There is a small and overintimate lift behind the doors. It runs sideways, down, up, and then sideways again, completing a route that sends Huw’s inner ear on a loop-the-loop. They emerge into a hallway that’s carpeted with greasy-feeling tentacles that twine sensuously around his toes, and the walls have the sheen of waxed and oiled skin. It smells of Doritos and musk.
Bonnie hands him the sack with her clothes and his ruined underpants and the teapot and pushes him ahead of her, squeezing his ass affectionately as they go.
The Bishop is three meters high, ten-limbed, with eight complete sets of assorted genitals, fourteen breasts, and four tongues, like an explosion in a gourmet brothel’s cloning vats. He, She, and It—the three in one—is impossibly hideous to contemplate. Bonnie ushers Huw into its presence after negotiating with a pair of disturbingly toothless ministers who bar the high door.
“Your Grace,” she says as they step into its eucalyptus-fumed inner chamber.
“My dear child,” it says with one of its mouths. “It warms Our heart to see you.” It has a voice like a teenaged boy, high and uncertain. “And your companion. You are both lovely as they day He made you.”
One of its hands slithers free of the tangle and extends before them. Bonnie bends down and kisses the ring painted on the third finger, then elbows Huw, who kneels tentatively and takes the proffered digit, which is warm and moist and pulses disturbingly.
“Your Grace?” he says.
“Be not afraid, child,” says the Bishop. “This meatsuit allows Us to bring the Word to Our scattered temples without having to transport Our physical person through the uncertain world. One day, all of us will be liberated by these meatsuits, free to explore our flesh in many bodies all at once.”
“You’re uploaded?” Huw says, taking his hand away quickly and shuffling back on his knees.
The Bishop snorts a laugh with its rightmost face. “No, child, no. Merely telepresent. Uploading is the mortification of the flesh—this is its celebration.”
“Your Grace,” Bonnie says, peering up at it through her fringe with her eyes seductively wide. “It has been an honor and privilege to serve you in my time here in Glory City. I’ve found my counseling duties to be very rewarding—the gender-reassignees here face unique challenges, and it’s wonderful to be able to help them.”
“Yes,” says the Bishop, crouching down. “And We’ve appreciated it very much. But We sense that you are here to ask some favor of Us now, and We wish you’d get on with it so that We could concentrate on the savage rogering we’re getting in one of Our bodies.”
“It’s complicated,” Bonnie says. “This guy here is on the run—he’d been captured and they were taking him to the auto-da-fé when I rescued him.”
“This is the One?” the Bishop asks, putting one delicate feminine hand behind his head and pulling him closer to its big golden eyes. “The two who brought you to Glory City are not know for their extreme piety. So why do you suppose they brought you here, rather than simply, oh, eating you or using you for spare parts?”
Huw keeps himself from shying back with an effort of will. “I don’t know,” he says. Bonnie crowds in to another one of the Bishop’s faces. Deep within him, Huw feels a shiver of golden light, the god feeling.
“I think my downers are wearing off.”
“They tasped him, so I hit him with some depressants,” Bonnie says.
“Feels goooooood,” Huw says.
“It does, doesn’t it?” the Bishop says. “I favor three or four hours on the tasp myself, twice a week. Does wonders for the faith. But I suppose we’d best keep your ecstasy under control for now. Phillida!” it calls, clapping two of its hands together, bringing one of the ministers running. It twines an arm between the guardian’s legs and murmurs, “Bring Us a freethinker’s cap, will you?” The minister’s toothless maw gapes open in ecstasy, and then it scurries off quickly, returning with a mesh balaclava that the Bishop fits to Huw’s head, lining up the eye- and mouth-holes.
Huw’s golden glow recedes.
“It’s a Faraday cage with some noise-cancelation built in to reverse any of the mind-control radiation that gets through,” the Bishop says. “How did you come to be on the American Continent, anyway?”
“It started when I ate some godvomit and smuggled it out of a patent court,” Huw says.
The Bishop’s golden eyes widen. “Judge Rosa Giuliani’s court? In Libya? Last week? I’m a big fan of her show! You are carrying the ambassador?”
“The very same,” Huw says, obscurely pleased at this notoriety. “It wasn’t my idea, believe me. Anyway, this smuggler I know—we know—Adrian, he sent me here. Said that this was the safest place to hide out.”
Bonnie breaks in. “But now we come to find out that he’s been dealing with the two who tasped Huw—”
“Sam and the doc,” Huw says.
“I know of them,” the Bishop says, its voice dripping with arch disapproval.
“Selling them bootleg downloads.”
“Ahh,” the Bishop says. “Excuse Us a moment.” It arches its back and screams out a long orgasmic wail. “One of Our other meatsuits is being ministered to,” it says distractedly: “We needed to have a bit of a shout. We’re pleased to know this. It explains certain pseudo-nuclear events in the outback that We’ve had word of—the doc must be retailing anti-ant technology to the other hayseeds.”
Bonnie shuddered. “That’s just for openers, I’m sure. Fuck knows what else Ade has sold those nutjobs.”
“Just some downloads, he said,” Huw says. “Fuck it, what did he mean by that? You can download anything; I know I did!”
“Downloads could be either good or bad,” the Bishop says, rubbing two disturbingly rugose hands together as if in prayer. “But first, We have more pressing temporal priorities to attend to, my children. It appears that your rescue did not go unnoticed by the puritan majority, and they will presently be calling. Moreover, this would explain a request for a flight plan and landing clearance that the airport acknowledged four hours ago—” The Bishop stops, its back arching ecstatically. “—oh! Oh! Oh! Closer to thee, my God!” Breasts quiver, their purple aureolae crinkling, and it screams out loud in the grip of a multiple orgasm of titanic proportions.
Huw peers out through the eye-holes of his mesh mask, which presses cold and hard into his skin. “Did you say that the law is nearby?”
“I believe they are,” the Bishop says. “Yes, there. The primary perimeter has been breached. Such a lovely front door.” It looks sternly at Bonnie. “You were reckless, child. They followed you here.”
“I took every precaution,” Bonnie says, blushing. “I’m no amateur, you know—”
Huw has a sudden sickening feeling. “It’s me,” he says. “I’m bugged with a geotracker.”
Bonnie glares at him. “You could have said something,” she says. “We’ve compromised the whole operation here now.”
“I was distracted, all right? Mind-control rays make you forgetful, okay?”
The Bishop clucks its tongues and gives them each a pat on their bare bottoms. “Never mind that now, children. All is forgiven. But I’m afraid that you are right, we are going to lose this temple. And I’m no more infallible than you, you know: I’ve been ever so lax with the evacuation drills here. My ministers find that they disturb their contemplation of the Almighty. I fear not for this meatsuit, but it would be such a shame to have all my lovely acolytes fall into the hands of the Inquisition. I don’t suppose that you’d be willing to help out?”