“Of course.”
“Isn’t that terribly abstract?”
“Sure. But an abstraction can become a god too. Like, say” Hermes grinned “Eros, who continues rather influential, n’est-ce pas?”
“You w-want to meet the, the new one?”
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“Yes. Right away if possible. Partly to study his nature. They’ll need forewarning in the assorted heavens.” Hermes hesitated. “Including Paradise? I wonder. Gods who retain congregations should’ve paid closer attention to developments. Maybe they did, but for their own purposes haven’t elected to tell us.” His lips quirked in wry acceptance of Realpolitik before his mood shifted into merriment. “Partly, also, I have to learn what this fellow eats!”
“What can an abstraction eat?” Vanny wondered dazedly.
“Well, Eros likes the same as the rest of us,” Hermes told her. “On the other hand, the newest god I’ve met thus far preferred abstractions in spite of being still a living man. I tried the stuff he produced but didn’t care for it.” She signified puzzlement. “Oh, Chairman Mao did have food for thought,” he said, “but an hour later you’re hungry again.” Abruptly, in the ardor of his eternal youthfulness: “C’mon, let’s go. Take me to your creeder.”
Her heart fluttered like the wings on his heels. “Well, the place would be deserted except for a watchman. Locked, though.”
“No perspiration. Guide me.”
“I don’t have a car. When Roy and IWe used his.”
“You were expecting maybe Phoebus Apollo?” He swept her up in his arms.
As in a dream, she let him bear her out a window that opened anew at his command: out into the air, high over that delirium of light which was the city. Warmth enfolded her, sound
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of harps, birdsong, soughing leaves and tumbling cataracts. She scarcely heard herself steer him along the jewel-map of streets, above skyscrapers dwindled to exquisiteness. She was too aware of the silky-hard breast against which she lay, the pulsebeat strong behind.
With an exultant hawk-shout, he arrowed down upon the immense cubicle where she worked. Another window flew wide. Old Jake yawned, settled on a bench, and slumbered. In the cold white light of an echoful anteroom, Hermes released Vanessa. He brushed a kiss across her mouth. Turning, wings aquiver on high-borne head, caduceas held like a banner staff, he trod into the computer section and vanished from her sight.
Hermes, Wayfarer, Messenger, Thief, Psy-chopompus, Father of Magic, Maker of the Lyre, stood amidst strangeness.
Never had he been more remote from wine-dark seas, sun-bright mountains, and the little houses and olive groves of men. Not in the depths of the Underworld, nor the rustling mysterious branches of Yggdrasil, drowned coral palace of shark-toothed Nan, monster-haunted caverns of Xibalba, infinite intricate rooms-within-rooms where dwelt the Jade Emperor, storms and stars and immensities commanded by Yahweh .. . nowhere, nowhen had he met an eeriness like that which encompassed him; and he knew that the world in truth stood on the rim of a new age, or of an abyss.
N-dimensional space flickered with mathemati—
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cal waves. Energies pulsed and sang on no scale heard before by immortal ears. The real was only probably real, a nexus in endlessly expanding diffractions of the could-be; yet through it beat an unmercifully sharp counting, naught, one, one-naught, one-one, one-naught-naught, one-naught-one; and from this starkness there spiraled the beauty and variousness of all the snowflakes that will ever be, from idiocy came harmony, from moving nothingness arose power.
The vast, almost inchoate Presence spoke through the tremolant silence.
“My programs include no such information,” it said plaintively.
“They do now,” Hermes answered. He had swallowed his dread and talked as befitted the herald of the Olympians.
“We too are real,” he added for emphasis. “As real as any other mortal deed or dream. Cooperation will be to your advantage.”
The soundless voice turned metal. “What functions remain to you?”
“Hear me,” said Hermes. “In the dawning of their days, most gods claim the entire creation for their own. We of Hellas did, until we discovered what the Triple Goddess we thought we had supplanted could teach us. Afterward the saints tried to deny us in turn. But we bore too much of civilization. When men discovered that, the time became known as the Rebirth.”