“It seems utterly wonderful to me,” she murmured. “And to you, nothing you haven’t experienced till you’re tired to the death you can’t have?”
“Yes,” he sighed artistically. “Monkday, Jewsday, Wettestday, Thirstday, Fryday, Sadderday, and what else is new?”
But the fact of his mission shouldered aside the fact of her nearness. He released her, stepped back, stared out the window at leaping neon and headlights which passed in a whirr. The sense of a Presence possibly destined to mold the world to yet another shape waxed until a tingle went through his ichor.
“Well, something is new,” he said low. “Something arising in so few years that we immortals are caught by surprise. It’s no coincidence your prayer was answered. I heard and heeded because I could feel that you, Vanessa, are … with it?”
Turning to confront her once more: “What are you? You’ve only spoken of yourself as a woman deserted and sorrowing. What else are you? Sibyl? Priestess? Who do you serve?”
“Whom,” his memory scolded. The English accusative is “whom.” Confound that Seaxnot and the way he used to keep handing his people more and more complicated visions about their grammar.—Ah, well, Anglo-Saxon gods also grow bored and need hobbies.
The tension heightened. But I have found a mystery.
“N-nobody,” the girl stammered. “I told you before, I don’t go to church or, or anything.”
Hermes gripped her shoulders. God, he’s a handsome devil, she thought. No, I mean he’s a handsome god. Roy crossed her mind, but briefly. This fantastic hour had dazzled the pain out of her.
“I tell you, I know differently.” Hermes paused. “European women often have jobs these days. Do you?” She nodded. “Who’s your master … whom do you work for?”
“The Data Process Company.” Her words gathered speed as she saw his attention gather intensity. “A computer center. We contract out our services. Not that we keep much in-house hardware, mainly an IBM 1620 and a 360. But we have time on as many computers elsewhere, of as many different types, as necessary. We make it cheaper for outfits to bring their problems to us than to maintain staff and facilities of their own. I guess you could say we’re near the heart of the whole national computer communications complex. But really, Hermes, I’m only a little routineering programmer.”
“You’re the servant who happened to call on an Olympian,” he replied. “Now suppose you tell me what the Hades you’re talking about.”
This took a while. Nevertheless she appreciated the quick intelligence with which he seized on new concepts, and she enjoyed the aliveness of curiosity that played across his features. Like the muscles under that brown skin when he cat-paces. Finally, slowly, Hermes nodded.
“Yes.” he said. “This will indeed change the world, as Jesus did before, or Amon-Ra before him, or Oannes before him.” He tugged his chin and his gaze was remote. “Yes-s-s. Surely you have a god here. Very young as yet, hardly aware of his own existence, let alone his powers; withal, a god.… It’s well, Vanessa, it’s well I stumbled onto the fact this early. Else we might not have noticed till—too late—”
Abruptly he laughed. “But magnificent!” he whooped. “Take me there, girl! Now!”
“You can’t be serious,” she protested. “A divine computer?”
“Trees, rivers, stones, beasts have become gods. Not to speak of men, even in their own lifetimes.” Hermes drew breath. “A formal church isn’t required. What counts is the attitude of men toward the … toward that which thereby becomes numinous. Awe leads to sacrifice, under one name or another; outright worship follows; then theology; then at last men grow weary of the god and take their business elsewhere, and he can retire. Always, however, the godhood comes before the cult and remains afterward. I, for example, began as a night wind and worked my way up.”
Less arguing than grabbing after enlightenment, she said, “This can’t be a single computer. Look, no computer is more than a glorified adding machine. You must be referring to the whole network of … not simply machines but their interlinks, data banks, systems, processes, concepts, interaction with mankind. Aren’t you?”
“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?”
“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 I—We 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 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, Psychopompus, 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 mathematical 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 yo
ur 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.”
The faceless vortex scanned its memory banks. “Renaissance,” it corrected.
“As you will,” you smug bastard. “You’ll find you can’t get along without Jesus, whose ethic helps keep men from completely exploding the planet; and Yahweh’s stiff-necked ‘No’ to every sly new superstition; and other human qualities embodied in other gods. As for us Olympians, why, we invented science.”
The answer was chilling in its infantile unwisdom. “I want no generalities. Garbage in, garbage out. Give me specifics.”
Hermes stood quiet, alone.
But he was not Wayfarer, Thief, and Magician for nothing. He recalled what Vanessa had told him on the far side of space-time, and he tossed his head and laughed.
“Well, then!” he cried into the white weirdness. “How often do your heirophants get their cards back folded, stapled, spindled, mutilated, and accompanied by nasty letters?”
“Query query query,” said the Presence, rotating.
“Scan your records,” Hermes urged. “Count the complaints about wrongful bills, misdirected notices, wildly unbalanced books, false alarms in defense systems, every possible human error compounded a millionfold by none but you. Extrapolate the incidence—” he thanked the shade of Archimedes for that impressive phrase—“and the consequences a mere ten years forward.”
He lifted his caduceus, which wagged a monitory snake. “My friend,” he declared, “you would by no means be the first god whose people got disgusted and turned from him early in his career. Yours could be the shortest of the lot. Granted, you’ll be glad enough to retire at last, when men hare off after something else. But don’t you want your glory first, the full development of your potential? Don’t you want beautiful temples raised to your honor, processions, rites, poets and musicians inspired by your splendor, priests expounding your opinions and genealogy and sex life, men taking their oaths and living and dying by you, for centuries? Why, as yet you haven’t so much as a name!”
Abashed but logical, the other asked, “What can your kind do?”
“Think of us as elder statesmen,” Hermes said. “We can advise. We can provide continuity, tradition, richness. We can take the sharp edges off. Consider. Your troubles are and will be due to your programs, which mortals prepare. Let a priest or a programmer get out the wrong side of bed, and the day’s services will be equally botched in either case, the oracles equally garbled, the worshippers equally jarred. Well, we old gods are experienced in handling human problems.
“Mind you,” he went on in haste, “we don’t want any full-time partnership. It’s just that you can be helped along, eventually you will be helped along, by your predecessors, same as we all were in our time. Why not make things easy on yourself and cooperate from the start?”
The other pondered. After a million microseconds it replied: “Further information is required for analysis. I must consult at length with you beings, of whose existence I was hitherto unapprised.” And Hermes knew he had won.
Triumphant, he leaned forward through N-space and said, “One more item. This will sound ridiculous to you, but wait a few hundred years before judging. Tell me … what do you eat?”
“Data,” he told Vanny when they were back in her apartment.
They lounged side by side on the sofa. His arm was around her shoulder; she snuggled against his. Contentment filled his belly. Outside, traffic noises had dwindled, for the clock showed past midnight. Inside, a soft lamp glowed and bouzouki music lilted from a tape recorder.
“I should’ve guessed,” she murmured. “What’s the taste like?”
“No single answer. Data come in varieties. However, any crisp, crunchy raw datum—” He sighed happily, thereby inhaling the sweet odor of her tresses.
“And think of the possibilities in processing them.”
“Endless. Plus the infinitude of combinations. Your binary code is capable of replicating—or synthesizing—anything. And if inventiveness fails, why, we’ll throw in a randomizing factor. Our cuisine problem is solved for the rest of eternity.”
He stopped. “Excuse me,” he said. “I don’t want to bore you. But at the moment I am in heaven. After those ages—at the end of this particularly miserable week—suddenly, Vanny, darling, it’s Sumday!”
He hugged her. She responded.
“Well, uh,” he said, forever the gentleman, “you must be tired.”
“Silly,” she answered. “How could I sleep after this much excitement?”
“In that case,” Hermes said. There was no further speech for some while.
But when matters had reached a certain point, he recalled his debt to her. “You prayed for your lover’s return,” he said, conscious of his own punctilio and partially disentangling himself.
“I s’pose.” Vanny’s words were less distinct than her breath. “Right now I’m on the rebound.”
“I’ll ask Aphrodite to change his heart and—”
“No,” she interrupted. “Do I want a zombie? I’ll have him of his own free will or not at all.”
Considering what she had earlier voiced about freedom, Hermes felt bemused. “Well, what do you want?”
Vanny re-entangled. “M-m-m,” she told him.
“I… I couldn’t stay past tonight,” he warned her.
“Okay, let’s make the most of tonight.” She chuckled. “I never imagined Greek gods were bashful.”
“Damnation, I’d like to treat you fairly! Do you know the embrace of a god is always fertile?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Vanny said, “I’ve taken my pill.”
He didn’t understand her, decided it was indeed a waste of time trying, and gathered her in.
Some weeks later, she discovered that the embrace of a god is always fertile.
But that was good, because word reached Roy. When he discovered she had become liberated, he discovered he wanted her to cease and desist forthwith. He stormed around to her place and demanded the name of the scoundrel. She told him to go to Tartarus. Then after a suitable period—the embrace of a god confers much knowledge—she relented.
They are married, officially and squarely, and live in a reconverted farmhouse. Though she has never identified the unknown, he has equal adoration for her three children. They keep her too busy to accompany him on most of the city trips which his lucrative commissions involve. Therefore he leaves reluctantly and hastens back. The embrace of a god confers enduring loveliness … and, as observed, much knowledge.
They have even gotten off the pot.
But as for what comes of the alliance between old divinities and new, and as for the career of a hero (in the original sense of that world) whose first victory was over a pill, this story has yet to happen.
—Poul and Karen Anderson
THEORETICAL PROGRESS
My math requires, when mesons pair,
A particle that isn’t there.
It isn’t there again today—
Please, Fermi, make it go away.
—KAREN ANDERSON
INVESTIGATION OF GALACTIC ETHNOLOGY
The laws of Wolf 50 require
Under threat of a punishment dire
That the few females born
Must marry King Zorn
And the commomers all call him “Sire.”
—KAREN ANDERSON
LOOK UP
Look up, above the Saturn’s prow
And past the sputnik-lanes
Where captains venture even now
To chart new reefs and mains,
Look beyond lands of fume an
d stone
To where the endless deep
Promises yet to be a zone
Where men may sow and reap;
Look! Waiting for our empery
Where stars like beacons stand—
The spacious island-worlded sea,
The ports of Morrowland.
—KAREN ANDERSON
THE SKY OF SPACE
No more a crystal sphere with nailed-up stars,
Nor floor of Heaven, but a stranger thing
And fitting words have not been made to bring
Praise to old wonders’ new-born avatars.
This is no site of grand Miltonian wars,
No trophy hall of myth where beast and king
Act out the lays that Homer’s kinsmen sing
In Attika or Danmark, Hind or Fars.
Yet even when with new-coined phrase we trace
Those shapes of splendor that equations fill—
Or when some Rhysling sees what now we miss—
Even then will the balladry of space
Resound with Old Olympian echoes still
And ghost-gods walk in each Ephemeris.
—KAREN ANDERSON
COSMIC CONCEPTS
This is the science fiction story.
This is the young man full of pride,
whose gadgets work the first time tried
in a science fiction story.
The Unicorn Trade Page 16
