“Once you have chosen your own aspect of divinity, we will help you become conditioned to Her service, and if the time comes when you believe you cannot properly serve your patroness, you will succeed by serving your Hagion instead. When your patroness takes you to the Temple at each New Year, you will light incense in thanks to your own divinity. In your own quarters, you will maintain a shrine to Her. This is to remind you of the divinity through whom the lifeforce flows, however corporeal the body or frail the mind through which that force is transmitted.”
She saw a hand hesitantly raised. Fentrys, with an almost apprehensive expression.
“Yes, Fentrys?”
“Do the Hagions not resent being used like that, Madame?”
Madame frowned. At the back of the room, someone tittered, and she turned a quick and cautioning glance in that direction, like a search light, quickly beaming and as quickly withdrawn.
“It is not a foolish question, but it is a complicated one. The Hags at the Temple say that because the Hagions wish our patronesses to be served properly, they do not mind being used to that end. The Hagions accept our adoration, even though we are conditioned to give it, because we are using the conditioning to do their will. The Hags base their decision upon an historic precedent:
“On Old Earth, certain orders of celibate females were said to be brides of their male god. The writings of some of these women clearly establish that their devotion, though chaste in a physical sense, could be highly erotic, sensual, and joyous on a psychological level. These celibate orders often served the male priesthood or worked among the sick and the poor, doing many laborious and distasteful activities in the spirit of ‘serving’ their bridegroom, that is, achieving sensual and erotic rewards through activities which were neither. This conditioning and sublimation was considered appropriate.
“We do the same. Though serving our patroness may be unstimulating, serving our Hagion is highly erotic, sensual and joyous. Thus we accomplish the one by doing the other … “
Her voice faded and she stood, staring out a south window at the busy street with an expression that grew slightly troubled. Far to the east, across the river, ashen clouds rolled from the scarp, and they seemed far more ominous than usual. When she looked back at her students, she saw a hand raised at the back.
“Mouche?”
“Madame, when you talk about serving the patroness, you always say ‘we.’ Why is that?”
She smiled. “Oh, my boy, I serve the Hagions by serving your patroness by serving you, just as you serve the Hagions in serving your patroness. We are all caught up, all of us, in serving this through serving that. Nothing is ever quite clear or direct in this world, and love is the most unclear and indirect of all … “
A bell rang in the great hall. She said, “It is suppertime. You are dismissed.”
She returned to the window as the room emptied, hearing one final rustle of paper and turning to see that Mouche still lingered, looking blindly at her like one stunned by terrible news or a sudden revelation. She hardly dared speak to him, and yet his depth of concentration seemed almost dangerous …
“Are you considering which Hagion you will select, Mouche?”
His face lightened suddenly and he looked directly at her with a blinding smile.
“Oh, no, Madame. As you say, love is unclear and indirect, but once you feel it … I already have a goddess that I serve.”
He turned and went out, leaving Madame staring speechlessly after him. She had seldom seen such rapture on a human face. She could not imagine who, or what might have stirred it, and she felt a strange disquiet that only later did she identify as envy.
27—The Questioner is Announced
The council of the Men of Business (the C-MOB, as it was jovially called) made the laws that governed men’s affairs from their council house in Naibah, that structure known as the Fortress of Vanished Men. The council was made up entirely of g’Family Men, men whose wives had been dowered in and who had produced children. It elected from among its member an executive committee, ECMOB: six men from various parts of Newholme who came to Naibah each quarter year.