Olympus ssc, p.2
Olympus (SSC), page 2
Well, the experiment was over. This avenue was closed to me; I would have to go home and make some other decision, always remembering that I had a gas stove and the apartment was small. I pinched off a piece of my pancake and tasted it: grit, dust, a faint note of grain; the blood I could not taste at all.
I fed the rest to the pigeons, who fought over it, flavorless as it was.
At home I made ramen for dinner and settled down to read about epic battles over stolen women. The print swam, and my interest wavered with it. I had pored over these matters before, and they were still distant in time and place, removed from all I knew. Tonight I could not lose myself in that beckoning distance.
* * *
Neither could I decide to make an end to everything. I still had food in the cupboards, and I was tired. I went to bed.
In the middle reaches of the night, a noise awakened me. I lay with open eyes staring at the faint line of light above the curtains and listened.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It was not the drip of a faucet. I wondered if the young man in the next apartment had taken leave of his senses and was tapping a pen against the wall by my bed head.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap tap tap taptap…
No. It came from the window. Flurries of taps against glass. As though a regiment of incompetent burglars sought entry using blunt glass-cutters. Hail? Shrapnel? What?
I was afraid to look. The noise persisted and escalated. I sat up, turned on the light, and parted the curtains to see my own stunned night-shirted reflection, and the glint of a hundred golden, liquid eyes beyond the glass, the flash of fifty tapping beaks, the flutter of gray, brown, and white wings.
Pigeons. Pigeons hovered and beat upon my window.
Sickening memories of the Hitchcock movie swamped me. Birds had gone mad, and had come to peck me to death. I jumped to my feet and backed away from the window, my heart thudding, skin tightening on my skull. I could run—but what if they were tapping on every window in the building? What if the building were surrounded?
I took deep breaths.
Taptaptaptaptap.
I could hide in a closet; arm myself with my fire extinguisher and make a run for it; wrap myself in all the clothes I owned and hope for the best…
Pigeons. Pancake. The park. Aphrodite.
My goddess.
I crossed to the window, peering out at the flurry of birds. Wonder and fear warred within me. Had my prayer been answered? Had I cast true magic in the ultimate wrong direction?
My skin prickled. The pigeons tapped, stared, hovered.
What now?
Perhaps they loved me.
If I let them in, would they destroy me? Hurt me and leave me wounded? Or what?
Then again, I had been contemplating self-destruction. Perhaps this was a way to go.
Or I could close the curtains and try to sleep. Or leave the apartment, call animal control, see if someone could take care of this…problem.
I remembered tales of Aphrodite’s anger. She was not a goddess you wanted to cross.
I wished I liked pigeons more.
My fingers trembled as I unlatched the window.
I opened it, and they flooded in, gray, white, brown, banded, cooing and squabbling. They drifted to the floor and furniture, settling like a quilt over the room.
“Uh,” I said. “Welcome.” I sat slowly on the bed, feeling dazed.
Those birds closest to me sidled closer, cocking their heads to stare at me.
Did I have anything I could feed them? A bag of cornflakes. Maybe they’d like that.
Before I could rise, pigeons settled on my thighs, shoulders, head. One stroked a soft wing across my cheek. They murmured and cooed, their toes making tiny pricks through the flannel of my nightshirt, their bodies warm.
Moving carefully so as not to dislodge them, I lowered the window until it was open just enough to enable them to go in and out. I could imagine the dropping-splattered room I would wake to in the morning, but even more I could imagine falling asleep now in the midst of this horde of warm, cooing creatures. Their throaty murmurs were soothing. The day had been long, and I was tired. I lifted birds off of me, arranged myself under the covers, felt birds mass over me in a warm blanket, and slid into sleep.
* * *
This morning I woke with a woman beside me. Her head hair is short and gray, more feathers than hair; wherever on a human woman there would be body hair, she has tiny, almost transparent feathers. Her eyes are large and golden. She cocks her head and looks at me sideways. In her gaze is fascination.
I remember that Aphrodite’s chariot was drawn by doves.
Columba is quite satisfied with cornflakes for breakfast.
Today we are going to the library, where I will research as well as my vision allows ways to give thanks.
THE LITTLEST MAENAD
by Esther M. Friesner
Esther Friesner is considered one of the leading humorists in the fantasy genre, with such works as her (sadly out-of-print) Harlot’s Ruse and the anthology Alien Pregnant By Elvis. Her short story, “Death and the Librarian” won the 1995 Nebula Award.
I believe that what I regret the most about the Club’s latest contretemps is the fact that the best moral lesson I have been able to abstract from the wholesale slaughter is: When your friends return from their travels, never ask whether they have brought home any interesting souvenirs.
Which was precisely the mistake Bradley made at our little welcome-back party for Eames.
“Oh, this?” Eames held up the crystal pendant. He wore it as a watch fob. I could not quite make out the shape of the silver setting from which the stone itself dangled. “Just a trifle I picked up in one of those two-goat villages in the hinterlands of Athens.”
Keats-Smythe laughed. “Crystals? It’ll be hammered dulcimer music and bean sprouts next. And wine from California.” We all shuddered at the thought.
“Now, now. I am beginning to think that there must be something to all this New Age nonsense,” said Benjamin Winthrop, our Richest Member. “All of those crystal doodads, well, they do seem to be good for something.” He settled himself more comfortably in the buttery depths of one of our finer leather-covered armchairs and reached for the brandy at his elbow.
Note well that there was no brandy at his elbow when first he initiated that maneuver, yet by the time his fingers were within snifter-grasping range, the Club factotum Ashtoft had the glass bubble of fine spirits in place, awaiting Benjamin Winthrop’s pleasure. Upon that dim and ill-starred day when the Club no longer exists and the fixtures must be sold to stave off baying packs of creditors, Ashtoft shall no doubt fetch his weight in rubies.
Or crystals of the mystic variety: quartz polyhedrons whose worth is measured in units more esoteric and less financially sound than carats. Yet I hesitate to confess that there are times on the links of life when the Monetary must allow the Arcane to play through, lest Madness follow as caddy to them both. I know whereof I speak, for that selfsame sort of crystal was the very agent which so nearly provoked the early, unlooked-for disaster I have just suggested, viz.: the permanent closure of the Club. Indeed, it has only been our general willingness to cooperate with the local police in their ongoing investigation of the carnage so tastelessly exploited in the local press that—
But I anticipate.
Benjamin Winthrop savored his brandy—he, like the rest of us then gathered in the library, blissfully unaware of the cataclysm on tap. “Yes,” he went on, setting down the snifter upon a tooled leather coaster which materialized from the same omniscient Ashtoftian source as had provided the drink. “There most certainly is something to it—healing powers on some level or another. What do you gentlemen make of them, the crystals? For myself, I can no longer scoff.”
There was the soft, hasty sound of many tongues being bitten. If our Richest Member found himself unable to scoff at the powers of externally applied minerals, none among us was man enough to counter him publicly.
“There—there might indeed be something to them,” Bradley said hesitantly. “That is, I’m prepared to keep an open mind on the subject, until such time as evidence presents—”
“Evidence?” Benjamin Winthrop echoed. “I’ve evidence enough, if you’ll hear it.” We all encouraged him to enlighten us. He took some more brandy and folded his hands over his trim belly. “It concerns Amanda.”
An uncharacteristically human sigh slipped from Bradley’s Ups at the mention of that name. If he heard it, Benjamin Winthrop no doubt put it down to dyspepsia rather than amorous devotion. The normally stolid Bradley was not known to cherish a passion for anything beyond the occasional round of cutthroat bridge.
Benjamin Winthrop ran his finger lightly ’round the rim of his snifter. “I needn’t remind you how badly tom-up my poor child was by the death of her husband,” he said, grim. There he spoke plain truth. We neither needed nor wanted to be reminded of the events linked to that sad occurrence.
A moment of silence was observed by all, the reverent hush broken only by the distant, muffled click-click of finest ivory billiard balls in the adjoining room. Amanda’s late husband Piers had been our Oldest Member, a title which his demise had left by default to Benjamin Winthrop, who did not want it. Piers had seen us through the unpleasantness with Simpson’s
Greek gift, and further weathered the storm of Young Chapin’s tenancy and violent death. (Of both affairs, the less said here, the better. Amanda would concur, being as she was, to her shame, Young Chapin’s relict. Having come to her senses, albeit tardily, she was eager to have all mention of that youthful mesalliance stricken from memory.)
Alas, Amanda had not long to enjoy the more staid delights of her second marriage. Piers’ noble heart gave out soon after the birth of his predecessor’s posthumous son. Some claim it was the infant’s marked resemblance to Young Chapin and the thought of having to breed up the boy to the age of Reason (that is to say, Harvard matriculation) which caused a gallant spirit to throw in the towel.
“And how is Amanda?” Bradley inquired, breaking the solemnity of the instant. He wore an ardent, halfwitted look such as I have only seen once in my life before, in circumstances involving the back seat of my first BMW and a Radcliffe English major to whom I fed four vodka screwdrivers and told that her poetry was evocative of Emily Dickinson.
“Astonishingly well, of late,” Amanda’s father replied, slapping the arm of his chair. “Never better.” This was good news. In her zeal to have her first husband’s tenure pass into the dreamy realm of myth, Amanda had set about bewailing her second mate’s death with an intensity to leave most banshees looking like raw tyros. There had been days during the proper period of mourning when even the moony Bradley shuddered at the thought of being in the same room with her. “And it is all thanks to the very crystals we are presently discussing.” Leave it to our Richest Member to refer to his lecture as if it were a dialogue. Rank has its privileges, but Wealth possesses droit de seigneur.
“I am glad to hear that she is better,” Bradley said, his large, moist eyes aglitter with hope.
“Gentlemen, the change in Amanda’s attitude has been nothing short of phenomenal since some happy accident a scant two weeks past turned her to the works of Dr. Dion Sonoma and she began her course of—um—ah—” Benjamin Winthrop groped for the mot juste.
“Treatments?” suggested Bradley.
“Therapy?” Eames provided. He had returned less than a month ago from his recent European trip strangely bitter. This was the first I had seen him smile. It was nasty.
“Self-knowledge,” said Ashtoft, who endured almost physical pain whenever he beheld one of his charges groping for anything, be it potation or periphrasis.
“The very term!” Benjamin Winthrop snapped his fingers, looking as pleased as if he had thought of it himself. Ashtoft’s self-abnegating, giocondesque smile as good as ceded all title to the phrase immediately. Contained within the economy of that expression seemed to be the implicit message that his will, his desire—nay, the very aim, purpose, and sangreal of his life was but to serve.
Before Winthrop could expand upon the precise means by which his daughter had achieved self-knowledge through large rocks, our mildly bibulous comradeship was interrupted by the entrance of Ashtoft. That is, I should more precisely say Ashtoft Junior.
Whereas our redoubtable factotum was a man well-stricken in years, the fires of youth prudently banked to embers, his son’s whole manner implied that there had once been hotter fluids coursing through the family veins—coursed there still, in fact—of which the lad was walking proof. Only Ashtoft Junior never walked; he erupted. He was, in short, a genetic embarrassment.
“There’s someone at the door to see Mr. Winthrop!” His handsome face flushed a tawny red as he blurted this advisory. In the six months since Ashtoft Senior had procured his boy the post of Club page, the poor youngster had been plagued by blushes. His fine, fair complexion changed color more readily than that of a Victorian heroine, and for reasons as frivolous. Mostly, however, he seemed to reserve his cardiovascular excesses for moments of impending embarrassment and paternal chastisement, such as this.
Impending, I say. Not that he knew he had committed yet another gaffe servile, but that his complexion appeared to have acquired the prognosticating talents of a Delphic Oracle. His face realized when he’d put his foot in it long before he did.
A hiss of air sucked in through serviceable dentures came from Ashtoft Senior. He crossed the room with silent, deliberate rage and hustled his son out through the huge burled oak doors. A moment later he returned to show us how it should be done. Taking his place at the rear of Benjamin Winthrop’s chair he discreetly murmured in the Richest Member’s ear that his presence was requested without, if it would not be too great an inconvenience.
As Benjamin Winthrop excused himself and left the library, Ashtoft Senior gliding after, Bradley remarked, “Well, there goes the perfect candidate for one of those New Age whatchamacallum’s.” He chuckled dryly, as always. Although he was not yet out of his thirties, Bradley had taken steps to accelerate the aging of his soul. Dry and stuffy by turns, he would make the perfect burial chamber for any Egyptian mummy worth its natron.
“What, Ashtoft? What’s he want with a crystal?” Eames inquired, twirling his own.
“Not Ashtoft.” Bradley sniffed. “Ashtoft. The young ’un. Take one of those crystals and use it to tune in on the great whozit of how d’ you—? Of Being!” He pronounced this last word with force enough to let us all understand he meant it to begin with a capital letter.
“Now why in heaven’s name would he want to tune in on anything like that?” Keats-Smythe yawned and stretched his feet to the fire. “The Superbowl, perhaps, but the great whozit of Being? Hardly.”
A stern, determined look took over Bradley’s features. It was the first time any of us had ever seen a headstrong bread pudding. “Don’t you lot know anything? Crystals are the best way to summon up past lives or, failing that, to channel spirits.”
“Speaking of which, did you know you can buy Courvoisier for quite a decent price when you zip over to France from England on that Hovercraft thingie?” Prescott piped up. Soon we were all locked in a fiery debate as to the best sources for duty-free goods.
“I meant it’d calm him down!” Bradley shouted, not one to allow his mystic observations to be ignored.
“Sounds like he’s not the only one could stand a shot of tranquilizer.” Eames chuckled. “He’d be a fool to take it, though. Ashtoft Junior may be bouncier than a Golden Lab pup, but that’s not hurting him at all with the lady; that is, not unless her father finds out.”
There are ways and ways of making general statements. It would be fruitless for an outsider to comprehend the innate telepathy at work among us when phrases such as “Not Our Kind” and “Not The Done Thing” are passed from Up to lip at the Club.
Details are extraneous; we know.
So, too, here: Not a hint was there in Eames’ words to permit even Sherlock Holmes to deduce the identity of that tenebrous “lady” and her equally obscure “father,” yet Bradley needed no further specification.
“Amanda?” he gasped. “She is seeing him?” A crisp Belgian linen handkerchief dabbed cold sweat from his brow. “Socially?” It was the ultimate horror.
Eames attempted to look contrite, but I could see his heart was not in it. “Well…yes.” His fingers toyed with the silver-and-crystal fob.
“I take it that Benjamin Winthrop does not know,” Prescott commented. It was a redundant observation. One had only to check the ceiling. Since it was still intact, obviously our Richest Member had no inkling of his child’s latest ill-thought escapade in the realms of Venus.
Which orbit was approximately how far from Earth’s atmosphere he would fly when he found out.
“He must be told.” Bradley crumpled his handkerchief decisively between perfectly manicured fingers.
“Oh, go ahead and tell him, old boy.” There was a jovially sadistic streak in Eames I had not previously noted, save in his choice of neckties. As this was his first reunion with us all since his return from better than two years abroad, it made me wonder whether I was only imagining the vitriol he so merrily let drip upon Bradley’s head. “Yes, do tell him, but be warned. Either Amanda will deny it, in which case her father will freeze you like a slab of Chateaubriand, or else he will believe you.”
“What is wrong with that?” Bradley looked like a hedgehog about to embark upon Crusade: prickly, inspired with a holy vision, and laughably small.
Keats-Smythe cleared his throat and in a diplomatic tone even Ashtoft would have admired said, “Are you familiar with the classic tradition of slaying the bearer of bad news?” Bradley nodded. “Benjamin Winthrop has always been a great man for honoring the Classics.”
