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An hour before sundown Samuel Lonestar Bowround to the site where Sheena’s tent was pitched Two sentries crouched out in front They reminded me of the lions at the New York Public Library One of the a branch His knife had a sharply curved blade, and looked er and straighter, and he wasn’t carving anything with it He was just holding it and looking dangerous

Bow off several ornate sentences of gibberish The sentry did not appear at first to have heard He went on whittling for a few htened up abruptly, put down the hunk of wood, and tucked a knife into the waistband of his trousers He went into Sheena’s tent The other sentry contrived to look twice asas usual in order to take up the slack

The carver reappeared wordlessly, dropped to a crouch, picked up the chunk of wood, and whipped out his knife He resu us co our credentials Alone Ion past him, but Salowed to illuminate the interior of the tent It was uessed, and far more elaborately appointed When you considered that the tent was a mobile unit, taken up when the troupe broke camp and pitched anehen the day’s ht-tight, and it had rooh for a lush bed of straw and leaves on which our oddess nuold hair cascaded over bare shoulders Ani was extended, the other doubled up, as in Italian paintings of orgiastic pagan deities

Bowman said, "This be Tanner, who cole and hope of heaven" He bowed his head "What God has laid together, let no ain, and backed out of the tent

I had been well coached, and knew ot to my feet I shucked off the shapeless cotton shirt and trousers and stood naked for her inspection We had renewed the body make-up with fresh roots and berries, and I had collected a handful of cochineal beetles which supplied the red dye The candle provided iht, and Sheena squinted to studyinoutside, ready to spring into action if the thing blew up in our faces With luck I ht be able to cool Sheena before she sounded the alarht have a chance to make a desperate break But if she didn’t tip now, our odds is at the beginning," Bowman had told me "There’s a first-rate mind underneath all the flakiness, and now and then she can use it But if she doesn’t ht off the bat, you could be hoe cereot a real genius for consu Once she’s in the swing of things she wouldn’t know if she was being humped by a white man or a black man or a donkey She works a man half to death, but you don’t want to think it’s all a burden There are things about that wo to miss a whole lot But I don’t want to spoil it for you, Tanner cat You just go and have yourself a ti myself a time If I had felt any less virile I would have sat down and written regional fiction for The New Yorker It struck me that if I passed inspection I would just fail the road test anyway And that would knock the props out from under our escape plan

Sheena’s eyes scanned me I waited, and she nodded slowly, and it seemed that I had passed inspection She seehted hat she saw nor abysain to my knees

She said, "And thou shalt love the Goddess with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thyshall guide thy spirit all the length of thy days And thou shall write them upon the doorposts of thy house, and shall n in blood upon thy loins And thou shalt-"

It went on like this, the ceremony did, and while none of itthat I had heard it all before, part here and part there Now and then I recognized a part froe ritual, and ultiritty:

"Do you, Tanner, take this wooddess, to love, honor, and obey, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, until death do you in?"

" Katanga Salami Nokomis"

"Then by the authority vested in me I do proclaim us woman and husband Sticks and stones shall break thy bones but naed off the pelts, exposing her naked flesh Her body was so flawlessly forned it seemed incredible that she did not fold into three parts, that her navel was indeed unstapled She was honestly too good to be true, and the effect was perversely anaphrodisiacal – that which was so perfectly designed to turn one on had the effect of turning one (ic flaw in my own character I’ness to believe in the ideal when I encounter it Spectacular scenerya picture postcard When I see an extraordinary hairdo I assu luxuriantly appear plastic It has occurred to me that this inability to accept perfection may be a corollary to the idea of a rasp And I would have liked to pursue the thought further, but I had other things to contend with

Sheena, for exa, "we have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him Dust thou art, to dust returneth, and may God have mercy on your soul You etting ready to go into their acts For simplicity’s sake, we had divided the task of escape into three parts, like Gaul It was Pluout canoes, the entire navy of Sheena’s entire arhborhood of fifty men, and it was ical analysis, my job was the easiest of the three

I would have traded even with either of the about this, when Sheena repeated her last sentence There was a note of irritation in her tone I had missed my cue, and she didn’t seem to like it It seemed to me that thisher husbands in being able to understand what she was saying I guess the others were good at nonverbal coo to work, I reet it, I told et it, I added Up