The Second Randall Garrett Megapack. Randall Garrett

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СКАЧАТЬ got into position and looked up at the girls. “This one’s just for practice, so we can all see how it works.” He gave Symes’s extended foot a little push.

      Whee! he thought. Round and round the gentleman went, spinning quietly on his stomach, revolving in a merry fashion while the girls and Forrester watched silently. At last he slowed and stopped, his nose pointing at Bette and his toes at Dorothy.

      “Oh, my!” Dorothy said. “He’s pointing at me!”

      “He is not!” Bette said decisively. “His head points my way!”

      “But he—”

      “Temper, temper,” Forrester said. “No arguments. That one didn’t count, anyhow—it was just to see how he worked. And I do think he works very nicely, don’t you?”

      “Oh, yes, Lord Dionysus,” Kathy said. There was the same undertone in her voice, as if she were silently laughing at everything. She was, he told himself, an extremely unlikable young woman.

      The other girls agreed in a chorus. They were still studying the stiff body of Ed Symes. His stomach had made a little depression in the grass as he whirled, and he was now nicely bedded down for a real spin. Forrester rubbed his hands together.

      “Fine,” he said. “Now, all of you are going to be judges.”

      “Me, too?” Bette asked.

      Forrester nodded. “The head will be the determining factor. If our little Mr. Bottle’s head points to any one of you, that is the one I’ll choose first.”

      “See?” Bette said. “I told you it was his head.”

      “Well, I couldn’t tell before anybody said so,” Dorothy said. “And anyhow, I—”

      “Now, now, girls,” Forrester said, feeling momentarily like a Girl Scout troop leader. “Let’s listen to the rules, shall we? And then we can get down to playing the game.” He took a 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 СКАЧАТЬ