strayed into his mind, and he suppressed it firmly.
+
+The girl was a Veneran. A worshipper of Venus, Goddess of Love.
+
+Her choice of religion, he thought, was unusually appropriate.
+
+And as for his....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+
+It was hard to believe that, only an hour or so before, he had been
+peaceful and calm, entirely occupied with his duties in the great Temple
+of Pallas Athena. His mind gave a sudden, panic-stricken leap and he was
+back there again, standing at the rear of the vast room and focusing all
+of his strained attention on it.
+
+The glowing embers in the golden incense tripods were dying now, but the
+heavy clouds of frankincense, still tingled with the sweet aroma of
+balsam and clove, hung heavily in the quiet air over the main altar. In
+the flickering illumination of the gas sconces around the walls, the
+figures on the great tapestries seemed to move with a subtle life of
+their own.
+
+Even though the great brazen gong had sounded for the last time twenty
+minutes before, marking the end of the service, there were still a few
+worshippers in the pews, seated with heads bowed in prayer to the
+Goddess. Forrester considered them carefully: average-looking people, a
+sprinkling of youngsters, and in the far corner a girl who looked just a
+little like ...
+
+Forrester peered more closely. It wasn't just a slight resemblance; the
+girl really seemed to be Gerda Symes. Her long blonde hair shone in the
+dimness. Forrester couldn't see her very clearly, but his imagination
+was working overtime. Her magnificently curved figure, her wonderful
+face, her fiery personality were as much a part of his dreams as the bed
+he slept on.
+
+If not for her brother ...
+
+Forrester sighed and forced himself to return his attention to his
+duties. His hands remained clasped reverently at his breast. Whatever
+battle went on in his mind, the remaining few people in the great room
+would see nothing but what was fitting. At any rate, he told himself, he
+made rather an imposing sight in his robes, and, with a stirring of
+vanity which he prayed Athena to chasten, he was rather proud of it.
+
+He was a fairly tall man, just a shade under six feet, but his slight
+paunch made him seem shorter than he was. His face was round and smooth
+and pleasant, and that made him look younger than he was: twenty-one
+instead of twenty-seven. As befitted an acolyte of the Goddess of
+Wisdom, his dark, curly hair was cut rather long. When he bowed to a
+departing worshipper, lowering his head in graceful acknowledgment of
+their deferential nods, he felt that he made a striking and commanding
+picture.
+
+Though, of course, the worshippers weren't doing him any honor. That bow
+was not for him, but directed toward the Owl, the symbol of the Goddess
+embroidered on the breast of the white tunic. As an acolyte, after all,
+he rated just barely above a layman; he had no powers whatever.
+
+Athena knew that, naturally. But somehow it was a little difficult to
+get it through his own doubtless too-thick skull. He'd often dreamed of
+power. Being a priest or a priestess, for instance--now that meant
+something. At least people paid attention to you if you were a member of
+the hierarchy, favored of the Gods. But, Forrester knew, there was no
+chance of that any more. Either you were picked before you were
+twenty-one, or you weren't picked at all, and that was all there was to
+it. In spite of his looks, Forrester was six years past the limit.
+
+And so he'd become an acolyte. Sometimes he wondered how much of that
+had been an honest desire to serve Athena, and how much a sop to his
+worldly vanity. Certainly a college history instructor had enough to do,
+without adding the unpaid religious services of an acolyte to his work.
+
+But these were thoughts unworthy of his position. They reminded him of
+his own childhood, when he had dreamed of becoming one of the Lesser
+Gods, or even Zeus himself! Zeus had provided the best answer to those
+dreams, Forrester knew. "Now I am a man," Zeus had said, "and I put away
+childish things."
+
+Well, Forrester considered, it behooved him to put away childish things,
+too. A mere vanity, a mere love of spectacle, was unworthy of the
+Goddess he served. And his costume and bearing certainly hadn't got him
+very far with Gerda.
+
+He tore his eyes away from her again, and sighed.
+
+Before he could bring his mind back to Athena, there was an
+interruption.
+
+Another white-clad acolyte moved out of the shadows to his right and
+came softly toward him. "Forrester?" he whispered.
+
+Forrester turned, recognizing young Bates, a chinless boy of perhaps
+twenty-two, with the wide, innocent eyes of the born fanatic. But it
+didn't become a servant of Athena to think ill of her other servants,
+Forrester reminded himself. Brushing the possibility of a rude reply
+from his mind, Forrester said simply: "Yes? What is it?"
+
+"There's a couple of Temple Myrmidons to see you outside," Bates
+whispered. "I'll take over your post."
+
+Forrester responded with no more than a simple nod, as if the occurrence
+were one that happened every day. But it was not only the thought of
+leaving Gerda that moved him. As he turned and strode to the small door
+that led to the side room off the main auditorium, he was thinking
+furiously under his calm exterior.
+
+Temple Myrmidons! What could they want with him? As an acolyte, he was
+at least immune to arrest by the civil police, and even the Temple
+Myrmidons had no right to take him into custody without a warrant from
+the Pontifex himself.
+
+But such a warrant was a serious affair. What had he done wrong?
+
+He tried to think of some cause for an arrest. Blasphemy? Sacrilege? But
+he found nothing except his interior thoughts. And those, he told
+himself with a blaze of anger fierce enough to surprise him, were
+nobody's business but his own and Athena's. Authorities either less
+personal or more temporal had no business dealing with thoughts.
+
+Beyond those, there wasn't a thing. No irreverence toward any of the
+Gods, in his private life, his religious functions or his teaching
+position, at least as far as he could recall. The Gods knew that
+unorthodoxy in an Introductory History course, for instance, was not
+only unwise but damned difficult.
+
+Of course, he was aware of the real position of the Gods. They weren't
+omnipotent. Their place in the scheme of things was high, but they were
+certainly not equal with the One who had created the Universe and the
+Gods themselves in the first place. Possibly, Forrester had always
+thought, they could be equated with the indefinite "angels" of the
+religions that had been popular during his grandfather's time, sixty
+years ago, before the return of the Gods. But that was an uncertain
+theological notion, and Forrester was quite ready to abandon it in the
+face of good argument to the contrary.
+
+Whatever they were, the Gods were certainly the Gods of Earth now.
+
+The Omnipotent Creator had evidently left it for them to run, while he
+went about his own mysterious business, far from the understanding or
+the lives of men. The Gods, omnipotent or not, ran the world and
+everything in it.
+
+And if, like Forrester, you knew that omnipotence wasn't their strong
+point, you just didn't mention it. It would have been impolite to have
+done so--like talking about sight to a blind man. And "impolite" was not
+the only word that covered the case. The Gods had enough power, as
+everyone knew, to avenge any blasphemies against them. And careless
+mention of limitations on their power would surely be construed as
+blasphemy, true or not.
+
+Forrester had never even thought of doing such a thing.
+
+So what, he thought, did the Temple Myrmidons want with him?
+
+He came to the anteroom and went in, seeing the two of them at once.
+They were big, burly chaps with hard faces, and the pistols that were
+holstered at their sides looked completely unnecessary. Forrester took a
+deep breath and went a step forward. There he stopped, staring.
+
+The Myrmidons were strangers to him--and now he understood why. Neither
+was wearing the shoulder-patch Owl of Minerva/Athena. Both proudly
+sported the Thunderbolt of Zeus/Jupiter, the All-Father himself.
+
+_Whatever it is_, Forrester told himself with a sinking sensation, _it's
+serious_.
+
+One of the Myrmidons looked him up and down in a casual,
+half-contemptuous way. "You're William Forrester?"
+
+"That's right," Forrester said, knowing that he looked quite calm, and
+wondering, at the same time, whether or not he would live out the next
+few minutes. The Myrmidons of Zeus/Jupiter didn't come around to other
+temples on unimportant errands. "May I help you?" he went on, feeling
+foolish.
+
+"Let's see your ID card, please," the Myrmidon said in the same tone as
+before. That puzzled Forrester. He doubted whether examination of
+credentials was a part of the routine preceding arrest--or execution,
+for that matter. The usual procedure was, and probably always had been,
+to act first and apologize later, if at all.
+
+Maybe whatever he'd done had been so important they couldn't afford to
+make mistakes.
+
+But did the Myrmidon really think that an imposter could parade around
+in an acolyte's tunic in the very Temple of Pallas Athena without being
+caught by one of the Athenan Myrmidons, or some other acolyte or priest?
+
+Maybe a thing like that could happen in one of the other Temples,
+Forrester thought. But here at Pallas Athena people took the Goddess's
+attribute of wisdom seriously. What the Dionysians might do, he
+reflected, was impossible to say. Or, for that matter, the Venerans.
+
+But he produced his identity card and handed it to the Myrmidon. It was
+compared with a card the Myrmidon dug out of his pouch, and the
+thumbprints on both cards were examined side by side.
+
+After a while, Forrester got his card back.
+
+The Myrmidon said: "We--" and began to cough.
+
+His companion came over to slap him on the back with bone-crushing
+blows. Forrester watched without changing expression.
+
+Some seconds passed.
+
+Then the Myrmidon choked, swallowed, straightened and said, his face
+purple: "All this incense. Not like what we've got over at the
+All-Father's Temple. Enough to choke a man to death."
+
+Forrester murmured politely.
+
+"Back to business--right?" He favored Forrester with a rather
+savage-looking smile, and Forrester allowed his own lips to curve gently
+and respectfully upward.
+
+It didn't look as if he _were_ going to be killed, after all.
+
+"Important instructions for you," the Myrmidon said. "From the Pontifex
+Maximus. And not to be repeated to any mortal--understand?"
+
+Forrester nodded.
+
+"And that means _any_ mortal," the Myrmidon said. "Girl friend, wife--or
+don't you Athenans go in for that sort of thing? Now, up at the
+All-Father's Temple, we--"
+
+His companion gave him a sharp dig in the ribs.
+
+"Oh," the Myrmidon said. "Sure. Well. Instructions not to be repeated.
+Right?"
+
+"Right," Forrester said.
+
+Instructions? From the Pontifex Maximus? _Secret_ instructions?
+
+Forrester's mind spun dizzily. This was no arrest. This was something
+very special and unique. He tried once more to imagine what it was going
+to be, and gave it up in wonder.
+
+The Myrmidon produced another card from his pouch. There was nothing on
+it but the golden Thunderbolt of the All-Father--but that was quite
+enough.
+
+Forrester accepted the card dumbly.
+
+"You will report to the Tower of Zeus at eighteen hundred hours
+exactly," the Myrmidon said. "Got that?"
+
+"You mean today?" Forrester said, and cursed himself for sounding
+stupid. But the Myrmidon appeared not to have noticed.
+
+"Today, sure," he said. "Eighteen hundred. Just present this card."
+
+He stepped back, obviously getting ready to leave. Forrester watched him
+for one long second, and then burst out: "What do I do after that?"
+
+"Just be a good boy. Do what you're told. Ask no questions. It's better
+that way."
+
+Forrester thought of six separate replies and settled on a seventh. "All
+right," he said.
+
+"And remember," the Myrmidon said, at the outside door, "don't mention
+this to anyone. _Not anyone!_"
+
+The door banged shut.
+
+Forrester found himself staring at the card he held. He put it away in
+his case, alongside the ID card. Then, dazed, he went on back to the
+acolyte's sacristy, took off his white tunic and put on his street
+clothes.
+
+What did they want with him at the Tower of Zeus? It didn't really sound
+like an arrest. If it had been that, the Myrmidons themselves would have
+taken him.
+
+So what did the Pontifex Maximus want with William Forrester?
+
+He spent some time considering it, and then, taking a deep breath, he
+forced it out of his mind. He would know at eighteen hundred, and such
+were the ways of the Gods that he would not know one second before.
+
+So there was no point in worrying about it, he told himself. He almost
+made himself believe it.
+
+But wiping speculation out of his mind left an unwelcome and uneasy
+vacancy. Forrester replaced it with thought of the morning's service in
+the Temple. Such devotion was probably valuable, anyhow, in a spiritual
+sense. It brought him closer to the Gods....
+
+The Gods he wanted desperately to be like.
+
+That, he told himself sharply, was foolishness of the most senseless
+kind.
+
+He blinked it away.
+
+The Goddess Athena had appeared herself at the service--sufficient
+reason for thinking of it now. The statuesquely beautiful Goddess with
+her severely swept-back blonde hair and her deep gray eyes was the
+embodiment of the wisdom and strength for which her worshippers
+especially prayed. Her beauty was almost unworldly, impossible of
+existence in a world which contained mortals.
+
+She reminded Forrester, ever so slightly (and, of course, in a reverent
+way), of Gerda Symes.
+
+There seemed to be a great many forbidden thoughts floating around this
+day. Resolutely, Forrester went back to thinking about the morning's
+service.
+
+The Goddess had appeared only long enough to impart her blessing, but
+her calm, beautifully controlled contralto voice had brought a sense of
+peace to everyone in the auditorium. To be doggedly practical, there was
+no way of knowing whether the Goddess's presence was an appearance--in
+person, or an "appearance" by Divine Vision. But that really didn't
+matter. The effect was always just the same.
+
+Forrester went on out the front portals of the Temple of Wisdom and down
+the long, wide steps onto Fifth Avenue. He paid homage with a passing
+glance to the great Owls flanking the entrance. Symbolic of Athena, they
+had replaced the stone lions which had formerly stood there.
+
+The street was busy with hurrying crowds, enlivened here and there by
+Temple Myrmidons--from the All-Father, from Bacchus, from Venus--even
+one from Pallas Athena herself, a broad-beamed swaggerer whom Forrester
+knew and disliked. The man came striding up the steps, greeted Forrester
+with a bare nod, and disappeared at top speed into the Temple.
+
+Forrester sighed and glanced south, down toward 34th Street, where the
+huge Tower of Zeus, a hundred and four stories high, loomed over all the
+other buildings in the city.
+
+At eighteen hundred he would be in that tower--for what purpose, he had
+no idea.
+
+Well, that was in the future, and he ...
+
+A voice said: "Well! Hello, Bill!"
+
+Forrester turned, knowing exactly what to expect, and disliking it in
+advance. The bluff over-heartiness of the voice was matched by the gross
+and hairy figure that confronted him. In some disarray, and managing to
+look as if he needed simultaneously a bath, a shave, a disinfecting and
+a purgative, the figure approached Forrester with a rolling walk that
+was too flat-footed for anything except an elephant.
+
+"How's the Owl-boy today?" said the voice, and the body stuck out a
+flabby, hairy white hand.
+
+Forrester winced. "I'm fine," he said evenly. "And how's the
+winebibber?"
+
+"Good for you," the figure said. "A little wine for your Stomach's sake,
+as good old Bacchus always says. Only we make it a lot, eh?" He winked
+and nudged Forrester in the ribs.
+
+"Sure, sure," Forrester said. He wished desperately that he could take
+the gross fool and tear him into tastefully arranged pieces. But there
+was always Gerda. And since this particular idiot happened to be her
+younger brother, Ed Symes, anything in the nature of violence was
+unthinkable.
+
+Gerda's opinion of her brother was touching, reverent, and--Forrester
+thought savagely--not in the least borne out by any discoverable facts.
+
+And a worshipper of Bacchus! Not that Forrester had anything against the
+orgiastic rites indulged in by the Dionysians, the Panites, the
+Apollones or even the worst and wildest of them all, the Venerans. If
+that was how the Gods wanted to be worshipped, then that was how they
+should be worshipped.
+
+And, as a matter of fact, it sounded like fun--if, Forrester considered,
+entirely too public for his taste.
+
+If he preferred the quieter rites of Athena, or of Juno, Diana or
+Ceres--and even Ceresians became a little wild during the spring
+fertility rites, especially in the country, where the farmers depended
+on her for successful crops--well, that was no more than a personal
+preference.
+
+But the idea of Ed Symes involved in a Bacchic orgy was just a little
+too much for the normal mind, or the normal stomach.
+
+"Hey," Ed said suddenly. "Where's Gerda? Still in the Temple?"
+
+"I didn't see her," Forrester said. There _had_ been a woman who'd
+looked like her. But that hadn't been Gerda. _She'd_ have waited for him
+here.
+
+And--
+
+"Funny," Ed said.
+
+"Why?" Forrester said. "I didn't see her. I don't think she attended the
+service this morning, that's all."
+
+He wanted very badly to hit Symes. Just once. But he knew he couldn't.
+
+First of all, there was Gerda. And then, as an acolyte, he was
+proscribed by law from brawling. No one would hit an acolyte; and if the
+acolyte were built like Forrester, striking another man might be the
+equivalent of murder. One good blow from Forrester's fist might break
+the average man's jaw.
+
+That was, he discovered, a surprisingly pleasant thought. But he made
+himself keep still as the fat fool went on.
+
+"Funny she didn't attend," Symes said. "But maybe she's gotten wise to
+herself. There was a celebration up at the Temple of Pan in Central
+Park, starting at midnight, and going on through the morning. Spring
+Rites. Maybe she went there."
+
+"I doubt it," Forrester said instantly. "That's hardly her type of
+worship."
+
+"Isn't it?" Symes said.
+
+"It doesn't fit her. That kind of--"
+
+"I know. Gerda's like you. A little stuffy."
+
+"It's not being stuffy," Forrester started to explain. "It's--"
+
+"Sure," Symes said. "Only she's not as much of a prude as you are. I
+couldn't stand her if she were."
+
+"On the other hand, she's not a--"
+
+"Not an Owl-boy of Owl-boys like you."
+
+"Not a drunken blockhead," Forrester finished triumphantly. "At least
+she's got a decent respect for wisdom and learning."
+
+Symes stepped back, a movement for which Forrester felt grateful. No
+matter how far away Ed Symes was, he was still too close.
+
+"Who you calling a blockhead, buster?" Symes said. His eyes narrowed to
+piggish little slits.
+
+Forrester took a deep breath and reminded himself not to hit the other
+man. "You," he said, almost mildly. "If brains were radium, you couldn't
+make a flicker on a scintillation counter."
+
+It was just a little doubtful that Symes understood the insult. But he
+obviously knew it had been one. His face changed color to a kind of
+grayish purple, and his hands clenched slowly at his sides. Forrester
+stood watching him quietly.
+
+Symes made a sound like _Rrr_ and took a breath. "If you weren't an
+acolyte, I'd take a poke at you just to see you bounce."
+
+"Sure you would," Forrester agreed politely.
+
+Symes went _Rrr_ again and there was a longer silence. Then he said:
+"Not that I'd hit you anyhow, buster. It'd go against my grain. Not the
+acolyte business--if you didn't look so much like Bacchus, I'd take the
+chance."
+
+Forrester's jaw ached. In a second he realized why; he was clenching his
+teeth tightly. Perhaps it was true that he did look a little like
+Bacchus, but not enough for Ed Symes to kid about it.
+
+Symes grinned at him. Symes undoubtedly thought the grin gave him a
+pleasant and carefree expression. It didn't. "Suppose I go have a look
+for Gerda myself," he said casually, heading up the stairs toward the
+temple entrance. "After all, you're so busy looking at books, you might
+have missed her."
+
+And what, Forrester asked himself, was the answer to that--except a
+punch in the mouth?
+
+It really didn't matter, anyhow. Symes was on his way into the temple,
+and Forrester could just ignore him.
+
+But, damn it, why did he let the young idiot get his goat that way?
+Didn't he have enough self-control just to ignore Symes and his oafish
+insults?
+
+Forrester supposed sadly that he didn't. Oh, well, it just made another
+quality he had to pray to Athena for.
+
+Then he glanced at his wristwatch and stopped thinking about Symes
+entirely.
+
+It was twelve-forty-five. He had to be at work at thirteen hundred.
+
+Still angry, underneath the sudden need for speed, he turned and
+sprinted toward the subway.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And thus," Forrester said tiredly, "having attempted to make himself
+the equal of the Gods, Man was given a punishment befitting such
+arrogance." He paused and took a breath, surveying the twenty-odd
+students in the classroom (and some, he told himself wryly, _very_ odd)
+with a sort of benign boredom.
+
+History I, Introductory Survey of World History, was a simple enough
+course to teach, but its very simplicity was its undoing, Forrester
+thought. The deadly dullness of the day-after-day routine was enough to
+wear out the strongest soul.
+
+Freshmen, too, seemed to get stupider every year. Certainly, when _he'd_
+been seventeen, he'd been different altogether. Studious, earnest,
+questioning ...
+
+Then he stopped himself and grinned. He'd probably seemed even worse to
+his own instructors.
+
+Where had he been? Slowly, he picked up the thread. There was a young
+blonde girl watching him eagerly from a front seat. What was her name?
+Forrester tried to recall it and couldn't. Well, this was only the first
+day of term. He'd get to know them all soon enough--well enough,
+anyhow, to dislike most of them.
+
+But the eager expression on the girl's face unnerved him a little. The
+rest of the class wasn't paying anything like such strict attention. As
+a matter of fact, Forrester suspected two young boys in the back of
+being in a trance.
+
+Well, he could stop that. But ...
+
+She was really quite attractive, Forrester told himself. Of course, she
+was nothing but a fresh, pretty, eager seventeen-year-old, with a figure
+that ...
+
+She was, Forrester reminded himself sternly, a student.
+
+And he was supposed to be an instructor.
+
+He cleared his throat. "Man went hog-wild with his new-found freedom
+from divine guidance," he said. "Woman did, too, as a matter of fact."
+
+Now what unholy devil had made him say that? It wasn't a part of the
+normal lecture for first day of the new term. It was--well, it was
+just a little risque for students. Some of their parents might complain,
+and ...
+
+But the girl in the front row was smiling appreciatively. _I wonder what
+she's doing in an Introductory course_, Forrester thought, leaping with
+no evidence at all to the conclusion that the girl's mind was much too
+fine and educated to be subjected to the general run of classes.
+_Private tutoring_ ... he began, and then cut himself off sharply, found
+his place in the lecture again and went on:
+
+"When the Gods decided to sit back and observe for a few thousand years,
+they allowed Man to go his merry way, just to teach him a lesson."
+
+The boys in the back of the room were definitely in a trance.
+
+Forrester sighed. "And the inevitable happened," he said. "From the
+eighth century B.C., Old Style, until the year 1971 A.D., Old Style,
+Man's lot went from bad to worse. Without the Gods to guide him he bred
+bigger and bigger wars and greater and greater empires--beginning with
+the conquests of the mad Alexander of Macedonia and culminating in the
+opposing Soviet and American Spheres of Influence during the last
+century."
+
+Spheres of Influence....
+
+Forrester's gaze fell on the blonde girl again. She certainly had a
+well-developed figure. And she did seem so eager and attentive. He
+smiled at her tentatively. She smiled back.
+
+"Urg ..." he said aloud.
+
+The class didn't seem to notice. That, Forrester told himself sourly,
+was probably because they weren't listening.
+
+He swallowed, wrenched his gaze from the girl, and said: "The
+Soviet-American standoff--for that is what it was--would most probably
+have resulted in the destruction of the human race." It had no effect on
+the class. The destruction of the human race interested nobody.
+"However," Forrester said gamely, "this form of insanity was too much
+for the Gods to allow. They therefore--"
+
+The bell rang, signifying the end of the period. Forrester didn't know
+whether to feel relieved or annoyed.
+
+"All right," he said. "That's all for today. Your first assignment will
+be to read and carefully study Chapters One and Two of the textbook."
+
+Silence gave way to a clatter of noise as the students began to file
+out. Forrester saw the front-row blonde rise slowly and gracefully. Any
+doubts he might have entertained (that is, he told himself wryly, any
+_entertaining_ doubts) about her figure were resolved magnificently. He
+felt a little sweat on the palm of his hands, told himself that he was
+being silly, and then answered himself that the hell he was.
+
+The blonde gave him a slow, sweet smile. The smile promised a good deal
+more than Forrester thought likely of fulfillment.
+
+He smiled back.
+
+It would have been impolite, he assured himself, not to have done so.
+
+The girl left the room, and a remaining crowd of students hurried out
+after her. The crowd included two blinking boys, awakened by the bell
+from what had certainly been a trance. Forrester made a mental note to
+inquire after their records and to speak with the boys himself when he
+got the chance.
+
+No sense in disturbing a whole class to discipline them.
+
+He stacked his papers carefully, taking a good long time about it in
+order to relax himself and let his palms dry. His mind drifted back to
+the blonde, and he reined it in with an effort and let it go exploring
+again on safer ground. The class itself ... actually, he thought, he
+rather liked teaching. In spite of the petty irritations that came from
+driving necessary knowledge into the heads of stubbornly unwilling
+students, it was a satisfying and important job. And, of course, it was
+an honor to hold the position he did. Ever since it had been revealed
+that the goddess Columbia was another manifestation of Pallas Athena
+herself, the University had grown tremendously in stature.
+
+And after all ...
+
+Whistling faintly behind his teeth, Forrester zipped up his filled
+briefcase and went out into the hall. He ignored the masses of students
+swirling back and forth in the corridors, and, finding a stairway, went
+up to his second-floor office.
+
+He fumbled for his key, found it, and opened the ground-glass door.
+
+Then, stepping in, he came to a full stop.
+
+The girl had been waiting for him--Maya Wilson.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now here she was, talking about the Goddess of Love. Forrester
+gulped.
+
+"Anyhow," he said at random, "I'm an Athenan." He remembered that he had
+already said that. Did it matter? "But what does all this have to do
+with your passing, or not passing, the course?" he went on.
+
+"Oh," Maya said. "Well, I prayed to Aphrodite for help in passing the
+course. And the Temple Priestess told me I'd have to make a sacrifice to
+the Goddess. In a way."
+
+"A sacrifice?" Forrester gulped. "You mean--"
+
+"Not the First Sacrifice," she laughed. "That was done with solemn
+ceremonies when I was seventeen."
+
+"Now, wait a minute--"
+
+"Please," Maya said. "Won't you listen to me?"
+
+Forrester looked at her limpid blue eyes and her lovely face. "Sure.
+Sorry."
+
+"Well, then, it's like this. If a person loves a subject, it's that much
+easier to understand it. And the Goddess has promised me that if I love
+the instructor, I'll love the subject. It's like sympathetic
+magic--see?"
+
+Her explanation was so brisk and simple that Forrester recoiled. "Hold
+on," he said. "Just hold your horses. Do you mean you're in love with
+me?"
+
+Maya smiled. "I think so," she said, and very suddenly she was on
+Forrester's side of the desk, pressing up against him. Her hand caressed
+the back of his neck and her fingers tangled in his hair. "Kiss me and
+let's find out."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+
+Resistance, such as it was, crumbled in a hurry. Forrester complied with
+fervor. An endless time went by, punctuated only by short breaths
+between the kisses. Forrester's hands began to rove.
+
+So did Maya's.
+
+She began to unbutton his shirt.
+
+Not to be outdone, his own fingers got busy with buttons, zippers, hooks
+and the other temporary fastenings with which female clothing is
+encumbered. He was swimming in a red sea of passion and the Egyptians
+were nowhere in sight. Absently, he got an arm out of his shirt, and at
+the same time somehow managed to undo the final button of a series.
+Maya's blouse fell free.
+
+Forrester felt like stout Cortez.
+
+He pulled the girl to him, feeling the surprisingly cool touch of her
+flesh against his. Under the blouse and skirt, he was discovering, she
+wore very little, and that was just as well; nagging thoughts about the
+doubtful privacy of his office were beginning to assail him.
+
+Nevertheless, he persevered. Maya was as eager as he had ever dreamed of
+being, and their embrace reached a height of passion and began to climb
+and climb to hitherto unknown peaks of sensation.
+
+Forrester was busy for some time discovering things he had never known,
+and a lot of things he had known before, but never so well. Every motion
+was met with a reaction that was more than equal and opposite, every
+sensation unlocked the doors to whole galleries of new sensations.
+Higher and higher went his emotional thermometer, higher and higher and
+higher and higher and ...
+
+Very suddenly, he discovered how to breathe again, and it was over.
+
+"My goodness," Maya said after a brief resting spell. "I suppose I
+_must_ love you for sure. My _good_ness!"
+
+"Sure," Forrester said. "And now--if you'll pardon the indelicacy and
+hand me my pants--" he found he was still puffing a little and paused
+until he could go on--"I've got an appointment I simply can't afford to
+miss."
+
+"Oh, all right," Maya said. "But Mr. Forrester--"
+
+He rolled over and looked at her while he began dressing. "I suppose it
+would be all right if you called me Bill," he said carefully.
+
+"In class, too?"
+
+Forrester shook his head. "No," he said. "Not in class."
+
+"But what I wanted to ask--"
+
+"Yes?" Forrester said.
+
+"Mr.--Bill--do you think I'll pass Introductory World History?"
+
+Forrester considered that question. There was certainly a wide variety
+of answers he could construct. When he had finished buttoning his shirt
+he had decided on one.
+
+"I don't see why not," he said, "so long as you complete your
+assignments regularly."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nearly two hours later, feeling somewhat light-headed but otherwise in
+perfectly magnificent fettle, Forrester found himself on the downtown
+subway. He'd showered and changed and he was whistling a gay little tune
+as he checked his watch.
+
+The time was five minutes to five. He had just over an hour before he
+was due to appear at the Tower of Zeus All-Father, but it was better to
+be a few minutes early than even a single second late.
+
+The train ride was a little bumpy, but Forrester didn't really mind. He
+was pretty well past being irritated by anything. Nevertheless, he was
+speculating with just a faint unease as to what the Pontifex Maximus
+wanted with him. What was in store for him at the strange appointment?
+
+And why all the secrecy?
+
+His brooding was interrupted right away. At 100th Street, a bearded old
+man got on and sat down next to him. He nudged Forrester in the ribs and
+muttered: "Look at that now, Daddy-O. Look at that."
+
+"What?" Forrester said, constrained into conversation.
+
+"Damn subways, that's what," the old man said. "Worse every year.
+Bumpier and slower and worse. Just look around, Daddy-O. Look around."
+
+"I wouldn't quite say--" Forrester began, but the old man gave him
+another dig in the ribs and cut in:
+
+"Wouldn't say, wouldn't say," he muttered. "Listen, man, there ain't
+been an improvement in years. You realize that?"
+
+"Well, I--"
+
+"No progress, man, not in more than half a century. Listen, when I was a
+teen king--War Councilor for the Boppers, I was, and let me tell you
+that was big time, Daddy-O--when I was a teen king, we were going
+places. Going places for real. Mars. Venus. We were going to have
+spaceships, man."
+
+Forrester smiled spasmically at the old man. "I'm sure you--"
+
+"But what happened?" the old man interrupted. "Tell you what happened,
+man. We never got to Mars and Venus. Mars and Venus came to us instead.
+Right along with Jupiter and Neptune and Pluto and all the rest of the
+Gods. And we had no progress ever since that day, Daddy-O, no progress
+at all and you can believe it."
+
+He dug Forrester in the ribs one final time and sat back with melancholy
+satisfaction.
+
+"Well," Forrester said mildly, "what good is progress?" The old man, he
+assured himself after a moment's reflection, wasn't actually saying
+anything blasphemous. After all, the Gods didn't expect their
+worshippers to be mindless slaves.
+
+Somehow the notion made him feel happier. He'd have hated reporting the
+old man. Something in the outdated slang made him feel--almost
+patriotic. The old man was a part of America, a respected and important
+part.
+
+The respected part of America made itself felt again in Forrester's
+ribs. "Progress?" the old man said. "What good's progress? Listen,
+Daddy-O--how can the human race get anywhere without progress? Answer me
+that, will you, man? Because it's for-sure real we're not going any
+place now. No place at all."
+
+"Now look," Forrester said patiently, "progress is an outmoded idea.
+We've got to be in step with the times. We've got to ask ourselves what
+progress ever did for us. How did we stand when the Gods returned?" For
+a brief flash he was back in his history class, but he went on: "Half
+the world ready to fight the other half with weapons that would have
+wiped both halves out. You ought to be grateful the Gods returned when
+they did."
+
+"But we're getting into Nowheresville, man," the old man complained.
+"We're not in orbit. We can't progress."
+
+Forrester sighed. Why was he talking to the old man, anyway? The answer
+came to him as soon as he'd asked the question. He wanted to keep his
+mind off the Tower of Zeus and his own unknown fate there. It was an
+unpleasant answer; Forrester blanked it out.
+
+"Now, friend," he said. "What have you got? Just what mankind's been
+looking for all these centuries. Security. You've got security. Nobody's
+going to blow you to pieces tomorrow. Your job isn't going to vanish
+overnight. I mean, if you--"
+
+"I got a job," the old man said.
+
+"Really?" Forrester said politely. "What is it?"
+
+"Retired. And it's a tough job, too."
+
+"Oh," Forrester said.
+
+"And anyhow," the old man went on, "what's all this got to do with
+progress?"
+
+Forrester thought. "Well--"
+
+"Well, nothing," the old man said. "Listen to me, man. I say nothing
+against the Gods--right? Nothing at all. Wouldn't want to do anything
+like that. But at the same time, it looks to me like we ought to be able
+to--reap the fruits of our labors. I read that some place."
+
+"But--"
+
+"In the three thousand years the Gods were gone, we weren't a total
+loss, man. Not anything like. We discovered a lot. About nature and
+science and like that. We invented science all by ourselves. So how come
+the Gods don't let us use it?" The old man dug his elbow once more into
+Forrester's rib. "How come?"
+
+"The Gods haven't taken anything away from us," Forrester said.
+
+"Haven't they?" the old man demanded. "How about television? Want to
+answer that one, Daddy-O? Years ago, everybody had a television set.
+Color and 3-D. The most. The end. Now there's no television at all. Why
+not? What happened to it?"
+
+"Well," Forrester said reasonably, "what good is television?"
+
+"What good?" Once more Forrester's rib felt the old man's elbow. "Let me
+tell you--"
+
+"No," Forrester interrupted, suddenly irritated with the whole
+conversation. "Let _me_ tell _you_. The trouble with your generation was
+that all they wanted to do was sit around on their _glutei maximi_ and
+be entertained. Like a bunch of hypnotized geese. They didn't want to
+do anything for themselves. Half of them couldn't even read. And now
+you want to tell me that--"
+
+"Hold it, Daddy-O," the old man said. "You're telling me that the Gods
+took away television just because we were a bunch of hypnotized geese.
+That it?"
+
+"That's it."
+
+"Okay," the old man said. "So tell me--what are we now? With the Gods
+and everything. I mean, man, really--what are we?"
+
+"Now?" Forrester said. "Now you're retired. You're a bunch of retired
+hypnotized geese."
+
+The doors of the train slid creakily open and Forrester got out onto the
+34th Street platform, walking angrily toward a stairway without looking
+back.
+
+True enough, the old man hadn't committed blasphemy, but it had
+certainly come close enough there at the end. And if pokes with the
+elbow weren't declared blasphemous, or at least equivalent to malicious
+mischief, he thought, there was no justice in the world.
+
+The real trouble was that the man had had no respect for the Gods. There
+were a good many of the older generation like him. They seemed to feel
+that humanity had been better off when the Gods had been away. Forrester
+couldn't see it, and felt vaguely uncomfortable in the presence of
+someone who believed it. After all, mankind _had_ been on the verge of
+mass suicide, and the Gods had mercifully come back from their
+self-imposed exile and taken care of things. The exile had been designed
+to prove, in the drastic laboratory of three thousand years, that Man by
+himself headed like a lemming for self-destruction. And, for Forrester,
+the point had been proven.
+
+Yet now that the human race had been saved, there were still men who
+griped about the Gods and their return. Forrester silently wished the
+pack of them in Hades, enjoying the company of Pluto and his ilk.
+
+At the corner of 34th and Broadway, as he came out of the subway
+tunnels, he bought a copy of the _News_ and glanced quickly through the
+headlines. But, as always, there was little sensational news. Mars was
+doing pretty well for himself, of course: there were two wars going on
+in Asia, one in Europe and three revolutions in South and Central
+America. That last did seem to be overdoing things a bit, but not
+seriously. Forrester shrugged, wondering vaguely when the United States
+was going to have its turn.
+
+But he couldn't concentrate on the paper and, after a little while, he
+got rid of it and took a look at his watch.
+
+Twenty to six. Forrester decided he could use a drink to brace himself
+and steady his nerves.
+
+Just one.
+
+On Sixth Avenue, near 34th Street, there was a bar called, for some
+obscure reason, the _Boat House_. Forrester headed for it, went inside
+and leaned against the bar. The bartender, a tall man with crew-cut
+reddish hair, raised his eyebrows in a questioning fashion.
+
+"What'll it be, friend?"
+
+"Vodka and ginger ale," Forrester said. "A double."
+
+It was still, he told himself uneasily, just one drink. And that was all
+he was going to have.
+
+The bartender brought it and Forrester sipped at it, watching his
+reflection in the mirror and wishing he felt easier in his mind about
+the whole Tower of Zeus affair. Then, very suddenly, he noticed that the
+man next to him was looking at him oddly. Forrester didn't like the look
+or, for that matter, the man himself, a raw-boned giant with deep-set
+eyes and a shock of dead-black hair, but so long as nobody bothered him,
+Forrester wasn't going to start anything.
+
+Unfortunately, somebody bothered him. The tall man leaned over and said
+loudly: "What's the matter with you, bud? An infidel or something?"
+
+Forrester hesitated. The accusation that he didn't believe in the
+practices ordained by the Gods themselves was an irritating one. But he
+could see the other side of the question, too. The tall man was
+undoubtedly a Dionysian; and, more than that, a member of a small sect
+inside the general _corpus_ of Bacchus/Dionysus worshippers. He held
+that it was wrong to distill grape or grain products "too far," until
+there was nothing left but the alcohol.
+
+That meant disapproval of gin and vodka on the grounds that, unlike
+whiskey or brandy, they'd had the "life" distilled out of them.
+
+Forrester, however, was not really fond of brandy and whiskey. He
+decided to explain this to the tall man, but at the same time he began
+to develop the sinking feeling that it wasn't going to do any good.
+
+Oh, well, there was still room for patience. "Don't fire," as Mars had
+said somewhere, "until you see the whites of their eyes."
+
+"No, I'm no infidel," Forrester said politely. "You see, I'm--"
+
+"_No infidel?_" the tall man roared. "Then I tell you what you do. You
+pour that slop out and drink a proper drink." He made a grab for
+Forrester's glass.
+
+Forrester jerked it back, sloshing it a little in the process--and a few
+drops splattered on the other's hand.
+
+"Now look here," Forrester said in a reasonable tone of voice. "I--"
+
+"You spilling that stuff on me? What the blazes are you doing that for?
+I got a good mind to--"
+
+Another man stepped into the altercation. This was a square-built,
+bullet-headed man with an air that was both truculent and eager. "What's
+the matter, Herb?" he asked the tall man. "This guy giving you trouble
+or something?" He favored Forrester with a fierce scowl. Forrester
+smiled pleasantly back, a little unsure as to how to proceed.
+
+"This guy?" Herb said. "_Trouble?_ Sam, he's an _infidel_!"
+
+Forrester said: "I--"
+
+"He drinks vodka," Herb said. "And I guess he drinks gin too."
+
+"Great Bacchus," Sam said in a tone of wonder. "You run into them
+everywhere these days. Can't get away from the sons of--"
+
+"Now--" Forrester started.
+
+"And not only that," Herb said, "but he spills the stuff on me. Just
+because I ask him to have a regular drink like a man."
+
+"_Spills_ it on you?" Sam said.
+
+Herb said: "Look," and extended his arm. On the sleeve of his jacket a
+few spots were slowly drying.
+
+"Well, that's too much," Sam said heavily. "Just too damn much." He
+scowled at Forrester again. "You know, buddy, somebody ought to teach
+guys like you a lesson."
+
+Forrester took a swallow of his drink and set the glass down
+unhurriedly. If either Herb or Sam attacked him, he knew his oath would
+permit his fighting back. And after the day he'd had, he rather looked
+forward to the chance. But he had to do his part to hold off an actual
+fight. "Now look here, friend--"
+
+"Friend?" Sam said. "Don't call me your friend, buddy. I make no friends
+with infidels."
+
+And, at that point, Forrester realized that he wasn't going to have a
+fight with Herb or Sam. He was going to have a fight with Herb _and_
+Sam--and with the third gentleman, a shaggy, beefy man who needed a
+shave, who stepped up behind them and asked: "Trouble?" in a voice that
+indicated that trouble was exactly what he was looking for.
+
+"Maybe it is trouble, at that," Herb said tightly, without turning
+around. "This infidel here's been committing blasphemy."
+
+Three against one wasn't as happy a thought as an even fight had been,
+but it was too late to back out now. "That's a lie!" Forrester snapped.
+
+"Call me a liar?" Sam roared. He stepped forward and swung a hamlike
+fist at Forrester's head.
+
+Forrester ducked. The heavy fist swished by his ear harmlessly, and he
+felt a strange new mixture of elation and fright. He grabbed his
+vodka-and-ginger from the bar and swung it in a single sweeping arc
+before him. Liquid rained on the faces of the three men.
+
+Sam was still a little off balance. Forrester slammed the edge of his
+right hand into his side, and Sam stumbled to the floor. In the same
+motion, Forrester let fly with the now-empty glass. The shaggy man stood
+directly in his path. The glass conked him on the forehead and bounced
+to the floor, where it shattered unnoticed. The shaggy man blinked and
+Forrester, moving forward, discovered that he had no time to follow
+matters up in that direction.
+
+Herb was snarling inarticulately, wiping vodka-and-ginger from his eyes.
+He blocked Forrester's advance toward the shaggy man. Forrester smiled
+gently and put a hard fist into Herb's solar plexus. The tall man
+doubled up in completely silent agony.
+
+Forrester took a breath and started forward again. The shaggy man was
+shaking his head, trying to clear it.
+
+Then Forrester's head became unclear. Something had banged against his
+right temple and the room was suddenly filled with pain and small, hard
+stars. Sam, Forrester discovered, had managed to get to his feet. The
+something had been a small brass ashtray that Sam had thrown at him.
+
+Somehow, he stayed on his feet. The stars were still swirling around
+him, but he began to be able to see through them, and peered at the
+figure of the shaggy man, coming at him again. He let his knees bend a
+little, as if he were going to pass out. The shaggy man seemed to gain
+confidence from this, and stepped in carefully to kick Forrester in the
+stomach.
+
+Forrester stepped back, grabbed the upcoming foot, and stood straight,
+lifting the foot and levering it into the air.
+
+The shaggy man, surprise written all over his shaveless face, went over
+backward with great abruptness. His head hit the floor with an audible
+and satisfying _whack_, and then his limbs settled and he remained
+there, sprawled out and very quiet.
+
+Forrester, meanwhile, was whirling to meet Sam, who was coming in like a
+bear, his arms outspread and a glaze of hatred in his eyes. Forrester,
+expressionless, ducked under the man's flailing arms and slammed a fist
+into his midsection. It was a harder midsection than he'd expected;
+unlike Herb, Sam had good muscles, and hitting them was like hitting
+thick rubber. The blow didn't put Sam down. It only made him gasp once.
+
+That was enough. Forrester doubled his right fist and let Sam have one
+more blow, this one into the face. Sam's mouth opened as his eyes
+closed. His left arm pawed the air aimlessly for a tenth of a second.
+
+Then he dropped like an empty overcoat.
+
+There was a second of absolute silence. Then Forrester heard a noise
+behind him and whirled.
+
+But it was only Herb, doubled up on the floor and very quietly retching.
+
+Catching his breath, Forrester looked around him. The fight had
+attracted a lot of attention from the other customers in the bar, but
+none of them seemed to want to prolong it by joining in.
+
+They were all trying to look as if they were minding their own business,
+while the bartender ...
+
+Forrester stared. The bartender was at the other end of the bar, far
+away from the scene of action.
+
+He was, as Forrester saw him, just hanging up the telephone.
+
+Forrester put a bill on the bar, turned and walked out into the street.
+He had absolutely no desire to get mixed up with the secular police.
+
+After all, he had an appointment to keep. And now--after a quiet drink
+that had turned into a three-against-one battle royal--he had to go and
+keep it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+
+It wasn't a very long walk from the _Boat House_ to the Tower of Zeus,
+but it was long enough. By the time Forrester got to the Tower, he was
+feeling a lot worse than he'd felt when he left the bar. Being perfectly
+frank with himself, he admitted that he felt terrible.
+
+The blow from the brass ashtray wasn't a sharp pain any longer. It had
+developed into a nice, dependable ache that had spread all over the side
+of his head. And his right eye was beginning to swell, probably from the
+same cause. He'd skinned the knuckles of his right hand, too, probably
+on Sam's face, and they set up their own smarting.
+
+True, it wasn't a bad list of injuries to result from the odds he'd
+faced. But that wasn't the point.
+
+You just didn't go up to the Tower of Zeus looking like a back-street
+brawler.
+
+However, there was no help for it. He straightened his jacket and went
+in through the Fifth Avenue entrance of the Tower, heading for the first
+bank of elevators.
+
+Zeus All-Father would know everything about his fight, and would know
+that it hadn't been his fault. (Hadn't it, though? Forrester asked
+himself. He remembered the joy he'd felt at the prospect of battle. How
+far would it count against him?) Zeus All-Father, through his priests,
+would make what allowances should be made.
+
+Forrester hoped that the Godhead was feeling in a kind and merciful
+mood.
+
+He reached the bank of elevators, and the burly Myrmidon who stood
+there, wearing the lightning-bolt shoulder patch of the All-Father.
+Ahead of him was a chattering crowd of five: mother, father, two
+daughters and a small son, all obviously out-of-towners. The Tower of
+Zeus was always a big tourist attraction. The Myrmidon directed them to
+the stairway that led to the second-floor Arcade, the main attraction
+for most visitors to the Tower. The Temple of Sacrifice was located up
+there, while the ground floor was filled with glass-fronted offices of
+the secretaries of various dignitaries.
+
+Chattering gaily, and looking around them in a kind of happy awe, the
+family group moved off and Forrester stepped up to the Myrmidon, who
+said: "Stairway's right over there to your--"
+
+"No," Forrester said. He reached into his jacket pocket, feeling his
+muscles ache as he did so. He drew out his wallet and managed to extract
+the simple card he'd been given in the Temple of Pallas Athena, the card
+which carried nothing but a lightning bolt.
+
+He handed it to the Myrmidon, who looked down at it, frowned, and then
+looked up.
+
+"What's this for?" he said.
+
+"Well--" Forrester began, and then caught himself. He'd been told not to
+explain about the card to any mortal. And the Myrmidon was certainly
+just as mortal as Forrester himself, or any other hireling of the Gods.
+True, there was always the consideration that he might be Zeus
+All-Father himself, in disguise.
+
+But that was a consideration that bore no weight at present. Even if the
+Myrmidon turned out to be a God in disguise, Forrester wouldn't be
+excused if he said anything about the card. You had to go by
+appearances; that was the principle on which everything rested, and a
+very good principle too.
+
+Not that there weren't a few unprincipled young men around who pretended
+to be Gods in disguise in order to seduce various local and ingenuous
+maidens. But Zeus always found out about them. And ...
+
+Forrester recognized that his thoughts were beginning to veer once more.
+Without changing his expression, he said evenly: "You're supposed to
+know," and waited.
+
+The Myrmidon studied him for what seemed about three days. At last he
+nodded, looked down at the card intently, raised his head and nodded
+again. "Okay," he said. "Take Car One."
+
+Forrester moved off. Car One was not the first elevator car. As a matter
+of fact, it was in the middle bank, identified only by a small placard.
+It took him almost five minutes to find it, and by the time he stepped
+toward it clocks were ticking urgently in his head.
+
+It would do him absolutely no good to be late.
+
+But another Myrmidon was standing beside the closed doors of the
+elevator car. Forrester hissed in his breath with impatience--none of
+which showed on his face--and then caught himself. Certainly Zeus
+All-Father knew what he was doing, and if Zeus had thrown these delays
+in his path, it was not for him to complain.
+
+The thought was soothing. Nevertheless, Forrester showed his card to the
+Myrmidon with an abrupt action very like impatience. This Myrmidon
+merely glanced at it in a bored fashion and pushed a button on the wall
+behind him. The elevator doors opened, Forrester stepped inside, and the
+doors closed.
+
+Forrester was alone in a small bronzed cubicle which began at once to
+rise rapidly. Just how rapidly, he was unable to tell. There were no
+indicators at all on the elevator, and the opaque doors made it
+impossible to see floors flit by. But his ears rang with the speed, and
+when the car finally stopped, it did so with a slight jerk that threw
+Forrester, stiff and worried, off balance. He almost fell out of the car
+as the door opened, and clutched at something for support.
+
+The something was the arm of a Myrmidon. Forrester gaped and looked
+around. He was in a plain hallway of polished marble. There was no way
+to tell how many stories above the street he was.
+
+The Myrmidon seemed a more friendly sort than his compatriots
+downstairs, and wore in addition to the usual lightning-bolt patch the
+two silver ants of a Captain on the shoulders of his uniform. He nearly
+smiled at Forrester--but not quite.
+
+"You're William Forrester?" he said.
+
+Forrester nodded. He produced the ID card and handed it with the special
+card to the Myrmidon.
+
+"Right," the Myrmidon said.
+
+Forrester turned right.
+
+The Myrmidon stared at him. "No," he said. "I mean it's all right.
+You're all right."
+
+"Thank you," Forrester said.
+
+"Oh--" The Myrmidon looked at him, then shrugged his shoulders. "You're
+expected," he said at last in a flat voice. "Come with me."
+
+He started down the hallway. Forrester followed him around a corner to
+an ornate bronzed door, covered with bas-reliefs depicting the actions
+of the Gods among themselves, and among men. The Myrmidon seemed
+unimpressed by the magnificence of the thing; he pushed it open and
+bowed low to, as far as Forrester could see, nobody in particular.
+
+Taking no chances, Forrester copied his bow. He was still bent when the
+Myrmidon announced: "Forrester is here, Your Concupiscence," in a
+reverent tone of voice, and backed off a step, narrowly missing
+Forrester himself in the process.
+
+He waved a hand and Forrester went in.
+
+The door shut halfway behind him.
+
+The room was perfectly unbelievable. Its rich hangings were purple
+velvet, draping a large window that looked out on ...
+
+Forrester gulped. It was impossible to be this high. New York was spread
+out below like a toy city.
+
+He jerked his eyes away from the window and back to the rest of the
+room. It was furnished mainly with couches: big couches, little couches,
+puffy ones, spare ones, in felt, velvet, fur, and every other material
+Forrester could think of. The rooms were flocked in a pale pink, and on
+the floor was a deep-purple rug of a richer pile than Forrester had ever
+seen.
+
+And on one of the couches, the largest and the softest, she reclined.
+
+She was clad only in the diaphanous robes of her calling, and she was
+stacked. Beside her, little Maya Wilson would have looked about eight
+years old. Her hair was as red as the inside of a blast furnace, and had
+about the same effect on Forrester's pulse rate. Her face was a slightly
+rounded oval, her body a series of mathematically indescribable curves.
+
+Forrester did the only thing he could do.
+
+He bowed again, even lower than before.
+
+"Come in, William Forrester," said the High Priestess of
+Venus/Aphrodite, the veritable Primate of Venus for New York herself, in
+a voice that managed to be all at once regal, pleasant and seductive.
+
+Forrester, already in, could think of nothing to say. The gaze of Her
+Concupiscence fell on the half-open door. "You may retire, Captain," she
+said to the waiting Myrmidon. "And allow no one to enter here until I
+give notice."
+
+"Very well, Your Concupiscence," the Myrmidon said.
+
+The door shut.
+
+Forrester snapped erect from his bow, and then realized that he could do
+nothing but stand there until he had more information. What was the
+High Priestess of Aphrodite doing in the Tower of Zeus All-Father
+anyway? And--always supposing she had the right to be there, as of
+course she must have had--what did she want with William Forrester?
+
+He heaved a great sigh. This was turning into an extremely puzzling day.
+First there had been the message and the card admitting him to the
+Tower. Then there had been (the sigh changed in character) Maya Wilson.
+And then (the sigh changed again, into a faint echo of a groan) the
+fight in the _Boat House_.
+
+Now he was having an audience with the Primate of Venus for New York.
+
+Why?
+
+The High Priestess's smile gave him no hint. She raised herself to a
+sitting position and patted the couch. "Sit over here," she said. "Next
+to me." Then she changed her mind. "No," she added. "First just walk
+over here, stand up and turn around. Slowly."
+
+Forrester's brain was whirling like a top, but his face was, as usual,
+expressionless. He did as she had bid him, wondering frantically what
+was going on, and why?
+
+After he had turned completely around and stood facing her again, the
+High Priestess simply sat and studied him for almost a full minute,
+looking him up and down with eyes that were totally unreadable.
+Forrester waited.
+
+Finally she nodded her head slowly. "You'll do," she said, in a
+reflective tone, and nodded her head again. "Yes, you'll do."
+
+Forrester couldn't restrain his questions any longer. "_Do?_" he burst
+out. "I mean," he continued, more quietly, "what will I do for, Your
+Concupiscence?"
+
+"Oh, for whatever honor it is that our beloved Goddess has in mind for
+you," the High Priestess said offhandedly. "I can certainly see that you
+will do. A little pudgy around the middle, but that's a trifle and
+hardly matters. The important things are there. You're obviously strong
+and quick."
+
+At that point Forrester caught up with the first sentence of her
+explanation. "The--the Goddess?" he said faintly.
+
+"Certainly," the High Priestess said. "Else why would I give you
+audience? I am not promiscuous in my dealings with the lay world."
+
+"I'm sure," Forrester said respectfully.
+
+The High Priestess looked at him sardonically. "Of course you are," she
+said. "However, the important thing is that our beloved Aphrodite has
+selected you, William Forrester, for some high honor."
+
+Forrester caught her word for the Goddess, and remembered, thanking his
+lucky stars he hadn't had a chance to slip, that here in the Tower it
+was protocol to refer to the Gods and Goddesses by their Greek names
+alone.
+
+"I don't suppose," he said tentatively, "that you have any idea just
+what this--high honor is?"
+
+"You, William Forrester," the High Priestess began, in some rage, "dare
+to question--" Her tone changed. "Oh, well, I suppose I shouldn't become
+angry with ... No." She shrugged, but her tone carried a little pique.
+"Frankly, I don't know what the honor is."
+
+"Well, then," Forrester said, his bearing perfectly calm, even though he
+could feel his stomach sinking to ground level, "how do you know it's an
+honor?" The thought that had crossed his mind was almost too horrible to
+retain, but he had to say it. "Perhaps," he went on, "I've offended the
+Gods in some unusual way--some way very offensive to them."
+
+"Perhaps you have."
+
+"And perhaps," Forrester said, "they've decided on some exquisite method
+of punishing me. Something like the punishment they gave Tantalus when
+he--"
+
+"I know the ways of the Gods quite well, thank you," the High Priestess
+said coolly. "And I can tell you that your fears have no justification."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Please," the High Priestess said, raising a hand. "If the Gods were to
+punish you, they would simply have sent out a squad of Myrmidons to pick
+you up, and that would have been the end of it."
+
+"Perhaps not," Forrester said, in a voice that didn't sound at all like
+his own to him. It sounded much too unconcerned. "Perhaps I have
+offended only the Goddess herself." The idea sounded more plausible the
+more he thought about it. "Certainly the All-Father would back up his
+favorite Daughter in punishing a mortal."
+
+"Certainly he would. There is no doubt of that. And still the Myrmidons
+would have--"
+
+"Not necessarily. You're well aware of the occasional arguments and
+quarrels between the Gods."
+
+"I am," the High Priestess said, not without irony. "And it does not
+appear seemly that an ordinary mortal should mention--"
+
+"I teach History," Forrester said. "I know of such quarrels. Especially
+between Athena and Aphrodite."
+
+"And?"
+
+"It's obvious. Since I'm an acolyte of Athena, it may be that Aphrodite
+wished to keep my arrest secret."
+
+"I doubt it," the High Priestess said.
+
+Forrester wished he could believe her. But his own theory looked
+uncomfortably plausible. "It certainly looks as if I'm right."
+
+"Well--" For a second the High Priestess paled visibly, the freckles
+that went with her red hair standing out clearly on her face and giving
+her the disturbing appearance of an eleven-year-old. No eleven-year-old,
+however, Forrester reminded himself, had ever been built like the High
+Priestess.
+
+Then she regained her color and laughed, all in an instant. "For a
+minute," she said in a light tone, "you almost convinced me of your
+forebodings. But there's nothing in them. There couldn't be."
+
+Forrester opened his mouth, and _Why not?_ was on his lips. But he never
+got a chance to say the words. The High Priestess blinked and peered
+more closely at his face, and before he had a chance to speak she asked
+him: "What happened to you?"
+
+"A small accident," Forrester said quickly. It was a lie, but he thought
+a pardonable one. The truth was just too complicated to spin out; he had
+no real intent to deceive.
+
+But the High Priestess shook her head. "No," she said. "Not an accident.
+A fight. Your hands are skinned and bruised."
+
+"Very well," Forrester said. "It was a fight. But I was attacked, and
+entitled to defend myself."
+
+"I'm sure," the High Priestess said. "Yet I have a question for you. Who
+won?"
+
+"Won? I did. Naturally."
+
+It sounded boastful, he reflected, but it wasn't. He had won, and it had
+been natural to him to do so. His build and strength, as well as his
+speed, had made any other outcome unlikely.
+
+And the High Priestess didn't seem to take offense. She said only: "I
+thought so. Just a moment." Then she walked over to a telephone. It was
+a simple act but Forrester watched it fervently. First she stood up, and
+then she took a step, and then another step ... and her whole body
+moved. And moved.
+
+It was marvelous. He watched her bend down to pick up the phone without
+any clear idea of the meaning of the motions. The motions themselves
+were enough. Every curve and jiggle and bounce was engraved forever on
+his mind.
+
+The High Priestess dialed a number, waited and said: "Aphrodite's
+compliments to Hermes the Healer."
+
+An indistinguishable voice answered her from the receiver.
+
+"Aphrodite thanks you," the High Priestess said, "and asks if Hermes
+might send one of his priests around for a few minor ministrations."
+
+The receiver said something else.
+
+"No," the High Priestess said. "Nothing like that. Don't you think we
+have other interests--such as they are?"
+
+Again the receiver.
+
+"Just a black eye and some skin lacerations," the High Priestess said.
+"Nothing serious."
+
+And the receiver replied once more.
+
+"Very well," the High Priestess said. "Aphrodite wishes you well." She
+hung up.
+
+She came back to the couch, Forrester's eyes following her every inch of
+the way. She sat down, looked up and said: "What's the matter? Do I bore
+you?"
+
+"_Bore_ me?" Forrester all but cried.
+
+"It's just--well, nothing, I suppose," the High Priestess said. "Your
+expression."
+
+"Training," Forrester explained. "An acolyte does well not to express
+his emotions too clearly."
+
+The High Priestess nodded casually and patted the couch at her side.
+"Sit down here, next to me."
+
+Forrester did so, gingerly.
+
+A moment of silence ensued.
+
+Then Forrester, gathering courage, said: "Thank you for getting a
+Healer. But I'd like to ask you--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"How do you know I'm not under some sort of carefully concealed arrest?
+After all, you said before that you were sure--"
+
+"And I am sure," the High Priestess said. "Aphrodite herself has ordered
+a sacrifice in her favor. A sacrifice from you. And Aphrodite does not
+accept--much less _order_--a sacrifice from those standing in her
+disfavor."
+
+"You're--"
+
+"I'm sure," the High Priestess said.
+
+"Oh," Forrester said. "Good." The world was not quite as black as it
+could have been. And still, it was not exactly shining white. A
+sacrifice? And outside the door, Forrester could hear a disturbance.
+
+What did that mean?
+
+Her Concupiscence didn't seem to hear it at first. "We will perform the
+rite together and--" The noise grew louder. "What's that?" she said.
+
+It was the sound of argument. Forrester realized what had happened.
+"It's the priest from Hermes," he said. "The Healer. You forgot to tell
+the Captain of Myrmidons to let him in."
+
+"My goodness!" the High Priestess said. "So I did! It slipped my mind
+entirely." She touched Forrester's cheek affectionately. "Of course, I
+imagine it's only natural to be a bit forgetful when--" She got up and
+went to the door.
+
+The Captain and a small, fat priest in a golden-edged tunic were tangled
+confusedly outside. The High Priestess looked away from them in disdain
+and said regally: "You may permit the Healer to enter, Captain." The
+tangle came untied and the little priest scooted in. To him, as the door
+closed again, the High Priestess whispered: "Sorry. I didn't expect you
+quite so soon."
+
+"No more did I!" The priest waved his caduceus furiously, so that it
+seemed as if the twin snakes twined round it were moving, the two wings
+above them beating, and the ball surmounting all, on top of the staff,
+traced uneasy designs in the air. "Myrmidons!" he said.
+
+"I certainly regret--"
+
+"If you boiled down their brains for the fat content, one alone would
+supply the Temple with candles for a year! Just beef and nothing more!
+Beef! Beef!"
+
+Then, with a start, he seemed to see the High Priestess for the first
+time, and his tone changed. "Oh," he said. "Good evening, Your
+Concupiscence."
+
+"Good evening," the High Priestess said in an indulgent tone.
+
+"Well, well, well," the priest said. "What seems to be the trouble? My
+goodness. It must be important, sure enough--certainly important." His
+little round red eager face seemed to shine as he went on. "Hermes
+himself transported me here just as soon as you called!"
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Oh, my, yes," the priest said. "Just as soon as ever. Yes. Hm. And you
+can believe me when I tell you--believe me, Your Concupiscence--take my
+word when I tell you--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Hermes," the priest said. "Hermes doesn't often take such an
+interest--I may say such a _personal_ interest--in a mortal, I'll tell
+you. And you can believe me when I do tell you that. I do."
+
+"I'm sure," the High Priestess said.
+
+"Yes," the priest said, waving his caduceus gently. He blinked. "Where's
+the patient? The mortal?"
+
+"He's over here," the High Priestess said, motioning to Forrester
+sitting awestruck on the couch. Priests of Hermes were common enough
+sights--but a priest like this was something new and strange in his
+experience.
+
+"Ah," the priest said, twinkling at him. "So there you are, eh? Over
+there? You _are_ sitting over _there_, aren't you?"
+
+"That's right," Forrester said blankly.
+
+"Now listen to me carefully," the High Priestess said. "You're not
+to ask his name, or mention anything about this visit to
+anyone--understand?"
+
+The priest blinked. "Oh, certainly. Absolutely. Without doubt. I've
+already been told that, you might say. Already. Certainly. Wouldn't
+think of such a thing." He moved over and stood near Forrester, peering
+down at him. "My goodness," he said. "Let me see that eye, young man."
+
+Forrester turned his head wordlessly.
+
+"Oh, my, yes," the priest said. "Black indeed. Very black. A fight. My,
+yes. An altercation, disagreement, discussion, battle--"
+
+"Yes," Forrester cut in.
+
+"Certainly you have," the priest said. "And what'd the other fellow look
+like, eh? Beaten, I'll bet. You look a strong type."
+
+Forrester relaxed. It was the only thing to do while the priest babbled
+on, touching his wounds gently as he did so with various parts of his
+caduceus. The pain vanished with a touch of the left wingtip, and the
+lacerations healed instantly as they were caressed with first one and
+then another of the various coils of the snakes.
+
+But Forrester now was free to worry. Arrest was out of the question. As
+the High Priestess had said, on the evidence it was clear that Aphrodite
+intended to honor him in some way. And there was nothing at all, he
+thought, wrong with an honor from the Goddess of Love.
+
+But another sacrifice? After the sacrifice to Aphrodite he'd made
+earlier, and the fight he'd gotten into, he just didn't quite feel up to
+it. It wouldn't do to refuse, but ...
+
+"Well," the priest said, stepping back. "Well, well. You ought to be all
+right now, young fellow--right as rain."
+
+Forrester said: "Thanks."
+
+"Might feel a little soreness--tenderness, you might say--for a day or
+so. Only a day or so, tenderness," the priest said. "After that, right
+as rain. Right as you'll ever be. _All_ right, as a matter of fact: all
+right."
+
+Forrester said: "Thanks."
+
+The priest went to the door, turned, and said to the High Priestess:
+"Hermes' blessing on you both, as a matter of fact, as they say.
+Blessings from Hermes on you both."
+
+The High Priestess nodded regally.
+
+"And," the priest said, "merely by the way, as it might be, without
+meaning harm, if you would ask a blessing for me--Aphrodite's blessing?
+Easy for you. Of course, it would be nice curing--curing, as they
+say--stupidity, plain dumbness, as they call such things--curing
+stupidity as easily as I can cure small ills. Nice."
+
+"Indeed," the High Priestess said.
+
+"But there," the priest went on. "Only the Gods can cure that. Only the
+Gods and no one else. Yes. Hm. And not often. They don't do anything
+like that in the--ah--regular course of things. As a matter of fact, you
+might say, I've never heard of--never heard of such a case. Never. Not
+one. Yet ..." He opened the door, spat: "Myrmidons!" and disappeared
+into the hallway.
+
+The door banged shut.
+
+Forrester sighed heavily. The High Priestess turned to him.
+
+"Feel better?" she asked.
+
+"Much," Forrester said, dreading the ordeal to come.
+
+The High Priestess came over to the couch and sat down next to him. She
+put a hand on his shoulder. "Shall we prepare for the--sacrifice?"
+
+Forrester sighed again. "Sure," he said. "Naturally."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she was locked in his arms, it was as if time had started all over
+again. Forrester responded to the eagerness of the woman as he'd never
+dreamed he could respond; all his tiredness dropped away as if it had
+never been, and he was a new man. He touched her bare flesh and felt the
+heat of her through his fingers and hands; with his arms around her
+nakedness he rolled, locked to her, feeling the friction of skin against
+skin and the magnificence of her.
+
+The sacrifice went on ... and on ... and on into endless time and
+endless space. Forrester thrust and gasped at the woman and her head
+went back, her mouth pulled open as she shivered and responded to
+him....
+
+Forever....
+
+Until finally they lay, panting, in the magnificent room. Forrester rose
+first, vaguely surprised at himself. He found a towel in a closet at the
+far end of the room and wiped his damp forehead slowly.
+
+"Well," he said. "That was quite a sacrifice. What next?"
+
+The High Priestess raised herself on one elbow and stared across the
+room at him. "There is no need for such familiarity, Forrester," she
+said. "Not from a lay acolyte."
+
+Forrester tossed the towel onto a couch. "My apologies, Your
+Concupiscence. I'm a little--light-headed. But what happens next?"
+
+The High Priestess reached into the diaphanous pile of her clothing and
+came up with a small diamond-encrusted watch she wore, usually, on her
+wrist. "Our timing was almost perfect," she said. "It is now
+twenty-hundred hours. The Goddess expects you at twenty-oh-one exactly."
+
+A hurried half-minute passed. Then, fully dressed, Forrester went with
+the High Priestess to a golden door half-hidden in the hangings at the
+side of the room. She made a series of mystical signs: the circle, the
+serpent and others Forrester couldn't quite follow.
+
+She opened the door, genuflecting as she did so, and Forrester dropped
+to one knee behind her, looking at the doorway.
+
+It was filled with a pale blue haze that looked like the clear summer
+sky on a hot day. Except that it wasn't sky, but a curtain that wavered
+and shimmered before his eyes. Beyond it, he could see nothing.
+
+The High Priestess rose from her genuflection and Forrester followed
+suit. There was a sole second of silence.
+
+Then the High Priestess said: "You are to step through the Veil of
+Heaven, William Forrester."
+
+Forrester said: "_Me?_ Through the _Veil of Heaven_?"
+
+"Don't be afraid," she said. "And don't try to touch the Veil. Just walk
+through as if nothing at all were there."
+
+Forrester filled his lungs as though he were going to take a very high
+dive. He thought: _Here goes nothing_. That was all; there wasn't time
+for anything else.
+
+He stepped into the blue haze, and had a sudden sensation of falling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+
+There was a tingle like a mild electric shock. Forrester opened his
+mouth and then closed it again as the tingle stopped, and the sense of
+falling simply died away. He had closed his eyes on the way into the
+curtain, and now he opened them again.
+
+He closed them very quickly, counted to ten, and took a deep breath.
+Then he opened them to look at the room he was in.
+
+It was unlike any room he had ever seen before. It didn't have the
+opulence of the High Priestess's rooms. I am a room, it seemed to say,
+and a room is what I was meant to be. I don't have to draw attention to
+myself like my poorer sisters. I am content merely to exist as the room
+of rooms, the very type and image of the Ideal Enclosure.
+
+The floors and walk of the place seemed to blend into each other at odd
+angles. Forrester's eyes couldn't quite follow them or understand them,
+and judging the size of the room was out of the question. There was a
+golden wash of light filling the room, though it didn't seem to come
+from anywhere in particular. It was, in fact, as if the room itself were
+shining. Forrester blinked and rubbed his eyes. The light, or whatever
+it was, was changing color.
+
+Gradually, he realized that it went on doing that. He wasn't sure that
+he liked it, but it was certainly different. The colors went from gold
+to pale rose to violet to blue, and so on, back to gold again, while
+little eddies and swirls of light sparkled into rainbows here and there.
+
+Forrester began to feel dizzy again.
+
+There were various objects standing around here and there in the room,
+but Forrester couldn't quite tell what they were. Even their sizes were
+difficult to judge, because of the shifting light and shape of the room
+itself. There was only one thing that seemed reasonably certain.
+
+He was alone in the room.
+
+Set in one wall was a square of light that didn't change color quite as
+much as everything else. Forrester judged it to be a window and headed
+for it. With his first step, he discovered something else about the
+place.
+
+The carpeting was completely unique. Instead of fiber, the floor seemed
+to have been covered a foot deep with foam rubber. Forrester didn't
+exactly walk to the window; he bounced there. The sensation was almost
+enjoyable, he thought, when you got used to it. He wondered just how
+long it took to get used to it and settled on eighty years as a good
+first guess.
+
+He stood in front of the window. He looked out.
+
+He saw nothing but clouds and sky.
+
+It took a long while for him to decide what to do next, and when he
+finally did come to a decision, it was the wrong one.
+
+He looked down.
+
+Below him there were tumbled rocks, ledges of ice and snow, clouds
+and--far, far below--the flat land of the Earth. He wanted to shut his
+eyes, but he couldn't. The whole vast stomach-churning panorama spread
+out beneath him endlessly. The people below, if there were any, weren't
+even big enough to be ants. They were completely invisible. Forrester
+took a deep breath and gripped the side ledges of the window.
+
+And a voice behind him said: "Welcome, Mortal."
+
+Forrester almost went through the window. But he managed to regain his
+balance and turn around, saying angrily: "Don't _do_ that!" As the last
+of the words left his lips, he became aware of the smiling figure facing
+him.
+
+She was standing in a spotlight, Forrester thought at first. Then he saw
+that the light was coming from the woman herself--or from her clothing.
+The dress she wore was a satinlike sheath that glowed with an aura even
+brighter than the room. Her blonde hair picked up the radiance and
+glowed, too, illuminating a face that was at once regal, inviting and
+passionate. It was, Forrester thought, a hell of a disturbing
+combination.
+
+The cloth of the dress clung to her figure as if it wanted to. Forrester
+didn't blame it a bit; the dress showed off a figure that was not only
+beyond his wildest dreams, but a long way beyond what he had hitherto
+regarded as the bounds of possibility. From shoulder to toe, she was
+perfection.
+
+This was also true of the woman from shoulder to crown.
+
+Forrester gulped and, automatically, went on one knee.
+
+"Please," he murmured. "Pardon me. I didn't mean--"
+
+"Quite all right," the Goddess murmured. "I understand perfectly."
+
+"But I--"
+
+"Never mind all that now," Venus said, with just a hint of impatience.
+"Rise, William Forrester--or you who were William Forrester."
+
+Forrester rose. Sweat was pouring down his face. He made no effort to
+wipe it away. "Were?" he asked, dazed. "But that's my name!"
+
+"It _was_," Venus said, in the same calm tone. "Henceforth, your name is
+Dionysus."
+
+Forrester took a while to remember to swallow. "Dionysus?" he said at
+last.
+
+There was another silence.
+
+Forrester, feeling that perhaps his first question could use some
+amplification, said: "Dionysus? Bacchus? You mean me?"
+
+"Quite right," Venus said. "That will be your name, and you'd better
+begin getting used to it."
+
+"Now wait a minute!" he said. "I don't mean to be disrespectful, but
+something occurs to me. I mean, it's the first thing I thought of, and
+I'm probably wrong, but just let me ask the questions, if you don't
+mind, and maybe some of this will make some sense. Because just a few
+hours ago I was doing very nicely on my own and I--"
+
+"What are your questions?" Venus said.
+
+Forrester swayed. "Dionysus/Bacchus himself," he said. "Won't he mind
+my--"
+
+Venus laughed. "Mind your using his name? My goodness, no."
+
+"But--"
+
+"It's all because of the orgies," Venus said.
+
+Everything, he told himself, was getting just a little too much for him.
+"Orgies?" he said.
+
+Venus nodded. "You see, there are all those orgies held in his honor.
+You know about those, of course."
+
+"Sure I do," Forrester said, watching everything narrowly. In just a few
+seconds, he told himself hopefully, the whole room would vanish and he
+would be in a nice, peaceful insane asylum.
+
+"Well, it isn't impossible for a God to be at all the orgies held in his
+honor," Venus said. "Naturally not. But, at the same time, they are all
+rather boring--for a God, I mean. And that's why you're here," she
+finished.
+
+Forrester said: "Oh." And then he said: "Oh?" The room hadn't
+disappeared yet, but he was willing to give it time.
+
+"Dionysus," Venus said patiently, as if she were explaining the matter
+to a small and rather ugly child, "gets tired of appearing at the
+orgies. He wants someone to take his place."
+
+The silence after that sentence was a very long one. Forrester could
+think of nothing to say but: "_Me?_"
+
+"You will be raised to the status of Godling," Venus said. "You remember
+Hercules and Achilles, don't you?"
+
+"Never met them," Forrester said vacantly.
+
+"Naturally," Venus said. "They were, however, ancient heroes, raised to
+the status of Godling, just as you yourself will be. However, you will
+not be honored or worshipped under your own name."
+
+Forrester nodded. "Naturally," he said, wondering what he was talking
+about. There was, he realized, the possibility that he was not insane
+after all, but he didn't want to think about that. It was much too
+painful.
+
+"You will receive instructions in the use of certain powers," Venus
+said. "These will enable you to perform your new duties."
+
+Duties.
+
+The word carried a strange connotation. Dionysus/Bacchus was the God of
+wine, among other things, and women and song had been thrown in as an
+afterthought. The duties of a stand-in for a God like that sounded just
+a little bit overwhelming.
+
+"These--duties," he said. "Will they be temporary or permanent?"
+
+"Well," Venus said, "that depends." She smiled at him sweetly.
+
+"Depends?"
+
+"So far," Venus said, "our testing shows that you are capable of
+handling certain of the duties to be entrusted to you. But, for the
+rest, everything depends on your own talents and devotion."
+
+"Ah," Forrester said, and then: "Testing?"
+
+"You don't suppose that we would pick a mortal for an important job like
+this without making certain that he was capable of doing the job, do
+you?"
+
+"Frankly," Forrester said, "I haven't got around to supposing anything
+yet."
+
+Venus smiled again. "We have tested you," she said, "and so far you
+appear perfectly capable of exercising your powers."
+
+Forrester blinked. "Exercising?"
+
+"Exactly. As a street brawler, for instance, you do exceptionally well."
+
+"As a--"
+
+"How does your face feel?" she asked.
+
+"My what?" Forrester said. "Oh. Face. Fine. Street brawls, you said?"
+
+"I did," Venus said. "My goodness, the way you bashed that one bruiser
+with your drink--that was really excellent. As a matter of fact, I feel
+it incumbent on me to tell you that I haven't enjoyed a fight so much in
+years."
+
+Wondering whether he should be complimented or just a little ashamed of
+himself, Forrester said nothing at all. The idea that he had been under
+the personal supervision of Aphrodite herself bothered him more than he
+could say. The brawl was the first thing that came to mind. It didn't
+seem like the sort of thing a Goddess of Love ought to have been
+watching.
+
+And then he thought of the High Priestess.
+
+He felt a blush creeping up around his collar, and was thankful only
+that it was not visible under the tan of his skin. He remembered who had
+ordered the sacrificial rites, and thought bitterly and guiltily about
+spectator sports.
+
+But his face remained perfectly calm.
+
+"So far," Venus said, "I must say that you have come through with flying
+colors. You should be proud of yourself."
+
+Forrester didn't feel exactly proud. He wanted to crawl into a hole and
+die there.
+
+"Well," he said, "I--"
+
+"But there is more," Aphrodite said.
+
+"More?"
+
+The idea didn't sound attractive. In spite of what one of the tests had
+involved, the notion of any more tests was just a little fatiguing.
+Besides, Forrester was not at all sure that he would be at his best,
+when he knew that dispassionate observers were chronicling his technique
+and his every movement.
+
+How much more, he wondered, could he take?
+
+And, he reflected, how much more of _what_?
+
+"We must be certain," Aphrodite said, "that you can prove yourself
+worthy of the dignity of a Godling."
+
+"Ah," Forrester said cleverly. "So there are going to be more tests?"
+
+"There are," Venus said. "After all, you will be expected to act as the
+_alter persona_ of Dionysus. That involves responsibilities almost
+beyond the ken of a mortal."
+
+Wine, Forrester thought wildly, women and song.
+
+He wondered if he were going to be asked to sing something. He couldn't
+remember anything except the _Star Spangled Banner_ and an exceptionally
+silly rhyme from his childhood. Neither of them seemed just right for
+the occasion.
+
+"You must learn to behave as a true God," Venus said. "And we must know
+whether you are fitted for the part."
+
+Forrester nodded. The one thing keeping him sane, he reflected, was the
+hope of insanity. But the room was still there, and Venus was standing
+near him, talking quietly away.
+
+"Thus," she said, "there must be further tests, so that we may be sure
+of your capacities."
+
+Capacities? Just what was _that_ supposed to mean? "I see," he lied.
+"And suppose I fail?"
+
+"Fail?"
+
+"Suppose I don't live up to expectations," Forrester said.
+
+"Well, then," Venus declared, "I'm afraid the Gods might be angry with
+you."
+
+Forrester had no doubt whatever as to the meaning of the words. Either
+he lived up to expectations or he didn't live at all. The Gods' anger
+was not a small affair, and it seldom satisfied itself with small
+results. When a God got angry with you, you simply hoped the result
+would be quick. You didn't really dare hope it would also be temporary.
+
+Forrester passed a hand over his forehead. If he had been doing his own
+picking, he thought a little sadly, the job of tryout stand-in for
+Dionysus was not the job he would have chosen. But then, the choice
+wasn't his, and it never had been. It was the Gods who had picked him.
+
+Unfortunately, if he failed, the mistake wouldn't be laid at the door of
+the Gods. It would be laid at the door of William Forrester, together
+with a nice, big, black funeral wreath.
+
+But it didn't sound too bad at that, he told himself hopefully. After
+all, it wasn't every day that a man was offered the job of stand-in for
+a God, not every day that a man was offered the chance of passing a lot
+of strenuous and embarrassing tests, and dying if he failed.
+
+He told himself sternly to look on the positive side, but all he could
+think of was the succession of tests still to come. What would they be
+like? How could he ever pass them all? What would be thought necessary
+to establish a man as a first-rate double for Dionysus?
+
+Looks, he thought, were obviously the first thing, and he certainly had
+those. For a second he almost wished he could see Ed Symes and apologize
+for getting mad when Ed had told him he looked like Bacchus.
+
+But then, he reflected, he didn't want to go too far. The idea of
+apologizing to Ed Symes, no matter who his sister was, made Forrester's
+gorge rise about five and a half feet.
+
+"However," Aphrodite went on, as if she had just thought of something
+too unimportant to bother mentioning, "don't worry about it. My father's
+thunderbolt needn't concern you. I have every confidence that you will
+prove yourself."
+
+She smiled radiantly at him.
+
+The idea occurred to Forrester that she just didn't think that a
+mortal's mortality was important. But the idea didn't stay long. Being
+reassured by a Goddess, he told himself confusedly, was very reassuring.
+
+Venus was looking him up and down speculatively, and Forrester suddenly
+thought a new test was coming. A little gentle sweat began to break out
+on his forehead again, but his face stayed calm. He took a deep breath
+and tried to concentrate on gathering strength. The High Priestess had
+been something special but, Forrester thought, she had not really called
+out his _all_. Venus was clearly another matter.
+
+But Venus said only: "Those clothes," in a considering sort of tone.
+
+"Clothes?" Forrester said, trying to readjust in a hurry.
+
+"You certainly can't go in those clothes. Hera would object quite
+violently, I'm afraid. She's awfully stuffy about such things."
+
+The intimate details about the Gods intrigued Forrester. "Stuffy? Hera?"
+
+"Confidentially," Venus said, "at times, the All-Mother can be an
+absolute bitch."
+
+She went over to one of the light-swirled walls, and a part of the light
+seemed to fade as she did so. Of course, she did nothing so crude as
+opening a door. When she started for the wall there was no closet
+apparent there, but when she arrived it was there, solid, and open.
+
+It was just that simple.
+
+She took out a white robe and started back. Forrester took his eyes from
+her with an effort and watched the closet disappear again. By the time
+she had reached him, it was only a part of the swirling wall again.
+
+And the hospital attendants were nowhere in sight.
+
+She handed Forrester the robe. He took it warily, but it seemed real
+enough. At any rate, it was as real as anything else that was happening
+to him, he thought.
+
+It was a simple tunic, cut in the style of the ancient Greek _chiton_,
+and open at one side instead of the front. Forrester turned it in his
+hands. At the waist and shoulder there was a golden clasp to hold it in
+place. The clasp wasn't figured in any special way. The material itself
+was odd: it was an almost fluorescent white and, though it was perfectly
+opaque, it was thinner than any paper Forrester had ever seen in public.
+It almost didn't seem to be there when he rubbed it between his thumb
+and forefinger.
+
+"Well, don't just stand there," Venus said. "Get started."
+
+"Started?" Forrester said.
+
+"Get dressed. The others are waiting for you."
+
+"Others?"
+
+But she didn't answer. Forrester looked frantically around the room for
+anything that looked even remotely like a dressing room. As a last
+resort, he was willing to settle for a screen. No room, no screen. He
+was willing to settle for a chair he could crouch behind. There was
+none.
+
+He looked hopefully at the Goddess. Perhaps, he thought, she would leave
+while he dressed. She showed no sign of doing so. He cleared his throat
+and jerked at his collar nervously.
+
+"Now, now," Venus said sternly. "Don't tell me the presence of your
+Goddess embarrasses you." She raised her head imperiously. "Hurry it
+up."
+
+Very slowly, he began taking off his clothes. There was, after all,
+nothing to be ashamed of, he told himself. As a matter of fact, Venus
+ought to be getting used to the sight of him undressing by this time.
+
+Somehow, he finally managed to get the _chiton_ on straight. Venus
+looked him over and nodded her approval.
+
+"Come along now," she said. "They're waiting for us. And one thing:
+don't get nervous, for Hera's sake. You're all right."
+
+"Oh," Forrester said. "Sure. Perfectly all right. Right as rain."
+
+"Well, you are. As a matter of fact, I think you'll make a fine
+Dionysus."
+
+She led him toward a wall opposite where the closet had been. As they
+approached it, a section of it became bluer and bluer. With a sinking
+feeling, Forrester told himself that he knew what was coming.
+
+He did. The wall dissolved into the shimmering blue haze of a Veil of
+Heaven, just like the one that had transported him from New York to his
+present position. Where that was, he wasn't entirely sure, but
+remembering his one look out the window, he suspected it was Mount
+Olympus.
+
+But there wasn't any time for thinking. Venus took his hand coolly as
+they reached the blue haze. Then both of them stepped through.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+
+The room into which they stepped seemed even larger than the one they
+had left. The distances were just as hard to measure, and why Forrester
+had the feeling, he couldn't have said, but it did feel larger. The
+sense of enormous space hung over it.
+
+The wall colors were just the same, however, dripping and changing in a
+continuous flow of patterns, with the little sunbursts and rainbows
+appearing here and there without any visible reason.
+
+But the room itself was comparatively unimportant, Forrester knew. It
+was what went on in the room that sent shivers up his spine, and
+instructed one knee to start knocking against other one. He had heard of
+the Court of the Gods, though as far as he knew no mortal had ever seen
+it. There were certainly no photographs of it, even in the most
+exhaustive travel books.
+
+Forrester knew without question that he was standing in that Courtroom.
+The knowledge did not make him calm. And the beings sitting and
+reclining on couches along the shimmering walls made him feel even
+worse. He recognized every one of them, and every one sent a new shock
+of awe running through his nerves. His stomach felt like a hard rubber
+handball.
+
+There was Zeus All-Father, with his great, silvery, ringleted beard. His
+hands were combing through it and he was frowning majestically into the
+distance. Next to him was the imperious Hera, Mother of the Gods. She
+sat with her hands folded in her lap, as if she were waiting for the end
+of the world to be announced. There was Mars, tough and hairy-chested,
+scratching his side with one hand and scowling horribly. His fierce,
+bearded face looked somehow out of place without the battle helmet that
+usually topped it. The horned and goat-legged Pan was there, and Vulcan,
+crippled and ugly with his squat body and giant arms, reclining like an
+ape on a couch all alone, and motherly looking Ceres using one hand to
+pat her hair as if she, not Forrester, were the nervous one.
+
+Athena was there, too, lovely and gray-eyed. She seemed to be smiling at
+him with special favor, and Forrester felt grateful.
+
+He needed all the help he could get.
+
+But the other Gods were absent. Where were they? Pluto and Phoebus
+Apollo were missing, and so were Mercury, Neptune, Dionysus and Diana.
+
+And ...
+
+"Ah," the great voice of Zeus boomed, as Forrester and Venus stepped
+through the Veil. Forrester heard the voice and shuddered. "The mortal
+is here," Zeus went on in his awe-inspiring roar. "Welcome, Mortal!"
+
+Forrester opened his mouth, but Hera got in ahead of him.
+
+She leaned over to her divine husband and hissed, in a tone audible to
+everyone in the room: "Don't belabor the obvious, dear. Enough's
+enough."
+
+"It is?" Zeus said. The roar was exactly the same. "I'm not at all sure.
+No! Of course not. Naturally not, my dear. Naturally not." He looked
+around slowly, nodding his great head. "Now, now. Let's see. Do we have
+a quorum? I don't see Morpheus. Where's Morpheus?"
+
+"Asleep, as usual," Mars growled. He finished scratching his side and
+began on his beard. "Where else would the old fool be? He's nothing but
+a bore anyway and I say to Hades with him. Let's get on."
+
+"Now, Ares," Pallas Athena said mildly. "Don't be crude."
+
+"Crude?" Mars bellowed. "All I said was that the old bore's not here.
+It's true, isn't it? What in Hades is so crude about it?"
+
+"Hah!" Vulcan growled, in a bass voice that seemed to come from the
+bottom of a large barrel. "Look who mentions being a bore."
+
+"Why, you--" Mars started.
+
+"Children!" Hera snapped at once.
+
+There was quiet, and Forrester had time to get dizzy. Maybe, he thought,
+he had been traveling too much. After all, he had started in New York,
+and then he had found himself on what he suspected was Mount Olympus, in
+Greece. And now he was somewhere else.
+
+He wasn't entirely sure where. The Court of the Gods existed; he knew
+that. But he had never heard just where it existed, and it was entirely
+possible that no mortal knew. In which case, Forrester thought
+confusedly, I don't even know where I am.
+
+For the first time, he began to think seriously that, perhaps, he was
+sane after all. Maybe everything he was seeing and hearing was true. It
+was certainly beginning to look that way. And, in that case, maybe the
+dizziness he felt was just airsickness, or spacesickness, or whatever
+kind of sickness came from traveling through those blue Veils.
+
+At least, he told himself, thinking of the old man he had met on the way
+downtown, at least it beat the subway.
+
+He looked behind him. He and Venus were standing in the center of the
+room. There was no blue veil behind them. It had, apparently, done its
+duty and gone away.
+
+The subway, Forrester told himself solemnly, didn't do that.
+
+Zeus cleared his throat ponderously. "I count eight of us," he said.
+"Eight, all told. Of course, that's eight without the mortal." He
+paused, and then added: "If you count the mortal in, there are nine."
+
+Pan stirred. "That's a quorum," he announced in a hoarse voice that had
+a heavy vibrato in it. It reminded Forrester, oddly, of the bleating of
+a goat. Pan crossed his legs and his hooves clashed, striking sparks.
+"Pluto and Poseidon said they'd accept our judgment."
+
+"Why the absence?" Vulcan said shortly.
+
+"A storm, I think," Pan said. "Out in the North Atlantic, if memory
+serves--and it does. As far as I recall, there are four ships sunk so
+far. Quite an affair."
+
+Vulcan said: "Ah," and reclined again.
+
+Hera leaned forward. "Where's Apollo? He said he might come."
+
+"Sure he did," Mars said heavily. "Old Sunshine Boy never misses a bit
+of excitement. Only he probably found something even more exciting. He's
+in California, all dressed up as a mortal."
+
+"California?" Ceres said. "My goodness, what would that boy be doing in
+California?"
+
+Mars guffawed. "Probably showing off--how Sunshine Boy loves to show
+off! Displaying that gorgeous body to the girls on Muscle Beach, I'll
+bet."
+
+"Eight to five," Pan said at once.
+
+Mars turned to him and nodded shortly. "Done."
+
+"Now, if I were a betting man," Vulcan began in a thoughtful bass,
+"I'd--"
+
+"We all know what you'd do, Gimpy," Mars roared. "But you won't do it,
+so shut up about it."
+
+"Please," Hera said. "Order." Her voice was like chilled steel. The
+others settled back. "I think we're ready. Shall we begin, dear?" She
+looked at Zeus, who got ready to start. But before he could get a word
+out, there was a flicker of blue energy in the room, a couple of yards
+away from Forrester and Venus. The flicker expanded to a Veil, and a man
+stepped out of it.
+
+He was a short, fat individual wearing a _chiton_ as if he had slept in
+it for three or four weeks. His face was puffy and his golden hair was
+ruffled. His eyelids seemed to have acquired a permanent half-mast, and
+beneath them the eyes were bleary and disinterested.
+
+Forrester needed no introductions to Morpheus, the God of Sleep.
+
+The God looked around at the assembled company with a kindly little
+smile on his tired face. Then, slowly and luxuriously, he yawned. When
+his mouth closed again, after a view of caverns measureless to man, he
+rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles, and then heaved a great sigh and,
+apparently, resigned himself to the terrible effort of speech.
+
+"I'm late," he said. "But it's really not my fault."
+
+"Oh?" Hera said in a nasty tone of voice.
+
+Morpheus shook his head slowly from side to side. "It really isn't." His
+voice was terribly calm. It was obvious, Forrester thought, that he did
+not give a damn. "The alarm just didn't seem to go off again. Or else I
+didn't hear it."
+
+"Now, Morpheus," Hera said. "I should think you'd get some kind of alarm
+that really worked, after all this time."
+
+"Why bother?" Morpheus said, and shrugged ponderously. "Anyhow, I'm
+here." He yawned again. "The thing's tiresome, but I did say I'd be
+here, and here I am. Now, does that satisfy everybody? Because if it
+doesn't, I do have some sleep to catch up on."
+
+"It satisfies us all," Hera said with some asperity. "Go sit down."
+
+Morpheus shambled quietly over to a couch near Mars. He lowered himself
+onto it, and slowly slipped from a sitting position to a reclining one.
+
+"Well," Hera said to Zeus, "we're ready, dear."
+
+"Oh," Zeus said. "Oh. Certainly. I declare this meeting--I declare this
+meeting fully met." He cleared his throat with a rumble that shook the
+air. "We're here, as I suppose you all know, to consider the problem of
+William Forrester. But first, I am reminded of a little story I picked
+up on Earth, and in the hopes that some of you here might not have heard
+it, I--"
+
+"We've heard it," Hera said, "and, anyhow, this is neither the time nor
+the place."
+
+Zeus turned to look at her. He shrugged. "Very well," he said equably.
+"Let us return to William Forrester, as a possible substitute for
+Dionysus. The first consideration ought to be the psychological records,
+wouldn't you say?"
+
+"I would," Hera said through her teeth.
+
+"I believe Athena is in charge of that department, and if she is ready
+to report--"
+
+"Of course she's ready," Hera said, "dear."
+
+Zeus nodded. "Well, then, what are we waiting for?"
+
+Athena got up and faced the company. "In general," she began at once, "I
+think we can pass the candidate completely on the psychological records.
+The Index of Subordination is low, but we don't want one too high for
+this post. Too, the Beta curve shows a good deal of variation, a
+Dionysian characteristic. There is, perhaps, a stronger sense of
+responsibility than is recorded in the Dionysian index, but this may not
+be a handicap."
+
+"By no means," Hera said. "Responsibility is something we could all do
+with more of, around here." She shot a poisonous glance at Morpheus,
+whose eyes were now completely closed.
+
+Forrester, busily wondering what his Beta curve was, and why it varied,
+and what he would do if he lost it and had to get another one, missed
+the next few words of Athena's report. The word that did impinge on his
+consciousness did so with a shock.
+
+"Sex," Athena said. "But, after all, that is not quite in my
+department." She looked as if she were very glad of the fact. "In
+general, as I say, the psychological tests present no insuperable
+barriers."
+
+"Fine," Hera said. She dug Zeus in the ribs again.
+
+"Oh," Zeus said. "Yes. Fine."
+
+"Next," Hera said.
+
+"Yes," Zeus said. "By all means. Next."
+
+Mars got up. He was now scratching the hair on his chest. He looked
+around at the others with a definitely unfriendly expression.
+
+"The physical department is mine," he said. "The candidate can handle
+himself, all right. There isn't much doubt of it." He burped, wiped his
+mouth with the back of one hand, and went on: "Of course, he's let
+himself run to fat a little here and there, but it isn't really serious.
+Mainly a matter of glandular balance or something like that, as far as I
+understand Hermes' report."
+
+Forrester began to feel like a prize chicken.
+
+"And physical training," Mars said. "Well, there hasn't _been_ any
+training, that's all. And that's bad."
+
+"He is not being considered for your position," Vulcan said. "One
+muscular brainless imbecile is enough."
+
+Mars took a deep breath.
+
+"Please," Hera said. "Continue the report."
+
+The breath came out in an explosion. "All right," Mars said.
+"Discounting the training end of things, and assuming that Hermes can
+fix up the glandular mess, I think he can pass the physical."
+
+Forrester wasn't sure that he liked being referred to as a glandular
+mess. On the other hand, he asked himself, what could he do about it? He
+stood quietly, wondering what was coming next.
+
+His worst fears were fulfilled.
+
+Venus stepped forward and gave her report. Basically, it was a codicil,
+of a rather specialized nature, to the physical report. While it was
+going on, Forrester glanced at Athena. She looked every bit as
+embarrassed as he felt, and her face wore a look of sheer pain. Once he
+thought she was going to leave the room, but she remained grimly seated
+until it was all over.
+
+Forrester couldn't figure out, when he thought about it, how the Gods
+had managed to give him all these tests without his knowing anything
+about it. But, then, they were supernatural, weren't they? And they had
+their own methods. A mortal didn't have to understand them.
+
+Forrester wasn't sure he was happy with that idea, but he clung to it.
+It was the only one he had.
+
+When Venus finished her report, there was a little silence.
+
+"Any other comments?" Hera whispered to her husband.
+
+"Ah, yes," Zeus said. "Other comments. If anyone has any other comments
+to make, please make them now. Now is the time to make them."
+
+He sat back. Morpheus stirred slightly and spoke without opening his
+eyes or sitting up. "Sleep," he said.
+
+Hera said: "Sleep?"
+
+"Very important," Morpheus said slowly, "the candidate sleeps pretty
+well--soundly, as a matter of fact. The only trouble is that he doesn't
+get enough sleep. But then, no one on this entire crazy world ever
+does." He yawned and added: "Not even me."
+
+Forrester passed a hand over his forehead. He realized, very suddenly,
+that he had come to a conclusion somewhere during the meeting. He was,
+he told himself, definitely sane.
+
+That left another conclusion. He was not dreaming anything that was
+happening. It was all perfectly real.
+
+And he was about to become a demi-God.
+
+That in itself didn't sound so bad. But he began to wonder, in a quiet
+sort of way, just what was going to happen to William Forrester,
+acolyte and history professor, when Forrester/Bacchus had became a
+reality. With a blunt shock he knew that there was only one answer.
+
+William Forrester was going to die.
+
+It didn't matter what the verdict of the Gods was. There were more tests
+coming, he knew, and if he failed them the Gods would kill him quite
+literally and quite completely.
+
+But, he went on, suppose he passed the tests.
+
+In that case he was going to become Forrester/Bacchus, a substitute God.
+Plain old Bill Forrester would cease to exist entirely.
+
+Oh, a few traces might remain--his Beta curve, for instance, whatever
+that was. But Bill Forrester would be gone. Somehow, the idea of a
+revenant Beta curve didn't make up for the basic loss.
+
+On the other hand, he reminded himself again, what choice did he have?
+
+None.
+
+He forced himself to listen to what the Gods were saying.
+
+Zeus cleared his throat. "Well, I think that closes the subject. Am I
+right, dear?"
+
+"You are," Hera said.
+
+"Very well," Zeus said. "Then the subject is closed, isn't it?"
+
+Hera nodded wearily.
+
+"In that case, we can proceed with the investiture. Hephaestus, will you
+please take charge of the candidate?"
+
+Hephaestus/Vulcan sighed softly. "I suppose I must." He swung off the
+couch and stood half-crouched for a second. Forrester looked at him
+blankly. "Well," Vulcan said, "come on." He jerked his head toward
+Forrester. "Over here."
+
+With one last backward glance at Venus, Forrester walked across the
+room. Vulcan turned and hobbled ahead of him toward the wall. Forrester
+followed until, almost at the wall, a Veil of Heaven appeared. Feeling
+almost used to the thing by now, Forrester followed Vulcan through, and
+he didn't even look behind him to see if the Veil had vanished after
+they'd come through. He knew perfectly well it had. It always did.
+
+The room they had entered was similar to the others he had seen, but
+there was no change of colors. The walls glowed evenly and with a
+subdued light that filled the room evenly. And, for the first time, the
+walls weren't simply blanks that became things only when approached. The
+strangest-looking objects Forrester had ever seen filled benches,
+tables, chairs and the floor, and some were even tacked to the glowing
+walls. He stared at them for a long time.
+
+No two were alike. They seemed to be all sizes, shapes and materials.
+The only thing they really had in common was that they were
+unrecognizable. They looked, Forrester thought, as if a truckload of
+non-objective twentieth-century sculpture had collided with another
+truck full of old television-set innards. Then, in some way, the two
+trucks had fallen in love and had children.
+
+The scrambled horrors scattered throughout the room were, Forrester told
+himself bleakly, the children.
+
+Vulcan sat down on the only empty chair with a sigh. "This is my
+workshop," he announced gravely. "It is not arranged for visitors, nor
+for the curious. I must advise you to touch nothing, if you wish to save
+your hands, your sanity, and very possibly your life."
+
+Forrester nodded dumbly. Vulcan's tone hadn't been unfriendly; he had
+merely been warning a stranger, in the shortest and clearest manner
+possible, against the dangers of feeling the merchandise. Not, Forrester
+thought, that the warning was necessary. He would as soon have thought
+of trying to fly as he would of touching one of the mixed-up looking
+things.
+
+"Now," Vulcan said, "if you'll--" He stopped. "Pardon me," he said, and
+levered himself upright. He went to a chair, swept a few constructions
+from it and put them carefully on a table. "Sit down," he said,
+motioning to the chair.
+
+Gingerly, Forrester sat down.
+
+Vulcan returned to his own chair and climbed onto it. "Now let us get to
+business."
+
+"Business?" Forrester said.
+
+"Oh, yes," Vulcan said. "I imagine you were pretty well bewildered for a
+while. No more than natural. But I think you've figured it out by now.
+You know you are going to be given the powers of a demi-God, don't you?"
+
+"Yes. But--"
+
+"Do not worry about it," Vulcan said. "The powers are--simply powers.
+They are not burdens. At any rate, they will not be burdensome to you.
+We know that--we have researched you to a fine point, as you may have
+gathered from the fol-de-rol back there." He gestured toward his right,
+evidently indicating the Court of the Gods.
+
+"But," Forrester said, "suppose I'm not what your tests say. I mean,
+suppose I--"
+
+"There is no need for supposition. Beyond any shadow of doubt, we know
+how you, as a mortal, will react to any conceivable set of
+circumstances."
+
+"Oh," Forrester said. "But--"
+
+"Precisely. You have realized what yet needs to be done. We know what
+your abilities and limitations are--_as a mortal_. The tests you have
+yet to pass are concerned with your actions and reactions as a
+demi-God."
+
+Forrester swallowed hard. He felt as if he were on a moving
+roller-coaster. No matter how badly he wanted to get off, it was
+impossible to do so. He had to remain while the car hurtled on.
+
+And where was he going?
+
+The Gods, he told himself with more than ordinary meaning, knew.
+
+"The power which is to be infused into you," Vulcan said, "if you don't
+mind the loose terminology--"
+
+"I don't mind in the least," Forrester assured him earnestly. "Not in
+the least."
+
+"The power infused into you will make some changes. These will not only
+be physical changes. Mental changes must be expected."
+
+"Oh," Forrester said. "Mental changes."
+
+"Correct. Physically, you see, you will become what no mortal can ever
+quite be: a perfectly functioning biological engine. Every sinew, nerve
+and muscle, every organ and gland, every tissue in your body will be in
+perfect harmonic balance with every other. Metabolically speaking, your
+catabolism and anabolism will be in such perfect balance that aging will
+not be possible."
+
+Forrester thought that over. "I'll be immortal," he said.
+
+"In that sense of the word," Vulcan said, "you will. You will be, as a
+matter of fact, quite a good deal tougher, stronger and harder than any
+animal now existing on the face of the Earth. I must except, of course,
+a few of the really big ones, like the elephant and the killer whale."
+
+"Oh," Forrester said. "Sure."
+
+"But make no mistake. You can still be killed. A bullet through the
+heart will not do the job; it will merely incapacitate you for a few
+hours. But if you were to have your head blown off by a grenade, you
+would be quite dead. Remember that."
+
+"I don't see how I could forget it."
+
+"You will heal with incredible rapidity, but there are limitations.
+Anything that pushes the balance too far will be fatal. You can lose a
+hand or even an arm without serious harm; the missing member will be
+regrown. But if you were to fall into a large meat-grinder--"
+
+"I get the idea," Forrester said, feeling pale green.
+
+"Good," Vulcan said. "However, there is more."
+
+"_More?_"
+
+"There are certain other powers to be given you in addition. You will
+learn of these later."
+
+Forrester nodded blankly.
+
+"Now," Vulcan said, "all these physical changes will have a definite
+effect upon your psychological outlook, as I imagine you can plainly
+see."
+
+Forrester thought about it. "Well--"
+
+"Let us suppose that you are a coward who has avoided fights all his
+life. Now you are given these powers. What will happen?"
+
+"I'll be strong."
+
+"Exactly. You will be strong. And because you are strong, and almost
+indestructible, you suddenly decide that you can now get your revenge on
+the people who have pushed you around."
+
+"Well," Forrester said, "I--"
+
+"You begin to look for fights," Vulcan said. "You go around beating up
+everyone you can find, simply because you now know you can get away with
+it. Do you understand me?"
+
+"I guess so."
+
+"A man with a vicious streak in him would be intolerable in this
+position. Can you see that? Take an example: Ares. Mars is a tough God,
+hard and at times brutal. But he is not vicious."
+
+Forrester was a little surprised to hear Vulcan say anything nice about
+Mars. He knew, as everyone did, the long history of ill-will and
+positive hatred the two had built up between them. It had begun soon
+after Vulcan's marriage to Aphrodite/Venus.
+
+He hadn't been a cripple then, of course. For a while, he and Venus had
+had a fine time. But Venus, apparently, just wasn't satisfied with the
+dull normal routine of married life. None of the Gods seemed to be, as a
+matter of fact. Either they were altogether too married, like Zeus, or
+else they weren't married enough, like Venus. Or else they were like
+Diana and Athena, indifferent to marriage.
+
+At any rate, Venus had begun looking around for fresh talent. And the
+fresh talent had been right there ready to sign up for a long contract
+on a strictly extra-legal basis.
+
+One day Vulcan caught them at it, his wife and Mars. Vulcan was angry,
+but Mars didn't exactly like to be interrupted, either, and he was a
+little faster on the draw. He tossed Vulcan over a nearby cliff,
+crippling him for good.
+
+And as for Aphrodite--who knew? It was entirely possible that, by this
+time, the Goddess of Love had run through the entire list of Gods and
+was now at work on the mortals.
+
+Forrester wasn't entirely sure he disliked the idea, on a simple
+physical level. But there was more than that to it, of course; there was
+Vulcan. Forrester found himself liking the solemn, positive workman. He
+didn't want to hurt him.
+
+And a liaison with Venus was certain to do just that.
+
+He came back to the present to hear Vulcan still discoursing. "Also,"
+the God said, "changes in glandular balance must be made. These changes
+have a necessary effect on the brain. The personality changes subtly,
+though I can assure you that the change is not a marked one." He paused.
+"For all these reasons," he finished, "I am sure that you can see why we
+must subject you to further tests."
+
+"I understand," Forrester said vaguely.
+
+"Good. Now, you will not know whether a given incident--any given
+incident--is a perfectly natural occurrence or a test imposed on you by
+the Pantheon. Can you understand that?"
+
+Forrester nodded.
+
+Vulcan levered himself upright, his ugly face smiling just a little.
+"And remember what I have told you. No worrying. You don't even know
+just what any given test is supposed to accomplish, so you can't know
+whether the action you choose is right or wrong. Therefore, worrying
+will do nothing for you. You will be at your best if you simply behave
+naturally."
+
+"I'll try."
+
+"Remember, also, that you were picked not merely for your physical
+resemblance to Dionysus, but your psychological resemblance as well.
+Therefore, playing his part should be comparatively simple for you.
+Right?"
+
+"I guess so," Forrester said, feeling both expectant and a little
+hopeless about it all.
+
+"Fine," Vulcan said. "Now wait one moment." He turned and limped over to
+a structure that looked like a sort of worktable. When he came back, he
+was carrying several objects in his big hands. He selected one, an ovoid
+about the size of a marble, colored a dull orange, and handed it to
+Forrester. "Swallow that."
+
+Forrester took it cautiously. As soon as he found out what he was
+supposed to do with the thing, its dimensions seemed to grow. It looked
+about the size of a golf ball in his shaking hands.
+
+"_Swallow_ it?" he said tentatively.
+
+"Correct," Vulcan said.
+
+"But--"
+
+"This object is a--well, call it a talisman. It will not dissolve, and
+it is recoverable, but for the Investiture it must be inside you."
+
+"But--"
+
+"You will find it so easy to swallow that you will need no water. Go
+ahead."
+
+Forrester put the thing in his mouth and swallowed once, just to test
+Vulcan's statement. The effect was surprising. He could barely feel it
+leave his tongue, and he couldn't feel it go down at all. He swallowed
+again, experimentally, and explored the inside of his mouth with his
+tongue.
+
+"It is gone," Vulcan said. "Good."
+
+"It's gone, all right," Forrester said wonderingly.
+
+"The sandals are next." Vulcan selected a pair of sandals with rather
+thick soles and handed them over. They were apparently made of gold.
+Forrester obediently strapped them on, and Vulcan next handed him a pair
+of golden cylinders indented to fit his curved fingers.
+
+"You hold these very tightly," Vulcan said. "During the Investiture, you
+must grip them as hard as you can." He peered closely at them and
+pointed to one. "This one goes in the left hand. The other goes in the
+right. Squeeze them as if--as if you were trying to crush them. All
+right?"
+
+"All right," Forrester said.
+
+Vulcan nodded. "Good. From this moment on, do exactly as you are told.
+Answer questions truthfully. Keep nothing secret. Remember my
+instructions."
+
+"Right," Forrester said doubtfully.
+
+"Come on," Vulcan said, heading for the wall. The inevitable Veil of
+Heaven appeared, and Forrester followed through it as before.
+
+The room they entered was not, he thought, the same one they had been in
+before. Or, if it was, it had changed a great deal. It was difficult to
+tell anything for sure; the shifting walls looked the same, but they
+also looked like the shifting walls in Venus' apartments.
+
+At any rate, there were now no couches on the floor. The room seemed
+even bigger than before, and when the walls settled down to a steady
+golden glow, Forrester felt lost in the immensity of the place. In the
+center of the room was a raised golden dais. It was about five feet
+across and nearly three feet high.
+
+The Gods were ranged around it in a semicircle, facing him. Vulcan
+slipped into an empty space in the line, and Forrester stood perfectly
+alone, holding the cylinders.
+
+Zeus cleared his throat. "Step up on the dais," he said.
+
+Stumbling slightly, Forrester managed to do so without losing his grip
+on the cylinders.
+
+In the center of the raised platform, with the Gods staring at him, he
+felt like something under a microscope.
+
+"William Forrester," Zeus said, and he shuddered. The All-Father's voice
+had never been more powerful. "William Forrester, from this moment
+onward you will renounce your present name. You will be known as
+Dionysus the Lesser until and unless it shall please us to confer
+another name on you. Henceforth, you will be, in part, a recipient of
+the worship due to Dionysus, and you will hold the rank of demi-God. Do
+you accept these judgments and this honor?"
+
+Forrester gulped. A long time seemed to pass. At last he found his
+voice. "I do," he said.
+
+"Very well," Zeus said.
+
+The Gods joined hands and closed the circle around Forrester,
+surrounding him completely. The golden auras that shone about their
+bodies grew more and more bright. Forrester clutched the golden
+cylinders tightly.
+
+Then, very suddenly, there was an explosion of light. Forrester thought
+he had staggered, but he was never sure. Everything was too bright to
+see. Dizziness began, and grew.
+
+The room whirled and tipped. Somewhere a great organlike note began, and
+went on and on.
+
+Forrester convulsed with the force of a single great burst of energy
+that crashed through his nervous system.
+
+And then, in a timeless instant, everything went black.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+
+The morning of the Autumn Bacchanal dawned bright and clear--thanks to
+the intervention of the Pantheon. In New York, the leaves were only just
+beginning to turn, and the sun was still high enough in the sky to make
+the afternoons warm and pleasant. Zeus All-Father had promised good
+weather for the festival, and a strong, warm wind from the Gulf of
+Mexico was moving out the crisp autumn air before the sun had risen an
+hour above the horizon.
+
+The practicing that had gone on in thousands of homes throughout the
+city was at an end. The Autumn Bacchanal was here at last, and the
+Beginning Service, which had started in the little Temple-on-the-Green
+right at dawn, when the sun's rays had first touched the tops of New
+York's towers, was approaching its end. The people clustered in the
+building, and the incomparably greater number scattered outside it, were
+feeling the first itch of restlessness.
+
+Soon the Grand Procession would begin, starting as always from the
+Temple-on-the-Green and wending its slow way northward to the upper end
+of Central Park at 110th Street. Then the string of worshippers would
+turn and head back for the Temple at the lower end of the Park, with
+fanfare and pageantry on a scale calculated to do honor to the God of
+the festival, to outshine not only every other festival, but every past
+year of the Autumn Bacchanal itself.
+
+The Autumn Bacchanal was devoted to the celebration of the harvest, and
+more specifically the harvest and processing of the grape. All the
+wineries for hundreds of miles around had shipped hogshead after
+hogshead and barrel after barrel of fine wine--red, white, rose, still,
+or sparkling--as joyous sacrifice to Dionysus/Bacchus, and in thanks
+that the fertility rites of the Vernal Bacchanal had brought them good
+crops. Wine flowed from everywhere into the city, and now the immense
+reserves were stacked away, awaiting the revels. Even the brewers and
+distillers had sent along their wares, from the mildest beer to vodka of
+120 proof, joining unselfishly in the celebration even though,
+technically, they were not under Dionysian protection at all, but were
+the wards of Ceres, the Goddess of grain.
+
+Celebrants, liquors, chants, preparations, balloons, confetti, edibles
+and all the other appurtenances of the festival spiraled dizzyingly
+upward, reaching proportions unheard of throughout history. And, in a
+back room at the Temple-on-the-Green, the late William Forrester sat,
+trying to forget all about them, and suffering from a continuous case of
+nerves.
+
+Diana marched up and down in front of him, smacking her left fist into
+her calloused little right palm. "Now listen," she said crisply. "I know
+you're all hot and bothered, kid, but there's no reason to be. You're
+doing fine. They love you out there."
+
+"Sure I am," Forrester said, unconvinced.
+
+"Well, you are," Diana said. "You just got to have confidence, that's
+all. Keep your spirits up. Tried singing?"
+
+"Singing?"
+
+"Singing, kid. Raises the spirits."
+
+Forrester blinked. "Really?"
+
+"Take it from me," Diana said. "How about Tenting Tonight?"
+
+"How about what?"
+
+"Tenting Tonight," Diana said. "You know."
+
+"I--guess I do." Forrester wished that Diana would do more than treat
+him like a pal. She was a remarkably beautiful woman, if you liked the
+type, and Forrester liked virtually any type.
+
+Now, success appeared to be within his grasp. But it did seem an odd
+time to bring the subject up. Oh, well, he thought, maybe she was just
+trying to cheer him up and had picked this way of doing it.
+
+It worked, too, he told himself happily.
+
+He cleared his throat. "Where?"
+
+Diana stared. "Where?"
+
+"That's right," Forrester said. Something was going wrong but he
+couldn't discover what it was. "The tenting."
+
+"Oh," Diana said. "Right here. Now. Raises the spirits."
+
+"I should say it does!" Forrester agreed enthusiastically. "But after
+all--right here--"
+
+"Don't worry about it, kid. Nobody will hear you."
+
+"_Hear_ me?"
+
+"Anyway, it's nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of people do it when they
+feel low."
+
+"I'll bet they do," Forrester said. "But it's different with you and
+me."
+
+"Me?" Diana said. "What do I have to do with it? I just told you--"
+
+"Well, sure. And here and now is as good a time and place as any."
+
+Diana stepped back a pace. "Okay, let's hear it. Sing!"
+
+"Sing? You mean I have to sing for my--"
+
+"I'll join you," Diana said.
+
+Forrester nodded. He was beginning to get confused. "You'd better," he
+said.
+
+"_Tenting tonight on the old camp grounds_," she sang. "Now come on."
+
+Forrester coughed. "Oh," he said. "Sing."
+
+"Sure," Diana said, and they went through the song together. "How about
+another chorus?" she asked.
+
+"It's all right, Diana," Forrester said, knowing she preferred the name
+to her Greek one of Artemis. "I feel fine now."
+
+"Well," Diana said in a disappointed voice, "all right."
+
+What surprised Forrester most was that he _did_ feel fine. All the Gods
+had helped him in the past several months, but Diana had been especially
+helpful. As a forest Goddess, and as Protectress of the Night, she'd
+been able to tell him a lot about how an orgy was arranged. He had often
+wished that she would teach by example, but now, he discovered, it was
+too late for wishing.
+
+She was, he told himself with only faint regret, just like a sister to
+him. Or even a brother.
+
+"I guess everything will be okay," he said. "Won't it?"
+
+Diana clapped him on the back. "You're going to be great. Just go out
+there and show 'em what kind of a God you are."
+
+"But what kind of a God am I?"
+
+"Just keep cool, kid. You won't fail me--I know it."
+
+"I'll try," Forrester said. "Only I'm getting nervous just sitting
+around here. I wish we could go out and stroll around; we've got plenty
+of time, anyhow."
+
+Diana nodded. "It's ten minutes yet before the Procession starts. I
+suppose we might as well take a look around, kid, if it makes you feel
+better."
+
+"It might."
+
+"Fine, then. But how do you want to go?"
+
+Forrester blinked. "How?"
+
+"Invisibility," Diana said, "or incognito?"
+
+"Oh," Forrester said. Then he added: "You're asking me?"
+
+"Of course I am, kid. Now, look: this is your celebration, remember?
+You're Dionysus. Got it? Even in my presence, you act the part now. You
+ought to know that."
+
+"Well, sure, but--"
+
+"Keep this in mind. These people haven't had a Sabbatical Bacchanal in
+seven years. Every seven years they get to see their God--and this year
+you're it. Right?"
+
+"I guess so. But--"
+
+"No buts," Diana said. "You're the boss and they're your worshippers.
+That's all there is to it. Now, you've got to make up your mind. What'll
+it be?"
+
+Forrester thought. "Well," he said at last, "I guess it had better be
+incognito. With this crowd, there's too much likelihood of getting
+bumped into if we're invisible. Right?"
+
+Diana grinned. "That's the boy! You're thinking straight now!"
+
+Forrester had the sudden feeling that he had just passed another test.
+But he didn't quite dare ask about it "All right," he said instead.
+"Let's go."
+
+He put his mind to work concentrating on the special faculties that his
+demi-God power gave him. His face began to change. He looked less and
+less like Dionysus as the seconds went by, and more and more like
+William Forrester. At the same time, the golden aura around his body
+began to fade. After a few minutes he looked like William Forrester
+completely, a nice enough guy but pretty much of a nonentity.
+
+Diana, with the greater power of a true Goddess, achieved the same sort
+of result almost instantly. Her aura was gone and the sparkle had left
+her eyes. Her brown hair looked a little mousy now, and her face was
+merely pretty instead of being gloriously beautiful.
+
+"Just one thing," Forrester said. "We'd better make ourselves invisible
+just to leave the Temple. Somebody might suspect we weren't ordinary
+people at all."
+
+"Right again," Diana smiled. She nodded her head and blinked out.
+
+Forrester could still see a cloudy outline of her in the room, but he
+knew that was because he was a demi-God, with special powers. An
+ordinary mortal, he knew, would see nothing at all.
+
+He followed her into invisibility and walked out the back door of the
+Temple-on-the-Green. The door was open and two Temple Myrmidons, wearing
+the golden grape-clusters of Dionysus on their shoulder patches, stood
+outside the door. Neither of them saw Forrester and Diana leave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three minutes later, they were standing near the doorway of the Temple,
+watching the preparations for the Grand Procession. The fifty priests of
+Dionysus gathered there while the enormous crowd pushed and shoved to
+get a better view of the ritual. The sacrifice of the first fruits had
+been completed, and now, at the door of the Temple, each of the fifty
+priests filled a chalice from a huge hogshead of purple wine.
+
+They chanted a prayer in unison and spilled half the wine on the ground
+as a libation. Then they lifted the chalices to their lips and drank,
+finishing the other half in one long motion.
+
+The chalices were set down, and a cheer rose from the crowd.
+
+The Bacchanal had begun!
+
+The priests separated into two equal groups. Twenty-five of them started
+northward, marching to their positions at regularly spaced intervals in
+the procession. The remaining twenty-five stayed behind, ready to
+accompany Dionysus himself at the tail of the parade.
+
+Each of the other Gods was represented by a special detachment of ten
+Myrmidons, each contingent wearing the distinctive shoulder patch of the
+God it served: the thunderbolt of Zeus, the blazing sun of Apollo, the
+pipes of Pan, the sword of Mars, the hammer of Vulcan, the poppy of
+Morpheus, the winged foot of Mercury, the trident of Neptune, the
+cerberus of Pluto, the peacock of Hera, the owl of Athena, the dove of
+Venus, the crescent of Diana, and the sprig of wheat that represented
+Mother Ceres. The Myrmidons grinned in expectation of the good times
+coming; a Dionysian festival was always something special, and
+competition for the contingents was always tough.
+
+There were balloons everywhere, as the crowd shoved and pushed into the
+line of march. Someone was bawling an old song about the lack of liquor,
+and the strident voice carried over the shouts and halloos of the mob:
+
+"_How dry I am--_"
+
+Forrester and Diana, now visible, pushed their way through the crowds. A
+man flung his arm around the Goddess with abandon, shouting something
+indistinguishable; Diana shook him off gently and went on. Forrester
+almost tripped over a small boy sitting on the grass and crying. A
+Myrmidon was standing over him, and the child's mother was trying to
+lift the boy.
+
+"I wanna go to the orgy," the boy kept saying. "I wanna go to the orgy."
+
+"Next year," the mother told him. "Next year, child, when you're six."
+
+The Myrmidon lifted the child and carried him away. The mother shouted
+an address after him, and the Myrmidon nodded, pushed his way through a
+gesticulating group of celebrants and disappeared in the direction of
+Central Park West. There, other Dionysian Myrmidons were patrolling,
+making sure that no non-Dionysian got in except by special invitation.
+Any non-Dionysian who wanted to celebrate was supposed to do it on the
+streets of the city, and not in Central Park, which was going to be
+crowded enough with legitimate revelers.
+
+The shouting and screaming went on, people pushing and shoving, confetti
+beginning to drift like a light snow over the worshippers. One man held
+five balloons and a cigarette, and he was popping the balloons with the
+cigarette tip, one by one. Every time one of the balloons exploded, a
+group of women and girls around him shrieked and laughed.
+
+Forrester turned back. Behind a convenient bush, he and Diana made
+themselves invisible again, and re-entered the Temple-on-the-Green.
+
+The silence inside the Temple was deafening.
+
+"The noise out there could break eardrums," Forrester complained. "I've
+never heard anything like it."
+
+"Just wait," Diana told him. "The music will start any time now--and
+then you'll _really_ hear something." She paused. "Ready?"
+
+Forrester glanced down at himself. "I guess so. How do I look?" He had
+constructed a golden _chiton_ and mentally clothed himself in it. It was
+covered by a grape-purple cloak embroidered with golden grapevines. And
+around his head a circlet of woven grapevines had appeared, made of
+solid gold. It was a little heavier than Forrester had expected it would
+be, but it lent him, he thought, rather a dashing air.
+
+"Great," Diana said. "Just great."
+
+"Think so?" Forrester said, feeling rather pleased.
+
+"Sure you do. Now go out there and give 'em the old college try."
+
+Forrester gulped. "How about you?"
+
+"Me? I'm on my way out of here. This is your show, kid. Make the most of
+it."
+
+Forrester watched her go out the rear door. He was alone. And the Autumn
+Bacchanal Processional was about to begin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+
+Noise! Forrester, seated in the great golden palanquin supported by
+twelve hefty Priests of Dionysus, had never seen or heard anything like
+it. He waited there on the steps of the little Temple-on-the-Green for
+the Procession to wind by, so that he could take his place at the end of
+it. But the Procession looked endless.
+
+First came a corps of Priests and Myrmidons, leading their way stolidly
+through the paths of Central Park. Following them came the revelers, a
+mass of men and women marching, laughing, singing, shouting, dancing
+their way along to the accompaniment of more music than Forrester had
+ever dreamed of.
+
+The Dionysians had practiced for months, and almost everything was
+represented. There were violinists prancing along, violists and a crew
+of long-haired gentlemen and ladies playing the viol da gamba and the
+viol d'amore; there were guitarists plunking madly away, banjo players
+strumming and ukelele addicts picking at their strings, somehow all
+chorusing together. In a special pair of floats there were bass players,
+bass fiddle players and cellists, jammed tightly together and somehow
+managing to draw enormous sounds and scratches out of the big
+instruments. And behind them came the main band of musicians.
+
+The woodwinds followed: piccolo players piping, flutists fluting, oboe
+players, red-cheeked and glassy-eyed, concentrating on making the most
+piercing possible sounds, men playing English horns, clarinets, bass
+clarinets, bassoons and contra-bassoons, along with men playing serpents
+and, behind them, a dancing group fingering ocarinas and adding their
+bit to the general tumult, and two women tootling madly away on
+hoarse-sounding zootibars.
+
+And then, near the center of the musicians, were the brass: trumpets and
+trumpets-a-piston, trombones and valve trombones and Fulk horns, all
+blatting away to split the sky with maddening sound, Sousaphones and
+saxophones and French horns and bass horns and hunting horns, and tubas
+along in their own little cart, six round-cheeked men lost in the curves
+of the great instruments, valiantly blowing away as they rolled by into
+the woods of the park, making the city itself resound with tremendous
+noise and shattering cadence. And behind them was the battery.
+
+Kettle drums, bass drums, xylophones, Chinese gongs, vibraphones, snare
+drums and high-hat cymbals paraded by in carts, banged and stroked and
+tinkled enthusiastically by crew after crew of maddened tympanists. And
+then came the others, on foot: tambourines and wood blocks and parade
+cymbals and castanets. At the tail of this portion of the Procession
+came a single old man wearing spectacles and riding in a small cart
+drawn by a donkey. He had white hair and he was playing on a series of
+water-glasses filled to various levels. His ear was cocked toward the
+glasses with painstaking care. He was entirely inaudible in the general
+din, but he looked happy and satisfied; he was doing his bit.
+
+After him followed a group of entirely naked men and women playing
+sackbuts, and another group playing recorders. Bringing up the rear, as
+the Procession curved, was a magnificent aggregation of men and women
+yowling away on bagpipes of all shapes and sizes. All of the men wore
+sporrans and nothing more; the women wore nothing at all. The music that
+emanated from this group was enough to unhinge the mind.
+
+And then came the keyboard instruments, into the middle of which the
+five theremin-players had been stuck for no reason at all. The strange
+howls of this unearthly instrument filtered through the sound of pianos,
+harpsichords, psalters, clavichords, virginals and three gigantic
+electric organs pumping at full strength.
+
+And bringing up the very rear of the Procession was a special decorated
+cart, full of color and holding a lone man with long white hair, wearing
+a rusty black suit and playing away, with great attention and care, on
+the largest steam calliope Forrester had ever met. Jets of steam fizzed
+out of the top, and music bawled from the interior of the massive thing
+as it went by, trailing the Procession into the woods, and the entire
+aggregation swung into a single song, hundred upon hundreds of musicians
+and singers all coming down hard on the opening strains of the Hymn to
+Dionysus:
+
+    "_Mine eyes have seen the glory of the Lord who rules the wine--
+    He has trampled out the vintage of the grapes upon the vine!_"
+
+The twelve Priests picked up the palanquin and Forrester adjusted his
+weight so they wouldn't find it too heavy. It was impossible to think in
+the mass of noise and music that went on and on, as the Procession wound
+uptown through the paths of Central Park, and the musicians banged and
+scraped and blew and pounded and stroked and plucked, and the great Hymn
+rose into the air, filling the entire city with the bawled chorus as
+even the twelve Priests joined in, adding to the ear-splitting din:
+
+    "_Glory, Glory, Dionysus!
+    Glory, Glory, Dionysus!
+    Glory, Glory, Dionysus!
+    While his wine goes flowing on!_"
+
+Forrester had always been disturbed by what he thought might have been a
+double meaning in that last line, but it didn't disturb him now. Nothing
+seemed to disturb him as the Procession wound on, and he was laughing
+uproariously and winking and nodding at his worshippers as they sang and
+played all around him, and the hours went by. Halfway there, he fished
+in the air and brought down the small golden disks with the picture of
+Dionysus on them that were a regular feature of the Processional, and
+flung them happily into the crowd ahead.
+
+Only one was allowed per person, so there was not much scrambling, but
+some of the coins pattered down on the various instruments, and one
+landed in the old gentleman's middle-C water glass and had to be fished
+out before he could go on with the Hymn.
+
+Carousing and noisy, the Procession finally reached the huge stand at
+the far end of the park, and the music stopped. On the stand was a whole
+new group of musicians: harpists, lyrists, players of the flageolet and
+dulcimer, two men sweating over glockenspiels, a group equipped with
+zithers and citharas and sitars, three women playing nose-flutes, two
+men with shofars, and a tall, blond man playing a clarino trumpet. As
+the Procession ground to a halt, this new band struck up the Hymn again,
+played it through twice, and then stopped.
+
+Seven girls filed out onto the platform in front of the musicians. One
+was there representing every year since the last Sabbatical Bacchanal.
+Forrester, riding high on the palanquin, beamed down at them, roaring
+with happy laughter. They were all for him. Having been carried to one
+end of the park in triumph, he was now to march back at the head of his
+people, surrounded by seven of the most beautiful girls in New York.
+
+Their final selection had been left, he knew, to a brewery which had
+experience in these matters. And the girls certainly looked like the
+pick of anybody's crop. Forrester beamed at them again, stood up in the
+palanquin and spread his arms wide.
+
+Then he sprang. In a flying leap, he went high into the air and did a
+full somersault, landing on his toes on the stage, twenty-five feet
+away. The girls were kneeling in a circle around him.
+
+"Come, my doves!" he bellowed. "Come, my pigeons!" His Godlike golden
+baritone carried for blocks.
+
+He grabbed the two nearest girls by their hands and helped them to their
+feet. They blushed and lowered their eyes.
+
+"Come, all of you!" Forrester shouted. "We are about to begin the
+revels!"
+
+The girls rose and Forrester gestured them in closer. Then, surrounded
+by all seven, he threw back his head again.
+
+"A revel to make history!" he roared. "A revel beyond the imagination of
+man! A revel fit for your God!"
+
+The crowd cheered wildly. Forrester picked up one of the girls, tossed
+her into the air and caught her easily as she descended. He set her on
+her feet and put his hands solidly on his hips.
+
+"My cup!" he shouted. "Fill you my cup!"
+
+Behind the stage was a corps of Priests guarding a mountainous golden
+hogshead of wine, adjudged the finest wine produced during the year.
+
+"We shall have drink!" Forrester shouted. "We shall let the revels roar
+on!"
+
+Two priests came forward, staggering under the weight of a gigantic
+crystal goblet containing fully two gallons of the clear purple liquid.
+They bore it to Forrester with great pomp, and before them came a dozen
+players on the gahoon and the contra-gahoon, making Forrester's ears
+ring with deafening fanfares.
+
+Forrester took the great goblet in one hand and held it with ease. Then
+he lifted it into the air with a wordless shout, filled his lungs and
+laughed. He put the goblet to his lips and drained it in a single long
+motion. A mighty hurrah shook the trees and rocks of the park.
+
+Forrester waved the goblet. "Again. Fill you my cup once more!" He
+embraced the seven girls with one sweeping gesture of his arms. "My
+little beauties must have drink! Fill you the cup!"
+
+He passed it back to the Priests carefully. They received it and went
+back to where the others were waiting to fill it. Then they staggered
+forward again and Forrester picked up the brimming goblet. He held it
+for the girls, each of whom tried to outdrink the others. But it was
+still more than half-full when they were finished.
+
+Forrester raised it again. The crowd shouted. "Observe your God!"
+Forrester roared. "Observe his powers!" He threw his head back and
+emptied the goblet. Then, holding it in one hand, he faced the
+assemblage and delivered himself of one Godlike belch.
+
+The crowd shrieked its approval. Forrester had the goblet filled once
+more and put three of the girls in charge of it. Then he came down the
+steps from the platform and began the long march back to the
+Temple-on-the-Green.
+
+The shouting, carousing revelers followed him joyfully. Halfway back,
+one of them stumbled forward and caught at the trailing edge of his
+robe. There was an immediate crackle and burst of static electricity,
+and the stumbler fell back yelping and shaking his arms. The Myrmidons
+came and took him away.
+
+Dionysus couldn't be touched by anyone except those authorized to do
+so--the seven girls and the Priests. But Forrester barely noticed the
+accident; he was too happy on top of his world, laughing and hugging the
+girls close to him.
+
+Behind him, the Priests at the golden hogshead, now set free to taste
+the wine themselves, had lost no time. They were dipping in busily with
+their own goblets--a good deal smaller than the two-gallon crystal one
+for Dionysus himself. There was not even any need for libations; enough
+ran over the brimming edges of the goblets to take care of that detail,
+and the Priests were soon well on the way to becoming sozzled.
+
+The musicians, now joined by the corps which had waited on the uptown
+stage, struck up a new tune, and drowned out even the shouting crowds as
+they cheered their God. After a little while, the crowds began to sing
+along with the magnificent noise:
+
+    "_Dionysus wrapped his hand around the goblet,
+    Around the goblet--around the goblet--
+    Dionysus wrapped his hand around the goblet,
+    And we'll all get--stinking drunk!_"
+
+It was by no means an official hymn, but Forrester didn't mind; it was
+sung with such a great deal of honest enthusiasm. He himself did not
+join in the singing; he was otherwise occupied. With his arms around two
+of the girls, drinking now and then from the great goblet three more
+were holding, and winking and laughing at the extra two, he made his
+joyous way down the petal-strewn paths of Central Park.
+
+The Procession wound down through the paths, over bridges and under
+tunnels, singing and playing and marching and dancing madly, while
+Forrester, at its head, caroused as merrily as any four of them. They
+reached a bridge crossing a little stream and Forrester sprang at it
+with a great somersaulting leap that carried the two girls he was
+holding right along with him. He set them down at the slope of the
+bridge, laughing and giggling and the other girls, with the Procession
+behind them, soon caught up. Forrester let go of one of the girls,
+grabbed the goblet with his free hand and swung it in a magnificent
+gesture.
+
+"Forward!" he cried.
+
+The Procession surged over the bridge, Forrester at its head. He grabbed
+the girl again, handing the goblet back to his corps of three carriers,
+and bowed and grinned at his worshippers behind him, surging forward,
+and at some others standing under the bridge, ankle-deep, shin-deep,
+even knee-deep in the rushing water, craning their necks upward to get a
+really good view of their God as he passed over. There were over a
+hundred of them there.
+
+Forrester didn't see a hundred of them.
+
+He saw one of them first, and then two more. And time seemed to stop
+with a grinding halt. Forrester wanted to run and hide. He clutched the
+girls closer to him with one instinctive gesture, and then realized he'd
+made the wrong move. But it was too late. He was lost, he told himself
+dolefully. The sun had gone out, the wine had lost its power and the
+celebration had degenerated to a succession of ugly noises.
+
+The first face he saw belonged to Gerda Symes.
+
+In that timeless instant, Forrester felt that he could see every detail
+of the soft, small face, the dark hair, the slim, curved figure. She was
+smiling up at him, but her face looked a little bewildered, as if she
+were smiling only because it was the thing to do. Forrester wondered,
+panic-stricken, how she, an Athenan, had managed to get entry to a
+Dionysian revel--but his wonder only lasted for a second. Then he saw
+the second and third faces, and he knew.
+
+The second face belonged to an absolute stranger. He looked like an
+oafish clod, even viewed objectively, and Forrester was making no
+efforts in that direction. He had one arm around Gerda's waist and he
+was grinning up at her, and, sideways, at Forrester with a look that
+made them co-conspirators in what was certainly planned to be Gerda's
+seduction. Forrester didn't like the idea. As a matter of fact, he hated
+it more than he could possibly say.
+
+But all he could do was trust to Gerda's own doubtless sterling good
+sense. She couldn't possibly prefer a lout like her current escort to
+good old Bill Forrester, could she?
+
+On the other hand, she thought Bill Forrester was dead. She'd had to
+think that; when he became Dionysus the Lesser, he couldn't just
+disappear. He had to die officially--and, as far as Gerda knew, the
+death wasn't just an official formality.
+
+With Bill Forrester dead, then, had she turned to the oaf for comfort?
+He didn't look very comforting, Forrester thought. He looked like a
+damned outrage on the face of the Earth. Forrester disliked him on first
+sight, and knew perfectly well that any future sights would only
+increase the dislike.
+
+It was the third face, though that explained everything.
+
+The third face was as unmistakable as Gerda's, though in an entirely
+different way. It was fleshy and pasty, and it belonged, of course, to
+Gerda's lovable brother Ed. Forrester saw everything in one flash of
+understanding.
+
+Ed Symes obviously had enough pull to get his sister invited to the
+Bacchanal. And from the looks of Gerda, he hadn't let the matter rest
+there. She was holding a half-filled plastic mug of wine in one hand--a
+mug with the picture of Dionysus stamped on it, which for some reason
+increased Forrester's outrage--and she was trying her best to look as if
+she were reveling.
+
+From the looks of her, Ed had managed to get her about eight inches this
+side of half-pickled. And from the horribly cheerful look on Ed's
+countenance, he wasn't about to stop at the half-pickled mark, either.
+
+Of course, from Ed's point of view--and Forrester told himself sternly
+that he had to be fair about this whole thing--from Ed's point of view
+there was nothing wrong in what was happening. He wanted to cheer Gerda
+up (undoubtedly the news of the Forrester demise had been quite a shock
+to her, poor girl), and what better way than to introduce her to his own
+religion, the best of all possible religions? The Autumn Bacchanal must
+have looked like the perfect time and place for that introduction, and
+Gerda's escort, a friend of Ed's--somehow Forrester had to think of him
+as Ed's friend; it was clearly not possible that he was Gerda's--had
+been brought along to help cheer the girl up and show her the advantages
+of worshipping Dionysus.
+
+Unfortunately, the advantages hadn't turned out to be all that had been
+expected of them. Because now Gerda had seen Forrester alive and--
+
+Wait a minute, Forrester told himself.
+
+Gerda hadn't seen William Forrester at all.
+
+She had seen just what she expected to see; Dionysus, God of Wine. There
+was no reason for him to shrink from her, or try to hide. Just because
+he was walking along with seven beautiful girls, drinking about sixteen
+times the consumption of any normal right-thinking fish, and carousing
+like the most unprincipled of men, he didn't have to be ashamed of
+himself.
+
+He was only doing his job.
+
+And Gerda did not know that he wasn't Dionysus.
+
+The thought made him feel a little better, but it saddened him, too,
+just a bit. He set himself grimly and shouted: "Forward!" once more. To
+his own ears, his voice lacked conviction, but the crowd didn't seem to
+notice. The cheered frantically. Forrester wished they would all go
+away.
+
+He started forward. His foot found a large pebble that hadn't been
+there before, and he performed the magnificent feat of tripping on it.
+He flailed the air frantically, and managed to regain his balance. Then
+he was back on his feet, clutching at the girls. His big left toe hurt,
+but he ignored the agony bravely.
+
+He had to think of something to do, and fast. The crowd had seen him
+stumble--and that just didn't happen to a God. It wouldn't have happened
+to him, either except for Gerda.
+
+He got his mind off Gerda with an effort and thought about what to do to
+cover his slip. In a moment he had it. He swore a great oath, empurpling
+the air. Then he bent down and picked up the stone. He held it aloft for
+a second, and then threw it. Slowly and carefully he pointed his index
+finger at it, extending it and raising his thumb like a little boy
+playing Stick-'Em-Up.
+
+"_Zap_," he said mildly, cocking the thumb forward.
+
+A crackling, searing bolt of blue-white energy leaped out of the tip of
+his index finger in a pencil-thin beam. It sped toward the falling
+pebble, speared it and wrapped it in coruscating splendor. Then the
+pebble exploded, scattering into a fine display of flying dust.
+
+The crowd stopped moving and singing immediately.
+
+Only the musicians, too intent on their noisemaking to see what had gone
+on, went on playing. But the crowd, having seen Forrester's display and
+heard his oath, was as silent as a collection of statues. When a God
+became angry, each was obviously thinking, there was absolutely no
+telling what was going to happen. Foxholes, some of them might have told
+themselves, would definitely be a good idea. But, of course, there
+weren't any foxholes in Central Park. There was nothing to do but stand
+very still, and hope you weren't noticed, and hope for the best.
+
+Even Gerda, Forrester saw, had stopped, her face still, her hand lifted
+in a half-finished wave, the plastic cup forgotten.
+
+_I've got to do something_, Forrester thought. _I can't let this kind of
+thing go on._
+
+He thought fast, spun around and pointed directly at Ed Symes, standing
+in the water below the bridge.
+
+"You, there!" he bellowed.
+
+Symes turned a delicate fish-belly white. Against this basic color, his
+pimples stood out strongly, making, Forrester thought, a rather unusual
+and somewhat striking effect. The man looked as if he wished he could
+sink out of sight in the ankle-deep water.
+
+His mouth opened two or three times. Forrester waited, getting a good
+deal of pleasure out of the simple sight. Finally Symes spoke. "Me?"
+
+"Certainly you! You look like a tough young specimen."
+
+Symes tried to grin. The effect was ghastly. "I do?" He said
+tentatively.
+
+"Of course you do. Your God tells you so. Do you doubt him?"
+
+"Doubt? No. Absolutely not. Never. Wouldn't think of it. Tough young
+specimen. That's what I am. Tough. And young. Tough young specimen.
+Certainly. You bet."
+
+"Good," Forrester said. "Now let's see you in action."
+
+Symes took a deep breath. He seemed to be savoring it, as if he thought
+it was going to be his very last. "Wh--what do you want me to do?"
+
+"I want you to pick up another stone and throw it. Let's see how high
+you can get it."
+
+Symes was obviously afraid to move from his spot in the water. Instead
+of going back to the land, he fished around near his feet and finally
+managed to come up with a pebble almost as big as his fist. He looked at
+it doubtfully.
+
+"Throw!" Forrester said in a voice like thunder.
+
+Symes, galvanized, threw. It flew up in the air. Forrester drew a
+careful bead on it, went _zap_ again with the pointed finger, and
+blasted the rock into dust.
+
+The silence hung on.
+
+Forrester laughed. "Not a bad throw for a mortal! And a good trick,
+too--a fine display!" He faced the crowd. "Now, there--what do you say
+to the entertainment your God provides? Wasn't that _fun_?"
+
+Well, naturally it was, if Dionysus said so. A great trick, as a matter
+of fact. And a perfectly wonderful display. The crowd agreed
+immediately, giving a long rousing cheer. Forrester waved at them, and
+then turned to a squad of Myrmidons standing nearby.
+
+"Go to that man and his friends!" he shouted, noticing that Symes's
+knees had begun to shake.
+
+The Myrmidons obeyed.
+
+"See that they follow near me. Allow them to remain close to me at all
+times--I may need a good stone-thrower later!"
+
+Gerda, her brother and the oaf without a name were rounded up in a
+hurry, and soon found themselves being hustled along, willy-nilly, out
+of the water, up onto the bridge and into Dionysus' van, where they
+followed in the wake of the God, in front of the rest of the Procession.
+Of the three, Forrester noted, Gerda was the only one who didn't seem to
+think the invitation a high honor. The sight gave him a kind of hope.
+
+_And at least_, he thought, _I can keep an eye on her this way_.
+
+The Procession wended its way on, bending slowly southward toward the
+little Temple-on-the-Green again. The musicians played energetically,
+switching now from the hymn to their unofficial little ditty. Some
+switched before others, some switched after, and some never bothered to
+switch at all. The battery, caught between the opposing claims of two
+perfectly good songs and a lot of extraneous matter, filled in as best
+they could with a good deal of forceful banging and pounding, aided by
+the steam calliope, and the result of all effort was a growing cacophony
+that should have been terribly unpleasant but somehow wasn't.
+
+The shouting of the crowd, joking and singing, may have had something to
+do with it; nothing was clearly distinguishable, but the general feeling
+was that a lot of noise was being produced, and that was all to the
+good. Noise could have been packaged by the board foot and sold in
+quantities sufficient to equip every town meeting throughout the country
+in full for seven years, and there would have been enough left over,
+Forrester thought, to provide for the subways, the classrooms, the
+offices and even a couple of really top-grade traffic jams.
+
+Gerda and the others of her party marched quietly. Ed, Forrester
+noticed, tried a few cheers, but he got cold stares from his sister and
+soon desisted. The oaf shambled along, his arm no longer around Gerda's
+waist. This pleased Forrester no end, and he was in quite a happy mood
+by the time the Procession reached the Temple-on-the-Green.
+
+He was so happy that he performed his atoning high jump once again, this
+time with a double somersault and a jack-knife thrown in, just to make
+things interesting, and landed gently, feeling positively exhilarated
+and very Godlike, on the roof of the Temple.
+
+As the Procession straggled in, the music stopped. Forrester cleared his
+throat and shouted in his most penetrating roar to the silent
+assemblage: "Hear me!"
+
+The crowd stirred, looked up and paid him the most rapt attention.
+
+"On with the revels!" he roared. "Let the dancing begin! Let my wine
+flow like the streams of the park! Let joy be unrestrained!"
+
+He stood on the roof then, watching the crowd begin to disperse. It was
+the middle of the afternoon, and Forrester was amazed at how quickly
+the time had passed. The Procession itself had taken a good six hours
+from start to finish, now that he looked back on it, but it certainly
+hadn't seemed so long. And he didn't even feel tired, in spite of all
+the dancing and cavorting he had gone in for.
+
+He did feel slightly intoxicated, but he wasn't sure how much of that
+feeling was due purely and simply to the liquor he had managed to
+consume. But otherwise, he told himself, he felt perfectly fine.
+
+The musicians were breaking up into little groups of three and four and
+five and going off to play softly to themselves among the trees. The man
+with the steam calliope sat exhausted over his keyboard. The old man
+with the water glasses was receiving the earnest congratulations of a
+lot of people who looked like relatives. And now that the official
+music-making was over, a lot of amateurs playing jews'-harps and
+tissue-paper-covered combs and slide-whistles had broken out their
+contraptions and were gaily making a joyful noise unto their God. If,
+Forrester thought, you wanted to call it joyful. The general tenor of
+the sound was a kind of swooping, batlike whine.
+
+Forrester stared down. There were Gerda and her brother and the oaf.
+They were standing close by the Temple, three Myrmidons keeping guard
+over them. The rest of the crowd had dissolved into little bunches
+spreading all over the park. Forrester knew he would have to leave, too,
+and very soon. There were seven girls waiting for him down below.
+
+Not that he minded the idea. Seven beautiful girls, after all, were
+seven beautiful girls. But he did want to keep an eye on Gerda, and he
+wasn't sure whether he would be able to do it when he got busy.
+
+Somewhere in the bushes, someone began to play a kazoo, adding the final
+touch of melancholy and heartbreak to the music. The formal and
+official part of the Bacchanal was now over.
+
+The _real_ fun, Forrester thought dismally, was about to begin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+
+"Now," Forrester said gaily, "let's see if your God has all the names
+right, shall we?"
+
+The seven girls seated around him in a half-circle on the grass giggled.
+One of them simpered.
+
+"Hmm," Forrester said. He pointed a finger. "Dorothy," he said. The
+finger moved. "Judy. Uh--Bette. Millicent. Jayne." He winked at the last
+two. They had been his closest companions on the march down. "Beverly,"
+he said, "and Kathy. Right?"
+
+The girls laughed, nodding their heads. "You can call me Millie,"
+Millicent said.
+
+"All right, Millie." For some reason this drew another big laugh.
+Forrester didn't know why, but then, he didn't much care, either.
+"That's fine," he said. "Just fine."
+
+He gave all the girls a big, wide grin. It looked perfectly convincing
+to them, he was sure, but there was one person it didn't convince:
+Forrester. He knew just how far from a grin he felt.
+
+As a matter of fact, he told himself, he was in something of a quandary.
+
+He was not exactly inexperienced in the art of making love to beautiful
+young women. After the last few months, he was about as experienced as
+he could stand being. But his education had, it now appeared, missed one
+vital little factor.
+
+He was used to making love to a beautiful girl all alone, just the two
+of them locked quietly away from prying eyes. True, it had turned out
+that a lot of his experiences had been judged by Venus and any other God
+who felt like looking in, but Forrester hadn't known that at the time
+and, in any case, the spectators had been invisible and thus ignorable.
+
+Now, however, he was on the greensward of Central Park, within full view
+of a couple of thousand drunken revelers, all of whom, if not otherwise
+occupied, asked for nothing better than a good view of their God in
+action. And whichever girl he chose would leave six others eagerly
+awaiting their turns, watching his every move with appreciative eyes.
+
+And on top of that, there was Gerda, close by. He was trying to keep an
+eye on her. But was she keeping an eye on him, too?
+
+It didn't seem to matter much that she couldn't recognize him as William
+Forrester. She could still see him in action with the seven luscious
+maidens. The idea was appalling.
+
+All afternoon, he had put off the inevitable by every method he could
+think of. He had danced with each of the girls in turn for entirely
+improbable lengths of time. He had performed high-jumps, leaps,
+barrel-rolls, Immelmann turns and other feats showing off his Godlike
+prowess to anyone interested. He had made a display of himself until he
+was sick of the whole business. He had consumed staggering amounts of
+ferment and distillate, and he had forced the stuff on the girls
+themselves, in the hope that, what with the liquor and the exertion,
+they would lie down on the grass and quietly pass out.
+
+Unfortunately, none of these plans had worked. Dancing and acrobatics
+had to come to an end sometime, and as for the girls, what they wanted
+to do was lie down, not pass out--at least not from liquor.
+
+The Chosen Maidens had been imbued, temporarily, with extraordinary
+staying powers by the Priests of the various temples, working with the
+delegated powers of the various Gods. After all, an ordinary girl
+couldn't be expected to keep up with Dionysus during a revel, could she?
+A God reveling was more than any ordinary mortal could take for long--as
+witness the ancient legend concerned the false Norse God, Thor.
+
+But these girls were still raring to go, and the sun had set, and he was
+running out of opportunities for delay. He tried to think of some more
+excuses, and he couldn't think of one. Vaguely, he wished that the real
+Dionysus would show up. He would gladly give the God not only the
+credit, he told himself wearily, but the entire game.
+
+He glanced out into the growing dimness. Gerda was out there still, with
+her brother and the oaf--whose name, Forrester had discovered, was Alvin
+Sherdlap. It was not a probable name, but Alvin did not look like a
+probable human being.
+
+Now and again during the long afternoon, Forrester had got Ed Symes to
+toss up more rocks as targets, just to keep his hand in and to help him
+in keeping an eye on Gerda and her oaf, Alvin. It was a boring business,
+exploding rocks in mid-air, but after a while Symes apparently got to
+like it, and thought of it as a singular honor. After all, he had been
+picked for a unique position: target-tosser for the great God Dionysus.
+Who else could make that statement?
+
+He would probably grow in the estimation of his friends, Forrester
+thought, and that was a picture that wouldn't stand much thinking about.
+As a stupefying boor, Symes was bad enough. Adding insufferable
+snobbishness to his present personality was piling Pelion on Ossa. And
+only a God, Forrester reminded himself wryly, could possibly do that.
+
+Now, Forrester discovered, Symes and Alvin Sherdlap and Gerda were all
+sitting around a large keg of beer which Symes had somehow managed to
+appropriate from some other part of the grounds. He and Alvin were
+guzzling happily, and Gerda was just sitting there, whiling away the
+time, apparently, by thinking. Forrester wondered if she was thinking of
+him, and the notion made him feel sad and poetic.
+
+Gerda couldn't see him any longer, he knew. The darkness of night had
+come down and there was no moon. The only illumination was the glow
+rising from the rest of the city, since the lights of the park would
+stay out throughout the night. To an ordinary mortal, the remaining
+light was not enough to see anything more than a few feet away. But to
+Forrester's Godlike, abnormally perceptive vision, the park seemed no
+darker than it had at dusk, an hour or so before. Though the Symes trio
+could not possibly see him, he could still watch over them with no
+effort at all.
+
+He intended to continue doing so.
+
+But now, with darkness putting a cloak over his activities, and his mind
+completely empty of excuses, was the time to begin the task at hand.
+
+He cleared his throat and spoke very softly.
+
+"Well," he said. "Well."
+
+There had to be something to follow that, but for a minute he couldn't
+think of what.
+
+Millicent giggled unexpectedly. "Oh, Lord Dionysus! I feel so
+_honored_!"
+
+"Er," Forrester said. Finally he found words. "Oh, that's all right," he
+said, wondering exactly what he meant. "Perfectly all right, Millicent."
+
+"Call me Millie."
+
+"Of course, Millie."
+
+"You can call me Bets, if you want to," Bette chimed in. Bette was a
+blonde with short, curly hair and a startling figure. "It's kind of a
+pet name. You know."
+
+"Sure," Forrester said. "Uh--would you mind keeping your voices down a
+little?"
+
+"Why?" Millicent asked.
+
+Forrester passed a hand over his forehead. "Well," he said at last,
+thinking about Gerda, only a few feet away, "I thought it might be nicer
+if we were quiet. Sort of private and romantic."
+
+"Oh," Bette said.
+
+Kathy spoke up. "You mean we have to whisper? As if we were doing
+something secret?"
+
+Forrester tightened his lips. He felt the beginnings of a strong
+distaste for Kathy. Why couldn't she leave well enough alone? But he
+only said: "Well, yes. I thought it might be fun. Let's try it, girls."
+
+"Of course, Lord Dionysus," Kathy said demurely.
+
+He disliked her, he decided, intensely.
+
+There was a little silence.
+
+"Well," Forrester said. "You're all such beautiful girls that I hardly
+know how to--ah--proceed from here."
+
+Millicent tittered. So did one of the others--Judy, Forrester thought.
+
+"I wouldn't want any of you to feel disappointed, or think you were any
+lower in my estimation than--than any other one of you." The sentence
+seemed to have got lost somewhere, Forrester thought, but he had
+straightened it out. "That wouldn't be fair," he went on, "and we Gods
+are always fair."
+
+The sentence didn't ring quite true in Forrester's mind, and he thought
+he heard one of the girls snicker, but he ignored it and went bravely
+on.
+
+"So," he said, "we're going to have a little game."
+
+Millicent said: "Game?"
+
+"Sure," Forrester said, trying his best to sound enthusiastic. "We all
+like games, don't we? I mean, what's an orgy--I mean, what's a
+revel--but a great big game? Isn't that right?"
+
+"Well," Bette said doubtfully, "I guess so. Sure, Lord Dionysus, if you
+say so."
+
+"Well, sure it is!" Forrester said. "Fun and games! So we'll play a
+little game. Ha-ha."
+
+Kathy looked up at him brightly. "What kind of game, Lord Dionysus?" she
+asked in an innocent tone. She was an extravagantly pretty brunette with
+bright brown eyes, and she had been one of the two he had held in his
+arms during the Procession back from the uptown end of the park.
+Thinking it over now, Forrester wasn't entirely sure whether he had
+chosen her or she had chosen him, but it didn't really seem to matter,
+after all.
+
+"Well, now," he said, "it's going to be a game of pure chance. Chance
+and nothing more."
+
+"Like luck," Bette contributed.
+
+"That's right--uh--Bets," Forrester said. "Like luck. And I promise not
+to use my powers to affect the outcome. Fair enough, isn't it?"
+
+"Certainly," Kathy said demurely. There was really no reason for him to
+be irritated by the girl, so long as she was agreeing with him so
+nicely. Nevertheless, he wasn't quite sure that she was speaking her
+mind.
+
+"Oh," Millicent said. "Sure."
+
+Bette nodded. "Uh-huh. I mean, yes, Lord Dionysus."
+
+Forrester waved a hand. "No need for formality," he said, and felt like
+an ass. But none of the girls seemed to notice. Agreement with his idea
+became general. "Well, let's see."
+
+His eyes wandered over the surrounding scenery in quiet thought. Several
+Myrmidons were scattered about twenty feet away, and they were standing
+with their backs to the group as a matter of formality. If they had
+turned around, they couldn't have seen a thing in the darkness. But they
+had to remain at their stations, to make sure no unauthorized persons,
+souvenir-hunters, musicians, special-pleaders or just plain lost souls
+intruded upon great Dionysus while he was occupied.
+
+The Myrmidons were the only living souls within that radius, except for
+Forrester himself and his bevy--and the Symes trio.
+
+His gaze settled on them. Ed Symes, he noticed with quiet satisfaction,
+was now out cold. Forrester thought that the little spell he had cast on
+the beer might have had something to do with that, and he felt rather
+pleased with his efforts, at least in that direction. Symes was lying
+flat on his back, snoring loudly enough to drown out all but a few notes
+from the steam calliope, which was singing itself loudly to sleep
+somewhere in the distance. Near the prone figure, Gerda was trying to
+fend off the advances of good old Alvin Sherdlap, but it was obvious
+that the sheer passage of time, plus the amount of liquor she had
+consumed, were weakening her resistance.
+
+Forrester pointed a finger at the man. The one thing he really wanted to
+do was to give Alvin the rock treatment. One little _zap_ would do it,
+and Alvin Sherdlap would encumber the Earth no more. And it wasn't as if
+Alvin would be missed, Forrester told himself. It was clear from one
+look at the lout that no one, anywhere, for any reason, would miss Alvin
+if he were exploded into dust.
+
+The temptation was very nearly irresistible, but somehow Forrester
+managed to resist it. He had been told that he had to be extremely
+careful in the use of his powers, and he had a pretty good idea that he
+wouldn't be able to justify blasting Alvin. Viewed objectively, there
+was nothing wrong with what the oaf was doing. He was merely following
+his religion as he understood it, and the religion was a very simple
+one: when at an orgy, have an orgy.
+
+Gerda didn't have to give in if she didn't want to, Forrester thought.
+He tried very hard to make himself believe that.
+
+But his finger was still pointed at the man. He didn't stop his powers
+entirely; he merely throttled them down so that only a tiny fraction of
+the neural energy at his command came into play. The energy that came
+from the tip of his finger made no noise and cast no light. It was not a
+killing blow.
+
+Invisibly, it leaped across the intervening space and hit Alvin Sherdlap
+squarely on the nose.
+
+The results were eminently satisfactory. Alvin uttered a sharp cry, let
+go of Gerda and fell over backward. His legs stood up straight in the
+air for a second, and then came down to hit the ground. He was silent.
+Gerda stared down at him, too tired and confused to make any coherent
+picture out of what was going on.
+
+Forrester sighed happily to himself. _That_, he thought, _ought to take
+care of Alvin for a while_.
+
+"Lord Dionysus," Kathy asked in that same innocent tone, "what are you
+pointing at out there?"
+
+The girl was decidedly irritating, Forrester thought. "Pointing?" he
+said. "Ah, yes." He thought fast. "My target-tosser. I fear that his
+religious fervor has led to his being overcome."
+
+The girls all turned round to look but, of course, Forrester thought,
+they could see nothing at all in the darkness.
+
+"My goodness," Bette said.
+
+"But if he's unconscious," Kathy put in, "why were you pointing at him?"
+
+Forrester told himself that the next time the Sabbatical Bacchanal was
+held, he would see to it that an intelligence test was given to every
+candidate for Dionysian Escort, and anyone who scored as high on it as
+Kathy would be automatically disqualified.
+
+He had to think of some excuse for looking at the man. And then he had
+it--the game he had planned. It was really quite a nice little idea.
+
+"I hate to see the poor mortal miss out on the rest of the evening,"
+Forrester said, "even if he is asleep now. And I think we may have a use
+for him."
+
+He gestured gently with one hand.
+
+Gerda and Alvin Sherdlap didn't even notice what was happening. They
+were much too busy arguing, Alvin claiming that somebody had slapped him
+on the nose--"and pretty hard, too, let me tell you!"--and Gerda
+swearing she hadn't done it. The fact that Ed Symes's snores were fading
+quietly into the distance dawned on neither of them.
+
+But Ed was in flight. He rose five feet above the ground, still
+unconscious and snoring, and sped unerringly across the air, like a
+large, fat arrow shot from a bow, in the direction of Forrester and the
+circle of girls.
+
+He appeared overhead suddenly, and Forrester controlled him so that he
+drifted downward as delicately as an overweight snowflake, eddying in
+the slight breeze while the girls gaped at him. Forrester allowed the
+body to drop the last six inches out of control, so that Ed Symes landed
+with a heavy thump in the center of the circle. But no harm was done. Ed
+was very far gone indeed; he merely snored on.
+
+"There," Forrester said.
+
+Millicent blinked. "Where?" she said. "Him?"
+
+"Certainly," Forrester said in a pleased tone. "He's a good deal too
+noisy, though, don't you think?"
+
+"He snores a lot," Judy offered in a tentative voice, "if that's what
+you mean, Lord Dionysus."
+
+"Exactly. And I don't see any reason to put up with it. Instead, well
+just put him in stasis for a little while, and that'll keep him quiet."
+Again he waved one hand, almost carelessly. Ed Symes's snores vanished
+immediately, leaving the world a cleaner, purer, quieter place to live
+in, and his body became as rigid as if he were a statue.
+
+"There," Forrester said again with satisfaction.
+
+"Now what?" Kathy asked.
+
+"Now we straighten him out."
+
+One more pass, and Ed Symes's arms were at his sides, his legs stretched
+straight out. Only his stomach projected above the rigid lines of his
+body. Forrester thought he had never seen a more pleasing sight.
+
+Dorothy gasped. "Is he--is he dead?"
+
+Forrester looked at her reprovingly. "Dead? Now what would I do that
+for, after he's been so helpful and all?"
+
+"I don't know," she muttered.
+
+"Well," Forrester said, "he's not dead. He's just in stasis--in a state
+of totally suspended animation. As soon as I take the spell off, he'll
+be all right. But I don't think I'll take it off just yet. I've got
+plans for my little target-tosser."
+
+He reached over and touched the stiff body. It seemed to rise a fraction
+of an inch, floating on the tips of the grass. The wind stirred it a
+little, but it didn't float away.
+
+"I took some of his weight off," Forrester explained, "so he'll be a
+little easier to handle."
+
+Now Ed Symes was behaving as if he were a statue carved out of cork.
+With a quick flip, Forrester turned the statue over. The effect was
+exactly what he wanted. Ed did not touch the grass at any point except
+one: the point where his protuberant stomach most protruded. Fore and
+aft, the rest of him was balanced stiffly in the air.
+
+Forrester gazed at the sight, feeling fulfilled. "Now," he said with a
+note of decision in his voice, "we are going to play Spin-the-Bottle!"
+
+The girls giggled and laughed.
+
+"You mean with him?" Bette said.
+
+Forrester sighed. "That's right," he said patiently. "With him."
+
+He got into position and looked up at the girls. "This one's just for
+practice, so we can all see how it works." He gave Symes's extended foot
+a little push.
+
+_Whee!_ he thought. Round and round the gentleman went, spinning
+quietly on his stomach, revolving in a merry fashion while the girls and
+Forrester watched silently. At last he slowed and stopped, his nose
+pointing at Bette and his toes at Dorothy.
+
+"Oh, my!" Dorothy said. "He's pointing at me!"
+
+"He is not!" Bette said decisively. "His head points my way!"
+
+"But he--"
+
+"Temper, temper," Forrester said. "No arguments. That one didn't count,
+anyhow--it was just to see how he worked. And I do think he works very
+nicely, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Lord Dionysus," Kathy said. There was the same undertone in
+her voice, as if she were silently laughing at everything. She was, he
+told himself, an extremely unlikable young woman.
+
+The other girls agreed in a chorus. They were still studying the stiff
+body of Ed Symes. His stomach had made a little depression in the grass
+as he whirled, and he was now nicely bedded down for a real spin.
+Forrester rubbed his hands together.
+
+"Fine," he said. "Now, all of you are going to be judges."
+
+"Me, too?" Bette asked.
+
+Forrester nodded. "The head will be the determining factor. If our
+little Mr. Bottle's head points to any one of you, that is the one I'll
+choose first."
+
+"See?" Bette said. "I told you it was his head."
+
+"Well, I couldn't tell before anybody said so," Dorothy said. "And
+anyhow, I--"
+
+"Now, now, girls," Forrester said, feeling momentarily like a Girl Scout
+troop leader. "Let's listen to the rules, shall we? And then we can get
+down to playing the game." He took a deep breath. "Isn't this fun?"
+
+The girls giggled.
+
+"Good," Forrester said. "If Mr. Bottle's head ends up between two of
+you, then the other five girls will have to decide which girl the head's
+nearer to. The two girls involved will remain absolutely quiet during
+the judging, and if the other five can't come to a unanimous agreement,
+we'll spin Mr. Bottle again. Understand?"
+
+"You mean if the head points at me, I get picked," Bette said. "And if
+the head goes in between me and somebody else, all the other girls have
+to decide who gets picked."
+
+It was a masterly summation.
+
+"Right," Forrester said. "I'm going to give Mr. Bottle a spin. This one
+counts. We'll have the second spin, and the rest of them, later."
+
+"Gee!" Millicent whispered. "Isn't this _exciting_?"
+
+Forrester ignored the comment. "And remember, I give you my word as a
+God that I will not interfere in any way with the workings of chance. Is
+that clearly understood?"
+
+The girls murmured agreement.
+
+"Now," Forrester said, "all you girls get into a nice circle. I'll stand
+outside."
+
+The girls took a minute or two arranging themselves in a circle, arguing
+about who was going to sit next to whom, and whose very proximity was
+bound to bring bad luck. The argument gave Forrester a chance to check
+on Gerda again. She was whispering softly to Alvin, but they weren't
+touching each other. Forrester turned up his hearing to get a better
+idea of what was going on.
+
+They had progressed, in the usual manner, from argument to life-history.
+Gerda was telling Alvin all about her past.
+
+"... but don't misunderstand me, Alvin. It's just that I was in love
+with a very fine young man. An Athenan, he was. A wonderful man, really
+wonderful. But he--he was killed in a subway accident some months ago."
+
+"Gosh," Alvin said. "I'm sorry."
+
+"I--I have to tell you this, Alvin, so you'll understand. I still love
+him. He was wonderful. And until I get over it, I simply can't ..."
+
+Feeling both ashamed of himself and pleased, as well as sorry for the
+poor girl, Forrester quit listening. The Gods had arranged his simulated
+death, which, of course, had been a necessity. His disappearance had to
+be explained somehow. But he didn't like the idea of Gerda having to
+suffer so much.
+
+_My God!_ Forrester thought. _She still loves me!_
+
+It was the first time he had ever heard her say so, flatly, right out in
+the open. He wanted to bound and leap and cavort--but he couldn't. He
+had to go back to his seven beautiful girls.
+
+He had never felt less like it in his life.
+
+But at least, he consoled himself, Gerda was keeping Alvin at arm's
+length. She was being faithful to his memory.
+
+Faithful--because she loved him.
+
+Grimly, he turned back to the girls. "Well, are we all ready now?"
+
+Kathy looked up at him brightly. "Lord Dionysus, it's so dark I can't
+even see for sure what's going on. How can we do any judging, if we
+can't see?"
+
+Forrester cursed Kathy for pointing out the flaw in his arrangements.
+Then, making a nice impartial job of it, he cursed himself for
+forgetting that what was perfectly visible to him was dark night to
+mortals.
+
+"We can clear that up," he said quickly. "As a matter of fact, I was
+just getting around to it. We will now proceed to shed a little light on
+the subject--said subject being our old friend Mr. Bottle."
+
+The trick had been taught to him by Venus, but he'd never had a chance
+to practice it. This was his first real experience with it, and he could
+only hope that it went off as it was supposed to.
+
+He stepped into the middle of the circle, near Ed Symes's stiff body and
+held his right hand above his head, thumb and forefinger spread an inch
+apart and the other three fingers folded into his palm.
+
+Then he concentrated.
+
+A long second ticked by, while Forrester tried to apply even more neural
+pressure. Then ...
+
+A small ball of light appeared between his thumb and forefinger, a
+yellow, cold sphere of fire that shed its radiance over the whole group.
+Carefully, he withdrew his hand, not daring to breathe. The ball of
+yellow fire remained in position, hanging in mid-air.
+
+The muffled gasp from the circle of girls was, Forrester told himself, a
+definite tribute.
+
+"Now don't worry about it, girls," he said. "That light's only visible
+to the eight of us. Nobody else can see it."
+
+There was another little series of gasps.
+
+Forrester grinned. "Can everybody see each other?"
+
+A murmur of agreement.
+
+"Can everybody see Mr. Bottle here?"
+
+Another murmur.
+
+"In that case, let's go." He stepped outside the circle of girls,
+reached in again for Ed Symes's foot, and set the gentleman spinning
+once more.
+
+Symes spun with a blinding speed, making a low, whistling noise.
+Forrester watched the body spin dizzily, just as anxious as the girls
+were to find out who the first winner was going to be. He thought of
+Millicent, who chewed gum and made it pop. He thought of Bette, the
+inveterate explainer and double-take expert. He tried to think of
+Dorothy and Jayne and Beverly and Judy, but the thought of Kathy,
+irritating and uncomfortable and too damned bright for her own good, got
+annoyingly in the way.
+
+He was rather glad he had promised not to use his powers on the spinning
+figure. He was not at all sure which one of the girls he would have
+picked for Number One.
+
+And he had, after all, given his word as a God. True, he wasn't quite a
+God, only a demi-Deity. But he did feel that Dionysus might object to
+his name being used in vain. A promise, he told himself sternly and
+with some relief, was a promise.
+
+After some time, Mr. Ed (Bottle) Symes began to slow perceptibly. The
+whistling died as Symes began rotating about his abdominal axis at a
+more and more leisurely rate. Seconds passed. Symes faced Bette ...
+Millicent ... Kathy ... Judy ... Bette again ...
+
+Forrester watched, fascinated.
+
+Finally, Symes came to a halt. All the elaborate instructions in case
+the Bottle ended up pointing between two girls had been, Forrester saw,
+totally unnecessary. Symes's head was pointing at one girl, and one girl
+alone.
+
+She gave a little squeal of delight. The others began chorusing their
+congratulations at once, looking no more convincing than the runners-up
+in any beauty contest. Their smiles appeared to have been glued on
+loosely, and their voices lacked a certain something. Possibly it was
+sincerity.
+
+"All right, that's it for now." Forrester turned to the winner. "My
+congratulations," he said, wondering just what he was supposed to say.
+Not finding any appropriate words, he turned back to the group of six
+losers. "The rest of you girls can do me a big favor. Go get a couple of
+the Myrmidons to protect you, hunt around for the nearest wine barrel
+and confiscate it for me. It's been a thirsty day."
+
+"Gee," Jayne said. "Sure we will, Lord Dionysus."
+
+"Now take your time," Forrester said, and the losers all giggled at
+once, like a trained chorus. Forrester grimaced. "Don't come back till
+you find a barrel. Then we'll play the game again."
+
+In a disappointed fashion, the six of them trooped off into the darkness
+and vanished to mortal eyes. Forrester watched them go and then turned
+to the winner, feeling just a little uncertain.
+
+"Well, Kathy," he started. "I--"
+
+She flung herself on him with the avid girlishness of a Bengal tiger.
+"I have dreamed of this night since I was but a child! At last I am in
+your arms! I love you! Take me! I am yours, all yours!"
+
+"That's nice," Forrester said, taken far aback by the girl's sudden
+onslaught. His immediate impulse was to unwind Kathy and set her back on
+her own feet, some little distance away, after which he could start
+again on a more leisurely basis. After all, he told himself, people
+ought to spend more time getting to know each other.
+
+But he remembered, just in time, that he was Dionysus. He conquered his
+first impulse and put his arms around her. As he did so, he discovered
+that his face was being covered with kisses. Kathy was murmuring little
+indistinct terms of endearment into his ear every time she reached it en
+route from one side of his face to the other.
+
+Forrester swallowed hard, tightened his grip and planted his lips firmly
+on Kathy's. A blaze of startling heat shot through him.
+
+In a small corner at the back of his mind, a scroll unrolled. On it was
+written what Vulcan had told him about his mental attitude changing
+after Investiture. When he had been plain William Forrester, an attack
+like the one Kathy was making on him had pretty much chilled him for a
+while. But now he found himself definitely rising to the occasion.
+
+There was a passion to her kiss that he had never felt before, a rising
+tide of flame that threatened to char him. The movement of her mouth on
+his sent new fires burning throughout his body, and as her hands moved
+on him he was awakened to a new world, a world of consuming desires.
+
+He wished his own clothing away, and fumbled for a second at the two
+fastenings that held Kathy's _chiton_ in place. Then it was gone and
+there was nothing between them. They met, flesh to flesh, in a fiery
+embrace that grew as he forced her down and she responded eagerly,
+wildly, to his every motion. His lips traveled over her; her entire
+body was drowning him once and for all in an unbelievable red haze,
+unlike anything he had ever before experienced ... a great wave of
+passion that went on and on, rising to a peak he had never dreamed of
+until his body shivered with the sensations, and he pressed on, rising
+still higher in an ecstasy beyond measure....
+
+His last spasm of tension turned out the God-light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She lay in his arms on the grass, holding him almost as tightly as he
+held her. He felt exhausted, but he knew perfectly well that he wasn't.
+A God was a God, after all, and Kathy was only the hors d'oeuvres of a
+seven-course dinner.
+
+"You're wonderful," Kathy said in a soft whisper at his ear. "Absolutely
+wonderful. More wonderful than I could ever dream. I--"
+
+She was interrupted by a strange, harsh voice that bellowed from
+somewhere nearby.
+
+"All right, bitch!" it said. "Get the hell up from there! And you too,
+buster!"
+
+Forrester jerked his head up in astonishment and froze. Kathy looked up,
+fright written all over her face.
+
+The man standing over them in the darkness looked like a prize-fighter,
+one who had taken a number of beatings, but always given better than he
+had received. His arms were akimbo, his feet planted as firmly as if he
+were a particularly stubborn brand of tree. He glared down at them, his
+face expressive of anger, hatred--and, Forrester thought dully, a
+complete lack of respect for his God.
+
+The man barked: "You heard what I said! On your feet, buster! If I have
+to kick your teeth in, I want to do it when you're standing up!"
+
+Forrester's jaw dropped. Then, as the initial shock left him, anger
+boiled in to take its place. He toyed with the idea of blasting this
+mortal who showed such disrespect to a God. He sprang to his feet,
+ready to move, and then stopped.
+
+Maybe the man was crazy. Maybe he was just some poor soul who wasn't
+responsible for his own actions. It would be merciful, Forrester
+thought, to find out first, and blast the intruder afterward.
+
+He looked around. Twenty yards away, the encircling Myrmidons still
+stood, their backs to the scene, as if nothing at all were going on.
+
+Forrester blinked. "How'd you get in here, anyway?"
+
+The man barked a laugh. "None of your business." He turned to Kathy, who
+had devoted the previous few seconds to getting her _chiton_ on again.
+Hurriedly, Forrester wished back his own costume. Kathy got up, staring
+straight back at the intruder. Fear was gone from her face, and a kind
+of calmness that Forrester had never seen before possessed her now.
+
+"So!" the intruder bellowed. "The minute my back is turned, off you go!
+By the Stars and Galaxy, I--I don't know what to call you! You're worse
+than your predecessor! Can't turn anything down! You--"
+
+"Now wait!" Forrester bellowed in his most Godlike voice. "Just hold
+still there! Do you know who you're talking to? How dare you--"
+
+And Kathy interrupted him. Forrester stood mute as she stripped the
+stranger with a voice like scalding acid. "Listen, you," she said,
+pointing a finger at the man. "Who do you think you are--my husband?"
+
+"By the Stars--" the stranger began.
+
+"Don't bother trying to scare me with your big mouth," Kathy went on
+imperturbably. "You don't mean a thing to me and you can't order me
+around. What's more, you know it. You're not my husband, you big
+thug--and you're never going to be. I'll sleep with whomever I please,
+and whenever I please, and wherever I please, and that's the way things
+are going to be. After all, lard-head, it's my job, isn't it? Got any
+questions?"
+
+Her _job_?
+
+Forrester began to wonder just what he had managed to walk into now. But
+that was a detail. The important thing was that his Godhood had been
+grossly, unbelievably insulted--and at a damned inconvenient time, too!
+
+He stepped between Kathy and the intruder, his eyes flashing fire. "Do
+you know who I am? Do you know that--"
+
+"Of course he knows," Kathy put in abruptly. "And if you don't want to
+get hurt, I'd advise you to stay out of this little quarrel."
+
+Forrester turned and stared at her.
+
+What the everlasting bloody hell was going _on_?
+
+But there wasn't any time to think. The intruder put his face up near
+Forrester's and glared at him. "Sure I know who you are, buster," he
+said. "You're a wise guy. You're a Johnny-come-lately. And I know what I
+ought to do with you, too--take you apart, limb by limb!"
+
+That did it. Forrester, seeing several shades of red, decided that no
+God could possibly object if this ugly blasphemer were blasted off the
+face of the Earth. He raised a hand.
+
+And Kathy grabbed it. "_Don't!_" she said in a frightened tone.
+
+The intruder grinned wolfishly at him. "Pay no attention to Little Miss
+Sacktime over there, Forrester. You go right ahead and try it! All I
+need is an excuse to vaporize you. Just one tiny little excuse--and I'll
+do the job so damn quick, your head won't even have time to start
+swimming." He set himself. "Go on. Let's see your stuff, Forrester."
+
+Forrester's arm came down, without his being aware of it. There was only
+room in his mind for one thought.
+
+The intruder had called him Forrester.
+
+Where had he gotten the name?
+
+And, for that matter, how had he seen the two of them in the darkness?
+
+While the questions were still spinning in Forrester's mind, Kathy threw
+herself forward between him and the stranger. "Ares!" she screamed. "You
+stupid, jealous idiot! Get some sense into that battle-scarred brain of
+yours! Are you completely crazy?"
+
+"Now you listen to me--" the stranger began.
+
+"Listen, nothing! If you want to pick a fight, do it with me--I can
+fight back! But if you lay a hand on Forrester, we'll never find
+another--"
+
+The stranger reached out casually and clamped one huge paw over her
+mouth. "Shut up," he said, almost quietly. He glanced at Forrester and
+went on, in the same tone: "Don't give away everything you've got,
+chum."
+
+A second passed and then he took the hand away. Kathy said nothing at
+all for a moment, and then she nodded.
+
+"All right," she said. "You're right. We shouldn't be losing our tempers
+just now. But I didn't start--"
+
+"Didn't you?" the stranger said.
+
+Kathy shrugged. "Well, never mind it now." She turned to Forrester. "You
+know who we are now, don't you?"
+
+Forrester nodded very slowly. How else could the man have come through
+the cordon of Myrmidons and seen them in the darkness? How else would he
+have dared to face up to Dionysus--confident that he could beat him? And
+how else could all this argument have gone on without anyone hearing it?
+
+For that matter, why else would the argument have begun--unless the
+stranger and Kathy were--
+
+"Sure," he said, as if he had known it all along. "You're Mars and
+Venus."
+
+He could feel cold death approaching.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+
+William Forrester sat, quite alone, in the room which had been given him
+on Mount Olympus. He stared out of the window, a little smaller than the
+window in Venus' rooms, at the Grecian plain far below, without actually
+seeing. There was no vertigo this time; small matters like that couldn't
+bother him.
+
+The whole room was rather a small one, as Gods' rooms went, but it had
+the same varicolored shifting walls, the same furniture that appeared
+when you approached it. Forrester was beginning to get used to it now,
+and he didn't know if it was going to do him any good.
+
+He peered down, trying to discern the patrolling Myrmidons around the
+base and lower slopes of the mountain, placed there to discourage
+overeager climbers from trying to reach the home of the Gods. Of course
+he couldn't see them, and after a while he lost interest again. Matters
+were too serious to allow time for that kind of game.
+
+The Autumn Bacchanal was over, a thing of the past, on the way to the
+distortion of legend. Forrester's greatest triumph had ended--in his
+greatest fiasco.
+
+He closed his eyes as he sat in his room, the fluctuating colors on the
+walls going unappreciated. He had nothing to do now except wait for the
+final judgment of the Gods.
+
+At first he had been terrified. But terror could only last so long, and,
+as the time ticked by, the idea of that coming judgment had almost
+stopped troubling his mind. Either he had passed the tests or he hadn't.
+There was no point in worrying about the inevitable. He felt
+anesthetized, numb to any sensation of personal danger. There was
+nothing whatever he could do. The Gods had him; very well, let the Gods
+worry about what to do with him.
+
+Freed, his mind turned over and over a problem that seemed new to him at
+first. Gradually, he realized it wasn't new at all; it had been
+somewhere in the back of his thoughts from the very first, when Venus
+had told him that he had been chosen as a double for Dionysus, so many
+months ago. It seemed like years to Forrester, and yet, at the same
+time, like no more than hours. So much had happened, and so much had
+changed....
+
+But the question had remained, waiting until he could look at it and
+work with it. Now he could face that strange doubt in his mind, the
+doubt that had colored everything since his introduction to the Gods,
+that had grown as his training in demi-Godhood had progressed, and that
+was now, for the first time, coming to full consciousness. Every time it
+had come near the surface, before this day, he had expelled it from his
+mind, forcefully getting rid of it without realizing fully that he was
+doing so.
+
+And perhaps, he thought, the doubt had begun even earlier than that.
+Perhaps he had always doubted, and never allowed himself to think about
+the doubt. The floor of his mind seemed to open and he was falling,
+falling....
+
+But where the doubt had begun was unimportant now. It was present, it
+had grown; that was all that mattered. He could find facts to feed the
+doubt and strengthen it, and he looked at the facts one by one:
+
+First there was the angry conversation between Mars and Venus, on the
+night of the Bacchanal.
+
+He could still hear what Mars had said:
+
+"_... worse than your predecessor._"
+
+And then he'd shut Venus up before she gave away too much--realizing,
+maybe, that he had given away a good deal himself. That one little
+sentence was enough to bring everything into question, Forrester
+thought.
+
+He had wondered why it had been necessary to have a double for Dionysus,
+but he hadn't actually thought about it; maybe he hadn't wanted to think
+about it. But now, with the notion of a "predecessor" for Venus in his
+mind, he _had_ to think about it, and the only conclusion he could come
+to was a disturbing one. It did more than disturb him, as a matter of
+fact--it frightened him. He wanted desperately to find some flaw in the
+conclusion he faced, because he feared it even more than he feared the
+coming judgment of the Pantheon.
+
+But there wasn't any flaw. The facts meshed together entirely too well
+to be an accidental pattern.
+
+In the first place, he thought, why had he been picked for the job? He
+was a nobody, of no importance, with no special gifts. Why did he
+deserve the honor of taking his place beside Hercules and Achilles and
+Odysseus and the other great heroes? Forrester knew he wasn't any hero.
+But what gave him his standing?
+
+And, he went on, there was a second place. In the months of his training
+he had met fourteen of the Gods--all of them, except for Dionysus. Now,
+what kind of sense did that make? Anyone who's going to have a double
+usually trains the double himself, if it's at all possible. Or, at the
+very least, he allows the double to watch his actions, so that the
+double can do a really competent job of imitation.
+
+And if an imitation is all that's needed, why not hire an actor instead
+of a history professor?
+
+Vulcan had told him: "You were picked not merely for your physical
+resemblance to Dionysus, but your psychological resemblance as well."
+
+That had to be true, if only because, as far as Forrester could see,
+nobody had the slightest reason to lie about it. But why should it be
+true? What advantage did the Gods get out of that "psychological
+resemblance"? All he was supposed to be was a double--and anybody who
+_looked_ like Dionysus would be accepted _as_ Dionysus by the people.
+The "psychological resemblance" didn't have a single thing to do with
+it.
+
+Mars, Venus, Vulcan--even Zeus had dropped clues. Zeus had referred to
+him as a "substitute for Dionysus."
+
+A substitute, he realized with a kind of horror, was not at all the same
+thing as a double.
+
+The answer was perfectly clear, but there were even more facts to
+bolster it. Why had he been tested, for instance, _after_ he had been
+made a demi-God? In spite of what Vulcan had said, was he slated for
+further honors if he passed the new tests? He was sure that Vulcan had
+been telling the truth as far as he'd gone--but it hadn't been the whole
+truth. Forrester was certain of that now.
+
+And what was it that Venus had said during that argument with Mars?
+Something about not killing Forrester, because then they would have to
+"get another--"
+
+Another _what_?
+
+Another _substitute_?
+
+No, there was no escape from the simple and obvious conclusion. Dionysus
+was either missing, which was bad enough, or something much worse.
+
+He was dead.
+
+Forrester shivered. The idea of an immortal God dying was, in one way,
+as horrible a notion as he could imagine. But in another way, it seemed
+to make a good deal of sense. As far as plain William Forrester had been
+concerned, the contradiction in the notion of a dead immortal would have
+made it ridiculous to start with. But the demi-God Dionysus had a
+somewhat different slant on things.
+
+After all, as Vulcan had told him, a demi-God could die. And if that was
+true, then why couldn't a God die too? Perhaps it would take quite a lot
+to kill a God--but the difference would be one of degree, not of kind.
+
+It seemed wholly logical. And it led, Forrester saw, to a new
+conclusion, one that required a little less effort to face than he
+thought it would. It should have shaken the foundations of his childhood
+and left him dizzy, but somehow it didn't. How long, he asked himself,
+had he been secretly doubting the fact that the Gods were Gods?
+
+At least in the sense they pretended to be, the "Gods" were not gods at
+all. They were--something else.
+
+But what? Where did they come from?
+
+Were they actually the Gods of ancient Greece, as they claimed?
+Forrester wanted to throw that claim out with the rest, but when he
+thought things over he didn't see why he should. To an almost
+indestructible being, three thousand years may only be a long time.
+
+So the Gods actually were "Gods," at least as far as longevity went. But
+the decision didn't get him very far; there were still a lot of
+questions unanswered, and no way that he could see of answering them.
+
+Or, rather, there was one way, but it was hellishly dangerous. He had no
+business even thinking about. He was in enough hot water already.
+
+Nevertheless....
+
+What more harm could he do to his chances? After the Bacchanal fiasco,
+there was probably a sentence of death hanging over his head anyhow. And
+they couldn't do any more to him than kill him.
+
+It was ridiculous, he told himself, with a return of caution and sanity.
+But the notion came back, nagging at his mind, and at last it took a new
+form.
+
+The Gods had the rest of the information he needed. He had to go to one
+of them--but which one?
+
+His first thought was Venus. But, after a moment of thought, he ruled
+her regretfully out as a possibility. After all, there was Mars' mention
+of her "predecessor." If that meant anything, it meant that the current
+Venus wasn't the original one. She would have a lot less information
+than one of the original Gods.
+
+_If there were any originals left...._
+
+He tabled that thought hurriedly and went on. Vulcan had told him at
+least a part of the truth, and Vulcan looked like a good bet. Forrester
+didn't like the idea of bearding the artisan in his workshop; it made
+him feel uncomfortable, and after a while he put his finger on the
+reason. His little liaison with Venus made him feel guilty. There was,
+he knew, no real reason for it. In the first place, he hadn't known the
+girl was Venus, and in the second place she may not have been the same
+one who had been Vulcan's original wife, thirty and more centuries ago.
+
+But the guilt remained, and he tabled Vulcan for the time being and went
+on.
+
+Morpheus, Hera, and most of the others he passed by without a glance;
+there was no reason for them to dislike him, but there was no reason for
+comradeship, either. Mars popped into his mind, and popped right out
+again. That would be putting his head in the lion's mouth with a
+vengeance.
+
+No, there was only one left, the obvious choice, the one who had helped
+him throughout his training period--Diana. She genuinely seemed to like
+him. She was also a good kid. The thought alone was almost enough to
+make him smile fondly, and would have if he had not remembered the peril
+he was in.
+
+He turned away from the window to look at the color-swirled wall across
+the room. He had remained in his room ever since Mars and Venus had
+brought him back from New York, and he wasn't at all sure that he could
+leave it. In the normal sense of the word, the place had neither exits
+nor entrances. The only way of getting in or out of the place was via
+the Veils of Heaven--matter transmitters, not something supernatural, he
+realized now.
+
+As far as Forrester knew, they still worked. But the Gods could generate
+a Veil anywhere, at any time. Forrester, as a demi-God, could only will
+one into existence on sufferance; he could only work the
+matter-transmitting Veils if the Gods permitted him to do so. If they
+didn't, he was trapped.
+
+Well, he told himself, there was one way to find out.
+
+He walked over to the wall and stood a few feet away from it,
+concentrating in the way he had been taught. He was still slower at it
+than the Gods themselves, and hadn't developed the knack of forming a
+Veil as he walked toward the place where he wanted it to be, as they
+had.
+
+But he knew he could do it--if he was still allowed to.
+
+Minutes went by.
+
+Then, as the blue sheet of neural energy flickered into being, Forrester
+slumped in sudden relief. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
+
+The Veil was there--but was it what he hoped, or a trick? Possibly he
+could focus the other terminal where he wanted it, but there was also
+the chance that the Gods had set the thing up so that, when he stepped
+through, he would be standing in the Court of the Gods facing a tribunal
+for which he was totally unprepared.
+
+It would be just like the Pantheon, he thought, to pull a lousy trick
+like that.
+
+But there was no point in dithering. If death was to be his fate, that
+would be that. He could do nothing at all by sitting in his room and
+waiting for them to come and get him.
+
+He focused the exit terminal in Diana's apartment. There was no way of
+knowing whether the focus worked or not until he stepped through.
+
+He opened his eyes and walked into the Veil.
+
+He felt almost disappointed when he looked around him. He had steeled
+himself to do great battle with the Gods--and, instead, he was where he
+had wanted to be, in Diana's apartment.
+
+She was standing with her back to him, and Forrester didn't make a
+sound, not wanting to startle the Goddess. She was totally unclad, her
+glorious body shining in the light of the room, her blue-black hair
+unbound and falling halfway down her gently curved back. But she must
+have heard him somehow, for she turned, and for half a second she stood
+facing him.
+
+Forrester did not move. He couldn't even breathe.
+
+Every magnificent curve was highlighted in a frozen tableau.
+
+Then there was a sudden flash of white, and she was clad in a clinging
+_chiton_ which, Forrester saw, served only to remind one of what one had
+recently seen. It worked very well, although Forrester did not think he
+had any need for an aid to his memory.
+
+"My goodness!" Diana said. "You shouldn't surprise a girl like that! I
+mean, you really gave me a shock, kid!"
+
+Forrester took his first breath. "Well," he said, "I could be dishonest,
+not to mention ungallant, and tell you I was sorry."
+
+"But?" Diana said.
+
+"Being of sound mind and sound body, I'm a long way from being sorry."
+
+And Diana dropped her eyes and blushed.
+
+Forrester could barely believe it.
+
+But it did show a part of the Goddess's personality that was entirely
+new to him. He was sure that any of the Gods or Goddesses could sense
+when a Veil of Heaven was forming near them, and get prepared before it
+was well enough developed to allow for passage. But Diana--who was,
+after all, one of the traditionally virgin Goddesses, like Pallas
+Athena--had chosen to pretend surprise.
+
+Forrester had a further hunch, too. He thought she might have
+deliberately vanished her _chiton_ only a second or so before he
+entered. And that put a different--and a very interesting--face on
+things.
+
+Not to mention, he thought, an entire figure.
+
+But he didn't say anything. That wasn't his main business in Diana's
+apartment. Instead, he watched her smile briskly and say: "Well, you're
+here, anyhow, kid, and I guess that's enough for me. Want a drink? I
+could whip up some nectar--and maybe an ambrosia sandwich?"
+
+"I'll take the drink," Forrester said. "I'm not really hungry, thanks."
+
+Diana held out her hands, fingers curved inward, and a crystal cup of
+clear, golden liquid appeared in each--matter transmission, of course,
+not magic. She handed one over to Forrester, who took it and looked the
+Goddess straight in the eyes.
+
+"Thanks," he said. "Diana, I've got some questions to ask you, and I
+hope I'll get the answers."
+
+She touched the rim of her cup to his. Her voice was very soft, but she
+didn't hesitate in the least. "I'll answer any questions I have to. Sit
+down."
+
+They found chairs along the walls of the room and sat facing one
+another. Forrester took a sip of his drink, settled back, and tried to
+think where to begin. Well, God or no God, Zeus had the key to that one.
+He had said it years ago, and it had passed almost into legend:
+
+"Begin at the beginning, go on until you reach the end, and then stop."
+
+Very well, Forrester thought. He cleared his throat. Diana looked at him
+inquiringly.
+
+"I don't know how far into the noose I'm putting my head with this one,
+Diana," he said. "But I trust you--and I've got to ask somebody."
+
+"Go ahead," she said quietly.
+
+"First question. The original Dionysus is dead, isn't he?"
+
+She paused for a moment before answering. "Yes, he is."
+
+"And I was scheduled to take his place."
+
+"That's right."
+
+"As a full God," Forrester said.
+
+Diana nodded.
+
+There was a little silence.
+
+"Diana," Forrester said, "what are the Gods?"
+
+She got up and crossed to the window. Looking out, she said: "Before I
+answer that, I want you to tell me what you think we are."
+
+"Men and women," he said. "More or less human, like myself. Except
+you've somehow managed to get so far ahead of any kind of science Earth
+knows that, even today, your effects can only be explained as 'magic' or
+'miracle.'"
+
+"How could we get that far ahead of you?"
+
+Forrester took a leap in the dark to the only conclusion he could see.
+"You're not from Earth," he said. "You're from another planet." The
+words sounded strange in his own ears--but Diana didn't even act
+surprised.
+
+"That's right," she said. "We're from another planet--or, rather, from
+several other planets."
+
+"_Several?_" Forrester exclaimed. "But--oh. I see. Pan, for instance--"
+
+Diana nodded. "Pan isn't even really humanoid. His home is a planet
+where his type of goatlike life evolved. Neither Pluto nor Neptune is
+humanoid, either; they're a little closer than Pan, but not really very
+close when you get a good look. The rest of the Gods are humanoid--but
+not human."
+
+"Wait a minute," Forrester said. "Venus is human. Or, anyhow, she's a
+replacement, just the way I was slated to be a replacement for
+Dionysus."
+
+Diana drained her cup and clapped her hands together on it. The cup
+vanished. Forrester did the same to his own. "Correct," she said. "Venus
+just--just disappeared once. They got an Etruscan girl to replace her.
+She's not the only replacement, either."
+
+Forrester stared. "Who else?"
+
+"You tell me."
+
+He thought the list of Gods over. "Zeus," he said.
+
+Diana smiled. "Yes, Zeus is a long way from the great hero of the
+legends, isn't he? Using the old calendar, Zeus died in about 1100 B.C.,
+not too long after the close of the Trojan War. As far as anybody knows,
+Neptune did the actual killing, but it's pretty clear that the original
+idea wasn't his."
+
+"Hera's," Forrester guessed.
+
+"Of course," Diana said. "What she wanted was a figurehead she could
+control--and that's what she got. Though I'm not sure she's entirely
+happy with the change. If the original Zeus was a little harder to
+control, at least he seems to have had an original thought now and
+again."
+
+Forrester sat quietly for a time, waiting for the shock to pass. "What
+about Dionysus?"
+
+Diana shrugged. "He--well, as far as anybody's ever been able to tell,
+it was suicide. About three years ago, and it drove Hera pretty wild,
+trying to find a substitute in a hurry. I suspect he was bored with the
+wine, women and song. He'd had a long time of it. And, too, he'd had
+some little disagreements with Hera. As you may have gathered, she is
+not exactly a safe person to have as an enemy. He probably figured she'd
+get him sooner or later, so he might as well save her the trouble."
+
+"And Hera had to rush to get a replacement? Why couldn't there just have
+been some sort of explanation, while the rest of you ran things?"
+
+"Because the rest of us couldn't run things. Not for long, anyhow. It's
+all a question of power."
+
+"Power?" Forrester said.
+
+"Everything we have," Diana said, "is derived, directly or indirectly,
+from the workings of one machine. Though 'machine' is a long way from
+the right word for it--it bears about as much resemblance to what you
+think of as a machine as a television set does to a window. There just
+isn't a word for it in any language you know."
+
+"And all the Gods have to work the machine at once?"
+
+"Something like that." Diana came back from the window and sat down
+facing him again. "It operates through the nervous systems of the beings
+in circuit with it, each one of them in contact with one of the power
+nodes of the machine. And if one of the nodes is unoccupied, then the
+machine's out of balance. It will run for a while, but eventually it
+will simply wreck itself. Every one of the fifteen nodes has to be
+occupied. Otherwise--chaos."
+
+Forrester nodded. "So when Dionysus died--"
+
+"We had to find a replacement in a hurry. The machine's been running out
+of balance for about as long as it can stand right now."
+
+Forrester closed his eyes. "I'm not sure I get the picture."
+
+"Well, look at it this way: suppose you have a wheel."
+
+"All right," Forrester said obligingly. "I have a wheel."
+
+"And this wheel has fifteen weights on it. They're spaced equally around
+the rim, and the wheel's revolving at high speed."
+
+Forrester kept his eyes closed. When he had the wheel nicely spinning,
+he said: "Okay. Now what?"
+
+"Well," Diana said, "as long as the weights stay in place, the wheel
+spins evenly. But if you remove one of the weights, the wheel's out of
+balance. It starts to wobble."
+
+Forrester took one of the weights (Dionysus, a rather large, jolly
+weight) off the wheel in his mind. It wobbled. "Right," he said.
+
+"It can take the wobble for a little while. But unless the balance is
+restored in time, the wheel will eventually break."
+
+Hurriedly, Forrester put Dionysus back on the wheel. The wobble stopped.
+"Oh," he said. "I see."
+
+"Our power machine works in that sort of way. That is, it requires all
+fifteen occupants. Dionysus has been dead for three years now, and
+that's about the outside limit. Unless he's replaced soon, the machine
+will be ruined."
+
+Forrester opened his eyes. The wheel spun away and disappeared. "So you
+found me to replace Dionysus. I had to look like him, so the mortals
+wouldn't see any difference. And the psychological similarity--"
+
+"That's right," Diana said. "It's the same as the wheel again. If you
+remove a weight, you've got to put back a weight of the same magnitude.
+Otherwise, the wheel's still out of balance."
+
+"And since the power machine works through the nervous system--"
+
+"The governing factor is that similarity. You've got to be of the same
+magnitude as Dionysus. Of course, you don't have to be an _identical_
+copy. The machine can be adjusted for _slight_ differences."
+
+"I see," Forrester said. "And the fifteen power nodes--" Another idea
+occurred to him. "Wait a minute. If there are only fifteen power nodes,
+then how come there were so many different Gods and Goddesses among the
+Greeks? There were a lot more than fifteen back then."
+
+"Of course there were," Diana said, "but they weren't real Gods. As a
+matter of fact, some of them didn't really exist."
+
+Forrester frowned. "How's that again?"
+
+"They were just disguises for one of the regular fifteen. Aesculapius,
+for instance, the old God of medicine, was Hermes/Mercury in
+disguise--he took the name in honor of a physician of the time. He would
+have raised the man to demi-Godhood, but Aesculapius died unexpectedly,
+and we thought taking his 'spirit' into the Pantheon was good public
+relations."
+
+"How about the others?" Forrester said. "They weren't all disguises,
+were they?"
+
+"Of course not. Some of them were demi-Gods, just like yourself. Their
+power was derived, like yours, from the Pantheon instead of directly
+through the machine. And then there were the satyrs and centaurs, and
+suchlike beings. That was public relations, too--mainly Zeus' idea, I
+understand. The original Zeus, of course."
+
+"Of course," Forrester said.
+
+"The satyrs and such were artificial life-forms, created, maintained and
+controlled by the machine itself. It's equipped with what you might call
+a cybernetic brain--although that's pretty inadequate as a description.
+Vulcan could do a better job of explaining."
+
+"Perfectly all right. I don't understand that kind of thing anyhow."
+
+"Well, in that case, let me put it this way. The machine controlled
+these artificial forms, but they could be taken over by any one of the
+Gods or demi-Gods for special purposes. As I say, it was public
+relations--and a good way to keep the populace impressed--and under
+control."
+
+"The creatures aren't around nowadays," Forrester pointed out.
+
+"Nowadays we don't need them," Diana said. "There are other
+methods--better public relations, I suppose."
+
+Forrester didn't know he was going to ask his next question until he
+heard himself doing so. But it was the question he really wanted to ask;
+he knew that as soon as he knew he asked it.
+
+"Why?" he said.
+
+Diana looked at him with a puzzled expression. "Why? What do you mean?"
+
+"Why go on being Gods? Why dominate humanity?"
+
+"I suppose I could answer your question with another question--why not?
+But I won't. Instead, let me remind you of some things. Look what we've
+done during the last century. The great wars that wrecked Europe--you
+don't see any possibility of more of those, do you? And the threat of
+atomic war is gone, too, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, yes," Forrester said, "but--"
+
+"But we still have wars," Diana said. "Sure we do. The male animal just
+wouldn't be happy if he didn't have a chance to go out and get himself
+blown to bits once in a while. Don't ask _me_ to explain that--I'm not a
+male."
+
+Forrester agreed silently. Diana was not a male. It was the most
+understated statement he had ever heard.
+
+"But anyhow," Diana said, "they want wars, so they have wars. Mars sees
+that the wars stay small and keep within the Martian Conventions,
+though, so any really widespread damage or destruction, or any wanton
+attacks on civilians, are a thing of the past. And it's not only wars,
+kid. It's everything."
+
+"What do you mean, everything?"
+
+"Man needs a god, a personal god. When he doesn't have one ready to
+hand, he makes one up--and look at the havoc that has caused. A god of
+vengeance, a god who cheers you on to kill your enemies.... You've
+studied history. Tell me about the gods of various nations. Tell me
+about Thor and Baal and the original bloodthirsty Yahweh. People _need_
+gods."
+
+"Now wait a minute," Forrester objected. "The Chinese--"
+
+"Oh, sure," Diana said. "There are exceptions. But you can't bank on the
+exceptions. If you want a reasonably safe, sane and happy humanity, then
+you'd better make sure your gods are not going to start screaming for
+war against the neighbors or against the infidels or against--well,
+against anybody and everybody. There's only one way to make sure, kid.
+We've found that way. We _are_ the Gods."
+
+Forrester digested that one slowly. "It sounds great, but it's pretty
+altruistic. And while I don't want to impugn anybody's motives, it does
+seem to me that--"
+
+"That we ought to be getting something out of it ourselves, above and
+beyond the pure joy of helping humanity. Sure. You're perfectly right.
+And we _do_ get something out of it."
+
+"Like what?"
+
+Diana grinned. She looked more like a tomboy than ever before. "Fun,"
+she said. "And you know it. Don't tell me you didn't get a kick out of
+playing God at the Bacchanal."
+
+"Well," Forrester confessed, "yes." He sighed. "And I guess that
+Bacchanal is going to be the one really high spot in a very shortened
+sort of life."
+
+Diana sat upright. "What are you talking about?"
+
+"What else would I be talking about? The Bacchanal. You know what
+happened. You must know--everybody must by now. Mars is probably
+demanding my head from Hera right now. Unless he's got more complicated
+ideas like taking me apart limb by limb. I remember he mentioned that."
+
+Diana stood up and came over to Forrester. "Why would Mars do something
+like that and especially now? And what makes you think Hera would go
+along with him if he did?"
+
+"Why not? Now that I've failed my tests--"
+
+"_Failed?_" Diana cried. "You _haven't_ failed!"
+
+Forrester stood up shakily. "Of course I have. After what happened at
+the Bacchanal, I--"
+
+"Don't pay any attention to that," Diana said. "Mars is a louse. Always
+has been, I hear. Nobody likes him. As a matter of fact, you've just
+passed your finals. The last test was to see if you could figure out who
+we were--and you've done that, haven't you?"
+
+There was a long, taut silence.
+
+Then Diana laughed. "Your face looks the way mine must have, over three
+thousand years ago!"
+
+"What are you talking about?" Still dazed, he wasn't quite sure he had
+heard her rightly.
+
+"When they told me the same thing. After the original Diana was killed
+in a 'hunting accident'--frankly, she seems to have been too independent
+to suit Hera--and I passed my own finals, I--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"Now don't look at me like that," Diana said. "And pull yourself
+together, because we've got to get to the Final Investiture. But it's
+all true. I'm a substitute too."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+
+The Great God Dionysus, Lord of the Vine, Ruler of the Revels, Master of
+the Planting and the Harvest, Bestower of the Golden Touch, Overseer of
+the Poor, Comforter of the Worker and Patron of the Drunkard, sat
+silently in a cheap bar on Lower Third Avenue, New York, slowly imbibing
+his seventh brandy-and-soda. It tasted anything but satisfactory as it
+went down; he preferred vodka or even gin, but after all, he asked
+himself, if a God couldn't be loyal to his own products, then who could?
+
+He was dressed in an inexpensive brown suit, and his face did not look
+like that of Dionysus, or even of William Forrester. Though neatly
+turned out, he looked a little like an out-of-work bookkeeper. But it
+was obvious that he hadn't been out of work for very long.
+
+_Hell of a note_, he thought, _when a God has to skulk in some cheap bar
+just because some other God has it in for him_.
+
+But that, unfortunately, was the way Mars was. It didn't matter to him
+that none of what happened had been Forrester's fault. In the first
+place, Forrester hadn't known that the girl at the Bacchanal had been
+Venus until it was much too late for apologies. In the second place, he
+hadn't even picked her; he'd kept his promise not to use his powers on
+the spinning figure of Mr. Bottle Symes. But Venus had made no such
+promise. Venus had rigged the game.
+
+But try explaining that to Mars.
+
+He didn't seem to mind what went on at the Revels of Aphrodite--being
+Goddess of Love was her line of work, and even Mars appeared to
+recognize that much. But he didn't like the idea of any extracurricular
+work, especially with other Gods. And if anything occurred, he, Mars,
+was sure damned well going to find out about it and see that something
+was done about it, yes, sir.
+
+Forrester finished his drink and stared at the empty glass. It had all
+begun on the day of his Final Investiture, and he had gone through every
+event in memory, over and over. Why, he didn't know. But it was
+something to do while he hid.
+
+It hadn't been anywhere near as simple as the Investiture he had gone
+through to become a demi-God. All fourteen of the other Gods had been
+there this time; a simple quorum wasn't enough. Pluto, with his
+dead-black, light-absorbent skin casting a shade of gloom about him, had
+slouched into the Court of the Gods, looking at everybody and everything
+with lackluster eyes. Poseidon/Neptune had come in more briskly,
+smelling of fish, his skin pale green and glistening wet, his fingers
+and toes webbed and his eyes bulging and wide. Phoebus Apollo had
+strolled in, looking authentically like a Greek God, face and figure
+unbelievably perfect, and a pleased, stupid smile spread all over his
+countenance. Hermes/Mercury, slim and wily, with a foxy face and quick
+movements, had slipped in silently. And all the others had been there,
+too. Mars looked grim, but when Forrester was formally proposed for
+Godhood, Mars made no objection.
+
+The entire Pantheon had then gone single-file through a Veil of Heaven
+to a room Forrester just couldn't remember fully. At the time, his eyes
+simply refused to make sense out of the place. Now, of course, he
+understood why: it didn't really exist in the space-time framework he
+was used to. Instead, it was partially a four-dimensional
+pseudo-manifold superimposed on normal space. If not perfectly simple,
+at least the explanation made matters rational rather than supernatural.
+But, at the time, everything seemed to take place in a chaotic dream
+world where infinite distance and the space next to him seemed one and
+the same. He knew then why Diana had told him that the word "machine"
+could not describe the Gods' power source.
+
+He had been seated there in the dream room. But it wasn't exactly
+sitting; every spatial configuration took on strange properties in that
+pseudo-space, and he seemed to float in a place that had neither
+dimension nor direction. The other Gods had all seemed to be sitting in
+front of him, all together and all at once--yet, at the same time, each
+had been separate and distinct from the others.
+
+He wanted to close his eyes, but he had been warned against doing that.
+Grimly, he kept them open.
+
+And then the indescribable began to happen. It was as though every nerve
+in his body had been indissolubly linked to the great source of
+God-power. It was pure, hellish torture, and at the same time it was the
+most exquisite pleasure he had ever known. He could not imagine how long
+it went on--but, eventually, it ended.
+
+He was Dionysus/Bacchus.
+
+And then it had been over, and a banquet had been held in his honor, a
+celebration for the new God. Everyone seemed to enjoy the occasion, and
+Forrester himself had been feeling pretty good until Mars, smiling a
+smile that only touched his lips and left his eyes as cold and hard as
+anything Forrester had ever seen, had come up to him and said softly:
+
+"All right, Dionysus. You're a God now. I didn't touch you before
+because we needed you. And I don't intend to kill you now; replacements
+are too hard to find. I'm only going to beat you--to within an inch of
+your damned immortal life. Just remember that, buster."
+
+And then, the smile still set on his face, he had turned and swaggered
+away.
+
+Forrester had thought of Vulcan.
+
+Mars wasn't a killer, in spite of his bully-boy tactics. He had too good
+a military mind to discipline a valuable man to death. But he was more
+than willing to go as near to that point as possible, if he thought it
+justified. And what he allowed as justification resided in a code all
+his own.
+
+"Right" was what was good for Mars. "Wrong" was what disturbed him. That
+was the code, as simple, as black and white, as you could ask for.
+Vulcan was one of the results.
+
+Vulcan had been Venus' lawful husband, as far as the laws of the Gods
+went. That didn't matter to Mars--when he wanted Venus. He had thrashed
+Vulcan, and the beating had left permanent damage.
+
+The damage was translated into Vulcan's limp. Any God's ability to heal
+himself through the machine's power was dependent on the God's own
+mentality and outlook. And Vulcan had never been able to cure his limp;
+the psychic punishment had been too great.
+
+Forrester ordered another drink and tried to think about something else.
+The prospect of a fight with Mars was sometimes a little too much for
+him to handle.
+
+The drink arrived and he sipped at it vacantly, thinking back to Diana
+and her story of the Gods.
+
+There was one hole in it--a hole big enough to toss Mount Olympus
+through, he realized. Where had the Gods gone for three thousand years?
+And how had they gotten to Earth in the first place?
+
+Those two unanswered questions were enough to convince Forrester that,
+in spite of all he knew, and in spite of the way his new viewpoint had
+turned his universe upside down in a matter of hours, he still didn't
+have the whole story. He had to find it--even more so, now, as he began
+to realize that the human race deserved more than just the "security"
+and "happiness" that the Gods could give them. It deserved independence,
+and the chance to make or mar its own future. Protection was all very
+well for the infancy of a race, but man was growing up now. Man needed
+to make his own world.
+
+The Gods had no place in that world, Forrester saw. He had to find the
+answers to all of his questions--and now he thought he knew a way to do
+it.
+
+"Want another, buddy?"
+
+The bartender's voice roused Forrester from his reverie. He had
+absent-mindedly finished brandy-and-soda number eight.
+
+"Okay," Forrester said. "Sure." He handed the bartender a ten-dollar
+bill and got a kind of wry pleasure out of seeing the picture of
+Dionysus on its face. "Let's have another, but more brandy and less soda
+this time."
+
+The drink was brought and he sipped at it, looking like any ordinary
+citizen taking on a small load, but tuned to every fluctuation in the
+energy levels around him, waiting.
+
+Only a God, he knew, could hurt another God, and even then it took
+plenty of power to do it. Actually to kill a God required the combined
+efforts of more than one, under normal circumstances--though one,
+properly equipped and with some luck, could manage it. As far as his own
+situation was concerned, Forrester was prepared for a deadly assault
+from Mars. Maybe Mars didn't intend to kill him, but being maimed for
+centuries, like Vulcan, was nothing to look forward to, and it was just
+as well to be on the safe side. Just in case the God of War had managed
+to get one or two other Gods on his side, Forrester had talked to Diana
+and Venus, and had their agreement to step in on his side if things got
+rough, or if Mars tried to pull anything underhanded.
+
+And any minute now....
+
+Suddenly Forrester felt a disturbance in the energy flow around him.
+Somewhere behind him, invisible to the mortals who occupied the bar, a
+Veil of Heaven was beginning to form.
+
+With a fraction of a second, Forrester was forming his own. But this
+time he took a little longer than he had before.
+
+It wasn't the first time he'd had to run. For over a month now, he had
+been jumping from place to place, all over the world. He had gone to
+Hong Kong first. When Mars had traced him there and made a grab for him,
+Forrester had made a quick jump, via Veil, to Durban, South Africa. It
+had taken Mars all of forty-eight hours to find Forrester hiding in the
+native quarter, wearing the _persona_ of a Negro laborer. But again
+Forrester had disappeared, this time reappearing in Lima, Peru.
+
+And so it had gone for five full weeks, with Forrester keeping barely
+one jump ahead of the God of War.
+
+And, in that month, he had achieved two important things.
+
+First, he had begun to make Mars a little overconfident. By now Mars was
+fully convinced that Forrester was nothing but a coward, and he was
+absolutely certain that he could beat the newcomer easily, if he could
+only come to grips with him.
+
+Second, Forrester had discovered that Mars' basic reflexes were a trifle
+slower than his own.
+
+If Mars had been able to form his own Veil and step through it in time
+to sense the last fading glimmers of Forrester's Veil, he would have
+been able to follow immediately. Instead, he had to go to all the
+trouble of finding Forrester over and over again. That meant slower
+reflexes--and that, Forrester thought, might just give him the edge he
+needed.
+
+But this time, Forrester was going to let Mars follow him--slow
+reflexes and all. This time, he waited that extra fraction of a
+second--and then stepped through the Veil.
+
+He was in the middle of a great rain forest. Around him towered trees
+whose great trunks reached up to a leafy sky. The place was dark; little
+sunlight came through the roof of leaves and curling vines. A bird
+screamed somewhere in the distance, sounding like a lost soul in agony;
+the sound was repeated, and then there was silence.
+
+Forrester was exactly where he had intended to be: in the middle of the
+Amazon jungle.
+
+He had time for one look around. Then Mars stepped out of a shimmering
+Veil only yards away from where Forrester was standing. Immediately,
+Forrester felt Mars throw out a suppressor field that would keep him
+from forming another Veil. He did the same thing. Now, as long as both
+held their respective fields, neither could leave.
+
+"Greetings," Forrester said.
+
+The bird screamed again. Mars ignored it.
+
+"You're just a little too slow," he said, grinning. "And now, buster,
+you're going to get it--and get it good."
+
+"Who?" Forrester said. "Me?"
+
+Mars hissed his breath in and fired a blast of blue-white energy that
+would have drilled through a foot of armor plate. But Forrester blocked
+it; the splatter of free energy struck at the nearby trees, sending them
+crashing to the ground. A small blaze started.
+
+Forrester followed the blow with one of his own, but Mars parried
+quickly. A few more little fires began in the vicinity. Then Mars
+bellowed and charged.
+
+By the time he reached the spot where Forrester had been, Forrester was
+fifty feet in the air, standing with his arms folded and looking down in
+an interested manner.
+
+"You ought to watch out," he said. "You might stumble into a Venus
+Flycatcher down there. I mean besides the one you've got already."
+
+Mars' mouth dropped open. He gave vent to an inarticulate roar of rage
+and leaped into the air. As he rose toward Forrester, the defender
+closed his eyes and changed shape. He became a rock and dropped. He
+bounced off Mars' rising forehead with a great noise.
+
+Mars roared and dived for the stone--and found himself holding a large,
+angry tiger.
+
+But an old trick like that didn't fool Mars. Tiger-Forrester, suddenly
+finding himself fighting with another tiger as ferocious as himself,
+began clawing and biting his way free in a frenzy of panic. He managed
+to make it just long enough to become a stone again, dropping toward the
+Earth.
+
+For a moment, the other tiger seemed uncertain. Then, catching sight of
+the falling stone, he became an eagle, and went after it with a scream,
+claws outstretched and a glitter of hatred in the slitted eyes.
+
+Forrester reached the ground first. The eagle braked madly, trying to
+escape a giant Kodiak bear. Forrester stood on his hind legs and
+battered the air with great, murderous paws. Mars scooted upward,
+already changing into something capable of coping with the bear. A huge,
+bat-winged dragon, breathing barrels of smoke, flapped in the air,
+looking all around for its opponent. It did not notice Forrester
+scurrying away in the shape of an ant through the leaves and thick humus
+of the jungle floor.
+
+By now, the air was becoming smoky and the flames were licking up the
+sides of trees all through the vicinity, and racing along the giant
+vines that curled around them. The dragon belched more smoke, adding to
+the general confusion, and roared in a voice like thunder:
+
+"Coward! Dionysus! Come out and fight!"
+
+There was an instant of crackling silence.
+
+Then Forrester stepped out from behind a blazing tree. He, too, was a
+dragon.
+
+Mars snarled, breathed smoke and made a power dive. Forrester dodged and
+the fangs of the monster missed him by inches. Mars sank claw-deep into
+the ground, and Forrester slammed the War God on the side of his head
+with one mighty forepaw. Mars blew out a cloud of evil-smelling smoke
+and managed to jerk himself free. He leaped to all four feet, glaring at
+Forrester with great, bulging, hate-filled eyes.
+
+"Man to man, you bastard!" he said in a flame-filled roar.
+
+Forrester leaped back to avoid being scorched. He poured out some smoke
+of his own. Mars coughed.
+
+"Damn it, no more shape-changing!" the War God thundered.
+
+"Fair enough!" Forrester shouted. He changed back to his Dionysian form,
+circling warily until Mars had followed suit. Then the two began to
+close in slowly.
+
+Around them the forest burned, vegetation even on the swampy ground
+catching fire as the entire vicinity crackled and hissed with heat.
+Neither of them seemed to take any notice of the fact.
+
+Mars was a trained boxer and wrestler, Forrester knew. But it was
+probably a good many centuries since he'd had any real workouts, and
+Forrester was counting heavily on slowed-down reflexes. Those would give
+him a slight edge.
+
+At any rate, he hoped so.
+
+The circling ceased as Mars leaped forward suddenly and lashed out with
+a right to the jaw that could end the fight. But Forrester moved his
+head aside just in time and the fist glanced off his cheek. He staggered
+back just as Mars followed with a left jab to the belly.
+
+Forrester clamped down on the War God's wrist and twisted violently,
+pulling Mars on past him. The War God, caught off balance, lunged
+forward, tripping over his own feet, and almost fell as he went by.
+Forrester, grinning savagely, brought his right hand down on the back of
+Mars' neck with a blow whose force would have killed an elephant
+outright.
+
+Mars, however, was no mere elephant. He grunted and went down on his
+hands and knees, shaking his head groggily. But he wasn't out. Not
+quite.
+
+Forrester doubled up his fist as Mars tried to rise, and came down again
+with all the force he could muster, squarely on his opponent's neck.
+
+There was a satisfyingly loud crack, audible, even in the roar of the
+burning forest. Mars collapsed to the ground, smothering small fires
+beneath his bulk. Forrester leaped on top of him and grabbed his head,
+beard with one hand and hair with the other. He twisted and the War God
+screamed in agony. Forrester relaxed the pressure.
+
+"All right, now," he said through clenched teeth. "Your neck's broken,
+and all I've got to do is twist enough to sever your spinal column.
+You'll be crippled for as long as Vulcan has--maybe longer."
+
+Mars shrieked again. "I yield! I yield!"
+
+Forrester held on. "Not just yet you don't," he said grimly. "I want
+some information, and I'm going to get it out of you if I have to wring
+them out vertebra by vertebra."
+
+Mars tried to buck. Forrester twisted again and the War God subsided,
+breathing hard. At last he muttered: "What do you want to know?"
+
+"Why did you and the other Gods leave Earth for three thousand years?
+And where did you come from in the first place? I want the _real_
+reason, chum." He applied a little pressure, just as a reminder.
+
+"I'll tell you!" Mars screamed. "I'll tell you!"
+
+And as the roaring flames crackled in the Amazon forest, the agonized
+Mars began to talk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+
+Zeus, Venus, Diana and Forrester sat in the Court of the Gods, listening
+to a large, blue-skinned individual with bright red eyes and two long
+white fangs coming from a lipless mouth. The eyes were like a cat's,
+with slitted pupils, and the general expression on the individual's face
+was one of feral hatred and bestial madness. However, as he had
+explained, he was not responsible for the arrangement of his features.
+He was, he kept saying, only interested in the general welfare. What was
+more, it was his business to be interested. He was, as a matter of fact,
+a cop: Bor Mellistos, of the Interstellar Police.
+
+"My rank," he had told them mildly, "is about the equivalent of your
+Detective Inspector."
+
+"Technically," he was saying now, "you are all four guilty of being
+accessories--as I understand your local law phrases it. However--"
+
+He smiled. It made him look unbelievably horrible. Forrester tried not
+to pay any attention to it.
+
+"However," he went on, "in view of the fact that none of you could
+possibly have known that you were, in fact, accessories--that is, that
+you were dealing with a criminal group, if you understand me--plus the
+fact that Mr. Forrester, as soon as he did discover the facts, called us
+at once through the power machine--I feel that we can overlook your part
+in the matter."
+
+Venus frowned. "Wait a minute. I'm not sure I understand this at all.
+What crime are the Gods supposed to have committed?"
+
+"Not crime, miss," Bor Mellistos said. His eyes twinkled. Forrester
+gulped and turned away. "Crimes. Misuse of a neural power machine, for
+one--and the domination and enslavement of a less advanced intelligent
+culture for another. Both those are very serious crimes."
+
+"Less advanced culture?" Forrester said. "You mean us?"
+
+"I'm afraid so, sir," Bor Mellistos said. "You see, all the members of
+my culture are attuned to the power nodes of one neural machine or
+another, but this power is not meant to be misused. We have been
+searching for this group for a long time now."
+
+"And you first got wind of them on Earth about three thousand years
+ago?"
+
+"A little more than that, actually," Bor Mellistos said, "if you don't
+mind the correction."
+
+"Not at all," Forrester said, looking at the fangs of the Detective
+Inspector.
+
+"We were alerted after the radiations had been coming in for some time.
+The search for this group wasn't nearly as urgent then."
+
+"And that's why they had to go into hiding?" Diana asked.
+
+"Correct, miss," Bor Mellistos said. "The only one we managed to catch
+was the woman calling herself Aphrodite, or Venus." He looked at the
+substitute Venus. "That's the one you replaced, miss."
+
+"How did you catch her?" Forrester pursued.
+
+"Well," Bor Mellistos said, turning a faint shade of orange with
+embarrassment, "she was--ah--engaged in a secret liaison with a mortal
+at the time. Knowing that two of the other gentlemen would be furious
+with her if they discovered this fact--"
+
+"Mars and Vulcan," Forrester supplied.
+
+"Quite correct, sir," Bor Mellistos said. "Knowing, as I say, that they
+would be furious, she had taken special pains to hide herself. When the
+alarm reached the others that we were coming, they could not warn her.
+As a result, when she returned to Mount Olympus, we were waiting for
+her."
+
+"Serves her right!" Zeus said with indignation.
+
+Bor Mellistos said: "Quite," very politely.
+
+"And then," Forrester said, "you patrolled this place for a while."
+
+Bor Mellistos nodded. "We left about three hundred years ago, finally
+deciding that they had gone elsewhere. By the way, do you know where
+they were hiding all this time?"
+
+"My guess," Diana said, "is that they were here on Earth, of course."
+
+"Naturally, miss," Bor Mellistos said. "But where?"
+
+Zeus shrugged. "All sorts of places. I ran a tailor shop myself,
+pressing and cleaning. I understand that Poseidon and Pluto entered
+freak shows--they were fine attractions, too. Pan lived mostly in the
+forests, doing well enough for himself running wild. Diana and Athena
+ran a small hairdressing studio in Queens. And Venus--"
+
+"Please," Venus interrupted.
+
+"Perfectly honorable profession," Zeus objected. "One of the oldest.
+Perhaps the very oldest. And I don't see why--"
+
+"Please!" Venus insisted.
+
+Zeus shut up with a little sigh.
+
+"At any rate," Bor Mellistos said, "that's the story up to date. And now
+there's only the question of the Overseer positions. Would you like to
+fill them?"
+
+"Who?" Venus asked. "_Us?_"
+
+"Well," Bor Mellistos said, "you have the experience. And we do need
+someone to take over. You see, three thousand years ago your technical
+attainments were not large. There was little need for an Overseer. Now,
+however, you are nearly at the stage where you will be invited to join
+the Galactic Federation. And we must make sure you do not do any
+irreparable harm to yourselves during the next few years."
+
+"Well," Forrester said, "how could we--"
+
+"If you'll permit me, sir," Bor Mellistos said, "I can explain. You
+would work much as the so-called Gods did--but with no publicity, and a
+greater sense of responsibility, if you understand me. Earth would never
+know you were there."
+
+"I'd have to--stay away from mortals?" Forrester asked.
+
+"Exactly," Bor Mellistos said.
+
+Well, Forrester thought, it had its compensations. In the three days
+that the Detective Inspector had been on Earth, Forrester had had time
+to think and to find out some things. Gerda, for instance, was getting
+married to Alvin Sherdlap. Forrester wondered what kind of love would
+let a woman choose a name like Gerda Sherdlap, and decided it was better
+not to think about it.
+
+What did he have to go back to? History classes? Students? Even students
+like Maya Wilson?
+
+Well, he was sure he could do better than that. He looked at Diana and
+became even surer.
+
+"The remaining eleven Overseers," Bor Mellistos was saying, "will be
+along shortly. You will then be able to draw fully on the machine. You
+need merely follow world events and make sure that any--ah--regrettably
+_final_ decisions are not made. Your actions will, of course, be very
+much undercover."
+
+Forrester nodded. "This mass arrest of the Gods is going to cause an
+upheaval all by itself."
+
+"Quite true, sir. But that will be worked out. I'm afraid I don't really
+know the details, but doubtless the other eleven who are coming will
+inform you more thoroughly on that score."
+
+Forrester sighed. "About the Gods--what kind of punishment will they
+receive?"
+
+"Well, sir," Bor Mellistos said, "it varies. Vulcan, for instance--the
+person who called himself Vulcan, or Hephaestus--will probably get off
+with a lighter sentence than the others. He was a mechanic, brought
+along under some duress to service the machine. But the sentences will
+be severe, you may be sure. Very severe."
+
+Forrester didn't feel like asking any more questions about that. There
+was a pause. He looked at Diana again, and she looked back at him.
+
+"Do you accept?" Bor Mellistos said.
+
+Forrester and the others nodded.
+
+Bor Mellistos said: "Very well. In that case, I will inform the other
+eleven Overseers already picked that they will be met by you here, on
+Mount Olympus, and that--"
+
+But Forrester wasn't listening.
+
+He had begun whistling, very softly.
+
+The song he was whistling was Tenting Tonight.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pagan Passions, by
+Gordon Randall Garrett and Laurence Mark Janifer
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