and Athena, the divine patroness of science. Athena wants to help us, but whatever she does helps the war god. Neat. Very neat.”
The man with the moustache ordered another bottle of stout. When it came, he stared at George stonily. “It is not symbolism,” he said, measuring his words. “It’s the honest truth. I told you I was a mountain climber, didn’t I? I climbed Ruapehu last summer. I saw them there.”
“What did they look like?” George asked lazily.
“Well, I really only saw Hermes. He’s the messenger, you know, and it’s easier for people to look at him without being blinded. He’s a young man, very handsome, very jolly-looking. He looks like he’d play all kinds of tricks on you, but you wouldn’t mind it. They’d be good tricks. He—you could see him shining, even in the sun.”
“What about the others?”
The man with the stout shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. You wouldn’t understand me. They’re too bright. They have to put on other shapes when they go among men.
“But I think they miss us. I think they’re lonesome, really. The Maori are a fine people, very intelligent, but they’re not quite what the gods are used to. You know what I think?” The man with the moustache lowered his voice solemnly. “I think we ought to send an embassy to them. Send people with petitions and offerings. If we asked them right, asked them often enough, they’d be sorry for us. They’d come back.”
There was a stirring four or five stools down, toward the middle of the bar. A sailor stood up and came toward the man with the moustache. “So you don’t like the government?” he said menacingly. There was a beer bottle in his hand.
“Government?” the man with the moustache answered. George noticed that he was slightly pop-eyed. “What’s that got to do with it? I’m trying to help.”
“Haaaaaa! I heard you talking against it,” said the sailor. He swayed on his feet for a moment. Then he aimed a heavy blow with the beer bottle at the center of the moustache.
The man with the moustache ducked. He got off the bar stool, still doubled up. He drew back. He rammed the sailor hard in the pit of the stomach with his head.
As the sailor collapsed, the man from New Zealand stepped neatly over him. He walked to the front of the bar and handed a bill to the bartender who was standing, amazed, near the cash register. He closed the door of the bar behind him.
After a moment he opened it again and stuck his head back in. “God damn everybody!” he yelled.
After the sailor had been revived by his friends and pushed back on a bar stool, the man with the trumpet case, who had been on the far side of the stout drinker, moved nearer to George.
“Interesting story he told, wasn’t it?” he said cheerily. “Of course, there wasn’t anything to it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” George answered perversely. “There might have been.”
“Oh, no,” the man with the trumpet case said positively. He shook his head so vigorously that the folds of his pious, starchy, dewlapped face trembled. “Nothing like that.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because…” He hesitated. “Because I know what the real reasons for our difficulties are.”
“Well, what’s your explanation?”
“I—I don’t know whether I ought to say this,” the starchy man said coyly. He put his head on one side and looked at George bright-eyed. Then, as if fearing George’s patience might be on the edge of exhaustion, he said, quite quickly, “It’s the last trump.”
“Who’s the last trump?” the man on the bar stool around the corner from George asked, leaning forward to listen. George knew him by sight; his name was Atkinson.
“Nobody,” the starchy man answered. “I meant that the last trump ought to have been blown ages ago. The world is long overdue for judgment.”
“H. G. Wells story,” George murmured.
“I beg your pardon?” said the starchy man.
“Nothing.” George motioned to the bartender and ordered a round of drinks. Atkins on took gin and ginger ale, and the starchy man kirschwasser.
“Why hasn’t the trump been blown?” Atkinson asked, with the air of one tolerating noisy children.
“Because it’s lost,” the starchy man replied promptly. “When the time came to blow it, it wasn’t in Heaven. This wicked, wicked world! Ages ago it should have been summoned to meet its master.” He drooped his eyelids.
George felt his tongue aching with the repression of his wish to say, “Plagiarist!” Atkinson said, “Oh, fooey. How do you know the trump’s been lost?”
“Because I have it here,” the starchy gentleman answered. “Right here.” He patted his trumpet case.
George and Atkinson exchanged a look. George said, “Let’s see it.”
“I don’t think I’d better…”
“Oh, go on!”
“Well… No, I’d better not.”
Atkinson leaned his elbows on the bar and rested his chin on his interlaced fingers. “I expect there’s nothing in the trumpet case actually,” he said indifferently. “I expect it’s only a gambit of his.”
The soft, wrinkled skin of the man who was drinking kirschwasser flushed red around the eyes. He put the trumpet case down on the bar in front of George with a thump, and snapped open the lid. Atkinson and George bent over it eagerly.
The trumpet case was lined with glossy white silk, like a coffin. Against the white fabric, gleaming with an incredible velvety luster, lay a trumpet of deepest midnight blue. It might have been black, but it wasn’t; it was the color of deep space where it lies softly, like a caress, for trillions of miles around some regal, blazing star. The bell of the trumpet was fluted and curved like the flower of a morning glory.
Atkinson whistled. After a moment he paid the trumpet the ultimate tribute. “Gosh,” he said.
The man with the trumpet said nothing, but his little mouth pursed in a small, tight, nasty smile. “Where’d you get it?” George queried. “I’m not saying.”
“How do you know it’s the last trump?” Atkinson asked.
The starchy man shrugged his shoulders. “What else could it be?” he asked.
The door at the front of the bar opened and three men came in. George watched them absently as they walked the length of the bar counter and went into the rear. “But… you mean if this thing were blown, the world would come to an end? There’d be the last judgment?”
“I imagine.”
“I don’t believe it,” Atkinson said after a minute. “I just don’t believe it. It’s an extraordinary looking trumpet, I admit, but it can’t be… that.”
“Ohhhhh?”
“Yes. If it’s what you say, why don’t you blow it?”
The starchy man seemed disconcerted. He licked his lips. Then he said, in rather a hostile tone, “You mean you want me to blow? You mean you’re ready to meet your maker—you and all the rest of the world—right now? Right this minute? With all your sins, with a ll your errors of commission and omission, unforgiven and unshriven on your head?”
“Sure. That’s right. Why not? The longer the world goes on existing, the worse it’ll get. As to sins and all that, I’ll take my chances. They couldn’t be much worse than what—” Atkinson made a small gesture that seemed to enclose in itself the whole miserable, explosive terrestrial globe—“than what we have now.”
Under his breath, George quoted, “‘We doctors know a hopeless case—’”
The starchy man turned to him. “Do you agree with him, young man?” he demanded.
“Yep.”
The man with the trumpet turned bright red. He reached into the case and picked up the trumpet. As he lifted it through the air, George noticed what a peculiarly eye-catching quality the celestial object had. Its color and gloss had the effect on the eye that a blare of horns has on the ear. Heads began to turn toward it. In no time at all, everyone in the bar was watching the starchy man.
He seemed to pause a little, as if to make sure that he had the attention of his audience. Then he drew a deep, deep breath. He set the trumpet to his lips.
From the rear of the bar there burst out a jangling, skirling, shrieking, droning uproar. It was an amazing
