Chekov jumped at the light touch of a hand on his shoulder.

"Ca..."

Apollo smiled at him, crooking the golden arc of a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Lord, I think. Or sir, if you prefer. So many customs and usages. I lose track. What *is* your tribe? You look a little Bactrian."

"Russian," Chekov said shortly. Apollo was standing awfully close to him, and smelt overpoweringly of eucalyptus. He stepped back, but the hand gripped his shoulder quite painfully. "Don't go," the god said.

"I can't."

"You're a good deal more perceptive than your leader." Apollo's tone was playful. "*Much* more perceptive."

Chekov was not at all sure how to respond. Kirk did seem to be letting this alien lead him round in circles, but of course, that was probably just a smokescreen while he came up with a plan. Chekov shrugged amiably and did his best to look dumb and flattered.

"You could call me Apollo," the alien suggested. He smiled. "And I could call you... Adonis."

"No, I don't think you could," Chekov said.

"Not justified? Oh, really. You're too modest. You do *know* the..."

"I do know who Adonis was. But on Earth, now, the name has connotations. I am not an 'Adonis'."

"You're very like him," Apollo said. "Very like Aphrodite's little heart breaker."

Chekov narrowed his eyes and decided to change the subject. "Where is Lieutenant Palamas?" he demanded. "I thought you were 'walking' with her."

Apollo laughed, in a rather melodramatic way. The ground underfoot shook slightly in sympathy. "She's like a flower, isn't she? Alive, beautiful, but not completely sentient. I told her she was like Aphrodite, and she believed me."

Chekov just looked at the alien, who eventually looked away.

"You and I know the rules of rhetoric," he explained. "We understand what we are about. Carolyn is only a woman."

"But where is she? What did you do to her?"

"I dropped the juice of poppies into her eyes. She sleeps. Probably, she dreams. She imagines herself a Grecian maiden, and I a swan, or a bull. Such sweet dreams these flower maidens entertain. And, more importantly, while she's asleep she's not talking."

"Then... if you don't like her, why did you make her go with you?"

"Because I could. To show your captain, and his rather plebian assistant, that she is not his, but mine. Here, everything is mine." Apollo looked around him approvingly. "Everything acknowledges me as lord."

Chekov tightened his hold on his tricorder. He'd been on to something when the 'god' had reappeared, on to a definite surge in the power readings. He cast about for an excuse to continue his investigation, but Apollo seemed perfectly happy just standing beside him, gazing across the grove of gnarled and ancient olive trees.

He suddenly smiled benevolently at the ensign. "This setting is almost perfect, but it needs a fountain." At his words, a small marble pedestal shimmered into existence. Silver drops of water spouted from its centre into the still air, and splashed into a pool carved out of its surface. A miniature but perfect rainbow formed around it. "Do you like it?" Apollo asked.

"It is very nice."

"The day is warm. Drink from it," Apollo suggested.

"You have probably put poppy juice in it," Chekov pointed out. "And how do I know that I don't belong to you for one month every year for every drop of water I drink?"

"That was pomegranates," Apollo said. "Well, if I can't impress you with my hospitality or my water features, perhaps we could try sculpture."

The air shimmered again. Chekov blinked. Next to the fountain, another piece of marble had appeared. This was a statue of a human male, a little larger than life, naked. It was standing in what he vaguely remembered being told was a classic Greek pose, weight on one leg. It was facing away from him, but he could see that instead of a traditional 'Greek' accessory, like a lyre, or a weapon, it had a tricorder slung over one shoulder. He circled it. He looked at its face first. Yes, it was the spitting image of himself. He glanced down. In every detail.

"Very nice," he said.

"Is that all you have to say?" the sculptor demanded. "Where were you educated? Sparta?"

"Starfleet Academy."

"I've never heard of it, but I suppose the good schools come and go. Five thousand years is a long time." Apollo had followed him on his circumnavigation of the statue, and now stepped back to admire his handiwork, and his model. "One never knows quite how to handle the proportions. If you make it strictly to scale..." The statue altered slightly. The two men regarded it wordlessly. "...It always looks too big. I could never understand that." He turned to Chekov for confirmation, or otherwise, and sighed at the ensign's stubborn refusal to react at all. "And yet, the fountain is also modelled from life, and actually twice as large, but seems insignificant."

Chekov shot a wary look at the fountain, and realised that its central column was a phallus. It was indeed about twice life size, as far as he could estimate, and seemed to be anatomically correct, down to the twin spheroids nestling at its base.

"Are you sure you're not thirsty?" Apollo suggested again.

"Quite sure."

The statue began to grow, as Apollo himself had earlier. As it strained heavenward, the sunlight gleaming off the silver-grey of the marble, the rainbow spreading wider, Apollo stepped close to Chekov once again. "*Still* not thirsty, noble youth?"

The spray began to fall on them. Chekov brushed it off his face, obviously betraying disgust at the connotations of what was happening. Apollo laughed, caught his wrist and licked the golden drops off his clenched fist. "Ambrosia. And if you are not Adonis, you must surely be a son of his loins. It has been five thousand years since I have shared the pleasures of love with a human youth. Carolyn is beautiful, but the taste of her lips has left me hungry for more substantial fare."

"Let me go."

"Come to the fountain, son-of-Adonis, and taste the wine."

Chekov found himself forced to his knees. The wiry grass against his skin made him realise he'd lost his uniform, and not for a Grecian tunic. He was as naked as his statue.

"Worship me."

'This can't be happening,' Chekov thought. 'But it is...' Apollo cupped the back of Chekov's head with his hands and drew his head under the hem of his short gold robe. 'It is...'

Apollo's incipient erection nudged him in the face, but he kept his eyes closed and ignored it.

"You're very unwise," Apollo said. "Adonis, the father of your fathers, spurned the advances of a goddess and was killed by a wild pig in the end. He could have been immortal. *You* could be immortal." He waited. "I can force you to do this whether you will or not."

"But you want us to choose to worship you," Chekov said. "Don't you? You can't force someone to worship you."

The god groaned histrionically, then pulled away and dragged Chekov across to the plinth of his statue. "I must... it's been too long... I swear by all Olympia, I usually have a little more self control."

He grasped Chekov's hips and perched him on the edge of the marble block. "Bactrian beauty..."

Chekov pushed him away and kicked at the god's solar plexus with one bare foot. Apollo seized his ankles and paused, entranced. "What beautiful feet! No calluses, not a corn or a blister. They must carry you everywhere in a litter. Perfection!"

Chekov struggled. He lashed out with his fists. He cursed. He blasphemed. He realised he was enjoying himself. After four years of obeying Starfleet's orders, however vicious or demented, at last he could fight back. He felt a momentary sympathy for Mister Scott, leashed by the captain, and landed a satisfying punch on divinity's right cheek. If Apollo was going to steal someone's woman, he could be a little less dismissive of her attractions.

Apollo seemed to grow larger, did grow larger, until he could restrain the object of his lust with a single hand across his hips. The divine erection grew too.

Apollo laughed at the expression of horror on Chekov's face. "So it is possible to impress you," he said, and his voice reverberated like thunder. "Embrace it. Embrace me." He thrust the organ forward. Chekov fended it off with his hands. They stared at each other for a long moment.

"Very well then. You are a brave and honorable youth, but I must have you or I will be distracted by lust." Apollo shrank back abruptly to the size from which he'd started, although his erection seemed to lag behind a little in this readjustment. "Lie back."

"No."

"I could chain you to this rock and send eagles to eat your liver."

Chekov considered the scenario. Gods did, on the whole, tend to get their own way eventually. There didn't seem much point in going through the bloodier kinds of 'eventually' just for form's sake. Chekov bit his lip and obeyed. Apollo hooked the ensign's knees over his shoulders. "Oil!" he decreed. He held up fingers dripping with pale green liquid, and plunged them past the still defiant sphincter. Chekov yelped, and gasped, as the fingers slid over a sensitive spot.

"The gift of the gods to mortal youth," Apollo crooned. He gave the ensign's prostrate a few more strokes for good measure. "In a little while, you won't know how you ever refused me."

"Get your hands off me, you cossack."

"I don't know which is more tiresome, a fawning woman or an unwilling youth." Apollo sighed langourously as he slid his erection in to replace his fingers. It tickled all the right places deliciously on the way in, and left behind an aching sense of emptiness on the way out. Chekov gritted his teeth and tried desperately not to moan.

"Such a very *reluctant* youth," Apollo said, plainly not taken in for a moment.

"Cyclops!" Chekov grunted. "Trojan! Goth!"

Apollo grasped the ensign's erection in his oily palm and pumped it enthusiastically until Chekov gave up devising suitable insults and came, back arched and arms flung wide.

"Bozhe moi!" he gasped, recovering somewhat.

"At last," Apollo said smugly. He resumed a steady pumping until he came himself. There was a brief display of lightning, the sky showered them with rose petals and a misty drizzle of water rinsed the participants completely clean. Chekov's uniform reappeared, looking laundered. A warm breeze took care of his hair.

Apollo stretched, grinned and rearranged his tunic. "Thank you. I think I'll be able to concentrate now."

Chekov frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Kirk is such a distraction. He's too old, of course, but I could do something about that. What a wondrous youth he must have been - golden curls, eyes as green as the Hellespont, straight of limb and..."

"Just like Adonis?" Chekov said.

"Very funny. No, if anything he reminds me of Achilles. But I think he's noticed that you've been gone for rather too long, and I must get back to Carolyn before she wakes. Farewell..." He leaned forward and kissed Chekov on the lips. "...my Bactrian."

He vanished, leaving Chekov to dress, find his tricorder, risk a quick drink from the fountain - he didn't think after all that Apollo seemed the type to count pomegranate seeds - and get back to work.

The End