4. THE THIRD LESSON

A closer relationship between the church and ladies of the night.

The first day of the next week dawned, with a bright sun shining down onto the blue savannah of Terraful. Zoz arrived to teach his class as was his custom, and precisely as the siren sounded.

His students were all there. They had to be: it was the law and punishment might be foisted onto late comers. Not that it ever happened, but it might.

“I was speaking to Fil on the river bank when I sought the solitude to be fishing,” he began, somewhat tentatively, “she has expressed interest in a high calling and sought my advice.”

“I wish to enter prostitution,” explained the scar-faced Fil, “I feel it is my calling and might suit me better than other callings.”

“Then let me change the topic of today’s lesson and examine the role of prostitutes in the early pre-history of your species,” said Zoz with the kind of smile that suggested he might be on a favourite topic.

“Have they always been rich and closely allied to the church?” asked Cun, “for it is an idea...”

Zoz shook his head. “For countless generations it was known as the oldest profession,” he began, “and many early societies frowned upon those women who wanted to earn their wealth as prostitutes. It was considered unhealthy, both spiritually and medically. Disease was rampant in the long ago of time, disease that was often spread by the sort of contact a man may have with a fem during playtime.”

“But surely that was easily cured?” interrupted Din who, as ever, was plain speaking, “I know that most diseases were tackled before the Trumpster brought on the Great Chaos in which humanity was reduced, in population, to less than one percent of what it had been.”

“There was a long age in which men grew from mindless chimps into men before then,” Zoz told him, “and some diseases were endemic. It took time for your distant ancestors to discover, for instance, a range of antibiotics that they were so delighted with that they overused them, reducing their effectiveness almost as soon as they were discovered. Your ancestors had to learn. But back to the history.”

“Please,” whispered Fil,

“The church frowned upon the kind of activity that prostitution involved,” went on Zoz seriously. “Back I the dim distant reaches of time it was believed that there was a gigantic Father who kept a watchful eye on every single person on the home planet, and judged them when they died, sending those who displeased him to a rather unpleasant eternity whilst those who were good and virtuous went to a beautiful place. Prostitutes went to the former eternity and were, I recall, burned during an agonizing and never ending afterlife in pits of fire.”

“That can’t be true,” gasped Cun, fiddling with her long tresses.

Zoz smiled at her. “Of course not,” he replied, “it’s what the people believed rather than what was real. But belief can be a powerful thing, and that belief was re-enforced by dictates from the church, which unlike the benign organization that it is today had within it structures designed to both terrify the masses into believing their, shall I call it nonsense? I better had, for that was what it was. And there was punishment too, physical punishment and even capital punishment for not believing. And it was worse than that! There was punishment for believing in the wrong version of the nonsense! It was no wonder that men and fems spent their short lives in total fear of the dictates of the church.”

“Then it might be argued that the Trumpster and his witch-slave the Maybot did a good thing, bringing on the Great Chaos,” shuddered Pul.

Zoz smiled at him. “It might indeed,” he said, “seen, that is, through the spyglass of time! But back then it seemed to be anything but a good thing. Death, especially a horrible death, is no joke, believe you me.”

“And the Church, you say, was responsible for impossible beliefs?” asked Cun.

Zoz nodded. “As an entity the church started small and weak and in opposition to many other conflicting spiritual beliefs, and in order for it to grow it had to be dominant. It had to ensure that everyone within its compass was a slave to what it said. It incorporated pomp in order to give ordinary men a kind of ethereal majesty and superiority, and in times when mere men and fems lived in humble dwellings it ordered that great monstrous cathedrals be build, and on the highest ground at that. Then it turned its attention to ensuring the continuance of belief.”

“I wouldn’t have been fooled by it,” murmured Din, his eyes determined.

“It’s hard to put yourself in the place occupied by people of long ago,” sighed Zoz, “but there was a long period of almost endless fear that at the end of life a person would be banished to the flaming eternity planned for those called sinners.”

“What are sinners?” asked Cun.

“Were. What were sinners,” corrected Zoz, “they were ordinary men and fems who were judged by the church to not believe in the nonsense its priests enunciated. They were filled with fear that their afterlives might be endless torture.”

“And priests were that … terrible?” asked Fil.

“They were. Things have changed since then, of course, and nowadays it is the Priesthood that has the greatest need for prostitutes rather than condemning them to all sorts of horrors for following their calling, and because, somehow, the Priesthood has kept hold of the greater part of its old historic wealth, it can afford to pay the best prostitutes a good bounty for their services. And Fil, if you truly wish to enter into your chosen profession you will find that that same church will arrange for you to have the surgery you require in order to remove all traces of the scars upon you face.”

“That’s not why I want to have that career,” said Fil a little hotly, “but because I want to give my life into a worthy service, and I have found, forgive me my friends but it is true, that marked as I have been by an accident I get far less time playing with others than they get. But if I am a prostitute I can play as often as I like!”

“Ah,” nodded Zoz, “but bear this in mind: you will never be able to select your own playmates: they will be selected for you, and might not always be to your liking.”

“I won’t mind,” smiled Fil, “for to my mind it is better to play with an ugly man than never play at all!”

© Peter Rogerson 13.04.19