e person to have as an enemy. He probably figured she'd
get him sooner or later, so he might as well save her the trouble."

"And Hera had to rush to get a replacement? Why couldn't there just have
been some sort of explanation, while the rest of you ran things?"

"Because the rest of us couldn't run things. Not for long, anyhow. It's
all a question of power."

"Power?" Forrester said.

"Everything we have," Diana said, "is derived, directly or indirectly,
from the workings of one machine. Though 'machine' is a long way from
the right word for it--it bears about as much resemblance to what you
think of as a machine as a television set does to a window. There just
isn't a word for it in any language you know."

"And all the Gods have to work the machine at once?"

"Something like that." Diana came back from the window and sat down
facing him again. "It operates through the nervous systems of the beings
in circuit with it, each one of them in contact with one of the power
nodes of the machine. And if one of the nodes is unoccupied, then the
machine's out of balance. It will run for a while, but eventually it
will simply wreck itself. Every one of the fifteen nodes has to be
occupied. Otherwise--chaos."

Forrester nodded. "So when Dionysus died--"

"We had to find a replacement in a hurry. The machine's been running out
of balance for about as long as it can stand right now."

Forrester closed his eyes. "I'm not sure I get the picture."

"Well, look at it this way: suppose you have a wheel."

"All right," Forrester said obligingly. "I have a wheel."

"And this wheel has fifteen weights on it. They're spaced equally around
the rim, and the wheel's revolving at high speed."

Forrester kept his eyes closed. When he had the wheel nicely spinning,
he said: "Okay. Now what?"

"Well," Diana said, "as long as the weights stay in place, the wheel
spins evenly. But if you remove one of the weights, the wheel's out of
balance. It starts to wobble."

Forrester took one of the weights (Dionysus, a rather large, jolly
weight) off the wheel in his mind. It wobbled. "Right," he said.

"It can take the wobble for a little while. But unless the balance is
restored in time, the wheel will eventually break."

Hurriedly, Forrester put Dionysus back on the wheel. The wobble stopped.
"Oh," he said. "I see."

"Our power machine works in that sort of way. That is, it requires all
fifteen occupants. Dionysus has been dead for t