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.”

  The faceless vortex scanned its memory bank “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 him. 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 had 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 Anderson, The Armies of Elfland

 

 

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