Element 79

The Judgment of Aphrodite

Hermes gave the contenders a quick, experienced glance. A weird lot, a distinctly unpleasant lot, was his instant analysis. He was damned glad he wasn’t going to find himself frolicking with any of ’em. He doubted whether Aphrodite quite realized just what it was she was letting herself in for this time.

On the far left was a fellow in a yellow cape, a king of some sort. Every fifteen seconds or so he spat a stream of bright red liquid into a huge spittoon. He squirted it out, blood, presumably, from the side of his mouth in what he evidently thought to be a stylish fashion. Thus relieved, he looked around the room with a satisfied smirk. Then he would chew for a few seconds and out would come the next jet.

The one at left-center needed close watching. For a moment it would be a handsome young man, not much different from Hermes himself. Then, in a flash, it would be a long, drawn-out old man banging away at the floor with a heavy cloven hoof. Another flash, and it would be a toothless hag in a battered hat who sat there leering up into the face of the blood-spitting king. A trick cyclist, if Hermes ever saw one.

At right-center sat a patriarch with a huge white beard, fully a yard wide. He sat motionless and quite without expression.

At extreme right, equally motionless and equally expressionless, was a thing. Essentially all body, broad with a thick chest, it had a face of a sort, the features apparently of gilt. Hermes had the fancy the features consisted merely of gilt lettering, but this seemed absurd.

Aphrodite floated in to the sound of exquisitely delicate music. Simply but superbly dressed, she took her accustomed chair on the raised dais. Hermes caught a glimpse of the fabulous legs and sighed.

The king in the yellow cape was the first one up. “I am Tamerlenk, conqueror of nations, conqueror of mankind.” A veritable torrent of blood swished into the spittoon.

“I see a beautiful country before me, a land golden with ripening corn.” The fellow threw out his cloak, as if to suggest yellowing fields. Then he pointed straight ahead. “I will have that country. I will have every last thing in it, every woman, every man, every child. With subtle potions I instruct my soldiery to intense greed and cruelty. I inflame them to intense lust. I drive them like the whirlwind into the land of the ripening corn. Women are raped before the eyes of lovers and husbands, men are flogged until not a piece of flesh will cling to the bare bones. Terror reigns supreme, terror untempered by pity. Then I hold up my hand—so!—and peace descends instantly on the land. All is now silent and still, and with silence comes abject obedience from every man, every woman, every child. The land is now mine, every last thing in it.

“This is no vainglorious boasting. The pages of history stand open to attest to my conquests. I waste no more words. Power lies in strength, not in words, and the true servants of power are the whip, the chain, and the branding iron.”

Tamerlenk gave a last decisive ping into the spittoon and sat himself down, plainly satisfied with his performance. Well he might be, thought Hermes. Aphrodite was making notes in her special little book, the way she always did when she was impressed. This monster had hit Aphrodite’s weakness—the exercise of brute physical force—slap-bang on the nose, just as Ares, the war god, always seemed able to do. Hermes had a sudden suspicion of this Tamerlenk fellow. This might be a trick by Ares himself, a trick to maneuver himself into bed with Aphrodite. Once there, once home again, as it were, it wouldn’t be hard for him to make her forget their last quarrel.

Why must it always be the screwballs who were attractive to women, the plausible rascals and the pathological idiots? Hermes shook his handsome young head, and sighed again.

The trick cyclist was the next one up. In the guise of the old crone in the hat, the creature began in a high falsetto. “I frighten the maidens of the villagery. Sometimes I skim milk, sometimes I labor in the quern, and bootless make the breathless housewife churn. Sometimes I make the drink to bear no barm. Sometimes I mislead night wanderers. Hee-hee! Laugh I at their harm.”

In a flash the old crone was gone, replaced by a skull inside which a brisk fire was burning. The skull itself seemed to be inlaid with turquoise mosaics. Before Hermes could make quite sure of this, a creature with lank, black hair parted down the middle, a creature with a vast mouth—the teeth even and flat at the bottom like a pair of scissors—was standing there. This apparition immediately gave way to an oddity with the horns of a cow, the teeth filed into sharp needles this time. The gyrations went faster and faster until Hermes became quite dizzy. Aphrodite turned on him with a quizzical shrug.

“I haven’t the slightest idea how the idiot got himself in here,” he muttered apologetically.

Aphrodite had seen enough. “Stop it!” she snapped. The command was not to be ignored. The gyrations halted dead. It was the thin creature standing there, the one with the cloven hoof. Hermes noticed it had a big black tail, a tail which twitched continuously. The thing seemed incapable of being still, even from one second to the next.

“I am the Devil,” it began.

“Never mind who you are. What’s all this twinkling in aid of?”

“Those are the many guises of my assistant devils. I have many assistant devils, at my orgies.”

“What orgies are these? Will you be good enough to stop twitching.”

The Devil swiveled uncomfortably on his cloven hoof. His case wasn’t going any too well. The thrashing tail was stilled for a moment. He must think up something to show off his power. “I have an enormous orgy starting promptly at midnight on Walpurgis night.”

Apart from the merest whistle through the teeth, Aphrodite took this absurdity with complete composure. “Will you be good enough to define the word ‘orgy?’ Exactly what goes on in an orgy?”

“Well, devilry, of course, generalized devilry. I get ’em all going round and round in a wild dance, faster and faster I force ’em to go. Until the first cockcrow.”

The Devil started up quite a realistic drum roll with his hoof. Aphrodite and Hermes exchanged glances. Neither could remotely conceive of why the first cockcrow should have anything to do with it.

“I instructed you a moment ago to be more explicit. Who are ’em?”

“Damned souls, of course, out of graves gaping wide. I open up the graves of all damned souls on the nights of my special orgies.”

“What is the purpose of this ridiculous nonsense?”

“Everlasting torment, my dear lady. Hell is my kingdom. In hell everlasting tortures are inflicted on the hosts of the damned. Following this little session, it is my intention to enjoy an extended interview with the damned soul who immediately preceded me. I’ll soon have him spitting out of the other side of his face, I promise you.”

The Devil beat out a veritable tattoo with his tail. Hermes had the feeling the creature could give you a really nasty thwack with that big black tail. He also had the feeling Aphrodite wasn’t going to put up with this nonsense for very much longer. Her voice was already dangerously silky. “How would I go about it, becoming a damned soul?”

“Nothing easier,” said the creature cheerfully, “particularly for a woman. Just get yourself seduced.”

“Really, as easy as that?”

“Nothing more needed, one of my oldest tricks. Just get yourself solidly seduced.”

Too late, the Devil realized his foolish mistake, talking nonsense about seduction to the very goddess of love. He started his twinkling tricks again, hoping, no doubt, to confuse the issue. Hermes could see the skull with the turquoise inlay, then the scissor teeth, then the cow horns, round and round in a whirling kaleidoscopic display. Aphrodite gave the big thumbs-down, and like a flash Hermes stabbed the button. In the merest fraction of a nanosecond, the ground opened up at left-center.

The Devil was gone now, but the noise he was still able to kick up with his drumming hoof rumbled up from the depths below, more than loud enough to be a nuisance.

“Better clear him altogether,” muttered Aphrodite.

Nothing loath, Hermes pressed the clear-store button. Instantly the noise stopped, but in its place a vast sulfurous cloud of smoke belched up out of the floor like some enormous geyser. Hermes just managed to punch the air-conditioner before the smoke entirely blotted out the console keyboard.

The incident did not improve Aphrodite’s already shortening temper. The acrid smoke left her with red-rimmed eyes, not at all becoming to any girl. Hermes could see things were going to be a bit tough on the two remaining contenders. Yet neither showed any sign of apprehension or even of inconvenience. Up came the fellow with the enormous beard. Hermes would have predicted the fellow would be equipped with a massive voice, it just had to be so. Sure enough, the Voice boomed out, “I am that I am.” Nothing more.

“I am that I am,” repeated Aphrodite. “What d’you make of that one?”

“Shortest possible logical closed loop,” answered Hermes. “Just two interlinked transfer instructions.”

The fellow continued, “I am the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, and the god of Jacob.”

Aphrodite’s rippling laugh echoed through the hall. “Who are Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham?” Answer there was none. The bearded patriarch stared dead ahead, his eyes focused on infinity. Hermes pressed the query button. It took a second or two for the search to be made. Out came the information on the high-speed printer.

“Nomads. Complex sexual situation. Small-time stuff,” he said.

“Rather what I expected. This fellow has delusions of grandeur.”

Aphrodite was on the very point of a thumbs-down when the Voice intoned, “I live on a throne, high and uplifted. Above it stand the seraphim.”

Hermes watched as Aphrodite’s wonderful mouth opened wider and wider. In astonishment, she asked, “What are seraphim?”

“Each seraph hath six wings. With twain they cover my face, with twain my feet, with twain they do fly.”

Once more the laugh with all sunlight in it rippled through the hall. This time the patriarch heard it. With an expansive smile and a guffaw he boomed, “One day I called Samuel, and Samuel rose up and said, ‘Lord thou callest me, I am here.’ So I said unto him, ‘No, Samuel, I called thee not, lie thyself down again,’ whereupon he laid himself down again.”

Aphrodite smiled in her silkiest style. “Let me remind you, I am here to make judgment on a reasoned case, not to listen to drab anecdotes or feverish pronouncements. Suppose you apply yourself to a little coherent thought.”

The fellow stood blinking for quite a while. At last some recollection crossed his mind. “I visited Sarah as I had spoken, and did unto her as I had spoken.”

“What had you spoken?”

“That Sarah shall bear a son. That Abraham’s seed shall prosper.”

“I asked you a moment ago to make an attempt at rationality. How could Abraham’s seed prosper if it was you who visited Sarah? What were these unmentionable things you did to her? Did you give her a little pleasure, a little kindness? Or did you treat her with the summary dispatch of a farmyard animal?”

Ignoring these pertinent questions, the patriarch lifted his right hand high above his head. “I am a jealous god,” he thundered. “I have smitten the first-born in the land. I have caused the waters to close upon mine enemies. I have made the ground to tremble beneath their feet.”

To emphasize his point, the patriarch began to blow out through pursed lips in the manner of a horse. At first there came nothing but a woofing, exactly in the manner of a horse. Then ever so slightly the ground did indeed begin to tremble. Fascinated at this discovery, the fellow went on and on with his woofing. More and more he got the trick of it, until quite suddenly there came a really violent shaking. A glass of fruit juice at Aphrodite’s elbow jiggled and spilled over into her lap. The liquid instantly soaked its way through the resplendent dress. In a fury she shouted, “Stop this ridiculous and childish nonsense!”

There was no stopping it. The Voice boomed on. “I am the lord of hosts. In the beginning I created the heavens and the earth. My spirit moved on the waters.”

The voice of Aphrodite, as she rose from her chair, was also loud and threatening. “Quiet, or I will have you cleared, utterly and finally, so that not a single absurdity is left behind.”

Heedless, the Voice ranted on. “Come then, gather unto my supper that ye may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses, the flesh of all men both great and small.”

Hermes glanced again at the data sheets from the printer. “Raving lunatic. Worst case of paranoia on record,” he shouted.

At swelling volume, the creature continued to give tongue. “Come, look here,” it thundered, “look and ye shall see. I have a name written on my thigh—king of kings, lord of lords.”

“This one’s got the lot,” bellowed Hermes in Aphrodite’s ear.

“Then give him the lot,” she bellowed in reply.

Hermes extended a deliberate finger to the oblivion button. Instantly, Whitebeard was gone, the ranting stopped. But not without all trace. Like the Devil, this creature vanished in a pall of smoke, this time a sickly smoke—incense, apparently—worse, if anything, than the Devil smoke. Hermes was too taken aback by the intensity of it to reach for the air-conditioner. Yet the pall gradually cleared, and with its clearing Hermes found Aphrodite clinging to him.

“I suspected something like that might happen,” she whispered, “I got to the controls just in time.”

Aphrodite resumed her judgment seat with as much dignity as she could muster. It wasn’t easy to be dignified, for the tumbler of spilled juice had made her abominably sticky. Never again, never again, she decided, was she getting herself into a situation like this. Even the blood-spitting Tamerlenk was fast losing his attractions. Aphrodite was just on the point of making a reluctant judgment in favor of Tamerlenk when a discreet cough reminded her of the fourth contender. The thing was standing there, a big rectangular box with a shining gilt face. It had legs, after all, extremely short, stumpy legs. The face really was nothing but gilt lettering. The thing began in a flat, featureless voice. “In a very real sense. I have been gravely perturbed at the manner in which business has been conducted today. I am referring now, not to the summary dispatch of the two immediately preceding gentlemen, but to an omission on the part of the Chair to state our terms of reference. An observer, persona curiae, might well be pardoned for failure to comprehend what this affair is about. I will commence, therefore, by stating terms of reference from the floor.

“Power is the subject of our debate. The contenders, each one of us, has appeared here freely, without constraint or duress. It is the opinion, the belief, the conviction of each one of us that power over the destiny of man resides chiefly in our person. It is my belief that power resides in me. Each of the gentlemen who preceded me held a similar belief. We are here to provide evidence to substantiate our belief. It is the task of the Chair to weigh our several arguments and then to deliver a balanced and final judgment (I might add, parenthetically, that the Chair has graciously condescended to spend a night of extreme frolicsomeness with the winner). These are our terms of reference.”

Hermes saw the dark look on Aphrodite’s face. No objection, he knew, would be made to an immediate punching of the windbag button. Yet in all fairness, a thumbs-down could hardly be given on anything the gilt creature had said so far. Besides, Hermes had no wish to leave the field open to the blood-spitting merchant. The flat voice continued. “The contention which I am here to prove is that I, a book of rules, a mere rule-book, if you prefer to call me so, exercise complete sway over the destiny of man. From front to back, top to bottom, I am a vast aggregation of laws and statutes. With these I bind my subjects far more effectively than the fetters employed by the remaining gentleman on my right. The gentleman imagines himself to be a conqueror. Yet where are his conquests? Are they not all gone now, like thistledown blown away in the wind? My conquests become more firmly established as time goes on. My rules become hallowed by time. My laws become established by precedent. Learned men search me from cover to cover, lavishing their energies and talents to insure that I am obeyed in all things, down to the last comma. Strong men quail before me quite as abjectly as they ever quailed before the gentleman whose spittoon is now very definitely spilling over onto the floor of this otherwise clean and pleasant hall.

“As the centuries pass, I hold dominion over an ever-increasing proportion of humanity. Throughout the so-called advanced countries, I control the lives of the people down to the finest details. In one of the oldest of these countries, I have reduced the people to an ultimate paralysis, a paralysis in which no decisions can be taken, a paralysis in which nothing happens except endless and futile argument, utterly without point or urgency. In this last stage, I reduce all humankind to an intellectual senility in which they even become incapable of responding to the most elementary facts.

“A remarkable aspect of my power is that my victims never regard themselves as victims. The more I reduce them to a state of complete inanition, the happier they become. Astonishingly, I do not even write my own laws or my own statutes. I allow humans to pack into my massive chest anything that should take their fancy. This explains why I am quite largely stuffed with rubbish. I contain outrageous logical contradictions. Far from hindering me, this even helps my purposes, for humans torture themselves over the contradictions, not by a genuine removal of logical difficulties, mark you, but by setting up elaborate pretenses that no such contradictions exist. These pretenses greatly assist me in inducing mental collapse in otherwise quite rational and healthy people. I cause mental agony on a vast scale, far more effectively and acutely than the whips, chains, and branding irons employed by the remaining gentleman on my right.

“Absurd talk, you might be disposed to think. Absurd, indeed, but true, utterly true. Why, you may wonder, do they not destroy me, these foolish humans, why not burn me, disintegrate me—eh? Here’s the rub, they cannot do so. I cannot be eliminated, because no human organization can succeed without me. Particularly, no army can fight without me. An army without regulations is but a rabble. Now suppose some section of humankind sought to manage without me. It would have no army, save a mere rabble. It would be overwhelmed by the armies of those humankind who pay allegiance to us. It would be wiped from the face of the earth.”

Hermes shifted uneasily. A dread of this gilt-faced creature was beginning to grow within him. There was a curious conviction in the flat, unemotional voice, so sharply in contrast to the other contenders. Aphrodite was feeling it, too. Her face was a chalky-white, for no doubt the thought of a night’s frolic with this appalling thing was beginning to prey on her mind. The creature went relentlessly on. “Let me pass next to an exposure of the weaknesses in the arguments put forward by others who spoke before me. Throughout his former career, the gentleman of the many faces—whom you so rightly converted to a puff of sulfurous smoke—failed in everything he attempted. He failed precisely because he could never bring himself to accept the need for rules and regulations. Had the gentleman ever been able to organize himself, to draw up a rigid and extensive code of sinning, there is no telling to what heights he might have climbed. By nature, if I may be permitted the term, the gentleman was anti-everything, anti-rule, anti-law, which, by the way, is why he smelled so very badly in his final moments.

“The gentleman of the large beard and overpowering voice presents us with a more complex problem. You must understand, my dear young lady, that this gentleman in his time enjoyed a considerable vogue in the world. Many indeed will be distressed to discover him converted so adroitly to a whiff of incense. His passing will leave regrets.”

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.