Gary Corby - Death Ex Machina

I hadn’t recognized the woman at first. Firstly because the snakes grabbed one’s attention, secondly because the lady wore nothing but a skirt. Her breasts bounced in time to the wild dance. It took some while before I thought to look up at her face. When I did, I got a shock.

I said, “Petros, is that your wife?”

“Did I not mention that? Maia is a priestess of Sabazios. Here in Athens, she is the priestess of our god. There is no other like her.”

There certainly wasn’t.

Maia, now completely naked, danced within the circle. She held the writhing vipers high above her head, one in each hand. In her frenzy she chanted the same words over and over, “Euoi saboi! Euoi saboi!” Maia was caught up in religious ecstasy. I wondered if she even knew where she was.

The audience chanted in time to the beat, “Euoi saboi! Euoi saboi!” They were totally caught up in the moment.

One of the snakes bent over and bit Maia solidly on the arm.

I clutched Petros’s arm. “Petros, the vipers have bitten Maia!”

“Their fangs have been pulled,” he said calmly. “They cannot harm her.”

Maia barely noticed. I saw when she came close that her eyes were almost rolled up. She gyrated in a way that had the attention of every man in the clearing, and probably half the women too.

Somehow Maia found Petros. She bent over him, her breasts swaying and with a wild snake to each side of him. I had to lean back to avoid a viper in my face.

Petros knew what she wanted. He got to his feet and joined her in the dance. That lasted until Maia wrapped her arms around Petros, still gyrating. At some point while I’d been watching her, he had shed his clothes. It was obvious he was enjoying the attention. Maia pulled Petros down on top of her.

All about us, the followers of Sabazios were doing the same thing. We were surrounded by heaving bodies and cries of ecstasy.

There were men who went to symposia for the flute girls, or for the girls who euphemistically called themselves flute girls. I was not one of them. For one thing, Diotima had proven a very passionate woman; for another, my best and only real friend Timodemus was besotted with his own wife. When we visited each others’ homes we’d even been known to take our wives along with us.

I wondered what to do.

Diotima solved the problem for me. She stared at me as if she’d never seen me before. She licked her red lips and I knew she was tasting the last drops of the beer. Then she threw herself at me and ripped off my clothes.

Diotima and I awoke in each other’s arms and, almost, the arms of the couples all around us. We looked into each other’s eyes, at close range. We were both thinking about what had happened.

I said, “Whatever they put in this beer, we need to get some of it into our wine.”

Diotima shifted closer, to avoid the couple behind. They too were waking to the dawn.

“I’m not so sure, Nico. If they did, people would never get any work done.”

The feel of her warm breasts against my chest elicited the usual response. Diotima felt it happening.

“Again?” she murmured.

“How many times is that?”

“I lost count.”

“One more for good luck.” I was ready and raring to go. I positioned myself beside her.

“Did you enjoy it?” a voice behind me asked.

It was Petros.

“Yes, we did, thank you very much,” I said from the prone position.

I stood up. Diotima hurriedly pulled clothes about her.

I added, “But Petros, the Sabazians will have to stop these rites.”

Petros looked surprised. “I don’t understand. Don’t Athenian men indulge in orgies all the time?”

“Yes, but not with our wives! That would be immoral. Seriously, Petros, if the Athenians find out you followers of Sabazios behave like this, you’re going to be in big trouble.”

“This we know. It’s why we perform our rites outside the city, where none will notice. Also, in the grove we have more room to … er … spread.”

All about us, entwined bodies were waking up.

“I can see what you mean,” I said. Then, recollecting why we’d come, I said, “Did Romanos participate in these rites?”

“Of course he did.” Petros looked puzzled.

“And Romanos knew the effect of beer on happy, cavorting people,” I said.

“It’s not the beer that causes the orgy,” Maia said. She had walked over to us as we spoke to her husband. “It is the spirit of Sabazios. He is the god of the harvest. He makes all things fruitful. When Sabazios enters into you, then you too become fruitful.” Maia shrugged. “Some people resist the God. For others, they find it difficult to let the god come to them, even when they are willing. For such people, beer is the sacred drink that opens the door to the God.”

“Your brother must have known this about the beer,” Diotima said.

“Yes,” Maia agreed.

“Then why was he planning to sell it?” I asked.

“Sell it? You must be confused,” Petros said. “We have no such plan.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” I said.

“No, we’re planning to give it away,” Petros went on. “To everyone in Athens.”

Maia smiled the smile of a religious fanatic who knew everything she did was for a divine cause. “Isn’t it wonderful? We will spread the sacred word of Sabazios. With free beer!”

Theokritos, the high Priest of Dionysos, looked askance at Diotima. “You, a priestess of Artemis, partook in the orgiastic rites of this barbarian god Sabazios?”

Diotima looked at me. I looked at her. We both wondered how to explain what had happened.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Diotima offered.

“These people don’t drink wine,” Theokritos said. “They drink beer !”

“Yes.”

“This must be stopped!” Theokritos thundered.

Diotima and I had washed in the Ilissos River on our way home, where we stayed only long enough to change clothes. They were covered in various bodily fluids. The washing slave looked disgusted as we handed them to her and asked us what we’d been doing.

We went straight to see the High Priest of Dionysos. Diotima insisted. The Sabazian rites might have been fun-I certainly thought so-but having experienced them, it was obvious to us both that they were in direct opposition to Dionysos. At any other time of the year that might have been acceptable, but to invoke a rival god at the height of the Dionysia was perilously close to sacrilege. The high priest had to be informed.

Theokritos muttered, “I see Dionysos demands more of me.”

“I know it’s a problem, Theokritos,” I said. “But is it really so bad?”

“Of course it is!” Theokritos almost shouted. He made a visible effort to calm down. “I know you’re a man after my own heart, Nicolaos. That was obvious from our last meeting. Do you not see that if beer becomes popular among the ignorant, it must inevitably lead to a loss of worshippers for Dionysos?”

I rubbed my chin and thought about it. “I see what you mean. But what can you do?” I asked. “Forgive me, Theokritos, but there’s no law against handing out free beer.”

“There is against importuning the Gods of Athens!”

That was true. The impiety laws in Athens were very strong indeed. I for one wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of them. Indeed that was the crime which we’d been hired to solve, not the murder.

Diotima said, “But if the Sabazians distribute their beer without proselytizing their god, then they haven’t broken any laws, have they sir?”

“That’s not the point!” Theokritos went red in the face. “This drinking of beer in the time of Dionysos defies every ethic; it passes every boundary of common decency.”