Diana smiled. "Yes, Zeus is a long way from the great hero of the legends, isn't he? Using the old calendar, Zeus died in about 1100 B.C., not too long after the close of the Trojan War. As far as anybody knows, Neptune did the actual killing, but it's pretty clear that the original idea wasn't his." "Hera's," Forrester guessed. "Of course," Diana said. "What she wanted was a figurehead she could control--and that's what she got. Though I'm not sure she's entirely happy with the change. If the original Zeus was a little harder to control, at least he seems to have had an original thought now and again." Forrester sat quietly for a time, waiting for the shock to pass. "What about Dionysus?" Diana shrugged. "He--well, as far as anybody's ever been able to tell, it was suicide. About three years ago, and it drove Hera pretty wild, trying to find a substitute in a hurry. I suspect he was bored with the wine, women and song. He'd had a long time of it. And, too, he'd had some little disagreements with Hera. As you may have gathered, she is not exactly a safe 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?"