Fred Hoyle - Element 79

The gilt rule-book paused for a moment, a dramatic pause, “Now what, we must ask ourselves, lay at the bottom of this vogue? The fact, no more no less, than that the gentleman in question employed my services from the beginning of his career. My services seemed attractive to the gentleman exactly because of my policy of allowing everyone to write his, or her, own laws and commandments. Permit me to read a specimen of the laws written by the bearded gentleman.”

Fascinated, Hermes watched as the creature slipped a scroll of parchment out from its belly. Screwing up the gilt face, almost as if it were adjusting a pair of spectacles, the creature intoned in a weird singsong falsetto, “The woman who lieth carnally shall be scourged with rods. The man who lieth carnally shall make offering of a ram to the priest, for his sin is grievous.”

The creature proceeded to pull sheaf after sheaf of scrolls from its chest and guts, tossing them with a contemptuous gesture high into the air.

“A wonderful relief, I might say, to be freed from all this ill-mannered rubbish. Still, it bears directly on my point. The former patriarchal gentleman made great play with his rules, regulations, laws, covenants, and commandments. It was just this mass of restrictive rules that gave him an uncanny influence over certain segments of humanity. Yet the power was mine, really. Behind the scenes it was I who manipulated the strings on which the gentleman and his followers used formerly to dance.”

“Have you finished?” Aphrodite asked wearily.

The creature seemed to smirk. “I have reached the end of my case, a case so clear, so decisive, that your judgment, my dear young lady, is now but a trivial formality. However, before leaving the floor I wish to offer serious advice to you and to your friends.

“Ask yourselves why in the last score of centuries you have been so strangely in eclipse. The hirsute gentleman, the gentleman of the many faces—I take them together, for the two were really in conspiracy, a point which I imagine escaped you—exercised a greater influence than all your many exceedingly quick-witted friends have been able to do. Your most remarkable discoveries in the technological field have brought a measure of recovery in recent years, it is true, but the weakness remains. Unless the weakness be removed, I fear we shall have a relapse on our hands. The urgent need is to appreciate the need for me, the need for an enormous complex of restrictive rules and regulations—what you may eat, when you may eat it, what you may drink, when you may drink it, when you must breathe in, when you must breathe out, regulations and laws for everything. If the patient is to be fully restored to health, this is the way it must be. There must be none of the old free and easy habits.”

So saying, the strange creature with the gilt face resumed its seat. Hermes drew in a deep breath. In his view, there couldn’t be any doubt about it. By rights the creature had won. He didn’t expect Aphrodite to see it that way, not when her eyes were so set on the Ares-like piece of pork. She’d leave him to dispose of the gilt windbag. By rights he ought to give the thing an honorable discharge. With something of a shock, Hermes realized, this wasn’t at all what he’d really do—his finger was already itching to press the incendiary button. He’d burn up every last rule, every last regulation, every last little scrap of parchment, every last little particle of gilt.

Aphrodite stood. She made her announcement in a curiously flat voice. “My judgment is in favor of the gentleman or the right. To him I award the prize of a night’s frolic.” Turning to Hermes she added, “Return the gentleman on the left to his particular niche, wherever that should be.”

Then she walked down the steps from the dais, gracefully in spite of the juice, to where the gilt creature was sitting. It rose and took her arm in a stumpy paw. The two of them moved slowly out from the Judgment Hall.

Hermes was left with the problem of the disposal of the spittoon character—a veritable river of blood was streaming now across the floor. The stuff had the appearance of welling up out of the spittoon, as if from an obscene spring. If this abomination was what he claimed to be, the solution was easy—simply to press the return button. But if this were not Tamerlenk, the situation could be distinctly awkward. Ares would quite certainly be bull-mad at losing Aphrodite.

If it really was Ares, sitting down there, Hermes knew he’d have to watch out for himself. Keeping a wary eye on the creature, he moved toward the console. A high-velocity jet screamed past his ear. The stuff splattered against the wall with the thunder of a vast waterfall. Hermes dodged as the next broadside burst like cannon fire from the gaping mouth of the war god. The game was to make him run for it, to make him run like the wind. Not for his life must he run, for in the way of things Hermes was immune from death, but to save himself from being knocked silly. His every instinct shouted for him to get out of this place, to flee before the furious rage of Ares himself. Hermes fought back his fears. He threw himself into cover behind the console. Searching the keyboard, his finger came down on the morpheus button, just as the console itself was hit.

There was a deep silence. Hermes struggled to his feet. The console was now a twisted mass of smoking metal. Ares lay supine on the floor of the hall. Hermes walked slowly to where the war god lay, weltering, it seemed, in a sea of blood. But Ares was not dead, Ares was in an endless sleep, a sleep from which the strongest injections of hate could never waken him. There would be no more rivers of blood, no more memories of war, no more memories of women raped and men flogged.

The first light was dawning when the gilt rule-book slipped out of bed. The creature was distinctly loath to leave at so early an hour, but it was utterly imperative to reach the draftsman without delay, before the world woke to a new day. In the heat of passion, a jug of juice had spilled over his gilt front, and a good deal of his ink had run, blotching and blurring more than one critical statute, more than one nudum pactum .

The rule-book glided away, thinking smugly to itself that Aphrodite was happy, satisfied, and sound asleep. Actually she was none of these things, quite the reverse. She was pretending to sleep in the hope this appalling bore would stop whispering his favorite ordinances in her ear. She was unhappy, frustrated by decisions postponed, decisions requiring further investigations and further probing, decisions referred back for consideration by alternative bodies.

The miracle happened and the thing at last quitted her boudoir. Aphrodite stretched herself in the hope of stretching away the feeling she’d got of being packed tight in cotton wool. Out of nowhere it seemed, she had an astonishing idea. In amazement she wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her long ago. Reaching over, she grabbed the pink bedside telephone.

Hermes woke from restless sleep. Wearily, as he answered the call, he wondered what next. Then he heard Aphrodite’s whispered invitation. In a flash, he was out of the bed and out of the window with the lightning speed given only to the messenger of the gods.

From his earliest years, young Joe was a bright lad. He was the best of his group at everything, a good worker if need be, but mostly he managed things so easily he hardly needed to work very seriously. He mixed with the other members of his group, appearing socially well-adjusted, until they were past puberty and were all reaching the right age for the operation. Then he began seeking after knowledge he wasn’t supposed to have, particularly history, the history of long ago.