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And Jesus left him, with a sad smile, and Niven stood alone, for another time that was long.
and empty.
Once, late that night, he thought he heard the bull-ram horn of Odin, ringing across this dim,
shadowed land, but he could not be sure. And once he heard a sound of something passing, and
when he opened his eyes to look it was a cat-headed woman, and he thought Bast, and she slipped
smoothly away into the darkness without saying a word to him. And toward morning there was a
light in the sky that seemed to be a burning chariot, Phaëthon the charioteer. Helios’s burning
chariot, but that was probably the effects of the drowning, the hunger, the sorrow. He could not be
certain.
So he wandered. And time passed without ever moving. In the land without a name; and his
name was Niven; but it was no more important a name than Apollo or Vishnu or Baal, for it was not
a name men believed in. It was only the name of a man who had not believed. And if gods cannot be
called back, when their names have been known, then how can a man whose name was never known
be called back?
For him, his god had been Berta, but he had not given her an opportunity to believe in him.
He had prevented her from having faith in him, and so there were no believers for a man named
Niven, as there were no true believers for Serapis or Perseus or Mummu.
Very late the next night, Niven realized he would always, always live in this terrible
Coventry where old gods went to die; gods who would never speak to him; and with no hope of
return.
For as he had believed in no god...
No god believed in him.
