" . . . so," Jerry concluded, "we were hoping you could send us home."
Circe shook her head. "I am a sorceress, and a minor goddess. But my powers are small. I don't like to admit this, but Odysseus—a mere mortal!—overcame me on his first visit."
She took a deep breath. "But the part I find exceeding strange is the fact that to you we are creatures of legend. That you, Doc Jerry," she bowed respectfully, "have read of our deeds . . . even about things which we have not yet done. It is as peculiar as this feeling of . . . I feel I have done all this before."
Jerry had been unable to convince the aristocracy-bound mythfolk that "Doc" was not his hereditary title. He had been able to convince them he knew the details of the myths and legends. Some of that knowledge had nearly been bad for his health. Medea, the original victim of bad press, was still nearly incandescent.
How dare those Hellene bitches put the blame onto her? They'd cut up their own father and boiled him! And then said that she—Medea—had tricked them into doing it. Ha! The barefaced cheek of it! What kind of idiot would believe—
Halfway through her tirade, Jerry began muttering to himself. "Somebody—or something—is playing games with us. Using us. There are small inconsistencies . . . Medea is achronous with Odysseus . . . We also encountered the Theban sphinx. Something is wrong."
Circe overheard him and began nodding. "I was forewarned of your coming. Hermes came to tell me that barbarians who must die were coming." She seemed troubled.
Medea snorted. "Typical Greek gods! Hermes told me a 'safe place' to land. That nearly resulted in Bitar and Smitar eating them."
Lamont shook his head. "I don't understand it. Something brought us here. And now that same something is trying to eliminate us. And it has, at the very least, Hermes playing its games."
"Maybe it is sort of . . . destructive testing," said Cruz, flexing a forearm.
"Maybe. But let's be honest, it has picked some of the most appalling physical material, like me," said Jerry.
"Maybe it is the mind that it is wanting," said Lenoir, venturing his first comment.
"Salinas' mind? The man who is happy to be a pig? Or," said Liz, pointedly looking at Jim McKenna, who was winking at one of the attendant nymphs, "the mind of a randy paratrooper who can't keep his thoughts above his belt?"
Circe shook her head. "Whatever it is that is happening, it is a dark and evil thing. Yet if Hermes is involved you can bet the father of gods is in on it too. I think you should venture into the lands of Persephone, to the grim Halls of Hades, and consult the lost spirit of blind Teiresias the seer."
Jerry frowned. "Do you really think that'll help?"
Circe laughed her musical laugh. "Perhaps not. But it got rid of my last lot of troublesome guests, and sooner or later the dead know everything."
"So we sail a black ship into hell . . . " said Jerry.
Circe pulled a wry face. "I'll give you directions."
"Don't you mean: 'Don't think of lingering on shore for lack of a pilot'?"
"How did you know I was about to say that?"
"It's a direct quote," said Jerry grimly.
Whatever else Circe might do or not do, her curative magic was first-rate. Jerry could hardly believe that his ankle had been agonizingly painful. He tested it and turned to Medea, who was organizing the necessities for the trip. She seemed to be even more "organizingly inclined" than Liz.
"You really don't have to come along, Medea. We'll take Odysseus' ship. He's been there before."
Medea, as was her way, simply ignored the part of the statement she didn't want to hear. "Yes, we'll have to take the black ship. We won't all fit into the chariot, and anyway Bitar and Smitar need a rest."
"We'd better inform Odysseus and his merry men we're sailing a black ship into hell again," said Jerry, accepting the inevitable.
"Well, at least I've got something for the fleas this time," said Liz.
"What? And why have you been keeping it to yourself?" demanded virtually every modern, scratching instinctively.
"An herbal remedy of my mother's: wormwood, fleabane and rue, with added magic from Medea. Would you all like some? Every one of you looks as if you need it."
"And I'm going to try my hand at distilling. That son of a bitch Ody tries to get us smashed again, I'll spike his drinks for him," said McKenna.
"And I'm going to get a good night's sleep for a change," sighed Jerry. "Clean, full, safe, dry, and not on a ship."
The Krim device manipulated the prukrin threads of the Ur-universe's belief strands with skill. Already the reactivated long-moribund universe was nearly ready for the masters. And while the gods of this thread of Ur-universe were difficult to work with and unreliable in the extreme, it was also a valuable find. This species generated emotional intensities that the Krim would find delightful. The Ur-universes were intense and rich in the emotional flavors that the Krim relished. And it was all proceeding well. Krim-delighting rituals were being enacted faithfully . . .
Except for that one group! They were an irritation. A tear within the mantle of prukrin reality. Here they were, in a place rich in sorrows and misery and fear. And they were laughing! At ease! The masters would be furious. They would have to be eliminated, if they could not be turned to belief. Well. It would try using the darkness that lurked within this species' soul. It would tweak the legend. Human sacrifice was not unknown. Odysseus himself was believed to have insisted on the sacrifice of Iphigenia.