Chapter 9

“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!”