“You took part?”

“Sure. With the high priestess herself. It’s all right; these people don’t have your attitude towards sex, Skelder; they don’t think it’s dirty or a sin; they regard it as a sacrament, a great gift from the goddess; what would seem to you infinitely disgusting, wallowing in a mire of screaming sex-fiends, is to them pure and chaste and goddess-blessed worship. Of course, I think your attitude and theirs are both wrong: sex is just a force that one ought to take advantage of in other people; but I will admit that the Kareenans’ ideas are more fun than yours.”

Skelder’s voice was that of a slightly impatient and bored teacher lecturing a not-too-bright pupil. If he was angry, he managed to conceal it.

“You don’t understand our doctrine. Sex is not in itself a dirty or sinful force. After all, it is the medium designated by God whereby the higher forms of life may be perpetuated. Sex in animals is as innocent as the drinking of water. And in the holy circle of matrimony a man and a woman may use this God-given force, may, through its sacred and tender rapture, become one, may approach that ecstasy, or be given an intimation of that ecstasy, which is the understanding and perhaps even glimpse of—“

“Jesus Christ!” said Carmody. “Spare me, spare me! What must your parishioners mutter under their breaths, what groans, every time you climb into the pulpit? God, or What-ever-it-is, help them!

“Anyway, I don’t give a damn what the doctrine of the Church is. It’s very evident that you yourself think that sex is dirty, even if it takes place within the permissible bonds of matrimony. It’s disgusting, and the sooner the necessary evil is over and done with and one can take a shower, the better.

“However, I’ve gotten way off the track, which is that to the Kareenans these outbreaks of religio-sexual frenzy are manifestations of their gratitude to the Creator—I mean Creatrix—for being given life and the joys of life. Normally, they behave quite stuffily—“

“Look, Carmody, I don’t need a lecture from you; after all, I am an anthropologist, I know perfectly well what the perverted outlook of these natives is, and—“

“Then why weren’t you down here studying them?” said Carmody, still chuckling. “It’s your anthropological duty. Why send me down? Were you afraid you’d get contaminated just watching? Or were you scared to death that you might get religion, too?”

“Let’s drop the subject,” said Skelder, emotionlessly. “I don’t care to hear the depraved details; I just want to know if you found out anything pertinent to our mission.”

Carmody had to smile at that word mission.

“Sure thing, Dad. The priestess said that the Goddess herself never appears except as a force in the bodies of her worshipers. But she maintains, as did a lot of the laymen I talked to, that the goddess’s son, Yess, exists in the flesh, that they have seen and even talked to him. He will be in this city during the Sleep. The story is that he comes here because it was here that he was born and died and raised again.”

“I know that,” said the monk, exasperatedly. “Well, we shall see when we confront this imposter what he has to say. Ralloux is working on our recording equipment now so it’ll be ready.”

“OK,” replied Carmody indifferently. “I’ll be home within half an hour, provided I don’t run across any interesting females. I doubt it; this city is dead—almost literally so.”

He hung up the phone, smiling again at the look of intense disgust he could imagine on Skelder’s face. The monk would be standing there for perhaps a minute in his black robes, his eyes closed, his lips working in silent prayer for the lost soul of John Carmody, then he would whirl and stalk upstairs to find Ralloux and tell him what had happened. Ralloux, clad in the maroon robe of the Order of St Jairus, puffing on his pipe as he worked upon the recorders, would listen without much comment, would express neither disgust nor amusement over Carmody’s behavior, would then say that it was too bad that they had to work with Carmody but that perhaps something good for Carmody, and for them, too, might come out of it. In the meantime, as there was nothing they could do to alter conditions on Dante’s Joy or change Carmody’s character, they might as well work with what they had.

As a matter of fact, thought Carmody, Skelder detested his fellow-scientist and co-religionist almost as much as he did Carmody. Ralloux belonged to an order that was very much suspect in the eyes of Skelder’s older and far more conservative organization. Moreover, Ralloux had declared himself to be in favor of the adoption of the Statement of Historical Flexibility, or Evolution of Doctrine, the theory then being offered by certain parties within the Church, and advocated by them as worthy of being made dogma. So strong had the controversy become that the Church was held to be in danger of another Great Schism, and some authorities held that the next twenty-five years would see profound changes and perhaps a crucial break-up in the Church itself.

Though both monks made an effort to keep their intercourse on a polite level, Skelder had lost his temper once, when they were discussing the possibility of allowing priests to marry—a mere evolution of discipline, rather than doctrine. Thinking of Skelder’s red face and roaring jeremiads, Carmody had to laugh. He himself had contributed to the monk’s wrath by pointed comments now and then, hugely enjoying himself, contemptuous at the same time of a man who could get so concerned over such a thing. Couldn’t the stupid ass see that life was just a big joke and that the only way to get through it was to share it with the Joker?

It was funny that the two monks, who hated each other’s guts, and he, who was disliked by both of them and who was contemptuous of them, should be together in this project. “Crime makes strange bedfellows,” he had once said to Skelder in an effort to touch off the rage that always smoldered in the man’s bony breast. His comment had failed of its purpose, for Skelder had icily replied that in this world the Church had to work with the tools at hand and Carmody, however foul, was the only one available. Nor did he think it a crime to expose the fraudulency of a false religion.

“Look, Skelder,” Carmody had said, “you know that you and Ralloux were jointly commissioned by the Federation’s Anthropological Society and by your Church to make a study of the so-called Night of Light on Dante’s Joy and also, if possible, to interview

Yess—providing he exists. But you’ve taken it on yourself to go further than that. You want to capture a god, inject him with chalarocheil and make him confess the whole hoax. Do you think that you won’t get into trouble when you return to Earth?”

To which Skelder had replied that he was prepared to face any amount of trouble for this chance to kill the religion at its roots. The cult of Yess had spread from Dante’s Joy to many a planet; its parody on the Church’s ritual and Sacraments, plus the orgies to which it gave religious sanction had caused many defections from the Church’s fold; there was the fantastic but true story of the diocese of the planet of Comeonin. The bishop and every member of his flock, forty thousand, had become apostates and...

Remembering this, Carmody smiled again. He wondered what Skelder would say if he knew how literal his words were about “killing the religion at its roots.” John Carmody had his own interpretation of that. In his coat pocket he carried a True Blue Needlenose diminutive assassin, .03 caliber, capable of firing one hundred explosive bullets one after the other before needing a new clip. If Yess was flesh and blood and bone, then flesh could flower, blood could geyser, bone could splinter, and Yess would have another chance to rise again from the dead.