The Second Randall Garrett Megapack. Randall Garrett

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СКАЧАТЬ that case, let’s go.” He stepped outside the circle of girls, reached in again for Ed Symes’s foot, and set the gentleman spinning once more.

      Symes spun with a blinding speed, making a low, whistling noise. Forrester watched the body spin dizzily, just as anxious as the girls were to find out who the first winner was going to be. He thought of Millicent, who chewed gum and made it pop. He thought of Bette, the inveterate explainer and double-take expert. He tried to think of Dorothy and Jayne and Beverly and Judy, but the thought of Kathy, irritating and uncomfortable and too damned bright for her own good, got annoyingly in the way.

      He was rather glad he had promised not to use his powers on the spinning figure. He was not at all sure which one of the girls he would have picked for Number One.

      And he had, after all, given his word as a God. True, he wasn’t quite a God, only a demi-Deity. But he did feel that Dionysus might object to his name being used in vain. A promise, he told himself sternly and with some relief, was a promise.

      After some time, Mr. Ed (Bottle) Symes began to slow perceptibly. The whistling died as Symes began rotating about his ab­dominal axis at a more and more leisurely rate. Seconds passed. Symes faced Bette…Millicent…Kathy…Judy…Bette again…

      Forrester watched, fascinated.

      Finally, Symes came to a halt. All the elaborate instructions in case the Bottle ended up pointing between two girls had been, Forrester saw, totally unnecessary. Symes’s head was pointing at one girl, and one girl alone.

      She gave a little squeal of delight. The others began chorusing their congratulations at once, looking no more convincing than the runners-up in any beauty contest. Their smiles appeared to have been glued on loosely, and their voices lacked a certain something. Possibly it was sincerity.

      “All right, that’s it for now.” Forrester turned to the winner. “My congratulations,” he said, wondering just what he was supposed to say. Not finding any appropriate words, he turned back to the group of six losers. “The rest of you girls can do me a big favor. Go get a couple of the Myrmidons to protect you, hunt around for the nearest wine barrel and confiscate it for me. It’s been a thirsty day.”

      “Gee,” Jayne said. “Sure we will, Lord Dionysus.”

      “Now take your time,” Forrester said, and the losers all giggled at once, like a trained chorus. Forrester grimaced. “Don’t come back till you find a barrel. Then we’ll play the game again.”

      In a disappointed fashion, the six of them trooped off into the darkness and vanished to mortal eyes. Forrester watched them go and then turned to the winner, feeling just a little uncertain.

      “Well, Kathy,” he started. “I—”

      She flung herself on him with the avid girlishness of a Bengal tiger. “I have dreamed of this night since I was but a child! At last I am in your arms! I love you! Take me! I am yours, all yours!”

      “That’s nice,” Forrester said, taken far aback by the girl’s sudden onslaught. His immediate impulse was to unwind Kathy and set her back on her own feet, some little distance away, after which he could start again on a more leisurely basis. After all, he told himself, people ought to spend more time getting to know each other.

      But he remembered, just in time, that he was Dionysus. He conquered his first impulse and put his arms around her. As he did so, he discovered that his face was being covered with kisses. Kathy was murmuring little indistinct terms of endearment into his ear every time she reached it en route from one side of his face to the other.

      Forrester swallowed hard, tightened his grip and planted his lips firmly on Kathy’s. A blaze of startling heat shot through him.

      In a small corner at the back of his mind, a scroll unrolled. On it was written what Vulcan had told him about his mental attitude changing after Investiture. When he had been plain William Forrester, an attack like the one Kathy was making on him had pretty much chilled him for a while. But now he found himself definitely rising to the occasion.

      There was a passion to her kiss that he had never felt before, a rising tide of flame that threatened to char him. The movement of her mouth on his sent new fires burning throughout his body, and as her hands moved on him he was awakened to a new world, a world of consuming desires.

      He wished his own clothing away, and fumbled for a second at the two fastenings that held Kathy’s chiton in place. Then it was gone and there was nothing between them. They met, flesh to flesh, in a fiery embrace that grew as he forced her down and she responded eagerly, wildly, to his every motion. His lips traveled over her; her entire body was drowning him once and for all in an unbelievable red haze, unlike anything he had ever before experienced…a great wave of passion that went on and on, rising to a peak he had never dreamed of until his body shivered with the sensations, and he pressed on, rising still higher in an ecstasy beyond measure.…

      His last spasm of tension turned out the God-light.

      * * * *

      She lay in his arms on the grass, holding him almost as tightly as he held her. He felt exhausted, but he knew perfectly well that he wasn’t. A God was a God, after all, and Kathy was only the hors d’oeuvres of a seven-course dinner.

      “You’re wonderful,” Kathy said in a soft whisper at his ear. “Absolutely wonderful. More wonderful than I could ever dream. I—”

      She was interrupted by a strange, harsh voice that bellowed from somewhere nearby.

      “All right, bitch!” it said. “Get the hell up from there! And you too, buster!”

      Forrester jerked his head up in astonishment and froze. Kathy looked up, fright written all over her face.

      The man standing over them in the darkness looked like a prize-fighter, one who had taken a number of beatings, but always given better than he had received. His arms were akimbo, his feet planted as firmly as if he were a particularly stubborn brand of tree. He glared down at them, his face expressive of anger, hatred—and, Forrester thought dully, a complete lack of respect for his God.

      The man barked: “You heard what I said! On your feet, buster! If I have to kick your teeth in, I want to do it when you’re standing up!”

      Forrester’s jaw dropped. Then, as the initial shock left him, anger boiled in to take its place. He toyed with the idea of blasting this mortal who showed such disrespect to a God. He sprang to his feet, ready to move, and then stopped.

      Maybe the man was crazy. Maybe he was just some poor soul who wasn’t responsible for his own actions. It would be merciful, Forrester thought, to find out first, and blast the intruder afterward.

      He looked around. Twenty yards away, the encircling Myrmidons still stood, their backs to the scene, as if nothing at all were going on.

      Forrester blinked. “How’d you get in here, anyway?”

      The man barked a laugh. “None of your business.” He turned to Kathy, who had devoted the previous few seconds to getting her chiton on again. Hurriedly, Forrester wished back his own costume. Kathy got up, staring straight back at the intruder. Fear was gone from her face, and a kind of calmness that Forrester had never seen before possessed her now.

      “So!” the intruder bellowed. “The minute my back is turned, off you go! By the Stars СКАЧАТЬ