A flash of the old zest illuminated Christ’s eyes so that electron worlds within his pupils veered dangerously; and on forgotten islands in time, small volcanoes erupted. “I should go back and teach them all a lesson. Hypocrites and liars! Deliberately twisting a god’s words. Hypocrites and liars!” Christ banged his golden cane on the massive floorboards, sending sharp splinters of light everywhere, and Zeus said soothingly, “Forget it. It’s all passed now. And don’t go into a tantrum. You’ll make it rain in—where is it? Ohio? Last time you carried on, they had a flood.”

“That’s nothing compared to what you did in Greece, and the entire Mediterranean, for that matter,” Christ said, recovering. But then he shook his great head, untended graying curls cascading to the shoulders of his slightly stained sky-blue robe. “Still, it’s sad,” he said. “This whole place is just filled with old gods. Half of them have forgotten who they are. And no one comes to visit except those whiny petitioners. Bad enough, they call me by my first name.”

“You always did get depressed easily,” Zeus said. “We’ll rouse again. You wait and see. And if one of us does, we all do, of course.”

Into the splendidly appointed solarium came a dark, bent-over, tottering but massive figure of a goddess; gray hair kinky and wiry with leaping electricity; eyes a fury of autumnal ecstasy; ponderous yet so compelling in her mood of dejection that the whole room momentarily darkened. Christ and Zeus eyed each other with a worried air. Zeus coughed apologetically as he always did when Hera, his wife, came out of her private quarters: She was quite insane. She thought she wasn’t a god at all. She even believed she was human on bad days (which lasted for centuries, of course).

“She doesn’t have a believer left, poor thing,” Zeus said.

Hera sat down in the thronelike rocking chair with silver gliders; her face darker than the deepest twilight. She stared out the multidimensional windows for a while, then said finally, “It’s you two who are mad. We aren’t gods and goddesses. We never were. We were all deluded. I’m the only sane one here. You’re obsessed: Christ, with his Crucifixion; you, dear husband, with your claims of power; Mohammed with his magic sword, and all the rest. And Christ keeps seeing the head of John the Baptist on a platter, carried by one of the dancing girls. Divine delusions! Obsessions! Sad enough that you’ve deluded yourselves, but world upon worlds! I can’t bear to think about it. If it wasn’t that I had Pegasus for company, I would lose what mind I have left.”