But where the doubt had begun was unimportant now. It was present, it had grown; that was all that mattered. He could find facts to feed the doubt and strengthen it, and he looked at the facts one by one:
First there was the angry conversation between Mars and Venus, on the night of the Bacchanal.
He could still hear what Mars had said:
"... worse than your predecessor."
And then he'd shut Venus up before she gave away too much—realizing, maybe, that he had given away a good deal himself. That one little sentence was enough to bring everything into question, Forrester thought.
He had wondered why it had been necessary to have a double for Dionysus, but he hadn't actually thought about it; maybe he hadn't wanted to think about it. But now, with the notion of a "predecessor" for Venus in his mind, he had to think about it, and the only conclusion he could come to was a disturbing one. It did more than disturb him, as a matter of fact—it frightened him. He wanted desperately to find some flaw in the conclusion he faced, because he feared it even more than he feared the coming judgment of the Pantheon.
But there wasn't any flaw. The facts meshed together entirely too well to be an accidental pattern.
In the first place, he thought, why had he been picked for the job? He was a nobody, of no importance, with no special gifts. Why did he deserve the honor of taking his place beside Hercules and Achilles and Odysseus and the other great heroes? Forrester knew he wasn't any hero. But what gave him his standing?
And, he went on, there was a second place. In the months of his training he had met fourteen of the Gods—all of them, except for Dionysus. Now, what kind of sense did that make? Anyone who's going to have a double usually trains the double himself, if it's at all possible. Or, at the very least, he allows the double to watch his actions, so that the double can do a really competent job of imitation.
And if an imitation is all that's needed, why not hire an actor instead of a history professor?