The Face of Apollo

by Fred Saberhagen

  When Jeremy delivered the note, he was told to wait while a search was made. He got the impression that the effort might well consume an hour or more.

  While waiting, Jeremy encountered Carlotta, who had been sent here on a similar task. She volunteered to give him a tour of the library and the Hall of Statues.

  He was fascinated, and for the moment his real reason for being here was forgotten.

  The Academy complex was centered on an exhibition hall, which had been built in a different style of architecture and had been a temple to some specific god or gods. At least the building had been constructed to look like a temple, in which stood two rows of statues, facing one another under elaborate stone arches and across an expanse of yards of tiled floor, representing many of the known gods. One of the main structures of the Academy had been built on the ruins of some elder temple and incorpo­rating a portion of its framework.

  The library and hall of sculpture opened directly into each other—another way of looking at it was that they were both parts of the same vast room. The tall shelves created plenty of recesses, where a number of people could be unobserved.

  Carvings on the many pedestals and on the walls between them held a partial listing of gods. Hundreds of names, far more than were represented in the Hall of Statues.

  Jeremy's new memory informed him that the list contained mistakes, some of which his inner informant found amusing. Certain things that the signs and labels told him were simply wrong, though he certainly had no intention of trying to argue the fact.

  Carlotta, who in her two years of working with Arnobius had become something of a scholar in her own right, remarked that only a minority were from the Greek or Roman pantheons. Then she began to explain what that meant. Jeremy nodded, looking wide-eyed, though he'd had no trouble understanding the original comment, which had been made in an ancient lan­guage.

  One pedestal, unoccupied and set a little apart from the oth­ers, was marked: for the unknown god. The boy looked at it thoughtfully.

  Most of the statues in the great hall had been carved, or cast in metal, larger than human life, and many were only fragmen­tary. Obviously they were the work of many different sculptors, of varied degrees of talent. They had been executed at different times and were not meant to be all on the same scale. Some had obvious undergone extensive restoration.

  Fragments of learned conversation drifted in from the ad­joining rooms, where scholarly debates seemed to be going end­lessly and comfortably on.

  "It is, I think, inarguable that the true gods come and go in our world, absenting themselves from human affairs for a long time, only to return unexpectedly."

  "Whatever the truth of the matter earlier, before the unbind­ing of the odylic force many centuries ago, since then the gods' presence on earth has been cyclical.

  "Some scholars, our learned colleague Arnobius among them, argue passionately that the old gods have now once more re­turned and are now in the process of reestablishing their rule. Others refuse to credit the notion of divinity at all; nothing hap­pens in human affairs that cannot be explained in terms of human psychology."

  "Here, for example, is a statue of the Trickster. Like many other gods, he is known by several different names. He has more names than I can count—some of the better-known are Loki and Coyote."

  The display devoted to Coyote/Trickster caught Jeremy's eye, even among the diversity of the others in their long rows, because of its bewildering variety of images. Here was represented the god who possessed above all others the power of changing his shape.

  Jeremy thought Carlotta showed some signs of being emo­tionally perturbed when they came to this particular god. Right now he wasn't going to try to guess a reason.

  Here on a modest pedestal stood Aphrodite, in bronze and gloriously naked. The lettering on the pedestal cataloged her with a list of half a dozen alternate names, including Venus, some in different alphabets.

  Mars/Ares, arrayed with spear, shield, and helmet, had a place of honor—he was known to be a favorite of Lord Victor and several other wealthy patrons.

  Here stood Hephaestus/Vulcan, clad in his leather apron and little else, one leg crippled, a scowling expression on his face, and his great smith's hammer in his hand. How often I have seen him just so—but that thought had to be hastily reburied in new mem­ory, lest it bring on terror too great to be endured.

  Other names for the Fire-Worker resounded in Jeremy's new memory, evoking tales of wonder that he dared not pause to scan .. . Agni, the Vedic god of fire. Mulciber, a name from an­cient poetry.

  In the beginning, so the legends said, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades had been of equal strength and had divided up the universe among them. So it was according to the authorities of the Academy.

  "Is there a statue of Zeus somewhere?"

  "The people in charge have never been able to agree on what it should look like."

  And here Poseidon, the Earthshaker, who bore a trident among his other symbols.

  Other deities, from different pantheons, scattered through human history, had their own sections, rows of columns. The total appeared to be more than one hundred, and even Jeremy's augmented memory did not recognize them all.

  Another point that struck him was that there was no statue of Thanatos, the acknowledged ruler of the realm of Death. Maybe, Jeremy thought, no one had ever wanted, or ever made, a statue of him. Memory had heard it often said that the Pitiless God himself wanted no such representation.

  Other statues of gods and goddesses presented interesting ap­pearances also. Carlotta could tell some stories of them that even the Intruder had not heard before.

  Ancient books were stored here by the thousands, along with a great many volumes of lesser age. Some were on scrolls of vel­lum, some even on wax or carven tablets of wood or ivory or horn—of the few that were on display or left unrolled on a desk, accessible to his casual glance, there were none that Jeremy could not read.

  "What do you think you're doing there? Hey?" But it was a rather good-humored accusation, from a middle-aged scholar who sat surrounded by books.

  "I was reading, sir. Sorry if I—"

  "Reading that, were you? I'd gladly give a gold coin if you could tell me the meaning of that page."

  The boy looked down again at the worn scroll. Even the In­truder did not recognize all the words, some of which were likely only copyists' mistakes, but overall the text was concerned with arrangements for a funeral.

  "Sorry, sir. I've no idea."

  "Never mind. Get on about your business."

  It sometimes seemed to Jeremy, in the first days of his new life in the alien world of the Academy, that Arnobius and his colleagues must be blind, so determined did they seem to ignore what must be the glaring peculiarities of the Scholar's new servant lad. It was a fact that cattle and cameloids turned to look at Jeremy whenever he came near them and that he did indeed possess spe­cial powers of understanding languages. But all the supposed experts were intent on managing their own careers in their own way and had no interest in anything that might disrupt them.

  Jeremy was sure that more surprises, brought by the Intruder, still awaited his discovery; but he was in no hurry to confront them. He had his mission to accomplish.

  He was sure that Professor Alexander and Margaret Chalan­don ought to be here, somewhere; quite likely he had already seen them. But neither Jeremy nor his inner guide had any idea what either individual looked like, and there were thousands of people on the Academy grounds. It was hard to know where or how to begin a search.

  Without Jeremy's recently augmented memory, the world around him would have been alien indeed, and he would have spent his first days in a state of bewildered helplessness. As mat­ters stood, he was still frequently surprised, but never totally at a loss as to what he should do next.

  On the rare occasions when faculty members took any notice of him at all, they credited him simply with natural talent or good luck. Arnobius, like his colleagues, tende
d to assume that non-Academics were out of the running when it came to finding answers to the deep questions affecting all human lives.

  Not, someone commented, that the Academics themselves were doing very well at the task.

  Jeremy was on another routine errand for Arnobius when a man of about thirty-five, in Academic dress, grabbed him by the arm and demanded of him sharply: "Where did you get that knife and belt?"

  At first Jeremy thought his questioner was merely comment­ing on the impropriety of a servant going about the campus wearing a hunting knife—Arnobius himself hadn't seemed to notice, and so far no one else had commented. Knives were tools, after all, and workers carrying tools were a common enough sight.

  Jeremy, as he turned to confront his questioner, was aware of a sudden inward mobilization. The stirring of the Intruder be­hind his forehead was almost a physical sensation. What might be going to happen next he could not guess.

  Yet he felt no indication that anyone but himself, Jeremy Redthorn, was controlling his mind or body as he answered: "I had them from a friend of mine."

  The man was a little taller than average and appeared to be in excellent physical condition for a scholar. "What friend was this? Come, let's have the truth."

  "A friend who is now dead."

  "Man or woman?"

  "It was a woman."

  "Young or old?"

  "Young."

  "Her name?"

  Jeremy drew a deep breath and took the plunge. "The name she gave to me was Sal."

  Jeremy's questioner's manner changed again, and after taking a hasty look around he drew the boy aside to where they might hope to hold a private conversation.

  "And where was this?" he demanded in a low voice.

  "First, sir, you will tell me your name."

  When Jeremy's questioner stared at this insolence, the boy stared right back.

  After a few seconds the man's shoulders slumped slightly. He said: "Evidently you are more than you appear to be."

  Jeremy said nothing.

  "I am Professor Alexander."

  "Sir, I'm . . . I'm very glad indeed to have located you at last. Sal told me that I must find you and give you something."

  "What else did she give you, this young woman who called herself Sal? You say that she is dead?"

  "Yes. I'm sorry."

  His listener's shoulders slumped further.

  Jeremy pressed on. "The important thing she gave me is meant for you, but I can't hand it over right now."

  The relief in the professor's face was no less vast for being well concealed. "You have it safe, though?"

  Jeremy nodded.

  Then an interruption came, in the form of a loud group of students, just as Alexander was starting to explain matters to Je­remy. At least the man was promising Jeremy that he would be given an explanation in due course. But at the moment any fur­ther conversation was obviously impossible.

  There was only time for the Academic to demand: "Meet me in the stacks of the library, third alcove on the east wall, this evening at the eighth hour. Can you get away then?"

  Jeremy thought. "I can."

  "Bring it with you, without fail."

  When the appointed time came round, Jeremy, his evening his own as he had expected it would be, went to keep the rendezvous. His feet dragged, as he wondered if giving up the Face as he was bound to do was going to cost him his life. Also, he found him­self now intensely reluctant to give it up ... and never see the stars again. But at least he had been able to see them for a few nights, and for that he could thank Sal.

  Professor Alexander was at the appointed meeting place, a lonely and unfrequented alcove among the vast stacks of shelves. He sat at the small writing table, an oil lamp at his elbow—and his head slumped forward on his curved left arm. His right arm hung down at his side, and on the tiled floor below his hand lay the reed pen with which he had been about to write—some­thing—on the blank paper that lay before him.

  Jeremy put a hand on the man's shoulder—but there was no need to touch the body to be certain that it was dead. A quick, close look at Alexander's body revealed no visible signs of vio­lence.

  Thanatos had paid a visit. And Jeremy, looking out of the al­cove with frightened eyes, froze in absolute horror. Framed in a doorway some twenty yards away stood a lone figure. It was a man's shape, yet his left eye recognized in it at once the essence of Thanatos, God of Death. There was the unkempt dark beard, the fierce countenance, the hint of red and ghostly wings sprout­ing from his shoulders. And at the same time the figure was as thoroughly human as Jeremy himself, a beardless man dressed in a way that indicated he must be a member of the faculty.

  The God of Death. Jeremy Redthorn shrank back into the shadows. And the image of terror raised a hand in a casual ges­ture, a kind of wry salute to Apollo, before he backed through a doorway and disappeared.

  The thing, the man, the god, was gone. The boy slumped with the intensity of his relief and broke out in a cold sweat. There was to be no direct confrontation—not now, at least.

  Shivering as he made his way back toward the Scholar's quar­ters, Jeremy knew beyond a doubt that Alexander had been mur­dered and could only wonder why he himself had been spared.

  In his terror it was all he could do to keep from breaking into a dead run, heading for the gates, fleeing the Academy in a panic. But then he thought that now, as when confronted in the wild by a dangerous predator, that might be exactly the wrong thing to do.

  Now his only hope of keeping his promise to Sal lay in find­ing Margaret Chalandon. But he still knew nothing of her be­sides her name and the fact that she was a visiting scholar.

  A few hours later, when Alexander's dead body had been dis­covered by someone who reported it, great excitement spread through the Academy. Officially the death was blamed on natural causes, unexpected heart failure or something of the kind—a detailed examination had disclosed no signs of foul play, no marks of injury of any kind.

  Arnobius, like the great majority of his fellow Academics, was much upset when he heard of Alexander's death. He was also vaguely aware that his new servant was acting as if he were in some kind of difficulty or at least seemed to have taken on some new burden of worry.

  Carlotta was for the time being keeping in the background as far as Jeremy's affairs were concerned.

  Carlotta, as well as the head housekeeper, had given Jeremy some desultory instructions as to the skills and conduct expected from a personal servant. Oddly, as it seemed to him, his new memory was already furnished with a vastly greater store of information on the subject. To his teacher it appeared that Jeremy learned the job with amazing speed, as if he were able to get things right in­stinctively.

  The task was made easier by the fact that Jeremy's new mas­ter (who thought he was rewarding him handsomely by giving him a job of lowly status) rarely seemed to notice whether he was being served well or poorly—the Scholar's mind as usual re­mained on larger things.

  Repeated visits to the library, and also to the refectory, where ranking scholars took many of their meals, revealed more about the comfortably sheltered life of the ranking members of the Academy. Arnobius for the most part scorned, or rather ignored, such luxury and lived in rather ascetic style. Often his behavior surprised people who knew little about him except that he was the son of Lord Victor Lugard.

  In a way this seeker of contact with the gods was the black sheep of the family, among several other more warlike sons and cousins.

  Alcoholism and addiction to other drugs were definitely on the rise among those who professed skill in wizardry. So far, Arnobius showed no sign of any such tendency. All agreed that beginning several centuries ago, there had been a general decline in the world's magic. Gods had ceased to play a part in the affairs of humanity—or at least humanity had become less inclined to believe in such divine activity. But now, abruptly, within the last few weeks and months, signs and portents indicated that a gen­eral increase in magical energy was in
progress.

  The inconsistent rumors concerning the supposed recent bat­tle in the Cave of Prophecy between two gods were hotly de­bated, at every level of sophistication, here inside the Academy's walls and outside as well.

  From time to time Jeremy discussed the matter with his new friend, Ferrante, the young soldier. Neither of them were Acad­emics—Andy could barely read—but both were curious about the world.

  Ferrante admitted that he would like to learn to read well enough to try a book someday and to write more than his own name. Jeremy said he would try to find time to help him.

  Among the questions continually debated by the faculty was: Is magic a branch of philosophy? Many of the learned argued that it was the other way around. A third opinion held both to be branches of odylic science, by which the ancients had managed to transform the world.

  Some people continued to claim that real magic had ceased to exist, equating the time of its demise with that of the last with­drawal of the gods, which they put at various periods of between fifty and two hundred years in the past—the more extreme ar­gued that there never had been. The latter group included an in­fluential minority of political and military leaders, but their non-Academic ideas were not considered respectable here at the Academy.