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we’ve little else to do. Look out there, Pete. You see a Washington, or Wazhtin as it’s now called, like none we knew. Washington has been leveled twice since we left, and the present city was built two hundred years ago over the site of the dead cities. An attempt was made to model it after the previous metropolis. But a different Zeitgeist possessed the builders. They built it as their beliefs and myths dictated.”
    He pointed to the Capitol. In some respects, it resembled the one they remembered. But it had two domes instead of one, and on top of each dome was a red tower.
    “Modeled after the breasts of the Great White Mother,” Calthorp said. He pointed at the Washington Monument, now located about a hundred yards to the left of the Capitol. It was three hundred feet high, a tower of steel and concrete, painted like a barber pole with red, white, and blue stripes and topped with a round red structure.
    “No need to tell you what that is supposed to represent. The myth is that it belonged to the Father of His Country. Washington himself is supposed to be buried under it. I heard that story last night, told in all devoutness by John Barleycorn himself.”
    Stagg stepped through the open French windows onto the porch outside his second-story apartment. The porch ran completely around the second story, but Calthorp walked no farther than around the corner. Stagg, who had delayed following him, found him leaning on the porch railing. This was composed of small marble caryatids which supported broad trays on their heads. Calthorp pointed over the tops of the thick orchard in the White House yard.
    “See that white building with the enormous statue of a woman on top? She is Columbia, the Great White Mother, watching over and protecting her people. To us she is just a figure in a heathen religion. But to her people—our descendants—she is a vivid and vital force that directs this nation toward its destiny. And does so through ruthless means. Anybody who stands in her way is crushed—one way or another.”
    “I saw the Temple when we first came into Washington,” Stagg said. “We passed it on the way to the White House. Remember how Sarvant almost died of shame when he saw the sculptured figures on the walls?”
    “What did you think of them?”
    Stagg turned red, and he growled, “I thought I was hardened, but those statues! Disgusting, obscene, absolutely pornographic! And decorating a place dedicated to worship.”
    Calthorp shook his head. “Not at all. You have been to two of their services. They were conducted with great dignity and great beauty. The state religion is a fertility cult, and those figures are representations of various myths. They tell stories whose obvious moral is that man has once almost destroyed the earth because of his terrible pride. He and his science and arrogance upset the balance of Nature. But now that it is restored, it is up to man to retain his humility, to work hand in hand with Nature— whom they believe to be a living goddess, whose daughters mate with heroes. If you noticed, the goddesses and heroes depicted on the walls emphasized through their postures the importance of the worship of Nature and fertility.”
    “Yes? From some of the positions they were in, I’d say they certainly weren’t going to fertilize anything.”
    Calthorp smiled. “Columbia is also the goddess of erotic love.”
    “I have the feeling,” Stagg said, “that you’re trying to tell me something. But you’re taking a very indirect route. I also have a feeling that I won’t like what you’re trying to tell me.”
    At that moment they heard the clanging of a gong in the room they’d just left. They hurried back to see what was going on.
    They were greeted by a blast of trumpets and roll of drums. In marched a band of musician-priests from the nearby Georgetown University. These were fat well-fed fellows who had castrated themselves in honor of the Goddess—and, incidentally, to get a