Chapter 2

“But I’m supposed to be taking over for Béla, I mean, the Goddess of the Land,” Elaine was saying to the Bard Geoffrey. “Shouldn’t I have some sort of title?”

“You have a title, Goddess,” Jeff explained. “It’s ‘Goddess’. If you want to be called something else, you’ll have to associate yourself with that object or concept. The only thing I can think of to associate you with is Temptation!”

Annoyed by where her questions had led them, Bard Geoffrey closed the book of historical references he’d been reading when the goddess had interrupted him to learn more about what duties were expected of her now that her sister goddess was no longer available. He watched the naked, golden-haired goddess as she considered what he said.

‘The Goddess of Temptation, huh?’ Elaine thought to herself. Somehow, it lacked a certain ... dignity. She sighed, deciding to hold off on this matter until later. She needed a better title than that. “All right, you win. ‘Goddess’ will do, for now...”

She smiled at him. He was trying really hard to be annoyed with her right now, but she could plainly feel his attraction for her. That ‘want’ in his soul was what fueled his annoyance with her. As much as the Bard loved and worshiped the now absent Goddess of the Land, he lusted for her sister, Elaine, as well.

“What other duties are there?” she asked. “Do we eat together, or anything? Ceremonial dinners and stuff? Can I still have my own weekly services now that I’m a Justice?” She was being coy with him now. She’d lived in the manor with them for almost two years. She knew the routine.

“You will, I realize, do as you please, just as you always have,” Jeff replied, resigning himself to the fact that she was going to be the district goddess until such time as the Goddess of the Land saw fit to return to the land of the living. He was stuck with this temptress of a goddess until then.

“As far as administering justice,” he continued, “your reputation may cause some problems, but if you are as diligent as your predecessor in recognizing true causes and assigning appropriate sentences, any detractors to your reign will have no ground to stand on.

“You realize, of course,” he concluded, “that many people will not equate your incredible beauty and sexuality with intelligence and fairness in judgment. I know how smart you are and how well you can read others. I trust that the Goddess of the Land has trained you well enough in right-finding. It will be your words, your actions and your judgments that will create the light with which others see you.”

‘He thinks I’m smart?’ Elaine thought, confused, yet pleased. ‘I didn’t understand half of that! Is he complementing me or saying he expects me to fall on my ass?

‘He gets on that pulpit and lectures so that he can ignore how horny he is. When he does that I can’t tell if he means what he says or not! I hope I don’t have this much trouble in court... ‘

“So, okay then,” Elaine said, stalling, not sure what she should do or where she really stood with him, other than as a sexual object of his desire.

“Um, when do we hold court?” she asked, hoping he would say ‘sometime next week’. She was disappointed with his answer.

“Right after the noon meal,” he replied, smugly.

He turned his attention away, obviously dismissing her, and opened his book, thumbing through it to find where he had been reading earlier. After a moment, he looked up. She was gone.

‘I hope she wears something to court this afternoon, ‘ he thought, sighing with the relaxed relief the absence of her alluring, naked body provided him.

Jeff could relax, now that Elaine wasn’t present. Whenever she appeared in front of him, naked (and she was always naked), all he could think about was how badly he needed to merge his body with hers.

He read for a while, not really paying attention to the text; reading simply helped him to think more clearly. He’d had a couple of visitors join him at his first meal, one of whom wished to apply to the university. This ‘Tam’ fellow wished to trade his knowledge of electrical engines for a variety of other subjects, some of which could only be considered hobbies, or personal interests.

Jeff suspected that Tamarind was more interested in teaching than he was in improving his own education, possibly attempting to trade his mechanical knowledge for an easier life than farming. Jeff hadn’t actually considered having professors in his university since he had the Praetor, which could mind-link directly with the students and educate them en mass without ever having them crack open a book.

The main purpose of the university buildings was to house the students. There would be, of course, an assembly hall in each section, but only the first section was finished, so there was, currently, only one assembly hall, and it was being used for feeding the students. More construction would occur during the summer months, after the plowing and planting was finished and would continue until the Festival of Lights.

He decided to ask the Praetor what it thought of the situation. It always answered when he thought a question to it. He wondered what it did in its spare time. It answered him.

Images of the Praetor recording court proceedings from all thirty-two districts, formal occasions, such as weddings, funerals, transfers of property and other legal duties.

‘Goodness!’ Jeff thought. ‘How will it have time to educate an entire generation of youths?’

Another image appeared in Jeff’s mind showing a pie chart of how much processing time the Praetor used to record all this data compared to its maximum input/output capabilities. The Praetor was operating at about five percent of its capacity. Jeff was impressed.

‘And there are three more Praetors?’

Jeff couldn’t imagine the total computing power of even one Praetor, let alone four of them. Although it could have been his imagination, he felt that the Praetor was somewhat smug about its superior mental capabilities.

‘If the Goddess Elaine gets into trouble while holding court, ‘ he decided to ask, ‘is there something that can be done to save face and maintain order and the respect of the populace?’

Although that wasn’t what he had planned to discuss with the Praetor, he was more interested in this topic, as Court was going to begin in less than two hours, assuming the goddess wasn’t scared off completely and didn’t show up at all.

The Praetor was referring to the execution of the ‘Lady’ Sarah for her assassination attempt on the Goddess of the Land. That decision had nearly created a master-slave society with the goddesses as absolute rulers and everyone else as their slaves.

That situation had been defused by the Goddess of the Land, herself, and her sister goddess, Elaine, when they had produced the Writ of Stone, supposedly written by the Storm God, laying out the law in stone (granite, actually) as it applied to murder or assassination.

With the appearance of the Writ of Stone, the death penalty was revoked forever and was not a judgment that any justice, goddess or not, could use to condemn another individual, no matter what they’d done. The goddesses were not to be permitted lethal retaliation for any crime an individual might commit. Civil enslavement and loss of property was the worst one could expect in a judgment.

He noticed that the Praetor had withdrawn from his mind, evidently satisfied that it had answered his question. The ‘Great Bard Geoffrey’ was equally responsible for any decisions that the goddess Elaine made as a justice. The thought made him less comfortable than he liked to be, especially when lunch was only moments away.

The self-proclaimed ‘Golden Goddess’ joined him for lunch, having determined her new title as a justice. There was only one other blond goddess, and her hair was more rust-colored than golden, and that title wasn’t spoken for; Elaine had checked with the Praetor just to be sure.

“So that’s how you can announce me,” Elaine said, smugly.

“That says more about your sexuality than it does your ability to make valid judgments, Goddess,” Bard Geoffrey stated, quietly.

He didn’t really care what she called herself; he was simply relieved that she was wearing clothes. Her nudity always distressed his digestion. He wondered where she had gotten the modest white gown she wore. It looked vaguely familiar.

“It’s Béla’s,” Elaine volunteered. Jeff had been thinking so loud that Elaine couldn’t help but overhear. “I was looking through her stuff to see what she thought was respectable. What do you think of it?”

She smiled radiantly and straightened her shoulders. Jeff’s attention was immediately attracted to the part of the dress that the goddess Elaine filled out so much more than had the Goddess of the Land.

“Is that all you think about?” Elaine asked, pretending to be annoyed with his distracted stare. She knew she wasn’t fooling him into believing she was annoyed. He knew her too well. She loved the attention that men everywhere gave her. She blew him a kiss as forgiveness.

Lunch was a new creation by the chef; a cold-pressed, ground sausage baked with canned apples, burnt honey and cinnamon. It was light on the sausage and heavy on the cinnamon. Although Elaine didn’t care for meat, she thought the dish was delightful. Before she left for the temple with the Great Bard, she made arrangements with the chef to have that dish available as an entrée at her next service.

‘It’s too bad they don’t use money here, ‘ Elaine thought. ‘I’d double his salary for creating dishes like that!’ She wondered what she could do to reward him, but his true love was his kitchen. Unlike most men, he actually didn’t care too much for sex. His great passion was cooking. ‘Maybe he would like a new pan... ‘

As the Justice and the Bard arrived at her sister’s temple ‘(it’s mine, now, at least until Béla gets back, in a hundred years, or so... ), ‘ the attendant greeted them at the entrance.

“This afternoon’s caseload is unusually light, Goddess,” he explained. “There are only three cases to be heard today.”

The Golden Goddess could see that the attendant was nervous. She resisted raiding his mind as he had fairly good control and wasn’t blasting his thoughts in all directions. Mind raiding weakens the individual’s ability to control his own thoughts and emotions.

At one time during Elaine’s training, her sister had explained that the basic difference between a sane mind and a criminal mind is that the criminal mind lacks the social responsibility to control his desires. What he sees, he wants; whether he needs it or not. He doesn’t recognize another’s ownership, only his own desire. The criminal has learned, through personal experience, that he can be punished for exercising his ‘rights’, so he becomes sly about when and where he can ‘correct’ his perceived imbalance of ownership.

In cases of theft, Béla taught Elaine to seek out images similar to that in an accused person’s mind and make them visible to that person in the light of his lack of social responsibility. It often caused complete propitiation in the accused, and a trustworthy promise to act more responsibly in the future. The tricky part was that if the former criminal were to actually behave in a more acceptable manner, it was required that he be held accountable for the damage he’d done. He would have to make restitution, either in the form of property or service, to the victim.

It was often necessary to ‘right-find’ for the victim, too. The victim often was too emotionally distraught to see how any judgment other than burying the criminal in quicksand up to his neck and then setting his head on fire could be beneficial to society.

Béla had demonstrated that it was sometimes necessary to dig out images in the victim’s mind of similar acts, sometimes something he did as a child in order for the victim to become agreeable to a more sociable solution.

‘No one is completely guiltless, Darling, and often their guilt is what fuels their anger.’

This also prevented unwarranted cruelty committed in retribution against the former criminal by the victim in cases where personal service was required as restitution.

It was the nearest to the truth that she could understand: Nobody wanted to know. They were too busy punishing and killing each other.

The court attendant interrupted Elaine’s reminiscing as he began the afternoon session.

“The first case is of a man who is accused of damaging the property of Akbar Shiest,” he announced.

Jeff felt the Goddess Elaine mind-link with him, as was normal procedure. Her mind felt completely different than had the Goddess of the Land’s.

He couldn’t quite define what the difference was, but a cold, calculating edge was missing; a ‘rightness’ that his goddess had been convinced of about herself that was completely missing in the goddess Elaine. In the part of her mind where his goddess could feel anger and a call to action, the goddess Elaine felt uncertainty and the desire to back away from confrontation. She was having a terrible time just sitting there, listening to the court attendant talk.

Jeff marveled at the difference between the Justice Elaine and the sexy goddess he had been mind-linked with in previous instances when she was being a ceremonial object of desire during her services. She hadn’t lacked confidence and willingness to act, then. She had no lack of certainty about her sexuality; only her judgment when it affected others.