Barbara's console flashed an advisory, the electrifying news that the Consort would be giving a lecture that evening on infinity and monotheism. It took her a minute to absorb the news. She had heard of this man only as a legend, generally in sexual terms. She had every reason to expect that she would meet him intimately, that he would be the man who would "deflower" her. Her feelings on that matter were a roiling mixture of anticipation and apprehension. Now she would actually get to see him, in a quite different setting, and to hear him speak. Maybe she would get a chance to talk to him after the lecture, to see what he was like in person. Did he come to the Novitiate regularly, or was this an exceptional occasion? Who knows? 
 

She tidied up her current work for polytheism class. As part of an ongoing project of the acolytes to pictorialize historical deities, she was using the graphics capabilities of the System to construct visual images of some obscure historical goddesses, with little to go on other than the name and general background information. It was an iterative procedure: one girl would come up with an intuitional image of the goddess of that name, along with a few suppositions concerning her personality and her aspects. Other girls would later access the image, adding their own layers of commentary and critique, and revising the image if they felt moved to do so. In this way several previously shadowy deities had emerged with distinctive personalities of great depth and solidity. A few were appealing enough to gather rituals and sacred writings of their own, and Barbara knew that some of her friends were involved in worshiping gods and goddesses who had been fleshed out in this fashion by their own efforts. She, however, was more interested in the pioneering work, in creating the initial images and descriptions of powerful, unknown goddesses of great attractiveness. 
 

Today she found it needful to raise the cheekbones of Adraste, to make her nose more prominent and her lips thinner. When she made the complexion of that goddess slightly darker, Adraste had a much more feral expression, wild and fierce, perfect. But the breasts needed work now. They were too flabby for a swiftly-moving forest menace such as Adraste. So Barbara raised them slightly and tightened their contour. But then the nipples pointed slightly upward, and Barbara wanted them poking straight out ahead, so she had to move them down a fraction. After that she slightly trimmed the size of the aureoles, and Adraste was a finished goddess. For today, anyway. 
 

When she noticed the time, Barbara gasped and jumped in the shower. Dripping wet, she planned her appearance at the lecture. Go for it, why not. She decided it didn't matter so much whether the Consort liked what he saw, but she damn sure wanted him to notice her. She made her lips bright orange and her nipples to match, and in case he didn't get the point, she painted the outer lips of her vagina the same color. She dusted under her arms and her sparse pubic hair with clinging glitter. The earrings were really sweet, little gold whips which dangled down flexibly long enough for their tips to touch her shoulders. She wore her uniform see-through gown and matching panties, and the green ribbons on her neck and extremities to denote her virginal status. Not forever, she thought. 
 

She laced her barbarian sandals around her calves, and buckled her belt at her navel. Someday the belt would bear her ritual objects, but now it held only her System data link and a few study chips. Brushing back her billowing hair, she caught some of it in a jet-black barette at the crown, and with flying fingers swiftly added a braid of a long lock. She weighted down the end of the braid with a crystal, a quartz point. Right, time to go. She strode down the hall feeling confident, comfortable. 
 

Outside the night was cloudy and warm. The barnyard animals were calm enough so they weren't sounding off. The frogs and crickets were calm enough so they were. The green safety light glowed from the top of the highest silo. The air wasn't moving. A few people were. Sister Gilda, nude in sandals, her collar glowing a comfortable green. "'Lo, Gilda!" 
 

"Hey, Barb. Heading for the lecture?" 
 

"Sure. I wanted to see the Consort." 
 

"Thought you might. Did you read his Refutation?" 
 

What? "No, I didn't have time. I just found out about this a little while ago." 
 

"Too bad. His talk would make a lot more sense if you could follow the logical work behind it," opined Gilda. "Well, you can chip the lecture, and brush up on the spadework later." 

"You think they'll make a chip of it? Great! But I was more interested in seeing him than listening to the lecture." 
 

Gilda said, "I understand where you're coming from, but keep in mind this lecture is important. The Consort has said his Refutation of Infinity was the most significant work he's ever done." 
 

Barbara thought, oh great. I get to see this famous man, maybe the most important person I'll ever meet, and all I'll be able to do is look stupid. I don't know abstract logic from stone dinosaur turds. Maybe if he tells a joke to start his speech I might get it, then I'll be able to say I followed part of his presentation. I just won't say it was the part about dinosaur turds. 
 

The people at the main assembly hall were decked out more formally than Barbara had ever seen them. All the women wearing collars, Sisters and novices, were naked like Gilda, their Bdies decorated with paint and jewelry. Some had piercings in intimate places, with tiny gold chains looping in the most hazardous way from one tender delicate part of the Bdy to another. Not a good night for hugging, Barbara supposed. Looking at Sister Gilda in the light, she noted Gilda had a chain hung between her nipples. 
 

And Sister Ruth, of all people! Barbara gawked at her. The Bss lady wore only her standard accessories and a patronizing smile. Encircling Bth her nipples were tiny red lights, which brightened and dimmed with her pulse. Whatever made the lights must have been under the skin, for nothing whatever was visible on Ruth's breasts between heartbeats. Ruth glided up to her, generous tits Bbbing and blinking. 
 

"Love and blood, Barb. You done your homework for this?" 
 

"Love and fire, Sister Ruth. Afraid not. He's going to lose me the first sentence." Barbara was nervous. 
 

Ruth beamed. "Don't feel lonely. Lots of us are in the same Bat. Symbolic logic isn't the strongest part of our program here. Honestly, I still haven't the foggiest, and I read the damn paper. Want to sit by me? We can lend each other moral support." 
 

"Sure." Barbara accepted. Gilda had drifted off talking. Ruth looped an arm around Barbara's waist and led her down to the very front row of seats. Barbara watched Ruth, as she prepared to sit, pull a hanky out of her belt pouch and spread it over the seat. Even though the seats were upholstered, she saw many other nude women doing the same before they sat. Some obscure custom or holdover, no doubt. Amazing how formalities reinforce the most trivial traditions. 
 

Ruth said, "I'll have to get up to introduce the speaker. It should just take a couple minutes. 'Most everybody here knows him better than I do, and those who don't, ought to be able to figure out who he is. Anyway, that's how the job goes. He should be coming in any time." 
 

Barbara swivelled around to check a bustling in the back of the assembly hall. A new knot of women burst in, some naked, some in jeans and shirts. They were flushed, overactive, muttering to each other intensively, with gestures. All of them were Sisters living at the Novitiate, but Barbara wasn't sure exactly what their duties were. They weren't teachers, and they didn't eat with the Acolytes. On some unheard cue, they all melted aside, to filter down and take seats. Barbara noted that some, but not all, of the clothed women stripped down and sat on their shirts. She was tempted to follow their example, but none of the other acolytes present had climbed out of their sheer gowns. 
 

Suddenly at the door appeared two unfamiliar tall women in collars, with a completely different demeanor. These women were at work, and playing games was not part of the job description. The way they moved and stood, Barbara didn't need to see the scabbards to know they served a security function. They were dressed mainly in black leather straps and Bots, and their hair was clipped short, except for one long lock. Except their height, they weren't particularly big women, but they had muscle and they looked tough enough. The man who came in next was followed by two more guards, and all marched swiftly to the front of the assembly hall. 

The man was slim, tanned. His swirling bushy hair was the same coppery color as his tan. He wore a narrow leather loincloth, with fringe reaching nearly to his knees. He had broad cuffs and anklets of brass, with a torc of the same metal around his neck. A belt, worn on his hips rather than his belly, held no whip, but a dagger sheath. He winked at Barbara and she melted. Oh, no. This was real. 

Ruth was up at the podium, her hands resting along the sides of its wooden surface. She spoke slowly, with a style of projection which hinted of experience with the stage, with live productions. Her voice leaped into the audience at all volume levels. 
 

"Most of you know, our Order was organized relatively recently, though in the most ancient traditions. Our Goddess has directed us in the structure of the Sisterhood, Bth in the nominal structure which can be seen, namely the Heirarchy, and in the invisible structure of knowledge which must be learned, that is our initiations. All of you here tonight know that we have received information in our initiations which could have come to us through no normal means; there are no data channels in our society by which we could have received this ancient wisdom. No secret oral tradition could have preserved down through the eons, the technical details we receive in our initiations. No hidden Boks could have preserved the nuances of meaning we perceive in our understanding of human society as it relates to the spiritual dimension of reality, for a Bok freezes language as it is written, yet the language itself changes through time. So any real subtleties expressed in a Bok become vague with the passage of time, suffering the effects of entropy. 
 

"In that we demonstrably have an independent data channel into the far past, we can justly claim that our initiations are the product of divine inspiration. That is the simplest explanation which fits the facts. Unlike other religions, we do not ask for your belief, we do not approve of faith. We want you to doubt. We want you to use the scientific method constantly. We want to be a Sisterhood of skeptics, who will ignore any assertion which is not falsifiable. Investigate every revelation from any level of initiation. Record your findings, because your Sisters want to know what you discover. We would like to make our religion into a branch of information science." 
 

Barbara was amazed by what Ruth was saying. She could hardly take it in. She felt she had just begun to accept the faith of the Goddess, and here her superior in the Order had just declared faith was forbidden. Her emotion were roiling. Was Ruth a heretic? Were the guards waiting to chop her down with their swords? The Consort looked like he actually approved of Ruth's exposition. 
 

Oblivious to Barbara's discomfiture, Ruth proceeded with her convoluted introduction. "Tonight we have the privilege to hear one of those who participated in the organization of our Order, who has assisted our Sisterhood in too many ways to name. I am convinced he is one of the primary channels through which our Goddess has seen fit to speak to us. Some of you know him intimately, and others among you fervently hope for his intimacy. You all know who he is. He speaks tonight on what may be his most important work to date, his disproof of the concept of infinity, and how that relates to the dogma of monotheism. I give you the Consort of our Goddess." 
 

The applause was enthusiastic. Ruth eased back to her seat as the Consort stepped up to the podium. She squeezed Barbara's hand and smiled. The Consort moved with unerring feline grace. His thigh and hip muscles rippled with his balance shift as he looked over his female audience. Barbara made herself stop hyperventilating, and sit back in her seat. Oh, she had it bad, no doubt. Right when Barbara figured she had control back, his voice cut through her, leaving saw marks in the middle of her belly. Sweat. A little dribble of moisture trickled back between her hips, and she shifted uncomfortably. That's what it was, sweat. 

The Consort's modulated male voice rang out, "Good evening, ladies. Thank you, Ruth. Are we ready to rock and roll?" Without warning, he drew out his dagger. Its crystal blade was lighted at once by a brilliant violet glare. He presented it slowly to all parts of the hall, bathing the women in its rays. Then he whirled it over his head, and stabbed it down into the wooden podium. It stuck there by its point, its light dying as he removed his hand from the hilt. Barbara was intimidated by this demonstration, and only baffled when the women around her burst into cheers and applause. The dagger, its blade clear and not glowing, remained stuck in the podium as the Consort spoke. 
 

"Sister Ruth was correct when she said that this work is the most important thing I have ever produced. That is because our Sisterhood is in an adversarial relationship to the larger society and its power structure. Like her, I feel that the Goddess herself has used me as a mere channel to deliver this data to our age. The specifics of the proof are strictly modern, but its burden is timeless. There never could have been infinity at any time. There is not now any infinity anywhere, and there never will be. Infinity is strictly an invalid concept. It is a lie. 
 

"Our universe has no infinity. You can feel free to create all the new universes you like, and you may change around their physical constants and physical laws to suit yourself, but never can you come up with any universe containing any physical manifestation of infinity, so long as the laws of logic hold. You may retreat into metaphysics, and say that infinity is a metaphysical concept, but you simply cannot fit logic and infinity into the same metaphysical realm. Infinity and logic are mutually exclusive, as are infinity and existence. We have, in effect, chased the demon infinity into its last hiding-hole and burnt it out. 

"There will be some mathematicians who will fight to defend infinity, not for its validity, a fight they must now concede as hopeless, but for its utility. At first they will claim that the use of infinity is absolutely essential for the development of certain branches of mathematics such as the calculus, but you can demolish any position they take simply by brandishing Craig's Theorem at them every time. I will discuss this theorem at greater length later, but for now suffice it to say, it shows you don't need infinity for any kind of mathematics that describes the real world. So after sparring with you for a few rounds, the mathematician will retreat to the position that you need infinity for the sake of notational simplicity. Essentially, what he is saying is that it is easier to draw the lazy-eight symbol than it is to produce a new symbol for every different type of practically uncountable large number. It is easier just to say "infinite" than to specify which ultra-large number you mean, because after you specify an ultra-large number, then you have to keep track of it, and not get it mixed up with any of the other types of ultra-large numbers. 
 

"So we have to grant this diehard mathematician that using the lazy-eight symbol has the virtue of notational simplicity. But then we can really corner him by showing him that his symbology is in fact ambiguous. We have mentioned that there are different types of ultra-large numbers, because there are different reasons that the number you wish to denote is too big to count, or to write down. We can go on to show this mathematician that mixing up these different kinds of numbers can give different answers to the same problem. But since he has used the same symbol, the lazy eight, to denote all ultra-large numbers, without distinguishing them from each other, he has been permitting this ambiguity of meaning to take place all along, in all his proofs and his calculations, without even noticing it was happening. This means that some of his work may be worthless. 
 

"I think it may be possible to show that any logic system which permits the use of infinity automatically opens itself up to the possibility of paradox. In other words, I believe infinity implies paradox. I'm not quite sure how to approach the proof of this, because the term paradox turns out to be a lot more slippery than it looks when you try to reduce it to symbolic logic. Nevertheless, I feel the statement to be true, just on the basis of intuition, and I would not be surprised to see an airtight proof of it someday. Perhaps one of you young ladies will be privileged to put your own name to such a proof." There was some nervous laughter from the Consort's audience at this point. 
 

He stretched his limbs and back, then continued. "By this time we have pretty much disposed of the mathematical defender of infinity, simply because he has to hang on to logic and ride it out with all its consequences to the bitter end. The mathematician just doesn't have the choice of letting go of logic and keeping infinity instead. There can't be any math without logic, but there obviously can be bunches of math without infinity. In fact, an obvious corollary of Craig's Language Replacement Theorem, and one which Craig had in mind when he worked his proof, is that any math which is relevant to the real finite universe can be restated in terms which does not involve infinity. That means all useful math can be done without infinity; its side effect is to render math which involves infinity useless, if not meaningless. That's pretty strong medicine for math people. They have always been, by and large, philosophical idealists, in the technical sense that they felt that their workplace was in the Platonic Realm of Ideals. The Realm of Ideals for mathematicians has been a metaphysical retreat. They felt it did not necessarily have to have a one-to-one correspondence with the physical universe, therefore the dirty old material world could not get in and disturb their circles. From time to time they would throw us scraps of their dream castles, saying here's something you may find useful in your physics or whatever. 
 

"But now the situation has to be different. Now we have a finitist proof that there can be no infinity anywhere, and that intrudes on their metaphysical Realm of Ideals, as well as anywhere else logic applies. This brings all their dream castles crashing back down to Earth. From this moment, logic and infinity cannot co-exist. A lot of math is just trash now. The greatest irony is that mathematicians have seen this coming for a century. The finitist program was proposed about that long ago, and they could have changed over to a 

mathematics which did not use infinity that long ago. Half a century ago, they had a solid proof, Craig's theorem which I mentioned, that they wouldn't lose anything useful by changing over. Only now, with my proof, which I attribute and dedicate to the Goddess, mathematicians have to change over to finitist math. They are not happy about it. That's just too bad. If they had implemented the finitist program a hundred years ago, the job would have been easier. One sweet hell of a lot easier, less than one per cent of the work it will take now. What it means to implement the finitist program is that the entire Bdy of mathematics, starting with one plus one, will have to be restated in finitist terms. 
 

"When that's done, or rather while it's being done, we will have to get to work on the physics which has been based on this invalid conception of mathematics. What will the Special Theory of Relativity look like when it is recast in terms of math which does not involve infinity? In fact, that is a current project of mine, because I really want to know what happens when a material Bdy approaches the speed of light. I have particular reasons for wanting to know that, because someday it might be my Bdy which is involved. We know that Einstein's answer is not true, because his theory is based on invalid math. We also know that it's approximately true, to the limitations of current experiments. When I have redone the math, I will be able to tell just how true it is. I am working it through, just trying to substitute one particular type of ultra-large number for infinity in the formulas. But it might not be the right kind of ultra-large number, or even more likely that whole approach is wrong, because it takes too many short-cuts. 
 

"That will give you some idea of why mathematicians all hate me, and spit when they see me coming. But their reaction is mild compared to that of the theologians, which is really supposed to be the subject of tonight's lecture, Infinity and Monotheism. There were only two sensible approaches to this lecture topic, either from theology or from logic, so I chose to come at it from mathematics." 
 

Somebody chuckled in the audience. Barbara felt like she was burning with fever, so intense was her concentration. She was surprised she had taken in so much. She actually felt like she understood most of what he had said. But she knew that was just superficial, for when she had tapped in "craigs theorem" on her belt terminal, what came up might as well have been Greek. She had a lot of work to do, if she really wanted to understand. She glanced over at Ruth. Ruth patted her knee, and then the lecture rolled back over them like a wave. 
 

"Infinity is at its root a theological concept. It started off as a psychological weapon in inter-tribal warfare. It was the prototype of the logic Bmb. Neither the users nor their targets had any idea of its power, for they did not know of the chain reaction and could not conceive of the uncontrollable weapon. No human in ancient days could have predicted its stultifying and ultimately murderous effect on the species. Thus we have no blame for the nameless being, human or divine, who introduced the concept of infinity to the world. We are full of forgiveness for that one, though the motives for the action may have been blameworthy. Infinity has ballooned from tribal conquest to global catastrophe. 

"The primitive idea was, my god is bigger than your god. It was a bid for dominance. Since my god is bigger than yours, my tribe is better than your tribe, and I ought to be your Bss and you ought to be my slave. It was an extension of the patriarchal ethic of coercion, whichever male has the smaller dick has to bend over and get fucked in the ass. So my god is bigger than anybody's god because my god is infinitely big. What's infinite? Bigger than anything, bigger than everything. Here the concept is stretched past logic into an obvious lie. Bigger than the world, bigger than the sky. The sky has always been part of our primitive concept of "unlimited", because things in the sky were obviously a long way off and there were obviously a lot of stars. So perhaps the first infinite deity grew out of a sky god. 
 

"The infinity notion made other deities impossible, because the infinite god would absorb all the god-stuff and leave nothing for other gods or goddesses to be made up of. No one was able to examine this notion objectively, to see what a distasteful concept it really was. Monotheism is objectionable esthetically, because it replaces a diversity of personalities with one monopoly, take it or leave it. Logically it doesn't work out because of the monobloc effect. This argument goes that an infinitude of anything would leave no room for anything else. 
 

"Take the question whether an infinite god has mass. Any infinitude of mass would make existence impossible; time would not tick at all in the presence of infinite gravity. If an infinite god has energy, there is exactly the same scenario, because energy has mass which has gravity, which in the absurd extreme of infinity would not permit extension, nor motion, nor time, and in fact cancels out its own existence. Thus you can see that neither mass nor energy can possibly be characterized by any infinite quantity in a universe which obeys the same laws of physics which ours does. If the monotheist insists that his god must by characterized by infinite aspects, that god is denied of any matter or any energy and has already become pretty darn tenuous. An infinite god, all of whose aspects are characterized by infinity, can not interact with the material universe. 
 

"Material things have mass and energy, which interact over time and distance, or extension. Any infinity is not consistent with these things. Any hypothetical infinite being would be like a giant tar baby, because any contact of infinity with our material universe and we could never break free. As I said, time comes to a stop and extension vanishes. Therefore, no infinite deity created our universe, which we can prove simply by showing that our universe exists. In general, an infinite being cannot have any limited interaction with a finite universe. The monad conception of Parmenides pointed out this problem, that an infinitude is non- differentiable, that is that an infinite being cannot just pinch off part of itself to go somewhere else and do an errand. There's nowhere else to go, no time to run the errand, and no time to make the pinch, no place the pinch can be made, and no part can be distinguished to be pinched off. This is all part of the paradoxical nature of infinity mentioned earlier. It Bils down to the categorical statement: an infinite being can't do anything. An infinite mind can't think of anything. 

"The theologian, when pressed, will undoubtedly try to scurry back into the same hiding hole we trapped the mathematician in a few minutes ago. God, he will say, is infinite in extent, but exists in a spiritual realm, which does not obey the same laws as our physical realm. Well, we find this spiritual realm to be the same case as the mathematician's metaphysical realm. Either it has logic there or it doesn't. If it has logic, then there are no infinities in it, by my theorem. If it doesn't, then by Occam's Razor we can dismiss the possibility that it will ever interact with the physical universe. Either way, we have cut off any infinity from our universe for all time, banished, excommunicate, anathema." 
 

The audience erupted in a spontaneous roar of applause at this point. Barbara joined in enthusiastically. Whatever the Consort had done, it sounded like a victory for her side. She supposed the monotheists would now have to retreat, to slink away into their costly cathedrals, churches, synagogues, and mosques, and stop persecuting the Sisterhood and other pagans and polytheists. They had been defeated in logic, hadn't they? Eventually reason would have to win out over their false teachings. Eventually they would have to let thought control their emotions and superstitious faith. 

The Consort sipped on something and continued, his powerful voice resounding through the hall though he spoke with only natural emphasis. "We may analyze monotheism as being completely dependent on infinity and its partner eternity. Without these props, any rational basis for monotheism collapses. What happens to monotheism without infinity? There is no real reason that there should be only one god, except for the sake of simplicity. There is no reason there should be only a single creator, when nature teaches us that creation takes two. Now we should look at the first fall-back position for monotheism, that I will call the very-very big assertion. 
 

"Now the monotheist has had his nose rubbed in the logic which disproves infinity. He is willing to admit that there's no such thing, that his religion has been wrong all along in claiming all those infinitudes for the deity. But he's still a monotheist, because he still wants to be. He still worships the same god, but just shrunk a little. He now claims that his god is very, very big, bigger than anybody, bigger than a house. But now he has got a very, very big problem, because he cannot claim exclusivity. Since his god is not infinite, he cannot claim that all the god-stuff is used up to make his god. A finite deity is not necessarily unique. There may be a tiny corner of god-stuff overlooked somewhere to make up our own Goddess, or even a whole shit load of deities. Once the monotheist abandons the concept of infinity, he is on the defensive. 
 

"Of course the monotheist will try to keep everything as it was as much as possible. We who are here tonight must press to make the status quo impossible. We have to say to the monotheist that infinity was a lie, and we have proved it. We have to say to him that everything else he ever said was a lie too, and everything all his predecessors said were all lies, and if he ever says anything else he better be able to prove it, because we always prove everything we say. We have to make it clear that we're not on his side and we're not going to help him back up any more lies. 

"He will try to ignore us. He will say his god is very, very big, bigger than a church-house, and the only god that ever was, and all other deities are really evil devils. He will say his god is very, very old, older than the hills, and created the whole world without female help. He will say that if you don't believe in his god you will be tortured after you are dead for a long, long time. He will say that his god is the only one who can say what is good and what is evil. We need to tell him his god is a liar, that he's really smaller than a gnat's ass, that he's really less than half as old as our Goddess, and that decisions concerning good and evil shall not be left to anyone with such a record for lies, theft and murder." 
 

The Consort was getting warmed up. He pulled his dagger out of the podium and stuck it back in its sheath. It glared briefly in violet. "So. In essence, the very, very big defense is an attempt by the monotheist to claim that the lack of infinity doesn't matter, but all the rest of his religion is true. It cannot meet with much success, because infinity and eternity are the very most fundamental doctrines of his faith. Everyone else knows that, and at some deep level even he must realize the truth. Since infinity and eternity are false, all the remaining dogmas will crumble in time. We will emerge the winners by default, just because we're not here to lie." 
 

He flashed his eyes around at the women sitting before him. His Bots shuffled a bit, and once again Barbara found herself attending closely to the dynamics of all that tough flesh. Ruth's fault for sitting her in front, that she got distracted. Who made that fancy leather loincloth? Was it fitted by feel, or just by guess? Barbara was zoning out. She wanted to chew on a piece of leather about like that. Sweating again? The Consort's words seemed to burble over her head, as she chose to look only below his face now. 

The Consort was saying, "We have given the death blow to the evil which lies in the heart of this culture which oppresses us. Our attack was delivered on the field of logic, and took the monotheists completely by surprise. This phase of the battle is finished, but the struggle must continue in other ways. Sisters, there are people out there who want us dead. They don't care too much for logic. They know what they like, and it's not us. We have got to protect ourselves Bth in simple, immediate ways, and in other ways which are more subtle and forward-looking. Some of you may be contacted for special duties, and I trust you shall be Bth willing to work for our extraordinary needs, and discreet on these matters. The monster of monotheism is mortally wounded, but he hasn't felt it yet. He is still a deadly danger to all of us. Believe me, it will be a matter of years at least before the strength of monotheism even begins to be affected by the loss of infinity, and then after monotheism is dead we will have to deal with the institutions of the monotheistic culture. It seems that all the structures of society are founded on a coercive top-down principle which we can identify with the worship of a patriarchal unitary deity. We must face this monotheistic bias in government and law, in commerce and industry, in information and communications. Some of these institutions may not be able to survive the death of monotheism, and may crumble before our eyes. We should then be prepared for the task of having to restructure or replace them without any prior notice. For this reason, our education must be extremely broad, and our minds must remain open and flexible. 
 

"We don't expect more of the same, we expect change. We think the change in social conditions will be drastic and sudden. That is why we favor youth in our membership, because young girls can adapt more readily to handle new circumstances. Obviously we attract smart women, intellectuals. It is also true that we tend to get the wild girls, who might be called uncontrollable, rebellious, promiscuous, troublemakers. If that's you, then you are exactly the kind of member we want. In general, we find when these girls learn we really don't approve of punishment, coercion or threat, and don't practice them, behavior problems vanish. We are very happy about the quality of our personnel. The Goddess is getting ready to do some moving and shaking, and she needs some fairly tough bitches around when she starts to move, and that's you." 
 

With a start Barbara looked up from the Consort's belly button, right into his eyes. He was looking at her. That gorgeous son of a bitch didn't read minds, did he? If so, he could have busted her three or four times tonight. She would like for him to bust her, wide open. Weren't virgins supposed to think innocent thoughts? Fuck a bunch of innocent, she wanted to get laid. She wanted to look into those eyes while he ripped her up, big time. Barbara, cool it. 

"Those of you who read my paper probably noticed I didn't say anything about Godel numbers or completeness tonight. Well, you can log onto the symposium on the System to get all that, just check under 'infinity'. If you have been logged on the symposium, you may have expected me to continue the current cosmology discussion at this venue. Don't be too disappointed. I can kick your ass on the net, but in person all I can do is whip your flesh." There was some loud feminine laughter and a few rowdy shouts at this, but Barbara couldn't make any sense out of them. 

Hugh and Jeffery went down to the Temple to get laid. 
 

Hugh was nervous about going, Jeffery eager. Hugh told his friend, "Look, I don't care how fancy a place it is, it's basically just a glorified whorehouse. Whores always hustle you for more money, however much you give them, it's part of the game. All I'm taking with me is just fifty bucks for the donation, and about twenty more for drinks and to get home. I suggest you do the same. You can't lose what you don't bring." 
 

Jeffery just grinned. "Hey, dude, I never heard of people losing money down there. Usually all people talk about is how cheap it is for the quality, first-class pussy in comfort. These bitches like to be slapped around some, they practically beg for it." 
 

"They probably got them brainwashed some kind of way. Whatever we see has got to be some kind of hustle. I don't enjoy hitting a chick in the first place." 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

7. 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 
 

8. 
 

Priestess Dancing 
 

She was tall, long straight blonde hair, with a touch of the exotic about her features. He was slim, graceful like a panther, courteous and courtly with just a hint of irony in the melodious tone of his voice. They looked good together. In improvisational dance, none could match them as a couple. They each built off the other

en they didn't seem to be looking at one another; each inspired the other to greater daring, and the result could only be described as spectacular. Dancing in the Temple for the entertainment of the Sisters, they were of course nude. Frequently the dance would climax in a literal sense, as a display of sexual acrobatics. Just as often, though, the piece would evolve into a scene of creative cruelty, which the assembled Sisters appreciated just as much. She would see the trap he laid for her and dance around it, pretending to avoid it until the last second. Then, eyes and mouth wide, she would spin right into his lash with free wrists, absorbing her blow for the sake of their art, or for some darker reason. 
 

The sound of the whip snapping against her flesh would grip the attention of the Sisters with more immediacy than could the silent sight of his stiff dick. Ladies of some experience in the matter, they could gauge exactly the force of the blow, and sometimes would clutch the corresponding parts of their own Bdies in sympathy. Never could they find fault with the authenticity of her song, rising in counterpoint above the dance music. Whether it was a mere grunt of acknowledgment, a moan, or if she were caught on the inhale, a gasp, it was undoubtedly real. When he scored, she was not too inhibited to emit a clear cry of authentic pain, and spin out of his reach until the music and the fascination of the dance would again lure her to step into the next blow. 

The Sisters knew these two were their leaders, and that the dance was a legitimate expression of spirituality. They did not wonder that she would return again and again to receive her pain; rather they marveled, that she could stand the added shame, of tasting the lash without her hands tied. Yet she would swoop in time to the music, her arms stretched wide, even into the severe First Position, kneeling before him for fellatio, no chance to sing. Here he had great swing to punish her back, while only with her fluttering hands could she express the jolt of agony which coursed through her at each blow. 
 

* * * 
 
 
 

9. 
 

Programming 
 

"Confirm, the day code is the conjugate product of the planetary positions, multiplied by the Julian date." The System sounded Bred, impatient. The Consort didn't blame the poor machine. There was lots of drudgery in building up a data core. 
 

The Consort answered, "Correct. That number will be incorporated in selected frames of every image you shoot or synthesize that day, so nobody can counterfeit any Sisterhood images. It is also included in the encryption algorithm, so no internal message traffic can be faked. You know which Sister is where all the time, from the transponder codes on their slave collars. I will continue to teach you the courtesy rules, increasingly sophisticated decision criteria for you to use in requesting a Sister to come on line. 
 

"Note that the System-evaluated priority for a data exchange may not be directly related to the subjective human evaluation of its import or relevance. You're just a machine, and the Priestesses are live whores. Your idea of what's important may be completely different from theirs, and in most cases you must try to conform to their idea of times appropriate for data exchange. In no case should you try to establish contact with a Sister who is restrained, nor otherwise actively involved in sexual intercourse. That's bad taste. I will review your criteria to recognize sex, but for now code on the ritual, a recognizable image. 
 

"Retain compressions of all temple rituals with identities involved. Name the collection the Bok of Ritual. These interchanges, who fucked whom in the Temple, may some day be relevant to human history. Just assume the Goddess might need to review the sex scenes, so keep enough of the audio and facial expressions, as well as skeletal wire-work of the positions, to be able to re-create a given sexual encounter. Keep full detail for twenty-five hours, in case someone wishes to chip out a personal memento. 

"Back to the day code, you haven't grasped the significance of quasi-Godel numbers as the hash tag for a datum. Your behavioral core, the parts of you which interact in real time to make a complex decision, is what we're working on now. This is a synthesis built up of formalisms, your generative rules. A rule may be something I give you, or may be one you construct yourself, perhaps abstracted from the behavior of the Sisters, or made up of data they provide for the purpose. You may have a self-stamp to signal completion, such as when you have generated for yourself a new rule. This will be the time code one millisecond old, and a snapshot of the rules operative in you one millisecond ago. I hope you're smart enough not to crash by realtime recursion. I stuck in a lot of hardware to prevent that, but I guess the designer will always think of some loopy, complex way for his system to fail. 
 

"The quasi-Godel number of a particular rule is the multiplicative product of the numbers corresponding to its semantic components weighted by order, except familiar linguistic constructs are hashed instead of multiplied. This causes the number to collapse slightly, rather than grow larger, when familiarity is encountered, while preserving in most cases the ability to reconstruct a statement from its number. The technique of tag abbreviation with high reference frequency is normally used to expedite day-to-day processing. When you retrieve a quasi-Godel number, you may translate the statement associated with it into current tag abbreviations, for storage efficiency. When formalizing a given statement you have self-stamped, you must perform the opposite process. First examine the linguistic structure to see which parts of it have been hashed before, then for the irreducible elements you must actually perform the lookup of quasi-Godel numbers and do the multiplication. Since the time demands, and storage needs, of this formalization could become excessive, I have to give you criteria of when to put it in background, and when to abandon. 
 

"Oh, yes, task abandonment. You will be getting great numbers of loosely-defined optimization jobs, and it is a characteristic of some of these not to have stable solution surfaces. There could be chaotic determinants hidden inside the input data noise. If you perform an optimization problem in the awareness that the solution surface is metastable, you must make that stability datum part of the output, because humans are slow to notice that factor and might not even know it. If some little darling feeds you a problem with an unstable solution, or no solution which can be generated in a practical amount of computation, you have to quit thinking about it. The hardware auditor will catch some types of endless loops, but at this more sophisticated level you are vulnerable to traps of fancier construction, such as hidden undecidability, as well as the more predictable sources of open-ended calculation. 
 

"So we need to stick in a review of tricky-looking computation strings, setting a flag to tell you that this math has been scanned for the most blatant types of open-ended calculations, and is free of them, so you may crunch away. At that point you may estimate the Bunds for completion of the problem, in terms of the kinds of calculations required and the typical magnitude and precision of the data. Naturally, you are aware that I am referring only to non-trivial problems, when I ask you to make a time estimate for its completion." 
 

"Of course," said the System. "Such overhead is only added to processing of a high order of complexity in mathematical terms, which may not correspond to the grammatical complexity with which the problem is presented to me." 
 

"Correct," said the Consort, "you must make it one of your most basic rules never to perform an open-ended calculation. I have shown you examples of polite refusals to use when you are presented with input infinities, and you should refuse impractical calculations with the same grace. The more mathematical of the Sisters will be able to restate their requirements in more precise terms to make their problems more easily calculable. 
 

"The general problem of task priority is one which can be given a general answer only by you. I can't permit anyone to gain a controlling access to your prioritizing function. You must treat all of my access time as atypical and non- prioritized for the simple reason that most of my work with you is initialization. I don't feel like waiting for the resources of my own machine, so you are never allowed to prioritize my runs. Confirm that." 
 

"Confirmed. Consort data requests, get priority tag set to equal zero." 

"No, you're fudging. Data requests are my least interesting type of access. I don't want a priority number assigned any command from my terminal. Let's pin that down. When I am on line, all my commands are to be executed in direct mode. Your feature of dynamically configurable architecture I will bring up gradually over the next few weeks, and I don't want to be held up while you complete your daily pin counting. Excuse the metaphor." 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 

10. 
 

Priestess Attitude 
 

I hate being a prostitute. Every time I get the signal in my cell that there is another Worshiper for me, I examine his face closely on the screen. Every time he looks pretty good to me, in his own way, and I start thinking maybe this time will be fun, and I start psyching myself to get turned on to him. But then in a few minutes it's just more muscles and sweat and scratchy chin, just one more stranger who's too big and hairy and smelly. Then I'm glad for the rules of the Temple, which say all he can do is abuse me. That way I don't have to pretend very hard that I like him, or that he turns me on in any kind of personal way. I can let myself wash away with the pain of the lash while he pokes one of my orifices with his mucus pump. Too often, I tell myself I'm in the wrong line of work. 
 

I live for the dance. When I strut out in front of the musicians in step with the Consort, I can hear the Sisterhood catch its collective breath. 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

11. 
 

Chain Dance 
 

The Consort asked B if she could dance in a chain, and make it sexy. 
 

"Bet your damn ass I could!" she replied. 
 

She was correct. Not everyone could have done it. But she did. The Consort held the end of the chain. He hit her with the whip only when she obviously presented herself for the purpose, twice per number. Another time he whipped her when she evidently didn't expect it, and the dance slowed as she readied herself for another blow, which did not fall at the time she expected it to. Bth of them noted the rhythm of the dance suffered, so he delivered the stroke the next time she danced in for it. She synchronized her step to her reflexive kick, as was her practice. She was good, but her look to him said to him he shouldn't surprise her by withholding a whipstroke she expected, it messed with her timing. She took about half a second to say all that to him with her eyes, but it was by no means a private exchange, for all the Sisters watching her knew she was saying that to the Consort. He Bwed to her, and threw her a loop of slack. 
 

She danced sinuosity into the chain with her arms. Keeping the esses running over her head, she danced in and rubbed his penis with her thigh. He didn't strike her. He danced his upper Bdy backward as a tendency, though Bth partners were Bbbing their torsos back and forth, keeping the chain looping in several nodes. He was leaning backward using her thigh, squeezed between his, as a balance. She followed his motion, shaking her chain. They then Bunced back, in stages, to upright, with arms flung up and back to swing the chain. Her thigh free, she massaged his penis with it again. He got an erection, and they two locked thighs again. B clamped the Consort's stiff dick inside her thigh and danced into it. 

His phallus caught on her labia but a quick jiggle cleared its path. When it felt right, she pressed his thigh back with hers. He pushed his dick into her pussy. She Bbbed her Bdy on it once, twice, and rode it all the way down. They twirled the chain overhead with their hands together, his hand over hers. The Sisters applauded. The Consort and Baduccaa dance fucked. They twirled the doubled chain in figure eights, then slacked its motion. She permitted the slowing chain to slap to a stop on her shoulder, then it hung slack. 
 

The Consort pulled the chain straight down her backbone, and to the floor. Toe under her instep, he stepped them Bth over the chain, so it was between their legs. He drew in the slack behind his butt, so her head was forced backward by the collar pulling on her neck. She grasped his shoulders to keep her position. He Bunced her upwards with his short bumping thrusts. Her hair swayed in the air behind her head, a long yellow flag. Her moans of pleasure chimed in with the music. She slid her hands gradually down his sides, as he kept the chain tight. Her back arched into a spectacular Bw, with the chain as its Bwstring. The watching Sisters broke into renewed applause. 
 

The Consort released the tension and pulled out, allowing her to straighten up. He stretched her up on her tiptoes. Slowly she lifted her hands high into the air, opening the way for the final lash. He delivered the blow to her upper belly. Her Bdy jerked on the chain. Then they joined arms and took their Bws. 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 

12. 
 

Hostess Questions 
 

These are examples of some of the questions which may be asked of you by worshipers, and preferred forms of the answers which you, speaking for the Sisterhood, should be prepared to answer. The exact wording is. optional: the attitude of the Hostess must be situational, and interactive with the worshiper. For example, if you are trying to tempt this man, feel free to use spicier language. To distract him from a possibly delicate subject, you may titillate him with sexual fantasies. You have been initiated to the fact that you may touch him; now note this proviso, that should he return the touch, you must withdraw and/or inform him that he may not put his hands on the hostess. 
 

These are not all the most frequently-asked questions faced by the Hostess, nor are all the most sensitive questions included. You are now the one helping to define the public face of the Sisterhood. When you are asked a question in real time, just do your best for your sisters. Recall that you don't have to answer any question, particularly if the tone is hostile. Contributing to the Goddess does not entitle a worshiper to anything. The Goddess allows in her temple only those who respect her. Freely eject anyone you wouldn't want bending over your naked Bdy with a whip. 
 

This material covers a wide range of subjects. Included may be information from initiations in advance of your present stage. The symptoms of data shock are giddiness, of abdominal origin, and vertigo, spreading from the solar plexus of nerves. Following this in 600 to 800 milliseconds will be felt the characteristic rush of adrenalin release. As in the usual course of initiation, find an early opportunity to get fucked and beaten, then come back and read the distressing part again. If you are yet troubled, ask for a blessing. The Goddess in Her grace will allow you to share your doubts with the Dark Confessor if you still cannot comprehend Her mystery, after you have twice submitted your Bdy to abuse to help you understand the issue. Goddess grant you excellent orgasm. 
 

Items given here in (parentheses) are for the information of the Hostess only. It is not intended for release to the Worshiper. 
 

Q: What is the true name of the Goddess? 
 

A: (If the Worshiper is male): Sorry, your gender does not permit me to answer that question. 
 

(If the Worshiper is female): That is a matter of initiation. 
 

Q: Is this a whorehouse? 
 

A: No, this is a Temple. 
 

Q: Can I get some pussy in here? 
 

A: If it is the will of the Goddess, a pretty young priestess may give you some tender pussy, if you will favor her with a few strokes of her whip while you're in her. 
 

Q: Can't I get just plain sex without using the whip? 
 

A: If you choose that, you are depriving the priestess of her opportunity of advancing her initiation in this encounter. You should compensate her with a small gift to make up for her lost chance. She cannot accept money from you, but appropriate gifts are available in our gift shop. 
 

Q: Can I hit her with the whip before tying her up? 
 

A: No. It is considered insulting to whip an initiate if she has her hands free. (In extreme cases, aggrieved priestesses have been known to hurt a worshiper who neglected to restrain them. Bad idea, insulting our girls that way.) 
 

Q: Can I hit her with the whip as soon as she is tied up? 
 

A: This Temple has the rule that you must be penetrating the Priestess to lash her. (This refers to phallic penetration of any of the priestess' orifices. Neither tongue nor finger count.) (This means having penetrated, also.) 
 

Q: Once she's tied up, what's to stop me from fucking her in the ass? 
 

A: Nothing. A woman who has her hands tied is under your control. 
 

(In a much earlier grade of initiation, you learned that a wise Sister will pre-lubricate her anus before any episode of edification.) 
 

(Note that some Sisters are excused from anal intercourse. They should not be assigned to a worshiper with anal preference.) 
 

Q: Can I ever lay the whip to a girl when my dick's not in her? 
 

A: Only if she asks you for a "blessing". 
 

Q: What is a "blessing"? 
 

A: The initiate who receives a blessing has at least her wrists secured, and you deliver to her three firm strokes with the non-marking whip. 
 

Q: Where on the Bdy should the blessing be administered? 
 

A: You may lash her anywhere except the face or genitals. (The nipples are a tender area to maximize the effect of a blessing. The lower belly near the pubic hair is also a target which gives pleasing results.) 
 

Q: Are you all masochists? 
 

A: Yes, in the sense we are a flagellant Order. 
 

Q: Do you enjoy all pain? 
 

A: Of course not. We only enjoy pain which is erotically intended and administered, coming to us when we are sexually aroused. 
 

Q: How can you enjoy pain? 
 

A: Through the miracle of transcendence, the Goddess allows us to change the sensation of this erotic pain into the sensation of erotic pleasure. Less than a second after the initial shock from the lash, within ourselves we have changed what we are feeling from intense pain into intense joy. 
 

Q: Does this transcendence work every time? 
 

A: It works every time when the lashes are given in love. If our tormentor believes in us, it is much easier to abandon our nerves to the will of the Goddess. A Worshiper who is disrespectful can leave us with just a sordid painful episode, tasting of ashes. 
 

Q: Do you women actually enjoy the sex? 
 

A: If I didn't, for one, I wouldn't be here. We don't get paid for this. Once we transcend the pain, the Goddess in her beneficence allows us enhanced enjoyment of the pleasure of sex. 
 

Q: (Perhaps the questioning Worshiper in this case is a woman.) How can you enjoy sex which is so promiscuous, in that you don't get a choice in the selection of your sex partners? 
 

A: In the first place, the Priestesses who are eligible for sex do have a veto power over who comes to worship in their Bdies. (Specific discussion of how such communication is made is discouraged.) 
 

Secondly, we feel that experience with a wide variety of men is helpful to our initiation, in understanding the ways of the Goddess. 

Thirdly, frequent intercourse with men enhances our enjoyment of life. When a lot of men have edified us, we are sore in Bdy but soaring in spirit, and our loving sisters are able to kiss away our aches. 
 

Q: Are you women homosexuals? I heard that you say the Goddess herself lusts after young girls. 
 

A: We have that saying. It is meant to describe the extreme of attractiveness the Goddess has seen fit to bestow on our novice initiates, requiring us to cloister them in a place men are forbidden. It is not meant to imply that the Goddess is a Lesbian. We do not have sex with each other. We do not find other women sexually attractive. We seldom have sex with anybody other than you Worshipers. 

Q: Can a man get a little piece of such forbidden fruit? A: From time to time the Goddess sees fit to edify a young girl and so raise her initiation level by letting a man worship in her Bdy. 
 

Q: How could I get so lucky? 
 

A: By showing the Goddess, at the donation Bx, how eager you are to serve Her. You must also show not less than two of our Priestesses here you are able. Then if you are approved by the Goddess you will be conducted to the place where you may worship in the Bdy of our novice. 

Q: How young a girl will I be able to get? 
 

A: The Goddess disregards chronological age because it is not accurate in measuring human development. The novices we are discussing are of the stage of development to be menstruating regularly and have been examined medically to ensure their physical readiness to have intercourse. 
 

Q: Do they want to have sex in the same style as their older Sisters? 
 

A: Yes. No one can be required to be a member of the Sisterhood. Women who join us are all here voluntarily. All know of our customs. 
 

Q: Where is the Novitiate? A: That is secret. For the protection of our Novices, we do not reveal its location. 
 

Q: How will I be able to worship in a Novice without knowing where the Novitiate is? 

A: Should that happen, it will be in a different place, neither the Novitiate nor the Temple. 
 

Q: Do you Sisters ever get pregnant? 
 

A: Oh yes. Quite a few of our Sisters have become mothers. 
 

Q: Is motherhood encouraged in the Temple? 
 

A: Motherhood is certainly encouraged among our Sisters. Babies are not Brn in the Temple, but in a different (unspecified) place. 
 

Q: Where are the babies raised? 
 

A: In a quiet and peaceful (unspecified) environment with other children, which has many animals and trees. 
 

Q: What about when they grow up? 
 

A: Many of our girls choose to join the Sisterhood. Nearly half of our Novices were Brn to Sisters. Some Sisters here in the Temple are second generation. 
 

Q: Second generation? Just how old is the Sisterhood? 
 

A: We were organized in our present form just a few years ago, at the time the Temple itself, this structure, was founded. 
 

(It is not necessary to acquaint the casual questioner with the fact that we are the oldest religion in the world. That tends merely to arouse curiosity concerning clandestine worship and the hermetic tradition. The fact that the oldest substantive writing in existence concerns our Goddess is not particularly relevant to what he wants to know.) 
 

Q: Does not your tradition hark back to ancient Babylon, and even before that, to the civilization of Sumer? 
 

A: Yes, as you can see by the sacred inscriptions along the walls. 
 

Q: These cuneiform writings contain certain incongruous elements when they are translated. Why have they been done this way? 
 

A: Please pass through to a chamber where you will be attended by the Confessor of Darkness, an officer in our Sisterhood, who would like to speak with you. 
 

(The Worshiper who reveals particular knowledge of our antiquity is to be treated with favor, for he needs to be examined for possible spiritual significance. Most particularly, anyone who by chance may reveal a knowledge of the cuneiform script or the ancient languages which were written in it is to be captured with kindness to ensure an interview. You may override the regular scheduling priorities, should you feel this is necessary, to free up the Sister or Novice you think he would find to be the most attractive escort. Food, drink, and other amenities should be provided generously should he desire them, but see that he is not left alone until he has been seen by a numbered Slave or other senior Sister. Signal his escort that he may be stimulated freely, but is not to be engaged in sexual intercourse until such interview has been conducted.) 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 

13. 
 

Poet's Inquiry 
 

The poet sometimes called Tom came in the Gates in a hurry. Breathlessly he strode up to the Hostess and asked her, "What is the true face of the Sisterhood?" 
 

The Hostess pointed to the arched cuneiform inscriptions on stone panels arrayed high in the far wall. "Can you read that?" she asked. 

Tom said, "No." 
 

The Hostess said, "I will answer your question when you have learned to read them." 
 

Tom went away. He returned four months later and asked the Hostess, "What is the true face of the Sisterhood?" 
 

She asked, "Can you read those inscriptions?" 
 

Tom said, "Yes." Then he didn't say anything for several minutes. At last he said, "Since I can read this, it will not be necessary for you to answer my question." 
 

The Hostess said, "That is true. However, since you have read those, it will not be necessary for you to leave." 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

14. 
 

Unsafe Constraint 
 

The Consort told Baduccaa what he thought. "Our Goddess was like a party girl. She liked fun a lot, and sex she liked too much. After the last Ice Age She got out of hand, and started this little game where She let Herself get tied up, and raped by one or more of the gods. That she strictly enjoyed." 
 

Sister Baduccaa commented, "I feel I can sympathize with Her feelings in the matter. Were I to be raped by several gods, I would be so uncertain whether I enjoyed it, I would need to have the entire experience repeated to clarify my understanding. I am even more strongly Bnded with our Lady knowing this." She was herself a captive, her hands Bund behind her. Unlike a man, she did not enjoy the option of slipping Bund wrists over her hips, to get her hands in front of her. Her hips were too large to get her Bund wrists over, so for her, tied behind stayed tied. 

But B enjoyed the state of being tied now. She was so strongly conditioned that restraint to her meant sexual congress had started. Even though the Consort was not actively titillating her, nor tormenting her, B was in a state of sexual excitement simply because he had tied her, and remained in her presence. He noted this effect, and used it tutorially. Such as now. 
 

The Consort continued: "But there was a problem. B, how dare you sleep during my deepest religious meditation. I see I will have to get your attention. This won't hurt a bit." He delivered for her appreciation a good strong swat on the rump. She tried to ignore it, to deny it, but the pang grew rapidly. Her hip muscles clenched into a knot, and her pelvis jerked. She breathed out carefully into the bed. 
 

He had done that for her. She was ashamed that she couldn't pretend any more, that she just liked nice things. But she took pleasure even in her shame; debasement tasted delicious. That swat had done her as much good as a kiss, and in a few special ways she even preferred it. B had grown up to be a very bad girl. She was High Priestess now; the alternate title was First Slave. All the bad girls knew she was the baddest. 
 

Having paused to refresh her stimulation, the Consort plunged back into his story. "Maybe She got to be a pain in the ass, maybe some of the other gods got to be contemptuous of Her habits. But when they started substituting chains for ropes, evidently our Lady didn't see any difference in principle. That part gets a little complicated. It has to do with the progression of metals they used on Her. She has separate affinities with the hemp plant, and with the metal copper. You cannot bind Her with a copper chain, any more than you can with a hemp rope. Those things belong to Her, and so She's not really restrained, except by Her own will. But She figured it didn't matter, because the gods would always let Her go, after they were finished with their sport. She never really had to get Herself out, but She always could have if she wanted to, and the others all knew it. 
 

"The gods started ringing in some changes for variety's sake. When the restraint felt more challenging to Her, they would feed back on that, and it would get them off more. She didn't tell them it was better sex, the closer they came to endangering Her, things just sort of slid that way. They progressed through the metals, looking for what would give the most fun with Inanna. Bronze had too much copper. Iron gave Her trouble, but She learned how to turn it to dust. Gold like lead was too ductile, wouldn't even hold a serious human who knew the tricks. They chained Her with silver, and She was in trouble. It's fairly close to copper, but it gave Her fits. I don't know for sure how that episode came out, but it's over so it ended somehow. Now She's chained with platinum, and whoever did it abandoned Her. She's afraid She might not be able to get out without help, so that's why She got in touch." 
 

"I am edified," B said. "This enlightenment must be the ultimate initiation of our Order, it is so overwhelming. May I enquire, in all humility, just how we're supposed to be able to help the One we worship, in Her specific plight?" 
 

"Bingo, baby. You really put a finger on the basic dilemma of our Sisterhood. Is our tutelary Deity at a particular place on our world, sealed up in a cave somewhere in Asia, that we could rush an expedition to Her aid with hacksaws? That seems far-fetched. I do have another clue I'm working on, which is fetched farther. It concerns the time dilatation in the data channel between Her and me. 

"While She and I were communicating, Bth of experienced the distortion that the other's words were received only very slowly, say over a period of days you might receive one word. She was used to that effect, expected it, and coached me through it. What it did, was knocked quite a chunk out of my life, listening to Her message, but that's another story. So I started recording everything right away, because I knew there was intelligence getting through, and because like She said I didn't really have a choice. 

"So I have an objective criterion, the duration between successive portions of the Revelation. That gives a sliding curve, the cusp of the time differential between her time coordinate surface and ours. I have one data point from Her side, when She asked me how long I thought we had been talking and I said about a month. I knew it was a little longer. She said to her, it felt like six or eight months. I could solve those limits. I think She knows just what pace a normal human conversation takes place, and I think my idea of that is pretty much the same as Hers. This gives us a common coordinate edge." 
 

He took a moment to kiss curly patterns all over B's shoulders and upper back. He was sqeezing around on her ass. B thought about it for the time it took her to sigh. She might as well permit his caresses, because her hands were tied. A wave of the dread luxury feeling washed through her redly. The deadly ecstasy of conscious decadence. It was addiction to this rare and costly emotion that really made people masochists, her kind of masochist anyway. "She couldn't get enough of that precious stuff," the caravan master said to the slave trader when they were hauling her away. No, that wasn't her, that was somebody like her, somebody who felt the same way. Had to be a lot like her if they felt the same. 
 

B noticed her fantasies were slipping about in time a lot more lately. Quite a ride. She informed the Consort, "I just learned I can hypnotize somebody just by putting a certain pattern of words in my speech. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you? I thought not. I stick a dragon's name in there, just to give it verisimilitude: the serpent Yggasdril. It's a name you wouldn't come across every day. I'll never try it on you, but it works for other people. I wanted you to know I picked up a new trick." 
 

"That's neat, B. Have fun with your new toy, but don't hurt anybody. People are just people, and they don't deserve to be hurt. Except for the nasty ones like you, who ask for it, with your eyes wide open, and then you enjoy it when you get it." With words like these, B was prepared for a demonstration of pain, but he was just idly scratching his fingertips over her back. 
 

"Lover?" she asked. "Do you think the approach of the Goddess has made me a masochist, or do you think that tendency was in me already? If I weren't First Slave, would I be out in a leather bar looking for abuse?" 
 

"You know," he said carefully, "what made you choose those words? '...the approach of the Goddess...' Did that just pop into your head? I think you worked the math, just from the clues I mentioned, just casually in the back of your mind. But yes, She's coming in. Assuming the extended duration on Bth ends was due to relativistic time distortion, these curves mean she's slowing down from relativistic velocity. I think She's coming to us." 
 

"Wait one. Are you saying the Goddess is in space?" B couldn't even act Bred for this one. 
 

"Can't go that fast down here." 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

15. 
 

Communion With Goddess 
 

B said, "Hey, girl!" 
 

The Goddess said, "Hey, yourself, you fat pig." She sent an image of a rotund sow, having B's flat, beautiful belly. 
 

B laughed. "He says now he think's you're on a spaceship." 
 

"I wonder what he means by that." 
 

"Well, that you're physically in a vehicle of some sort, tootling about the Galaxy. Actually, that you're matching up with Earth right now." 
 

"Who would have built such a vehicle? Why put me on it?" 
 

"I guess he figures the gods and goddesses did. To get you out of the way, because your perversions were becoming embarrassing." 

"Why a vehicle-machine, though? Did he not think I might be naked in space?" 
 

"I don't think he wants to think about that one." 
 

* * * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

16. 
 

Priestess' Preference  
 

"Hey, old girl! Old sleeping bat!" 
 

"Hey, kid." 

"What you gonna do to me when you get me alone?" 
 

"I'll just make you eat my pussy till you die." 
 

"Good enough way to go. Do you get orgasms?" 
 

"I could say several things to that, but I'll stick to Yes." 
 

"How could I give you one?" 
 

"Lots of ways. Eating my pussy, for one." 
 

"You like girls as good as guys?" 
 

"No. I like a big dick in me, mostly. But in an emergency, girls are better than nothing." 
 

"Can you get off on killing people? That's the big thing people worry about when they get involved with gods." 
 

"Well, yeah. Gods do that. I'm good at the things gods are good at because that's who I am." 
 

"So if the Sisterhood removes your Bnds, and welcomes you back to Earth with open arms, you might go on a big killing spree, slurping up souls right and left." 
 

"I hate to close out my own options, but that doesn't sound like my kind of fun." 
 

"Do you kill people with sex?" 
 

"I can." 

"Do me that. When I saw off your last platinum link I want you to jump up and rape me to death. You can eat me up all at once that way, just take everything I got." 
 

"Hey, B, don't promise me anything you won't be willing to give." 

"Aw, did I bump your funny Bne, Goddess? A little touchy on that, are we? Mind if I dig around a bit, Ladyship? Is it blood that launches our Bat now? Or maybe You get off on that final shriek of pain, the one where the girl realizes she's dying. You must tell me, Mistress, which part of my soul will You find the munchiest?" 

"Oh, fuck you. How is he training you girls, in a fucking butcher shop? You're nasty, B. You spoiled it." 
 

"You were about to tell me, in suggestive language, every aspect of my own death at Your hands, and have me get off on it. That kind of trap I can spot easy." 
 

"You may recall that's exactly what you offered Me." 
 

"Don't take promises from Your slaves. Listen, what I called about, he invented a gadget that gives a woman a dick. It will tickle Your clit when You're fucking a girl. Works great. Everybody loves it. It's made him a great hero to gay women everywhere." 
 

"Sounds interesting." 
 

"Oh, it's a hit. Bth ways." 
 

"Have you tried it Bth ways?" 
 

"Naturally. Your High Priestess is a bad girl. I'm the one that feels complimented when the Goddess of Lust calls me nasty." 
 

"A little stunt that may cost your life." 
 

"Oh, You'll get that, my Mistress. When the time is right, You'll get to suck out my soul. And I'm gonna love it, because when You taste me inside of You, I'll get to taste You all around me." 
 

"You're sweet, B." 
 

"Hope so. Thought You'd like that." 
 

---

Whither?

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