Chapter 6

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.