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consulted the agenda, ‘finding things that offend their beliefs.’
    ‘Fair ’nuff,’ the hierarch said, and he went back to sucking his beard.
    Ezron ticked the list of action points. ‘Now for Item Two. We have a proposal from the High  Cockatrice himself, Hierarch Beliath, who tells me that he has found a new way to solve the sin of lust.
    Hierarch Beliath. Please tell me this doesn’t involve a pair of garden shears.’
    Beliath rose coughing from his seat. ‘It has forever been the case,’ he rasped, ‘that men were  created in the image of the Great Annihilator, ever since our blessed forefathers made him up. What have women given the world, except to unleash a tide of lust into our once-pure hearts? Behold!’ he cried,  fishing a photograph out of his white robes, ‘I looked at a picture of a woman and look what happened to me! If that isn’t sinful, I don’t know what is!’
    The picture was quietly passed around the table. The hierarchs shook their heads sadly.
    ‘Horrible,’ said Lord Othred.
    The photograph made its way past the sixteen representatives of the Bureau of War, past the  hierarch of the Bureau for Liberty, who was currently trying to dissolve his own office to escape the  tyranny of excessive government, and to Prong himself, who had started to snore.
    A hierarch slipped the photograph in front of him. ‘Grand Mandrill?’ He paused then nudged the  old man’s arm. ‘Lord Prong?’
    Prong’s eyes flicked open like a trap. Lurching forward, he blinked several times and yelped  ‘Faith is purity! Purge it with flame! What’s going on?’
    The hierarch tapped the table, and Lord Prong looked down at the photograph.
    ‘Gah!’ he cried, drawing back into his chair. ‘What devilry is this? Save us from this – this –  whose is this?’
    Daringly, Hierarch Beliath gave the Grand Mandrill a stern look. ‘I was debating the  licentiousness of women, Lord Prong. There will be a slideshow later. But for now, I propose that there is only one way of ridding New Eden of the evil taint of lechery – we must kill all women!’
    Cheers broke out among the hierarchs. ‘Crusade!’ one wheezy voice croaked.
    Lord Prong felt the soft whirr in his temple that told him his frontal lobe accelerator was going  to work. He was festooned with bionic enhancements, largely to compensate for the fact that he was two hundred and eighty-three. Sitting in his metal throne, a bundle of wires protruding from the side of his head like a broken television, it occurred to him that there might be a small flaw in this magnificent plan.
    ‘Fool!’ Prong rasped, and the microphone on his throat amplified his voice into a doom-laden  roar. ‘You overstep yourself, Beliath. Did you consider the obvious result of killing every woman in the Republic of Eden? Who would we have to pick on then, eh?’
    ‘Oh,’ Beliath said, chastened.
    ‘Quite. Also, we would not be able to breed.’
    ‘The Ghasts have cloning machines,’ Hierarch Grumm put in. ‘They could lend them to us. They  are our allies, after all.’
    ‘Oh they’re much too busy for that,’ Beliath replied, in a tone of bitter sarcasm. ‘They’ve got their new friends the lemming men to think about. Apparently the lemming men are really fanatical.’
    ‘How can they be more fanatical than us?’ Ezron demanded. ‘We’re a theocracy, for the  Annihilator’s sake – may he butcher everything in his divine mercy. It doesn’t get any more fanatical than that!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘We were committed to working with the Ghasts. I remember how it used  to be… we’d do the religious genocide while they purged the galaxy of inferior lifeforms.” He sighed.
    “We had something special together.’
    ‘We can get them back,’ Prong said.
    The hierarchs turned. Wild eyes and conical hats swung towards Prong’s throne. ‘What?’ Grumm  demanded, throwing an arc of spittle across the table.
    The Grand Mandrill smiled.