* * * * *
When she was locked in his arms, it was as if time had started all over
again. Forrester responded to the eagerness of the woman as he'd never
dreamed he could respond; all his tiredness dropped away as if it had
never been, and he was a new man. He touched her bare flesh and felt the
heat of her through his fingers and hands; with his arms around her
nakedness he rolled, locked to her, feeling the friction of skin against
skin and the magnificence of her.
The sacrifice went on ... and on ... and on into endless time and
endless space. Forrester thrust and gasped at the woman and her head
went back, her mouth pulled open as she shivered and responded to
him....
Forever....
Until finally they lay, panting, in the magnificent room. Forrester rose
first, vaguely surprised at himself. He found a towel in a closet at the
far end of the room and wiped his damp forehead slowly.
"Well," he said. "That was quite a sacrifice. What next?"
The High Priestess raised herself on one elbow and stared across the
room at him. "There is no need for such familiarity, Forrester," she
said. "Not from a lay acolyte."
Forrester tossed the towel onto a couch. "My apologies, Your
Concupiscence. I'm a little--light-headed. But what happens next?"
The High Priestess reached into the diaphanous pile of her clothing and
came up with a small diamond-encrusted watch she wore, usually, on her
wrist. "Our timing was almost perfect," she said. "It is now
twenty-hundred hours. The Goddess expects you at twenty-oh-one exactly."
A hurried half-minute passed. Then, fully dressed, Forrester went with
the High Priestess to a golden door half-hidden in the hangings at the
side of the room. She made a series of mystical signs: the circle, the
serpent and others Forrester couldn't quite follow.
She opened the door, genuflecting as she did so, and Forrester dropped
to one knee behind her, looking at the doorway.
It was filled with a pale blue haze that looked like the clear summer
sky on a hot day. Except that it wasn't sky, but a curtain that wavered
and shimmered before his eyes. Beyond it, he could see nothing.
The High Priestess rose from her genuflection and Forrester followed
suit. There was a sole second of silence.
Then the High Priestess said: "You are to step through the Veil of
Heaven, William Forrester."