A wave of fear blew through Cadmus' fogged brain. "Cadmeans. My—memory! Johlan erased almost everything. I remember nothing—yet—there's something—something I've got to remember!"
She didn't answer. They walked on. A Martian half-breed ogled them from a niche in the stone, jaws chewing the mind-shattering pulp of the Venusian thiln-flower. Wrecks of three worlds. They believed in nothing but their dreams—and the Gray God in the valley. The former they believed in as an only escape from a hopeless reality. The latter, because they had been conditioned to regard it as a god, as omnipotent.
You may fear a god, and hate a god, Cadmus mused, but you cannot desert a faith with impunity.
"You know a lot of Cadmus and the Cadmeans," he said as they walked deeper into the gloom. "I know nothing. Nothing! Listen, who is Cadmus?" He frowned. A ridiculous question.
"You are he," said Old Pirri. "Gods and heroes will never die."
"Who am I?"
"Cadmus."
He swore. His head ached more with doubts and hidden fears. A desperate yearning to know clawed frantically in his skull.
Old Pirri said, "There is a myth, centuries old, dear boy." Her voice softened. "But myths repeat themselves. They're rooted in the soul. In this myth, that was born on Terra when it was young and fresh and when blood was hot with early flames, there was a prince. He was tall and strong, and his skin was gold over muscles of steel."
She peered over her shoulder. "His name was Cadmus."