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.”
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 ass. 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 prone figure, Gerda was trying to fend off the advances of good old Alvin Sherdlap, but it was obvious that the sheer passage 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 encumber the Earth no