The Goddess of the Land lay naked on the soft, green grass behind her manor, luxuriating in the warmth of the two crystal suns, her eyes closed against the brightness. A warm breeze caressed her bare body, making her nipples stand up as they were reminded of her sister’s breath on them during the last sleep period. She felt the curious minds of the two gardeners as they worked along the hedge wall trimming it smooth with their sharp blades.

It had been a slow, lazy month since Béla’s judgement ended her month-long nightmare of mind-ripping interrogation by the Praetor. After all that mental torment, she still had difficulty believing it was over. Not only was she free, but the Praetor had determined that the ‘individual presently known as Béla was a random Quantum factor necessary to the survival of civilization. As such, her unimpeded…’

Béla didn’t remember all the elocutionary terms the Praetor had used, but her understanding of it was…

On two known occasions, her unpredicted influence had benefited the survival potential of civilization beyond its ability to be measured. The fact that that both of these events occurred within a relatively short time of each other indicated the likelihood of earlier, unknown events effecting civilization in a like manner.

In addition, as all previous attempts to curb her seemingly careless disregard of the civil codes had been disastrous, or, at best, was of indeterminate effect, she was granted ‘Carte Blanche’ status; complete freedom to do as she wished. She was not to be brought before judgement again, ever.

Although delighted with the assurance of her continued survival as a free being, Béla wasn’t sure it was a good idea to give her *that* much freedom. Most of the ‘improvements to civilization’ that she was aware of had been as a direct result of her adversarial confrontations with the judgement system (i.e. her father or the Praetor), forcing improved conditions for everyone. What the judgement had effectively done was grant her ‘queen of the world’ status for killing somebody. It would surely cause her problems, eventually.

For the last four weeks, Béla had spent at least half of her time recovering, allowing her mind to mend; doing absolutely nothing except lie in the sun and watch the clouds float over the inner surface. She discovered that she couldn’t track them completely around the entire circumference of New Eden. As they continually evaporated and reformed, individual clouds, and even masses of them, didn’t last that long. Besides, the air was too thick to see all the way across to the other side.

The southern crystal sun had been shining for almost a week now as Béla measured time. For the next two months, because of the tremendous output of the two crystal suns, one at each pole, there could be no travel between the surface and the great ship.

Béla had just finished her morning audience seated beside the Great Bard Geoffrey. She found it surprisingly easy to resolve disputes and determine punishments for various violations of the civil codes. The goddess had only to look into someone’s mind to determine what was required for that person’s continued civility.

As her psychic abilities improved, she became aware that many grievances between two parties were actually due to the fact that one or both litigants believed something about the other that simply wasn’t true. Once the falsehoods were cleared up, the involved, and often, embarrassed, participants usually resolved their grievances themselves.

The people of the Lorraine District loved and respected their goddess and her companion, the Great Bard Geoffrey, to the degree that they practically governed themselves in honor of them. They remembered their last master with his hated ‘goon squad’ and were grateful that the goddess had intervened.

They were, however, somewhat disappointed that she didn’t require their worship of her, especially after titillating tales of the ‘Goddess of the Land’s Spring Festival’ at New Hope began circulating.

Thinking about worshipping goddesses, Béla put her attention on Elaine’s mind as she slept in her own private audience chambers on the third floor of the manor. Currently she was lying naked in the middle of the cold marble floor, exhausted from a private little experiment she’d conducted with the help of a dozen of her more ardent new admirers.

Back on the ship, while the two sisters had feasted on each other celebrating Béla’s newly won freedom, Elaine, mind-linked with her sister, had discovered Béla’s memories of her sex club. Enthralled, Elaine vampirically embraced the concept of being violently mistreated while having sex with multiple male partners and wanted to experience it herself.

When Elaine had been a Mayan princess, she had never considered taking more than one sacrifice at a time. That may have been partly because no sacrifice ever survived any sexual encounter with the Espirito Sheba who now called herself Elaine.

Her first gangbang was much more exciting than feasting on her sacrificial partners had ever been. She found it impossible to control a dozen horny young men and quickly became the object of their lust, simply hanging on for the ride as she was passed around the room like one big, horny party favor. Plus, all of her worshipers survived, so it wasn’t necessary to find new and usually unwilling sacrificial replacements every time she wanted sex.

Elaine decided she liked being a goddess, again. She was going to have to think up a name for herself, since Espirito Sheba, Spirit (or Goddess) of the Land, had been usurped by Bard Geoffrey to describe her older sister, Béla.

Although Béla was being physically lazy, her mind was busy working on details of creating a hedonistic society similar to the Sumarian culture she experienced during her early years on Earth. Among other fundamental changes in earth culture that she’d lived through, the gradual, but sometimes violent, move from matriarchal to male-dominated societies was the cause of many cultural problems that had infested mankind throughout the ages. Once men got involved with power, war, and the enslavement of the female half of the population, they seemed to lose their empathic abilities.

‘Perhaps that was because they couldn’t bear to feel in their minds what they were doing to their women,’ thought Béla as she worked her way through the problem.

But that wasn’t going to happen again, because Béla and her sister ‘goddesses’ were fully and firmly in charge now.

This whole Victorian-Christian modesty bit was incredibly galling to her. She didn’t know any of her siblings who, once they learned how to fly, enjoyed having to wear clothes (well, except for Melinda and Hank – Hank had started this whole religion mess anyway and Melinda was a must-have-total-control-of-everything psycho nut case.