deep breath. “Isn’t this fun?”
The girls giggled.
“Good,” Forrester said. “If Mr. Bottle’s head ends up between two of you, then the other five girls will have to decide which girl the head’s nearer to. The two girls involved will remain absolutely quiet during the judging, and if the other five can’t come to a unanimous agreement, we’ll spin Mr. Bottle again. Understand?”
“You mean if the head points at me, I get picked,” Bette said. “And if the head goes in between me and somebody else, all the other girls have to decide who gets picked.”
It was a masterly summation.
“Right,” Forrester said. “I’m going to give Mr. Bottle a spin. This one counts. We’ll have the second spin, and the rest of them, later.”
“Gee!” Millicent whispered. “Isn’t this exciting?”
Forrester ignored the comment. “And remember, I give you my word as a God that I will not interfere in any way with the workings of chance. Is that clearly understood?”
The girls murmured agreement.
“Now,” Forrester said, “all you girls get into a nice circle. I’ll stand outside.”
The girls took a minute or two arranging themselves in a circle, arguing about who was going to sit next to whom, and whose very proximity was bound to bring bad luck. The argument gave Forrester a chance to check on Gerda again. She was whispering softly to Alvin, but they weren’t touching each other. Forrester turned up his hearing to get a better idea of what was going on.
They had progressed, in the usual manner, from argument to life-history. Gerda was telling Alvin all about her past.
“…but don’t misunderstand me, Alvin. It’s just that I was in love with a very fine young man. An Athenan, he was. A wonderful man, really wonderful. But he—he was killed in a subway accident some months ago.”
“Gosh,” Alvin said. “I’m sorry.”
“I—I have to tell you this, Alvin, so you’ll understand. I still love him. He was wonderful. And until I get over it, I simply can’t…”
Feeling both ashamed of himself and pleased, as well as sorry for the poor girl, Forrester quit listening. The Gods had arranged his simulated death, which, of course, had been a necessity. His disappearance had to be explained somehow. But he didn’t like the idea of Gerda having to suffer so much.
My God! Forrester thought. She still loves me!
It was the first time he had ever heard her say so, flatly, right out in the open. He wanted to bound and leap and cavort—but he couldn’t. He had to go back to his seven beautiful girls.
He had never felt less like it in his life.
But at least, he consoled himself, Gerda was keeping Alvin at arm’s length. She was being faithful to his memory.
Faithful—because she loved him.
Grimly, he turned back to the girls. “Well, are we all ready now?”
Kathy looked up at him brightly. “Lord Dionysus, it’s so dark I can’t even see for sure what’s going on. How can we do any judging, if we can’t see?”
Forrester cursed Kathy for pointing out the flaw in his arrangements. Then, making a nice impartial job of it, he cursed himself for forgetting that what was perfectly visible to him was dark night to mortals.
“We can clear that up,” he said quickly. “As a matter of fact, I was just getting around to it. We will now proceed to shed a little light on the subject—said subject being our old friend Mr. Bottle.”
The trick had been taught to him by Venus, but he’d never had a chance to practice it. This was his first real experience with it, and he could only hope that it went off as it was supposed to.
He stepped into the middle of the circle, near Ed Symes’s stiff body and held his right hand above his head, thumb and forefinger spread an inch apart and the other three fingers folded into his palm.
Then he concentrated.
A long second ticked by, while Forrester tried to apply even more neural pressure. Then…
A small ball of light appeared between his thumb and forefinger, a yellow, cold sphere of fire that shed its radiance over the whole group. Carefully, he withdrew his hand, not daring to breathe. The ball of yellow fire remained in position, hanging in mid-air.
The muffled gasp from the circle of girls was, Forrester told himself, a definite tribute.
“Now don’t worry about it, girls,” he said. “That light’s only visible to the eight of us. Nobody else can see it.”
There was another little series of gasps.
Forrester grinned. “Can everybody see each other?”
A murmur of agreement.
“Can everybody see Mr. Bottle here?”
Another murmur.
“In that case, let’s go.” He stepped outside the circle of girls, reached in again for Ed Symes’s foot, and set the gentleman spinning once more.
Symes spun with a blinding speed, making a low, whistling noise. Forrester watched the body spin dizzily, just as anxious as the girls were to find out who the first winner was going to be. He thought of Millicent, who chewed gum and made it pop. He thought of Bette, the inveterate explainer and double-take expert. He tried to think of Dorothy and Jayne and Beverly and Judy, but the thought of Kathy, irritating and uncomfortable and too damned bright for her own good, got annoyingly in the way.
He was rather glad he had promised not to use his powers on the spinning figure. He was not at all sure which one of the girls he would have picked for Number One.
And he had, after all, given his word as a God. True, he wasn’t quite a God, only a demi-Deity. But he did feel that Dionysus might object to his name being used in vain. A promise, he told himself sternly and with some relief, was a promise.
After some time, Mr. Ed (Bottle) Symes began to slow perceptibly. The whistling died as Symes began rotating about his abdominal axis at a more and more leisurely rate. Seconds passed. Symes faced Bette…Millicent…Kathy…Judy…Bette again…
Forrester watched, fascinated.
Finally, Symes came to a halt. All the elaborate instructions in case the Bottle ended up pointing between two girls had been, Forrester saw, totally unnecessary. Symes’s head was pointing at one girl, and one girl alone.
She gave a little squeal of delight. The others began chorusing their congratulations at once, looking no more convincing than the runners-up in any beauty contest. Their smiles appeared to have been glued on loosely, and their voices lacked a certain something. Possibly it was sincerity.
“All right, that’s it for now.” Forrester turned to the winner. “My congratulations,” he said, wondering just what he was supposed to say. Not finding any appropriate words, he turned back to the group of six losers. “The rest of you girls can do me a big favor. Go get a couple of the Myrmidons to protect you, hunt around for the nearest wine barrel and confiscate it for me. It’s been a thirsty day.”
“Gee,” Jayne said. “Sure we will, Lord Dionysus.”
“Now take your time,” Forrester said, and the losers all giggled at once, like a trained chorus. Forrester grimaced. “Don’t come back till you find a barrel. Then we’ll play the game again.”
In a disappointed fashion, the six of them trooped off into the darkness and vanished to mortal eyes. Forrester watched them go and then turned to the winner, feeling just a little uncertain.
“Well, Kathy,” he started. “I—”
She flung herself on him with the avid girlishness