"This is ridiculous," she objected once, "you're becoming… effeminate."

"Eris can be… somewhat 'adjusted'… to modern notions of decorum after we've invoked Her," he said calmly. "First we must have Her here. My Lady," he added obsequiously.

"I'm beginning to see why you had to pick an actress for this," she said a few days later, after a bit of Method business had won her an extra reward. She was, in fact, beginning to feel like Eris as well as act like her.

"The only other candidates- if I couldn't get you- were two other actresses and a ballerina," he replied. "Actually, any strong-willed woman would do, but it would take much longer without previous theatrical training."

Books about matriarchy began to supplement the films: Diner's Mothers and Amazons, Bachofen, Engels, Mary Renault, Morgan, Ian Suttie's The Origins of Love and Hale, Robert Graves in horse-doctor's doses- The White Goddess, The Black Goddess, Hercules My Shipmate, Watch the North Wind Rise. She began to see that matriarchy made as much sense as patriarchy; Hagbard's exaggerated deference toward her began to appear natural; she was far gone on a power trip. The invocations grew wilder and more frantic. Sade and Masoch were brought into the chapel to assist with demonaic music performed on a tom-tom and an ancient Greek pipe, they ate hashish cakes before the invocation now and she couldn't remember afterward exactly what had happened, the voice of the male called upward to her, "Mother! Creator! Ruler! Come to me!

Come to me! Come to me! Ave, Discordia! Ave, Magna Mater! Venerandum, vente, vente!

Thou hornless ever reborn one! Thou deathless ever-dying one! Come to me as Isis and Artemis and Aphrodite, come as Helen, as Hera, come especially as Eris!"

She was bathing in the rockpool when he appeared, the blood of slain deer and rabbits on his robe- She spoke the word and Hagbard was stricken- As he fell forward his hands became hooves, antlers sprouted from his head- His own dogs could eat him, she didn't care, the hemp smell in the room was gagging her, the tom-tom beat was maddening. She was rising out of the waves, proud of her nudity, riding on the come-colored pearls of foam. He was carrying her back to her bed, murmuring, "My Lady, my Lady." She was the Hag, wandering the long Nile, weeping, seeking the fragments of his lost body as they passed the closet and the window; he placed her head gently on the pillow. "We almost made it," he said. "Tomorrow night, maybe…"

They were back in the chapel, a whole day must have passed, and she sat immobile in full lotus doing the pranayama breathing while he danced and chanted and the weird music of the pipe and tom-tom worked on every conditioned reflex that told her she was not American but Greek, not of this age but of a past age, not woman but goddess… the White Light came as a series of orgasms and stars going nova, she half felt the body of light coming forth from the body of fire… and all three of them were sitting by her bed, watching her gravely, as sunlight came flowing through the window.

Her first word was crude and angry.

"Shit. Is it always going to be like that- a white epileptic spasm and a hole in time? Won't I ever be able to remember it?"

Hagbard laughed. "I put on my trousers one leg at a time," he said, "and I don't pull the corn up by its stalks to help it grow."

"Can the Taoism and give me a straight answer."

"Remembering is just a matter of smoothing the transitions," he said. "Yes, you'll remember. And control it."

"You're a madman," she replied wearily. "And you're leading me into your own mad universe. I don't know why I still love you."

"We love him, too," Sade interjected helpfully. "And we don't know why either. We don't even have sex as an excuse."

Hagbard lit one of his foul Sicilian cigars. "You think I just laid my trip on your head," he said. "It's more than that, much more. Eris is an eternal possibility of human nature. She exists quite apart from your mind or mine. And she is the one possibility that the Illuminati cannot cope with. What we started here last night- with Pavlovian conditioning that's considered totalitarian and ancient magic that's believed to be mere superstition- will change the course of history and make real liberty and real rationality possible at last. Maybe this dream of mine is madness- but if I lay it on enough people it will be sanity, by definition, because it will be statistically normal. We've just started, with me programming the trip for you. The next step is for you to become a self-programmer."

And he told the truth, Stella said. I did become a self-programmer. The three that you know were all my creations. Possibilities within me, women I could have become, anyway, if genes and environment had been only slightly different. Just small adjustments in the biogram and logogram.

"Holy Mother," George said hollowly. It seemed the only appropriate comment.

"The only other detail," she went on calmly, "was arranging a convincing suicide. That took a while. But it was done, and my old identity officially ceased to exist." She changed to her original form.

"Oh, no," George said, reeling. "It can't be. I used to jack off over pictures of you when I was a little boy."

"Are you disappointed that I'm so much older than you thought?" Her eyes crinkled in amusement. He looked into those suddenly thirty-thousand-year-old eyes of one manifestation of Lilith Velkor and all the arguments of Sade and Masoch appeared clownish and he looked through those eyes and saw himself and Joe and Saul and even Hagbard as mere men and all their attitudes as merely manly, and he saw the eternal womanly rebuttal, and he saw beyond and above that the eternal divine amusement, he looked into those eyes of amusement, those ancient glittering eyes so gay, and he said, sincerely, "Hell, I can never be disappointed about anything, ever again." (George Dorn entered Nirvana, parenthetically.)

All categories collapsed, including the all-important distinction, which Masoch and Sade had never argued, between science fiction and serious literature. No because Daddy and Mommy were always just that Daddy and Mommy and never once did they become for a change Mommy and Daddy do you dig that important difference? do you dig difference? do you dig the lonely voice when you're lost out here shouting "me" "me" justme

"I can never be disappointed about anything, ever again," George Dorn said, coming back.

"The only other time that happened," he added thoughtfully, "the only other time I had the feminine viewpoint, I blocked it out of my memory. That was my repression. That was the Primal Scene in this whole puzzle. That was when I really lost identity with the Ringmaster."

"Raise you five," said Waterhouse, throwing down another five-ton note. "I killed seven members of my own race, and I remember the names of every one of them: Mark Sanders, Fred Robinson, Donald MacArthur, Ponell Scott, Anthony Rogers, Mary Keating, and David J. Monroe. And then I killed Milo A. Flanagan."

"Well, I don't know," said Harry Coin. "Maybe I killed a lot of famous people. But I also got reason to think I may of not killed anybody. And I don't know which is worse."

"I wish somebody would tell me I hadn't killed anybody," said Waterhouse. "Are you guys going to meet me or what?"

"I wanted to kill Wolfgang Saure, and I did kill Wolfgang Saure," said John-John Dillinger. "If that brings evil upon me, so be it." He threw down a five.

"It may bring suffering rather than evil," said Waterhouse. "I have just one consolation. The first seven I killed because the Chicago cops made me. The last I killed under orders from the Legion."

Harry Coin looked at him open-mouthed. "I was gonna fold, but I just changed my mind. You ain't so smart." He threw down a ten-ton note. "I'll raise you five and see you. Do you really believe that?"