Pagan Passions by Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer (best novels to read for beginners TXT) 📕

questions I have to. Sit down."

They found chairs along the walls of the room and sat facing one another. Forrester took a sip of his drink, settled back, and tried to think where to begin. Well, God or no God, Zeus had the key to that one. He had said it years ago, and it had passed almost into legend:

"Begin at the beginning, go on until you reach the end, and then stop."

Very well, Forrester thought. He cleared his throat. Diana looked at him inquiringly.

"I don't know how far into the noose I'm putting my head with this one, Diana," he said. "But I trust you—and I've got to ask somebody."[136]

"Go ahead," she said quietly.

"First question. The original Dionysus is dead, isn't he?"

She paused for a moment before answering. "Yes, he is."

"And I was scheduled to take his place."

"That's right."

"As a full God," Forrester said.

Diana nodded.

There was a little silence.

"Diana," Forrester said, "what are the Gods?"

She got up and crossed to the window. Looking out, she said: "Before I answer that, I want you to tell me what you think we are."

"Men and women," he said. "More or less human, like myself. Except you've somehow managed to get so far ahead of any kind of science Earth knows that, even today, your effects can only be explained as 'magic' or 'miracle.'"

"How could we get that far ahead of you?"

Forrester took a leap in the dark to the only conclusion he could see. "You're not from Earth," he said. "You're from another planet." The words sounded strange in his own ears—but Diana didn't even act surprised.

"That's right," she said. "We're from another planet—or, rather, from several other planets."

"Several?" Forrester exclaimed. "But—oh. I see. Pan, for instance—"

Diana nodded. "Pan isn't even really humanoid. His home is a planet where his type of goatlike life evolved. Neither Pluto nor Neptune is humanoid, either; they're a little closer than Pan, but not really very close when you get a good look. The rest of the Gods are humanoid—but not human."

"Wait a minute," Forrester said. "Venus is human. Or, anyhow, she's a replacement, just the way I was slated to be a replacement for Dionysus."[137]

Diana drained her cup and clapped her hands together on it. The cup vanished. Forrester did the same to his own. "Correct," she said. "Venus just—just disappeared once. They got an Etruscan girl to replace her. She's not the only replacement, either."

Forrester stared. "Who else?"

"You tell me."

He thought the list of Gods over. "Zeus," he said.

Diana smiled. "Yes, Zeus is a long way from the great hero of the legends, isn't he? Using the old calendar, Zeus died in about 1100 b.c., not too long after the close of the Trojan War. As far as anybody knows, Neptune did the actual killing, but it's pretty clear that the original idea wasn't his."

"Hera's," Forrester guessed.

"Of course," Diana said. "What she wanted was a figurehead she could control—and that's what she got. Though I'm not sure she's entirely happy with the change. If the original Zeus was a little harder to control, at least he seems to have had an original thought now and again."

Forrester sat quietly for a time, waiting for the shock to pass. "What about Dionysus?"

Diana shrugged. "He—well, as far as anybody's ever been able to tell, it was suicide. About three years ago, and it drove Hera pretty wild, trying to find a substitute in a hurry. I suspect he was bored with the wine, women and song. He'd had a long time of it. And, too, he'd had some little disagreements with Hera. As you may have gathered, she is not exactly a safe person to have as an enemy. He probably figured she'd get him sooner or later, so he might as well save her the trouble."

"And Hera had to rush to get a replacement? Why couldn't there just have been some sort of explanation, while the rest of you ran things?"

"Because the rest of us couldn't run things. Not for long, anyhow. It's all a question of power."[138]

"Power?" Forrester said.

"Everything we have," Diana said, "is derived, directly or indirectly, from the workings of one machine. Though 'machine' is a long way from the right word for it—it bears about as much resemblance to what you think of as a machine as a television set does to a window. There just isn't a word for it in any language you know."

"And all the Gods have to work the machine at once?"

"Something like that." Diana came back from the window and sat down facing him again. "It operates through the nervous systems of the beings in circuit with it, each one of them in contact with one of the power nodes of the machine. And if one of the nodes is unoccupied, then the machine's out of balance. It will run for a while, but eventually it will simply wreck itself. Every one of the fifteen nodes has to be occupied. Otherwise—chaos."

Forrester nodded. "So when Dionysus died—"

"We had to find a replacement in a hurry. The machine's been running out of balance for about as long as it can stand right now."

Forrester closed his eyes. "I'm not sure I get the picture."

"Well, look at it this way: suppose you have a wheel."

"All right," Forrester said obligingly. "I have a wheel."

"And this wheel has fifteen weights on it. They're spaced equally around the rim, and the wheel's revolving at high speed."

Forrester kept his eyes closed. When he had the wheel nicely spinning, he said: "Okay. Now what?"

"Well," Diana said, "as long as the weights stay in place, the wheel spins evenly. But if you remove one of the weights, the wheel's out of balance. It starts to wobble."

Forrester took one of the weights (Dionysus, a rather large, jolly weight) off the wheel in his mind. It wobbled. "Right," he said.[139]

"It can take the wobble for a little while. But unless the balance is restored in time, the wheel will eventually break."

Hurriedly, Forrester put Dionysus back on the wheel. The wobble stopped. "Oh," he said. "I see."

"Our power machine works in that sort of way. That is, it requires all fifteen occupants. Dionysus has been dead for three years now, and that's about the outside limit. Unless he's replaced soon, the machine will be ruined."

Forrester opened his eyes. The wheel spun away and disappeared. "So you found me to replace Dionysus. I had to look like him, so the mortals wouldn't see any difference. And the psychological similarity—"

"That's right," Diana said. "It's the same as the wheel again. If you remove a weight, you've got to put back a weight of the same magnitude. Otherwise, the wheel's still out of balance."

"And since the power machine works through the nervous system—"

"The governing factor is that similarity. You've got to be of the same magnitude as Dionysus. Of course, you don't have to be an identical copy. The machine can be adjusted for slight differences."

"I see," Forrester said. "And the fifteen power nodes—" Another idea occurred to him. "Wait a minute. If there are only fifteen power nodes, then how come there were so many different Gods and Goddesses among the Greeks? There were a lot more than fifteen back then."

"Of course there were," Diana said, "but they weren't real Gods. As a matter of fact, some of them didn't really exist."

Forrester frowned. "How's that again?"

"They were just disguises for one of the regular fifteen. Aesculapius, for instance, the old God of medicine, was Hermes/Mercury in disguise—he took the name in honor of a physician of the time. He would have raised the man[140] to demi-Godhood, but Aesculapius died unexpectedly, and we thought taking his 'spirit' into the Pantheon was good public relations."

"How about the others?" Forrester said. "They weren't all disguises, were they?"

"Of course not. Some of them were demi-Gods, just like yourself. Their power was derived, like yours, from the Pantheon instead of directly through the machine. And then there were the satyrs and centaurs, and suchlike beings. That was public relations, too—mainly Zeus' idea, I understand. The original Zeus, of course."

"Of course," Forrester said.

"The satyrs and such were artificial life-forms, created, maintained and controlled by the machine itself. It's equipped with what you might call a cybernetic brain—although that's pretty inadequate as a description. Vulcan could do a better job of explaining."

"Perfectly all right. I don't understand that kind of thing anyhow."

"Well, in that case, let me put it this way. The machine controlled these artificial forms, but they could be taken over by any one of the Gods or demi-Gods for special purposes. As I say, it was public relations—and a good way to keep the populace impressed—and under control."

"The creatures aren't around nowadays," Forrester pointed out.

"Nowadays we don't need them," Diana said. "There are other methods—better public relations, I suppose."

Forrester didn't know he was going to ask his next question until he heard himself doing so. But it was the question he really wanted to ask; he knew that as soon as he knew he asked it.

"Why?" he said.

Diana looked at him with a puzzled expression. "Why? What do you mean?"

"Why go on being Gods? Why dominate humanity?"

"I suppose I could answer your question with another[141] question—why not? But I won't. Instead, let me remind you of some things. Look what we've done during the last century. The great wars that wrecked Europe—you don't see any possibility of more of those, do you? And the threat of atomic war is gone, too, isn't it?"

"Well, yes," Forrester said, "but—"

"But we still have wars," Diana said. "Sure we do. The male animal just wouldn't be happy if he didn't have a chance to go out and get himself blown to bits once in a while. Don't ask me to explain that—I'm not a male."

Forrester agreed silently. Diana was not a male. It was the most understated statement he had ever heard.

"But anyhow," Diana said, "they want wars, so they have wars. Mars sees that the wars stay small and keep within the Martian Conventions, though, so any really widespread damage or destruction, or any wanton attacks on civilians, are a thing of the past. And it's not only wars, kid. It's everything."

"What do you mean, everything?"

"Man needs a god, a personal god. When he doesn't have one ready to hand, he makes one up—and look at the havoc that has caused. A god of vengeance, a god who cheers you on to kill your enemies.... You've studied history. Tell me about the gods of various nations. Tell me about Thor and Baal and the original bloodthirsty Yahweh. People need gods."

"Now wait a minute," Forrester objected. "The Chinese—"

"Oh, sure," Diana said. "There are exceptions. But you can't bank on the exceptions. If you want a reasonably safe, sane and happy humanity, then you'd better make sure your gods are not going to start screaming for war against the neighbors or against the infidels or against—well, against anybody and everybody. There's only one way to make sure, kid. We've found that way. We are the Gods."

Forrester digested that one slowly. "It sounds great,[142] but it's pretty altruistic. And while I don't want to impugn anybody's motives, it does seem to me that—"

"That we ought to be getting something out of it ourselves, above and beyond the pure joy of helping humanity. Sure. You're perfectly right. And we do get something out of it."

"Like what?"

Diana grinned. She looked more like a tomboy than ever before. "Fun," she said. "And you know it. Don't tell me you didn't get a kick out of playing God at the Bacchanal."

"Well," Forrester confessed, "yes." He sighed. "And I guess that Bacchanal is going to be the one really high spot in a very shortened sort of life."

Diana sat upright. "What are you talking about?"

"What else would I be talking about? The Bacchanal. You know what happened. You must know—everybody must by now. Mars is probably demanding my head from Hera right now. Unless he's got more complicated ideas like taking me apart limb by limb. I remember he mentioned that."

Diana stood up and came over to Forrester. "Why would Mars do something like that and especially now? And what makes you think Hera would go along with him if he did?"

"Why not? Now that I've failed my tests—"

"Failed?" Diana cried. "You haven't failed!"

Forrester stood up shakily. "Of course I have. After what happened at the Bacchanal, I—"

"Don't pay any attention to that," Diana said. "Mars is a louse. Always has been, I hear. Nobody likes him. As a matter of fact, you've just passed your finals. The last test was to see if you could figure out who we were—and you've done that, haven't you?"

There was a long, taut silence.

Then Diana laughed. "Your face looks the way mine must have, over three thousand years ago!"[143]

"What are you talking about?" Still dazed, he wasn't quite sure he had heard her rightly.

"When they told me the same thing. After the original Diana