"I had some talent."
"How did you know your talent? Mana's like that. How does an athlete know his strength? It's a fizz in the head. It's an excitement. I thought I knew what it was like, but I didn't really. Not until that day in Olfaan's temple. Oh, I'd picked up scraps now and then, but nothing like that. Having a troop of warriors to lead had been giving me some, but we hadn't been on a node. Nodes make all the difference. That's why strangers find themselves nodes and become numens—gods, if you want to call them that. As soon as we marched in, my chaps realized that my drill had made them superior to all the other contingents. They were thinking, Good old D'ward! and I could feel that pride and admiration like a shot of hot brandy."
"You weren't frightened of the numen, Olfaan?"
He laughed. “I was a complete innocent! I still trusted Krobidirkin, you see. I thought he would have foreseen that ceremony and warned Olfaan I was coming and won her approval. Astina's lot were not part of the Chamber—so I thought, and in a very rough sense I was right about that. I was wrong about Krobidirkin. The Herder was just using me. There's the palace!"
"It's usually around here somewhere."
They stopped at the curb, looking across at Buckingham Palace, waiting for the policemen controlling the traffic.
"Ugly heap, isn't it?” Edward said. “You'd think that the King-Emperor of a quarter of the world would have a more impressive residence. Pity he isn't home, or we could drop in for tea.” The royal standard was not flying.
"He's doing his bit. He does a lot for the troops."
"So he damned well should! They're certainly doing enough for him."
Alice glanced up, surprised. “What's wrong?"
"Oh ... nothing."
"Come on! Out with it."
He shrugged, frowning. “I wish I understood how it works here. That was something we didn't talk about much in Olympus. A couple of thousand years ago, yes. Then it worked on Earth very much as it still does on Nextdoor. I think there really was a god at Delphi, then. When the Greeks went to consult the oracle, there was a numen present and the prophecies were genuine. Or some of them at least. When the Romans prayed in the Capitol to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, someone was listening. But things changed a few centuries back."
Alice had been wondering about that. “Nietzsche? ‘God is dead'?"
"No. The gods are not dead. They're still here, or else there are new gods. People stopped taking them literally when the Enlightenment came, but they didn't die. They've taken some other form."
"You're not saying King George is a stranger?"
He laughed. “Hardly!” His mood darkened. “No. Creighton said the Blighters started this war, but there's no nominal god of death receiving the sacrifices. That doesn't mean the sacrifices aren't being made. Who is lapping up the mana?"
"Edward! Are you saying that all gods—all gods—throughout history ... that all gods and all religions have been fakes, frauds?"
He hesitated. “No. No, I'm not saying that. You see, what the Service is trying to introduce in the Vales is a system of ethics that you would recognize. You would approve. I do. It has a lot of Christianity in it, and a lot of Buddhism.... The Golden Rule, mostly—the sort of thing that has cropped up in our world and in that world many times. It has to come from somewhere and—Come on!"
The policeman was waving. They crossed the road. She kept trying to release his hand, but he was holding her fingers tightly. Passersby shot them disapproving looks.
"It's incredible to be back here,” he said. “To see all the old familiar sights again."
"And yet the differences? What do you notice?"
"Crowds. The whole population of the Vales would not fill London. People overdressed, because of the climate. Walking their dogs! How absurdly, typically English! Mothers pushing babies in prams. Tourists and late holidaymakers, soldiers on leave. Policemen. Do those barrage balloons really do any good?"
They talked of the war for a while. They crossed Piccadilly and entered Hyde Park. His sinister talk of sacrifice bothered her, though, and eventually she asked him how it worked.
He sighed. “Know that, and you would understand all mysteries! The essence of sacrifice is that you do something you don't want to do because you think it will please your god. If you're lucky, you get a pat on the head and feel good. If I hadn't known that before, then I'd have learned it that day in Nag. All those warriors from Sonalby sacrificed to me! They didn't mean to. They didn't even know they were doing it, but each of them had to perform a very unpleasant ritual with a blunt knife and a handful of salt. They thought they were doing it for their own manhood, their goddess, and poor old Golbfish, but I was their leader and their friend, and there I was, right on the node. I had charisma! So they did it for me, and pretty soon I was gibbering drunk with mana."
"That was what you used on Golbfish?"
"Not really. I didn't use anything on him except charisma, and I couldn't help that. Oh, I suppose I was being a little more than naïve. Right at the beginning, as soon as he went up to the altar, I knew he was a very worried man. Probably no one else knew. I had no idea what the matter was, but I felt sorry for him. When I finally got my chance to march up the steps, I tried to give him a bit of cheering up. I gave him one of those looks you do when you want to tell someone something without actually speaking, you know? He sort of grabbed at it, and I realized that he was in mortal terror."
"Then the goddess came?"
"At the end she did. If I was tipsy, she must have been completely bung-eyed by that time. She'd all those thousands of people singing hymns to her and then hundreds of men offering blood and pain, all right on her node—mana in torrents! I don't suppose she'd had a feast like that in a generation. And suddenly it was cut off. It was all coming to me, see? So she came to find out what was going on. I'm sure nobody else saw her. I caught a glimpse and thought, Whoops! and she saw me and I'm sure she guessed right away who I was. I was very bad news, because I might queer her with Zath or Karzon or with major intriguing in the Pentatheon. The lady did not want to be involved! So she scarpered."
"But what did she look like?"
"Nothing special, as I recall,” he said vaguely. “Big woman. Hardly saw her. It was like two friends passing in a busy street. They tip their hats to each other and are gone. I was more worried about Golbfish."
"Why? Why did you decide to help him?"
Edward shrugged, almost shyly. “I didn't do anything, really. He needed a friend and my charisma made him trust me. He thought up his own way out. I was amused to discover I now had a prince under my command. I wasn't thinking too clearly, as I said. I felt invincible! Good day for sailing boats!"
Alice looked to where the children were playing by the Serpentine.
"Is that what you want to do? Stop and play with toy boats on a lake, just let the world go by? Two worlds?"
"I want to enlist."
"Edward, what exactly is prophesied about you in the other world? What does the Liberator actually do?"
He turned on her in sudden anger. “I told you: He kills Death. Not real death, just Zath, of course. And that's disaster! It leads to disaster! There's only one way it could be done, and that's for me to set myself up as a god and collect more mana than Zath—and he's been at it for a hundred years. I can't imagine what horrors I'd have to invent to squeeze worship on that scale out of the masses, and what happens after? What happens to me? What happens to them? All that just to kill one stranger, who'll probably be replaced by another in two shakes? Zath's the first one nasty enough to claim to be god of death, but it's such a great swindle he invented that he certainly won't be the last. The guv'nor saw all that, and when I finally got to read the bloody Filoby thing, I saw too, and I won't have anything to do with it! I came Home to enlist, but I also came Home to break the chain, and I'm never going back! Never! I won't! I mean it! That's final!” He spun on his heel and stalked away, walking faster than before.