"The governing factor is that similarity. You've got to be of the same magnitude as Dionysus. Of course, you don't have to be an identical copy. The machine can be adjusted for slight differences."
"I see," Forrester said. "And the fifteen power nodes—" Another idea occurred to him. "Wait a minute. If there are only fifteen power nodes, then how come there were so many different Gods and Goddesses among the Greeks? There were a lot more than fifteen back then."
"Of course there were," Diana said, "but they weren't real Gods. As a matter of fact, some of them didn't really exist."
Forrester frowned. "How's that again?"
"They were just disguises for one of the regular fifteen. Aesculapius, for instance, the old God of medicine, was Hermes/Mercury in disguise—he took the name in honor of a physician of the time. He would have raised the man to demi-Godhood, but Aesculapius died unexpectedly, and we thought taking his 'spirit' into the Pantheon was good public relations."
"How about the others?" Forrester said. "They weren't all disguises, were they?"
"Of course not. Some of them were demi-Gods, just like yourself. Their power was derived, like yours, from the Pantheon instead of directly through the machine. And then there were the satyrs and centaurs, and suchlike beings. That was public relations, too—mainly Zeus' idea, I understand. The original Zeus, of course."
"Of course," Forrester said.
"The satyrs and such were artificial life-forms, created, maintained and controlled by the machine itself. It's equipped with what you might call a cybernetic brain—although that's pretty inadequate as a description. Vulcan could do a better job of explaining."
"Perfectly all right. I don't understand that kind of thing anyhow."