also, that you were picked not merely for your physical resemblance to Dionysus, but your psychological resemblance as well. Therefore, playing his part should be comparatively simple for you. Right?”
“I guess so,” Forrester said, feeling both expectant and a little hopeless about it all.
“Fine,” Vulcan said. “Now wait one moment.” He turned and limped over to a structure that looked like a sort of worktable. When he came back, he was carrying several objects in his big hands. He selected one, an ovoid about the size of a marble, colored a dull orange, and handed it to Forrester. “Swallow that.”
Forrester took it cautiously. As soon as he found out what he was supposed to do with the thing, its dimensions seemed to grow. It looked about the size of a golf ball in his shaking hands.
“Swallow it?” he said tentatively.
“Correct,” Vulcan said.
“But—”
“This object is a—well, call it a talisman. It will not dissolve, and it is recoverable, but for the Investiture it must be inside you.”
“But—”
“You will find it so easy to swallow that you will need no water. Go ahead.”
Forrester put the thing in his mouth and swallowed once, just to test Vulcan’s statement. The effect was surprising. He could barely feel it leave his tongue, and he couldn’t feel it go down at all. He swallowed again, experimentally, and explored the inside of his mouth with his tongue.
“It is gone,” Vulcan said. “Good.”
“It’s gone, all right,” Forrester said wonderingly.
“The sandals are next.” Vulcan selected a pair of sandals with rather thick soles and handed them over. They were apparently made of gold. Forrester obediently strapped them on, and Vulcan next handed him a pair of golden cylinders indented to fit his curved fingers.
“You hold these very tightly,” Vulcan said. “During the Investiture, you must grip them as hard as you can.” He peered closely at them and pointed to one. “This one goes in the left hand. The other goes in the right. Squeeze them as if—as if you were trying to crush them. All right?”
“All right,” Forrester said.
Vulcan nodded. “Good. From this moment on, do exactly as you are told. Answer questions truthfully. Keep nothing secret. Remember my instructions.”
“Right,” Forrester said doubtfully.
“Come on,” Vulcan said, heading for the wall. The inevitable Veil of Heaven appeared, and Forrester followed through it as before.
The room they entered was not, he thought, the same one they had been in before. Or, if it was, it had changed a great deal. It was difficult to tell anything for sure; the shifting walls looked the same, but they also looked like the shifting walls in Venus’ apartments.
At any rate, there were now no couches on the floor. The room seemed even bigger than before, and when the walls settled down to a steady golden glow, Forrester felt lost in the immensity of the place. In the center of the room was a raised golden dais. It was about five feet across and nearly three feet high.
The Gods were ranged around it in a semicircle, facing him. Vulcan slipped into an empty space in the line, and Forrester stood perfectly alone, holding the cylinders.
Zeus cleared his throat. “Step up on the dais,” he said.
Stumbling slightly, Forrester managed to do so without losing his grip on the cylinders.
In the center of the raised platform, with the Gods staring at him, he felt like something under a microscope.
“William Forrester,” Zeus said, and he shuddered. The All-Father’s voice had never been more powerful. “William Forrester, from this moment onward you will renounce your present name. You will be known as Dionysus the Lesser until and unless it shall please us to confer another name on you. Henceforth, you will be, in part, a recipient of the worship due to Dionysus, and you will hold the rank of demi-God. Do you accept these judgments and this honor?”
Forrester gulped. A long time seemed to pass. At last he found his voice. “I do,” he said.
“Very well,” Zeus said.
The Gods joined hands and closed the circle around Forrester, surrounding him completely. The golden auras that shone about their bodies grew more and more bright. Forrester clutched the golden cylinders tightly.
Then, very suddenly, there was an explosion of light. Forrester thought he had staggered, but he was never sure. Everything was too bright to see. Dizziness began, and grew.
The room whirled and tipped. Somewhere a great organlike note began, and went on and on.
Forrester convulsed with the force of a single great burst of energy that crashed through his nervous system.
And then, in a timeless instant, everything went black.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The morning of the Autumn Bacchanal dawned bright and clear—thanks to the intervention of the Pantheon. In New York, the leaves were only just beginning to turn, and the sun was still high enough in the sky to make the afternoons warm and pleasant. Zeus All-Father had promised good weather for the festival, and a strong, warm wind from the Gulf of Mexico was moving out the crisp autumn air before the sun had risen an hour above the horizon.
The practicing that had gone on in thousands of homes throughout the city was at an end. The Autumn Bacchanal was here at last, and the Beginning Service, which had started in the little Temple-on-the-Green right at dawn, when the sun’s rays had first touched the tops of New York’s towers, was approaching its end. The people clustered in the building, and the incomparably greater number scattered outside it, were feeling the first itch of restlessness.
Soon the Grand Procession would begin, starting as always from the Temple-on-the-Green and wending its slow way northward to the upper end of Central Park at 110th Street. Then the string of worshippers would turn and head back for the Temple at the lower end of the Park, with fanfare and pageantry on a scale calculated to do honor to the God of the festival, to outshine not only every other festival, but every past year of the Autumn Bacchanal itself.
The Autumn Bacchanal was devoted to the celebration of the harvest, and more specifically the harvest and processing of the grape. All the wineries for hundreds of miles around had shipped hogshead after hogshead and barrel after barrel of fine wine—red, white, rose, still, or sparkling—as joyous sacrifice to Dionysus/Bacchus, and in thanks that the fertility rites of the Vernal Bacchanal had brought them good crops. Wine flowed from everywhere into the city, and now the immense reserves were stacked away, awaiting the revels. Even the brewers and distillers had sent along their wares, from the mildest beer to vodka of 120 proof, joining unselfishly in the celebration even though, technically, they were not under Dionysian protection at all, but were the wards of Ceres, the Goddess of grain.
Celebrants, liquors, chants, preparations, balloons, confetti, edibles and all the other appurtenances of the festival spiraled dizzyingly upward, reaching proportions unheard of throughout history. And, in a back room at the Temple-on-the-Green, the late William Forrester sat, trying to forget all about them, and suffering from a continuous case of nerves.
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