Chapter 4

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.