"And remember," the Myrmidon said, at the outside door, "don't mention this to anyone. _Not anyone!_"
Forrester found himself staring at the card he held. He put it away in his case, alongside the ID card. Then, dazed, he went on back to the acolyte's sacristy, took off his white tunic and put on his street clothes.
What did they want with him at the Tower of Zeus? It didn't really sound like an arrest. If it had been that, the Myrmidons themselves would have taken him.
So what did the Pontifex Maximus want with William Forrester?
He spent some time considering it, and then, taking a deep breath, he forced it out of his mind. He would know at eighteen hundred, and such were the ways of the Gods that he would not know one second before.
So there was no point in worrying about it, he told himself. He almost made himself believe it.
But wiping speculation out of his mind left an unwelcome and uneasy vacancy. Forrester replaced it with thought of the morning's service in the Temple. Such devotion was probably valuable, anyhow, in a spiritual sense. It brought him closer to the Gods....
The Gods he wanted desperately to be like.
That, he told himself sharply, was foolishness of the most senseless kind.
The Goddess Athena had appeared herself at the service--sufficient reason for thinking of it now. The statuesquely beautiful Goddess with her severely swept-back blonde hair and her deep gray eyes was the embodiment of the wisdom and strength for which her worshippers especially prayed. Her beauty was almost unworldly, impossible of existence in a world which contained mortals.
She reminded Forrester, ever so slightly (and, of course, in a reverent way), of Gerda Symes.
There seemed to be a great many forbidden thoughts floating around this day. Resolutely, Forrester went back to thinking about the morning's service.
The Goddess had appeared only long enough to impart her blessing, but her calm, beautifully controlled contralto voice had brought a sense of peace to everyone in the auditorium. To be doggedly practical, there was no way of knowing whether the Goddess's presence was an appearance--in person, or an "appearance" by Divine Vision. But that really didn't matter. The effect was always just the same.