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 t.i.ttered. 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 G.o.ds 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 a.s.s. 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 p.r.o.ne figure, Gerda was trying to fend off the advances of good old Alvin Sherdlap, but it was obvious that the sheer pa.s.sage 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 enc.u.mber 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 s.p.a.ce 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-t.o.s.s.e.r. 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 Baccha.n.a.l 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."