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 ...