The Second Randall Garrett Megapack Read online

  Diana marched up and down in front of him, smacking her left fist into her calloused little right palm. “Now listen,” she said crisply. “I know you’re all hot and bothered, kid, but there’s no reason to be. You’re doing fine. They love you out there.”

  “Sure I am,” Forrester said, unconvinced.

  “Well, you are,” Diana said. “You just got to have confidence, that’s all. Keep your spirits up. Tried singing?”

  “Singing?”

  “Singing, kid. Raises the spirits.”

  Forrester blinked. “Really?”

  “Take it from me,” Diana said. “How about Tenting Tonight?”

  “How about what?”

  “Tenting Tonight,” Diana said. “You know.”

  “I—guess I do.” Forrester wished that Diana would do more than treat him like a pal. She was a remarkably beautiful woman, if you liked the type, and Forrester liked virtually any type.

  Now, success appeared to be within his grasp. But it did seem an odd time to bring the subject up. Oh, well, he thought, maybe she was just trying to cheer him up and had picked this way of doing it.

  It worked, too, he told himself happily.

  He cleared his throat. “Where?”

  Diana stared. “Where?”

  “That’s right,” Forrester said. Something was going wrong but he couldn’t discover what it was. “The tenting.”

  “Oh,” Diana said. “Right here. Now. Raises the spirits.”

  “I should say it does!” Forrester agreed enthusiastically. “But after all—right here—”

  “Don’t worry about it, kid. Nobody will hear you.”

  “Hear me?”

  “Anyway, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of people do it when they feel low.”

  “I’ll bet they do,” Forrester said. “But it’s different with you and me.”

  “Me?” Diana said. “What do I have to do with it? I just told you—”

  “Well, sure. And here and now is as good a time and place as any.”

  Diana stepped back a pace. “Okay, let’s hear it. Sing!”

  “Sing? You mean I have to sing for my—”

  “I’ll join you,” Diana said.

  Forrester nodded. He was beginning to get confused. “You’d better,” he said.

  “Tenting tonight on the old camp grounds,” she sang. “Now come on.”

  Forrester coughed. “Oh,” he said. “Sing.”

  “Sure,” Diana said, and they went through the song together. “How about another chorus?” she asked.

  “It’s all right, Diana,” Forrester said, knowing she preferred the name to her Greek one of Artemis. “I feel fine now.”

  “Well,” Diana said in a disappointed voice, “all right.”

  What surprised Forrester most was that he did feel fine. All the Gods had helped him in the past several months, but Diana had been especially helpful. As a forest Goddess, and as Protectress of the Night, she’d been able to tell him a lot about how an orgy was arranged. He had often wished that she would teach by example, but now, he discovered, it was too late for wishing.

  She was, he told himself with only faint regret, just like a sister to him. Or even a brother.

  “I guess everything will be okay,” he said. “Won’t it?”

  Diana clapped him on the back. “You’re going to be great. Just go out there and show ’em what kind of a God you are.”

  “But what kind of a God am I?”

  “Just keep cool, kid. You won’t fail me—I know it.”

  “I’ll try,” Forrester said. “Only I’m getting nervous just sitting around here. I wish we could go out and stroll around; we’ve got plenty of time, anyhow.”

  Diana nodded. “It’s ten minutes yet before the Procession starts. I suppose we might as well take a look around, kid, if it makes you feel better.”

  “It might.”

  “Fine, then. But how do you want to go?”

  Forrester blinked. “How?”

  “Invisibility,” Diana said, “or incognito?”

  “Oh,” Forrester said. Then he added: “You’re asking me?”

  “Of course I am, kid. Now, look: this is your celebration, remember? You’re Dionysus. Got it? Even in my presence, you act the part now. You ought to know that.”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “Keep this in mind. These people haven’t had a Sabbatical Bacchanal in seven years. Every seven years they get to see their God—and this year you’re it. Right?”

  “I guess so. But—”

  “No buts,” Diana said. “You’re the boss and they’re your worshippers. That’s all there is to it. Now, you’ve got to make up your mind. What’ll it be?”

  Forrester thought. “Well,” he said at last, “I guess it had better be incognito. With this crowd, there’s too much likelihood of getting bumped into if we’re invisible. Right?”

  Diana grinned. “That’s the boy! You’re thinking straight now!”

  Forrester had the sudden feeling that he had just passed another test. But he didn’t quite dare ask about it “All right,” he said instead. “Let’s go.”

  He put his mind to work concentrating on the special faculties that his demi-God power gave him. His face began to change. He looked less and less like Dionysus as the seconds went by, and more and more like William Forrester. At the same time, the golden aura around his body began to fade. After a few minutes he looked like William Forrester completely, a nice enough guy but pretty much of a nonentity.

  Diana, with the greater power of a true Goddess, achieved the same sort of result almost instantly. Her aura was gone and the sparkle had left her eyes. Her brown hair looked a little mousy now, and her face was merely pretty instead of being gloriously beautiful.

  “Just one thing,” Forrester said. “We’d better make ourselves invisible just to leave the Temple. Somebody might suspect we weren’t ordinary people at all.”

  “Right again,” Diana smiled. She nodded her head and blinked out.

  Forrester could still see a cloudy outline of her in the room, but he knew that was because he was a demi-God, with special powers. An ordinary mortal, he knew, would see nothing at all.

  He followed her into invisibility and walked out the back door of the Temple-on-the-Green. The door was open and two Temple Myrmidons, wearing the golden grape-clusters of Dionysus on their shoulder patches, stood outside the door. Neither of them saw Forrester and Diana leave.

  * * * *

  Three minutes later, they were standing near the doorway of the Temple, watching the preparations for the Grand Procession. The fifty priests of Dionysus gathered there while the enormous crowd pushed and shoved to get a better view of the ritual. The sacrifice of the first fruits had been completed, and now, at the door of the Temple, each of the fifty priests filled a chalice from a huge hogshead of purple wine.

  They chanted a prayer in unison and spilled half the wine on the ground as a libation. Then they lifted the chalices to their lips and drank, finishing the other half in one long motion.

  The chalices were set down, and a cheer rose from the crowd.

  The Bacchanal had begun!

  The priests separated into two equal groups. Twenty-five of them started northward, marching to their positions at regularly spaced intervals in the procession. The remaining twenty-five stayed behind, ready to accompany Dionysus himself at the tail of the parade.

  Each of the other Gods was represented by a special detachment of ten Myrmidons, each contingent wearing the distinctive shoulder patch of the God it served: the thunderbolt of Zeus, the blazing sun of Apollo, the pipes of Pan, the sword of Mars, the hammer of Vulcan, the poppy of Morpheus, the winged foot of Mercury, the trident of Neptune, the cerberus of Pluto, the peacock of Hera, the owl of Athena, the dove of Venus, the crescent of Diana, and the sprig of wheat that represented Mother Ceres. The Myrmidons grinned in expectation of the good times coming; a Dionysian festival was always something special, and competiti
on for the contingents was always tough.

  There were balloons everywhere, as the crowd shoved and pushed into the line of march. Someone was bawling an old song about the lack of liquor, and the strident voice carried over the shouts and halloos of the mob:

  “How dry I am—”

  Forrester and Diana, now visible, pushed their way through the crowds. A man flung his arm around the Goddess with abandon, shouting something indistinguishable; Diana shook him off gently and went on. Forrester almost tripped over a small boy sitting on the grass and crying. A Myrmidon was standing over him, and the child’s mother was trying to lift the boy.

  “I wanna go to the orgy,” the boy kept saying. “I wanna go to the orgy.”

  “Next year,” the mother told him. “Next year, child, when you’re six.”

  The Myrmidon lifted the child and carried him away. The mother shouted an address after him, and the Myrmidon nodded, pushed his way through a gesticulating group of celebrants and disappeared in the direction of Central Park West. There, other Dionysian Myrmidons were patrolling, making sure that no non-Dionysian got in except by special invitation. Any non-Dionysian who wanted to celebrate was supposed to do it on the streets of the city, and not in Central Park, which was going to be crowded enough with legitimate revelers.

  The shouting and screaming went on, people pushing and shoving, confetti beginning to drift like a light snow over the worshippers. One man held five balloons and a cigarette, and he was popping the balloons with the cigarette tip, one by one. Every time one of the balloons exploded, a group of women and girls around him shrieked and laughed.

  Forrester turned back. Behind a convenient bush, he and Diana made themselves invisible again, and re-entered the Temple-on-the-Green.

  The silence inside the Temple was deafening.

  “The noise out there could break eardrums,” Forrester complained. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

  “Just wait,” Diana told him. “The music will start any time now—and then you’ll really hear something.” She paused. “Ready?”

  Forrester glanced down at himself. “I guess so. How do I look?” He had constructed a golden chiton and mentally clothed himself in it. It was covered by a grape-purple cloak embroidered with golden grapevines. And around his head a circlet of woven grapevines had appeared, made of solid gold. It was a little heavier than Forrester had expected it would be, but it lent him, he thought, rather a dashing air.

  “Great,” Diana said. “Just great.”

  “Think so?” Forrester said, feeling rather pleased.

  “Sure you do. Now go out there and give ’em the old college try.”

  Forrester gulped. “How about you?”

  “Me? I’m on my way out of here. This is your show, kid. Make the most of it.”

  Forrester watched her go out the rear door. He was alone. And the Autumn Bacchanal Processional was about to begin.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Noise! Forrester, seated in the great golden palanquin supported by twelve hefty Priests of Dionysus, had never seen or heard anything like it. He waited there on the steps of the little Temple-on-the-Green for the Procession to wind by, so that he could take his place at the end of it. But the Procession looked endless.

  First came a corps of Priests and Myrmidons, leading their way stolidly through the paths of Central Park. Following them came the revelers, a mass of men and women marching, laughing, singing, shouting, dancing their way along to the accompaniment of more music than Forrester had ever dreamed of.

  The Dionysians had practiced for months, and almost everything was represented. There were violinists prancing along, violists and a crew of long-haired gentlemen and ladies playing the viol da gamba and the viol d’amore; there were guitarists plunking madly away, banjo players strumming and ukelele addicts picking at their strings, somehow all chorusing together. In a special pair of floats there were bass players, bass fiddle players and cellists, jammed tightly together and somehow managing to draw enormous sounds and scratches out of the big instruments. And behind them came the main band of musicians.

  The woodwinds followed: piccolo players piping, flutists fluting, oboe players, red-cheeked and glassy-eyed, concentrating on making the most piercing possible sounds, men playing English horns, clarinets, bass clarinets, bassoons and contra-bassoons, along with men playing serpents and, behind them, a dancing group fingering ocarinas and adding their bit to the general tumult, and two women tootling madly away on hoarse-sounding zootibars.

  And then, near the center of the musicians, were the brass: trumpets and trumpets-a-piston, trombones and valve trombones and Fulk horns, all blatting away to split the sky with maddening sound, Sousaphones and saxophones and French horns and bass horns and hunting horns, and tubas along in their own little cart, six round-cheeked men lost in the curves of the great instruments, valiantly blowing away as they rolled by into the woods of the park, making the city itself resound with tremendous noise and shattering cadence. And behind them was the battery.

  Kettle drums, bass drums, xylophones, Chinese gongs, vibraphones, snare drums and high-hat cymbals paraded by in carts, banged and stroked and tinkled enthusiastically by crew after crew of maddened tympanists. And then came the others, on foot: tambourines and wood blocks and parade cymbals and castanets. At the tail of this portion of the Procession came a single old man wearing spectacles and riding in a small cart drawn by a donkey. He had white hair and he was playing on a series of water-glasses filled to various levels. His ear was cocked toward the glasses with painstaking care. He was entirely inaudible in the general din, but he looked happy and satisfied; he was doing his bit.

  After him followed a group of entirely naked men and women playing sackbuts, and another group playing recorders. Bringing up the rear, as the Procession curved, was a magnificent aggregation of men and women yowling away on bagpipes of all shapes and sizes. All of the men wore sporrans and nothing more; the women wore nothing at all. The music that emanated from this group was enough to unhinge the mind.

  And then came the keyboard instruments, into the middle of which the five theremin-players had been stuck for no reason at all. The strange howls of this unearthly instrument filtered through the sound of pianos, harpsichords, psalters, clavichords, virginals and three gigantic electric organs pumping at full strength.

  And bringing up the very rear of the Procession was a special decorated cart, full of color and holding a lone man with long white hair, wearing a rusty black suit and playing away, with great attention and care, on the largest steam calliope Forrester had ever met. Jets of steam fizzed out of the top, and music bawled from the interior of the massive thing as it went by, trailing the Procession into the woods, and the entire aggregation swung into a single song, hundred upon hundreds of musicians and singers all coming down hard on the opening strains of the Hymn to Dionysus:

  “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the Lord who rules the wine—

  He has trampled out the vintage of the grapes upon the vine!”

  The twelve Priests picked up the palanquin and Forrester adjusted his weight so they wouldn’t find it too heavy. It was impossible to think in the mass of noise and music that went on and on, as the Procession wound uptown through the paths of Central Park, and the musicians banged and scraped and blew and pounded and stroked and plucked, and the great Hymn rose into the air, filling the entire city with the bawled chorus as even the twelve Priests joined in, adding to the ear-splitting din:

  “Glory, Glory, Dionysus!

  Glory, Glory, Dionysus!

  Glory, Glory, Dionysus!

  While his wine goes flowing on!”

  Forrester had always been disturbed by what he thought might have been a double meaning in that last line, but it didn’t disturb him now. Nothing seemed to disturb him as the Procession wound on, and he was laughing uproariously and winking and nodding at his worshippers as they sang and played all around him, and the hours went by. Halfway there, he fished in t
he air and brought down the small golden disks with the picture of Dionysus on them that were a regular feature of the Processional, and flung them happily into the crowd ahead.

  Only one was allowed per person, so there was not much scrambling, but some of the coins pattered down on the various instruments, and one landed in the old gentleman’s middle-C water glass and had to be fished out before he could go on with the Hymn.

  Carousing and noisy, the Procession finally reached the huge stand at the far end of the park, and the music stopped. On the stand was a whole new group of musicians: harpists, lyrists, players of the flageolet and dulcimer, two men sweating over glockenspiels, a group equipped with zithers and citharas and sitars, three women playing nose-flutes, two men with shofars, and a tall, blond man playing a clarino trumpet. As the Procession ground to a halt, this new band struck up the Hymn again, played it through twice, and then stopped.

  Seven girls filed out onto the platform in front of the musicians. One was there representing every year since the last Sabbatical Bacchanal. Forrester, riding high on the palanquin, beamed down at them, roaring with happy laughter. They were all for him. Having been carried to one end of the park in triumph, he was now to march back at the head of his people, surrounded by seven of the most beautiful girls in New York.

  Their final selection had been left, he knew, to a brewery which had experience in these matters. And the girls certainly looked like the pick of anybody’s crop. Forrester beamed at them again, stood up in the palanquin and spread his arms wide.

  Then he sprang. In a flying leap, he went high into the air and did a full somersault, landing on his toes on the stage, twenty-five feet away. The girls were kneeling in a circle around him.

  “Come, my doves!” he bellowed. “Come, my pigeons!” His Godlike golden baritone carried for blocks.

  He grabbed the two nearest girls by their hands and helped them to their feet. They blushed and lowered their eyes.