Priestess of the Heavens

"My greetings to all out there," she said in a gentle and somber tone. "I send out this address to the planet, to the moon, but especially to our beloved members of the Agro Corps who have spent this past year in frightening isolation. The reason I single you out will become clear in a short while."

"As we are all painfully aware, we have all my great strides in isolating the markers for plagues A, B, C, and D. We now know the markers and believe it will take roughly five years of work before we have reliable vaccines. You might ask why it would take so long, and I would respond to you that these were not natural viruses with predictable patterns. Rather, they were engineered as weapons - and as such were meant to be hard to decode. These, however, are child's play compared to the affliction I am about to reveal."

"Though it is hard to remember now, you might recall a particularly virulent strain of influenza which passed through our population late last spring. At the time, we merely chalked it up as a very contagious, but cold-like flu with moderate symptoms."

"We have since learned more. We now categorize it as Plague 1A. What we didn't know was the true damage which been done. 1A had a diabolical payload which has just begun to be evident. Since November, our average birthrate per capita has gone down over sixty percent with a frightening number of stillbirths. At first we blamed it on side effect from the other plagues, but then we examined the surviving infants and saw a peculiar marker in their blood which we were able to correlate with nearly ninety-nine percent of the adult population. "

"We then examined the babies and found the disturbing signs I am about to share with you. They are sterile. Most have been born with no internal sexual organs or if they are present, the testes and ovaries are improperly formed and will never mature correctly. This is not an aberration, or a trend -- this is in over ninety-nine percent of the children. Further, the virus is so prevalent we have found new infections in all healthy babies within the first month of the child's life."

"I say this without false modesty... I am one of the top five geneticists who has ever lived. Even for me, 1A is nearly indecipherable. If I am lucky enough to find a cure for 1A in my lifetime, I will be lucky. It also has a natural mutative property so even when I do find a cure, I cannot assure it won't change properties and evade any vaccine I can provide. 1A is pervasive, strong, and amazingly adroit at achieving its obvious goal -- the elimination of the human race. 1A is pervasive on the Earth and on the moon. I truly have little hope of finding a true cure."

"However, we have our wheels. We have our beloved, nurturing wheels that have already proven to be the salvation of mankind and may do so once again. It is my proposal that the wheels be moved into closer proximity, with five colonies of twenty wheels locked together. Your population is untainted by the disease which has quite nearly spelled our demise. The only thing I can tell you with any surety is all of these infections must have a host to survive. You and your children will not see the earth again, but some day -- when you have grown into thousands and the childless children of earth have grown old and died, you will be able to return once more to the loving arms of Gaia -- may she bless you."

The screen went blank. Kari and Pax sat in dismal silence. Though the human race had suffered numerous blows, they had endured it. Now, however, it was entirely final. The earth was gone.

Pax rose first and went to his room. After a few minutes, Kari went to him and lay down on top of him.

"Hold me, Pax," she said, kissing him softly. "Just hold me for a little while."

"I'll hold you as long as you want, Kari," he said.

They stayed nestled in each other's arms and eventually fell asleep.

In the morning, Pax awoke to see Kari up on one elbow, staring down at him.

"I had a dream," she said softly.

"What about?" asked Pax.

"I can't tell you -- but I'll tell you this. We can't do anything for the next couple of weeks. No sleeping together, no pleasuring -- you can't touch yourself either."

"Okay?"

"You'll see why. I'll be sleeping in my room, but trust me. I have my reasons."

On the evening of the 21^st, the spring equinox, she had told Pax to meet her at a pre-appointed place, the fountain in Section 3. Pax arrived at the pool wearing, as he'd been told, a white robe and nothing else.

He had to catch his breath at the image awaiting him. Kari was also dressed in pure white -- this time a robe. Her hair was braided and wrapped around her head in a sacred pattern she'd taken from an image found on ancient Akkadian pottery. Around her neck was her favorite piece of jewelry composed of lapis lazuli beads and pearls. Her skin glistened with olive oil pressed from trees in Section 4 and her eyes were lined with a charcoal pencil she had created from the cinders left from their Midwinter celebration.

Beside her was a table with a large pitcher of beer made from the barley Pax had planted. This was a double-strong batch, containing over fifteen percent alcohol.

Pax approached solemnly, taking his cue from Kari.

"Drink, oh shepherd," she said, offering him a glass she poured and held to his lips.

Once he had taken several droughts, she also took a drink from the same glass -- polishing off much of the glass. She filled the glass again and repeated the process -- then once more, so both of their heads were more than a bit light.

"This is the day of life," she explained, taking his hand and sitting with him beside the pool. "For today, I am Inanna. She lives in me. You are the Shepherd Dumuzi, my chosen. Let us be festive and rejoice in a renewal of life."

"We meet beside the waters as they pour into the earth. The ancient Sumerians made no distinction between the word for water and semen. The ancients gathered in places such as this, where the waters of Enki poured and churned into mother earth, mixing with her and bringing new life each season in the fields.

She removed her robe and Pax gasped at the beauty of her glistening, naked body.

She smiled and stepped toward him, releasing the belt on his robe and pulling it off of his shoulders.

"I have prepared myself for thee, oh Shepherd. Have you done likewise? Have you denied yourself bodily pleasures and set yourself apart from other women?"

Pax could only smile and nod 'yes'.

She kissed him deeply, letting her glistening body slide up against him.

"Do I please thee, shepherd? Do I quicken your blood?"

She reached down between his legs and let her slippery hands feel his testament in answer.

"I see the Cedar grows strong with our union," she said.

She then took his hand and led him to a portable camp bed she had set up in a small grove to the side.

She whispered a prayer to him in his ear, though his head buzzed so from the intensity of the experience that he couldn't' remember much of it.

He did remember when she knelt before him, however, and took him into her mouth for the first time. She paused, looking up into his eyes.

"Make your honey sweet and thick, my beloved friend. I will drink you with pleasure."

It was not long before she did just that and had her very first taste of a man. For Kari, on this night, it was not unpleasant. It was the salt of the sea, of the sacred waters spilling into her throat.

"Will you make me ready, lord?" she whispered to him as she lay back on the bed. "Will you prepare me for your fullness?"

Pax did as he was ordered and knelt before her, kissing her tenderly between the legs. To his surprise, for the first time she seemed to be truly responding to his attentions. As she drew closer to an orgasm, she beckoned him up to lay beside her -- guiding his hand down to where his tongue had been.

"Like that," she gasped.

His finger had found the perfect little circle and she held onto his wrist as he pushed her, for the first time, over the edge.

It was not a tumultuous climax like she generally had with her female lovers, but it was a climax all the same. Pax was grinning like a Cheshire cat.

"Well done, sir," she said.

"Why thank you, ma'am."

"Are you ready?" she asked him, reaching down to caress him with her hand. "Oh! I guess you are."

She pulled him across her, and he paused with an infectious grin on his face.

"What?" she asked. "What is so funny?"

"I uh... I shouldn't say it."

"Go on, Pax."

"First, I'm sorry for breaking the serious mood."

"Don't be," she said with a warm smile. "This is meant to be a joyous occasion. Now just tell me."

"Well, it just occurred to me. Here we are, on a space vessel in the twenty-fifth century, and I'm about to boldly go where no man has gone before."

"Oh, you smart ass," said Kari with a giggle. "But true -- very true. Now get in there before I change my mind."

"Do I need to go slow, I mean, if no one..."

"Oh Pax, you might be the first man, but you're sure as hell not the first thing -- come on."

Pax positioned himself gently at her opening.

"Are you ready?" he whispered.

"Absolutely."

She reached around his back and pulled him insistently toward her. Well lubricated as she was by his attentions (and her own attentions prior to his arrival), he slid easily into her, all the way to the hilt."

"Oh -- my -- goddess," gasped Pax. "Kari, Inanna -- whatever I'm supposed to call you -- you have no idea how good this feels."

"I think I sort of do," said Kari, who was doing some gasping of her own.

"Really?" asked Pax.

"It certainly doesn't suck. Now make love to me, Pax."

They were two lovers learning each other's bodies, but for Kari it was an entirely foreign and almost out-of-body sensation.

It wasn't easy. Though she put on a pleasant mask for Pax, the first few moments were almost impossible for her. It was counter to everything her body was telling her. If it weren't for the pleasure her dear friend was deriving, she might not have been able to proceed but the sound of his moans and the sweat of his body against hers gave her sensations to focus on.

His manhood inside her was the most foreign thing. She'd played with her share of toys with her girlfriends, but it had never been a person.

The turning point came with Pax's orgasm.

"Oh Kari!" he cried. "Oh Kari, it's been so long! Oh Kari, my love!"

As he spilled himself into her, she closed her eyes and imagined the stream of life flowing into her womb... of the new life which might soon be forming from their loving act. Though she'd known that was the intention from the start -- it took that tangible physical sensation to truly bring it home in her mind.

"Oh yes, Pax," she cried. "Don't hold back. Give me all you have."

Though he had felt foreign in the beginning, as he lay gasping in her arms, his heavy weight upon her, his slickened cock nestled inside of her -- she welcomed all of it. She welcomed the feel of the lover inside of her arms and for the first time understood the sacred nature of their act. She felt herself transported back over six millennia and saw a woman much as herself -- a lover of women in a sacred position of power. She saw that this union was not a sacrifice but a blessing, an affirmation and renewal life. For them, the act was now even more sacred -- the potential life even more sacrosanct.

"Thank you Kari," murmured Pax. "I...oh my god that was amazing."

"It was, wasn't it?" whispered Kari. "Think about it Pax, we might have just made a baby."

"Oh my god, that's..." Pax rolled off of her and smacked his forehead. "That's what this was about? Can you believe it, I've been so stunned with everything I didn't even... but Kari, we've got the fertility banks on the wheel with everything you need."

"No Pax," said Kari tenderly. "You have to understand it from my perspective. If we're going to populate it this brave new universe, from where I come from it isn't going to start with a turkey baster. "

"Okay," said Pax, nodding.

Her hand had drifted down to the 'foreign object' she had recently encountered so intimately.

"Oh my, Pax!" she giggled. "Ready so soon?"

"Kari," he said, "it's been over a fortnight without anything, and well over a year without any real sex. I'll be more than ready for a few more times, at least."

"Well, you'd better be," she whispered. "Because some of the prayers around the ritual I use they talk about Inanna and Dumuzi doing it fifty times before Dumuzi was sated."

"Fifty?" mused Pax. "I don't know if I can get to that number. But for you, I'm willing to try."

"That's so agreeable of you," she said with a laugh.

She flipped herself across him and reached down to guide his glistening, honeyed rod into her. It took a little maneuvering, this new skill she was acquiring and he slipped out on first try.

"There it is," she purred as he found his way all the way in.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, almost meditating at the sensation.

"Hurt?" asked Pax with concern.

"No... just new, sweetie. Just new. Let's see how this works, shall we?"

It worked very well.

With the mix of their juices providing a fascinating blend of lubrication, Pax began a slow rhythm in and out of her. Their bodies soon found a perfect rhythm together and Kari discovered she was bucking her hips in a gyrating motion against his.

There was still something missing... the innate emotional element. She still lacked that 'whatever' with Pax that she would have had with a woman. However, it was replaced by the spiritual element, by the divine aspect of the creation of life. With that spiritual component replacing the emotional, she discovered herself reveling in the physical.

"Oh gods, Pax, this is so good," she moaned. "I've never, oh gods fuck me! Fuck me you wonderful man. I love this with you inside of... Oh!"

It tripped over, something she never would have imagined possible let loose with ferocity.

"Pax, I'm cumming," she was able to gasp out. "I'm cumm....Aieeh!"

Her whole body was shaking from the climax. Her hips, her legs, her chest. Her hands grasped at the sheets in almost panicked fashion. Pax stopped for a moment which was not what she needed.

"No!" she cried out. "Don't stop! Keep going no matter what until you cum! I have to have that. I have to feel your seed inside of me again."

Pax did as ordered and continued pounding into her from below. Though he was doing the majority of the work now, due to her near paralysis, they kept up a steady pace.

Orgasm after orgasm followed for Kari. She couldn't even open her eyes as, like waves in the ocean, one followed the other before the last one could even recede.

Pax seemed driven by something sacred himself for he seemed tireless. The sweat was pouring off of their bodies, but they continued on, driven by a heightened passion that neither wanted to let go of.

At last, the exhaustion of countless orgasms began to slow Kari down. She altered her pace and began lifting as high as she could off of his tireless cedar.

"There!" she said with an almost violent descent. "That! Is! Perfect!" she cried.

She took a breather, falling down onto Pax's chest and kissing him hungrily.

"Are you ready to cum, Pax?" she asked. "Will you fill me up again?"

"I will," he whispered.

"Fuck!" she cried as he slammed up and into her, then again.

"FUCK!" she yelled, as another climax began to explode within her.

"Oh Kari," cried Pax through gritted teeth. "I'm..."

"Do it, Pax!" she ordered him. "Cum for me!"

Responding instinctually to her own passion, the orgasm that ripped through Pax was almost violent in its intensity. They gripped at each other in fierce desperation as their bodies became inexorably entwined. Even as the last throes of their pleasure were dissipating they remained clinging to each other, their fingers interlocked, their lips touching tenderly.

As the two of them drifted off into an exhausted slumber, Kari could feel his heart beating through his chest -- almost in sync with her own. Two lines from a sacred poem drifted through her mind as she surrendered to sleep:

Sweet is the sleep of hand-to-hand.
Sweeter still the sleep of heart-to-heart.

They didn't awake until the early rays of the sun streaming into the morning of the wheel. She was still laying on top of him, her hair spilling across his face.

Though he had slipped out of her sometime in the night, she could feel his renewed firmness pressing against her.

Her stirring awoke him as well. He opened his eyes and smiled at her. Another verse entered her mind and she spoke them aloud to him.

"Last night as I, the queen, was shining bright,
Last night as I, the Queen of Heaven, was shining bright,
As I was shining bright and dancing,
Singing praises at the coming of the night —
He met me — he met me!"

She stopped then, and kissed him lovingly.

"Nice to meet you," she sighed.

"Nice to meet you, too."

"I don't know if we made to fifty," she said, "but I think if you put yours and mine together, we're at least at twenty-five?"

"I wouldn't doubt it," agreed Pax. "You were amazing!"

"I was certainly surprising," said Kari. "Never would have suspected that, trust me."

"So, are you like -- bi now?"

"Gods, no," she said, laughing. "I'm worshipping...I'm procreating...I'm replenishing the race. I don't know how to describe it -- it's sex, but it isn't my sexuality."

"Whatever it is, I'm not complaining," said Pax.

"Speaking of, how about we see if we can reach that number fifty?"

"I'm at your service," said Pax, he flipped her over and plunged into her.

***

She was thirsty. Her womb was thirsty. Pax was the only one who could slake that thirst. For the next week, they were inseparable and insatiable. Kari found herself fantasizing about different ways to seduce and couple with Pax...and often dreamed about the feeling of his warmth filling her from inside.

The first time it didn't take. Interestingly, once she had confirmed that and she was past ovulation, her desire waned quickly. It was probably a good thing, allowing them to focus on the necessary tasks at hand. She actually stopped even sleeping next to Pax because her body was too tempting to him and without the desire for reproduction, she couldn't reciprocate in the way he wanted.

With Pax's background in engineering, he was busy with the specialists devising ways to configure the wheels for the upcoming population. The plan was simple in concept. There were one-hundred wheels with two staff apiece. The wheels would be pushed to five points in separate areas, to minimize risks as much as possible. Twenty wheels, joined together, to form a base population of forty.

With Kari's background in social sciences, she was working with geneticist specialists and population experts on how to expand a population of two hundred to a steadily growing and healthy population. It was a difficult task, for they wished to draw on lessons from the past in order to nurture a thriving, stable, peaceful populace.

When the time arrived, Kari did not need a calendar or a test to know when her body was ready to try again. A dream stayed sharp in her mind. They had been beside the waterfall, but it hadn't been in the lush vegetation of the wheel. It had been an oasis in the desert. The dream had changed and she had been the earth, her vulva had been the pool below. Pax was standing at the top of the hill and a white stream was pouring out of him, flowing down the hill, and churning sensually into her.

When she awoke she could feel the moistness between her legs and had a strong renewal of yearning for Pax.