"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."