The scrambled horrors scattered throughout the room were, Forrester told himself bleakly, the children.
Vulcan sat down on the only empty chair with a sigh. "This is my workshop," he announced gravely. "It is not arranged for visitors, nor for the curious. I must advise you to touch nothing, if you wish to save your hands, your sanity, and very possibly your life."
Forrester nodded dumbly. Vulcan"s tone hadn"t been unfriendly; he had merely been warning a stranger, in the shortest and clearest manner possible, against the dangers of feeling the merchandise. Not, Forrester thought, that the warning was necessary. He would as soon have thought of trying to fly as he would of touching one of the mixed-up looking things.
"Now," Vulcan said, "if you"ll--" He stopped. "Pardon me," he said, and levered himself upright. He went to a chair, swept a few constructions from it and put them carefully on a table. "Sit down," he said, motioning to the chair.
Gingerly, Forrester sat down.
Vulcan returned to his own chair and climbed onto it. "Now let us get to business."
"Business?" Forrester said.
"Oh, yes," Vulcan said. "I imagine you were pretty well bewildered for a while. No more than natural. But I think you"ve figured it out by now.
You know you are going to be given the powers of a demi-G.o.d, don"t you?"
"Yes. But--"
"Do not worry about it," Vulcan said. "The powers are--simply powers.
They are not burdens. At any rate, they will not be burdensome to you.
We know that--we have researched you to a fine point, as you may have gathered from the fol-de-rol back there." He gestured toward his right, evidently indicating the Court of the G.o.ds.
"But," Forrester said, "suppose I"m not what your tests say. I mean, suppose I--"
"There is no need for supposition. Beyond any shadow of doubt, we know how you, as a mortal, will react to any conceivable set of circ.u.mstances."
"Oh," Forrester said. "But--"
"Precisely. You have realized what yet needs to be done. We know what your abilities and limitations are--_as a mortal_. The tests you have yet to pa.s.s are concerned with your actions and reactions as a demi-G.o.d."
Forrester swallowed hard. He felt as if he were on a moving roller-coaster. No matter how badly he wanted to get off, it was impossible to do so. He had to remain while the car hurtled on.
And where was he going?
The G.o.ds, he told himself with more than ordinary meaning, knew.
"The power which is to be infused into you," Vulcan said, "if you don"t mind the loose terminology--"
"I don"t mind in the least," Forrester a.s.sured him earnestly. "Not in the least."
"The power infused into you will make some changes. These will not only be physical changes. Mental changes must be expected."
"Oh," Forrester said. "Mental changes."
"Correct. Physically, you see, you will become what no mortal can ever quite be: a perfectly functioning biological engine. Every sinew, nerve and muscle, every organ and gland, every tissue in your body will be in perfect harmonic balance with every other. Metabolically speaking, your catabolism and anabolism will be in such perfect balance that aging will not be possible."
Forrester thought that over. "I"ll be immortal," he said.
"In that sense of the word," Vulcan said, "you will. You will be, as a matter of fact, quite a good deal tougher, stronger and harder than any animal now existing on the face of the Earth. I must except, of course, a few of the really big ones, like the elephant and the killer whale."
"Oh," Forrester said. "Sure."
"But make no mistake. You can still be killed. A bullet through the heart will not do the job; it will merely incapacitate you for a few hours. But if you were to have your head blown off by a grenade, you would be quite dead. Remember that."
"I don"t see how I could forget it."
"You will heal with incredible rapidity, but there are limitations.
Anything that pushes the balance too far will be fatal. You can lose a hand or even an arm without serious harm; the missing member will be regrown. But if you were to fall into a large meat-grinder--"
"I get the idea," Forrester said, feeling pale green.
"Good," Vulcan said. "However, there is more."
"_More?_"
"There are certain other powers to be given you in addition. You will learn of these later."
Forrester nodded blankly.
"Now," Vulcan said, "all these physical changes will have a definite effect upon your psychological outlook, as I imagine you can plainly see."
Forrester thought about it. "Well--"
"Let us suppose that you are a coward who has avoided fights all his life. Now you are given these powers. What will happen?"
"I"ll be strong."
"Exactly. You will be strong. And because you are strong, and almost indestructible, you suddenly decide that you can now get your revenge on the people who have pushed you around."
"Well," Forrester said, "I--"
"You begin to look for fights," Vulcan said. "You go around beating up everyone you can find, simply because you now know you can get away with it. Do you understand me?"
"I guess so."
"A man with a vicious streak in him would be intolerable in this position. Can you see that? Take an example: Ares. Mars is a tough G.o.d, hard and at times brutal. But he is not vicious."
Forrester was a little surprised to hear Vulcan say anything nice about Mars. He knew, as everyone did, the long history of ill-will and positive hatred the two had built up between them. It had begun soon after Vulcan"s marriage to Aphrodite/Venus.
He hadn"t been a cripple then, of course. For a while, he and Venus had had a fine time. But Venus, apparently, just wasn"t satisfied with the dull normal routine of married life. None of the G.o.ds seemed to be, as a matter of fact. Either they were altogether too married, like Zeus, or else they weren"t married enough, like Venus. Or else they were like Diana and Athena, indifferent to marriage.
At any rate, Venus had begun looking around for fresh talent. And the fresh talent had been right there ready to sign up for a long contract on a strictly extra-legal basis.
One day Vulcan caught them at it, his wife and Mars. Vulcan was angry, but Mars didn"t exactly like to be interrupted, either, and he was a little faster on the draw. He tossed Vulcan over a nearby cliff, crippling him for good.
And as for Aphrodite--who knew? It was entirely possible that, by this time, the G.o.ddess of Love had run through the entire list of G.o.ds and was now at work on the mortals.
Forrester wasn"t entirely sure he disliked the idea, on a simple physical level. But there was more than that to it, of course; there was Vulcan. Forrester found himself liking the solemn, positive workman. He didn"t want to hurt him.