“And ... you were the last one to leave?”

“Yes,” the old man sighed. “Curiosity kept me, I suppose. That, and a desire to be a source of inspiration for humans rather than an object of reverence.” He looked to McHenry and amusement twinkled in his eye. “You still need to know who I am, don’t you. You humans—even half-humans, such as yourself. You still need to apply names to everything so you can comprehend it.”

He sagged heavily into a chair. How he could possibly do that, McHenry didn’t know. For that matter, McHenry had no clue why he wasn’t sinking through the floor if he was supposed to be without bodily form.

“I have a variety of names,” he said at last. “Some called me Zeus. Others, Jupiter. The Norse called me Woden. They named days after me, planets after me. Very flattering, actually. The Egyptians dubbed me Amen-Re. Takami-Musubi is what the Japanese called me. Elegant language, Japanese. Elegant people. Always liked them. And so many more, big and small. From nations to tribes, they all knew me.”

McHenry’s eyes widened. “You were ... you were a sky god? A creation god? But ... you were one of the greatest gods of all! You were ... you were big!”

“I’m still big,” rumbled the old man. “It’s creation that’s gotten small.”

“And ... how long did you stay around? After the others left?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “A while. For entities such as I, we don’t tend to pay all that much attention to the passage of time. Monitoring that is much more the province and interest of mortals than us. One century is like five is like ten. It matters little to me. Although I will say that in my last centuries on Earth, there was very little call for most of my incarnations. The name applied to me most often during that time was Klaus.”

“Klaus?” McHenry looked at him dubiously. “I don’t remember any god named Klaus.”

“I wasn’t seen as a ‘god,’ per se. More as a charitable sprite. I must say, I rather liked that time of my life. I dealt with children, mostly. Saint Klaus, I was. Those were good times.”

“Saint Klaus ... wait. Santa Claus?”he said suspiciously. “You’re telling me you were Santa Claus?”

“That was one version of it, yes.”

“Santa Claus. With the red suit and the presents and coming down the chimney? You must be joking.”

“Do you find that so difficult to believe?”

“Well ... yes! You’re Zeus and Odin and Santa Claus all rolled into one? How ridiculous is that?”

“I feel the need to point out,” the old man said airily, “that someone who is currently existing as a disembodied spirit is hardly in a position to question the little absurdities that life presents. All those names aside, I find that after all this time, I simply prefer to be called the Old Father. It’s certainly descriptive enough.”

“You know,” McHenry said at last, “I really, really hope I’m dreaming all this, because it’s too insane to cope with if I’m not.”

“You’re not,” the old man assured him, and he now had a grim demeanor to him. “Would that you were. But you’re not. This is the truth of it: My brethren, my ‘associates,’ shunt anyone to this dimension whom they believe can cause trouble. Then again,” he said reflectively, “I suppose it’s somehow appropriate that they keep me locked away like this ... considering that it was I who had kept themimprisoned for so long.”

“ Youdid?” McHenry began to pace, no longer dwelling on mundane matters such as how he was able to move about in relation to physical objects. “This isn’t exactly the story they were telling us.”

“Well, of course it wouldn’t be, would it.” He snorted derisively. “Do you think they would want you to know? Can’t blame them, really. More than a century, I kept them tightly bottled up, like the Earth legends of genies in lamps ... which originated with us, I might add.”

“Of course,” said McHenry with a helpless gesture. “I’m starting to think everything from the common cold to Fermat’s last theorem came from you people.”

“I would not call us ‘people,’ really.”

“It doesn’t matter,” McHenry told him, beginning to feel impatient. He didn’t know whyhe was impatient. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to do or anyplace else to go. It was probably a holdover from his annoying human condition. “So why did you do that? Keep them under wraps?”

“They wanted revenge. For Apollo.”

“Revenge?”

“Understand, they thought him somewhat the fool,” said the Old Father. There was unmistakable sadness in his voice, although McHenry wasn’t entirely certain for whom the sadness was intended. “But they felt he was ill used by the crew of the Enterprise.However, they also saw opportunity presenting itself: opportunity in the form of Apollo’s assignation with the mortal woman, Carolyn, who was your ancestor. They saw you as a potential bridge to the status and power they once enjoyed. I endeavored to talk them out of it, but they would not listen to reason.

“I knew then what I had to do, in order to stave off potential disaster. I knew, however, I could not do it alone. After all these millennia, even I am not what I once was. I needed an ally ... and the only reasonable ally was someone whom the others felt antipathy for, and he for they. Someone who had no love lost between himself and his associates. Wisely or unwisely, I chose my son.”

“Let me guess: He has lots of names as well.”

The Old Father nodded. “Anubis, among the Egyptians. The Greeks called him Ares, the Norse knew him as Loki. Aborigine people called him the Coyote god. Ultimately, his forte was trickery, so really, who better?”

“I thought Anubis was the Egyptian god of death.”

“It’s much the same. Consider those who lie in agony, waiting for the release of death, yet it does not come. Meanwhile newborn infants lie asleep in their beds, just beginning their lives, and they are snuffed out for no apparent reason. Dictators and tyrants lead long, happy lives, while peacemakers and lovers of all who live are cut down in their prime. There is no greater perpetrator of morbid jests than death.”

“I’m living proof of that ... maybe,” said McHenry ruefully. “And in exchange for helping you, he was spared the indignity of being stuck away in some between dimension.”

“Exactly so. So I, with the aid of my trickster son, started gathering them up, one by one, shunting them away into another dimension, where they could cause no trouble. Artemis was the last of them ... and, damn my sentimentality, I was not able to complete the task I had set out to do.” He shook his head, clearly disgusted with himself. “She begged me, she pleaded. She swore to me that she had learned from observing her departed brother the foolishness of trying to thrust oneself into the affairs of mortals.”

“And so you spared her,” McHenry said tonelessly.

“Aye. I did.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “She can be very persuasive when she needs to be.”

“So I let her and Anubis wander free ... certain in my foolish confidence that I, ever vigilant, would be able to keep the rest of the beings contained. There is nothing so foolish as the pride of an old fool,” he added. “Although really, I should have known. When one has a son whose reputation is based upon trickery, what else can one expect but betrayal?”

“So Artemis pleaded her way out of exile. Hunh.” McHenry actually laughed at that. It was the first thing he’d found amusing about any of this insanity. “Boy. If Artemis had been penned up, my life would be very, very different. I’d be alive like a normal person, for starters. My parents wouldn’t have been driven insane by her presence in my life. ...”

“I am sorry, lad, for my misjudgment which brought her down upon you,” said the Old Father. “Unfortunately, I know that means very little.”

“No ... no, actually, it does mean something,” said McHenry, choosing to be philosophical about the matter. “Especially when you consider that, for centuries, peoples’ lives have been messed up by random calamities. At such times, they’ve always begged deities for enlightenment as to why these things happened. But they’re never really given any concrete answer. This may be the first time that a deity has actually stepped up and said, ‘My mistake. Sorry for the inconvenience.’ It’s appreciated. It doesn’t change anything, but it is appreciated.” McHenry pondered the situation a moment more and then asked, “How did he do it? Or I should say, how did theydo it?”