Vermin

What made this piece interesting to do was that the main character’s beliefs and emotions are so different from mine. Writing convincingly about someone who isn’t like you is one of the harder tricks to pull off; I hope I’ve done it well here. I wrote “Vermin” not least to make my wife, who isn’t fond of bugs, squirm a little. There, I know I succeeded.


The heavy but familiar weight of the water jar pressed into Victoria Griffin’s left hip as she walked back from the stream toward her husband’s cabin. Sweat slithered down her face, prickled in her armpits, greased the crevice between her buttocks so that she was unpleasantly aware of her own flesh sliding against itself. The heavy wool dress that covered all of her but head, hands, and feet made her want to scratch everywhere at once, as if it were a hair shirt.

She forced facial muscles into an expression of determined serenity. Serenity was the expression most often seen along the paths of New Zion. The Holy Mission Church taught that, since the body was the chief source of sin, all its sensations were to be mistrusted, and ignored as far as possible. On a steambath of a planet like Reverence, that was not always easy.

Serenity sagged toward exhaustion. Endless jungle heat and humidity made the task of building Reverence into a perfect world all the more daunting. Once in a great while, as now, the devil tempted Victoria to wish the Church had enjoyed the secular wealth to pick a more salubrious planet on which to pasture its flock. She knew the wish was sinful. Later, she would spend hours on aching knees repenting of it. But the water came first.

The path was muddy (the path was always muddy). One of Victoria’s feet flew out from under her. “Jesus’ name!” she cried in the moment before the ground slammed her backside. Even as she fell, she grabbed for the water jar. Too late. It hit a rock and smashed. A sharp sherd sliced her thumb, almost to the bone.

Filthy, bleeding, and crying, she staggered to her feet. Wet, slimy earth glued her dress to her haunches. Normally, that would have disgusted her. Now she hardly noticed. She squeezed the torn flesh of her thumb together, trying to stem the flow of blood. Drawn by the iron smell, the animated pinheads that were vermin scuttled down her arm.

Victoria let go of her thumb to smash a couple of the tiny pests, but more soon took their place. She hated bugs of every description; they made her cringe inside. But bugs of every description was what Reverence had. She looked daggers in the direction of the Haldol village a couple of miles away. Like all Haldol villages, it was awash in offal, a perfect breeding place for the crawling horrors that were only too happy to infest New Zion as well. The settlers fumigated their cabins again and again. It did no lasting good, not with the Haldols and their corruption so close.

One of the vermin bit her on the inside of the thigh, so high up that even her husband’s touch there felt wicked. On top of everything else that had just happened, that was too much. She let out a high, piercing note of pure outrage. And exactly then, of course, Cornelia Baker came round the corner with an empty jug.

Cornelia’s big blue eyes went round and wide. “Why, Victoria!” she gasped. “Areyou all right?”

“I think so,” Victoria said through clenched teeth. Cornelia Baker somehow managed perfect cleanliness and perfect neatness on a raw colonial world. Even the sheen of sweat that glistened on her face might have been taken for a virtuous glow. It was impossible to imagine a bloodsucking bug being so rude as to bite her high up on the thigh. She boasted every Christian virtue, and flaunted them as well.

Now she took efficient charge of Victoria. She brushed the worst of the muck from Victoria’s dress, threw a strong (and somehow, even after that tidying job, not particularly dirty) arm around her shoulder, and half led, half supported her back to New Zion. All the while she chattered on with such aggressively sincere sympathy that Victoria wanted to claw out those big blue eyes.

Victoria wanted to claw at herself as well. The biting bug, or perhaps a different biting bug, had decided to pierce her right between her legs. To scratch herself there made Victoria’s cheeks flame crimson even when she was alone. To scratch herself there in front of anyone would have been lewd and indecent, and possibly good for time in the pillory. To scratch herself there in front of Cornelia Baker was hideously unimaginable.

But the biter would not relent. To make matters worse, it kept looking for new, tender spots; she felt it crawling slowly through her secret hair. She could also feel the gooseflesh rising on her arms and legs at every new motion of the bug, no matter how tiny. The horrible anticipation of its next move brought her worse pain than any from her torn thumb or bruised behind.

At last, in front of Victoria’s cabin, Cornelia said, “Here we are, my dear. I do hope you’ll be better soon. God bless you.”

“God bless you, Cornelia, and thank you for all your help,” Victoria said, when she would sooner have screamed,Just go away!

Finally, Cornelia did go away. Victoria bolted inside the cabin, locked the door behind her. She shuttered the two small windows, pausing at the second one to dip her head in the direction of the church steeple she could see through it.

With all openings closed, the inside of the cabin turned night-dark. That suited Victoria. She hardly saw and deliberately did not look at the pale flesh she revealed when she stripped off her soiled and soaked dress. She did her best not to notice the puff of air that cooled her for a moment as the dress went off over her head.

Both her other dresses were dirty. She’d intended to wash them after she brought the water home. Now, instead, she quickly picked one and threw it on. Only when she was properly clothed did she wrap a rag around her thumb. And only after that did she look to the ceiling so she would not have to watch her unhurt hand as it tried to rout the biter from her private parts.

She gasped in relief, then gasped again when she thought how the first gasp might sound—no one could possibly hear it, but it shamed her all the same. Then the barred door rattled and she gasped again. Someone was trying to get into the cabin. “Who’s there?” she called shrilly.

“Only me, Mrs. Griffin,” a deep voice replied. “May I please come in?”

She ran to the door, threw up the bar. “Of course, Mr. Griffin,” she answered, and stood aside to let her husband by. “I didn’t expect you back from the fields so soon.”

“Broke my hoe handle,” he answered, scowling. He pointed to the path outside, where he’d dropped the ruined tool. “Have to shape myself a new one.” Then he finally seemed to take a good look at Victoria. “By the hope of heaven, Mrs. Griffin, what’s befallen you?”

Victoria went through the whole sorry tale (leaving out only Cornelia Baker’s attitude, which no man could be expected to understand). When she finished, her husband’s gaze flicked toward the kitchen. The cabin was too dark for him to see what was there, but he knew anyhow. He said, “We have no other water jar.”

“No, Mr. Griffin, we don’t.” Victoria fought down a flare of resentment—he might have spoken of her hurts before the household’s. But he was right. “I’ve been meaning to go into the Haldol village to dicker for another one, but—” She could not continue. She hated hiking to the Haldol village, not on account of the walk itself but because the village and all the Haldols in it crawled with vermin.

“No buts,” her husband said firmly. “Tomorrow you must get a new one. Now you will excuse me, I hope. I have a great deal of work still to do this day.”

He went out behind the cabin. Victoria heard him rummaging through the sticks piled there, then thesnick-snick of his knife cutting the end of one of them to fit the shank of the hoe blade. After a while, he grunted in satisfaction. His footsteps receded down the path.

Sighing, Victoria bundled up the two dresses she was not wearing—water from the wet, muddy one promptly soaked her breasts and belly all over again—with some of her husband’s overalls and carried them down to the stream to wash. She hadn’t planned to do the washing for another couple of days, but she hadn’t planned to fall in a puddle, either.

Her knees clicked and complained as she knelt by the bank of the stream. She scrubbed the clothes against a wooden washboard, rasping her knuckles with every stroke. Gooey lye soap burned the raw patches and slowly, so slowly, worked dirt free from wool. In New Zion’s ever-humid air, the clothes would dry even more slowly.

She looked upstream. It was only a quick glance, but she muttered a prayer of contrition as she averted her eyes. Upstream from New Zion, only a few miles away in distance but centuries in technology and light-years in attitude, lay the new Federation research base on Reverence—the godless Federation’s godless research base,she thought. Its gleaming metal walls, the whip and bowl antennae that linked the base to the thousands of other worlds in the Federation—all were anathema to the way of life the Holy Mission Church had worked for the past three generations to build here.

She picked up the bundle of clean, wet clothes. By now she was so soaked herself that a little more water no longer bothered her. She made sure, though, to carry the bundle in front of her as if it were a shield, so no one in the village could see how immodestly the damp dress she was wearing clung to her.

Once she’d spread dresses and overalls out to dry by her cabin, she went back to the stream yet again with a couple of small jars to get enough water for the night’s cooking. She had to make two trips, which left her gloomy as she began chopping turnips. Mr. Griffin was right, without a shadow of a doubt. Tomorrow, no matter how she loathed them, she would have to get a new jar from the Haldols.

Her husband came in from the fields again not long before sunset. He spoke a long grace over supper; Victoria bent her head and prayed with him. When they were finished, she carried the dishes into the kitchen. He ignited a stick of punk at the fireplace; in their desire for a life of Biblical simplicity, those who followed the way of the Holy Mission Church eschewed electricity.

Victoria came out, sank wearily into a chair. The hard seat was a trial to her sore backside, but she tried to will away the discomfort. The day had been long and taxing. But Mr. Griffin said, “Why are you sitting in idleness, with plates and pots yet to clean?”

“With our jug broken, I haven’t the water here to wash them, and I am too worn to travel to the stream two or three more times to fetch it. I shall clean them tomorrow, when I have a new jug, if that is pleasing to you, Mr. Griffin.” She did her best to make her voice sweet and persuasive.

Her husband would have been within his rights to order her into action, but he only grunted. He was tired, too. After a while, he said, “If you like, Mrs. Griffin, I will read you a passage of Scripture, that the idleness may be improved.”

“Yes, thank you,” Victoria said eagerly, glad he had decided not to make an issue of the dishes.

The Bible was the only book in the cabin. Her husband kissed the wooden cover that protected the precious pages from long-ago Earth. He held the volume close to the fattest candle. Twilight was already gone from the sky; night at New Zion fell with tropical swiftness. “This is the Book of Judges, the second chapter, the first verse,” he said, and paused to scratch his thick brown beard before he began: “ ‘And the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said . . .’ “

Leaning a little to one side on her chair to favor her bruised hindquarter, Victoria listened to Mr. Griffin read. They had not been married long; this was only their second trip through the Holy Scriptures together. Older couples in New Zion read the sacred words twelve, fifteen, even twenty times, and always seemed to find something new and rewarding in them.

After several chapters, Mr. Griffin caught himself in a yawn. “That’s enough for tonight, I think,” he said, shutting the Bible and setting it back on its stand on the mantel. He went around the room blowing out candles, picked up the one by whose light he’d read. “Shall we go to bed, Mrs. Griffin?”

“As you say, Mr. Griffin.” Victoria got up and followed him into the bedroom. He set the candle in a stand on the small chest of drawers by the bed. Then he and Victoria knelt side by side and prayed the day’s last prayers.

He turned his head and blew out the candle. The small, hot bedroom plunged into darkness. Victoria could not see her hand in front of her face as she lay down.

Her husband joined her in bed a moment later. As they had prayed side by side, so they lay side by side. She felt the mattress shift, heard the small, soft sounds of fasteners opening as he undid part of his overalls.So, she thought, and spread her legs for him.

He rolled onto her without a word, his weight and the heavy smell of him a familiar burden. His right hand pulled her dress up to her waist, bundled it between them. His left, for a moment, closed on her right breast. After a couple of squeezes that brought hurt and pleasure mixed, he took it away. Then, brusquely, he thrust himself into her.

That hurt, too; she was still dry. The rough cloth of his overalls chafed against her inner thighs, and against the new bites there. She opened her legs wider. The motion, though intended as one of escape, helped ease his way. A few more thrusts and he was lodged to the hilt.

His harsh exhalations stirred the soft down of her cheek. His passage in and out of her grew smoother. She felt herself tighten around him. Of itself, her back arched as she awaited the gathering sweetness of each new thrust.

He grunted above her, quivered briefly, and stopped. All his weight came down on her, so she could hardly breathe. As he withdrew, she felt a pang of frustrated longing. Congress between man and wife was one of the few pleasures the Church of the Holy Mission sanctioned. To have that pleasure cut short before its peak— Victoria sighed. It usually was.

Mr. Griffin flopped back to his side of the bed. Victoria rearranged her dress so it decently covered her once more. “May God grant us a child,” she said. They’d had a daughter a year and a half before, but she’d died inside of three months. The empty place she left still ached inside Victoria.

Her husband did not answer. He had already started to snore. She sighed again—quietly, so she would not disturb him. She lay on her back, staring up at the blackness of the ceiling. Of itself, her hand pressed at the place where her legs joined, this time not to scratch but to finish what Mr. Griffin had begun. But the first twinge of sensation made her guiltily snatch it away. “Sinful,” she whispered, reminding herself. “Shameful.”

After a long while, she slept.



Breakfast was a heel of bread. The butter was going bad; in Reverence’s climate, it would not keep no matter what she did. The rancid taste lingered in Victoria’s mouth as she loaded iron tools into her basket for the trip to the Haldol village. Having to make that trip left a bad taste in her mouth, too.

At the edge of the jungle, she turned to look back at New Zion. She felt like one of the Hebrews doomed to wander in the desert for forty years. No help for it, though. Treading carefully to keep from falling again, she started down the narrow, winding track that led from the human settlement to that of the Haldols.

Reverence’s jungle was far more alien to her than the long-ago desert of Sinai had been to the Hebrews. Even the green of the foliage was brighter, shinier, a touch more yellow than the honest green of the Earthly plants that fed New Zion. When she brushed into them, the leaves felt velvety against the skin of her hands and face. Smells went in swift succession from lasciviously sweet to stinks worse than any outhouse.

Bugs were everywhere—bugs on the velvety leaves, bugs on the ground, bugs flying through the air. Victoria swatted at herself, but she might as well have been Pharaoh, trying to hold back the inrushing Red Sea. Even in New Zion, bugs were a torment. In the jungle, they were a plague. She thought again of Pharaoh as many-legged wriggling things tickled between her breasts, ran up and down her legs, tried to crawl into her ears and nostrils. By the horror they raised in her, they might have been Satan’s imps.

The closer she drew to the Haldol village, the thicker the bugs became and the more of them were the pinhead-sized biters that particularly afflicted Reverence’s natives—and Victoria. She was all but trembling when the jungle abruptly ended and the clearing round the village began. A tall yellow Haldol spotted her and let out a high, trilling yeep that momentarily silenced the racket in the market square.

Everyone in the square came rushing toward her, yeeping and whistling and calling out “Good day! God bless you!” in shrilly accented English. The Haldols resembled nothing so much as stick people whose ancestors had been salamanders. Their skins were hairless and as slick and moist as the inside of her cheek, their eyes huge and round and altogether black. They wore no clothes. Their genitals looked enough like those of human beings to make Victoria’s cheeks heat on seeing them.

Worse even than those shamelessly and openly displayed genitals were the red warty patches on the sides of the males’ necks. Not only did they look creviced and diseased, but a faint odor of rotting meat came from them. The Haldols never seemed to notice it, but it twisted Victoria’s stomach and brought a flow of nauseous saliva to her mouth.

And worst of all were the vermin. She watched them crawl blithely over the Haldols’ smooth, shiny skins, now and then pausing to feed. The Haldols paid no special attention to them, not even when they came to rest on their private parts. She squirmed, remembering her own torments of the day before.

The vermin seemed fond of the Haldols’ privates.Why not? she thought—they were filthy creatures, and had to be naturally drawn to filthy places. They also congregated around the males’ warty, stinking neck patches. And from the Haldols, they were happy enough to crawl onto Victoria. She squirmed again, this time at the feather touch of tiny feet.

“What you want,pisquaa ?” one of the males squealed. The Haldol epithet for humans meant something likesilly person wrapped up in big leaves . Haldols thought humans endlessly amusing. It wasn’t mutual, not to the serious folk who went about God’s work at New Zion.

“I need a new water jug,” Victoria answered. She spoke no Haldol; few colonists did. The male who had asked her the question translated her reply into his own high-pitched speech.

His companions chattered excitedly. A water jug was serious business. “I show you!” the male said. “No, I!” another one broke in. A third, one evidently without English, pointed to his own skinny chest. Victoria vowed she would never chaffer with him.

Several more of the tall yellow natives darted into their huts, to emerge in moments with jugs to thrust into Victoria’s face. The Haldols were such excellent potters that no one at New Zion followed that trade any more. But the natives were ignorant of metalwork. They squawked in delight when Victoria displayed the assortment of nails, knife blades, and other iron tools she’d brought with her.

She quickly waved away a couple of would-be jug sellers whose wares were obscenely decorated. The Haldols had no sense of decency; they believed anything that was right to do was also right to depict. Anyone in New Zion depraved enough to buy such wares would spend time in the stocks.

Some of the potters were greedy. They wanted more tools than she was willing to part with. After a while, she was down to dickering with only three males. She liked all their pots. One in particular had lines of almost perfect smoothness. When she lifted it and set it against her hip, it fit as if it had grown there. But she did not want the Haldol to know she was especially fond of his pot, so she also made sure to admire the jugs the other two set before her.

The haggling went on most of the morning. That was partly because New Zion was not rich enough in iron to waste it for no good cause, and partly because Victoria hated to get the short end of a bargain, even if accepting it would have let her sooner leave the village she loathed.

The Haldols not directly involved in the haggling returned to their own pursuits, as unselfconsciously as if she had not been there. Some went out into the jungle to forage for the animals and fruits on which they lived. A disappointed potter, one with whom Victoria had chosen not to deal, began to shape a clay coil into a new vessel. Young Haldols scampered here and there, screaming at one another; they were even louder and shriller than their elders. A female spitted a still-writhing lizardy creature on a sharp stick and held it over the fire.

Haldols casually relieved themselves in the open. Victoria tried not to look, lowering her eyes to the water jugs and to the metal she was offering in exchange (that last was a sensible precaution in any case, as knife blade or nails might otherwise inexplicably ascend to heaven). But the sharp, foul stink of the natives’ droppings fought against the burnt-meat smell of the roasting (andstill squirming) lizard.

She finally shook her head once too often at one of the Haldol potters. With dignity, he picked up his jug and walked away. Now she faced only two males, the one whose pot she really wanted and one whose work she would take if the other kept insisting on an exorbitant price.

Sensing that the dicker was heating up, more Haldols strolled over to watch and to be in at the climax. Just behind her preferred potter, a male Haldol ran his hands down the flanks and over the breastless chest of the female beside him. The female’s mouth took the “O” shape that was a Haldol’s smile. She turned toward the male, reached out and took his member in her hand.

Again, Victoria lowered her eyes to the pots—again and again. Of themselves, they kept returning to the Haldol couple, who went about coupling as nonchalantly as if they were the only souls (damned souls, surely, for their heathen lack of shame, but souls nonetheless) for miles about. She’d seen animals mate countless times, back in New Zion, but animals were only animals, and only slightly embarrassing. Haldols were people, of a sort.

The female sank gracefully to her knees in the mud. Her mouth closed on the male’s organ. Victoria’s cheeks were incandescent. Any woman who performed such lewdness—any man base or lascivious enough to demand it—the stocks or the pillory could not be enough. They would kick their lives away on the gibbet . . . if they did not burn.

Then the female went down on all fours. The male knelt beside her. They joined like dogs. The Haldols, used to such horrid sights, found the bargaining over the water jar more interesting than their linked fellows. Victoria’s cheeks grew hotter still as she watched the couple’s slow, deliberate movements. Unexpectedly, mortifyingly, she also knew heat in her loins, the same frustrating, incomplete warming Mr. Griffin sometimes brought her in the darkness.

More anxious than ever to escape this cesspit of iniquity, she closed the deal with the Haldol potter she preferred faster than she might have. He beeped and squeaked his glee as she passed him nails and blades and fish hooks. The other potter glumly walked away, no doubt wishing the human would have been so generous to him.

The copulating Haldols finished at last. They got up, pulled some green leaves off a vine to wipe the mud from their lower legs and from the female’s hands. They ignored the vermin crawling over the rest of their bodies, which would have distressed Victoria worse than any mud. Vermin even crept inside the female’s distended genital slit. The sight made Victoria’s stomach churn. So did the way the Haldol did nothing to drive them away, but went right on talking to the male with whom she’d just mated.

Victoria snatched up the water jug and fled. “Goodbye,pisquaa, ” the Haldol potter called after her. “God bless you.”

At that moment, she was convinced God would bless her most if He arranged for her never to have to set foot in the Haldol village again.



“They aredirty creatures,” Victoria said to Cornelia Baker when she walked by the next morning.

“Who, the Haldols?” Cornelia’s mouth narrowed into a thin, disapproving line. “Of course they are, my dear. They reject the true and living God, the only true morality. Why do you think we go so seldom to their villages?” Her eyes widened in perfectly realistic sympathy. “But then you had to visit them yesterday, didn’t you? The water jug. I do hope you’re better from your fall.”

“Yes, thank you.” Victoria ground her teeth. Somehow it seemed impossible to imagine Cornelia Baker with vermin crawling through her pubic hair, with bloodsucking vermin piercing her glazed, flawless skin—what would they find for nourishment under there? But she was not only a human being but of the flock of the Church of the Holy Mission, and Victoria’s repugnance at all she’d witnessed among the Haldols came out: “They areso vile. Public filth, public lewdness—”

Cornelia looked at her avidly. “Whatdid you see?”

“I cannot even bring myself to describe it,” Victoria said. She was so full of disgust that she did not notice Cornelia’s expression change to one of disappointment. “And the Haldol vermin were everywhere. How can they live that way?”

“They are dirty, as you said,” Cornelia answered. “Another good reason to avoid them when we can. Is that a new bite on your cheek?”

Victoria’s hand flew up to the injured spot. “Er—yes,” she said, and knew she risked eternal damnation for the lie. Mr. Griffin had put that bruise there. He was not a hard man; he’d only hit her once for not having their home in proper order when he returned from the fields. Getting the new water jug from the Haldols had taken up too much of the day for her to finish the rest of the chores. But it was her own fault that the old jug had broken, so how could she complain?

“I do wish we could be rid of the Haldols’ vermin, I will say that,” Cornelia said. “Even the Haldols would benefit thereby. Surely they suffer worse from disease for being so constantly afflicted with those cursed crawling pinheads.”

Victoria did not care whether the base and lewd Haldols benefited; by her best guess, the vermin that swarmed over them were a judgment like unto that which God had visited upon the sinful Egyptians. But how was divine justice served by having New Zion also suffer for the natives’ vile profligacy? Try as she might, she could see no answer to that question.

No more, however, could she see how to be rid of the vermin. She said as much: “The Holy Mission Church long ago forswore the devilish arts we would need to kill off the bugs.” As if to remind her they were still there, one of them bit her on the inside of the ankle. She rubbed the wounded part against her other leg. Sometimes that crushed the little pests. More often, as now, the bug simply shifted its attack.

Cornelia Baker’s voice went soft and sly: “We have not the devilish arts, but those at the Federation base may well.”

“But they are as godless as the Haldol,” Victoria gasped, trying again—and again without success—to kill the biter that was tormenting her. “They are worse, for, being human, they should be of His flock.” The folk of New Zion had had no intercourse with the base in the two years since it was established. They had also firmly made it known that no one not of the Holy Mission Church was welcome in their town.

“How better and more just to overthrow the devil than through his own instruments?” Cornelia asked.

That was sound dogma. Victoria knew it. She also knew Cornelia was tempting her, trying to get her to be the one to step beyond the bounds of what was proper. “Mr. Griffin would never permit me to seek out the ones who have turned their backs on the Lord,” she said. The bug bit her leg again, this time in the fold of skin at the back of her knee. A drop of blood—or maybe it was just sweat—slid wetly down her calf.

“Will you let him keep you from serving the greater glory of God?” Cornelia said.

“Proper obedience—” Before Victoria could say anything further, the biter sank its piercing beak into her flesh once more. It was not a sign like the burning bush, or like Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, but she was no great prophet or saint, to deserve a great sign. She took the small one for what she thought it meant, and said, “Perhaps I will go after all.”

“God will bless you for it,” Cornelia exclaimed fervently, her eyes glowing at the prospect of His work being done . . . and also at the prospect of its being done at no risk to herself.

The Federation research base was farther from New Zion than the Haldol village. If she went there, she would surely be gone the greater part of a day. Mr. Griffin would probably hit her again, maybe more than once this time. She rubbed her cheek, wondering if she really wanted to take that chance.

Better a beating now and then,she thought,than this constant torment from vermin. As if to underscore the point, the Haldol pinhead crawling up her leg probed her again with its red-hot needle of a snout.

“Yes, perhaps I shall go after all,” she said, swatting at herself. Cornelia Baker smiled.



The Haldol village, while disgusting, was at least disgusting in a comprehensible way. Victoria’s knees wobbled from fear as much as from fatigue as she finally drew near the Federation research base. For all she knew, the godless scientists inside were waiting to strip her soul from her body with one of their machines and send it straight to the eternal fire. She didn’t know whether they could do that, but she thought they might be able to. Why would the Holy Mission Church so completely have rejected science if it did not emanate from Satan? Only the thought of getting rid of the vermin that constantly tortured her, that she hated and feared, kept her going forward.

A woman’s voice spoke from out of the air. “Hello, there. You’re one of the Churchies, aren’t you? What are you doing here? We thought you people didn’t want anything to do with us.”

Victoria had trouble following the quick, sharp accent, so different from that of her own folk. After a moment, she managed to stammer out an answer: “I—I need to talk with you people about—about something to help the Haldols.”

“Do you?” the unseen woman said. Victoria thought she sounded dubious. “Well, come on, then. No reason we can’t talk about it.”

The research base was a single low, immense building, taking up almost as much space on the ground as the entire village of New Zion. A pair of big glass panes were in the size and shape of a double door, but Victoria saw no handle. “How do I go in?” she asked.

Without warning, and with no human agency she could detect, the glass panes hissed apart from each other. Startled and alarmed, she drew back a pace. “Come in if you’re coming,” the woman said, sharply now. “Don’t just stand there letting out all our nice, conditioned air.”

Muttering a prayer, Victoria walked into the base. The doors closed behind her with another soft hiss. She shivered. No wonder the Holy Mission Church had turned its back on technology, if technology could make ordinary objects like doors behave as if they were infused with life.

She shivered again. She’d lived all her life in Reverence’s tropical humidity. Now, for the first time, she felt air that wasn’t hot and sticky. It seemed chilly and wrong, but only for a moment. After that, it was delicious—seductivewas another word that sprang into her mind. This was technology, too, she realized, technology luring man away from honest reality and into luxurious indolence.

The people inside the research base did not seem indolent. They bustled back and forth, going into a doorway here, popping out of one there. Despite the unnaturally cool air, they wore only brightly colored singlets and shorts. Victoria needed most of a minute to realize that some of the people so dressed were women. She blushed and cast her eyes to the floor at the indecent display of flesh. It was almost as bad as what she’d witnessed at the Haldol village—almost.Nothing could be that bad.

“Good heavens, dearie, whendid you last bathe?” By the voice, it was the woman Victoria had heard outside. Victoria had to look at her. She was in her late twenties, a few years older than Victoria, with light brown hair cut shorter than any woman in New Zion wore it, gray eyes, and open, friendly features. From the neck up, she looked like a nice person. From the neck down . . . an orange singlet that clung to the bosom tightly enough to reveal the outlines of nipples, green shorts that molded themselves to buttocks, had to be devices of the devil to incite sensuality.

And the question she’d asked, and the way she’d asked it—“A few days ago,” Victoria answered, more than a little defiantly. She didn’t smell any different from anyone else in New Zion; she smelled the way a person was supposed to smell. Gathering her spirit, she looked the strange woman in the face, asked, “When did you last pray?”

The woman blinked. “It’s been longer than a few days, I’ll tell you that. But I already knew your priorities were different from mine. Fair enough. My name is Janice; who are you?” She held out her hand as if she were a man.

Scandalized yet again, Victoria took it. She gave her own name. Then she blurted, “Can you help me? I’ve come on account of the vermin.”

“The vermin?” Janice frowned. A tiny vertical line appeared between her eyebrows. “I think you need to tell me more. Why don’t you come along into my office so we can talk?”

Victoria followed her. A whole wall of the office was filled with—at first she thought they were windows. Then she realized they had to be something more. One showed the way she had come—this Janice must have seen her as she approached. The woman waved her to a chair. It was softer and conformed more closely to her shape than any that would have been tolerated in New Zion. Its very comfort made her want to squirm. Janice gave her a glass of something cold. “Is it spirituous?” she asked suspiciously.

“Is it what?” Janice asked. She spoke to something on her desk. Victoria almost got up and left when the desk answered. But Janice turned to her and said, “No, it has no alcohol.”

Partially reassured, she took a small sip. Whatever it was, it was sweet and very cold, colder than stream water ever got. She felt it slide all the way down inside her when she swallowed. She took another sip, and another. Pretty soon the glass was empty. Victoria set it aside and said, “Now. About the vermin.”

“Go ahead,” Janice said. “Tell me about the vermin.”

Victoria told her, not so much about the vermin themselves as about her trip to the Haldol village. She even found herself stammering out the story of what the male and female Haldol had done right before her eyes, and how the vermin ambled over their slick, moist skins while they did it. (She would never have spoken of such things back in New Zion, but Janice, by the way she dressed and by the fact that she did not belong to the Holy Mission Church, seemed a harlot herself, and thus unlikely to be offended.) Victoria finished, “It’s just—disgusting. It can’t be healthy for them—the Haldols, I mean—either.”

“You surprise me, you really do,” Janice said. “From all I’d ever heard, none of you Churchies gave a damn about the Haldols.”

“Theyare damned,” Victoria said.So are you, she added to herself.

“Never mind; that’s not quite what I meant.” Janice frowned, considering. “We probably could get rid of their parasites for you, if that’s what you want. Are you really sure that’s what you want?”

Something in the way she asked the question warned Victoria it had teeth (after a moment, she figured out what it was: this Janice woman sounded like Cornelia Baker). She asked, “Why shouldn’t it be what I really want?”

“Well, what do you think will happen with the Haldols if they aren’t constantly pestered by disease-carrying vermin?” Janice asked.

“They’ll be healthier, like I said. Why shouldn’t I want them to be healthier?” Victoria wondered if she and Janice were speaking the same language.

Janice said, “Yes, I think you’re right; I think they will be healthier. Not only that, I think their children won’t die young so often. I think they’ll grow up and have lots of little Haldols of their own.”

“Good. Maybe, God willing, we’ll be able to convert them to proper love for Jesus Christ.” Babies who died young—even Haldol babies—touched Victoria’s heart.

Janice studied her as if she were a bug herself. “You really don’t understand, do you?”

“Understand what?”

“If we fix it so the Haldols don’t die young, there are going to be more and more Haldols. They’ll need more and more land, too. What will you Churchies do then? They’re native to this world and you’re not. Odds are, they’ll overwhelm you in a few generations. That’s how evolution works, you know.”

Victoria didn’t know. Evolution was evil; she was certain of that. The certainty was the beginning and end of her knowledge on the subject. Of one thing, however, she was even more certain. “The Lord will provide for us,” she said confidently. A pinhead bit her, just below her left breast. She shuddered. She was also sure that having those accursed vermin dead now mattered more to her than anything a few generations down the road. Her great-grandchildren, if she ever had any, could take care of themselves. All she wanted was to be free of welts.

“The Lord will provide, will he, dearie?” Janice no longer seemed open and friendly. Again, she reminded Victoria of Cornelia—Cornelia looking for a way to get someone else into trouble at no expense to herself. “If that’s what you want, I’m willing to give it to you. Far as I can see, it’ll serve you right. You people have no business on this planet in the first place.”

“Why do you hate us so much?” The hostility of the Federation research worker’s response rocked Victoria. “What did we ever do to you?”

“You know-nothings have been holding back the advance of knowledge for the last two thousand years,” Janice said. “If you had your way, all of humanity would be back on Earth, living in filthy huts like yours, starving one year in three, and going off to war over the nature of God. As far as I’m concerned, the faster people who think like you die out, the better off we’ll all be. So I’ll do just what you asked, because I think that’s the quickest way to be rid of you for good.”

Shaking, Victoria started to tell her to forget the whole idea. Then she realized it was too late for that; Janice was certain to try to get rid of the vermin now, just to hurt the Church of the Holy Mission as much as she could. Victoria’s voice wobbled as she said, “You seem just as sure you have the only right way to do things as we are. We at least have faith to sustain us. What sustains you?”

Before Janice could answer, she happened to glance down at her arm. Like a wandering pinhead, a Haldol bug crawled through the fine hair there. With a cry of disgust, she crushed it between thumb and forefinger. “I should have had you fumigated before I ever let you in here.”

“What does fumigated mean?” Victoria asked.

“You sure wouldn’t know, would you, Churchie? You just go on home now. We’ll take care of the bugs for you, I promise you that.” When Janice got to her feet, she carefully examined herself to make sure no other vermin from Victoria had attached themselves to her. Victoria averted her eyes, not caring for the sensual thoughts roused by the sight of Janice’s hands sliding over her smooth flesh (how did the woman have no hair on her legs?). She knew Janice was not caressing herself for the pleasure of it, but that was still how it looked.

“Go on,” Janice said again. “Out of here. I’ll clean up after you.” As Victoria left the office and headed for the door by which she’d entered, the woman from the research base followed her with a metal tube that sent forth a sweetly noxious vapor. “Want me to spray you, too?”

“No, thank you,” Victoria said with as much dignity as she could muster. She didn’t mind smelling the way she smelled, and going back to New Zion literally reeking of technology was unthinkable.

“Keep your vermin, then,” Janice said. “I don’t know why I bothered to ask; you’d just pick up another set of them on the way home. And we will get rid of them in a bit—just remember, you asked for it.” With that, she touched a button. The glass doors hissed open. Victoria stepped through. The doors closed. Inside the base, Janice sprayed where she had stood.

The outside air smote her like a warm, wet fist. She’d found the climate trying enough, living in it every moment of her life. Now, after an hour or two in—what had Janice called it?—conditioned air, she realized just how dreadful the weather was.

By the time she got back to New Zion, sweat plastered her heavy wool dress to her until it was almost as obscenely tight as Janice’s outfit had been. The rough fabric prickled against the soft skin of her belly and flanks. She tugged at the dress, trying to pull it away, but no sooner did she let go than it stuck again.

She did not see Cornelia Baker anywhere about. That, she thought, was as well. She turned off the central street toward her own cabin. It would be good to get home. Then her stomach did a flipflop and she felt cold in spite of the weather. Her husband stood outside the front door waiting for her, his thick arms folded across his chest. His fists were clenched.

She dipped her head to him. “Good even’, Mr. Griffin.”

“Where have you been?” His voice seemed to rumble out from somewhere deep inside him. “Nothing’s done here. Have you been slothfully idling again?”

“No, Mr. Griffin, I’ve not been idling,” Victoria said, deciding not to notice that unjustagain . “I’m sorry I didn’t do as much here as I might have today; the walk to and from the Federation research base took longer than I thought it would.”

He stared at her. She’d given him an answer he’d not looked for. It was not, however, one he approved of. “Did Satan possess you, to make you want to visit that godless place?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Griffin,” she said.I will not fear him, she told herself uselessly. “I thought they might have a way to rid the Haldols—and us—of the crawling vermin that torment our lives. They said they did—they said they would.” She did not repeat what else the woman named Janice had said. She trusted God to know who His true followers on Reverence were, and to protect them.

“Technology,” he said in that rumbling, fateful voice. “You went seeking technology. Technology is the Whore of Babylon, as well you know.”

“Yes, Mr. Griffin,” she whispered. The elders of the Church of the Holy Mission drummed that into every child on New Zion. Still, though, she tried to defend herself: “I did not seek it for us, Mr. Griffin, only for the Haldols, so that—” She broke off.—so that I wouldn’t be sickened by seeing the vermin crawl on them, sickened near to madness by the feel of them on me was what was true. She had gone looking for technology for her own sake, then. She could not lie. That sin was even worse. She stared at the ground between her feet. “I’m sorry, Mr. Griffin.”

He turned, opened the door. “I think we’d better go inside, Mrs. Griffin.” Numbly, she followed him into the cabin. He closed the door behind them. The sound of the bar thudding home was dreadfully final. Jonah might have heard that sound when the jaws of the whale closed on him.

“Please, Mr. Griffin—” Victoria began. He hit her then. Whatever she’d been about to say was lost in the pain. He hit her again, and again. She cowered and endured it as best she could. At first he was dispassionate about the beating, as if he were simply training an animal to do what he required.

But soon he began to breathe hard. The blows he rained on her grew harder and less calculated. “Whoring with the Whore of Babylon,” he panted. “I’ll teach you about whoring. See if I don’t!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and hurled her to the ground. One of her outflung arms slammed against a footstool, sent it spinning away.

He threw himself atop her. Even then, she did not understand what he was about until he jerked her dress up toward her waist. “No, Mr. Griffin,” she exclaimed. “Not in the daylight!”

“Shut up, whore!” He backhanded her. Clumsily, one-handed, he unbuttoned his overalls, yanked them down. She shut her eyes tight so she would not have to see the swollen organ that slapped against the inside of her thigh.

He always took her roughly. But for the fact that she was down on the floor instead of in their bed, this was hardly different from any other time. But he did it now to punish her further, not to join them as man and wife. She knew that—how well she knew it. But somehow, even though she knew it, his harsh thrusts made her body kindle, transmuting pain to pleasure.

She opened her eyes. His were closed, his face but a couple of inches from her own. Before her pleasure mounted to a peak—too soon as usual—he turned red and grunted like a pig. Then he abruptly pulled himself out of her. She did not want to be empty of him, not yet. But he rolled away, rearranged his overalls. “Cover yourself,” he growled.

“Yes, Mr. Griffin.” She tugged at her dress until it went decently down to her ankles once more. She watched her husband warily as she got to her feet, fearful he wanted to beat her again.

But he seemed sated. He stayed on the floor longer than she had. When he did get up, all he said was, “Fix me some supper.”

“Yes, Mr. Griffin,” Victoria said again. She went back into the kitchen. The places where he had hit her ached at every step. Only a small part of her minded the pain, the animal part concerned solely with bodily well-being. She knew she deserved what he’d given her.

The animal part of her also still wished he’d stayed atop her another minute longer. Her cheeks and ears heated in shame as she took out an onion and began to slice it. He hadn’t intended her to enjoy his body; he’d intended to humiliate her with it. And he had—but the humiliation itself was sweet. It almost tempted her to sin again, so that she might be chastised. . . .

“Get thee behind me, Satan,” she whispered as she reached for the loaf of bread on the counter. She threw away the stale slice at the end. That waste of food was in its own way also sinful, but she wanted supper to be as fine as it could, to show Mr. Griffin she truly was contrite.

Her husband was in his own way a fair man, and not one to hold a grudge—and perhaps that splendid supper did help mollify him. He read Scripture to her afterwards. And he spoke no more of her trip to the Federation research base. Their life together healed along with her bruises.

Two weeks after the day he beat and raped her, her courses failed to come. When she was certain what that meant, she got down on her knees and praised the Lord: “Truly all things work together for good.”



They named the baby Lavinia, after Mr. Griffin’s mother who was in heaven. She was a fussy child, and squawked for Victoria’s breast at all hours of the day and night. Between the baby and everything else she still had to do, Victoria stumbled about in a gray haze of fatigue. But Lavinia flourished, which made up for any amount of exhaustion.

When Lavinia was asleep during the day, Victoria would sometimes steal a moment to stand by the cradle and look down at her. Part of that was the normal pride any mother knew, part the extra concern of a mother who’d already lost one child. And part was the urgent need she felt to keep the vermin away from her baby.

Every so often, one of the round, revolting little bugs crawled out from under Lavinia’s swaddling and walked across her smooth cheek or through her thin, fine light brown hair. Then Victoria’s hand would swoop down like a stooping hawk, nab the pest, and crush it between the nails of thumb and forefinger. A couple of times, after she’d killed two or three vermin in the space of a couple of minutes, she cried because it was her daughter’s blood that stained her hand.

She also found and destroyed a great many biting pinheads while she was changing the baby’s soiled linen: that only made a revolting task more so. The vermin seemed especially fond of Lavinia’s most tender places. Victoria wished she did not have to touch her in those parts, but had no choice. Once she satisfied herself no vermin remained on the baby, she would avert her eyes from what her hands were doing.

The pests also seemed drawn to her breasts. In the moments before she dropped the privacy shawl over Lavinia and her bosom, she would flick away vermin one by one. Whatever she did was never enough. The bugs kept biting her and kept biting Lavinia, too.

She laughed at the promise she’d got from the Federation research base, the promise to eliminate the vermin and with them the settlements of the Church of the Holy Mission. The vaunted technology that had seduced so much of humankind must have stumbled here, when confronting the true elite of God. Progress in the material world was a snare and a delusion, anyhow. Where were Babylon, Rome, New York? Gone, gone, gone.

Victoria was tempted to go back to the research base and tell Janice just that, throw it in her face. Whenever she thought about leaving the baby with a friend for a day and making that long walk, she felt a curious stirring in her privates. That was a temptation, too, but one she managed to resist. She conceived again, but miscarried, which slowed her down for half a year.

The baby grew. She began to walk, to talk, to lisp her first hymns. She got into everything, came home covered in every kind of filth. Victoria washed Lavinia far more often than she washed herself. She always used the baths as an occasion to get rid of as many vermin on her daughter as she could. By the time Lavinia turned three, she found fewer of them than she had before. By the time Lavinia was four, the blood-filled pinheads were almost gone. She noticed she wasn’t getting bitten so often herself, either. She did not know whether to rejoice or be afraid.

When in doubt, she found out what her husband thought. “Fewer vermin lately, seems to me,” she said one evening after Lavinia had gone to sleep. She spoke cautiously, lest he remember how that might have come to pass.

Mr. Griffin grunted. He was tired from another in the endless string of days out in the fields. “Can’t say I miss ’em,” he answered, and let it go at that. Victoria had been sitting at the edge of her chair, stiff with tension. She relaxed—not that the hard chair permitted much relaxation. Her husband truly forgave her long-ago transgression, then.

The glow of relief sustained her only a couple of days. It turned to dread when Lavinia, trying to be helpful, knocked over the water jar and smashed it. She gave the child a sound switching and sent her to bed without supper, but that did not bring back the water jar. She would have to go to the Haldol village and dicker for another one.

She prepared for the ordeal as best she could. She cooked double the next day, so she would only have to reheat the stew the day after that: God willing, Mr. Griffin would find no excuse to set hands on her. She arranged for her neighbor to take care of Lavinia. None of that, though, kept the real panic, the panic that sprang from having to witness Haldol depravity, from making her heart pound and race.

When she finally got to the village, it was as bad as she remembered. In fact, it was worse. Two Haldols were mating in the middle of the street as she came up. They paid no attention to her; the rest of the Haldols paid no attention to them. They found the arrival of apisquaa , a human, far more diverting.

“Pot? Water jar?” one of them said in his squeakily accented smattering of English. “We have pot, water jar, God bless you. What you have,pisquaa ?”

The haggling started there. Victoria was glad to focus on the noisy Haldol potters rather than the lazily copulating couple behind them. Round Haldol eyes stared back at her from round Haldol faces. The red, rough patches on the sides of the males’ necks still reminded her of meat that had gone over.

But the vermin were gone! Not a single biting pinhead crawled across smooth, slimy Haldol skin. The Haldols themselves took no special notice of that, but then, they had never seemed to mind the vermin anyhow. Victoria minded them. Not having to look at them wandering over Haldol bodies, not having to feel their tiny legs on her own flesh and in her hair, left her so relieved that she almost managed not to think about the open lewdness constantly on display in the village.

One by one, the potters picked up their jugs and carried them away. At last Victoria was quietly bargaining with a single male, each of them sure goods would change hands, each intent they should do so on the best possible terms. Quietly bargaining . . . no sooner had the phrase crossed Victoria’s mind than she looked up (no risk to her sensibilities now, for the mating couple had long since finished). One of the reasons the Haldol village was quieter than she remembered from her last visit was that fewer immature Haldols were about, and no little yellow toddlers that she could see.

“Where are all the children?” she asked the Haldol potter, who could use her language fairly well. “Are they out in the forest today for some reason?”

The Haldol stuck out his tongue, a gesture of uncertainty. “Not so many childs,pisquaa . Few borns. Think maybe forest gods angry. Plenty pray them, plenty—” He pumped his arm in an obscene gesture that made Victoria blush. “But females, they no get childs.”

“Your gods are false,” Victoria said. “Surely Jesus would hear your prayers. The true God gave His only-begotten Son that mankind might live forever. Accept Him and He will help you—you are His creatures, too.”

Members of the Holy Mission Church had been preaching the Gospel to the Haldols since the day they landed on Reverence. Ever since that day, the Haldols had ignored them or, worse, laughed at them: all they’d taken was theGod bless you that larded their speech. But now the potter stuck out his tongue and said, “Maybe we talk to this God of yours. Ours not hear.”

Exultation filled Victoria’s body. It was sweeter than beet sugar, sweeter than anything she’d known save the spasm of her flesh when, as occasionally did happen, Mr. Griffin mounted her long enough to take her out of herself. She bit the inside of her lip, hard, at having the temerity to compare the carnal to his infusion of divine joy.

She gave the potter an extra knife blade, above and beyond the price they’d finally settled on. “God bless you, youpisquaa really crazy,” he said. She did not care. Had he been only a little less repellent to her, she would have kissed him.

Even her husband said, “If they truly do come over to Christ, you have done well, Mrs. Griffin.” That made her hold her head proud and high until she remembered vanity was also sinful. She hoped Mr. Griffin would choose that night to lie with her. When they were in bed, she even went so far as to brush her thigh against his, as if by accident, shamefully forward though that was. But he was already asleep. The day had been long. She soon joined him in slumber.



Victoria was used to getting up at dawn. From sun to sun never seemed time enough to get through a day’s chores. But she was not used to being blasted out of bed by a horn that sounded as if Satan himself would wind it come Judgment Day. “That’s technology,” Mr. Griffin shouted, trying to make himself heard above the hellish din. “What are the damned Federation people playing at, using their accursed technology here?”

Victoria did not answer. Lavinia was screaming in terror from the next room. She ran to comfort her daughter, who cried, “Make it stop, Mommy! Make the bad noise stop!” But Victoria could not make the bad noise stop.

In fact, the noise got worse, for it turned to bellowed words, and terrifying words: “Victoria Griffin! Where are you, Victoria Griffin? Come out!”

From the other bedroom, Mr. Griffin yelled, “Don’t you go, Mrs. Griffin! I’ll fetch the axe to protect you.”

All at once, Victoria felt a warm burst of affection for her husband. She also felt fear for him—what could an axe do against the demonic dangers of technology?

“We need to talk with you, Victoria Griffin,” the impossibly loud voice went on. “No harm will come to you; you have our promise.”

“Don’t believe them, Mrs. Griffin,” Mr. Griffin said. “Those from outside the Church are by nature liars and cheats.”

Now that the horn was no longer blaring, Victoria found she could think again, after a fashion. She said, “Let me go out, Mr. Griffin. How can they have any reason to wish me harm? And even if they should, well, as a martyr for the faith I will sit at the right hand of God and His Son. And besides,” she added, slipping from the spiritual to the purely pragmatic, “if I talk with them, maybe they’ll quit roaring.”

Her sudden switch jerked a startled chuckle from her husband. “All right, Mrs. Griffin. God go with you.”

“God go with you, Mommy,” Lavinia echoed as Victoria walked out of her room and went to the front door. Despite her brave words, her legs were fear-light, ready to turn and bolt the instant her will released them. She took a deep, determined breath and kept walking.

Several men and women of New Zion were already out of doors, staring in disbelief and horror at the smoothly curved metal device that floated a couple of feet above the grass of the village square, and at the wantonly dressed man and woman sitting inside the device. Cornelia Baker’s avidly curious glance flicked from the flying machine to Victoria and back again. Victoria looked away, sick at heart. Cornelia would never let her live down such scandal.

She decided the quickest way to be rid of the scientists (even thinking such a filthy word made her lips purse in dismay) would be to let them have their say. She forced herself to take a step toward the flier. “Here I am.”

“That’s her, all right.” Victoria recognized Janice more by voice than by face. Janice jumped down from the flying machine. Even Cornelia Baker gasped at the sight of her uncovered legs. Several New Zion doors slammed shut as the folk who lived in those cabins protected themselves from the shocking spectacle.

Janice strode toward Victoria. “I ought to knock your stupid, hymn-singing teeth down your throat, you stinking Churchie,” she snarled.

Victoria stared at her. “How have I offended you? How could I have offended you, when we’ve not so much as seen each other these past five years?”

“You didn’t do much then, either, did you?” Janice said bitterly. “All you did was set in motion the extinction of a whole intelligent species.”

“What? The vermin?” Victoria said. “Youare mad.”

“Not the vermin—the Haldols. There won’t be any more Haldols after the last of this generation dies, and it’s all your fault.”

“All I wanted to do was to get rid of the vermin, so the Haldols wouldn’t suffer so much from them.”And so they wouldn’t crawl on me, Victoria thought, recalling too well the feel of tiny legs moving through her body hair, of needlelike mouthparts jabbing through her skin to suck her blood.

“So you asked us, and we did it. We took care of the bugs, all right—turn three tailored retroviruses loose on them at once and they go, go fast. Trouble was, we moved too fast. I’m going to hate myself every day for the rest of my life for that, and I’m not the only one. When the Haldols stopped having little Haldols, we tried to find out why. Turns out the vermin aren’t just vermin—the Haldols need them to reproduce.”

“That’s the most disgusting thing I ever heard,” Victoria said with a shudder. “Besides, how could it be true? To my shame, I’ve seen what the Haldols do. It’s not—” Hot blood rose from her throat to the crown of her head, but she made herself go on, though her voice fell to a whisper: “It’s not that different from what passes between men and women.”

“It doesn’tlook that different,” Janice corrected her. “But male Haldols don’t put sperm into females when they fuck, they—”

“When they what?” Victoria broke in.

Janice clapped a hand to her forehead. “Churchies! When they mate, I mean. Anyway, they don’t put sperm in. They just prime the females’—organs. Is that all right? Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

“Yes. Go on,” Victoria said. The sooner this was over, the better.

“I am.” Janice glared at her. She still didn’t understand what she’d done wrong. The woman from the research base continued, “They prime them, they make them secrete a mucus loaded with pheromones that— Why am I bothering? Anyway, then the vermin that have been wandering over their bodies, the vermin that have picked up sperm from the males’ throat patches, those vermin go inside to feed on the mucus and incidentally to put the sperm where they’ll do the most good.”

Victoria remembered watching vermin crawl into the female Haldol’s private parts after she was done mating, remembered how sick the sight had made her. Now, knowing why they did it, she felt even sicker. She said, “You’re telling me that without the vermin—”

“No more baby Haldols, not ever again. That’s right, Churchie. How do you like being responsible for wiping out a whole race?”

The weight of the accusation was crushing, a weight like the one Jesus had accepted when He assumed the burden of mankind’s sins. But He was the Son of God, Victoria a mere human being.I didn’t mean it, she thought. That wasn’t good enough. She tried, “You’re the ones who killed the vermin, not me.” That wasn’t good enough, either; she knew it the moment the words passed her lips.

“We never would have done it if you hadn’t suggested it,” Janice said.

The coldness in her voice brought back to Victoria how cold it had been inside the research base; it was the only time in her life, save after an infrequent bath, that she hadn’t been filmed with sticky sweat (and, she recalled, Janice had said something rude about how often, or rather how seldom, she bathed). Thinking of that unnatural chill helped her remember what had gone on in there, remember it with almost word-for-word clarity, as if it had happened yesterday, not five years before. She said, “You didn’t get rid of the vermin to do New Zion and the Church of the Holy Mission a favor. You did it for the Haldols—you thought your lying evolution would make them prevail over us. I told you then that the Lord would provide. Now I see that He has.” She dropped to her knees and clasped her hands so she could properly thank God for His blessing.

Deep in her throat, Janice made a noise that would have seemed better suited to the killing beasts that haunted the jungles of Reverence. “Better it would have been you,” she ground out. “You deserve to be extinct. We’re going to try to figure out a way to keep the Haldols going without their vermin, but God—and I don’t mean yours—only knows if we’ll be able to do it before all their females get too old to breed. With a research budget that just about keeps us in paper clips, it won’t be easy.”

“I will pray for you and the Haldols both, you for delivery from your false idol of technology, and them for being delivered from the affliction it has brought.” Victoria shut her eyes to do just that. She slid into the near-trance state that marked true communion with God. In it, she was only dimly aware of Janice stomping away, of the aircarwhooshing out of New Zion, of the gasps from some of the more impressionable folk there at the sight of that marvel.

When at last she came back to herself, Cornelia Baker was standing in front of her. The other woman helped her to her feet, brushed at her dress to get out the mark of the dirt in which she’d knelt. “You drove them away, Victoria,” Cornelia said. “How ever did you do that?”

It was, Victoria thought, the first time in her life that she’d succeeded in impressing Cornelia Baker. “I told them the Lord’s truth, Cornelia,” she answered proudly.

“Was she—the slut, I mean—was she talking with you about the Haldols’—their—their—” Cornelia Baker was the boldest woman in New Zion. Not even she could make herself discuss prurient matters straight on.

Victoria understood her well enough. “Her name is Janice. Yes, we talked about that.” What the Haldols did, she thought, was so vile it made the way of man and woman, squalid as that was, seem perfection and purity beside it. “She says they’ll probably die out after this generation, and leave the whole world of Reverence to us.”

“Oh.” Cornelia thought about that. “Where will we get our pots, then?”

“It won’t happen tomorrow,” Victoria assured her. “Our great-grandparents knew how. I expect we’ll have time to learn again. It’s just what I told Janice—the Lord will provide. He always has.”

Cornelia Baker nodded confidently. “Amen,” she said.