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her palm frond totem covered her left shoulder. She always kept it bare, copying Durga's style. "I saved you a place."
    "Good morning, Chita. You look pale. Shouldn't you be resting?"
    Two years younger than Durga, Chita reveled in the eighth month of her first gestation, impregnated by Geraldo. Exgusting , as they used to say.
    Durga hated to leave Geraldo in Corcovado while they were gone, but if she took him to the coronation it would be like endorsing his latest shibdab idea.
    Every chalice, he said, should complete one gestation to demonstrate fertility before going into service. The theory had caught on. The chalices called it their proof of service, and Geraldo had been happy to "help them" with their proof.
    What shibdung . She couldn't believe it when Magda agreed. Don't let your opinion of Geraldo skew your judgment, Durga. Cities want some kind of assurance. Look what happened with Maribel.
    There was some logic to that. But Geraldo? Didn't anybody have any taste? Apparently the goddess didn't object. Geraldo still lived. Things had been so much easier when Asherah told her what to do.
    "All reality, physical and metaphysical, exists in a Great Chain of Being." Faina began the story they all would learn by heart.
    "At the highest of heights is the All, also called the Fullness. Below the All is the Pleuroma which contains emanations of the All. These emanations exist as pairs, from Love and Power down to Wisdom and Will.
    "Below the emanations are the gods, like Samael and Asherah.
    "Below the gods are the angels.
    "Below the angels is material reality, and the highest beings in the material world are human beings. The god Samael created the material world and humanity, but within each human being is a shard of the All, a spark of the original Fullness called a soul."
    Chita smirked. The girl had no respect. It was a mystery why Asherah blessed some people.
    "All these things were forgotten by humankind in the Age of Oil. Humanity turned away from the gods to worship power and profit. People stopped loving and respecting the earth. They stopped loving and respecting each other.
    "When four-fifths of humanity was lost in the DOG war and the cataclysm that followed, so many souls returned to the All at one time that its outward emanation stopped and threatened to turn inward."
    "Like a reverse Big Bang, the material world might have ended. As it was, the veil between the two worlds, material and spiritual, weakened. The gods came back. The angels crossed over.
    "With holy fire, Samael purged the polluted world so that mankind might survive and replenish the earth. But it was too late. Humanity had lost its fertility. Our reproductive technology is not robust enough to sustain population growth."
    Chita wasn't smirking. She was whimpering. She'd grown paler.
    "Asherah took pity on humanity. She has blessed each of us with natural fertility and long life. It is our sacred duty to provide the world with natural born generations."
    "Now, inhale."
    Durga knew the drill. There was nothing like a good cleansing breath. She automatically inhaled and exhaled, releasing tension she hadn't realized she carried. The taste of sweet hot tea filled her mouth.
    It was so easy to slip into trance, especially when she was near Faina, who was equally adept. As if a wall or membrane separating them had become so sheer that they could merge and become one being.
    So tempting. Surely it would be wonderful. A feeling of endless divine joy pulled her toward Faina. Perhaps one soul could directly encounter another. She could easily—wait. What was that emptiness? Chita gave off a feeling as desolate as Faina's joyfulness.
    Dark. Nothing. Empty.
    Durga snapped herself out of it. She pressed her palm against her thigh. You're a person in the world .
    Faina said, "On the fifth day after fertilization, you will select for sex. Imagine sweet for male and savory for female." She continued the instructions for controlling gestation which Asherah