I looked back at Gal. Her dugs were shaking like jellies now that the Man was close to climax. I looked down at my own and thought they might be the smallest of all, hardly there really. Maybe when my bloods become more regular there will be an improvement. I hoped, inshallaweh, they would grow into such big round bulbs as Galena’s, for the Men seemed to like them so very much. This Man now had one in each hand as he pumped away from behind her like an engine – so virile! – and he squeezed hard, his face all scrunched up in concentration, and her flesh bulged around his fingers like some ripe fruit, but with a thicker skin than any fruit. No mere peach could remain intact under such pressure!
We passed beneath the Way of Banners, erected especially to honour Fifteens on Attainment Day. First a series of small pennants banded with the colours of our House, sage green and violet; then our Flag with its representation of the Beautiful Man, Jesumuh, His sword in one hand, unfurled orchid in the other; finally a succession of inspirational passages from the DoppelBook, Romans 5:3–5, each phrase with a banner of its own to represent suffering, endurance, character, and hope:
We rejoice in our sufferings …
Knowing that suffering produces endurance …
And endurance produces character …
And character produces hope …
And oh, on that morning, we were all filled with such hope!
Then my attention was disturbed by Pearl’s elbow in my ribs. One reason we are such close friends is because we were combed from the vessels of neighbouring womanidols on the same day and had been together from cradle to now: Attainment Day. (At last!) We even look alike – everyone says so – and there isn’t anything we don’t do together. It is funny how close you can be to someone, yet there are parts of them you never ever get, not really. I always try to get on with other people, but Pearl never cares to. She shows her bad feelings when she has them. At other times she gets very enthusiastic about something so that other girlies look at her in a funny way because her face gets flushed, and sometimes her eyes go all gleamy with a feeling she cannot hold in like a proper girlie learns to do. She has trouble getting the balance right, never really was any good at blending into the female body corporate. I look after her. It is a duty of love for the strong to look after the weak. And she tries to look after me as best she can, too, in her way. She never lets any girlie say anything unkind to me. If they did she would hit them, or at least spit. I did explain that this was not helpful, no-one likes a spitting girlie. But she’d do it anyway. Pearl has always been brave and foolish like that, led by her heart. And now we stood together, as we had done always, from earliest childhood through all our Minus-years from Attainment (as we counted them off, looking forward, year by year). The day had come.
‘I’m not going to Beseech.’ Pearl’s eyes were bright and wild behind the mask.
I could not believe what I was hearing. I was glad for the mask that hid my face. But in any case, she rushed on before I had a chance to formulate any kind of answer. ‘Mica. I have been thinking very very hard these last days,’ she said, her voice low and hard. ‘I have a question for you. Why be a womanidol?’
I had no idea why she would say such a thing. Orchids live and grow in beauty and fecundity in secret places. The greatest thing a girlie can do is to live that metaphor, to be the image, to live and serve and die in humility. ‘Pearl, why ask? What else are we for?’
‘House mothers. Gardeners. Foot-soldiers. You know this. And, Mica, you have excelled in all girlie-guard exercises since Minus-Ten! There are other things …’
Very few are able to attain the zenith of our ambition, but we are raised to aim for it at least. She knew full well that regardless of any other talents we may have (inshallaweh) this sacrifice is at the core of the meaning of our lives! ‘There is nothing nobler than to aspire always towards the height of female Perfection, Pearl. You know this. Would you waste your life …?’
‘Waiting in the dark for a Seed-Bearer to fuck a baby into me?’
I turned away from her then. She would have felt the chill of my withdrawal.
The foul heresy and the evil way she spat it out had rocked me so very badly. To denigrate the Attainment of life in death, flesh made spirit through the Sacred Blood Rites of Perfection to become what is no more nor less than a living goddess from whose loins may spring one of the next generation of Civilisation’s leaders, arbiters of Truth, interpreters of the Holy Strictures of blessed Jesumuh! Yet she would spurn it! What had been going on in her mind? And for how long? It was horrible, and false, and arrogant … What sort of Cybelean imp had taken the place of my beloved friend? Where and how had she learned to betray? Even now I can barely bring myself to re-think her words even in the privacy of my own heart.
We of Oblation gathered at the base of the Nursery along with Sacricunt and Dutilove to hear the wisdom of the Son of the Son, the centre of all the circles, Elect of the Elect. He spoke in public on only the most sacred of occasions. And on this day of our Beseeching, he spoke to us Fifteens of Stone House. It was an annual ritual, but this year I was one of that ‘us’. As I stood with head reverently bowed I felt all due humility, and yet … there was another feeling, an opposite feeling: pride. And it was clamouring to me to attend to it, to stand erect, to raise my head, to gaze directly into the eyes of the Son. I prayed silently for the strength to bear within my breast this paradox of conjoined opposites, one pure, the other a defilement that would ruin me if I let it.
I looked around at the row of pure and naked would-be vessels standing attentively, faces masked against the vanity of personal identity. I reached out to touch Pearl, but her body was rigid and unyielding. So I withdrew my hand and listened in silence to the Son of the Son, our representative on Earth of the Resolved Twins Jesumuh, only child of GodFather (BBHCM), deliver the prayer, The Way of (wo)Man:
Forever hide thy face, O (wo)Man! Deflect thine abject gaze from that of your natural master. Be ever ready to serve the husbands whose land you till and protect. As nature’s wilderness must be conquered, controlled and cultivated that its fruits may be brought forth to sustain us, so must (wo)Man’s wildness be husbanded lest the corybantic frenzies of Cybele lay waste to all that is clean and good and orderly in the world we have reclaimed from the mire. Indeed, the dumb earth yearns to be harrowed by the bladed till: so beseeches vegetal (wo)Man for the plough of Man. Rejoice, O Votives of the Flesh, Slaves of the Cannon, born of filth. Exalt now in the gift of redemption wherein all extraneous material may be sheared, sawn, sewn and smoothed into the purest form possible for the female repository to attain: the womanidol as holey Vessel of Man, molded by Man into the fulsome form of tamed fecundity, the Perfected incubator of the Sacred Seed of Man, given by the Father and sewn into the compost-rich mulch that is the essence of the female creature …
And very soon, I knew, the Beseeching itself could begin. I knew, from having watched Beseechings since as far back as my memory extends, that it would be accompanied by music. Thus I was excited – undue, I know, unfitting – but music is rare, and for good reason, as it belongs to one of the categories of profane activities that are haraamasur. It was forbidden long ago by the wisest of Elders, first ministers and administrators of the Dual True Faith. Not only is music a means of idling away time that may otherwise be spent