“After you,” says Mahnmut.
6
It was just after sunrise and Zeus was alone in the Great Hall of the Gods when his wife, Hera, came in leading a dog on a golden leash.
“Is that the one?” asked the Lord of the Gods from where he sat brooding on his golden throne.
“It is,” said Hera. She slipped the leash off the dog. It sat.
“Call for your son,” said Zeus.
“Which son?”
“The great artificer. The one who lusts after Athena so much that he humped her thigh just as this dog would if the dog had no manners.”
Hera turned to go. The dog started to follow her.
“Leave the dog,” said Zeus.
Hera motioned the dog to stay and it stayed.
The dog was large, gray, short-haired, and sleek, with mild brown eyes that somehow managed to look both stupid and cunning. It began to pace and its claws made scraping sounds on the marble as it wandered back and forth around Zeus’s gold throne. It sniffed the sandals and bare toes of the Lord of Lightning, the Son of Kronos. Then it claw-clicked its way to the edge of the huge holovision pool, peered in, saw nothing that interested it in the dark videoswirl of the surface static, lost interest, and wandered toward a pillar many yards away.
“Come here!” ordered Zeus.
The dog looked back at Zeus, then looked away. It began to sniff at the base of the huge white pillar in a preparatory way.
Zeus whistled.
The dog’s head came up and around, its ears shifted, but it did not come.
Zeus whistled again and clapped his hands.
The gray dog came quickly then, running in a rocking motion, tongue lolling, eyes happy.
Zeus stepped down from his throne and petted the animal. Then he pulled a blade from his robes and cut off the dog’s head with a single swing of his massive arm. The dog’s head rolled almost to the edge of the vision pool while the body dropped straight to the marble, forelegs stretched ahead of it as if it had been ordered to lie down and was complying in hopes of getting a treat.
Hera and Hephaestus entered the Great Hall and approached across acres of marble.
“Playing with the pets again, My Lord?” asked Hera when she drew near.
Zeus waved his hand as if dismissing her, sheathed the blade in the sleeve of his robe, and returned to his throne.
Hephaestus was dwarfish and stocky as gods go, a little under six feet tall. He most resembled a great, hairy barrel. The god of fire was also lame and dragged his left leg along as if it were a dead thing, which it was. He had wild hair, an even wilder beard that seemed to merge with the hair on his chest, and red-rimmed eyes that were always darting to and fro. He seemed to be wearing armor, but closer inspection showed the armor to be a solid covering made up from hundreds of tiny boxes and pouches and tools and devices—some forged of precious metal, some shaped of base metal, some tooled of leather, some seemingly woven of hair—all hanging from straps and belts that crisscrossed his hairy body. The ultimate metalworker, Hephaestus was famous on Olympos for once having created women made of gold, young clockwork virgins, who could move and smile and give men pleasure almost as if they were alive. It was said that from his alchemic vats he had also fashioned the first woman—Pandora.
“Welcome, artificer,” boomed Zeus. “I would have summoned you sooner but we had no tin pots or toy shields to repair.”
Hephaestus knelt by the dog’s headless body. “You needn’t have done this,” he muttered. “No need. No need at all.”
“It irritated me.” Zeus raised a goblet from the arm of his golden throne and drank deeply.
Hephaestus rolled the headless body on its side, ran his blunt hand along its rib cage as if offering to scratch the dead dog’s belly, and pressed. A panel of flesh and hair popped open. The god of fire reached into the dog’s gut and removed a clear bag filled with scraps of meat and other things. Hephaestus pulled a sliver of wet, pink flesh from the gut-bag.
“Dionysos,” he said.
“My son,” said Zeus. He rubbed his temples as if weary of all this.
“Shall I deliver this scrap to the Healer and the vats, O Son of Kronos?” asked the god of fire.
“No. We shall have one of our kind eat it so that my son may be reborn according to his wishes. Such Communion is painful for the host, but perhaps that will teach the gods and goddesses here on Olympos to take better care when watching out for my children. “
Zeus looked down at Hera, who had come closer and was now sitting on the second stone step of his throne with her right arm laid affectionately along his leg, her white hand touching his knee.
“No, my husband,” she said softly. “Please.”
Zeus smiled. “You choose then, wife.”
Without hesitation, Hera said, “Aphrodite. She’s used to stuffing parts of men into her mouth.”
Zeus shook his head. “Not Aphrodite. She has done nothing since she herself was in the vats to incur my displeasure. Shouldn’t it be Pallas Athena, the immortal who brought this war with the mortals down on us with her intemperate murder of Achilles’ beloved Patroclus? And of the infant son of Hector?”
Hera pulled her arm back. “Athena denies that she did these things, Son of Kronos. And the mortals say that Aphrodite was with Athena when they slaughtered Hector’s babe.”
“We have the vision-pool image of the murder of Patroclus, wife. Do you want me to play it again for you?” Zeus’s voice, so low it resembled distant thunder even when he whispered, now showed signs of growing anger. The effect was of a storm moving into the echoing Hall of the Gods.
“No, Lord,” said Hera. “But you know that Athena insists that it was the missing scholic, Hockenberry, who must have assumed her form and done these things. She swears upon her love for you that…”
Zeus stood impatiently and paced away from the throne. “The scholic morphing bands were not designed to grant a mortal the shape or power of a god,” he snapped. “It’s not possible. However briefly. Some god or goddess from Olympos did those deeds—either Athena or one of our family assuming Athena’s form. Now… choose who will receive the body and blood of my son, Dionysos.”
“Demeter.”
Zeus rubbed his short white beard. “Demeter. My sister. Mother to my much-loved Persephone?”
Hera stood, stepped back, and showed her white hands. “Is there a god on this mount who is not related to you, my husband? I am your sister as well as your wife. At least Demeter has experience giving birth to odd things. And she has little to do these days since there is no grain crop being harvested or sewn by the mortals.”
“So be it,” said Zeus. To Hephaestus he commanded, “Deliver the flesh of my son to Demeter, tell her it is the will of her lord, Zeus himself, that she eat this flesh and bring my son to life again. Assign three of my Furies to watch over her until this birth is achieved.”
The god of fire shrugged and dropped the bit of flesh into one of his pouches. “Do you want to see images from Paris’s pyre?”
“Yes,” said Zeus. He returned to his throne and sat, patting the step that Hera had vacated when she stood.
She obediently returned and took her place, but did not lay her arm on his leg again.
Grumbling to himself, Hephaestus walked over to the dog’s head, lifted it by its ears, and carried it to the vision pool. He crouched there at pool’s edge, pulled a curved metal tool from one of his chest-belts, and worried the dog’s left eyeball out of its socket. There was no blood. He pulled the eye free easily, but red, green, and white strands of optic nerve ran back into the empty eye socket, the cords unreeling as the god of fire pulled. When he had two feet of the glistening strands exposed, he pulled yet another tool from his belt and snipped them.
Pulling mucus and insulation off with his teeth, Hephaestus revealed thin, glittering gold wires within. These he crimped and attached to what looked to be a small metal sphere from one of his pouches. He dropped the eyeball and colored nerve strands into the pool while keeping the sphere next to him.