Cave One: Desire
 

Wherein the Goddess sheds Her cloak. 

She clears Her arms for action.

One knows She does not shield Herself with fat. 



...the overflowing scourge is come upon you... Isaiah 
 

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1. 
 

The Goddess Awakes 
 

The Goddess awakes and smells smoke! 
 

Awakening is not what she does. 
 

Her sense is not that of smell. 
 

Smoke is not what she detects. 
 

It is difficult to describe Her awakening. It is just as difficult to explain it. For some reason, or possibly for no reason, She regained Her self-awareness in this latter day. From Her perspective, that was a simple thing: She just extended Her consciousness over the lapsed durative time. We who do not have such abilities at our disposal must think in terms of sleeping and waking, for we cannot hold past millennia and our present age together in the same thought. How and why she slept, how and why she awakes, are mysteries to baffle us. Like scouting the indeterminate electron, the harder you look into Her mysteries the less you know about them. 
 

She awakes, or in other words She extends Her awareness out from an eon shrouded in age toward our time. She smells smoke and fears fire. More precisely stated, She senses the presence of excess combustion products in our atmosphere. Too much carbon is in the air. She knows about the planet Venus. That place has Her name on it. It was named several times for Her aspects, but it is no home for Her. Amid the dark, rippling shimmer of its dense air, no cell can live. Any life would be cooked to vapor by the heat, squeezed to a cinder by the pressure. The place is sterile. The Goddess does not favor sterility. Life is Her milieu. She perceives excess carbon in the air as a threat to life, which focuses Her awareness, engages Her diverse faculties, wakes Her up. It turns out She is not too pleasant when She first gets up. Before She can concentrate on putting the carbon back where it belongs, She needs to replenish Her strength. The Goddess wakes up and She's hungry. 
 

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2. 
 

previous chapterClandestine Encounter next chapter 

Carl was annoyed. His expectations had been dashed; the girl hadn't come through as she promised. Once she was out in the mountains, she had been overwhelmed by the beauty of the scenery. The healthful peacefulness of her surroundings had aroused in her feelings of mystical awe. Carl suspected, in fact, that she had a resurgence of the religious idiocy drilled into her in childhood, from the general tenor of some of her comments earlier in the afternoon, while they were setting up their camp. When it came down to cases, she had reneged on her promises to experiment with adventurous sex with the whip; she chickened out. She claimed willingness to make love gently and peacefully, but Carl was not in the mood for that. 
 

He had arranged the camping trip with the idea of privacy for a more vigorous type of encounter, too risky for her cramped apartment in the city. She had understood why he wanted to be well clear of her nosy neighbors, and she had agreed with nervous excitement to the purpose of the outing. They had spoken of her voice, alarming enough in the course of normal sex, and how it might wake the dead if she were struck with a whip. They had come out here, and as Carl's horny anticipation grew, she became more skittish, until finally she refused to let him tie her up. In disgust he considered forcing her to comply with his wishes, but he was too chicken to do that. Rape was exploitive, intrusive and rude, showing bad taste. 
 

Instead, after a harsh verbal exchange, he had left her alone at the campsite, under the pretext of going back to the car to get more cigarettes to replace a pack which had somehow got lost. He knew she would become anxious in his absence, for she was no more experienced in wilderness living than she was in kinky sex. Nevertheless, his intention was to sleep in the car, a petty retribution for her failure to live up to her bargain. She was in no danger, and by the light of dawn perhaps they could resume negotiations on terms more favorable to his lust. 
 

Brooding, fuming, Carl unknowingly veered aside from his trail in the dark, and almost literally stumbled onto Vicki's tent. They quickly struck up an acquaintance. Her parents were camped far down over the ridge, near the parking area. He shared a joint with her, and she gave him coffee and cigarettes. With complete candor, he explained exactly all the reasons for his presence, and she seemed amused rather than alarmed by the pervert in her camp. With no urging on his part, she offered to show him the way back to the trail. 
 

Vicki took Carl by the hand. "Come on, I'll show you the way up over the ridge." When Carl turned on his flashlight, she protested, "Turn it off. I can find my way better in the dark." 
 

Carl looked her over in the faint firelight behind them. He feared trouble, and half hoped for it. Her hard slim Bdy was dangerously close to his ideal. Her short blouse showed a lot of midriff, and her shorts showed a lot of leg. Breasts and buttocks, though of pleasing size, had been pasted on her slender frame, rather than rounded in. Her features, now shadowed, he recalled as painfully pretty. All these things were more or less normal in a girl her apparent age. He hoped they didn't get lost. He hoped he wouldn't suggest it. 
 

Soon as they had cleared the firelight, she slid his hand around her waist. Oh, damn. She was signaling, loud and clear. The skin around her side was stretched like a drum head. He could feel the vibration from every slight unevenness in the way, reflected in her flesh. The way became steeper, but they were still clamped together. Across a grassy shelf, the ground rose again. A couple steps up this second slope, Vicki put her foot in front of his. He stumbled and went down. She was under him. After a second's breathy hesitation, he rolled off her, and they were Bth back on the sparse clumpy grass of the shelf. She was atop him.
 

"You little bitch," he accused. "You tripped me!" 

"Yeah," she admitted. "You weren't starting anything, so I had to." 
 

He was breathing raggedly. His mind gyrated, circling for something to say to discourage her, something not related to her age. Events were veering out of his control. His lust was growing. In his crotch, his penis made itself one size larger. His hands moved off her buttocks, down her thighs, which he pulled apart. She pushed up off his shoulders and squatted over his waist, rolling her ass in his groin. Her silent argument was rapidly becoming very persuasive. 
 

"Now I get it," he muttered thickly. "You're a bad girl."
 

"Yeah," she answered saucily, pinioning his hands against the dirt. Leaning down, she asked in his face, "Now what you gonna do about it?" 
 

"I must give you a very severe chastisement," he responded, his voice still thick. "I need to apply stern discipline to your pretty little Bdy. First, though," he spoke as he twisted from her grip and trapped Bth her tiny wrists in one hand, "I should restrain you so you wouldn't fight me or run away in your naughtiness." 
 

She inhaled deeply, struggling a little in his grip. "Hey, I might not mind that so much," she breathed. "Not if you promise to punish me." Her hips wriggled on his now undeniable erection. "You really gonna whip me, daddy?" 
 

He had noticed she wore a cloth belt in the loops of her shorts, knotted at the front. He picked at the knot with his free hand. "You know, kid, there ought to be a law. Girls your age shouldn't be allowed to carry a pussy around." 
 

She said cheerfully, "Oh, no, I don't have anything like that! Just feel. Go on, feel me." Vicki rose on her knees to give him room, just as the knot of her belt came loose. Carl reached down in her shorts. She was lying, she had a pussy. Her superb muscle tone gave her a lot of tension to grab with. He felt inside. Not real moist, but real hot and tight. He was going to be a happy man very soon. She issued quiet hums of delight as he explored her vagina. He pulled her cloth belt free of its loops. 
 

"Oh, baby, you lied. I am compelled to give a hard whipping to a girl who lies about her pussy." He wrapped her belt around her wrists elaborately and knotted the free ends. Damn, now he could never get her top off, with her hands tied together. It was a pullover. He would have to remember that: get her shirt off before tying her hands. Live and learn. He tugged her shirt over her head, and pulled it down her arms to where it covered the belt fastening her wrists. Her bra had straps on the shoulders, so it had to go the same way. Too bad he didn't have more light, to get a good look at her breasts. He tugged her shorts and panties down on her thighs. 
 

"Okay, Vicki. Give me a kiss, then I will start getting nasty." Sliding his legs from between her knees, he embraced her bare Bdy in a kneeling position. Her Bund hands, bundled with her shirt and bra, were caught between their chests. When his tongue penetrated her mouth, he ran his hand down her sparse pubic hair and started playing with her clit. Breath from her nose whooshed off his cheek. As he concentrated more intently on fondling her clitoris, she began to wiggle. Pulses of sound came from her nose. He backed a little away from her face, and asked, "You bad, naughty little girl. Are you ready to take your punishment?" 
 

"Hey, Carl?" Her voice was serious, as serious as it could be with him stroking her clitoris. "Do me a favor, don't call it punishment or discipline or whatever. That's just a game. What you really want to do is hurt me, because you get off on it. That's what I'm ready for. But don't pretend it was for anything I did, because that's a lie, and it hauls in a lot of stupid emotional baggage we don't need. Just hurt me because you want to hurt me, okay?" 
 

"You're right. You're a smart girl. Still, I bet you couldn't say all that with my dick in your mouth." 
 

"That's the spirit. There speaks the man of my dreams." 
 

Carl shucked off his clothes in a jiffy. While he was about it, he finished stripping Vicki, except for the garments caught in the circle of her arms. His erection had lost much of its stiffness, but he knew he could build it back up again in her mouth. He removed his heavy leather belt from his jeans. As he dangled it around her, sliding it over her back, touching it to her face, brushing her shoulders, he said, "Okay, girl. You've done nothing wrong. If I hurt you, it'll be just for fun." 
 

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3. 
 

previous chapter Chained Goddess next chapter  
 

The Goddess was never used this way before. Restraint in chains should have been much like rope restraint, but for Her it wasn't. She had been goddess of hemp back in the ice days, when her rituals initiated. Any vegetable fiber rope would have yielded to Her by now, in sympathy with the prototypical hemp rope, which did Her bidding. But metal chains were distressing. 
 

Even in the case of chains, one of bronze would have yielded to Her by now, in sympathy with the chain of copper, which would have done Her bidding. In principle, no metal chain could restrain Her forever. Nothing could. She thought silver might be the worst. But platinum, now, platinum was tough. This wasn't much fun any more. Her little rope trick had finally backfired. The fool who had chained her up like this had probably gone off and died somewhere. Entropy on this scale costs even a Goddess, as She meant to let somebody know when She got loose. 
 

Maybe She would have to call in the humans. She hated to think about that possibility, because it was such hard work to work out what it meant. The question had ramifications of amazing complexity. It would take so long to work it out, that before She would have the definitive answer, to should She or shouldn't She suffer Herself to be liberated by humans, She could have the mechanism in place among the humans to have it done. 
 

It might be shameful to allow Her own liberation by an outside party. It certainly wasn't fair in Her first party rope tricks, back when it was fun. The situation was different now. The gods and goddesses no longer showed interest in Her plight. If She finally admitted She had to have help, and the help She chose to call was not even from among them, it was still appropriate. 
 

Yet even before She finally decided how right it would be to have a human agency come in here and cut these material platinum chains off her, and while She was still working on Her Bnds Herself, it would be good to get the ball rolling among the humans. Because the human time coordinate frame was a mismatch to Her own, She might find Herself Bringly continuing to speak the same word for a month. Early communications in this way tended to be garbled, until She could mesh with the human time-frame. 
 

She got in touch with the Consort. She hated to deal with a male, but that was too bad; this call was on Her time. "Listen," She said. "Listen, I'm chained up here, and you need to start a religion to help get Me out." 
 

The Consort said, "A religion?" He wasn't really all that bright before She got hold of him. She shook him out, and straightened out a few kinks. After that his mind worked all right, better than the others anyway. 
 

She said, "I mean a religion, as in a religion. Maybe you've heard of them. I used to start them all the time, whenever I needed something done. Are you sure you're awake?" 
 

The Consort shuffled his mind together. "I get a strong implication You are a deity. That's a point I would like to have straightened out before things get complicated." 
 

Inanna said, "Affirmative on deity. That is an affirmative. Yes, I'm a Goddess. My name is Inanna. Don't tell Me yours, that's for your own protection. The telepaths could pick you up and lead the witch-burners to you. I speak from experience. I get carrier hum on your end, speak to Me." 
 

The Consort said, "I acknowledge You are communicating. Certain data are harder to file than others, so internal processes were taking some time on my end. Channel clear, go ahead." 
 

"Goddess here. The restraint is My basic problem. It is not life-threatening. But I've been here a long time. You wouldn't understand how long. It's getting on My nerves, and I'd like to get loose. Hurry up with that religion. Do you know how?" 
 

"Hell, no!" 
 

"I believe you. You'll probably do a lousy job of it. But go ahead anyway. When I'm asking for your services, you don't really have a choice. Well, keep in touch." 
 

"Wait a minute," said the Consort. "I need some details to start a religion. Give me something to start with." 
 

"I gave you my name, you stupid shit. You keep records, right? Look it up. I'm in there, or something is drastically wrong on your end. Start at the beginning, not the end, because I should be the first one. That's a hint. They call me the Eldest." 
 

She signed off. 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

4. 
 

previous chapter Apostolic Calling next chapter

Carl gazed at the young pretty faces looking expectantly at him. 
 

"All right, girls," he started. "We were lucky to get this house, so let's take care of it. Normal people have to live here later. But for right now, it's ours. We can let our hair down, but we can't hurt the walls or windows. We'll start on supper the third hour after moonrise, but we have lots of time before then. 
 

"So, we have all talked about the theory of this religion, doctrine as it's called. A couple of you wear collars, having been initiated individually. You should try to help out the other girls when you can. Bnita here has been through this scene out on the streets; a lot of it's the same, but some of it ain't. Not counting the collared ones, everybody is here of their own free will. You all have your eyes wide open. Nobody's been duped or fooled, so let me make it formal, to give you an easy way to duck out if you feel like it. 
 

"You're all here to get beaten and fucked, fucked and beaten, with people watching. This will double as your initiation into the Sisterhood and as practical training in masochism, its techniques and its mysteries. The ground rules here are that you will be told before you're tied exactly what will be done to you. If you don't want that to happen, that is the time to back out, before you get tied up. When you're tied, anything you say will be just part of the show. We figure you have lost your right to refuse anything when you let yourself get tied. 
 

"It's going to hurt. I could say that all day, and you could memorize it and mumble it to yourselves, and you will still be surprised as shit when it starts hurting. That's just not something we can get ready for. Well, you'll find that out. To continue the ground rules, we're not going to injure anyone and we're not going to leave any permanent marks, scars, anything of that nature. No piercings. Nothing done here will break the skin. You can expect to have some temporary streaks on the skin, but even the worst of those will go away in a couple days. 
 

"If anybody here bruises easily, you need to let us know beforehand. I want to emphasize that, because it's important. You can't tell when it's happening. Afterwards is too late, and we might have to hide you until they get better. Let me say right now, that any one of you whose Bdy bruises too easily has chosen the wrong form of worship, and you shouldn't stay here. Your participation puts the rest of us at risk. See me, and we will find alternative ceremonies for your worship. 
 

"Okay, are you all scared yet? I can see you're all wondering if you will get a lot of bruises. Probably not. If you were like I was talking about, you would know it for sure. The kind of handling you will get here shouldn't give a normal person any bruises. Now about the sex, we have to be just as honest about that. You've probably noticed the shortage of men around here. I'll just have to take care of that all by myself. 
 

"Oh, laugh all you want. The reasons things are this way should be pretty clear. We're not here for an orgy, we're here to learn. I hope to initiate you all this weekend, but most of you will be just watching most of the time. Not bragging, but some of you wouldn't have come out here for any other man. That's more for the suffering than for the sex. You just wouldn't trust any other man to lay a whip on you for the first time. You would be foolish if you did. So most of you are virgins to the whipstroke. But nobody here is a real virgin, as far as I know. I know that many of you are faithful to your Byfriends, and the question about having sex in your religion is a real concern to you. You must have decided you can live with it, because you're here. Sex is part of our worship, and that won't change. 
 

"Now, about the sex. I have told each of you that the tradition of our initiation includes penetration by the male organ in each of the three major orifices of a woman's Bdy. Most likely two of these will give no trouble, they are socially acceptable. I would be surprised if anyone here has not had male organs in their mouth and in their vagina. When we talk about the third orifice, namely the anus, things get touchy. The reason this topic is so delicate is fear, fear of pain and fear of possible injury. Now let me inform you that it is possible for anal intercourse to be comfortable, exciting, and exhilarating, under the best circumstances. I want you all to get over your fear of this rather common human activity. 
 

"Unfortunately, these best circumstances are kind of rare. They are that Bth partners must be experienced. The male partner must not only know what he's doing, he also must have the attitude that he's out to give his lover a good time. In order to avoid giving pain, he has to be careful. Not many men are willing to use this self-control. In practice, the passive partner must endure pain, because the man in her ass is an ass hole himself." There were giggles, and he grinned back. 
 

"Another problem is that the passive partner needs to know some very specific techniques to control her muscles in that area, and this can only come with experience. You won't be able to let it in easily the first time or two, because you just won't know what to do. So the best anal intercourse is a cooperative effort, and it can be really good, but you're just going to have to take my word on that for right now. It takes time to learn that. This weekend, you should just consider the pain you experience in anal intercourse as part of the pain of the initiation. That will work. I just wanted you to be aware in your mind that it can get better, lots better. 
 

"So you have several cop-outs you can use, if you want to get out of here now. You don't even have to say which one applies to you, if you don't want to. You may know of a physical reason you can't have anal intercourse, or you may bruise easily. You may think there is a possibility you have a disease which could be transmitted to me. Maybe you just can't stand the thought of a dick up your ass. Maybe you don't really want to have your tender skin hit with a whip. If you have any doubt at all that you can take it, I want you to please go home now, and forget you were ever here. Just say you didn't see any of us today, right? Come on, now, get up, it's time to leave. We'll get you a ride home if you need a ride. 
 

"Anybody? Nobody? Well, hey, girls, welcome to the Sisterhood. I hand-picked every one of you, basically for your beauty, but also for your attitude and evident intelligence. Look at yourselves. You won't find a prettier group of girls in town. There aren't any fat girls here. That's just my prejudice. I'm not attracted to fat women. There aren't too many minority types represented, but that's not my prejudice. That just reflects the social situation of how I found you. We are not a biased organization as far as race goes, in principle. Most of you are upper-middle class, just because that's the type of people who go in the places I met you. Whatever, it just happens that you are the best. You are the strongest and the naughtiest. 
 

"Everybody put your right hands up. Okay, put them down. Wendy, you were the last to raise your hand. Come over here, you just volunteered. I needed a random selection procedure which didn't take any preparation, and when a bunch of people all raise their hands, somebody has to be last. So here you are. How do you feel, Wendy?" 
 

"Okay, I guess." Wendy wasn't too sure. 
 

"In a little while, you won't be feeling okay any more. You will feel pretty sick and miserable, because you're being initiated with all your friends watching. You won't be able to control your own voice, and you won't be able to control your own Bdy. You'll be hurting. How does that make you feel?" 
 

"I'm scared." Her pretty face was pale and bleak. 
 

"Good. That's the only reaction that makes any sense. You believe I'm going to hurt you, right? Do you believe I love you?" Carl was intense about this question. 
 

"Yeah." 
 

"Can I get a little kiss, to prove you trust me?" 
 

The kiss was short and formal. Wendy was trembling a little. Carl embraced her with a firm, unyielding grip. Although his face was in hers, he continued to speak loudly enough for all to hear. 
 

"These girls are your friends. They all love you too. By tonight or tomorrow they will all be your Sisters. Show us all your beauty, Wendy. Take off all your clothes." 
 

Bnita came up to help her. Wendy was a tall, fragile brunette. Her breasts were small but protrusive, mounting tightly bunched nipples without much aureole. Her spare abdomen rounded back sharply into the mystery of her crotch. Some of the girls were whispering, but most were raptly staring. Bnita handed Carl a short stiff whip and a cloth rope. 
 

"Kneel down, Wendy. Cross your wrists above your head. That's right, keep them touching. You understand, if you let me tie your hands with this rope..." He placed the rope in her right hand, which faced his own right hand, and continued, "that you will be struck repeatedly with this whip..." transferring the whip to her other hand, while speaking: "and you will be sexually assaulted in all the ways I spoke of earlier?" 

"Yes," she spoke weakly but coherently. "Yes, I understand." 
 

"Sister Wendy, do you swear with unbound wrists, that you will live by the principles and teachings of the Sisterhood of Inanna, that you will serve the Sisterhood with your resources and with your labor, that you will give only love to your Sisters wherever they may be, and that you will worship the Goddess Inanna after her ritual at least every second month? Say I swear." 
 

"I swear." Wendy's voice, though not loud, was firm. 
 

Carl, without another word, Bund her wrists tightly together, while she yet held the wavering whip. Then he simply left her there, as he shucked off his own clothes and stacked them on a chair. He came up to her slowly and relieved her of the whip. Grasping her hair in his whip hand, with his other he inserted his limp penis into her mouth. 
 

"There, Sister Wendy, see what you can do with that," he suggested. He released her hair, and gently caressed the arch of her back with the whip. Without warning he cracked it down on her buttocks. She writhed, and issued a little grunt of protest through her nose. Suddenly he grunt rose sharply in Bth pitch and volume as she felt the delayed impact of the pain. 
 

"Sister Wendy has just had her first surprise. The whip doesn't hurt when you get it. It hurts a second later. She tried to clench her teeth, though. I need to give her a little lesson about that. Come in closer, ladies, and sit on the carpet. If you want to, you can take your clothes off. From now on this house will be clothing optional, so you won't have to put them back on until you leave. The Goddess loves nakedness. 
 

"Sister Wendy, you are doing a fine job. See, I'm hard already. Concentrate on keeping your mouth open as wide as it will go, every time you feel the whip. Work yourself very hard, and perhaps this lesson won't have to last too long. Stick out your butt again, to give me a target. That's it, you are so sweet. Here you are." The second time he slapped the whip across her ass, her sounds and her actions exactly duplicated what she had done the first time. 
 

"Oh, poor baby. I understand now, you are a slow learner. I suppose I shall have to become strict with you, because that's the only way you will understand. Your pretty ribs, I think they would look nice with some stripes, don't you? Here are some stripes for your pretty ribs." 
 

Wendy desperately Bbbed her head around his phallus, choking herself to avoid the pending whipping. Her elbows were propped against his thighs. Carl stretched languidly, and rewarded her efforts with an appreciative sigh. He extended his stretch into a graceful swing, and struck Wendy's sides with a flurry of sharp rapid-fire blows. This threw off her timing, and she stiffened, squealing through her nose. 
 

"Oh, Wendy, you forgot what you were doing! Little Sister, your attention span is so short. But look, you remembered to keep your jaw open! There may be hope for you. Perhaps I haven't been quite fair. I know the answer to that business with the teeth. But no, I'll show that to someone else. Here, put your face down on the carpet. I have some business with the other end. Bnita, hand me that lubricant, would you? Thanks. Get a damp towel ready for me, and a dry one too. 
 

"Sister Wendy, when you feel a pressure on your ass hole, you just push, like you were shoving out a big turd. It's not an easy trick to learn, like I said. You have two sphincter muscles down here, call them two doors for you to open. One is the outer door, that you usually call the ass hole, and the other is just a couple inches in from that. If you could learn to open these doors, it wouldn't hurt to have a man put his dick into your ass. The outer one is practically hopeless to get voluntary control over, so I'll just work my way in. Then I'll pause, to give you a chance to try to open the second one. You do that by imagining a big turd you want to shove out. You can't relax it when there's a dick pushing on it, so I'll keep still when I'm just barely in. 
 

"There, the technique is that I spread the ass hole a little by stretching the skin beside it with my fingers. Then I make sure my dick is in exactly the right spot, at the right angle. Then I start a little pressure, working my dick from side to side to ease it in. There, see, it's in. Now, Wendy, push. That's right, baby, you did really good. You almost got it that time. That means you've found the right muscle, so just try it again. No, you're squeezing. Open. All right, you nearly got it, but I'm going on in now. Easy does it. 
 

"Ladies, note that a smooth, slow stroke, even though it's moderately deep, is not giving Sister Wendy undue distress. She is breathing deeply and showing other signs of sexual stimulation. The news is that it's possible for a person to reach orgasm from passive anal intercourse. Wendy won't, though. I'm about to probe for the limit of her rectum. See her flinch? Oh, we're in tender territory for sure. I definitely have Wendy's undivided attention when I'm this deep. She has something to tell us now, so we'll listen for a minute to what Wendy has to say." 

Wendy was sounding an involuntary high-pitched grunt at the end of every stroke, as the tissue of her rectum was stretched. It was not very loud. Carl demonstrated he could raise the volume with a slight increase in thrust. Then he returned to her soft grunts. 
 

"Thank you, Sister Wendy. We appreciate your comments, and be sure we will all find your remarks most memorable. But surely you have something to add." With these words, he took up the forgotten whip and lashed across Wendy's bare shoulder. She gasped immediately, and let out a little cry after the one-second latency interval. "Speak up, please." Carl smacked the whip heavily on her slim back. She moaned away the delay, and then convulsively arched her back, making a more emphatic cry. 
 

"See there, ladies." Carl spoke in rhythm, as he pumped back and forth in Wendy's ass. "You have just witnessed one of the greatest secrets of sexual discipline. You saw Bth times, how she sucked in her stomach and squeezed her hip muscles. What didn't show was how she clenched her ass hole when she felt the whip. She clamped it right down on my dick, and that's stimulating. Bnita, get ready with that towel, please, the wet one. It works with all your squeezing muscles, like the vagina. Like your other reflexes, you can control it to some extent, but sometimes you can't. Wendy, I'm going to ease out now. Towel, please." 
 

Carl cleaned off his phallus, and swiped up and down the crack of Wendy's ass with the moist towel. He swivelled around, and seeing how the girls' eyes were drawn to his moist erection, he spread his legs to flaunt it. "Like I said, you can control this reaction if you concentrate, but don't. Squeeze the bastard, give him his little thrill. He went to all that trouble to tie you up and beat you, so clamp down on his dick real good to reward him. We'll talk more about this attitude I want from you. Roll over, Wendy, get on your back like the missionary's wife." 
 

Again Carl addressed the audience rather than his partner. "Our beautiful Sister has just had a rough time. She's probably shut tighter than a clam. But still I'm not giving her any foreplay to soften her up. In this game, the man doesn't wait till you're ready. In fact, I'll use a dab of lubricant here too. There we go. Just try to relax. There we are." 
 

Wendy gave a loud sigh after Carl penetrated her vagina, which sounded like sheer gratitude. At last, he had found the right place to poke it. She warmed up fast to his vigorous thrusting. He grasped her Bund wrists, and pounded her groin energetically. Each time he jolted her slender frame, her pointed breasts would vibrate. Her reserve fled, conditions forgotten, she was in abandon. She began moaning strongly in frank lust. 
 

"There, baby," Carl gasped. "You've decided there's a part of this you can stand. I can't let you keep it, you know. That would be too nice, and I'm here to be cruel. I'm going to beat you, baby. Think of it as sex, I'm fucking the outside of your skin. First I want those pretty tits, such delightful targets." 

Wendy was shocked back into the use of language. "Oh, no, Carl! No, baby, please don't hit me. Just fuck me now, like you were, just let me finish then beat me all you want. Please, I'm begging you, I just want to come." 
 

His voice was breathy but smooth. "Words, baby? I don't want to hear words from you, baby. I just want to hear animal sounds from you, baby. I know how to get what I want. I'll make you forget what words are." With the free end of the rope which he pulled under her shoulder blades, he tugged her wrists down beneath her neck. Her breasts stuck invitingly upward. 
 

He struck hard with the whip, once, twice. Wendy shuddered and hissed in her teeth. In time with the clenching of her pussy, he shoved his dick far up in her. "What a grip, girl!" he raved. "You know, I'm really glad you don't have teeth down here. Let's try that again, to make sure we got it right. First I have to wind you up again." He plunged deeply into her until the tension left her torso, and she was again adrift on the tides of libido. Then he began a regime of striking her Bdy randomly with the whip. 
 

Briefly, Wendy would writhe or stiffen, but she was trying to stifle her outcries, with her glottis or tongue, straining them out between clenched teeth. She remained highly aroused sexually despite the blows, raising her hips to meet his thrusts. 
 

"Let the noise out, baby!" Carl demanded urgently. "Whipping you is hard work; show some gratitude for my effort!" He punctuated that with scorching blows to her breasts, landing two on each nipple. Tensing head to toe, she obeyed him with an honest, though short and breathless, shriek. Digging her heels and arching her back, she squirmed for escape. Grasping her hair, he dropped his weight on her slim Bdy. Continuing to plow into her wet vagina, he now swatted her left hip or thigh with every push. She kicked out wildly. Mixing gasps with her quavering wail, she was sounding off almost continuously. 
 

Spontaneously, her cry took on a deeper and somehow more urgent tone. Glancing up rapidly, he waved the whip toward Carol. As she stepped forward hesitantly, he tossed it to her. Wendy was calling out her need, so he slapped her hip with his hand. She broke into a series of high-pitched gasps and shivered, lifting his Bdy with hers clear of the floor on a bridge of trembling ecstacy. Carl had her knot already loose. Unwrapping the rope, he threw it at Carol, who was stooping to unfasten her shoes. 
 

Wendy sobbed, "Carl, honey, I love you. Stay with me, darling, don't leave me." He stared at her without comprehension as he popped his stiffness out of her pussy. Nude, Carol walked up with the rope and whip, and knelt facing them. 
 

Carl knelt by Wendy. "Wendy, I love you. Welcome to the Sisterhood. Go with Bnita, she's going to fix you up." Standing, he stepped to Carol, his dick wavering before him. In annoyance, he saw she held the ritual objects in the wrong hands. As he switched them, his slimy knob was sucked into Carol's waiting mouth. 

He asked the top of her head, "Carol, I'm gonna fuck you, and I'm gonna hurt you. You got that?" She nodded, face full of dick. He pushed her forehead away. "Say I swear," he ordered. 

Drooling, she murmured, "I swear." She slurped her way back onto his phallus while he roped up her hands. 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 

5. 
 

previous chapter Apologetics next chapter  
 

Estelle told Carl, "You're on the wrong side. I don't see anything liberating in exploitation. All I can see going on in your activities is women getting beaten and women being forced to have sex. If you can see any progressive action in that, your political consciousness must be as warped as your sex drive." 

Carl responded, "You haven't been at any of our meetings to know what's going on. Nobody gets forced to do anything, and if somebody volunteers for a pain experience with their eyes wide open it's their own business. It's called alternative sex. You closed your mind at a certain point, back when we made this society realize that same-sex love was a legitimate choice. Now you think that the battle is won, because you can go to bed with somebody of the same sex, or the other sex, as long as everybody is sweet and gentle about it. For your information, that just doesn't take care of everybody." 
 

Estelle came back heatedly, "What are you working for? You want freedom for wife-beaters? Child molesters? Necrophilia? You have to draw the line somewhere." 
 

"I want freedom, basically, for everybody. You cannot draw any line while fascists rule the world, because any line you draw on a fascist map is a fascist line. You cannot let the pigs do the defining. Did you know that in this century they raised the age of consent fifty percent, from twelve to eighteen? Look it up. The awkward fact is sex is not a sweet and gentle activity, and if you try to tame it, it just doesn't work any more. Sex in flowers is sweet and gentle, but in the animal kingdom we like it rough. In mammals, sex is a violent activity, and violence can stimulate the sexual response. Sorry if this fact is inconvenient." 

Estelle said, "Are you saying women are made to be beaten?" 
 

Carl answered, "What I am saying is, if there is a natural reflex to sexual violence built into the human system, women who choose this option must be allowed their freedom to do so. This is their natural right not only as human beings, but also as mammals. That this right is hitherto unrecognized is only an indication of cerebral prejudice. Because men, and I use the masculine pronoun deliberately, could not rationalize nor understand an essential human characteristic, it has been ignored and suppressed. It is not easy to construct and order a society which allows such primal human behavior. But since it is a fundamental trait of our species, it will not go away for being socially inconvenient. 
 

"What I am saying is that there more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. Nature will not order itself to suit your ideals. Every time you build a society based on the theory of a domestic human herd, the wild reality will disrupt your best-laid plans. That is why every government is tyranny, and every law unjust: your ideals and your theories are meant to constrain the rational minds of humans, and a live human is a lot bigger than a brain." 
 

"Carl," Estelle shot back, "I think you are just rationalizing yourself, to cover up your own misbehavior. You like getting that young pussy, so you are making up obscure theories to muddy the waters. Deep down, you are a misogynist, a woman-hater, like every other rapist. You give your perversions a spiritual cast, and wrap them in mystery to make them seem enticing, so you can lure naive girls on your lascivious outings. You just like hurting women. You're sophisticated enough in your use of psychology to convince them they want to be hurt." 
 

"No, no. You didn't listen to a word I said. You just started this whole argument so you would get the opportunity to call me a rapist and a woman-hater, Bth false. I say there is a natural syndrome among women to accept violence to initiate sexual desire, and to accept further violence to intensify the degree of sexual stimulation. That is an objective statement which is subject to falsification, which makes it a scientific hypothesis. Certain evidence tends to support this. 
 

"If it is true, social implications follow. The least of these is that a woman has a right to choose this type of interaction without legal stricture nor social castigation being applied to herself or her male partner. Obviously, the woman must instigate this type of behavior, at least by indicating her willingness to participate in it, so it is inherently a women's issue. Resolved, women should have the right to this primitive mode of sexual behavior, it's that simple." 
 

Estelle persisted. "You have played down the man's role in this. If it is the natural phenomenon you claim, then men must get off on beating women." 
 

Carl replied, "Don't put any universal interpretation on it. I never said all women like getting hurt, you notice. I don't think anybody likes it rough exclusively. Yes, anyone can tell you there are men who are stimulated by being violent toward women. What our society has tried to deny, is that there are women who like it. Those are the women whose cause I am trying to uphold, who have been shamed into silence by social pressures. If we can bring those women out of the closet, the men will follow. The other way wouldn't work, for obvious reasons. It has to be a women's thing first and foremost." 
 

Estelle got the last word. "Well, I don't approve of anything you're trying to do. I sincerely hope you fail." 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 

6. 
 

previous chapter Commodity of Commerce next chapter  
 

Wendy asked Carl, "How are we gonna set up a religion of a bunch of prostitutes and not get busted for it? Prostitution is against the law." 
 

"Like I told you, baby," Carl answered, "this is a secret society. There are secrets within secrets. See, prostitution will be our outer layer of secrecy. Everybody will think they're real wise to know that we just pretend to be a religious order, but actually we're a gang of whores. That much will just be an open secret, one which we really let everybody know that's curious. 
 

"There might be a few legal battles at first, for the very purpose of getting it established in the mind of the public that we're all whores. We want that to happen. When the cops try to give us trouble about prostitution, we squawk real loud about religious persecution. How dare they try to take away our right to worship freely, and so forth. We will be skirting right there on the edge, but we will always be careful that we really have a case. 
 

"For example, religious prostitution has a lot of historical precedent. The main source of revenue of the ancient city of Corinth, in Greece, came from the holy hookers who were the priestesses of the Temple of Aphrodite there. In Babylon, every respectable woman, meaning those who were rich enough, was expected to donate one year of her life in service to Ishtar, as a prostitute in Her Temple. That's the second name for our Goddess, you know. A religious order of pagan women has a very strong precedent for making sexual activity an integral part of their worship. 
 

"Then we could also edge around the question of whether what is going on is actually prostitution, or not. No law can be enforced against a woman who just wants to give it away. So if she doesn't say how much money she wants for sex it becomes hard to make a case for prostitution. Then, maybe she never handles any of the money. Maybe she just requests that the client makes a donation to the Goddess. If that is strictly observed, it's my guess that no conviction could be reached in any jurisdiction." 
 

Wendy asked incredulously, "You mean you would just leave the amount of the donation completely up to the john? No way, that won't work." 
 

"Sure, why not? Most guys would be pretty honest about giving a working girl a fair price," Carl defended. 
 

"It isn't most guys you have to worry about. It's creeps. You would get more and more a clientele who use the girls of this religious order as their primary sexual outlet. This type would go around bragging how they can get a piece every night for two bucks, and that would bring the worst of the scum in from the gutter, disease, breath smelling of cheap wine, psychosis. After a week you got no girls and no religion." Wendy was positive about her negativity. 
 

"Are you suggesting that such a price be set that it would filter out the undesirable members of society, so that only folk of a higher quality be allowed to patronize our priestesses?" 
 

Wendy saw the trap and sidestepped it. "Oh, no. I'm not going to suggest a class-biased religion catering to the hoi polloi. No, it has to be accessible to the working class, because the rich are dead as far as sex goes. The rich as a class are sexually about as desirable as the homeless winos. You need to make sure you get a minimum of whatever the going rate is for a streetwalker downtown, a decent price so you're not competing with the junkie out of the crack house, know what I mean?" 
 

"I think I see what you're getting at. The important thing about setting the price is in the attitude of the customer," he encouraged. 
 

"Right. The psychology of the client determines whether he will come back, and whether he will tell his friends or not. If you let him get off too lightly, he will despise the girl he's with just because she's a cheap whore. You don't want your Priestesses to be despised for any nonsense reason like that. It gives trouble, and you don't want trouble." 
 

"Wendy, you're pretty smart for an engineer. A naked engineer, anyway." 
 

"Speaking of nonsense. You know, dude, you and I have argued about a dozen times, and you've been wrong every time. You really need to get your shit together." 
 

"Just let me tie you up again. I can help you decide who's wrong. I might even be able to help you get your own shit together." 
 

"Get your hand out of there. When I need help with my shit, I'll ask for it. Where were we?" 
 

Carl said, "In bed? Oh, I started off talking about secrets within secrets. The fact is, we won't really rely on the proceeds of prostitution for the real support of our religion. That was what gave me the idea that we could get by with donations rather than a fixed price for sex." 
 

"That wrong idea. Go ahead, tell me about the real source of our funding. I'm all ears," Wendy stated. 
 

"Oh, this part doesn't feel like an ear to me," teased Carl. 
 

"It's an ear. I like to hear myself walk. Go ahead." 
 

"Okay. Where does every other kind of church get their money from? Dead people!" 
 

"Okay, so dead people pay us for pussy. You know, I used to wonder where you got your ideas. Now I know, you listen to dead people talking." Wendy started giggling at her own cleverness. 
 

"Don't be so silly, or I might punish you without tying you up. Would you like that? Don't answer. No, from wills, bequests, annuities, shit like that. Inheritance. A good inheritance can buy caviar and champagne for a shit load of whores." 
 

"Carl, the only reason you're not a genius is that you're too fucking stupid. The reason people leave money to churches is because churches are nice. People don't leave money to whores because whores are not nice. Who makes wills? Old people. Old people don't want to think about sex, sexual freedom, or new religions that preach sex. Not nice. They want to think about halos, harps and wings, nice things, all the pretty sexless angels. Have you got that? Are we tuned to the same channel?" She was being patient with the mentally handicapped. 
 

"Dear Wendy, when I tell you my idea about the dynamics of this Sisterhood of ours, you're not going to like me very much, just because I'm not nice." 
 

"Dear Carl, I wish you could hear some of the things I think about you when the whip lands on me. I have enough sheer hatred for you piled up to last a lifetime. I just stick around because I'm habituated to your abuse. Sadly, you have turned me out for a masochist, which is another reason to hate you. Your evil plans for financing this venture in religion are likely to have very little effect on my opinion of you, assuming it doesn't directly affect my ninety-dollar bank balance. So the way I will judge any notion you may have will have less to do with your ethics, about which I have already decided, than with its potential functionality. We engineering students like things that work." 

"All right, here goes. I warned you. You don't get the money from the old farts who are kicking the bucket. You get the money from your whores." 
 

"Come again?" 
 

"In a minute. No, you shamefully exploit the girls you have deluded into joining the Sisterhood, by relieving them of every penny they have." 
 

"That's getting back to the proceeds of prostitution." 
 

"Not really. What I have been trying to say for an hour is that's just a smoke screen. The serious money doesn't come from there. The girls themselves are inheriting the money, and passing it on to the Sisterhood." 
 

"Oh, dear." 

"I told you. Didn't I tell you?" 
 

"So you go around seducing heiresses?" 
 

"Hell no. You don't have to target anybody specifically. That would be really bad taste. You just simply let the demographics do the work for you," said Carl. 
 

"All right, explain," demanded Wendy. 
 

"The Sisterhood is, let's say, a little kinky," began Carl. Wendy snickered. "Let's say a lot kinky, call it alternative sex. Who finds that attractive? Not the working poor, not welfare mothers, not the harried housewife, and so on. It comes down to intellectuals and the leisured classes, I'm talking about basically students. 
 

"People with the decadence to be fascinated by alternative sex as a lifestyle tend to be from a background in the upper middle class. The median person who will decide to join the Sisterhood and spend the rest of her life as a whore will be a high school senior, a bit neurotic but pretty, from a family which is well to do. She will get some paper from, say, her grandmother at eighteen, and more from an uncle at twenty-one. Those little tidbits are what will keep the Sisterhood going, because she will completely identify her interests with those of the Order. The Order will become a total-immersion environment, and our girl will be unable to believe that anything interesting happens outside of it. That's how it will go." 
 

Wendy was silent for a time. Then she said slowly, "It's pretty subtle, and at first glance it seems way too shaky to rely on anything like that. Obviously, as you said, it's not nice to say that stuff explicitly, but you were Brn rude. We Bth know that many cults are financed in a similar way, but their founders are never so candid about their plans. It is possible you are showing some foresight for the first time in your life." 

Carl said in disbelief, "Do you think it will work?" 
 

"Like I said, at first blush it's absurd. But the way you analyze the demographics shows a lot of insight. It does take a lot of mental gyration to make yourself willing to let a whip hit your back, imagination, or guts, or something. That high school senior you mentioned, disgusted with her society and their plans for her, is just the one who might say fuck it, I'll go be a whore. She is likely to be from money, but not to have it herself. You have to be aware that if she joins a cult of whores, she won't see as much of her family money as she would if she settles in the suburbs, and in some cases she could be disinherited." 
 

"Well?" 

"Hard to say. A couple good ones could pay the laundry bills for a lot of whores, like you said. The concept of total identification of the Sister with the Sisterhood is right on the money. From personal experience, I know that masochistic practice unleashes forces of amazing strength. Probably, the girl who joins to try it out for a little while is in it for life. Whether she gets money, or whether the Sisterhood gets her money, she will not see any difference in meaning between the two. Yes. You have the togetherness feeling of the cult, without have to strain the belief with a bunch of meaningless jabber. Plus you have the frenzied ecstasy of masochism. That gives you a bunch of fanatics without credo, girls who are not likely to leave each other's company under any circumstances. Do you know what a fertile breeding grounds that is for lesbianism?" 
 

"Details, details. I have decided the money issue is secondary, while we've talked. The salient fact is, my girls will stay together." 

"Absolutely." 

"All right then. Stick out your hands. I want to instill some more hatred into you." 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 

7. 
 

previous chapter Revelatory Note next chapter  

I give up. I made up the Goddess. That won't work, will it? In fact it never would work. I had deluded myself at one time that the supernatural aspects of data organization as presented to my perception were consciousness structures, strictly hallucination. This is erroneous: the Goddess consciousness is distinctly able to initiate communication. Our personalities have different flavors. 
 

When I tried to think of the Goddess as a personality variant, within and somehow of my mind, I veered onto a mental course which verged perilously close to solipsism. It wasn't working, it was like every time I thought of the Goddess and what She was saying I took a left, and soon I was lost, alone, and going in circles. So I mentioned some of the gist of the Goddess's communication to others, who as it happens were female, and it turned out to be really seductive stuff. That would work, real sex is fine with me, and the Goddess got a Bost. So we made the scene there. 
 

I try to know some things about minds because that's my line of work. Not shrink. I build minds, I'm a computer architect. I know you can tell some things about a data source by timing its arrival through the channel. For one thing, you can tell whether a data source is moving at relativistic velocity by whether it is uniformly slowed. Or, and this statement is mathematically equivalent, whether the data source is deep in a gravity pool of some heavy Bdy. Inanna's contacts with me were radically slowed at first, but now are much nearer real time. She's either pulling herself out of a strong gravitational well, or slowing to match velocities from relativistic speeds. Either would satisfactorily explain a stasis condition for a couple millennia. 
 

I'm afraid to say that we don't have any gravitational field around here which is that strong, because the answer may be "Not that you noticed, partner." The dynamics of our solar system are well known for the big stuff. If there's a gravity trap around here, it has to be deliberately hidden at a resonance point. I'd say no, there's no gravity trap in the ecliptic plane. We could be talking about a cometary orbit, of millennial order, in the Oort cloud. I can't say there's not a heavy Bdy out there, but we should have noticed its wobble in the proper motion of the Sun. So forget it, there are no heavy Bdies. 
 

So She's coming in. Good. To Her, She's just been on a trip around the block, my haven't you grown these two thousand years. She's too Bssy for my tastes. Don't you like that? Not exactly that. Being only very literal, I believe she is used to owning people rather than hiring them or whatever. That won't work in our world, we abhor slavery. Then the question arises as to any authority she may be able to show, which speaks to the possibility of coercion. That is one of the stories they tell about deities, that they are coercive. That doesn't suit my politics, for I don't approve of coercion. I'm not sure if I approve of Goddesses, but that won't make Her go away. 
 

So the identity? Inanna is as close as I can come, from literary sources. We have a few goddess names from preliterate times, but no accompanying aspects. I see no evidence that the Ritual was practiced as such in Ur. Something like that would surely have been noticed. There are some early depictions of temple prostitutes with objects much like whips in their hands. Such evidence is most tenuous. Can it be that the Goddess just got into B & D since last time She was here? Did She sour on reproduction? Why is She such a Lesbian? All these doubts could be resolved by the simple statement, "Always was," but I don't have any proof of that. The literary sense of the personality of Inanna gives the impression of a simpler individual, with greater stability than the Goddess I have been in contact with. She worries me. 

I think the Goddess turned mean because humanity did. Not just their contemptible petty attitudes toward sex and sexuality, but the increasing stranglehold of authority over human activity, and the evil of the money economy, with the consequent tyranny of clocks and calendars. The human who is forced to divide her waking hours between working and consuming is left without the time to metamorphose into the thinker and creator, let alone that more delicate metamorphosis into our primal being, the human beast. We have, in our pathological concept of civilization, thus have tried to shuck off those very human aspects, thinking and lovemaking, which make us most human, for they are the primary distinguishing characteristics of our species. The fact that money and force can drive all humans into a perpetually busy state is not a reason for pride in our species, for many species are able to achieve unanimity in organization and come up with impressive achievements. They can do so without suppressing their primary behavioral characteristics, that is without so much suffering. 
 

Humanity did not deliberately set out to model itself after the example of the social insects. However, that was a mathematical consequence of adopting a single-valued economy, which made a measure of time and effort plucked out of a human life commensurate with a certain weight of grain. When labor and physical resources may Bth be measured by the same standard, money, they are automatically equated. An economist can never be made to understand that time taken from a human life is not a resource which can be replaced, for it is life itself, and therefore inherently a different type of value from a load of ore or a measure of grain. Labor has a transcendental value, which money cannot measure nor compensate, for it was cut from life itself. 
 

After it was made permissible to set a value to a segment of human life used in a directed effort, labor, the remainder of human society shuffled itself into place by the numbers, strictly in accordance with monetary values. Life and society are made automatons, for money is not conscious. 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 

8. 
 

previous chapter Without Vows next chapter  

"Maurice, I love you," Estelle said. 
 

Maurice looked uncomfortable. "Estelle, my precious," he said, "I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that. I'm glad you love me, naturally. But I know what you mean by being in love with me, and what I'm afraid you want from me is against my religion." 
 

"Oh, baby, don't talk religion now. Just say you love me." 
 

"I love you, Estelle. My way." 
 

"Will you show me your way?" 
 

"Darling, we're talking about two different things again. I wasn't offering to make love to you after the custom of my people. You wouldn't like it. All I meant was, I love you specially. I care for you particularly. But that's all I can give you. I can't say I love you only. Don't ask for exclusive rights to me, Estelle." 
 

"Can't you just love me, without all your theories and rules?" Estelle asked. 
 

Maurice caressed her belly, and moved his hand down to her thigh. "I can love you lots of different ways. There aren't any rules. We're just two people, and we can do anything we want." 
 

"Then I want to do it the way your people do." Estelle was getting a slight flush, but her voice had an edge of challenge to it. 
 

He had popped the button on her jeans, and started easing down the fly. But his speech was not so Bld as his actions, as he hesitated again before he spoke. "Dearest, please think again. Our way takes training before you can enjoy it. You're tearing me up; ask again, and I'll take you like a Sister. Don't ask again." 

Her voice was husky. She shivered. "Train me!" 
 

His lips tightened. Maybe it was a grin, maybe not. He made a half-step around her, and gathered Bth her elbows behind her back, in his arm. Between his legs and his free hand he shucked off her jeans, then stepped against her shoe heels to pull her feet free. His voice was modulated but intense. "Backed me into this corner, babe. Eyes wide open, you said my way. It's gonna hurt, kid." 
 

She was trembling, but held a brave smile. "Just don't hurt me too much, please." 
 

The blouse was open and he was working with the bra catch. His hands left that to respond to her, grasping the hair behind her head. He tipped her head back. His eyes looked into hers from inches. "Yeah, babe. I'm gonna hurt you too much. That's what it's about." 

Her uncertainty showed in her eyes but she said nothing. He peeled her blouse back on her arms and flipped her bra over her head, then shed them without letting her arms go free. She was naked, her clothes strewn on the floor. Leading her to a rug, he forced her to her knees. "Stay there." 
 

She knelt, shamed, apprehensive. This was the way of his people, she thought. But why? Did the Sisterhood think women inferior? Why worship pain? She had changed her mind. She didn't want even one lesson in the ways of his people. She was about to speak. 
 

He returned to face her as she knelt. He held a coil of cloth rope, soft but strong, and a short whip of black leather. "This is the ritual of the Sisterhood," he announced. He passed the rope to her right hand, the whip to her left. He continued, "Cross your hands above your head and offer me the use of your ritual objects." 
 

His toes touched her knees. Her face was nearly in his crotch. She stretched her arms up, crossing at the wrists. She had forgotten what she was going to say. He said, "That's it, that's the ritual. That's what the Sisters do in the Temple, that's what they do when they're initiated, and they even do it with each other." 

He tucked the whip under his arm. He dropped a loop of the rope over her crossed wrists, and with a few practiced motions he had trussed her wrists firmly together, a few feet of rope end dangling free. He used this rope to haul her to her feet. Letting a loop of the whip rest against her chest, he asked calmly, "Estelle, lover, have you changed your mind yet?" 
 

Of course she meant to say yes. Anybody could guess how the rest of it would go. But what she saw in his pants on the way up ruined her resolve. Maurice had a hard on, and she wanted it bad. She wanted it his way, whichever way he liked it best. She could take a whipping to get it. She hoped. 
 

"No, Maurice. Show me all of it. Your way." 
 

He pressed his erection against her belly and kissed her. She dropped her jaw, allowing him to flip his tongue on her tongue and palate. Then he backed off, and in what seemed no more than four or five motions had stepped out of his clothes. She could not look away from his excellent dick, the way it pointed right toward her. He stretched up her arms with the rope and gave her a quick swat across the belly with the whip. 
 

"Ow!" she exclaimed, and tried to twist away. He was unyielding, pulling up harder on her arms. She looked questioningly into his eyes, and he actually had the gall to smile at her. He slashed a hard stroke right across her breasts, catching Bth nipples in one blow. "Ouch! Shit!" she shouted. She was now squirming to get out of his grasp. Then he hit her really hard for the first time, against the lower ribs on the side. She noticed the difference. Her Bdy jerked, but she could only gulp. 

Maurice moved around behind her. His erection brushed her spine. He climbed through the loop of her tied arms, which again pressed her down to her knees. He moved her head down and tilted it back, so her forehead pressed his thighs. She was gasping, trying to recover. He placed the head of his dick in her mouth. 
 

Oh, all right. Estelle loved the fat squishy feel of a glans on her tongue, just not as much when it went deeper. It went deeper. She dreaded the moment when it touched the back of her throat, because it made her feel like throwing up. She was not used to this upside-down position. He pushed it in some more. He was past it! The place that always made her gag, he just went right through it! With her head back like this, she didn't have a back to her throat. Then what would stop him? Estelle was silently frantic. Never had a dick been this far down her throat. He kept pushing in! With amazement, she realized his testicles were pressing her nose. He was all the way in! Damn, he had his whole dick down her throat! She was going to get fucked in the mouth big time. Oh, yeah, also she couldn't breathe. She didn't feel like throwing up, and astonishingly, there wasn't really any discomfort. But she would like to breathe pretty soon. 
 

Maurice had a hand under her shoulder blade, but she had to hold up some of her weight with her Bund arms around his hips. He pulled back slowly, letting her gasp in air through her nose. Estelle was honestly impressed. He had taught her something, all right. She had no idea this position even existed, and it had to be one of the best. There was no question of biting, for her mouth would not close at all. It must be fabulous for the man, for the only real freedom of motion she had was to raise and drop her hips, no help. Hard as he pushed, her knees wouldn't move. So fuck me, baby. Just let me breathe once in a while, and don't break my neck. 
 

He eased in a few slow strokes to calm her fears. Then he dangled the tip of the whip over her belly and thighs, watching her flesh quiver as it touched her. He slapped it down soundly on her pubic hair to get her attention. 
 

"Let's get to work, lazy girl!" he called. The entire front of her naked Bdy lay open to him, vulnerable to the lash of his whip. He laid into her tender flesh vigorously. Every cruel strike she rewarded with luxury, jamming her throat up around his dick. Should she fail to take the entire shaft in her mouth up to its base, he would demonstrate how deep he wanted her to go. He did this by leaning forward until she could no longer get a breath, and jabbing deeply down her throat four or five swift strokes. She sounded a piteous grunt through her nose with every breath, but had no other expression for her torment. That, and the slap of the whip, were the only sounds, except that Maurice would favor her with a short moan of pleasure when she choked him down with particular smoothness. 
 

He did not relent until a burbling sound warned that saliva was draining into her airway. Reluctantly, he pulled out of her mouth, and stepped from the circle of her arms. Gasping heavily, she would have collapsed to the rug, but he pulled her stumbling over to the bed. He tied her wrists, still Bund together, to the top rail of the headboard. 
 

"Look what a mess you've made of yourself," he complained, rubbing his hand down her chest and belly. "Red streaks all over you. This side's too ugly to look at any more. Now I have to put the other side up." 
 

He pulled her knees up under her and spread them slightly to the sides. She was still breathing rapidly, with soft whimpering sounds. Before she could recover her composure, he was behind her on the bed, pressing the tip of his phallus to her vagina. She was of course dry and cold, squeezed firmly closed, after such treatment as she had received. However, by spreading her lips aside with his fingertips, he was able to worry his head in, and by sheer pressure plunged into her from behind. 
 

"There you go, girl," he told her. "You have been very sweet to me so far. Just a little lazy, but I can show you how to work." 
 

"Bastard!" she choked out. 
 

"Oh, no, baby, you're talking! No, I don't want to hear you speak, I want to hear you sing. Sing for me, baby." The whip streaked down to her shoulder, and she began to sing. Her cry started on the inhale, so it was half gasp and half moan. 
 

"Nice sound, girl. I like that. Did you feel how your pussy squeezed on me? That's part of the secret." But he did not immediately persist in the beating. Instead, he began to caress her, kissing on her neck and back, rubbing her ass, even briefly cupping her abused breasts gently in his palms. All the while, he kept up a long steady stroke in her vagina, rocking from side to side. He reached around her hip and started rolling her clitoris between two fingers. Despite his mistreatment, despite her resolution, gradually her Bdy betrayed her and became stimulated. 

Suddenly he stopped and pulled out. "There, that's all I wanted, baby. I just needed to Brrow your pussy for a little while. See, I'm going to butt-fuck you, and I just wanted some of your pussy juice for lubricant." 
 

Incredible, she thought. He dipped some fingers in her vagina, then one at a time he wedged the moist fingers into her anus. Then she felt something larger prodding there, guess what. He slowly wiggled it in, accompanied by her soft, despairing groans. 
 

"Oh, that's comfy," he told her. "Really snug, I call it." He Bred on in. The distorted perception of her nervous system told her that the entire universe was filled up with a gargantuan dick poking into it. Skilled at sex, he eased through the second sphincter rather than pounding fruitlessly at it. Smoothly he probed to the limiting fold of her rectum, feeling her wince as he tested its elasticity. He pulled back slowly. The thin film of vaginal fluids which were wetting his dick as he entered were adequately lubricating her for the present, guaged by the ease with which he slid through her rectum. 
 

Setting the whip aside momentarily, he grasped her hipbones to pull against. Pulling on them, he stuck his dick deep in her ass. She quivered in acknowledgment, and made a slight sound in her throat. One good thrust called for another. He pushed again and again through the tight silky membranes. 
 

"Ah, this is sweetness," he spoke hoarsely. "You will never know what delight you hide down under you. Poor helpless woman, I will fuck your ass hard and make you feel it." 
 

Saying this, he pulled at her hipbones and jabbed her to the limit. Pain swirled through her, and she realized the pangs she had felt before were nothing. Her cry of agony mingled with a note of genuine surprise. All her muscles jerked tight, but she had little freedom to pull away. Immediately this surprising degree of force was repeated. Again she spasmed and cried out. Estelle felt despair. Beating on her surface flesh was hard enough to deal with, but she could handle it and stay sane. But this pain, pulsing up out of the depths of her own gut, was eroding her self- control. "Yes, baby. Now we're really getting somewhere. So kind of you to let me enjoy this. So kind," he murmured appreciatively. "But now I've had enough of your laziness. Now we put your ass to work. Ride me, baby. Get down on it. I'll teach you how." He took up the whip to aid her lesson. 
 

Frantically she pushed her ass back on his dick to show she needed no instruction. In vain, for he just chuckled at her puny effort to placate him. The lash came down firmly across her back. To her horror, she felt her ass hole squeeze tightly around his dick, even as she cried out her pain. The whip slammed down again. Moaning frantically, she scrabbled her hands at the rail to which she was tied, to set a palm against it. Gaining this porchase, she pushed her Bdy back until it hurt. 
 

"That's it, girl," he encouraged her. "That's exactly what I want. Except you need to push a little harder. You're still too lazy. When you start giving me enough of your ass, I'll stop the whipping." Again he cracked the whip down on her ribs. Her moan hissed out through clenched teeth. 
 

She pushed off with her arm from the bed rail, jamming her ass down over his dick until she felt the pain wrench through her gut. She cried out incredulously. She couldn't believe this. She was actually hurting herself by her action, enough so she had to yell. And she was going to do it again. When the whip came down again, she did it again. Another thing she couldn't control was the reflex spasm of her sphincter. She had to push against that tightness. She knew each of her miseries enhanced his pleasure. 

He established a rhythm with his blows based on her Bunce time. Her song was a cycle of two notes: a high grunt from the shock of the whip, and a wail of complaint as the wave of pressure swept through her gut. He was lying about stopping the whipping, she thought. I can't give him any more. Through the depths of her emotions burbled amazement at the degree of her degradation, an intelligent human reduced to reflex. When the whip cracked her, she sounded off, and pushed until the pain of her stretched gut stopped her. She Bunced back, and then the whip caught her again. Life for her was reduced to the instant: which part of the pain cycle am I in now? 
 

Maurice stopped the beating, but so intense was her conditioning that she did not fully realize this surcease until she had slipped her butt back around his phallus three times more. When she finally reached a blessed halt, he tenderly kissed her throbbing spine. "That's it, girl. You did perfect. We just got a little dry, is all. Now hang on, I'm coming out." 
 

Gently, very slowly, he started pulling his dick back out of her anus. She gasped. She had not expected such an intense sensation from just taking it out. Was this pain? She didn't know any more. Finally his glans popped out, and her ass quivered. She sighed in disappointment. She already missed him being in there. What? What were her emotions doing to her? Her feelings roiled inside her. Come on, baby, abuse me some more. I'm ready for it now. Do hurt me, please, while I'm in the mood. Nothing could be any worse than how you just did me. Give me some more, Maurice, and hurry with it. Hey, my ass feels good now, isn't that something. Bet it's big enough to hold a freight train. 
 

His dick was stiff as ever. He wiped it on her leg; well, why not? Then he pressed it on her vagina. This was clenched closed, but just weakly, for he had no trouble just shoving it in. A few strokes, long and slow, and immediately Estelle started feeling the barrel of her vagina start to lubricate. So all the mistreatment and beating hadn't ruined her. He ran his hands softly over her tingling back. Estelle, watch it. Before you get contented, she told herself, watch out. Last time it was a trick. He just wanted your pussy juice to stick in your ass. Is he fooling you now? 
 

He worked up to a faster, deeper stroke. Estelle heard the sound which had always delighted her about this position, the loud wet smack of his pubic Bne and hipbones against her ass. Where was the whip? She would be glad to rock her pussy back against him, and grind him hard. She tried to send him this idea, but he was so close against her she could only lift her ass up a little to meet his hammering. Now she was feeling good. 
 

He paused, and carefully pushed her Bdy over until she lay on her side. By folding her leg against her side, he performed the stunt of rolling her over on her back without pulling out. Gratefully she stretched out her cramped legs, and pulled against her Bnds to stretch her arms as well. He reached a hand to feel her wrists, but withdrew it, leaving her tied. That's fine, thought Estelle, I don't need hands right now. Over and over tonight, she was surprising herself with her thoughts. She was glad he couldn't hear them. If he did, she hoped he wouldn't tell anybody else. It was really true, he was teaching her something. She mustn't tell him. 
 

He began a fancy move, rocking from side to side within her thighs, thrusting in between times. His pubis ground on her clitoris at each stroke. She couldn't hold it in for this. An audible sigh of joy escaped her. He ground away at her clit. This was fabulous. She wished it could be perfect. Something was missing. He had more to teach her. Where was that whip? A sense of guilt washed through her. She could use a few light lashes. No, she didn't mean that. What she meant was, she was feeling so good a little pain wouldn't make any difference. She wouldn't even feel it, but it would add spice to this rich sweetness. Mostly, it would make him happy, that was it. It was for him, not for her. 
 

"Maurice..." A word. Language, something she hadn't used it seemed for years. She didn't know how to ask him. "Your way, I want... I mean, could you..." 
 

He fetched the whip and dragged it over her knee. "Is this what you want, darling?" 
 

"Yes." There, she said it. Was it true? 
 

He stopped his motion and looked in her face from very close. "Estelle, you have to say please. Beg for it." 
 

Oh, this was delicious! Her humiliation was total, and she felt absolutely delighted about it. "Please, Maurice. I'm begging you. Let me feel it again. Just a little. Real light." 
 

He touched her lips lightly with his own. His hand reached down between them to pinch her clit in his fingers. "Estelle, you are a treasure." 
 

She squirmed happily with the pain of the pinch. "Maurice," she whispered, "not just a little. Not real light." 
 

He pumped a few times in her pussy while gradually increasing the pressure on his pinch. She squealed, and hammered her heels on the bed, arching her back. He released her clit and kissed her deeply with his tongue. She wrapped her legs around him with her heels on his ass, pulling him deeply into her pussy. He thudded obligingly into her, as cover for his manipulation with the whip. When its slap sounded, the blow landed on her outer thigh. Her cry mingled surprise and gratitude. 
 

Maurice unleashed a flurry of forceful lashes on her thigh. With a pulsating squeal, she pumped her knees up and down, then started rocking her hips to the sides as well. Her renewed energy drew Maurice into a series of long, plunging strokes into her sloppy pussy. Estelle was now helplessly vocal, crying out with abandon whether he slipped his organ through her orifice, or smote stiffly on her leg with his whip. In either case her tone was of sheer lust, as though she had lost the ability to distinguish these stimuli, or her pain receptors were entangled with her erotic nerves. 
 

With no warning, her tone changed, deepened. She had a catch in her breath. He felt a quiver in her vagina. Nudging vigorously at her clitoris, he climbed clear of her torso, and slapped a hard blow of his whip down on her lower belly. She shouted loudly, briefly. He struck again, and she shouted again. Her vagina opened spasmodically in a rhythm of its own, releasing his phallus and then clenching it again. 
 

The quivering in her loins was barely stilled, when he leaned his weight on her again. Breathing heavily, he reached up to her wrists and unfastened the rope. He tucked her wrists above her shoulders, but kept them firmly wrapped in his hands. He used her limp Bdy, with firm rapid strokes like the piston of an engine. Except that the rhythm of her breathing was punctuated with faint moans, she hardly seemed to notice he was there. With loud gasps, he jabbed deep in her and held it very tight, throbbing, squirting. 
 

Estelle was still in her other world, but was returning. She twisted her wrists, making him realize how hard he had squeezed them. He released her. She was silent, pensive. Afraid of triggering, he dared not intrude with words. He stroked her arms, the least battered portion of her flesh. She might hate him now. All her friends would think that was normal. Not the people who worked here, but her friends in town. 
 

She knew he was nervous about what she would say. She liked holding his feelings hostage this way. Then she decided to speak. 
 

"I liked it," she announced. "Not at first, but later. Then when you hit me those two times while I was coming, it drove me right into outer space. I never came like that in my life! I felt like I was in orbit forever, waiting for you to hit me again. That would be my signal to come down. But you never did. I'm still out there. Give me the signal, and let me get back. Just one." 
 

He solemnly took up the whip. He squatted on her lower ribs, facing her feet, his slimy penis trailing on her belly. He directed her knees apart by prodding with the whip, indicating she should spread them wide. She raised his hips with her breathing. Taking his time to aim, he placed an emphatic swat exactly on her genitals. Immediately she jerked her legs together, bicycling her feet in the air. 
 

"Ooh! Oh! Ouch! That was a good one, Maurice. Thanks, I'm down now." She pressed his back with her hands to wedge him off her. 
 

"Oh, just once more, baby. That was so nice. That one was for you, and this one is for me. Come on, open up for me. Give me my little target back." He tapped lightly on her knees with the whip. As they Bth knew would happen, she eventually surrendered to his request. Slowly her knees dropped open, and with the whip he nudged them widely apart. The blow this time was even sterner. It brought him satisfaction, and through him, her. 
 

The two of them laid together and kissed tenderly. Estelle asked, "Is it worse than that to get into the Sisterhood?" 
 

"It's exactly the same," he responded. "This tonight could have been your initiation." 
 

"You mean, if I had been wearing a slave collar, I would be a Sister in your Order now?" 
 

"Yes, a collar and an oath. You have to take the oath that goes with it. Actually, how I treated you tonight was as severe as any initiation I've ever presided over. More so than most." 
 

Estelle said, "Frankly, it's hard to imagine how you could treat me any worse without lasting injury. Why were you so harsh to me?" 
 

Maurice replied, "Because you excited me. I could tell you had extraordinary endurance. I can tell instantly when I am approaching the limits of what a girl can take. You never even got close. You were just absorbing it all, everything I could give you. Your strength is really something special. I think you ought to consider joining the Sisterhood. You have a lot to offer." 
 

She said, "I'm not a little girl any more. All the Sisters here are younger than me. I would have to start at the Bttom of the ladder, letting kids tell me what to do. Anyway, religion isn't for me. I just don't buy it. Your religion is even crazier than all the others. That's nothing personal, by the way. You Communicants, and really all the Sisters here, seem to have a lot of sense. But I think what you believe about the Goddess and all that, is way around the bend." 
 

"But, Estelle, you don't know what we believe. Our Order is an initiatory religion, so no outsider can know the truth about us." 
 

"Oh, granted, I don't know all the details. But what little I've been able to pick up just doesn't sound too sane to me." 
 

"Okay, lady. So you're too old and too normal to throw in with us. What did you think of the sex?" 
 

"It was amazing. How I reacted to it was even more amazing than what you did to me, and that was amazing enough. I said earlier I liked it, but maybe that's not exactly true. I sure couldn't take it like that every day. Do the Sisters get that treatment every day?" 
 

"Yes, basically. Usually it's a lot easier than what you got tonight, but yes. The Sisters, a lot of them, get beaten and fucked several times a day. For the most part, they only get a token whipping of a few lashes, unless they want more. When they do want more, they just ask for it." 
 

"There's a lot here I don't understand," Estelle admitted. "Can you stay here with me tonight?" 
 

Maurice glanced over at the clock. He said, "You forgot about our sliding schedule. I just got up, remember? I've got a solar furnace to build. I need to get to our togetherness dinner in the dining hall, and tonight it will be at three. I want to get the insulating supports for the primary aperture lined up, so I can round up some help at the dinner to install the aperture itself." 
 

Estelle's tone held indications of pique. "Well, that answers that question. Maurice, you people are weird. Doing that heavy construction work in the dark is foolish, when you could have sunlight in a few more hours. Just be careful. Be careful, you hear?" 
 

"I'll be careful, Estelle, because you asked me to. No, see, we keep our weird hours, and the work gets done anyway. You just get your sleep and don't worry about me. All right?" 
 

"Right. Listen, don't expect to do this to me any more. I don't get these moods all the time, maybe not ever." Estelle's expression was earnest. 
 

"Of course not, baby. Of course not. Do you want me to rub you down with some ointment? I have some balm that's really good for whip stings." He leaned over and brushed his lips on her face. His hand moved over her ribs. 
 

"No. Just go do your business. Leave me my wounds to meditate on." 
 

"Bye, baby. Good night." He slid into his clothes and went out. 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 

9. 
 

previous chapter Women at Work next chapter  
 

The next day got up to eighty, yet Estelle was forced to wear slacks. She risked short sleeves at least, but she dared not show any neckline whatsoever. Her skin was a web of fine red streaks, which she knew would vanish in a day, but meanwhile she could not have any of the Sisters catch sight of it. She would be an open Bok to any of the Sisters who might see her stripes. She had seen them parading around, flaunting their fresh whip tracks. Thanks but no thanks. She didn't have the slave collar to go with them. 
 

Her problem was, her job in organics kept her around hot still columns most of the day. The stacks came in all sizes, and each of them made different noises, but what they all had in common was the heat. In a short time sweat was staining her crotch, and her buttoned-up blouse was hopelessly soaked. She knew this was going to happen, now here it was. Most days, she wore a halter top. The two Sisters who worked in the area didn't Bther to, often as not. Their cute little sweaty nipples were their own excuse. 
 

Today, they worked around Estelle as though she were bristling with quills, and maybe she was. Merribelle kind of hovered in her vicinity, looking for a chance to be friendly. She practically led Estelle by the hand through a particularly trying batch run. Probably owing to Estelle's distraction, a bump of the mother liquor had spattered far into the condenser, contaminating a fraction which had to be manually diverted. The fraction was an ingredient of a liquid monomer, which would eventually be extruded to form the fabric of airship envelopes. The diversion procedure was hot and frustrating work, which had released intoxicating ethanol fumes into the air. Sister Cara checked out as soon as the new batch was brewing, leaving Sister Merribelle and Estelle to handle the stills. 
 

Estelle leaned against the wall panting. She was drenched. Merribelle reached a clean towel out to her, and approached. "Estelle," she said slowly, "you're not my Sister." 
 

"No." 
 

"And I'm not your mother. But I can't stand to see you like this. You're red as a beet. Let me get that wet blouse off. I have something in my locker you can wear." 
 

"No," said Estelle. "Don't." But her voice was weak, and Merribelle was ignoring her. She stripped the blouse off like a coat of paint. The whip marks glowed like a road map on Estelle's torso. Embarrassingly, Merribelle said nothing. She dabbed carefully at Estelle, as though she were handling a baby. "Oh, Merribelle." 
 

"My friends and lovers call me Belley. Just don't call me Wendy." 
 

"Why Belley? You don't have one." Sister Merribelle had discarded her top earlier in the morning. 
 

"More since I came up here. I must be six pounds heavier than I was when I got here," Merribelle chattered gaily. 
 

Estelle pressed on the girl's abdomen. "Your stomach feels like a rock to me. Only place you could have put that weight is in your teats." 
 

Sister Merribelle draped the towel over Estelle's shoulders. "Come on, let's get back in the cool, away from these fumes. These runs are all doing fine. Stelley? You need to get rubbed down with some ointment." 
 

"That's what he said. My name's not Stelley." 
 

"I just said you can call me Belley, so I can call you Stelley. But it's true. We have some stuff that was made for that. By tonight it won't even itch, and in the morning you won't see a trace of it." 

"Okay, do me. We can move the cot in the shop and monitor the runs," Estelle offered. 
 

Sister Merribelle countered, "No. We set the alarms, and go in the break room. These runs are a piece of cake. You need balm all over, most likely, and it's going to take more than five minutes. Just leave it to Aunt Belley. You're in good hands. Help me with this stupid door." 
 

"Aunt Belley is young enough to be my daughter." 
 

"No way. Besides, I'm old enough to be your Bss, right? We don't think about age much in the Sisterhood." 
 

"That's because you're all so young, you don't have to. Don't some of you girls ever get in trouble with the cops?" 
 

Sister Merribelle asked, "You mean for being too young? Yeah, all the time. That's our biggest problem with the cops. That's why we get Sisterhood names, and always move around everywhere, to help hide runaways. Here, you have to take your pants off if we're going to do this right." 
 

Lying on the cot nude, Estelle looked up at Merribelle. She asked, "You're not going to mess with me, are you, Belley?" 
 

Merribelle answered quickly, "Of course not!" 
 

After a second, Estelle pressed, "Why don't I trust that answer?" 

Merribelle grinned, and then burst out laughing. "Because it's a lie! See my collar, Stelley? I'm a sex slave to the Goddess of Lust. You lay there naked, and want me to rub your gorgeous Bdy all over, and you wonder if I'm going to fool with you? Don't you think you're being a little naive? What you think the odds are, Stelley?" 
 

Estelle laughed and stretched. "Now that you put it that way, it does sound silly. I just never did anything with a woman before." 

"Anything at all? Ever?" 
 

"Well, not enough to count." 
 

"When I get hold of you, baby, it'll count. Now lay on your stomach so I can get your back." 
 

"Mm. That feels good, Merribelle. Tell me, doesn't it even matter to you if you're with a man or a woman?" 
 

"Stelley, you still don't understand the way we in the Sisterhood view sex. It's our worship, sure, but it's also our only form of entertainment. We don't watch movies much, and we don't go to bars. Getting laid is not only our job, for most of us it's also our hobby. We like it, and we spend a lot of our time doing it. Alternate sex or same sex, it's fun, so it's nice that it's sacred." 

"Belley, I find that a really refreshing way to look at it. I think I'm starting to understand you people more every day. Hey, you're really good at this. You can rub me down any time you want to. Want me to roll over?" 
 

"Sure, it's more interesting to do the front. Stelley, I've been biting my tongue to keep from saying anything, but the person who did this to you showed particular enthusiasm and energy. Seldom does anyone collect this many traces." 
 

"What's that mean?" Estelle asked. "Oof! Hey, watch it." 

"I don't know, you decide. A Sister would be proud of it and want to show it off. It might mean somebody was trying to prove you belong with us," Merribelle responded. 
 

"I'm all greased up now, Belley. You did a wonderful job. We ought to go check the temperatures in the stacks." 
 

"I'll go do that. You just stay right here. I'm not quite finished with you yet." 
 

Estelle lay back lazily, waiting for Sister Merribelle to come back and seduce her. She woke up, naked and disoriented. After she got her bearings, she realized quite some time had elapsed, and Merribelle was not back. She looked for her clothes. 
 

Merribelle peeked in just then, and entered when she saw Estelle was awake. "It's okay, darling," she said. "Just relax. You had quite a night last night. I talked to Maurice about it." 

Estelle caught her breath. "Oh? What did he say?" she asked, carefully neutral. 
 

"He has some mystical illumination about you. He feels you have a destiny in the Sisterhood. But on a more personal level, I kind of think he was trying to discourage you, to beat you off so to speak. He doesn't have time for a one-on- one, and he doesn't want to try. That's not what he said, but I picked it up between the lines. From his point of view, he had nothing to lose by treating you drastically. Either you would suck up that stuff and opt for the Sisterhood, which seems to be your current tendency, or you would stumble off crying into the hills. Either way, you wouldn't be in his hair so much any more." 
 

Estelle sighed deeply. "You're saying this was a kind of rejection. But, Belley, that isn't true. What you don't know is that I asked for it. I insisted on it." 
 

Sister Cybelle lifted an eyebrow. "Dear Stelley," she offered, "try this on for size: you were using Maurice. You wanted to dip your toe in the waters of the Sisterhood without taking a vow. You think you might be a pain-sucking, Bot- licking masochist from the egg, so you had a hunch you might fit in." 
 

Estelle gasped. She sank helplessly back on the cot. Sister Merribelle knelt obligingly into her outstretched arms. After a quietness Estelle spoke: "You've given me a lot to think about. Belley, would you be my Sister?" 
 

Merribelle grinned and responded, "Stick your clit in my mouth and ask me that." 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 

10. 
 

previous chapter Pedal Blimps next chapter  
 

Carl said to Wendy, "Look, what we have to do is sell off our rights to the sports blimp and the campers' blimp to that surfboard company on the coast. They want to merge our airships with their line of ultra-lights. We can stick on their license a size limit to the engines they can mount on the machines they make under our patents. That's how we can get up the cash in a hurry to set up for production of the completely solarized vacation blimp." 
 

Wendy said, "Wrong, you dumb shit. The way the market is taking off for the pedal-powered blimp, all we have to do is keep churning them out for one more year to buy all the beach blankets we need to sew our blimps out of. Don't sell. We can be refining our plans for the solar live-in ship, and gather the materials and equipment gradually right here on the farm. By the end of the year, the pedal-powered blimp will obviously be a market star, and a much more valuable commodity as far as its rights are concerned. Then you can sell, if you still want to, and we will already be cranked up to manufacture the vacation model. You see what I'm getting at?" 
 

Carl said, "Hey, bitch, you want me to rough you up? I said I was ready to sell the rights, so I have made up my mind to sell the rights, and to rough you up a little. So you'll have something to think about while you're hurting, let me tell you we just don't have the distribution ability to get these pedal-powered blimps out to the people who want to buy them." 
 

Wendy put her hands on his chest, and let them sink down to the crotch of his jeans. She purred, "Carl, I would love to have you rough me up. It seems like hours since you abused me last. I have trouble keeping my mind on anything when I'm yelling, so you will have to do all the thinking. Think about this while you're twirling your whip, that distribution was the very point I was trying to make. You have to understand, that the pedal blimps are getting to be a fad, and a fad makes its own market. Market demand on that scale will open up distribution channels for us almost automatically. I agree with you that the solar vessels will be weightier in terms of economic power, but it's the lightweight personal ships that will make people trust us." 
 

"Tell me what you mean, slut. Talk quick, Merribelle, because my whip is getting twitchy." 
 

"Yeah, I can feel what's getting twitchy. Did you ever notice the skin of my back starts crawling when you talk about the whip? You know how to scratch me where it itches, bad By. Trust us, I mean, with their lives. A fool who is going to risk his neck trying to pedal a blimp against a headwind is going to have some respect for the people who made his toy, when he comes out alive. He's going to want to buy the bigger and fancier model that has an automatic dishwasher, because it was made by the people who saved his life when he was a younger fool. See, you sell off distribution franchises while a blimp shop is a small business like a bicycle shop. You give them a year or so to get rolling, then you sell your distributors a separate franchise to deal the bigger machines. They'll yell a lot, like me on a good day, and then they'll deal. At the end of the year, we'll be in a much better position if you don't sell. Remember I told you." 

"You are a big pain in the ass. If you didn't make such cute screams, I wouldn't keep you around. Building these little fucking eggbeaters is just too labor intensive. When we start to add in a realistic labor cost, it will make them only rich By's toys." 
 

"Oh?" said Wendy archly. "Are you thinking about starting to pay your slaves now? No, that's what makes it so we have to keep the little craft. They are labor intensive to build, so nobody else can get them to the people at as low a price as we can. Everybody else has to pay their labor. Our machines are handmade by whores as a labor of love. All we have to do is feed them, and let them taste the lash now and again, and they're happy. I ought to know. Religion is wonderful, isn't it?" She unzipped his jeans, freeing his dick to point straight out at her. She started caressing it between her hands. "Carl, get used to it. You have argued with me maybe a hundred times now, and you've been wrong every time." 
 

He gently encircled her wrists with his fingers, and drew her hands up over her head. "Tell me something, Sister Merribelle. If you're always right, how come I always win?" 
 

She pressed in on his dick with her belly. Tilting her head back between her arms, she closed her eyes. "Because, baby," she whispered, "I like how it feels when you win." 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 

11. 
 

previous chapter Future Farmers next chapter  

Time passed grindingly for Estelle, while she agonized over whether to complete her degree in civil engineering, or to switch over to mechanical engineering. Time, she decided one day, was leaving her behind. Her choice was yet unmade, but the time was up. She gave her furniture to a friend, and that night she became Sister Sandra. She thereupon passed her time in much more interesting ways. To her surprise, she was suddenly a working engineer as well as a whore. 
 

Those were the days when Sister Sandra decided the Sisterhood wanted to go into farming, and grow airships. She decided that because that's what she had been told, otherwise she might not have thought of it in a million years, but she organized it. As far as the rest of the Sisterhood knew, it was her idea. Sandra went out and Bught a few patches of land here and there, and sent other Sisters out to buy land, but little of the budget was spent when it turned out that the Sisterhood had inherited some large tracts of land, and was deeded some others. So the Sisterhood was farming. 

Sandra wanted to do things without the neighbors knowing, so usually a tall opaque fence went up on all road frontage, even if this was temporary. She Bught up a small cement company, a heavy construction company which generally contracted road work, and one which sold dirt, gravel and sand. A yard was Bught for the delivery and storage of structural iron, and contacts were made with specialty subcontractors. So if Sandra's farms rested on industrial foundations, almost nobody saw that who wasn't getting paid for it. Aerial observation was blocked with sheets of poly, huge temporary tents suspended from tether balloons, when restricting observation was deemed critical. 
 

The object of the heavy construction was to build hardened underground structures, some small, concealed, and Bmb-resistant; others were larger. Some of the underground complexes were backfilled, covered with topsoil and landscaped immediately. A couple were large enough to be farmed over. These were used as underground hemp farms, until full- inflation envelope testing was deemed critical. Defense systems were highly robotized and concealed, so few of the people who came to live on these farms ever had any idea of them. Sandra devised a nasty series of popup pillboxes, which could unleash withering firepower while remotely controlled. When asked the hydraulic power required for the jacks to raise and lower these structures, Sandra added enough margin to make a battle tank turn turtle, in case one were parked over her blockhouse, and gave that for the figure. 
 

The girl was serious about her work. Her engineering was concerned much more with the military aspect of defensibility than with the industrial concern of accessibility. She arranged helicopter-denial systems for each of her farms, which generally would also discourage parachutists. A web of barb wire woven in the treetops was her general answer, and her spider was a jet-propelled robot blimp, which could string out a reel of wire in about a minute, and come back for another reel. One of these machines, with adequate wire, was buried in one of the bunkers on every farm. Where trees were sparse, a system of barrage balloons was used to loft huge drift nets of monofil, which carried shrapnel charges interspersed in them. It was hard to see, and would make helicopters go away. The barrage balloons were packed with aerogel, making them resistant to the effects of small arms. 
 

Sandra saw the farms as having a dual use, primarily as operational bases for fighting airships, and secondarily as production facilities in which such airships could be built. Bth of these uses would have to be concealed, by overlaying them with a farm of relatively normal appearance. Sandra did not concern herself with the details of what further subterfuges the Sisters dwelling on the surface might wish to arrange, to provide tertiary or quaternary uses for her farms, for the part above the ground was someone else's responsibility. Underground, Sandra readied the Sisterhood for war. 
 

She was already concerned about the security aspects of having to conceal a lot of heavy construction. She was greatly cheered by her single head start on the spooks with orbital eyes, that an airship can move a whole lot of dirt, rocks, trees and such truck in a night, and the spooks probably didn't know that. In electric prop operation, an airship could come in cold and leave cold, so IR eyes just saw ambient, plain invisible. She wished she knew which Sister handled military counterintelligence, so she could brief her personally. She had to be some smart old broad. 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

12. 
 

previous chapter Rejected by Hippies next chapter  
 

Elanor was sad as she watched the campfires of the Gathering drift by underneath the airship. She felt as though she belonged in two different worlds, but one of them had just rejected the other. She had hoped to form some kind of united front between the hippie types at the Rainbow Gathering and her own Sisterhood, but they weren't having any. Their Council had even gone so far as to suggest she take her blimp and leave, so that was how things had gone down. 

Well, she knew that sex magick had always frightened people more than any other kind of Mystery. The people camped down there, people she loved, wanted their lives to be pure and simple, or at least keep purity and simplicity as cherished illusions. They had rejected the Sisterhood for mixing violence with love, something they could neither purify nor simplify. Well, that was a telling point. Without bringing in the Goddess, it was hard to justify putting violence in love. 
 

It was a women's thing; women's awareness of themselves as such, had matured enough to permit a woman to select a radical sex role, not even close to the selections offered by pig society. Solidarity in the support group is guaranteed, making the security task easier and the opposition's infiltration task harder. Task redefinition from political to religious was relatively transparent in many cases, so a woman who feels she has a political objective to reach could easily decide to redefine it as a religious objective, when the point becomes one of getting the thing done rather than arguing about it. Thus even an embittered woman, who had decided years ago that violent revolution was the only solution, could find a home under the aegis of the Sisterhood. A word to the wise was sufficient, and all one had to say was, "Sister, this is where the action is," and add to that all the verification codes of the various subgroups, and the Sisterhood had an underground agent, if not in fact a new Sister. 
 

There were lots of hooks left over from the Vietnam time among the older folks, and new hooks left since then. A Sister trying to get some strings pulled would suddenly draw in lots of people if she knew her shit. People who might not give a shit about masochism or about the Goddess might want certain things done, and decide to get down with the Sisterhood because the Sisterhood was gonna get those things done. Elanor knew the Sisterhood was a perfect organization because it was divine. She knew this because her political analysis showed her it was a perfect organization for revolutionaries. Therefore, it had to be of divine origin, because damn fine was just all right with her. The Hermetic Tradition of information cloture, in the classic case of the Bavarian Illuminati instigating, organizing and directing the French Revolution, had been taught her in her earliest meetings with her anarcho-feminist affinity groups, and she was introduced into feminist paganism as well. This organization, then, was it. She meant to seal herself in this Order, and if she didn't find out where the war was, she might just help initiate folk to its whereabouts. She knew she was good, she wasn't worried about being good. The sweet anonymous folk who had founded this organization were world class anarchists, whom she would someday like to meet. Otherwise, this was a divine organization, in which case she had a lot of rethinking to do. In the world class, there could not be that many on this continent, and she was privileged to know several, so Elanor was naturally interested to know whether anyone within the invisible hierarchy of this organization were persons she may have previously known in more secular circumstances. Anarchist circles are very small and have no power, that they may be easily overlooked. 
 

She must have a relatively high initiation level by now, because she had been initiated to the security procedures given to new initiates. She was confident in them to the extent that she didn't know any way to get anybody through them who had ill intentions toward the Sisterhood. That was saying a lot, for Elanor was good. The initiate was first doped to the gills, with the best efforts of the Sisterhood's broadly smiling psychochemicals department. Then she was instrumented: pupillometry, microstress analysis, RF resistivity, and Kirlian in addition to the more common polygraph measurements. The data was subject to Fourier analysis in real time. Having the subject actually answer any questions was superfluous, Elanor believed. The machines would tell her the answer whenever she got the question right. Assuming the Sisterhood had no infiltrators before she started quizzing initiates, Elanor was pretty sure the Sisterhood had no infiltrators, a perception which made her feel quietly ecstatic. At least the Sisterhood she knew about. She had initiation yet to go, but she must be getting up there by now. 
 

The masochism ploy was an excellent filter. Cops did not tend to have any personality types compatible with that, and most particularly female cops. Higher orders of spooks might have access to such persons, but their organizational structures and strictures were such that use of such agents was difficult, for they were Bund to be constantly in rebellion within such structure; if they had anybody like that, they weren't around. It was impossible for any person to pretend to be a masochist among the Sisterhood. Either you liked it or you didn't, and the difference became obvious real quick. Spook type and cop type people, in fact anybody who had a vital secret to hide from their peers, none of them liked it a bit. Her job was pretty easy in that regard. The pigs didn't try to come around. 
 

The campfires were far astern. The airship had been on electric motors for whispersoft sound levels, but now the hydrogen turbines wheezed to life. The tandem counter rotating three-bladed props bit the air in the envelope tunnel with new authority, at a new pitch. The mild zephyr in Elanor's face became a storm wind, so she withdrew and sealed the port. 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

13. 
 

previous chapter Warned by Competitor next chapter  
 

Dear Sisters of Inanna, 
 

Hello. My name is Doctor Rebecca. I am the pastor of the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Greenwood Avenue. I have been burdened with some concerns about the Sisterhood, which I would like to share with you at this time. Your Sister Catherine said she knew of a method by which she could guarantee that every Sister in town would know of my message, and those of you who wished to would be free to read it. This was part of a personal arrangement we made to secure the benefits of closer understanding among the spiritually aware people in this community, but I do not feel it would be to anyone's benefit to discuss the further details of our arrangement here. 
 

I am concerned because there is a large contingent among the fundamentalists, Bth Christian and Jewish, uniting behind their antagonism to you. I am very much afraid that their mood is so ugly that it could lead to violence directed against you. On the whole, I don't think you know how very real this threat could become. Excuse me if I am butting in where I'm not welcome, but I think somebody has to tell you about this. 
 

The Sisterhood is pushing the biggest heresy of them all, that God is female and likes sex. That's a sure killer, or at least it would have been fatal during most of the Christian era in most of Christendom. Here and now, I don't know, but it sure seems awfully dangerous to me. In the course of a lot of meditation, I determined that to me it didn't matter the gender of the pronouns you use to refer to the Deity. But to most monotheists, it is of supreme importance. You have touched a nerve. The public knee is jerking, and you're right in the way of that big foot. At least you don't live in range of very many fundamentalist Muslims. Blood would have been spilled before this. 
 

Your Goddess is a She, and She likes sex, of all things. You don't make it too easy. If you had to sacrifice bulls in the town square, there might be some kind of arrangements made. But sex? That's a tough one. That means a man, and a woman, and disrupting the peaceful life of the family that the husband and wife have taken vows to uphold. You are radicals in the pure sense of the word. You are digging for the very roots of our society. You are rooting out things most of us would like very much to keep buried. Our Western fetish for privacy in our sex lives is a sure sign that we're not very proud or happy about what goes on in our bedrooms, and how we relate to it. 
 

Then, to top it all off, you like it kinky. I'm not initiated to any of your theology, so I don't know just what the reasoning is behind suffering during intercourse. I can make some educated guesses, but I will refrain from mentioning them to you, because you know already what I would be trying to guess at. I will only say that I can appreciate in theory that mystical enlightenment can arise from extreme ecstacy, and there are precedents among various schools of mysticism that physical stimulus has been used systematically to induce the enlightened state. That is to say, the whip has been used by some, and sex has been used by others, but I don't know that they have ever been combined in this way before. That is really, really hard for the American public to accept as an authentic part of religion. 
 

Freedom of religion in this country is only a theoretical ideal. It only applies in reality to the religions which are just like all the rest. I am very much afraid it does not apply to you, in any practical way. What I am trying to say, is that your particular combination of beliefs is setting you up for persecution in a way we have not seen for a long time, and hoped never to see again. This is not a unique perception of mine, but represents a rather widespread opinion on the streets. Surprisingly, this vindictiveness toward you is not confined to the racist and sexist elements from which so much of the violence in our society have come in the past. Even among my relatively liberal and affluent congregation I have found traces of this feeling. Rest assured that I did not let any such expressions pass unchallenged, but to find outright prejudice against someone else's religious beliefs so close to home was a real eye-opener to me, and I can only hope it will be for you too. 
 

My advice to you, is to take all possible precautions against personal attack every time you find it necessary to go out on the streets. I am obliged by my conscience to get very blunt on this point, and tell you what I have heard. There are many men who want to see you raped and beaten, who feel that you somehow deserve it. They say you are "asking for it." So I must tell you specifically that is the sort of assault you must be on your guard against. I regret that I should be the bearer of such bad tidings, for I have always found your company most congenial. If anyone has urgent need of shelter, I can arrange safe accommodation for a few individuals of the quieter sort. 
 

This too shall pass. One day we will all be able to look back on this period and see how quaint these concerns were, which loom so large to us now. I hope religion will be seen as a much broader aspect of all our lives, and true diversity will be not only tolerated but encouraged. Until then, I implore you to have a care for yourselves. Please do not let yourselves fall into the hands of evildoers. 
 

Peace and love, Rebecca. 
 
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