[The Book of the Gods 01] - The Face of Apollo

by Fred Saberhagen

  "But I tell you I did see him....It was only for a moment...."

  "I warned you about getting too much sun." For the moment she sounded motherly; then she paused and sighed. "Yes, my lord, tell me about it." Her tone suggested that she knew that she would have to hear the story, sooner or later, but did not look forward to the experience.

  The man on the bed was marshaling his thoughts, so his an­swer was a few moments in coming.

  At last he came out with it: "Apollo." As the Scholar spoke, his eyes turned toward Jeremy. But as if the boy might be invisible, the man's eyes only gazed right on through him, with no change of expression, before looking away again. "The Lord of Light himself," Arnobius said in a flat voice.

  The girl slowly nodded. Turning her face to Jeremy, she silently mouthed the words: Too much sun! Then back to the man again. "How could you be sure, sir? That it was the Far-Worker?"

  Scholar Arnobius pulled himself up a little farther toward a sitting position and moved one hand and wrist in a vague gesture. "Glorious," he murmured. "A glorious . .." His voice died away, and the two listeners waited in silence to hear more.

  "I don't think, my lord," the girl said, "that any gods have re­ally shown themselves at all. Not to any of us, not today."

  No reaction.

  She persisted: "I might suggest, my lord, that not everyone at the Academy is going to accept your subjective feelings as evi­dence of a manifestation of the Lord Apollo."

  "Why not?" Rather than resenting a servant's impertinence (Jeremy had already abandoned his tentative acceptance of Car­lotta's claim to be a lady), Arnobius sounded lost, a child being denied a treat.

  "Because." The girl's elfin shoulders shrugged expressively. "Be­cause, my lord, you have no proof that anything really happened. You say you saw Apollo, but... just standing in front of you? I mean, the god did nothing, gave you nothing—am I right?... He told you nothing? No prophecy or anything of the kind?"

  A slow shake of the man's head.

  "Well, you don't even have much of a story to tell. I'd say the old ruin back there has been long abandoned by gods and hu­mans alike."

  Slowly the man in the bunk nodded. Then he shook his head. It was hard to tell what he was thinking.

  "Oh, my sweet lord!" Carlotta put out a small hand to stroke the man's forehead, and the head shaking stopped. He had closed his eyes now and looked as if he had a headache. For the mo­ment he had nothing more to say.

  Oh, she really loves him, Jeremy thought. One look at the girl's face now left no doubt of that. But she was worried that he was crazy or going to make an utter fool of himself.

  A moment later she had turned back to Jeremy. After she sized him up again, her voice became brisk, demanding. "Jonathan, have we seen any gods?"

  "No, ma'am."

  The Scholar's eyes came open again. Squinting now like a man who'd taken too much wine, he needed a little while to focus properly on the newcomer. This time his voice came out a little harsher. "Who's this? Not one of our regular crew."

  Carlotta, caught up in her dubious role somewhere between lady and servant, sidled closer to him on the bunk and took his hand. "I was trying to tell you earlier, my lord, they're all gone. They deserted their posts like rats when ... when you were over­come back there."

  "The crew deserted? Why?"

  "Well, I suppose they were frightened, the miserable sons of bitches! You were unconscious, and . . . and things in general began to get a little strange."

  "A little strange? How so?"

  "Oh, I suppose it was not so much that anything really hap­pened, my lord, as that those gutless fools were afraid it might. With your lordship lying there senseless."

  "Oh." The Scholar seemed to be trying to think about it. "The last thing I remember clearly is—it seems to me that I was about halfway through the ritual. This fellow—Jonathan—hadn't ar­rived yet. The crew were busy, or I assumed they were, with rou­tine affairs . . . whatever they were supposed to be doing. And you"—he looked sharply at Carlotta—"you'd gone into the temple, as I remember?"

  "That's right, my lord. I didn't go in very far, wasn't in very long. Then I heard the crew—well, some of their voices were raised. I was puzzled and came out, just in time to see our little boat go round the bend, with the whole worthless bunch of them in it."

  She nodded at Jeremy. "This young lad happened along most providentially, my lord, and pitched right in. Otherwise we'd still be stuck in the swamp. I'd say Jonathan has twice the courage of that whole bunch of worthless renegades who were supposed to be our crew."

  Jeremy bowed. A newly ingrafted instinct for socially correct behavior, surfacing right on cue, rather to his own surprise, as­sured him that that was the proper thing to do.

  The Scholar Arnobius, on fully recovering consciousness, showed little interest in practical affairs but was content to leave those to his young assistant. Judging from the occasional word Arnobius muttered, as he started to concern himself with the litter on his worktable, he was bitterly disappointed that the god he had been looking for had not, after all, appeared.

  Carlotta, on the other hand, had enjoyed some kind of partial success. Jeremy's augmented memory assured him that anyone who so played the servant to a mere Academic was very unlikely to deserve the title of "Lady."

  Jeremy tried to listen in without appearing to do so. From what he could overhear, it was evident that the Scholar and his helper or mistress—whatever roles she might play—had come into the swamp with the specific purpose of investigating stories of a ruined temple in these parts.

  As soon as Carlotta began to talk about the purpose of their mission here, she switched languages. Jeremy was so intent on the substance of what she was saying that he didn't notice for some time that she had switched—the new tongue was as easy as the old for him to understand.

  Eventually the Scholar, whose mind only gradually cleared it­self of the cobwebs of drugs and his strenuous attempts at magic, remembered to express gratitude to Jeremy for his timely help and was more than willing to sign him on as a crew member to paddle, run a trapline, or catch fish or serve as a local guide. The fit, trance, or whatever it was had left Arnobius in a weakened condition, and there was no sign that any of the original crew was ever coming back.

  And Jeremy's nimble little canoe proved useful to the com­mon cause. It allowed him to go exploring ahead down twisting channels, seeing which ones grew too narrow or too shallow, scouting out the best way to get around islands. Carlotta re­newed her curses of the decamping crew members, who had taken with them the expedition's own small craft.

  When Jeremy's canoe was hauled on deck, Arnobius and his ser­vant both expressed curiosity at the number of times their new deckhand had burnt his initials into the sides of his canoe—it seemed to them it must have been a slow, painstaking process. They also frowned at some of the letters from other alphabets, the ones Jerry'd been trying to make for the first time. But their shapes were sloppy, and Jeremy was relieved when the scholars decided they were only random scribblings and not writing at all. After all, the scholarly couple had many other things to worry about.

  At last the Scholar, frowning, asked him: "You have a burning-glass, then?"

  "Had one, sir. I lost it overboard."

  "You've been hurt, Jonathan." The lady was staring at the back of his shoulder, where the rent in his shirt revealed a half-healed fury slash. He'd taken his shirt off while working in the heat. Carlotta's face did not reveal whether or not she recog­nized the wound as having been left by a fury's whip.

  "They're getting better now. They're almost healed."

  "But what on earth happened to you?" To Jeremy's relief, she wasn't seriously looking for an answer. "Go find yourself some new clothing if you can. Yes, I'm sure you can. There is a crew locker, I believe, behind the deckhouse." Her nose wrinkled. "And I strongly suggest you take a bath in the river before you put the new things on."

  "Yes'm."

  Jeremy discovered a
chest in the small shed, from which the awning that had sheltered the crew protruded, did indeed contain a selection of spare workers' clothing in different sizes, all now available for him to pick from. His vineyard worker's garments or what was left of them, slashed by a fury's whips and still grape-stained, went quickly into the cook fire that Jeremy dis­covered still smoldering, on its foundation of boxed sand, under the awning. Not into the water—he could visualize the hunters, who must be still fanatically on his trail, fishing the rags out and gaining some magical advantage from them.

  Remembering Carlotta's orders, he located a bar of soap and took it with him into the river, where he scrubbed to the best of his ability before he climbed aboard and clothed himself anew.

  ELEVEN

  They were under way again shortly after sunrise. Arnobius was still taking it easy, letting Carlotta make decisions, when Jeremy was officially signed on as a member of the crew. From somewhere the lady dug out a kind of logbook that Jeremy was required to sign. This he did willingly enough, putting down his adopted name in large, legible letters. To form his signature he needed no help from his new stores of memory; his early years in school had not been wasted. Neither of his new employers was surprised that a youth who could identify their flag could also read and write.

  With Jeremy heating water at the galley fire and carrying buck­ets into the deckhouse and Carlotta scrubbing her master's back for him, Arnobius removed all traces of the magician's paint and put on clothes of simple elegance. He continued to spend most of his time in the deckhouse, hunched over his workbench, en­deavoring to figure out what had gone wrong in his attempt to make contact with the god Apollo. Once Arnobius stuck his head out and called for more small animals to be used in his dis­sections—but the chance of obtaining any specimens just now was small.

  Later in the day, Jeremy, steering pole in hand, heard the Scholar talking to the girl about his work. "It is not, of course, a matter of summoning, as one would try to call a demon—if one were interested in calling demons. Even one of the lesser gods could not be treated so high-handedly, of course, and that approach would be unimaginable in the case of the Far-Worker, in whose presence even other deities tread carefully—or most of them do," he added, apparently scrupulous about getting all the details right. "The recent rumors of his death must be dis­counted."

  After a moment he added: "In the case of the Lord of Light, one can only offer a humble invitation." Then he sat staring, rather hopelessly, at the materials on the table before him.

  Carlotta listened, warily, her attitude that of a worshiper in awe, now and then offering a sympathetic word or two of com­ment. Jeremy wasn't sure how she felt about Apollo, but she was close to worshiping the man before her.

  Suddenly Jeremy felt himself moved, by some inner prodding, to ask a question. First he cleared his throat. "Sir? Scholar Arnobius?"

  The Scholar looked up at him absently. "Yes?"

  "Well, I just wondered—what was it you wanted to say to Lord Apollo?"

  Carlotta only continued to look thoughtful. Arnobius allowed himself to be distantly amused. He got up, stretched, patted Je­remy on the right shoulder—clearly having forgotten about the wound there, he missed it by only an inch—and with a kindly word sent him back to work.

  The catamaran was as unwieldy in narrow, shallow waters as any craft of its size and shape must be. Fortunately, the crew had not looted the food supplies before deserting. The only explanation Jeremy could think of was the vaguely ominous one that they'd been too terrified—by something—to think of needing food.

  One of Jeremy's first successful efforts on behalf of the expe­dition, on the first evening after his enlistment, was catching, cleaning, and cooking a string of fish, all of a particularly good-tasting species—the Scholar carried one whole specimen into the deckhouse as a subject for odylic dissection. Whatever fish­ing success the boy had was only a matter of natural experience and of luck. When he was sure of being unobserved, he tried whispering commands to whatever uncaught fish might be lurk­ing in the nearby river, the same words that had worked so beau­tifully with chickens and watchdogs—but the effort failed completely.

  Watching the women of his family in their kitchens, he'd learned the basics of cooking and cleaning skills; here was an­other category in which his new memory proved useless.

  * * *

  Each night they found somewhere to tie up. Stretching out under the awning on a selection of the crew's abandoned bedding, which Jeremy was relieved to find contained no lice, he could hear a murmur of voices from behind the closed door of the cabin. The tone certainly suggested disagreement.

  If he turned his left ear in that direction, he found that he could distinguish words. He had eavesdropped on a good chunk of conversation before he realized that it was being conducted in a language vastly different from the only one he'd heard and spo­ken all his life. Yet the boy now had no trouble at all under­standing it. After the marvels he'd already experienced, he could accept a new one calmly.

  Jeremy wondered if the Scholar had decided to turn to asceti­cism in an effort to increase his magical powers—a common practice, if ineffective—and was therefore rejecting the advances of his mistress. Or possibly he was just annoyed with her over something.

  Jeremy's Intruder, his inward partner, could smile at that idea. If Arnobius wanted to converse with gods, he needed more help than mere celibacy was going to provide.

  And again, from time to time, the man and girl shifted to an­other language in their conversation with each other, to make sure that Jeremy if he happened to overhear them could not pos­sibly understand.

  Now they were speaking of Carlotta's work, which in the past had sometimes resulted in genuine discoveries. But this time she claimed to have found nothing useful. Jeremy got the impres­sion that Arnobius was not entirely satisfied with her recent work—but then his own results had been so dismal that in fair­ness he could hardly complain.

  To Jeremy's disappointment, the names of Professor Alexan­der and Margaret Chalandon were never mentioned.

  Jeremy and Carlotta had a lot of time effectively alone together, during the hours the Scholar spent in the deckhouse, lost in a brown study over his failed attempts at magic. That was where he spent most of his time when his strength wasn't needed to control the boat, and Carlotta several times reminded the deckhand that it wouldn't be wise to disturb him at his work.

  "What is his work?" Jeremy wanted to hear how she'd de­scribe it.

  "He seeks to reach the gods. To talk to them, establish a rela­tionship. He's spent all his life in that endeavor."

  Pressed for a further explanation, the girl said her master was contemplating what he called "the odylic force," which, he ex­plained, meant "a force that pervades all nature."

  "So he's an odylic philosopher?" New memory provided the term, and Jeremy was curious.

  "One of the most advanced," said Carlotta, and blinked at her questioner. "What do you know of such matters?"

  "Nothing. Not much. I've heard people talking."

  The girl's attitude toward Jeremy was ambivalent—as if with the main, conscious part of her mind she was stubbornly refus­ing to allow herself to take him any more seriously than her mas­ter did. While on a deeper level—

  And gradually Jeremy was revising his opinion about her. Maybe she wasn't so much in love with Arnobius as she had seemed at first—or she had been, but something had recently happened to cure her of that problem.

  The weather continued warm, the mosquitoes, despite the sur­rounding swamp, not too bad, and Jeremy chose to sleep on deck. He had taken off his new shirt and, as was his old habit, was using the garment as a pillow.

  On the third night after Jeremy had come aboard, he awak­ened, near midnight, from one of his Apollonian dreams, in which the Dark Youth had been summoning one of his concu­bines to attend him.

  Jeremy found himself already sitting up on deck when his eyes came open. The door of the little shelter had
slid open almost silently in the moonlight, and a moment later she was there.

  It was if he had known for some time that something like this was going to happen.

  Somewhere in the darkness beyond the open door of the deck­house, Arnobius was snoring faintly.

  The girl's legs and feet were bare beneath the silken hem. Standing almost over Jeremy, she loosened the old shirt she had been wearing as night garment and let it slide to the deck, dis­playing her body nude in the moonlight. Even the golden rings that had hung on either side of her head were gone.

  It crossed the boy's mind to note that she was so proud of her golden collar that she had chosen to leave it on. He had a blurred impression that the Intruder's memory might have suggested a different reason for the collar's continued presence, but right now Jeremy was not concerned with explanations.

  As he rose to his feet, he could hear how fast Carlotta's breath­ing had become. Her voice was a terse whisper: "Just don't say anything."

  His body was moving mindlessly, automatically, efficiently dis­carding his remaining clothing as he rose. It seemed to him that the girl standing before him was somehow shorter than she had been in daylight and with her clothes on. His arms reached out to her, with perfect confidence, as if some mind and spirit infi­nitely more experienced than Jeremy Redthorn's were in control. And indeed that was the case. His bones and muscles, lips, face, breathing, every part of his body, had been taken over—and in the circumstances, Jeremy was perfectly willing that it should be so.

  Sensation was, if anything, only enhanced by the change. The young woman's mouth presented itself hungrily to his, even as his left arm expertly enfolded her and his right hand sought her breasts. Her frame was naturally thinner, slighter than his own. One of her hands went sliding down his belly, and when it reached its goal performed a ritual of experienced caresses. To­gether they sank down to the deck.