Wisdom

Adult/Youth, Incest, Pedophilia

This story contains depictions and/or descriptions of sexual activity between adults and minors. If it is not legal to read this sort of material in your locality, you object to this sort of material and/or you are under 18 years of age, please stop reading now and exit this story. This story is a work of fiction. No character within bears any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, and no scenario within is intended to depict any actual event and neither should the same be inferred. This story remains the sole property of the author. Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author at edward_sellon@protonmail.com. Disagreeable comments will be ignored. This story may be downloaded for the personal enjoyment of readers, but those wishing to re-post and/or re-print the same must first obtain the permission of the author.

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Chapter III - A Walk in the Sun

Emerging with Yanni into the bright golden and still rather brisk morning, I saw that, as we began moving up the sidewalk and then turned east onto the broad avenue, the earlier stillness of the village had been thoroughly supplanted by the bustle of a considerable gaggle of children of all ages and also some adults. All wore -- the females around their torsos and the males round their necks -- the ubiquitous chains with the engraved pendants, the varying colors of the chains confirming my conclusion of the day before, that they were the indicators of an age classification system. I noted the younger children wore bronze chains, like the one I had seen around Sweet's neck, while the older children wore silver chains, like the ones I had seen worn by Emma and Martin. The adults wore golden chains. A platinum chain encircled Yanni's neck, however, like the one I had seen gracing his sister Lina's muscled abdomen. Curiously, other than Yanni, the chains of only a few of the adults were adorned by gemstones while the chains of what seemed like most of the kids sported rubies and sapphires and diamonds. I made a mental note to ask Yanni what it all meant.

The adults and children all wore variants of the yellow garments that signified the day, the adults more often cleaving to the common uniform of bikini bottoms and feet sheathed by low-cut athletic socks and light footwear such as sandals or canvas sneakers. Some wore jackets to ward off the morning chill but others, like Yanni and me, braved the crispness and went topless, erect nipples to be seen on every chest.

Among the youngsters, though, a more eclectic variety prevailed with regard to the bronzing of their flesh as well as the garments they were wearing. Most had donned some sort of yellow article to encase their young genitals, but their selections were decidedly skimpier. A good number of the boys wore micro-pouch thong-back bikinis that barely concealed their nether regions and left nothing about their hard young asses to the imagination. In some cases, their young cocks were erect enough to cause the pouches to noticeably rise and detach from their bodies. Some of the boys paired their bikinis with thigh-high panty hose of varying shades of yellow and varying grades of sheerness or athletic socks of equal length, and, rather than sandals or sneakers, their feet were shod with hiking boots.

One honey-blonde boy, whom I guessed was around thirteen years of age, sported an impressive, circumcised penis that, even though it was mostly flaccid, had to be at least six inches long. His prick hung low, its glans pushing his pouch down and out to reveal most of his thick shaft and pristine balls. His muscled legs were wrapped in a pair of thigh-high black and yellow-striped socks that I thought were quite striking, at least while he was wearing them, and, on his feet, he wore golden khaki hiking boots, threaded with red laces, which sheathed his legs up to just below his knees.

My mouth watered at the sight of him, but I quickly turned away, though his image was indelibly burned into my memory. My eyes darted toward Yanni but, for the moment, he was more concerned with exchanging greetings with the crowd than paying attention to me. I breathed an inward sigh of relief. I suddenly wasn't in the mood to hear Yanni once again express his belief that I wasn't just some observer, neutral or not, but that I might find myself more at home here than I cared to admit. I did realize my senses were under such a constant assault, though, that I was having trouble organizing my thoughts.

The girls were just as daringly imaginative. Some were garbed simply, but were still outrageously alluring, wearing variants of micro-bikini bottoms like the one I had on. Others wore short shorts made of denim or spandex, some of the latter in brilliant metallic shades, all riding low on their hips, and some cut so high that all of their asses were revealed. The short shorts ranged in size from short to ultra to micro to super micro. Some of the girls combined bikini bottoms with the shorts, the side straps of the bikinis rising from the top of the low-cut shorts to ride high on their hips. Like the boys, some of them wore hose or long socks and, on their feet, some wore the usual sandals or sneakers while others wore glossy ballet slippers.

Seeing all this, I allowed myself a small smile. Whatever pretensions to paradise this place maintains, I thought, it shares at least a little something with the outside world: the youthful stabs at individuality and self-discovery manifested in the ceaseless fashion show that was forever a hallmark of growing up. It was only then I noticed that, amidst the variety, the one article all of the kids had in common was a pair of knee pads shielding the hinges of their legs. Something else to ask Yanni, I thought.

It was plainly a happy and healthy group, all of them moving east toward the Main House, chattering and laughing, some of the children horsing around. I was irresistibly struck by how unashamed all of them seemed. Here they were, nonchalantly strolling in states of brazen display, some of them visibly aroused, some of them blithely fondling their own genitals as they walked, and yet, somehow, nothing seemed amiss, even to a square from the outside world like me. The morning was bright and cool, a new day was at hand, and these kids seemed as carefree and suffused with youthful promise as kids anywhere, perhaps even more so.

Considering the flock of youths passing before me, I thought of what I had seen of Sweet the day before: his easy nudity, his unabashed arousal, his joyous indulgence in sex, all amid a thoroughly merry disposition, engaging personality and delighted meeting with life. Coming here had seemed to do no harm to the boy once named Marco. I knew I couldn't judge the whole place based on the little I had seen of one child, of course, but here was a herd that seemed no different, that appeared just as contented, just as gratified by the small moments of living as they surely must have been exalted by the undoubted myriad pleasures their young bodies had already experienced and enjoyed.

Everyone in the crowd, adults and children alike, seemed to know Yanni, waving and wishing him a good morning. Some of the kids, the boys and the girls, came up to him, hugging and kissing him, some even playfully licking his nipples, grabbing at his genitals or squeezing his buttocks. Yanni returned all the hugs and gropes and some of the kisses lingered, his tongue swirling in the mouths of several boys and girls. As I watched him consort with the kids, knowing he had likely had sex with each and every one of them, I noted that most if not all of the boys wore their hair long, down to their shoulders and lower, and some secured their tresses in ways and with colorfully gilded hair ties one might expect to be more appropriate for girls.

Ever the gentleman, Yanni introduced me to everyone who accosted him, telling them my name and describing me as a visitor, a personal guest of the Master. To a person, all of them greeted me with genuine warmth and wished me a happy stay. Upon hearing the mention of the Master and my so-far tenuous association with him, some of the children regarded me with wide-eyed awe while timidly offering their hands, as if the mere utterance of their god was enough to straiten them into a state of reverent wonder. The occasional childish shyness aside, however, I was amazed at how polite and well-spoken all of them were, nothing like the sullen mumbling brats I had encountered in the outside world.

Meeting them all slowed our progress and another pack of youths following us on the avenue caught up. Amid a renewed bout of embraces, fondles and smooches, Yanni introduced me to all of them as well, my eyes falling on one beautiful half-naked child after another. At the tail end of this ruck was a young boy whom I guessed couldn't be any older than ten. He was thoroughly lovely, the large bright brown eyes and full lips of his elfin face topped by a thick shock of dark auburn hair that draped over a side of his forehead and fell over the tops his ears. His flesh was only lightly browned, and his lissome figure displayed tantalizing hints of the athletic musculature that lay in his future. The relatively conservative cut of his hair left no doubt he was a boy, but his choice of garments provoked mighty doubt about which sex he preferred. The bronze chain, adorned with a couple of diamonds and a number of sapphires, was about his neck. Encircling his waist was an embroidered neon yellow garter belt made of transparent tulle. Studded with shiny golden buckles and snaps, the garter belt was attached to a matching pair of hose that sheathed his slender but sinewy legs. On his feet, he wore a pair of full-soled yellow satin ballet flats. He wore no panties and his slim uncircumcised young cock, at least four or five inches in length, stood at attention, proudly jutting out from his body. The sight of him, his beauty and his scandalous outfit, astounded me but I quickly set my face, not wanting to give off the slightest hint that what was typical in this world was throwing me for a loop or suddenly had my pussy dripping.

Yanni, of course, introduced me to the boy, whose name was Miles. His easy smile lit his eyes and face, and he was as courteous and charming as the other children I had met. As we shook hands, I think I did my best to keep my eyes on his face and off his exquisite cock, the two of us exchanging pleasantries in the manner of a mundane meeting rather than the encounter of a topless woman and visibly aroused boy. Yanni mentioned that Miles was the grandson of the town mayor, which caused the boy to lower his head a bit, a slight blush creeping up his cheeks. Miles apparently didn't care to have that modest bit of status mentioned, but Yanni smiled and playfully tousled the boy's hair, whisking away his moment of discomfort. After a few moments of amiable small talk, Miles moved on, mine and Yanni's eyes falling on his pretty ass. While gazing at the boy's bottom, Yanni gave me a fleeting glimpse of the core of his nature, absentmindedly running his tongue over his upper lip and giving his cock a squeeze, the organ hardening within the confines of his bikini bottoms.

Has Yanni's cock been inside that boy's ass? I wondered. I quickly concluded it had to have been. Just as I had no doubt that he had likely had sex with most, if not all, of the children we had already encountered, why not the adorable Miles as well? I was tempted to ask him but thought such a question could wait for another time, that there were more important mysteries to solve for now. I couldn't help thinking of what Yanni had shared yesterday and earlier today, though, about once being the Master's Chief Boy Lover and bringing for his enjoyment boys Yanni had already seduced. If Yanni had fucked all those boys then, why would it be any different now? Any boys that Yanni was fucking, as Sweet had so happily said, surely had to be boys the Master was fucking as well. And very charming, very fetching Miles had to be one of them.

As we resumed walking, I reached out and touched one of Yanni's arms, gesturing with my head at Miles. "Yanni, is androgyny encouraged here?" I asked.

Yanni looked at me and then again gazed up at the avenue at Miles, who was now several dozen feet away. "I can see why you or anyone else from the outside world might think that," he answered, turning back to me. "And, for once, you wouldn't be wrong. But, for someone who lives here, I think they would just say we encourage boys to be like boys and girls to be like girls, but that doesn't mean boys shouldn't be in touch with their feminine side or that girls shouldn't be in touch with their masculine side, and however they want to express that is absolutely fine. For example" -- he, too, indicated Miles with a slight gesture of his head -- "if a boy wants to feel and be sexy by wearing girl clothes, like a garter belt or panties or hose, no one here is going to think that odd or strange or call him names or make fun or anything like that. And if a girl wants to wear what are typically thought of as boy clothes, that's fine too. Here, all that's normal. Just like boys sharing love with each other and girls sharing love with each other is normal, as normal as boys and girls sharing love with each other or kids sharing love with adults."

Yanni thought a moment. "When I was a kid and living in the Master's house," he added, "he loved all of us, all his lovers, being naked or sexy. He didn't have many rules, but one was that we always had to be naked or sexy because it was natural, the way all of us are meant to live, and just made it easier for the love to be shared, just like I told you yesterday. There was even this big closet that was filled with just sexy stuff." He spread his hands to indicate the immensity of the bygone closet. "Whatever you can think of that's sexy to wear, you could have found it in that closet. Any one of us could go in there and put together sexy outfits to wear and, when he came home, whoever did the best job was usually the first one of us he fucked. But it was always left up to us. You could go in there or not go in there. You could be naked all the time if you wanted. Lina, for example, never went in there. I mean, not unless the Master was taking pictures of her for one of his photo sets. Otherwise, she just preferred always being naked."

The mention of Lina got me thinking. She had told me something of what it had been like to live in the Master's house during what I then thought were his salad days as a pedophile and child pornographer, and now Yanni was relating further details of that same era. What had it been like, I wondered, to see her running around naked when she was a girl barely into double digits? I tried to picture the panoply of debauchery in my head but, despite my skills as a writer who often leapt to the most terrible conclusions about my fellow human beings and their works, my imagination on this occasion was somewhat beggared. A house full of children, some naked while others lolled in their selections of salacious gear, all waiting for the return of their benefactor, their protector, their exploiter, all their silky tight young holes at his disposal at any moment he cared to choose. It was horrible; it was monstrous; it was undeniably fascinating and titillating. I marveled, realizing that the Master's private den of iniquity had somehow flowered, like a thickening wisteria slowly squeezing the life out of a tree, into a creed, an ethos, a way of life, a whole world.

"Anyway," Yanni continued, "the Master was so right, and the way we lived then is the way all of us live here now. There's no inhibition or shame here. All of us live naked or sexy and we can share love whenever we want. Like I said, the Master had only a few rules at his place but every one of us knew those rules had to be obeyed. The Master was never a tough guy about his rules; he never gave orders or yelled or anything like that. Heck, I can't even remember too many times when he raised his voice. But now, here, one of the rules everybody follows is the same as one of the ones he insisted on then: that love is the most important thing in life, and it's meant to be shared, and it doesn't matter who you are or who you're with or where you happen to be or what you're doing or whatever's going on around you. If you want to love yourself or want to love with others, you just do it and that's that. It's that simple -- and that important. Love is all. Love is the truth."

I was again beguiled and actually rather moved, not solely by Yanni's obvious and consistent belief, but also by the audacious implications of what he had just said. The Master's villainy, sexual and otherwise, had led to nothing less than the creation of a world where the all-powerful notions of body-negative sexual repression propagated by the great monotheistic religions of the last few millennia had, at last, been overthrown. A world where nudity wasn't anodyne, like at some silly nudist camp with its hypocritical pretensions to naturism, but deliberately paired with eroticism, where sex was openly and unashamedly enjoyed, not only between adults, but between adults and children and among the children as well. A world where no thought was given to the squelching of the innate sexuality of children, but rather, where they grew up without inhibitions or shame about their bodies, and the natural, spontaneous reactions of their young bodies to sights and touches were encouraged, even celebrated.

It struck me then that what the Master and his followers were attempting was a return to a mythical state of nature, a re-enchantment of existence; a world of nude fairies and sprites, of necromancers casting spells and sorceresses concocting potions, of elves gliding unseen through enchanted woods, and hobbits hiding in the underbrush; of naked bodies, in all innocence, writhing together in mystical bowers dappled by the light of the sun and glow of the moon. Was such a world possible? I wondered. How could anything get done if everyone spent all their time sucking and fucking? In order for civilization to simply exist, wasn't it necessary for everyone to mope about in a perpetual miserable funk? And yet, here I was, under the very firmament, immediately after the filling of the void and peopling of the earth. Was this place the garden humanity had longed for? In that moment, I felt, for the first time, pangs of admiration for the Master: for his audacity, his remarkable accomplishment, for a vision that was far beyond the capacity of any ordinary hood. Had he discovered the way past the flaming sword of Uriel? Strangely, though, that same moment did not cause me to wonder why I might feel that way, why, rather than recoiling, I was actually mulling the virtues of the Master, his band of votaries and their deviant cult. Why was I able to take at least one small step beyond the nimbus of certainty that enveloped everyone and had been drilled into me since the possession of my first jot of understanding? Why was I able to see, without yet really seeing, some glimmer of the truth of which Yanni had admonished?

Another lot of happy chattering children overtook us and there were yet more greetings and hugs and kisses and introductions. The last child introduced to me was a very pretty young girl named Emilia, who couldn't have been any older than eight or nine. She had chestnut hair that fell to the top of her back and was tied in a ponytail by a blue ribbon. She was flat chested, but her nipples were decidedly erect, two puffy protrusions that noticeably rose from her tanned flesh. She had a small birthmark on the right side of her sharp jaw, a sinewy slender body and long legs. Other than the yellow flat T-strap sandals on her feet, she wore only a pair of yellow thong bikini bottoms fastened by blue bows at its sides that matched the ribbon in her hair. Even before Yanni introduced us, I noticed her big brown eyes fixed on me with a piercing stare, and her thin lips set in something that, on her young face, resembled determination.

As Emilia and I shook hands, her somewhat unsettling stare never wavered and, without taking her eyes from me, she asked Yanni: "Will you be sharing love with her, Yanni?"

Yanni laughed. "I hope so, Emilia," he replied, turning to me with a smile. "I hope so."

Emilia was living proof of my musings about the children here. She lowered her eyes to brazenly regard my body. "You're really pretty," she finally said.

I was briefly at a loss for words with this strange child, who, I suddenly realized, was likely not regarded as strange in this place. "Thank you, Emilia," I finally managed to say. "You're very pretty too." It was only then I noticed the bronze chain around her muscled belly bore six diamonds and several rubies.

Emilia ignored my compliment, openly staring at my breasts. "If you share love with Yanni, will you let me know so I can join the love?" she inquired.

I was completely nonplussed and had no idea how to reply. Seeing the state to which this young girl had reduced me, Yanni saved the moment. "Well, we'll see, Emilia," he said. "She comes from a place where they don't share love as easily as we do, especially with young ones, so it's not as natural for her."

Emilia seemed to easily accept Yanni's explanation. "Oh," she replied simply, finally turning to look at him. She thought a moment and then added: "Yes, we learn about those places in school. It's a shame they don't share love when they feel the need. People who live in those places must be very unhappy." She turned back to me. "Well, I hope you and I share love." She then plunged one of her hands down into her bikini bottoms and utterly unselfconsciously, without the slightest shred of inhibition, unmistakably sent some of her finger into her juvenile slit. The hand quickly emerged, and she held it up to me, her fingers noticeably moistened. "You see!" she declared. "You make me really wet."

Emilia's hand hovered for a few moments, long enough for me to detect the slight aroma of her juices, a whiff of freshness that, while faint, I somehow found momentarily bewitching. I was then at a thorough loss for words, afraid even to move, marveling that a girl so young could produce such copious spendings and wondering if she was holding up her hand as some sort of invitation. But before I could summon myself to do or say anything, Emilia drew back her hand, stuck the fingers in her mouth and wiped them clean with her tongue.

Emilia stared at my breasts again. "I hope I get breasts like yours when I'm older," she said. "They're, like, perfect for your body and you've got really sexy areolas." She suddenly dialed down the power of her stare and raised a hand to wave at me and then Yanni. "Anyway," she said brightly, "goodbye!" She skipped off, now resembling a young girl from my world despite her state of undress, the cheeks of her trim little bottom jiggling amid the strand of yellow fabric that disappeared into the crack of her ass.

Smiling again, Yanni turned to me. "Well, it looks like someone's got a crush on you," he said.

I watched Emilia scamper off while a corner of my mind considered the possibilities of her unmistakable invitation, tumbling over and over like a house sliding down the side of a hill in the midst of an earthquake. I fought off alluring visions of Emilia and I naked in a bed, our tongues busy at play in each other's folds, her young body resting against mine as her mouth hungrily devoured my breasts. I had no idea what to say to Yanni's undeniable observation and so, in an instant, decided, amid my consternation, to try to turn the situation around on him.

I looked at him with a hard stare and asked the question I had earlier decided not to ask. "Have you had sex with her?"

Yanni detected the sudden change in my demeanor but simply nodded. "Yes, many times," he answered easily. "The last time I fucked her" -- he thought a moment -- "must have been about a week ago. She lives with her parents a few blocks away from my house, so she's always coming over to hang out with Pop and Sweet. She's got a bit of a crush on Pop, you know. And I don't wonder why. Pop is lovely in every way: his face, his body, his cock, his personality. Anyway, I came home and there they all were, the three of them, sharing love on one of the loungers of our pool deck. Pop was fucking her while she was sucking Sweet's cock. They asked me to join the love and I did. I fucked Pop's ass while he fucked Emilia, and we all got into a really good rhythm, and, after Pop came, he pulled out of her pussy and then I put my cock inside her and fucked her too, and then Sweet came in her mouth, and then she and I shared Sweet's come in deep kisses while I kept on fucking her, and finally she came, and I came with her. And then, even though I was still coming, I pulled out of her pussy, and all three of them licked my cock and ate up my jizz, sharing it with each other and me in kisses. It was very beautiful. And then she stayed over for dinner."

Yanni's account, which I suspected he had rendered in a very detailed fashion to bedevil me, had me picturing the four of them romping with utter abandon: three hard cocks spewing load after load of cum, all to the delight of a little girl who was as eagerly licentious as her afternoon lovers. I was aroused but also incredulous. "You managed," I asked in an accusing tone while gesturing at his penis, "to get that cock into her?"

Yanni nodded again, "Emilia is eight," he explained, "but she's tall for her age. But most girls that age or older can be fully fucked, depending on their size and the size of the cock. You just have to be gentle and go slow so they can have their pussies trained and enjoy the love, especially if it's their first time or the first few times after their pussy cherries are popped. In fact, girls as young as five or even four can be fucked. You just have to know how to fuck them. I explained all this to you before. The Master was the one that taught me, and it was the Master's dad that taught him. He started fucking my sister Rola, for example, when she was eight, and, back then, I used to see him fucking her all the time, not to mention other girls that were younger, some a lot younger."

I shook my head in what I told myself was revolted wonder and fell silent. Yanni was quiet as well, acutely sensing, as he always did, my mood. He simply knew I was suddenly, inexplicably, seething and my mind was swirling with outraged questions. He would be ready to honestly answer each and every one of them when they were posed. We slowly walked on, the latest crowd moving beyond us.

I gave way entirely to the curiosity I had promised myself to hold at bay until some other more opportune time. "So, if you've fucked her," I finally said, "I'm guessing the Master's fucked her too." I took a few deep breaths. "He's fucked her, hasn't he, that little girl?" I spat. "And you too, you sick fuck! How could you? How could all of you?"

Yanni stopped and turned to look at me and I looked up at him. "No one has ever forced Emilia to do anything," he said. "She's been enjoying love with her parents since she was born, and with her younger brother and sister since they were born. She's enjoyed love with many others here at Philo-Sophia, with adults and other children, her teachers, and the Master. And everything she's seen and done, everything she's experienced and been taught, all the love she's shared, has been her choice."

"But that's not possible!" I said fiercely. "Children can't consent, not to sex!"

"That's another lie your society has told you. Children are sexual beings, just like adults, sometimes even more so. They can consent because they know their own bodies, and having sex, enjoying love, helps them know their own minds, allows them to fully realize all the capabilities and talents they've been given and might develop; brings them, finally, to a full realization of themselves as human beings. Their sexuality doesn't magically switch on at eighteen or some other arbitrary age. Their bodies are filled with powerful erotic energy when they're young, very young, even from the time they're born, and here that isn't suppressed in any way. They're allowed, encouraged, to express their sexuality openly, lovingly and safely.

"Now Emilia" -- he gestured up the road in the direction Emilia had gone -- "just happens to be a very sexual child, even by our standards. Her father popped the cherry in her pussy when she was four and the cherry in her ass when she turned eight, which was his right as her father, her first lover, the person who, along with her mother, is the first in her life with the responsibility to teach her about love and how love is made real by sex. We don't have any silly notions about children being unequal to adults, especially their parents; about some sort of imaginary power differential that keeps children from experiencing the pleasure and knowledge their own bodies can give them. Emilia may only be an eight-year-old girl to you, but here she's already a woman, with the knowledge and the right to do with her body whatever she pleases. She can fuck or not fuck, love or not love; it's always up to her -- and that's true of everybody here."

Yanni's voice was suddenly jacketed by a firmly defiant tone. "And, yes, Emilia's been the Master's lover many times, invited to participate in his afternoon orgies and spending the night in his bed, sometimes by herself and sometimes with others. The Master himself has told me that he thinks she has a great deal of natural sexual talent, that her pussy is very sweet for a girl so young, and he loves the feel of her pussy and asshole around his cock -- and I feel the same way. That time I told you about, when she visited and we all shared love by the pool and then she stayed for dinner, she was the one who asked me to join the love she was sharing with Pop and Sweet, she was the one who asked me to fuck her after Pop came, and she was the one who asked me to make her come while I was fucking her. And then, after we all had dinner, she and Pop got into a sixty-nine on the living room floor and she was on top, and she was the one who asked me to fuck her ass while she ate Pop's cock and balls and Pop ate out her pussy -- and I did. I fucked her ass and fucked it hard, and the harder I pounded her, she was the one who asked me to fuck her harder still. Every time I've fucked her -- and the first time I fucked her she was five years old -- I've totally enjoyed it and I know she's totally loved being fucked by me. And I don't say that to brag or anything like that. I say it simply because it's the truth. The love Emilia and I have shared, alone or with others, has always been good. And that last time when she was over at our place, when we were all sharing love on the pool deck, we shared the love, freely and openly, under the sun while our neighbors were in their backyards and looking on, if they weren't sharing love themselves. Because, here, seeing things like that, doing things like that, is just natural. And Emilia and I will share love again -- many, many more times."

Yanni sighed. "And I'd appreciate you not taking things out on me when you get mad," he added. "I know all this is strange and terrible for you -- or at least that's what you say. If you want to get mad about it, whether you get mad at us or yourself, that's fine. But don't take it out on me, someone who likes you and cares about you. You may think I'm a horrible monster, but that doesn't change the fact that you and I are friends, even if you don't like to admit it."

Yanni had cowed me, and I lowered my head. "I'm sorry," I said, actually apologizing to this child fucker I liked so much. "I should be more detached; that's what a good reporter does anyway. I just" -- I paused a moment, unsure how to phrase what I wanted to say -- "can't get my head around what you're telling me, that a child that young can be so eagerly and willingly sexual."

Yanni softened then, a small smile on his face. "No worries," he said. "We won't ever mention it again." His smile faded a bit. "But trust me when I say it's true," he added. "When I was Chief Boy Lover, long before we got this compound going, I saw it all the time. Every one of the Master's lovers, the ones that lived in his house and the ones that didn't, willingly came back for more of his love, all of them wanting so bad to learn everything he could teach them. The ones that lived with him were always so happy and excited when he came home, including me and my sisters, all of us always ready to give him anything he wanted because we knew he would always give us so much in return. And the ones that didn't live there, well, you should have seen them, the way they would just rip off all their clothes as soon as they stepped inside his place. Every bit of shame they might have once felt about being naked and openly sharing love had melted away -- and that was the Master's doing, the result of his love and his teachings.

"And I see it to this day, even more so now that we live here, in this place, thousands of us now, where we can all be naked and sexy all the time. It's so beautiful when a child is allowed to express their intrinsic sexual nature, which is the truest thing about all human beings; when they can join others in love without any fear or worry. In a lot of ways, Emilia's like any little girl anywhere, still exploring, still learning, still finding out about herself and all that life has to offer. But she's also very special, a member of the first generation born in Philo-Sophia. She doesn't know anything but here, a world where she can love and be loved -- always. Her kind will help to put the change in motion."

What the fuck could I say to any of that? I sighed and we resumed walking. I was actually feeling a bit ashamed I had tried to put Yanni in a corner by making a moral judgment rather than just observing and listening. I sought a way to banish the momentary awkwardness between us.

"Is everyone heading for the Main House?" I asked.

Yanni nodded. "Most of them, yeah," he replied. "They start serving breakfast at five."

"Everyone eats at the Main House?"

"Well, yes and no," Yanni said. "You see, when we first came here, there wasn't much other than the Main House. Elysium didn't exist then so most of the people that were here -- and there were a few hundred of us then -- had to live in these tents called yurts."

Knowing what a yurt was, I nodded.

"You should have seen this place then," Yanni continued, sweeping his left arm over and behind me to indicate the space occupied by the town we were leaving behind. "What's now Elysium was filled with those yurts, as far as the eye could see." He paused a moment. "But it wasn't so bad. The yurts were pretty spacious; some were big enough for whole families, and they had electricity and air conditioning for the summer, though the summers here are usually pretty mild. But they didn't have kitchens or running water or toilets, so we had to set up communal showers and port-a-potties." He laughed. "As many yurts as there were, there were about as many port-a-potties. And, in the mornings and evenings, you could always see a long line of people, adults and kids, waiting to take a shower. But, at least in one way, that was never too much of a problem since nudity is no big deal here, and people, especially families, would often shower together. We did have to make a rule that no sex was allowed in the showers whenever there was a crowd of people waiting." He laughed again.

I caught Yanni's mention of the mild summers and the fact that summer was not now, a small clue as to where in the world we might be, likely somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. In spite of myself, I chuckled over his mention of the bygone rule prohibiting sex in the showers. "Now that must have been a hardship," I said.

Yanni laughed yet again. "Yeah," he said with a smile. "Well, anyway, while all that was going on, everybody that was here took their meals at the Main House. There's a big ballroom there that doubles as a dining hall. It's the same space we use for big ceremonies, like the start of the Grand Orgies." He gestured in the direction of the Main House. "You'll see it soon when we get there."

Despite all I was learning about this world, a mundane thought snuck into my head at that moment. They hold the Grand Orgies there? I thought. Geez, before they start serving food there, I hope they clean that ballroom within an inch of its life.

"Anyway," Yanni continued, "eventually the town got built, and it's still being built, and people moved into their houses and offices and set up their shops, and the yurts started coming down, and more people came, and we built the Academy and the residence halls, and everything else. And now people can eat in their own homes and the kids can eat at the dining hall at the Academy, and there are even a few eateries and restaurants in the town. But the Master kept up the tradition of serving three meals a day at the Main House and a lot of people still go, especially the people who were here at the beginning." He paused a moment, thinking. "I mean, people were really glad when they could finally move out of the yurts and into a proper house but everyone that was here then, when we started out and there was next to nothing, look back and are really proud, you know, proud of all that hard work and all we've accomplished so far, and the meals at the Main House were a part of all that, part of everything we shared then and still share now.

"And I know the Master and Maya feel the same way because so many people coming to the Main House every day is like a daily reminder that we're a community, and, more than that, a family. All of us, the men and women, the boys and girls, a family, loving and strong."

Yanni fell silent then, obviously considering his own words while I did the same. He made it seem as if the denizens of this world had, in a remote corner of some vast frontier, carved a town out of the wilderness that was destined to grow into a mighty metropolis, like the settlers who had traversed the American West and found themselves on the distant shore of an unknown continent. But then I kicked myself, remembering that history already contained tales just as compelling and oddly spectacular. Hadn't the Pilgrims crossed an ocean and laid the foundation for a nation that would someday bestride the world? Hadn't the Mormons crossed a desert and founded a city on a great salt flat that was the center of a quasi-empire to this day? As for Yanni's regard for the significance of the meals shared at the Master's lair, I couldn't resist, perhaps a bit uncharitably, thinking that there had been communal dining halls at places like Jonestown, Rajneeshpuram and Mount Carmel.

The sidewalk ended and we left the blocks of houses behind, approaching a long grove of oaks. The great overhanging branches of the trees blanketed the avenue ahead, golden rays of the morning sun slanting through gaps in the leafy canopy to dapple the black asphalt road with little patches of yellow light. As we approached the alameda, there was a sign by the side of the road that read: "You are now leaving Elysium. Amas. Semper amare."

"Love," I whispered. "Always love." I turned to Yanni. "I still find it hard to believe what you told me yesterday: that there are over twenty thousand people living in the town."

Yanni regarded me with a small knowing smile. "And more arriving practically every day," he retorted with obvious pride. "The world is full of pedos, even if people don't want to admit it. And this place will be a haven for them, for all of them, until the rest of the world comes to its senses." He turned his head to look up the road. "In the meantime, there are about as many people here as there might be in any sleepy small town."

"I'm sure the town is anything but sleepy," I retorted with a small snort.

Yanni laughed.

"Where did they all come from?"

"Some have been with us for a long time," Yanni answered. "The first compound -- that's what we call it now, anyway -- was a trailer park the Master owned with his father. It was pretty run down when they bought it, but the Master fixed it up. Back then, some of the people that lived there lived there year-round and others lived there part of the year; you know, snowbirds that came down during the tourist season. There were already some pedos living at the trailer park when they bought the place and the Master got to know them all. He let them know he would protect them, help them if they got into trouble, and that they could trust him. He shared some of his child lovers with some of them and they shared their lovers with him. They got first crack at the kiddy porn the Master was making. Anyway, one friendship led to another, word got around, and more and more pedos moved in, all sorts of people, and that was the real beginning of Elysium."

Yanni's explanation was very interesting and revealing, to be sure, at least as far as it went. I stored it away, a foundation for future questions. "But that can't account for the thousands that live here now," I asserted.

"No, you're right," Yanni replied. "By the time we moved into the second compound, the Master had set up a system to keep track of pedos getting arrested all over the world and it wasn't long before that database was huge. There were all sorts of people in there: men and women, some of them famous -- or infamous, I'd guess you'd say. There were people from all walks of life: bankers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, even cops. We'd get in touch with them and offer to help them out, and the smart ones accepted our help."

"How did you help?"

"If they needed help with their cases, we'd pay for their lawyers and try to get them the best deal possible. If they had to go to prison, we'd look after them while they were inside, sending them money for commissary, trying to make sure they were treated fairly and didn't get abused. It used to be pretty bad for pedos inside, but as more and more of them got sent up things actually got better simply because so many of them were doing time. Anyway, we'd help after they got out too, providing them with stipends, helping them find places to live, getting them jobs."

The capacity of this place and its inhabitants to amaze me seemed to be limitless. A global network devoted to helping and protecting pedophiles, I thought, all seemingly in the service of a long-range plan of astounding intricacy and depth. Who could have imagined such a thing? What sort of minds could have conceived such an idea? Still, I admitted to myself, it was no wonder the denizens worshipped the Master as a savior and his inner circle styled itself as something royal, even holy. Flabbergasted yet again, I asked: "How was all this help arranged?"

"I can't tell you that," Yanni replied. "What I can tell you is that the database is now maintained by Lina's people as part of their intelligence operation. Some of that info goes to a charity organization that's run by Peaches and Dawn, who are also Goddesses. You'll meet them soon. But if you want to know more, you'll have to ask them."

I felt a sudden pang of frustration. I knew Lina wouldn't tell me shit, and I remembered Yanni mentioning Peaches and Dawn the day before as the Master's first chief girl lovers, during a time in the distant past. They were obviously grown women now, still important cogs in the Master's sinister organization. I wondered how amiable they would be to telling me of their doings. Knowing I couldn't learn anything more for the moment, I simply nodded. "Okay," I simply said. "But how did all these people end up here?"

"We found this island, bought it, and the Master and Maya started fixing it up; renovating the Main House; building new buildings, like the Studio complex; establishing Elysium and the Academy; and just creating all that you see around you." He spread his arms to indicate the entirety of our surroundings. "Anyway, at the same time, they started getting in touch with a lot of the people we had helped over the years." He looked me in the eye and added: "Don't ask me how and why they picked the people they picked because they didn't share that with me. They worked with Lina and Peaches and Dawn on that. And don't ask me how they got in touch because I won't tell you."

At the mention of an island, my eyebrows involuntarily arched. So, we were on an island. I remembered Yanni had mentioned that the evening before. It has to be a large island, I thought, and there couldn't be many of such a size on the planet, at least ones that were privately owned. That tidbit of important information was decidedly mollifying. "Okay," I replied equably with a small smile. "No worries." I pondered what he had shared for a few moments and then asked: "So all the people they did pick, I assume, had a hand in helping create this place."

"That's right," Yanni admitted. "They first got in touch with architects, engineers, city planners, construction people, landscapers, and all the other kinds of people they knew Philo-Sophia would need. They chose well because everyone they contacted was eager to get involved, to become a part of what the Master and Maya envisioned, to build a community and become practitioners of our new faith." He paused a moment. "All of them played a role in building this place and the work is still going on. That's why when I tell you we have a community here, a family, I'm not exaggerating."

I regarded Yanni but said nothing in reply. I couldn't dispute anything he had said. In residence for less than a day, my eyes had, continued astonishment notwithstanding, already confirmed all he had just uttered. What I saw around me was far more than a band of perverts scrabbling in the shadows. I saw a breathing, living society, nothing less than a civilization, nascent but vibrant, a modern-day umma, the strength of which was, as exemplified by the town we had just left behind, undeniably waxing. I gently shook my head in wonderment and took a deep breath. I had thought to expose a gaggle of child pornographers; a prolific gaggle, to be sure, but nothing more. I simply had not considered that, despite the stories I had heard, I might encounter a veritable nation-state of pedophiliac true believers that, like the wild-eyed fanatics that burst out of Arabia in the 7th Century, had the whole world in mind.

The crowd had moved well ahead of us, distant on the now quiet road. A cool, sweet breeze blew through, rustling the leaves overhead while birds sang their ode to the morning. The cloying saltiness of the nearby ocean was on the wind, and I inhaled a deep draught of it into my lungs. A group of stragglers, four young girls gabbing and giggling, walked past us, all of them smiling and waving at Yanni.

As Yanni waved back at them, I took note of their bronze belly chains. I turned to him and asked: "What's the significance of the belly chains and necklaces, Yanni, especially those gemstones?"

"Everybody wears them, except for the Master and the striplings. When kids turn eight, they get a bronze chain that they wear until they're thirteen. Then they get a silver chain and finally a gold chain when they turn eighteen. The gemstones signify how many times someone has been the Master's lover."

That, too, was interesting. Just a few minutes before, Yanni had gone on about the equality, sexual and otherwise, between the adults and children in this realm and yet here he was describing a system that classified all by age. The manner in which he related this apparently important feature of his world, though, indicated to me the dichotomy was lost on him. As for the gemstones, I automatically concluded they were yet another subtle way the Master asserted control over his followers, especially the youngsters. But I didn't want to spark any more unpleasantness so, rather than point out the contradiction, merely said: "I'm guessing the boys get the sapphires and the girls get the rubies."

"That's right," Yanni said, nodding. "They get a stone every time they're chosen to be the Master's lover for his afternoon meditation or for the night. Once they're picked ten times, they get a diamond."

I studied Yanni's platinum chain and the long lines of diamonds on either side of the pendant bearing his engraved name.

"Why is your chain platinum?" I asked. "And I noticed Lina's chain was platinum a well."

"Platinum chains are worn by members of the Holy Family," Yanni explained.

I then tried counting the diamonds on Yanni's necklace, estimating there were two dozen or more, even my inexpert eye telling me they were all genuine and hence worth a small fortune.

Yanni caught me looking. "I've got thirty diamonds on my necklace but they're just for show," he said. "If I wore stones for every time the Master and I have shared love, I wouldn't be able to move." He laughed.

I sighed. "I noticed there were four diamonds on Emilia's belly chain," I said. "So that means she's been the Master's lover over forty times, that he's fucked her who knows how many times."

Yanni nodded. "That's right," he said. "But remember, she got her first chain only this year, so it records only the number of times she's been with the Master since she turned eight. She shared love with Master many, many times before that. In fact, she was four the first time the Master fucked her, not too long after her father popped her pussy cherry."

We left it at that. I regarded him for a few moments and, while flicking one of my own earlobes, then asked: "What do the earrings signify, Yanni? I noticed Lina wore earrings identical to yours as well."

"The same thing as the platinum chains," Yanni explained. "Earrings like mine are worn only by members of the Holy Family."

"But I noticed those girls on the plane -- what were their names?" I thought a moment and remembered. "Lisa and Susan, they wore earrings like yours but without the topazes and the prongs were yellow gold, not white gold."

Yanni smiled. "Wow, you do notice everything, don't you?" he said. "I guess that's what makes you a good reporter." He paused a moment and then explained: "Lisa and Susan were wearing the earrings that are given to all the members of the Master's household. They're a part of his family too, just not a part of the Holy Family."

"But everyone here is a member of the Master's family, you said," I retorted.

"In a very real way, yes," Yanni said. "This compound's only been around a few years, but we've already accomplished so much. Like I said, everyone who's here -- the people who were here at the beginning and the people who came later -- has played some part in helping the Master and Maya building all you see around you. So, in that way and a lot of other ways, we are a family, all of us. And we all share love the way a family should."

I regarded him again. "What do you do here, Yanni?" I asked.

Yanni looked down at me and then down at the ground. "I'm the assistant deputy chief of staff for operations," he replied, a bit sheepishly. "That's my fancy title anyway. The Master and Maya set up the organizational chart, but, basically, I help run everything the Master does."

"What's the everything?"

Yanni considered a moment, either because he was thinking of how to phrase his answer or of what to reveal. I had no doubt, though, he would be completely honest with me. "I primarily oversee operations outside the compound, like the sex clubs, the titty bars, the distribution of the kiddy porn, the kiddy whorehouses, and the Rangers and the Scouts."

Well, that was a mouthful, I thought, and led to a slew of new questions as we walked, now largely alone om the road under the trees. "The sex clubs?" I asked. "The titty bars?"

Yanni nodded. "Back when the Master was still heavy into being a doper," he began, "he needed a way to launder all the money he was making and one of the ways he did that was by buying a strip club. He fixed it up and it started making big money right away. Titty bars are a cash business, after all. Anyway, the place made so much money, he bought another one, and then another, and more until he had a whole chain of them across the country, and in Canada and Mexico too. He was making so much money from the clubs that he began to see the potential of being in just the sex business, and that's when he started slowly getting out of dealing drugs." He paused a moment, thinking. "A lot of the girl lovers that were with him then ended up working as strippers at his clubs when they got older, so he took care of them that way. All of them made big money, and some of them went into adult porn or even the movies, and some of those girls became big stars. Diamond, Gem's mother, she started working as a stripper at his first club when she was fifteen and, eventually, she became chief stripper and then the manager of the place."

Judging by the tone of Yanni's voice, one might have thought he was he was talking about someone ascending to the head of a great corporation rather than a teenage girl rising to the management of a titty bar, but I had already seen many times over that in this world black was white and down was up. "And the sex clubs?" I asked.

Yanni shrugged. "When he started hitting it big with the strip clubs," he answered, "the Master realized there was money to be made with sex clubs. He sort of started from scratch there, even though he knew a lot of people who were swingers because he was one too. Anyway, he found a place, an old nightclub. He re-modeled it, did it up real nice, top-notch all the way, and then he opened, and it was a success from the start. You should've seen the crowd that first night. Anyway, it was just like the titty bars: one led to another and soon he had a chain of them all over, not just all over the country, and in Canada and Mexico, but in Asia, Europe and South America too. And that led to him financing bigger and more elaborate places, like swinger hotels and sex resorts."

"What's the name of some of those places?" I asked, not just for the sake of my snooping but also because I was genuinely curious. I had wallowed in the swinging lifestyle since my teens and, at that moment, wondered if I had partied at an establishment owned by the Master.

Yanni merely smiled at me, however, letting me know we had come to the end of that subject.

"And the kiddy porn?"

"I'm not going to tell you any details about the distribution. All I can talk about is what the Master puts out, but you know a lot about that already."

How the fuck did Yanni know what I knew about? I wondered. It was yet another confirmation they had me checked out six ways from Sunday. "Okay," I said, "tell me about that."

"We usually put out eight videos a month; nearly a hundred videos every year -- and the photo sets that go with them. There's a featured boy and girl every month who get their own videos. We call them the Andromeda of the month and the Ganymede of the month. Then there's a boy girl video, a gay boy video, a gay girl video, and a group sex video. This month, the group sex video is that boy orgy video I was telling you about, the one that Pop is in."

"That's six videos," I observed. "What about the other two? You said there were eight a month."

"The other two vids are the monthly storybooks and specials."

"What are those?"

"The Storybook series are short-subject vids. They tell stories, about five or six episodes per video, and each episode is usually, like, six to fifteen minutes long. And the Special series are full-length movies, though sometimes instead of making a movie -- you know, like with characters, a script and a story -- we make a movie using footage shot during the Grand Orgies. The vid you saw yesterday, for example, the one of the last Summerfinding Orgy, was our May Special, though the version you saw was a compilation of the raw footage before final editing, not the actual vid that went out to the customers."

"Earlier you said the Master came up with all or nearly all the ideas for the videos. Were the Storybook and Special vids the ones you were talking about?"

Yanni nodded. "He not only comes up with the ideas," he said, "but he writes a lot of them, at least the treatment, and, even if he doesn't direct them, he edits a lot of them."

"And all this happens at the Studio?" I asked.

Yanni nodded again. "That's right," he said. "We've got a soundstage and sets and everything over there. It's like Hollywood for kiddy porn. But sometimes there are exterior shoots at various spots on the island, and sometimes even location shoots off the island."

"When do I get to visit the Studio," I asked as lightly as I could muster, "see the Master at work, see where his magic happens?"

Yanni smiled. "When he tells me he's ready for you," he replied simply. "He might never tell me he's ready, but we'll see."

I was quiet for a few moments and then asked: "And what about the child prostitution?"

"You already know a lot about that," Yanni replied. "Those places are called Club Serenus. I know you never got inside one, but they're all very swanky, like a big-time nightclub or restaurant. There are locations all over the world, and the kids that work in them come from all over the world. They work as wait staff, servers, bartenders, you name it; as entertainers, dancers and singers and whatnot, and, yeah, they provide sexual services to the members. They're trained in everything the club might require, including sex. We have all of the managers of each location keep a careful eye out for the best of the kids that work in them, the smartest and the ones that are the best at sex, because those kids are usually selected to be brought here, to live at the Guest House and eventually live on the compound and become students at the Academy."

I again thought of Lisa and Susan, the fraternal twin sisters I had met on the plane the day before and who had brought me the superb Cosmopolitan. For the first time, I wondered about them. Where had they come from? When they spoke, I had detected no hint of an accent of any kind (but then the same was true of Sweet and every other child I had heard along the way). How had they become part of the Master's world? Had they, before becoming members of the Master's so-called family, done their time in one of the clubs?

"Can anyone patronize Serenus?"

Yanni shook his head. "You already know the answer to that," he said. "The clientele in every city is restricted to a very select and always very rich few. New clients are gotten strictly through referrals from existing clients, and they're checked out thoroughly before they're allowed to become a member. We have shifting locations in over a hundred cities now and you'd be surprised who visits. I mean, really powerful and connected people."

"Why would I be surprised?" I asked. "I mean, hit me with some names."

Yanni laughed. "You know I won't," he said. "But big people, some of them famous celebrities, big businessman, congressmen, senators, governors. Some of them are big-time hypocrites, talking shit about how much they love Jesus and hate sin, and how they're so against sex and gay and trans people and pedophiles while they fuck kids on the down low."

"And, I presume, the Master's got this dirt on all of them?"

Yanni nodded. "If the Master ever goes down," he said, "the rest of the world goes down with him. I've heard him say it might be worth the sacrifice, to show the rest of the world how truly natural it is to want to have sex with children and actually have sex with them, and, because it's forbidden right now, only the rich and powerful get to enjoy the privilege of knowing the pure love of children while everybody else is brainwashed into believing it's a bad thing."

"That's because it is a bad thing," I retorted.

Yanni smiled. "Your friend, the big-time investment banker, doesn't think so," he said. "And you certainly didn't tell him that when you were trying to get information out of him."

I stopped in my tracks, knowing there was only one question to ask. "What have you done to him?" I asked, fearing the answer.

Yanni looked at me. "Nothing," he said. "Absolutely nothing -- so far." He held up his right hand then and crossed his fingers over his chest, saying: "Cross my heart and hope to die. When you showed up and started making trouble, I was the first to get the word and it actually wasn't too difficult to figure out who was telling you stuff. The Master knows him, or knew him, and he says he always knew the guy envied him -- and hated him because he envied him. Besides, that guy's got enough troubles right now. Anyway, normally, we wouldn't have hesitated. Lina wants him dead and even picked two of her Guardians to do the job, but the Master told her not to send them out. He said he doesn't want him harmed -- for your sake." He paused a moment. "But he's being watched, and that decision could change."

I knew Yanni was being honest with me. As always, he inspired an odd sense of trust. But I was taken aback, thinking how they could have deduced my source -- and freshly appreciating the stakes of this story. What Lina had told me the day before wasn't a threat, but a promise. If whatever I did posed any threat to them, it wasn't just my life on the line but also that of the man whose loose lips had led me here. I hated him, sure, but I didn't want him dead. I had to tread carefully -- and had to balance on a knife edge whatever I wrote in future.

In an attempt to soothe my sudden pensiveness, Yanni said: "Don't worry. Nothing's going to happen. I know you're too smart to let anything happen."

I couldn't tell if that was reassurance or a veiled threat. Telling myself I knew Yanni, at least a bit, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but I couldn't help but worry. Sure, the banker was an arrogant fuck who smugly believed his wealth and connections had carried him beyond the reach of human justice, but he had, after a fashion, trusted me and now his life hung by a thread. There was no way to get word to him now, and, even if I saw him again after I left the island -- presuming I left the island -- Yanni and the rest of the Master's people would surely know.

I took a deep breath and exhaled, absentmindedly resuming the walk, Yanni beside me. "Now I'm thinking this isn't worth it," I said. "Maybe I" -- I paused a moment, hardly believing what I was about to say -- "shouldn't have gone after this story."

Yanni considered what I said and replied: "You are who you are. I don't think anyone or anything could've stopped you. That's why you let him fuck you; to find out what he knew."

I turned my head to regard Yanni, but his face was placidly neutral. Was there anything this pack of sick fucks didn't know? And yet I knew he wasn't judging me, merely stating a fact. I had let the banker put his pedophile cock in my pussy and ass a bunch of times, and, in return, he had babbled a wealth of information, not all I had wanted to know, for sure, but enough to keep me and the story going. Men were such weaklings, always thinking with their little heads. "Yeah," I said. "I let him fuck me."

"The Master admires you," Yanni stated.

That bowled me over. "He admires me?" I exclaimed in disbelief.

Yanni nodded. "He says you don't do anything half-ass, that you're willing to do anything to get what you want, and that kind of determination should be admired."

I let that sink in as we kept walking. The sick fuck admired me! I thought. Why? Did my all-consuming ambition mirror his own? I sighed and, wanting to shift the subject, asked: "Who or what are the Rangers? You mentioned them earlier."

"Those are the elite sacred prostitutes, who live here on the compound. We arrange expeditions to major events through the year and the Rangers go to work. Just one trip can bring in millions of dollars over a few days. I usually go out with the Rangers, supervise every expedition, and there's one out right now at the NBA Finals, but the Master asked me to stay behind this time because of your visit." He stopped a moment, thinking. "I'm actually glad he did," he added. "I wasn't looking forward to visiting Detroit."

"And you condone that?" I asked flatly.

"I don't disapprove, if that's what you're asking," Yanni replied. "I was actually the one who organized the first expedition, to the Super Bowl about twelve or thirteen years ago, when I was only seventeen. We brought in over twelve million dollars just from that first trip, all in cash. I remember the Master was so proud of me. And the kids were glad to do it, just like they are now." He looked at me and added: "What you don't seem to get is what Lina told you yesterday: that everyone here, including all the kids, are devoted to the Master. They willingly do what needs to be done to keep the compound going, to keep our world safe. Every bit helps accomplish what the Master has planned, and there's no judgment here about any of it. In fact, the Rangers are admired. Maya says that they and their work are sacred, because they do so much to advance our faith. I called them elite because they are. As young as they are, their sexual training and talents are unmatched. In a way, they're about as important as the Guardians or the elite models.

"You may think what we have going is a cult -- and maybe it is, in a way -- but that doesn't change the fact that everyone here is willing to do anything, even die, for the Master, because they know he wants to bring the truth to everyone, even the ones who are willingly blind. And if there are people willing to pay big bucks to have sex with our Rangers, that's just more proof how natural that desire is -- and what people are willing to do to make that desire a reality."

I wasn't about to bring an argument to bear on Yanni's circular logic, the spinning reasonableness of his twisted thought. I merely kept quiet and considered what he had said.

"Still," Yanni added, "the Master has thought about ending the expeditions and disbanding the Rangers. The kiddy porn and everything else is bringing in so much money that he says we won't really miss the money the Rangers bring in if we end the expeditions. And then we can re-assign the Rangers to being full-time models. But Lina is against the idea. She says the Rangers bring in a lot of valuable intelligence, so the issue is up in the air right now."

"How much does the kiddy porn bring in?" I asked.

Yanni shrugged. "You should ask my sister Rola about that," he replied. "I mean, I have an idea, but she's the one who handles the numbers. She knows to a penny everything we make from every operation."

I filed away that tidbit, knowing I would soon see Rola in any case. "Tell me more about the Goddesses," I said.

Yanni considered a moment. "Well, there's Maya," he began. "Like I told you, she's the Master's oldest child and his Chief Wife. She's the chief of staff here. She oversees everything on the compound and outside it. She was the one who started and put together our faith. I remember her saying then she just knew the Master was a prophet, that he was sent to begin the process that will heal our species and lead to true salvation -- in this life and on this planet, not in any mythical afterlife. Anyway, like I said before, the faith she created was so beautiful, so sexual, we all went along. So, the Master may be our god, but she's the High Priestess. She officiates over the Grand Orgies and the high rituals. Just like everybody calls the Master the Master, most everybody, especially the kids, call Maya the Mistress."

I nodded. "You mentioned your other sister. Rola."

"Yeah, like I said, she's in charge of all the money. She always had a head for numbers, so the Master sent her to school to become an accountant."

"But didn't you tell me she gave birth to Chad when she was just thirteen?"

"Yeah," Yanni said, "but that didn't stop her from going to school. We're a family and we all look after each other. All of us helped raise Chad and all the other kids the Master had or adopted or who were living at our place." He looked over at me and, detecting my desire for a fuller version of the story, added: "When Rola was twelve and Lina was fourteen, Rola became the Master's Chief Girl Lover because it was around that time that Lina and a few of the Master's other girl lovers, including Tiffany, started putting together the squad of kids who became the first Guardians, and the Master felt that Lina shouldn't have to do both jobs. The Master was still a doper then, but it was Lina who came up with the idea of using kids not just as lookouts, but also as guards and intelligence agents, and as a way of dealing with the Master's competitors and enemies, and then she made it all happen. I mean, she had some help but, for the most part, it was all her."

"You mean using them as killers?" I interjected in a slightly accusatory tone.

"Yeah," Yanni admitted. "It was around that time that a bunch of shit went down, like Caesar getting killed, and we had to figure out a way to deal with the situation, and, like I said, it was Lina who put the idea in action, and it was an idea that worked really well, and, well, you can guess the rest."

"Lina and her people took care of the people that killed Caesar?"

Yanni shook his head. "I'm not going to tell you about that. You can ask Lina or Maya and if they decide to tell you, fine."

I nodded. "Okay," I said. "But can you at least tell me what happened with Rola?"

"Well, the Master got Rola pregnant with Chad, like, just a few months after she became Chief Girl Lover. It wasn't a planned pregnancy; it just happened. The Master hates wearing rubbers; he didn't then, and he doesn't now, but, because he's so good at fucking, especially with kids, he was always really good at sensing just when he had to pull out before he came. But I guess that one time he fucked Rola some of those little swimmers made it into her pussy and got through. Anyway, I remember how surprised the Master was, how surprised all of us were, and, for a little while, he was unsure about what to do and we were all sort of worried about what would happen." He laughed.

"What was he uncertain about?" I asked.

"Rola's status, for one," Yanni replied. "He had just appointed her Chief Girl Lover and there was so much other shit going on, and, in the middle of all that, he suddenly had another kid on the way. But his being unsure about things didn't last long. He talked things over with Rola and eventually everything worked out."

"What did you think at the time?" I asked.

Yanni shrugged. "I think part of what went on with him then was he had never really thought of himself as a father before," he said, "not even after Maya or her sisters or Tiffany was born. I mean, he was only thirteen when Maya was born, so they weren't that far apart in age, and, for the first eight years of her life, before she came to live with him, she was mostly raised by Parvati and her grandparents. So, he and Maya were always more lovers than father and daughter, just like him and Gem now, and, as for Tiffany, since nobody ever tried to figure out who her father was, she was just, you know, part of the family, one of the Master's girl lovers. Anyway, when Rola told him she was pregnant, it was one of the few times I've ever seen him uncertain about something."

Yanni thought about what he had said for a few moments and then loosed an audible exhalation. "I think too he never before felt he had to act like a father," he said. "Despite all the kids he had made and all the kids he was fucking and all the kids that were living with him at the time, he always thought of them as lovers, not as sons or daughters, even though I knew a lot of them thought of him as their father, even more than their own actual fathers. Well, at least the ones who had fathers or who knew their fathers. I know that was true of me and Lina and Rola. But Rola getting pregnant finally forced him to accept he was going to become a father for real, that he was going to have a big part in actually raising a kid, because there was no uncertainty, you know?" He regarded me for a few moments before continuing. "I mean, unlike the situation with Tiffany, no one doubted he was the father of Rola's baby."

"There was never any talk of abortion or giving up the baby for adoption?"

Yanni shook his head. "No, never," he said. "None of us ever thought that would be a possibility. Even then, all of us knew the love inside him wouldn't ever let him even think about that. But, up until that time, I don't think he had ever planned on or even thought about having kids of his own with anyone but Parvati and Maya, despite the questions about Tiffany. I don't know why. Maybe it was because he was a hood, the life he was leading, you know? Anyway, like I said, he thought about it for a day or two, and then he and Rola talked, and everything was okay again. The tension just disappeared. In fact, whatever the Master and Rola shared, the two of them were all happy about it. He loves Chad so much and he's really proud of him."

"You never asked the Master or Rola what they talked about?" I asked.

Yanni shook his head. "No," he replied. "Neither of them ever told me -- or anyone else, as far as I know -- and, since Rola never told me, I figured it wasn't my place to ask. Heck, she never even told Lina, and the two of them talk about everything -- at least most of the time. I was just glad everything worked out, and everybody else felt the same way."

Yanni paused a moment. "Anyway, the Master never felt that uncertainty again," he added, as if to assure me of something, though I couldn't begin to guess what, and wouldn't know until sometime later.

Yanni chuckled. "Heck, now it's the opposite," he said. "He's always happy to hear he's got another baby on the way." He thought some more, then turned to me, lowering his voice to something of a conspiratorial whisper. "I mean, you know, Maya is his wife and Gem is his favorite, everybody knows that, but Chad is his only son. Well, his only son so far."

Yanni was quiet a moment, then turned to me again and, a touch of excitement animating his voice, added: "Someday Chad will be the Master and Gem will be the Mistress. The Master says he'll retire and just spend the rest of his life sucking and fucking." He laughed. "Not that that would be any different from what he does now. But I guess he means he would give up being our god and all his other responsibilities. He said he would be like Tiberius, but I've never asked him who that was."

"Tiberius was a Roman emperor who retired to the island of Capri," I explained. "When he retired, he took with him a bunch of young boys and girls and spent the rest of his life having sex with them -- at least until he was murdered by his nephew Caligula, who became the next emperor."

"Oh, yeah?" Yanni said. "That's cool. I mean the having sex with all those kids part, not the getting murdered part."

"So, what ended up happening with Rola and the Master and Chad?" I asked.

"Well, when Rola got pregnant, she had to give up being Chief Girl Lover, at least after a while, so she could take care of Chad, but before she gave it up, she was the one who set up the system we have today. She's always been super organized."

"How so?"

"Well, before Rola became Chief Girl Lover, things were pretty loose," Yanni answered. "The Master seduced kids, the Chief Boy and Girl Lovers seduced kids, and the groups of kids who worked with the Chief Lovers seduced kids, so everything was sort of catch-as-catch-can, which led to problems, especially when it came time to schedule a kid to meet the Master for the first time -- you know, when it was a kid he hadn't seduced himself. And, back then, the Master usually chose at random, sometimes at the last minute, which kid or kids would spend the night with him, and so that meant he ended up fucking some kids more often than he fucked others, and Rola knew that could lead to problems too. So, she made things more formal, set up an actual organization that operated in an established way and kept to a schedule. Each of the Chief Lovers appointed a deputy who helped them run things, and below the deputies were the assistant deputy lovers, each of whom was responsible for seducing and preparing the kids in a particular age group. When an assistant deputy lover thought a kid was ready to meet the Master, the kid was brought to Rola first so she could judge for herself if the kid was truly ready."

I recalled something Yanni had mentioned earlier that day about his own exploits as Chief Boy Lover: that he had seduced boys in the Master's name, had had sex with all of them before ultimately offering them up to his adult pedophile lover. I mustered a piercing stare in order to regard him. "You mean they were brought to Rola in order to have sex with her before they were brought to the Master to have sex with him," I stated.

The knives hurled by my unforgiving expression had as little effect on Yanni as bullets bouncing off a superhero. "That's right," he said with a broad smile on his face as he turned to me. "Rola felt any kid who had a chance to be with the Master should be prepared and talented enough to be in his bed, to receive his love and give him their love in return. She thought that doing things that way increased the chance that if a kid made it as far as being with the Master, then that kid already had a good chance of becoming a member of our family, and maybe also come to live with us at the Marina House, and she was right. It also worked with the Master's schedule; it gave him the time to do his business and fuck as many kids as he wanted without anybody getting bummed out about it."

"How did it do that?"

"Rola kept track of who he fucked and when," Yanni explained, "and that way she knew how and who to schedule. I mean, she always talked to him about the schedule, so she never scheduled anyone without his approval, which is the way it's done to this day. But sometimes he had his moods, you know, just like he does now. He'd fuck a kid and want to fuck that same kid the next day, or for a bunch of days in a row. And, sometimes, he'd think of a kid when he was out and running around, doing whatever, and he'd call the house and tell Rola he wanted that kid or kids waiting for him when he got home. A lot of times when he got that way, it was Maya or Lina he'd ask to be ready for him. But usually, when he got home, Rola had everything set up for him, so he'd orgy with the chosen kids in the afternoon, and then, at night, he knew in advance which and how many kids were going to be in his bed, usually the ones who had loved him best in the afternoon."

"How did that system keep his lovers from getting bummed out? It sounds to me like he still played favorites."

Yanni nodded. "Yeah," he agreed. "But Rola figured out how to work that too. She assigned certain days of the week to the boys, certain days of the week to the girls, other days of the week to mixed groups of boys and girls, and Sunday was the always the day we had a family orgy, where everybody loved everybody. Sunday is what we call White now."

Remembering his earlier explanation of how the Master had bent time to his will, I simply nodded.

"Anyway," Yanni continued, "that way, everybody got a chance to share love with the Master on a pretty regular basis, either during the afternoon orgies and/or during the nights, and, besides all that, there were days he would take off and there were the holidays, when he'd be home all day, naked and hard, and sucking and fucking all over and around the house pretty much every minute of the day with whoever he wanted to love at any given time."

Yanni spoke of his younger sister's designs with a bright-eyed and happy pride, which, beyond their long and regular indulgence in incest, made it obvious how much he loved her. I simply shook my head in wonder, thinking how a young girl, as Rola had been then, could devise such a diabolically efficient system. I couldn't help but think that whatever twisted ends she served then and now, Rola must be an extraordinary person. "And that system worked?" I asked.

Yanni nodded. "Yeah," he said. "It worked so well that that's the way things are done to this day."

"What did the Master think of that plan when Rola suggested it to him?"

"He saw the sense of it right away," Yanni replied. "It got rid of any complications and confusion, and it gave him more time each day to take care of his business as well as share love. He didn't have to spend so much of his time hunting for kids and seducing them. Anyway, by that time, new kids were coming into our family from several sources, and not just all the seductions. But the lovers were still bringing him new kids, nearly all the time, and Rola planned everything every step of the way. But he did tell me, later on, that he missed the spontaneity of the way things were done before. He loved just going out and spotting kids, meeting them on his own, persuading them to come back to his place, and seducing them. He said every seduction was like a test of his powers, that every kid is different and so every seduction is different, that each one had its own unique discoveries and surprises. Some seductions took only a few minutes while others took weeks, but he was always patient. He's always said a true pedo is patient, and that the length of a seduction isn't often an indicator of the eventual quality of the child lover. His dad taught him that lesson and his own experiences confirmed the truth of it."

"He's an expert, no doubt," I retorted dryly. My riposte masked a darkly suffusing fascination, and not just because of the insidious intricacy of it all. But, once again not wanting to stumble onto a sticky strand of Yanni's spiderweb of revelations, I simply filed it away, reasoning I would pump him and anyone else (maybe including the Master) for more later on.

"You were Chief Boy Lover at the time, right?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"How did you feel about all the changes Rola made? I mean, they affected the way you operated too, didn't they?"

"Yeah," Yanni agreed with a small shake of his head. "But I saw the sense of it too. Like I said, Rola is really organized. She's my younger sister, but she sort of taught me how to be organized too. I was a lot more devil-may-care about things back then."

I smiled at that. Liking Yanni as I did, I couldn't help but wonder how the passage of years had matured him. Now, he was one of the major movers in the operation of a vast criminal empire, one of the stewards of a burgeoning pedophiliac cult, and yet so bawdily and sunnily charming that I could hardly imagine a more lissome, alluringly carefree soul, even when picturing him as a boy. I found myself wishing I had known him then.

"And Lina really appreciated it as well," Yanni added, "because when Rola finally gave up being Chief Girl Lover -- when she was, like, in her seventh or eighth month -- and Lina had to go back to doing that as well as running the Guardians, Rola left her a system that ran pretty much automatically. Officially, Lina was Chief Girl Lover, and, officially, she was Chief Girl Lover longer than anybody else, until she was seventeen, but she pretty much let Diamond run things on a daily basis, and things ran so smooth that Diamond kept at it even after she got pregnant with Gem."

Yanni paused a moment, thinking. "Anyway, Chad was born, and Rola was pretty busy being a new mother, but, like I said before, she always had this head for numbers, so she started to help the Master keep his businesses and books straight, keeping track of all the money he was making from dope and other stuff, and she was so good at that that, later on, the Master sent her to college, and she got degrees in accounting and taxes. When Lina gave up being Chief Girl Lover, Anna took over and Lina just concentrated on running the Guardians, and she's been doing that ever since. After Anna, Chloe was Chief Girl Lover and now it's Gem." He thought a moment and added: "I guess that makes all of them Goddesses too."

I shook my head in wonder. "Fucking amazing," I said. "Who'll ever believe it?" I spent a few moments mulling over all Yanni had so far revealed, realizing there was still so much more to come. "Who else?"

"Well, I told you a bit about Diamond," Yanni said. "She's Gem's mother."

I nodded.

Yanni shrugged. "Well, she was one of the Master's girl lovers and he got her pregnant too, about six months after he got Rola pregnant, and she had Gem when she was twelve. I think that pregnancy was accidental too, but, by that time, the Master had already gotten used to the idea of being a real father, and so he was really happy when Diamond told him she was pregnant." He smiled at the memory. "It was like he knew even before Gem was born that she was going to be a really special kid."

The seeming placidity underlying what Yanni had just said was blemished by the slightest of ripples, and by now our rapport had waxed to the point that I felt the rolling quiver wash over and past my mind. "That situation with Diamond and Gem wasn't as happy as you make out, was it?" I said.

Yanni sighed, a heavy sigh. "A lot of stuff went down during that time," he said.

"Was that the other part you mentioned when you were talking about what went on with Rola and Chad?" I asked.

Yanni merely nodded.

"What was it that went down?"

"A lot of stuff that the Master was afraid would happen," Yanni replied. "And that's all I'm going to say about that. If you want to know more, ask Diamond."

"Okay," I agreed. "Can you tell me more about Diamond anyway?"

"Well, Gem was born about six months after Chad," Yanni explained. "Diamond was never officially Chief Girl Lover, but she was Lina's Deputy Chief Girl Lover, and because Lina was always so busy -- you know, being Chief Girl Lover, at least officially, and running the Guardians -- Diamond took on a lot of her work as Chief Girl Lover. That was part of how a lot of the shit that was going down then got worked out. Besides, Diamond and the Master were always really close. In the old days, when the Master's day was done and he came home, she would bathe him every night, and that's how the Angels got started because when Diamond got older and had more responsibilities, she trained the boys and girls who took over that job from her, and those kids became the first body servants and handmaidens. But when Diamond was still doing it, you could walk into his bathroom practically every night and see her and the Master fucking in his big bathtub.

"Anyway, I guess that's one of the reasons the Master's even closer to Gem. Well, you know how fathers are about their daughters. All of us could tell he fell in love with her as soon as she was born. I remember walking into his bedroom a bunch of times back then and seeing Diamond in his bed nursing Gem and pumping the Master's cock at the same time. And when the Master came, they fed the cum to Gem and she ate it all up. So, you could say her father's cum was the second thing she ever tasted."

Yanni paused a moment, thinking, then added: "Anyway, about two years after Gem was born, the Master got Diamond pregnant again -- that time it was no accident -- and she had his daughter Jewel. Then, like I told you, when she was fifteen, Diamond went to work as a stripper in one of the Master's clubs, and, by the time she was eighteen, she was running the place. Eventually, she was running all the strip clubs and she's been doing that since the time we all moved to this compound."

"This compound? This is the third one, right?"

Yanni nodded. "That's right," he replied. "There were two compounds before this one."

"Really?"

Yanni nodded again. "Yeah," he said. "Like I said before, the first compound was a big trailer park owned by the Master and his dad."

A small smirk bowed my lips, and, in a teasing tone, I said: "A trailer park?"

Yanni looked over at me and nodded yet again while noting my amusement with a smile. "Yeah," he replied amidst a brief chortle. "Don't laugh. The place was huge, like a little city, and it was pretty upscale for a trailer part, at least later on. It was right next to the ocean, and had its own marina, and a park, a swimming pool, and even a miniature golf course. Like I said, a lot of the trailers were owned by these snowbirds -- you know, people who come down only for the winter -- so the place seemed empty for a good part of the year, but I'd say close to half the trailers were occupied by people who lived there all year round."

"What was the place called?"

"Neptune's Kingdom," Yanni replied affably.

"Neptune's Kingdom," I repeated, savoring another clue. "And Maya was his Amphitrite."

Yanni didn't get the reference. "Huh?"

"Nothing," I muttered, then turned to look at him. "Tell me more."

Yanni was silent for a few moments, another smile coming to his lips as he sank into the shallows of pleasant memories. "Well," he said," the Master and his dad bought the place to use it for one of their money laundering fronts, but it made good money on its own. His dad, so far as I know, never bothered to visit, but the Master moved there to run the place and he lived there most of the time."

I couldn't resist teasing Yanni again. "He lived in one of the trailers?" I asked. "I hope it was a double wide."

My jibe caused Yanni to snicker. "No, wiseguy," he retorted. "There was this big old house on the property, on top of this little hill, and it overlooked the marina. It had been there since long before the trailer park; it was built back in the twenties, I think. Anyway, the Master had it fixed up, and he put in this big swimming pool and pool houses, and he had the whole house surrounded by this big, tall wall" -- he raised his arms to indicate the height and immensity of the wall -- "so no one could see in. And, in front of the house, down the hill, there was this big empty lot." He swept his left arm through the air in front of him to indicate the size of the lot. "The people that owned the trailer park before were going to use the lot to build more trailers, and I'm pretty sure they were going to demolish the old house, but they ran out of money or something like that, so that's why they sold the whole place. Anyway, the Master had the lot dug up and landscaped and turned it into this big tropical garden. It was really beautiful. It had these paths and streams with little bridges over them, and ponds that were deep enough for swimming, and one of the ponds had a waterfall. And there were these little clearings where you could just lie down and enjoy the sun and the breeze and make love. It was close to the ocean so there was always a breeze. You could just lie back and listen to the breeze blowing through the palm trees. I'd go there a lot just to relax. It was so nice me and sometimes a bunch of the Master's lovers would camp out there and spend the night. But a lot of the times I went there was just to share love -- with the Master or some of the other kids. Anyway, the Master had a wall built to surround the garden as well."

"And all of you lived in the big house?" I asked.

"Yanni nodded. "Yeah, most of us," he said. "It was called the Marina House, and it had a lot of rooms. I mean, it wasn't as big as the Main House here on the island" -- he gestured in the direction we were heading, toward the great granite bulk of the Master's mansion -- "but it was definitely the biggest place all of us had lived in up to that time.

"Growing up there was fun. We had the run of the place, and we could do pretty much whatever we wanted. The Master never had too many rules. One was we had to be naked or sexy, like I told you before, and the other was we always had to pick up after ourselves. And that was pretty much it. I mean, we all had to help out with the chores, but nobody ever complained too much about that. Some of us, like Gio and Jackie, helped the Master out with his pics and vids. And we all had to go to school. The Master always said if we were going to live with him, we weren't going to be allowed to dick around, that we all had to go to school. So, Esme would drop us off every morning at school in this bus we had and pick us up every afternoon.

"But, when we were at the house, we could just be naked and do whatever -- or do nothing. But there was always something to do -- and I don't just mean sharing love. There was a game room and there was tons to do just in there. There was an air hockey table and foosball and skee-ball, pinball machines, and all the big-time video games. There was even one of those claw machines -- you know, where you move around the claw to scoop up a prize." He raised a hand and scrunched the fingers to indicate the configuration of a metallic claw. "There was the swimming pool and a library full of the Master's books. Lina used to spend a lot of time in there. And there was a big TV room; I remember the Master used to call it the serenity room.' And the fridge was always full of food, and there were always snacks and soft drinks, even though the Master wasn't too big on salt and sugar. And there was this big freezer where we used to keep meat and ice cream and popsicles. We used to go through a ton of those on hot days and there were a lot of those cause the summers were always long. And pretty much every week, especially during the summers when school was out, we'd have cookouts; burgers, hot dogs, steaks, ribs, you name it."

As Yanni described the opulent prison in which he had been raised, I resisted the urge to allow my smug certainty to bring a snide smile to my face. The younger Master had obviously gone all out to keep his child lovers narcotized. What youngster could have resisted such a seeming paradise, even if their innocence had been the price? I found it interesting that the Master had, amidst all the pleasures he must have surely enjoyed with all those children, insisted his charges attend school. Why? Had it been a tactic to avoid the scrutiny of the authorities, or had he been genuinely concerned for their edification? I admit that had me confused. In the time since, the Master had created his own world and was now largely beyond the reach of any justice. He could do as he liked. Yet Yanni had told me a school existed here, had ardently contended the Master was not an exploiter, but an educator, among other things, and that a love of wisdom animated his motives. Was there some truth to what Yanni insisted was the bottomless well of love the Master bore? I quickly swatted that thought away.

"Who didn't live at the house?" I asked.

"Well," Yanni said, "some of the Master's lovers back then lived in the trailer park and spent a lot of time at his place, but they didn't actually live in the house. And some didn't live in the trailer park at all. But, as time passed, more and more of his lovers lived at the house. But Peaches and Dawn and Dakota had their own place."

I again knew Yanni was holding something back. I had detected something under the surface of how he had before said that children came to the Master from "several sources" and I had the same sense now that he was saying more and more children had come to live with the Master over time. I could barely begin to guess what that something was. For the time being, though, I wanted no more unpleasantness between us, so I put a leash on my usual reportorial aggressiveness and let it slide, knowing I'd later ask him or someone else in some other fashion about the topic. I merely narrowed my eyes and said: "You mentioned them. Peaches and Dawn and Dakota, I mean. They're all Goddesses too, right? Where did they live?"

Yanni nodded again. "That's right," he replied. "You see, even by that time, the Master was busy with a lot of stuff so, even though he lived at the house at the trailer park, he put Peaches and Dawn in charge of the place on a day-to-day basis. Back then, they were getting out of high school, but they'd been with him for a long time, since nearly the beginning, really. They were his first Chief Girl Lovers, even before the job officially existed, and they helped him make his kiddy porn, his first legendary photo sets. Anyway, the Master trusted the two of them to do a good job, so they and Dakota lived in a house in the Little Compound."

At the mention of the Master's salad days as a child pornographer, I was tempted to go off on a tangent but quickly decided to stick to the subject at hand, once again reasoning I could always ask after that altogether arousing topic at a later time, maybe even later today when I encountered the so-called Goddesses.

"What was the Little Compound?" I asked. "And who is Dakota? I remember you mentioned her, so I'm guessing she's one of the Goddesses too."

Yanni nodded yet again. "Yeah, she's one of the Goddesses," he affirmed. "She's Dawn's younger sister."

Yanni paused for a few moments then, thinking on how to formulate the remainder of his response. Watching him, I couldn't help but feeling touched how sincere he was about explaining himself, his so-called family, this place and the sordid history that had led to this walk and our conversation. I wondered about that. Were his meticulous explanations an effort to turn my head, to not only increase my understanding but also to gain my sympathy and even acceptance? If that's the case, I thought then, he's got another thing coming. Still, I did note his mention of long summers, which narrowed my speculation regarding where the Master had gotten his start.

"There was this wide avenue that led through the center of the whole trailer park," Yanni said, "and ended at this cul-de-sac. And at the cul-de-sac there was this little park, and in the park there was this hall people could rent -- I guess it was like a community center too but there were never any community meetings -- and there was a swimming pool too, and a snack bar. Anyway, I'm telling you all this `cause on the far side of the swimming pool there was this fence that had a gate, and the gate led to a path, and the path led through this little wooded area to the Little Compound, which was a group of houses at the bottom of the hill -- real houses, not trailers, all done in a Japanese style. The Master was always big on Japanese culture and design and whatnot. Anyway, the houses were really pretty. And the houses were surrounded by their own wall, so nobody on the outside, anybody who lived in the trailer park and happened to go back there, could see inside. Anyway, that's why we called it the Little Compound, because of the wall.

"I found this out this out even before I knew the Master `cause there was this big mailbox at the community center where people left checks to pay their rent and their fees or drop off complaints and suggestions, and my mom used to send me up to the mailbox every month to drop off our rent check -- when she was still paying the rent, that is. Anyway, I guess I wandered back there one day, and I saw there were two gates in the wall, one for people and one for cars. And next to each gate was this little box with a keypad, so you could enter the codes to open the gates. But I didn't know the codes until later."

The memory of the bygone compound caused Yanni's lips to bow into a small smile. He began using his hands to augment the rest of his description. "Anyway," he continued, "there were five houses in the Little Compound, like a little neighborhood. There was a swimming pool in there too, that everybody who lived in the houses could use. Peaches and Dawn and Dakota lived in one of the houses, and another was reserved for the Master to use whenever he was seducing a potential new young lover. Kids he or the lovers had seduced, or that had come to him in other ways from other sources, lived in the other three houses until he thought they were ready to move up the hill to the big house, sort of like the system we have now with the Guest House. You remember you saw the Guest House yesterday?"

I nodded, considering with a not misplaced awe the diabolical mechanism that had been conceived and instituted years ago to slake the Master's lust, an operation that had only waxed with the passage of time. He had once only seduced the children of some distant city; now he routinely slept with children brought to him from all over the globe. "And that system worked, even back then?" I asked.

Yanni nodded. "Yeah," he replied. "Like I said, the Master trusted Peaches and Dawn, so they were responsible for supervising the kids that lived in the Little Compound as well as running the trailer park, and they could be pretty strict. Just like at the Marina House, the kids were responsible for keeping the houses neat and clean, and the pool area too, and mowing the lawn and stuff like that. Everybody had chores and everybody had to go to school. If a kid caused too much trouble, they'd chuck him or her back out onto the street. But that didn't happen often, and, even when it did, a lot of those kids came back, and they got straightened out."

Straightened out? I thought. I was tempted to laugh but kept a cover on my cynical mirth. Still, my eyes narrowed again, and I closely studied Yanni's usually expressive face, which seemed to be oddly neutral as he explained the particulars of the past. There was something missing here but I still couldn't divine what that might be. "And if a kid graduated from the Little Compound?" I asked, once again making air quotes with my fingers.

"They'd move up to the big house and officially become part of the Master's family," Yanni replied. "They become one of his lovers and one of his kiddy porn models." He turned his head to regard me a few moments and then resumed his description. "At the back end of the wall that surrounded the Little Compound, after you passed through the pool area, there was another gate, and that led into the tropical garden. Like I told you, there were these paths in the garden and one of the paths led up to the big house."

"And that's the house where you and your sisters grew up?" I asked, guessing at the source of his earlier smile.

"Yeah," Yanni said, nodding again. "Me, my mom and my sisters lived in the trailer park before the Master and his dad bought the place, and it was pretty run down in those days, scuzzy even, full of these low-rent drug dealers and chicks turning tricks out of their trailers and whatnot. The Master got rid of those people, and then, like I said, he fixed the place up and re-developed the marina, and started attracting the snowbirds to lease and buy. The only people he let stay -- and I didn't find out about this until later -- were the pedos. The place was full of pedos. I think there must have been at least one pedo on every block."

Yanni laughed. "I asked the Master about that later and told me that, even then, he sort of felt the need, without really knowing why, to create a place where pedos like himself could feel safe and valued." He paused a moment. "And he did help them out, like I told you. Whenever any of them got in trouble, he'd bail them out and help pay their legal bills, and, if any of them had to do time, he made sure to do his best to look after them while they were inside and look after their places while they were away. Of course, back then, penalties were lighter for molesters -- well, the people society calls molesters, anyway." He paused again, thinking for a moment. "I remember Maya and I talked about all that once, and she said that was like a sign; that, even then, long before he became the Master, when he was just a hood and didn't even know what he was destined to become, he was already helping his people, already doing his part to protect and spread the truth."

Listening to Yanni's recollection of the early years of the beneficence of his prophet, I regarded him with a skeptical expression, but he was staring straight ahead, too lost in his reminiscence to notice my undisguised dubiousness. "Did you know then that the Master was a pedo?" I asked.

Yanni shook his head. "Not then," he replied, "though I saw things that added up later. There were always kids, some that I knew lived in the trailer park and some that didn't, passing through the gate that led into the Little Compound. We'd see them punch in the code that unlocked the gate and we'd wonder how they knew the code. And sometimes we'd see the Master driving around on his motorcycle or in his car -- he had this big Lincoln Continental then -- with a kid or two or more riding with him, and then he'd drive through the car gate and disappear inside. Only later did I find out that what I was seeing was him with kids he was going to start seducing or already seducing or kids that were already his child lovers."

Yanni again paused a moment, again thinking. "You know," he finally said, "the Master teaches that all kids are different and true pedos know to seduce different kids in different ways and at different speeds. A pedo always has to pay careful attention to the kid he's seducing and move at that kid's pace. For example, I think I said before the Master's told me he seduced some kids in minutes, but others took weeks. But he was always patient. The Master says that a true pedo is always patient. A true pedo appreciates that every kid is different, and that the length of a seduction is hardly ever an indicator of the eventual quality of a young lover."

I nodded. "Yes, you did say that before," I said. "I defer to his judgment. As I said before, no doubt he's an expert."

Yanni seemed not to detect the renewed mild scoff of my tone, but simply continued relating his rose-hued assessment of the Master's long-ago adventures. "Anyway," he continued, "he'd park his bike or his car on the driveway of the Little Compound and with kids he was seducing he'd take them inside the house that was reserved just for him, and he'd do his magic. Like I said, sometimes it didn't take long, but sometimes it took a few hours or a few visits. However long it took, I've never heard he ever failed. The Master's told me that, when he was seducing kids, convincing a kid to come back to his place was always most of the battle. And with kids that were already his lovers, he'd go in to talk to Peaches and Dawn, about business or whatnot, and then they'd all get naked and fuck. Or they'd get naked and share love at the pool or go into the garden. Like I said, there were all these little clearings in the garden where he and his lovers could suck and fuck; under the palm trees, feeling the sun on their bodies and the breeze from the ocean too." He paused yet again, his eyes noticeably coruscating while another smile crossed his lips as his mind recalled the forbidden pleasures that were had in that debauched tropical garden. "It was very beautiful," he added. "The Master, even then, loved doing it outdoors."

"And there was no fear of being seen?" I asked.

"No," Yanni said with a shake of his head while once again trying to paint a picture with his hands. "The whole area was very private, sort of a smaller version of this island, I guess." He laughed. "I still remember how we used to run naked through the garden, our cocks hard while we chased each other, and then, after we caught each other, we'd just fall onto the grass and share love, sometimes for hours. Just me and him and sometimes a bunch of us. So, so beautiful."

I regarded him. "Practice for paradise," I remarked, a detectable note of sarcasm in my voice.

Yanni got the hint that time but merely regarded me with a wry smile. "Yeah," he replied simply. "Just that."

"From what you told me last night, though," I observed, "you and your sisters weren't exactly graduates of that system."

Yanni's face scrunched. "Yes and no," he replied. "Even though we lived in the trailer park, the Master met us and seduced in sort of a different way. He met our mom first, seduced her, and that led him to us. Well, my sisters first and then to me."

"So, how did you eventually find out about all that was going on?" I asked.

Yanni shrugged. "When I became one of his lovers," he replied, "especially after I became his Chief Boy Lover. Not a day went by where we didn't fuck at least once, usually a lot more times than once, and a lot of times we fucked" -- he licked his lips lasciviously -- "we fucked outdoors. He was that way with my sisters too."

"And how did your sisters become his lovers?" I asked.

Now it was Yanni's turn to narrow his eyes. "You already know about that," he said.

Yanni was right, of course. He and Lina had already told me a great deal about how they had entered the Master's world just a few short years after its genesis. I was a good enough reporter, however, to know it paid to ask questions more than once. More often than not, the stories people told changed or new details came to the fore, and that's what I was hoping to elicit. At that moment, though, only a very small corner of my mind was allowing the admittance that their accounts had powerfully aroused me, had left me a sodden heap the night before, and a writhing jumble of wantonness earlier this morning. "I know," I replied. "I was just wondering if there was any more to the story."

Yanni shook his head. "Nothing too important," he said. "Our dad disappeared. None of us know where he is -- or care." His voice assumed a distinctly disdainful tone. "He was always sort of fucking useless when he was around. He was always out of work. Whenever he did have a job, he always lost it. Later on, I realized he was just a bum; he didn't want to work, not even to support his wife and family. He never kept any promises, always had a story." He paused a moment and then his voice softened. "Our mom supported us -- mostly. They used to argue a lot, about money, I guess, and him always being out of work. But he never hit her; at least he wasn't that type of guy. But one day he just left and never came back, and I guess that killed something in our mom. She was never the same. I guess, despite all his flaws, she really loved him. Anyway, that's when she started getting into crack, and it was around that same time that the Master took over the trailer park. But instead of chasing her out, he let her stay, even though she lost her job when she started hitting the pipe and couldn't pay the rent."

"Why was that?"

Yanni looked over at me and smiled. "I know you're expecting me to say it was because he was a great guy," he said, "a great humanitarian, and he was so full of love and he felt sorry for her and her kids, and bullshit like that."

I returned his smile. "I wasn't expecting that at all," I said teasingly while giving in to the sudden urge to take his hand in mine and gently tug on his arm.

Yanni chuckled while squeezing my hand. "Well, the truth is he just wanted her," he said. "My mom was hot before the crack completely ruined her. She was really pretty, and she had this great set of tits and a fantastic ass, just a great body. When I think about her now, how good she looked, especially when she wore tight jeans that showed off her ass, I can't understand why our dad left her. I mean, wherever he ended up, he couldn't have done better than her."

Yanni paused a moment, thinking. "Knowing what I know now," he said vehemently, "I just wish I had gotten to fuck my mom, to love her the way she deserved to be loved. If I had known then what the Master taught me later, I would have fucked her morning, noon and night, and made real our love as mother and son, and maybe that would have saved her." He paused again, still turning over in his mind the choices and courses of years past. "And I know Lina and Rola feel the same way. Lina has this picture of our mom when she was young. She's in a bikini on a beach, showing off her smokin' body. Lina keeps it in a frame in her room at the cathedral and she's told me she jerks off to it a lot. Anyway, Lina looks a lot like she did, though Lina's thinner and our mom's hair wasn't as dark as hers is."

I considered those last utterances, trying to picture the woman Yanni was remembering. There seemed to be no trace of sadness in his voice, only a wistful recollection of someone as they once had been. His raw comments about his own mother's figure, his confession of an incestuous desire borne by him and his sisters for the woman who had birthed them, barely registered with me at that moment. By now, having dwelt in this depraved realm for less than a day, I was becoming used to -- or so I told myself -- hearing about the most morally corrupt wants and practices as if someone were making observations regarding the weather. Besides, I had my own thoughts about incest, which, as deeply interred as they were, weren't necessarily condemnatory. Only later did I stop to mull the totality of his remarks and my blasé reaction to the same, once again realizing, with a start, how my involvement with this story was either transforming me or, as Yanni never tired of stating, simply allowing me to admit I was someone I had always been destined to become, a believer in their perverted truth.

As Yanni spoke, though, I was more mindful of his mother: who she had once been, what she had once looked like, and how the tragedy of her addiction had engulfed her, leaving her children in the clutches of the Master, who had made them his creatures, among the pillars of his pedophile paradise. How different might they have been if she hadn't succumbed to narcotics? I wondered. What sort of lives would they have led if but for a cruel twist of fate? When Lina considered her own life, as Yanni had told me last night, was this what she thought about?

I wasn't completely contemplative, however. When I heard Yanni mention his mother had imparted her countenance to Lina, I was suddenly quietly crazed to see his mother for myself, my pussy releasing a slow but steady drip as I thought how to get my hands on that photo of her in a bikini.

"We all knew the Master was fucking her," Yanni continued, "because he spent a lot of nights at our place, and we would walk into her room in the morning and he'd be there, lying in her bed naked, his cock out, and she'd be sleeping naked beside him, her pussy and her asshole full of his cum. Or we'd walk in, and he'd actually be fucking her or eating her out or whatever. I remember one time I walked in, and he was not only fucking her doggy-style, but pissing in her pussy, and then he pulled out and bent down and drank his own piss out of her cunt, and then she turned around and laid back on the bed and he got top of her, and they shared his piss in these deep kisses. I think I was only ten then, so I hardly understood what I was seeing, but I remember it got me so hard my cock was aching."

Yanni paused yet again. "Even then," he continued, "I remember me and my sisters talking about that, about how shameless he was, and about how shameless he made our mom. Before she knew him, we weren't often naked in front of one another. Our mom and our dad both came from conservative Lebanese families, after all. But after the Master came into our lives, pretty much everything changed. When he wasn't fucking her, he'd walk around our place naked like it was the most natural thing in the world. We'd see his cock get hard and he'd watch porn on our TV, including kiddy porn, and he'd just jack off in front of us. He'd fuck our mom in every room of our place whether we were around or not. He didn't care if we saw, and sometimes he smiled at us as he fucked her, and, after a while, our mom didn't seem to care either. At first, we didn't know what to do, or if we should do anything, so, after a while, I guess mostly because our mom was okay with it, we all got used to it.

"It was only later we understood that a lot of the times his cock got hard was because he was looking at us, thinking about having sex with us. But back then, he always came to our place; we never ended up at the Little Compound or went up to the big house. So, we didn't know then what a big pedo he was, that he already had a harem of boy and girl lovers, and that he was heavy into making kiddy porn. So, he could afford to be patient where we were concerned. When it came to us, my sisters and me, he just bided his time. Despite all we saw and all he did in front of us, he never once made a move on any of us. I think he knew even then that, eventually, all of us, one way or another, would become his lovers."

"If he was around so much," I asked, "why did you end up in the streets?"

Yanni shrugged. "Like I said, the Master was letting us live rent-free, and he gave our mom money too," he answered. "But her habit got worse and worse, and, eventually, she was spending all the money he gave her on the rock. She was getting high all the time, and she pretty much stopped eating, until finally she just skin and bones. Her hair---" He stopped abruptly, taking a deep breath while pursing his lips, a swallow roiling the flesh of his throat. "She had such beautiful hair, all long and curly, down to the middle of her back, but it all went stringy because she stopped washing. Her skin was pale; it felt like paper. Her teeth started falling out, and she started pissing and shitting herself, so she smelled bad all the time." A lone tear gathered at the corner of one of his eyes, but he quickly wiped it away.

At a loss to know what to do or say, I simply looked at Yanni and again reached for his hand, squeezing it. He squeezed back.

"Anyway," Yanni continued, "the Master argued with her. We heard them. He tried to get her off the pipe, threatened to kill her dealers, and sometimes she listened to him, but she never stayed off for long. So, after a while, he stopped coming around as often and, when he did, it was mostly to check on us. I didn't want to ask him to take care of us -- I guess I was too proud to do that -- so that's why I hit the streets.

"I made some good money for a while. Like I told you, the trailer park was filled with pedos, and a lot of them were willing to pay to fuck me, so I brought all that money home, and that kept us going for a while. But whatever money my mom found, she spent on crack. So, I had to make even more money, and I started to hang out at this rock garden that was next to a big public library that was close to the trailer park. It was a nice place, actually, sort of like the Master's garden at the trailer park but not as big or as nice. There were these paths cut through coral rock, and this stream ran through the garden, and there were these little bridges in a Caribbean motif that let you walk over various parts of the stream. And, like the Master's garden, it had all these secluded corners, and was a hangout for gay guys and pedos, and I was always getting hit on whenever I went in there. So, I started going there to make money and pretty soon I was sucking, like, ten or more cocks a day."

"Is that how you got in trouble?" I asked.

Yanni nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I met this guy in the rock garden. A big older guy, good looking. We went into this little clearing, and I sucked him, and I got him off real good. He came in buckets. Then he sucked me, made me come, swallowed all my jizz, and then he bent me over, and licked my asshole before putting his cock inside me. He had a pretty good-sized cock, I remember, and it was a pretty good fuck, but, when it was all over, he pulled out a twenty and that was it, that was all he was gonna pay me. I told him I deserved at least a hundred for a suck and fuck job, and the fucker actually laughed at me and threw the twenty in my face. I got so mad I shoved him, and he fell on his ass, and dropped his wallet. I snatched up the twenty and the wallet, and just ran. I knew he wasn't going to catch me so, after a while, I stopped running, and took all the money out of the wallet. The guy was loaded. There was, like, over five hundred dollars in the wallet. I ran home, gave most of the money to Lina, told her to hide it real good so our mom wouldn't find it, and then went back out. That very night, the cops picked me up and took me to juvie. That fucker I blew actually reported me, saying I had mugged him. I mean, can you believe it? A little twelve-year-old shit like me, mugging a big guy like him? Anyway, nobody wanted to listen to my side of the story, that we had sucked and fucked, so I went up in front of the judge, and he put me in juvie for six months, and it was while I was inside that my mom sold Lina and Rola to the Master, and they went to live with him in the big house."

"And when you got out, you went to live with him too."

Yanni nodded. "That's right."

"Your mom never came for you?" I asked. "How did she end up?"

Yanni shook his head. "She OD'd about a year later," he said. "We used to go down to her trailer to check on her. It was Lina who found her. She'd been dead about three days. The place smelled awful."

In spite of my hard-bitten self, my eyes teared up at hearing that, and I regarded Yanni, my beloved kid-fucker friend, with an expression of sadness and sympathy. He avoided my gaze, looking down at his feet as we walked. I had finally detected in his voice, as he told me of his mother's demise, a small note of regret amidst a practiced matter-of-factness. The years had done their work, I thought, salving the deep wounds and allowing him to recall such a great trial without displaying too much of the intensely felt emotions that were such a hallmark of his personality.

"Anyway," Yanni added in a low voice, "the Master paid for her funeral. It was him, me, Lina and Rola at the service and at the cemetery. No one else came. He bought a big headstone, but we never went back to visit the grave."

"Why not?"

"What for? She hadn't been our mom for a long time when she died."

"What was her name?" I asked softly.

"Hawa," Yanni replied, his voice barely more than a whisper.

"Hawa," I repeated under my breath, thinking that was appropriate. I recognized the name as the Arabic version of Eve, the mother of all life. If their mother had done only that, given her children life, I thought, that had to be enough. Whatever her failings, her gift of life had led to this moment, to the two of us stirring memories while walking down this shrouded path, and that had to mean something, somehow. I wasn't normally so spiritually contemplative, more often believing that, if there was a God, he didn't give a shit about scrabbling humanity, but, in that moment, at least for Yanni's sake, I was.

We walked in silence for a while, and then, unable to resist the imperatives of my mission, I asked: "So, there was a second compound?"

Deep in thought, Yanni started a bit and then turned to me. "Hmmm?" he grunted softly before fully comprehending my question. "Oh, yeah, um, there was another compound before this one, a big house -- a mansion, really -- on a big piece of property right on the ocean. There were a bunch of little cottages on the property too. But, as big it was, we outgrew it pretty quickly. There were simply too many kids joining the family then. And none of us liked it too much anyway. The house was too modern, sort of sterile. But then the Master and Maya found this island. What's now called the Main House was already here; it was built, like, over a hundred years ago, but nobody had lived in it for a long time, so it was in pretty bad shape. They fixed it up and expanded it. And they built more buildings. They built Elysium, like I told you, and they built the hospital, the school and its residence halls, and the Studio, and just made a lot of improvements, and we all started moving in. It's so far taken four years and a lot of money, and we're still not finished."

I considered all the bits of information Yanni had related. The first compound had been a large trailer park equipped with a marina overlooking an ocean, obviously located somewhere in the United States. His comments about the snowbirds and description of the Master's tropical garden also made plain it was located in a tropical zone, and that further narrowed the possibilities. Such a place couldn't be too difficult to find, I thought, even if it was likely owned by some company that would lead to a string of other companies situated in mailboxes all over the planet.

Hawaii? Puerto Rico? No, the image of pasty snowbirds winging their way south at the onset of every winter brought only one place to mind. It had to be Florida. I was sure of it. Somewhere in the Sunshine State, that bleached and broiled haven for confidence tricksters and dopers and fraudsters of all sorts, there was a trailer park populated by pedophiles, and where, in a large house and secluded garden, the Master had romped with scores of naked children. The second compound, the modernist mansion by the sea, was likely also somewhere in Florida, I pictured a concrete and glass monstrosity derivative of Mies van der Rohe or Frank Lloyd Wright, its windows lit by the sun as they coldly stared down at the churning ocean.

As for the island, I didn't yet know its exact dimensions, but could tell it was rather large, at least several miles wide and more miles long. The island alone must have cost tens of millions of dollars to buy, and the improvements and construction probably cost tens of millions more. There had to be way to track down the purchase of the island as well as records of all the renovation and improvements afterward. There surely can't be that many private islands that large on the planet, I thought, much less one that came equipped with such a massive old house. I would make discovering exactly where all those places were my first order of business after I left, I promised myself. For the time being, though, I would file away what Yanni had said, and, not wanting him to think I was spending too much time thinking about this, again shifted the subject a bit.

"So, we were talking about Diamond," I said. "Is that what she does now, run all the titty bars?"

Yanni seemed not to take note of the change of topic. "She's in charge of all of them, yeah," he replied. "Officially, I'm her boss, but I pretty much let her alone to do her thing. She knows her job better than anybody and she always brings in great numbers. She also supervises the wardrobe staff at the Studio, so she keeps an office there, but doing that is sort of like a hobby for her. She doesn't want to spend time away from the compound, the way Peaches and Dawn do, but she likes to keep busy -- and be near Gem. She runs around all day, talking on her phone, sending e-mails, and a bunch of kids help her at the Studio." He thought a moment and then, with obvious admiration for Diamond's skills at multi-tasking, added: "There's this huge storage room at the Studio full of" -- he spread his arms wide -- "just all kinds of costumes and sexy stuff, and Diamond and her people decide what gets worn -- and what gets taken off -- in every photo shoot and vid. She's consults on every project, so she works very closely with Anna and Gem."

"Gem, her daughter, who is Chief Girl Lover now?" I asked.

Yanni nodded.

"And Anna who used to be Chief Girl Lover?"

Yanni nodded again.

"Why? What is it that Anna does now?"

"Anna's in charge of the Creative Department," Yanni explained, "which is the fancy name for the Studio." He laughed. "I guess you could say she's like a producer. She oversees every photo and video shoot. She puts together the budgets and the schedules, and just makes sure everything at the Studio runs right."

"And Gem? How is she involved with what Anna does?"

"Anna keeps Gem up to date on the production schedule because one of Gem's jobs as Chief Girl Lover is to suggest to the Master and Anna which girls should get picked to be in the photo and video shoots. Then she's responsible for making sure the girls that are picked are on time for wardrobe -- if they're actually wearing anything for the shoot, that is -- and make-up and shooting. So, she pretty much spends every morning at the Studio with the Master and Anna and her mom or, if the shoot is at a location, she's there too."

I took it all in, the intricacy of this world the Master had created. For a moment, I found myself admiring him. Who the fuck was he? What sort of determination and strength had he had to have had to have brought all this into being? I thought. What was the totality of the twisted vision that had animated him -- and moved him even now? How had it formed? I kept hearing he had been a doper several notches above a street-level dealer. He had been a smut merchant, a whoremonger, a pedophile extraordinaire, a swinger, and a killer, the living embodiment of a Thomas De Quincey essay. He had a head for business, it was plain, but how had that led to the creation of a veritable world, the inspiration of a messianic reverence in thousands of people, especially all the children I had so far seen? Was he possessed by some brutal charisma, like a latter-day Rasputin? Or was it more refined, a new edition of someone like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh? Did his knowledge of and talent for subtle control stem from an education? If so, why had he chosen to live life as a criminal, to indulge rather than resist his passion for fucking kids? Had this age of reason wreaked no impact on him, no trapping of civilization gotten any purchase? Was he some sort of undiscovered sociopath? Or was he simply an auto-didact, a hood who had consumed books, and, like Joey Gallo getting sprung from Sing Sing, come out the other side of his nature armed with knowledge and thus more dangerous than before?

Was I staring into the heart of darkness here or was it the Master staring out from the abyss into the savage jungle that had pretenses to civilization? I mentally slapped myself then, coming out of the haze that had me thinking, if only for a few moments, that the Master merited anything resembling approbation rather than scorn, and that he might indeed be any kind of prophet.

I sighed and simply asked: "Anyone else?"

"There's Peaches and Dawn," Yanni said.

"Oh, yes, you mentioned them," I said. Slightly amused, I couldn't resist a smirk and added: "Peaches?"

Yanni grinned. "Well, that's what everyone calls her," he said. "Her real name is Judith. Peaches is a nickname the Master gave her a long time ago when they became lovers. He told her her pussy tasted like peaches, so that's what he started calling her and the name stuck. But Dawn and Dakota still call her Judy. She and Dawn have been friends since they were little girls, so they're like sisters. The Master seduced Peaches when she was nine and he was thirteen, and then he got her to bring Dawn to meet him, and he and Peaches seduced Dawn, and then Dawn brought over her sister Dakota, who was seven. All three of them have been with the Master ever since, since, like, before the beginning. Peaches and Dawn were sort of like his first Chief Girl Lovers, though nobody called them that then. Anyway, they're his Chief Scouts now."

I briefly mulled over a part of what Yanni had just said. This was at least the third or fourth time I had heard of someone assuming a new name based on the Master's literal sexual tastes. Yanni's boy lover Sweet bore his name because of the flavor of his semen, and his other boy lover Pop had earned his sobriquet because of the strength of his ejaculations. There was also on the compound a boy named Silk who had gotten his name due to the Master's assessment of the texture of his penis. And now I was hearing that Peaches, one of the Master's first child lovers, was called so due to his judgment of her preteen vaginal spendings. The man isn't just a living god, I thought, re-naming the days of Creation, but also his own Adam, naming the beasts of the field and birds of the air. From before the beginning, he had lived his life according to his own diktat and now was the undisputed absolute ruler of this realm. Did he have any limits at all, and, if he did, were the constraints imposed from somewhere beyond him or were they all of his own making? It was a question, I knew, that could be explored, at least from one direction, when I finally met Peaches and Pop and Silk. For the moment, I focused on the matters at hand.

"What does that mean?" I asked. "His chief scouts?"

"Well, that's we call them," Yanni explained. "Peaches and Dawn run what we call the Procurement Department. When they got out of high school, the Master had them both go to college to get trained to get jobs where they would work with kids all the time, and they helped build the network we have now."

"What sort of network?" I asked.

"Peaches and Dawn have people and connections all over the world: with charities, with orphanages, with social workers, and on and on. Their network spots kids who might be candidates to be assigned to work in one of the Club Serenus locations and also brought here to the compound. So, they travel a lot. They're away a lot of the time, but they usually come back to spend long weekends on the compound. They're here today. You'll meet them when we get to the Main House."

My ears pricked up. "What sort of jobs did they get?" I asked.

Yanni smiled. "I'm not going to tell you," he said. "You can ask Peaches and Dawn, and if they tell you, fine, but my guess is they won't."

I returned Yanni's smile and sighed again. "Okay," I said. "But when you say they have connections, what exactly does that mean?"

"I'm not going to tell you about that either," Yanni replied, "at least not in detail. All I can say is that they have people everywhere and those people know people all over the world, even in little villages in places you probably never heard of; people whose job it is to deal with children or who can get their hands on children. When they deal with legit people, they do it through an NGO that operates globally, an NGO that helps children. But not always. Sometimes, they deal with people who are not so nice, people who buy and sell kids. With people like that, they've got deals cooking all the time, sometimes for one or two kids, but sometimes for a bunch of kids that are sold at auction."

Yanni's understandable reticence aside, those last bits were quite a bit of news. "Auctions!" I exclaimed. "When and where are these auctions?"

"That's something else I can't tell you too much about," Yanni said. "But there are auctions held at various times of the year in places all over the world, including the U.S. If you've got the connections, like Peaches and Dawn have, then you know who to talk to and where to go."

"Well, what about this NGO?" I retorted. "It helps children? You mean it turns them into little whores or brings them here so they can get dicked by the Master and appear in his kiddy porn. That's what you mean by help, right?"

For a moment, it seemed Yanni was tempted to, in response to my scornful sarcasm, deliver a more expansive explanation but, if that was the case, he quickly thought better of it. "Yeah," he said simply but dismissively. "I meant just that."

I kicked myself. Get a hold of yourself, stupid, I thought. Whatever you're feeling, stop being so judgmental and just let him talk, and draw him out when necessary. Don't be so censorious that he starts to shut down. In the next moment, I wondered if I was being the occasional harpy because my condemnation was sincere or if I was being twinged by guilt due to my efforts to manipulate Yanni into spilling as much as he could. Why should I feel guilty? I thought ruefully. This is what I do for a living. I didn't admit to myself that I might be feeling guilty because I genuinely liked Yanni and was mightily resisting his assessments of myself and my purpose here.

"Well, what about this NGO?" I asked. "What's the name of it?"

"Fuck off," Yanni said gently. "You know I'm not going to tell you that."

"Okay," I said with yet another sigh. "You know I had to ask."

I was grateful for a few moments of quiet as we approached the end of the alameda. Just beyond the canopy of the trees, I saw the avenue broadened into a circle of asphalt, at the center of which was a circular patch of grass from which grew one stout oak, its crown shading the circle and the base of its trunk surrounded by a black wrought-iron bench.

Drawing closer to the circle, I heard a sound to my right and turned my head to see, in a small clearing formed by a shallow depression just a few feet from edge of the road, young Miles and an older girl. The girl, who looked to be twelve or thirteen years old, was raven haired, her tresses shiny in the light of the morning and falling like a flowing bowl to her neck. Her flesh seemed as white as Carrara marble, glowing against the darkness of not only her hair but also the black eye shadow that coated the lids of her closed eyes, and black lipstick that daubed her full mouth. Her head was moving up and down, but from what I could see of her face amid the coursing waves of her hair, she was pretty, and her body was lean, long and athletic. In violation of the orthodoxy of the day, she wore a pair of black bikini bottoms, and, on her feet, a pair of black Chuck Taylor low-rise sneakers. As I caught sight of her, her long arms were braced against the trunk of a tree, the nails of her fingers also painted black. Her body was bent forward, and her bikini bottoms had been moved aside. Her legs were spread apart, and her feet were firmly planted in the leaf-strewn earth to accommodate Miles, who was vigorously fucking her from behind.

Thoroughly immersed in their passion, the two youngsters were lost to the world. Amid her breaths and moans, the girl kept her eyes closed, never opening them once that I saw. Her budding breasts, topped by kohl-painted areolas, had to be at least an A cup, bouncing with every stroke Miles delivered, his cock flashing in and out of her young cunt like a flying piston. A head taller than Miles, she gave as good as she got, slamming her ass back against the boy's torso, meeting every one of his thrusts into her body as if she was striving to take command of the fuck. Belying his feminine beauty and whatever questions were provoked by his garments, Miles grappled with her, pounding her pussy with a savage determination. His hands clutched her pale flanks as he fucked her, deep savage grunts emerging from his throat with every stroke. Unlike the girl, he opened his eyes from time to time as they rutted, staring in seeming wonder down at her ass or up the length of her back toward the rear of her head. His gaze was reserved only for her, however; he never noticed our presence just a few feet away.

There was no subtlety to the fuck, just youthful carnal power. They crashed against each other, the muscles of their legs and torsos visibly straining, the slapping of their bodies dimly echoing in the otherwise quiet forest. The girl's moans suddenly waxed to a high pitch as she raised her head and threw it back, her black lips parted, and eyes still shut tight as she came. Miles soon joined the girl in orgasm, his thrusts coming to a halt, and his own eyes closing as he raised his face to the branches above, his body suddenly still amid trembles that roiled the silken flesh of his chest, arms, abdomen and torso. His come was obviously suffusing his whole body, and, as the orgasm did its work, he left the whole length of his young cock inside the girl, coating the walls of her twat with his cream.

Coming down from their erotic high, the two children, their chests heaving, took a few minutes to catch their breaths. The girl's head dropped between her outstretched arms; her closed eyes pointed at the roots of the tree lacing through the ground. Miles stayed behind the girl, his hand still at her sides, his cock still in her pussy. I thought for sure he would soon pull out and I would see his beautiful young cock softening but dripping with juice and cum, and the girl's pussy slit welling up with the mixture of her spendings and his spunk.

A part of me gave thought to hurriedly moving on, to allowing the two youths their privacy, but I was fixed to the spot where I stood. The sight had me riveted. I could hardly believe two youngsters could summon and bring to bear such fervid wanton lust. What I've seen so far of this place, I then thought in an instant, means a sight like this is not only not remarkable but probably commonplace. So, I stayed where I was, my eyes fastened on the girl and boy to see what would happen next. When their bodies parted and they looked about and saw us, I told myself, I would make myself, my moral certainty already crumbling, ready for whatever happened.

But then, amazingly, renewed by a second wind, the boy and girl, without a word being spoken, simply resumed their fucking. Deep blasts of air escaped their mouths as they once again began moving against one another. They started slow, quivering from each stoke as their sensitized genitals sent electric charges through their young bodies. But within a few minutes, the previously seen blazing pace had been re-attained, their bodies battering toward another climax.

My mind and body were in a tumult over what I was seeing, my pussy flowing from such a brazen display of seemingly inexhaustible feral energy, indulged by two children no less. My mouth hanging open, it was only then I turned to Yanni. The last few minutes nearly had me forgetting he was with me.

Yanni's eyes were sparkling, a large smile on his face as he took in the sight of the lecherous youths. He turned his head and smiled down at me, then nudged me, a gesture of his head letting me know it was time to move on. As reluctant as I was to go, I offered no resistance, retreating from the edge of the clearing and following him as we again set off down the road, the sounds of keening moaning and determined grunting gradually fading behind us. We had walked several feet before either of us dared to say anything.

We came to the circular iron bench at the center of the circle of asphalt. The two of us shaded by the thick branches of the oak, Yanni bade me sit on the bench. "Let's take a load off," he said.

I sat and he sat next to me, turning his body slightly to regard me. Only then did I realize that my immersion in our conversation and all I had so far seen had made me unaware we had walked several miles from the cottage. I reached down to loosen my sandals, rub my feet, and then looked over at Yanni.

"Well, that was quite something, wasn't it?" Yanni said, a big smile on his face. "I wondered why Miles' cock was so stiff. Now we know. He was meeting someone."

"You know everyone here," I retorted in an almost accusatory tone. "Who was she?"

Yanni laughed. "Her name is Algaia," he said simply.

Algaia, I thought. The name of the oldest of the Three Graces, daughters of Zeus who bestowed all that was most beneficent and pleasurable in mortal society. Algaia was thought to embody beauty and elegance. Along with her younger sisters Euphrosyne and Thalia, they, among all their blessings, graced festivals and organized dances. Well, I thought, there was nothing elegant about the fuck we just saw, but, as much I hate to admit it, there was a decidedly savage beauty. The name was oddly appropriate for a young girl growing up in a place like this.

"Why was she dressed and made-up the way she was?" I asked. "Isn't today Yellow?"

"Yes, it is," Yanni agreed. "But no one has to wear yellow or any other color that signifies a particular day. We do it as a reminder that all of us are part of something, something bigger and more important than any one of us, and also to honor the Master, who made all of this possible." He paused a moment. "As for Algaia and her sisters, well, they definitely march to their own drummer, just like their dad. They're all goth. But no one minds. Here, everyone is free to be whoever and whatever they want to be."

I considered that for a moment. So, even this loopy cult had its square pegs, but if Yanni was to be believed, they were tolerated, even celebrated. Certainly, young Miles, who was attired, if such a word could be used, in yellow, but was himself a bit of an outlier, had shown no reluctance while coupling with the mysterious Algaia. The Master is wise, I thought. In his divine realm, he allows a space for iconoclasts, at least as long as, I was sure, they didn't stray too far from the fold. Whatever her coating, the fact that a young teen girl like Algaia was so vigorously having sex with a ten-year-old boy dressed in garter belt and hose meant that she, and whoever had raised her, had to be believers in the prevailing pedophile creed.

"Who is her dad?" I asked.

"Steven," Yanni replied. "He and his daughters all live at the Main House. He's in charge of the Master's archives, the last of the originals."

Yanni said the last in such a way that my eyes narrowed, my mind on the alert for yet another nugget that would lead to a rich vein of revelation. "What does all that mean?" I asked.

Yanni shrugged. "Steven and the Master have known each other since they were kids," he explained. "He and his older brother Gary were lovers with the Master back when" -- he stopped to think for a moment -- "gosh, back before even the beginning, back when the Master wasn't even a pedophile. I mean, the Master had already had sex with a bunch of adults, like his dad, and he had had sex with other kids, but he hadn't begun seducing younger kids yet. Anyway, his best friend then was Caesar, and he was the one who got the Master together with Gary and Steven. They were making it with their grandfather, so they were already into sex, and all of them became lovers."

"How old were all of them then?"

Yanni shrugged again. "I don't know," he said.

"You know very well," I asserted in a teasingly friendly tone. "Tell me."

"The Master must have been around eleven," Yanni said. "Gary was his same age, so Steven must have been around nine."

"So, what is it that Steven does now that he rates living in the Main House with his daughters?"

"Steven was always heavy into computers," Yanni explained, "even before they were a thing. Back in the old days, even before my sisters and me came to live with the Master, he was the one who put everything the Master was doing on computers. He taught himself. Whatever he doesn't know about computers isn't worth knowing. He trained Mark, his nephew, who runs technology for the whole compound. So, everybody calls Steven Wizard. Anyway, now he looks after all of the Master's records. It's all digitized now, stored on these huge servers in the basement of the Main House, and linked to servers in other parts of the world in case the servers here ever fail."

I was fascinated, instantly wondering if I would be allowed to see and access that establishment. "What's on there?" I asked. "On those servers, I mean."

"Everything," Yanni said. "Everything the Master's done for the last thirty years, since before the beginning. His business, his deals, his money, all the goods he has on everyone, and all the porn he's collected and made, including the kiddy porn. Every kid he's ever loved is on there. Not just the stuff that he and then his people made to sell, but his private collections, stuff that he made just for himself, and the stuff made by his grandfather and his dad, stuff going back to before the Master was even born."

That explained something I had come across the day before when searching through the database in the SUV while on the way to the airport. I had seen entries for items from the 1940s and the decades immediately thereafter. Knowing the Master was not ancient, I had briefly wondered about that before wallowing in the videos from more recent times. Now that mystery was solved. The Master's ardor to chronicle his exploits in pictures and video was, like his passion for children, in the blood, handed down from his father and grandfather and who knew from who else further back? I was determined to discover and see more, but that, I knew, could wait.

"You said Steven was the `last of the originals,'" I asked. "What did that mean?"

Yanni's face blanched a bit. "I can't tell you too much about that," he said.

I sighed. "Well, tell me what you can," I replied.

"When the Master became a biker," Yanni began, "he already had his own crew, all the guys he had known since he was a kid, like Caesar and Gary and Steven. We call them the originals. They helped lay the foundation for everything that came after."

"You told me Caesar got killed," I said. "Are you saying the rest of them got killed too?"

Yanni simply nodded.

"Is that why you haven't mentioned Steven's brother Gary," I asked, "at least in the present tense? He was one of the ones that got killed?"

Yanni nodded again. And that was that. I knew him well enough by now to know when he had come to a stopping point. But I had to lob one last question.

"Is there anything else you can tell me about all that? I mean, how and why they all got killed?"

Yanni shook his head. "No," he said. "All I can say is their getting killed is what led to the founding of the Guardians."

Now I was really chomping at the bit. The ever-menacing, ever-present Guardians. Lina's people, who loved her like a goddess and revered the Master with a fanatical devotion. So, somehow, in the undoubted welter of blood that had seen the liquidation of the Master's original cohort, Lina had played at least some small role. What was it? I wondered. Was that event, beyond the little she had shared with me the day before, one of the fundaments of who she was now? Was there anyone here who would tell me? Or was it one of the mysteries that lay at the heart of the creation of every religion, ignored, rarely acknowledged, the whole truth forever known only to a select few?

"So, can you at least tell me how many daughters Steven has?" I asked.

Yanni nodded. "Three," he said.

"I presume he fucks them all," I said flatly.

Yanni nodded. "Of course," he said. "Steven's a pretty reclusive guy, but he's a good father. He shares love with his daughters the way a father should."

"Let me guess," I said. "Algaia's sisters are named Euphrosyne and Thalia."

Yanni's face lit up in delighted confusion. "Yes, that's right," he said. "How did you know?"

My mind was aswirl with questions, some of which nagged at me more than others, so, for the moment, I was not in the mood to explain something else to Yanni. Oh, read a book! I thought ungratefully, and then chastised myself in the next moment. Here Yanni was patiently explaining as much as he could, and I was miffed because he didn't immediately disgorge all I wanted to know. There are secrets everywhere, I thought, wherever one turns. How could I blame him for guarding the ones that necessarily existed here?

"A lucky guess," I retorted.

I could tell Yanni knew my deduction was nothing of the kind but, as usual, he sensed my mood and kept quiet.

"How old are they?" I asked.

"Algaia is twelve," Yanni replied. "But she'll turn thirteen in about a month or so. Euphrosyne is ten and Thalia is nine."

"I'm sure you've fucked all three of them," I said.

Yanni nodded.

"And the Master's fucked all of them too," I stated.

Yanni nodded again.

I thought then of the statues I had seen of the Three Graces, one unearthed from ancient Rome, now at the Metropolitan in New York; the other carved by Antonio Canova in the early nineteenth century, once the property of Empress Josephine, but now residing at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Both had taken my breath away but the one in London, hewn from blinding white marble, I had found particularly arresting. The sisters stood nude, embracing, on the verge of a transport of passion, obviously reveling in each other as much as in the pleasures and virtues they bestowed on men. The oldest, Algaia, had her arms around the other two while the sister to her left had her hand on her right breast and the sister to her right reached out to place a hand on the shoulder of the sister across, as if to draw her in for a kiss. Handmaidens to Aphrodite, one couldn't help but conclude they were not just sisters, but lovers. What was it like, I had wondered, to eat the cunt of a demigoddess? I had bought photos of the statue at the gift shop, and, that night in my hotel room, frigged myself silly while looking at them. I never had a sister but knew that had I had one I wouldn't have resisted seducing her. What was it like to so rapturously surrender to incest? Already knowing at least part of the answer, I wondered if this was the place to discover, like a statue brought forth from the past, the other facets of the riddle. When Steven's daughters made love with one another, as they surely did, was the forbidden mystery commonplace to them, not even sparking a thought beyond the pleasure they shared, or, as young as they were, was it still heavy with all the awe and majesty of adoration? Was it here I would finally savor the taste of divine pussy?

"Well, the morning's getting on," Yanni suddenly said, slapping the tops of his legs. "Let's get going. We don't have too much more to go." He stood up.

I nodded, reached down to secure my sandals and rose from the bench. At the end of the road, we emerged from under the blanket laid by the limbs of the old oak, our eyes adjusting to the waxing light of the rising morning sun. We were at the edge of a vast green meadow, which was overlooked from a distance by the great granite bulk of the Main House, sitting atop a hill at the other end of the viridescent swath. Lit by the light of the gathering day, the dew on the grass shone like a carpet of dully gleaming gems. The moist blades beneath our feet muttered softly as we trudged on.

I turned my head to our left and saw on a small hill a few dozen feet away a group of several dozen naked youths practicing yoga against the glare of the rising sun. The teenagers of the group seemed to be setting the pace, moving into asana after asana as the younger children followed suit, all their bare bodies glowing gold and red as they shifted from downward dog to plank to sun salutation to warrior pose and so on. As they moved, I could see the cocks of some of the boys were rock hard, sticking straight out from their young bodies.

Yanni saw where I was looking and said: "That's the Page and Squire Hall yoga class. They always get up early to practice before breakfast."

We walked on across the great meadow and, as we came to the top of a small rise, a circular copse of fir trees came into view. Within its confines, a medium brown wooden ziggurat was rising above of the tops of the wood. Even from a distance, I could see the structure consisted of thousands of wooden pallets such as one might find in any warehouse, which were being stacked in layers by a seeming platoon of people. The tree blocked my view of the lower levels of the ziggurat, but I could see figures stationed on the middle levels as they were handed pallets coming from below and then passing them on to others at higher levels until those at the top installed the pallets to form an ever-narrowing tower, the top of which I estimated had to be at least fifty feet or more from the ground.

We arrived at the beginning of a gravel path set in the grass that seemed to lead directly to the copse, and, as the small pebbles beneath our feet crunched with each of our steps, I gestured in the direction of the wood, asking, not without a touch of wonder in my voice: "What is that, Yanni?"

"That's the Wood of the Great Altar," Yanni replied.

"And what's that they're building?"

"That's for the bonfire," Yanni stated simply.

"The bonfire?"

"Yellow night is orgy night," Yanni explained. "At eight tonight, Lucifer, the great bell in the Main House tower, will be struck; then the drums at the Great Altar will sound, and the bonfire will be lit. Pretty much everyone on the compound will come to the wood. Maya will perform a service at the Great Altar, and sometimes the Master is there too. Then the orgies will begin. Everyone all over the island will be sucking and fucking, all of us just sharing love. The biggest orgy will be at the wood, before the Great Altar, thousands of bodies around the bonfire and under the moon and stars. And when the orgy really gets going, Maya and the Master, if he's at the wood too, will lead a group of chosen children, usually a dozen or two, from the wood back to Paradise."

"And what's Paradise?"

"That's what we call a certain room just past the entrance to the Master's apartments at the Main House. There's a permanent kiddy orgy there. On any day, at any hour, you can go there and find at least a few kids naked and sharing love with each other. Any kid is free to join that orgy whenever they want, but there are usually more kids there when the Master is known to actually be in his apartments because everyone knows that when he is around, he looks in on the orgy from time to time, and sometimes picks kids he sees there to join him in his bedchamber. But on Yellow night, the orgy at Paradise is a lot bigger, and the Master and Maya preside over it personally. They watch and join in, and eventually pick some of the kids to spend the night with them in the Master's Bedchamber."

My mind reeling once again, I managed to ask: "And this happens every week?"

Yanni nodded. "The orgy will last most of the night," he added. "For the Grand Orgies, especially the ones that last more than a day, like Ostara that happened a few months ago or the Midsummer Orgy that's coming up, we try to keep the bonfire going for however long the orgy lasts. There's a big warehouse in Elysium where we store all the wood for the fires, and more is coming in all the time. Rola tells me we spend a shitload on it. Anyway, for the regular Yellow night orgies, when they're fucked out, people sleep at the wood, unless it starts raining. Or they go home and come back the next morning."

I took note of Yanni's mention of Ostara, a pagan holiday. The holy festivals and rituals of this world had obviously been inspired by ancient heathen practices, something I presumed was largely Maya's doing. "Why do they come back?" I asked. "To continue the orgy?"

Yanni shook his head. "No," he said. "Like I told you before, White, what you call Sunday, is the day of worship. So, if you left the wood the night before, you come back for the morning worship service. Maya performs that as well and the Master is always there for it. But when you've spent the night in an orgy, your body is going to be covered by cum, piss and pussy juice. And if you've spent the night in an orgy at the wood your body is going to be covered by soot too from the bonfire. So, right before the service, everybody is ritually washed by the Acolytes and then the service happens. Then everybody goes home to enjoy a day of love with their families."

"So, Sunday is like incest day?" I teased.

Smiling, Yanni met my jibe with good humor. "Yep," he replied. "White is devoted to families sharing love, doing everything that's natural and beautiful."

"Where do you spend White?" I asked.

"At the Citadel," Yanni replied in a tone that betrayed a smidge of annoyance, as if I should have already deduced the answer from what he had so far told me.

"What's the Citadel?" I asked.

"That's what we call the Master's apartments," Yanni explained. "I'm a part of the Holy Family, after all. After the service, we all have breakfast together, even Lina. And then we all go upstairs to the Master's Bedchamber and spend the day loving, like a family should."

As we talked, the gravel path had led us to the edge of the copse, a gap in the ring of trees adorned by a tall, elaborately carved wooden arch gilded by wildflowers and colorful burlap drapery. The path also ringed the copse, leading to our left and our right, away from the inviting arch.

It seemed Yanni was leading me left, around the copse rather than through it, so, my curiosity supremely piqued, I exclaimed: "Can't we see inside?"

Yanni turned back to me and thought a moment before replying. "Sure," he agreed. "But not for too long. The Goddesses will be waiting."

Briefly wondering at his seeming reluctance, I smiled at hm. "Okay," I said. "I just wanna see."

"Come back tonight," Yanni said with a smile, "and you'll see a lot more."

I returned his smile. "I'll consider it," I said. "I'm sure you'll do your best to lead me down the wrong path."

Yanni laughed. "It seems to me you're doing your best to do that on your own," he said.

We plunged into the wood. As we walked through the gap, I looked up through the unencumbered rafters of the arch, guessing that the peaks of the stately fir trees towered thirty or more feet above us. Traversing the wood itself must have been a journey of about fifty feet before it opened onto a vast circular space that was akin to a natural arena, the size and simple beauty of which caused a small gasp to escape from my throat.

"This is the Wood of the Great Altar," Yanni said softly and reverently, looking around in a contemplative wonder that matched my own, as if he was seeing the space for the first time despite obviously having been here many times before. "This is where love is made real."

"What it must have taken to build this," I said in wonderment.

Yanni nodded. "The meadow was here when the Master bought the island," he said. "Maya thought up the idea for the wood and designed it, but to build it the Master had to bring in all these trees and have them planted. You should have seen the size of the trucks that carried them in. Anyway, they've grown quite a bit since then. Rola told me all of this" -- he spread his arms to take in the wood -- "cost big bucks to create."

"How much?"

Yanni shrugged. "Millions," he said, and then fell silent for a few moments. "And, to think, it's all only temporary."

"Why only temporary?"

"Eventually," Yanni replied, "when the new Guardian headquarters in Elysium is finished, the Yellow night orgies and worship services will be moved to the plaza at the cathedral. Most of the compound's administrative departments will be moved there too. I don't know if the Grand Orgies will be moved there; that decision hasn't been made yet." He paused a moment and when he spoke again, his tone was decidedly wistful. "All of this will become a park. Personally, I like it here. I can't imagine a better place to worship. But the plaza is even bigger than the wood, though it's a longer trip to get there." He shrugged. "I don't know. I guess all the details will get worked out."

"You mentioned this cathedral last night," I observed. "Is it a real cathedral?"

Yanni looked at me and nodded. "Oh, yeah," he said. "It was built, like, a few hundred years ago. It's huge." He spread his hands to indicate the immensity of the cathedral. "There's this cliff at the northern end of the island and the cathedral was built right into it, right into the rock. There used to be a whole big operation here, a bishop and priests and a whole bunch of Indians. They farmed the land. The whole northern half of the island used to be one big farm, and the Master says we'll make it that way again. Anyway, the cathedral was empty for a long, long time. We've been here for a few years now and we still haven't explored all of it."

That tidbit of history told me a lot, particularly the mention of Indians. We had to be somewhere in the vicinity of South America, which meant the island was likely somewhere in the South Atlantic or South Pacific. I knew next to nothing, however, about the history of the Catholic Church in the Americas, nor about Latin American history in general, so the rest of what Yanni had mentioned was a mystery to me.

Yanni fell silent again, looking about the wood like a supplicant paying his first visit to a fabled house of worship. Whatever the magnificence of the cathedral, I couldn't help but agree with him that it couldn't compare to the beauty of the wood. I joined him in looking about. A few feet before us, on the gravel path that led farther into the arena, were twin rectangular baptistries of immense size cut into the earth. Wooden canopies carved in the manner of the arch at the entrance of the wood shielded the baptistries from the sky. Wide notches in the stone rims of the baptistries fronted steps that descended into the clear water, from which rose the faint scents of various oils. My nose detected rose, sandalwood and vetiver as well as others I couldn't name. As we walked past the baptistries, I presumed it was here the ritual washing occurred.

"This is the where the worshippers are washed before the service," Yanni said, his voice breaking into my thoughts, confirming what I had been thinking. "They descend into the holy water" -- he indicated the notches set in the rims of the baptistries -- "and they're washed by the Acolytes, their bodies restored after a night of love, and then they come out and other Acolytes dry them, and then they walk over to sit and wait for the service -- in the same place where they were sucking and fucking the night before." He indicated the area beyond the baptistries.

Four great quadrants of black rubber matting set into the earth formed a vast circle. At the center of the circle was a large clearing from which rose the wooden ziggurat. The circle itself was surrounded by a ring of metal firepits, identical to the ones I had yesterday seen on the road leading to the front of the Main House, which were set on slabs of charcoal gray slate, their bowls blackened and scorched from repeated use.

We stepped into the circle and walked across the width of one of the quadrants, the rubber giving gently beneath our feet. As we walked, looking about while slowly approaching the central clearing, I couldn't help but think of how similar rubber matting covered the floors of playgrounds all over the planet, children jumping and running and stumbling over the yielding surface, but here were employed for a decidedly more depraved purpose: naked young bodies undulating and writhing in forbidden pleasure.

Again breaking into my thoughts, as if always reading my mind, Yanni, as we walked, spread his hands to take in the rest of the great circle, softly and solemnly saying: "People bring blankets and pillows as well as refreshments and little snacks, and they spend the night: loving and being loved, moving together, sharing all of themselves; parents loving their children and their children loving them back; families loving other families; adults loving children, and children loving each other, bodies all gold and yellow in the light of the fires, the moon and stars shining down, the Acolytes walking about, always ready with flavored lotions and lube and sex toys wherever they might be needed. It's always so beautiful. Everyone loves and then they sleep, the wood just covered in naked bodies until the sun rises. It's the way things were meant to be, the way we were all meant to live."

I regarded Yanni, but said nothing, knowing he believed with every fiber of his being all he had just uttered. I couldn't help but admit to myself that all he had just described made for a compelling picture, and, at least for once, doubt crept in. Who was to say my conception of civilization, the civilization that had bred and shaped me, was the valid one? There was no god, after all, no divine law, only the one planet known on which a spoor of life had taken hold and then the silent, yawning, surrounding, uncaring universe. Who was to say this was bad or immoral or wrong, when humans were just as imperfect as any civilization they were bound to create? Here, whatever my thoughts on or reaction to the place, there seemed to be nothing but love and peace, rather than, in the world I had come from, constant business for polemologists. Wasn't this place, this compound of unrestrained licentiousness, more in keeping with whatever passed for natural law, a ceaseless worship of nature through the constant congress of bodies, no matter what age the bodies happened to be?

While looking at Yanni, I wondered, the sudden questions gnawing at me, but I stayed silent and simply walked on. Whatever the case, I had no doubt I would return here tonight to see the spectacle for myself, the mass of bodies in a great storm of copulation by the light of the fires. I anticipated what I would witness and felt my juices flow, moistening the crotch of my bikini bottoms.

We came to the edge of the central clearing and saw a group of men and teenaged boys at work, a line of them handing over the wooden pallets from trucks parked beyond the circle and then upwards to others stationed at the ascending levels of the ziggurat. As always, all of them seemed to know Yanni. They waved and some said hello, a few shouting down from the upper levels of the wooden tower. Yanni smiled and returned all their greetings.

I noticed some of the boys looking at me with undisguised lust, their cocks hardening in their bikini bottoms. I fought off the instinct to blush and silently surrendered to feeling flattered. As we moved closer to the ziggurat, I tilted my head upwards to gaze at its peak and marveled that within a few hours this impressive structure would be engulfed in flame.

"When the bonfire is lit," I asked, still looking up at the top of the ziggurat, "won't the fire threaten the trees?"

"Just before the fire is lit," Yanni explained, "we bring in a big fire engine. It sprays down the trees, the Great Altar and the whole circle, and it stands by just to make sure nothing bad happens. The fire throws off sparks, sure, but we've never had a problem. Sometimes the sparks fall on the people and leave little burns, but no one minds. A little pain always enhances the pleasure. We call them orgy kisses."

I nodded, lowered my head to take in the vastness of the desiccated circle and saw at my feet the remnants of what had obviously been a predecessor to the blaze that was to be kindled tonight, a great crumble of blackened and bleached slats. I poked at the charred mass with a sandaled foot, a bit of black powder staining my toes. I lowered my leg, the parched ground softly crunching beneath my feet as my nose detected a heavy trace of the acrid sweetness of the bygone flames.

"What is this from," I asked.

"That's left over from the last few orgies," Yanni replied simply. Seeing the slight confusion in my eyes, he, with a small chuckle, added: "We usually plan to have the Grand Orgies and Yellow night orgies here at the wood, sometimes at West Beach, but the weather doesn't always cooperate. So, sometimes, when we have an orgy, we put up a big canopy and hold it at the outdoor swimming pool at the Main House, like we did with the Summerfinding Orgy this year, or we just move everything indoors to the dining hall. When that happens, we don't light a bonfire. The Yule Orgy, for instance, is rarely held outdoors because it's almost always raining during that time of year."

We resumed walking, making our way through the central clearing and back onto the rubber matting, heading toward the Great Altar itself. "What was that one for?" I asked, gesturing back at the pile of lumber we were leaving in our wake.

"The Master's Birthday Orgy," Yanni replied. "That happened just about a week ago now."

A scrap of something Yanni had said the day before slithered through my mind. "Didn't you say something happened at that orgy -- what was it? -- that somebody became lovers with someone else?'

Yanni nodded. "Gem and Leah became lovers," he said.

"How does that work? I asked. "I mean, what does that mean, that they became lovers? I was under the impression everyone here was everyone else's lover."

"Everybody here can share love with whomever they want whenever they want," Yanni said. "But they can also declare that someone else is special to them, that they have a lover, someone they love and cherish above all others. It's only natural to want to have someone who loves you best, who knows your heart and mind better than anyone else. And, if they want, they can let everybody else know through our newspaper, and they can also let the Master know and he'll announce it at the beginning of the next Grand Orgy. So, that's what Gem and Leah did."

Yanni paused a few moments as we walked on, traversing the rubber matting on our way to a grassy expanse before the Great Altar. "Gem and Leah were raised together, so they're as close as sisters," he continued. "But not too long ago they started spending a lot more time together, sharing love and whatnot. I mean, a lot more, even for them. So, they decided to become lovers, and they started living together, and they let the Master announce it right before the beginning of his birthday orgy. It was sort of like a present to him because they knew it would make him happy. It sort of surprised everybody else, though."

I could hardly believe how eager I suddenly was, giddily sharing compound gossip with Yanni. "Why did it come as a surprise?" I asked. "They were raised together as sisters, you said, so I'm guessing that, in this world, that probably means they spent their whole lives having sex with each other -- and with their father the Master."

"It wasn't that," Yanni explained. "It's just that Gem and Jessica were really into each other. When Gem was appointed Chief Girl Lover, she made Jessica her deputy. But Jessica has always been together with Ashley, and I think the Master saw that that whole situation could be a problem. He's never said so, at least not to me, but I think that's why he got Jessica pregnant, and then did the same with Ashley: so they could have their babies around the same time and stay lovers."

I hit him with a jaundiced eye. "So, your perfect world isn't beyond jealousy or manipulation?" I said.

"One, I never said our world was perfect," Yanni replied equably. "What I said is that we live the way human beings were meant to live, but we're still human beings, with all the flaws and imperfections of human beings. Was there jealousy? I actually don't think so. All the girls are very mature. But the Master wanted to do what he could before there was any kind of problem. He wants everybody to be happy, especially the people in his own family. As it is, as much as Jessica loves Ashley, I get the sense a part of her wishes she and Gem were officially lovers." He regarded me. "And what's wrong with manipulation? The Master is like any father looking over his family, trying to make sure problems get nipped in the bud before they become bigger problems. Besides, the man was a hood, was always a pedophile, and now he's a prophet. He's an expert at manipulation."

"Yesterday and today, you said -- about yourself, about everyone here, especially the kids -- that the choices all of you have made all came about because of your own free will. Now you're admitting that it was all manipulation on the part of the Master."

"I don't see any contradiction," Yanni asserted. "Yes, everything that happened -- to me, to everybody else here -- happened as a result of our own free will, but that doesn't mean the Master didn't guide us, that he didn't guide me when I made my choice. And it was my choice. I told you: he was honest from the start, with me, with all of us. He never tricked me or tried to sell me some bullshit story. As soon as I met him, I knew what he was -- and so did my sisters. I mean, that time I came to his door after I got out of juvie, his cock got hard as soon as he saw me, and then I saw him fucking my sisters, so I obviously had no doubt about who and what he was, and what he wanted from me. But I wanted to make it with him, and when he asked me to give him my love I did it because I wanted to -- so much. If you want to call that manipulation, fine -- and maybe it was. Maybe he's smarter than all of us. But I know the choice was mine. Was it a choice he wanted me to make? Yeah." Suddenly as insistent as any true believer, he poked at his own bare chest while adding: "But it was still my choice. I chose to love him and then chose to accept his love. And I've never regretted a bit of it."

The obvious depth of his belief deterred me from further arguing the point. I wanted no more undue unpleasantness between us, and I reasoned trying to convince him otherwise would be as useful as trying to sell sausages in a mosque at prayer time. "Okay," I said, once again not so subtly shifting the subject. "But let me get this straight: Gem is Diamond's daughter and Jessica is Maya's daughter?'

Yanni nodded.

"How did their mothers feel about that that situation between their daughters and the Master's involvement?"

"I think they were both happy that the Master handled it so well, with such skill nobody ended up getting hurt. But, knowing him the way they do, they probably didn't expect anything less."

"It didn't bother them that he manipulated the whole thing, that he ended up getting not one but two young girls pregnant?"

"No, of course not," Yanni insisted, swatting away the concern implicit in my question with a dismissive scrunch of his face. "None of them wanted what was going between Gem and Jessica to cause any hurt, especially to Ashley. And, besides, the Master has always intended to impregnate all his daughters, including the adopted ones. It's just that his getting Ashley pregnant came as a bit of a surprise. If he was going to put a baby in her, we all expected that to happen later, especially since Ashley was a cadet, and she and Lina were into each other."

There was another scrap of information to store in my head; I wouldn't dare set it down on paper or in my computer while I was here. There had to be records chronicling all those births. A thorough search might uncover birth certificates, immunization records, school enrollments, maybe even adoption papers that would lead me to the real identities of this collection of pederasts.

In an attempt to conceal my thoughts, I asked: "What are cadets?"

"That's what we call the kids who go to the Guardian School."

I was amazed yet again. "You mean there's another school here besides the -- what did you call it? -- the Academy?"

Yanni nodded. "When kids turn thirteen," he explained, "they graduate from Page Hall and go on to Squire Hall. But some apply to go to the Guardian School. The special ones, the ones with a lot of potential, get invited to attend the Guardian School. But whether their application is accepted, or they get invited, it's considered an honor to be admitted. It's a tough program and some kids drop out. Anyway, to stick it out, you have to study and work for five years before you graduate and become a full-fledged Guardian." He paused a moment. "Ashley was very special. She wanted to be a Guardian from the time she was little. She worshipped Lina. And she studied and trained for a long time to get ready. So, an exception was made for her, and she was admitted to the school when she was only eleven. Lina looked after her and Ashley became one of her assistants. And then they became lovers, at least unofficially."

I hadn't yet met Ashley and so had no idea what she looked like. But if she had been admitted to the ranks of the Guardians at the age of eleven, she undoubtedly had to have had a chiseled body, muscles rippling over a boyish frame like that of a world-class gymnast. An image of Lina in bed with such a young girl, both of them naked, their tongues roaming over each other's marmoreal flesh, suddenly rocketed to the top of my brain and my pussy juiced once again. Oh, how I so wanted to be at the center of such a tableau.

Before I could restrain myself, I posed my next question with a tad too much fervency, which, as soon as the words tumbled out of my mouth, I hoped Yanni wouldn't detect or at least ignore. "How did Lina take it?" I asked. "I mean, the Master getting Ashley pregnant?"

"Fine, I guess," Yanni replied, suddenly frowning and obviously considering how the episode had impacted his sister. "I mean, I don't know. I know Lina cares a lot for Ashley and misses her. When they were living together, she didn't have other people, other cadets, in her bed. Now she sleeps with a bunch of cadets practically every night, Martin and Emma most often." He paused a moment, thinking, then said: "I guess she's lonely." He sighed. "I guess maybe she's the only one who got hurt. But I don't know. I mean, I know she talked to the Master about everything, but not to me; not to me or Rola."

I detected the hurt in Yanni's voice and reached out to give him a pat on an arm. He smiled at me and, in spite of myself, I smiled back.

We came to the end of the sea of black rubber, crossed a wide expanse of grass and finally arrived at the Great Altar, which was a large metal-canopied stage, akin to something that fronted a crowd at an outdoor music festival. It was an impressive structure, especially when one considered that its intricate aluminum skeleton, like everything else about the sacred wood, had been brought, at obviously great expense, to this secluded island.

I estimated the enveloping canopy rose to a height of over twenty feet. The front rim of its surface was adorned by a line of black flags, the pennants fluttering in the breeze, all bearing the image, in silver, of a stylized poplar tree. I wondered if that representation, like the stars and stripes, was the symbol of this depraved republic. The underside of the canopy was studded with a thicket of lights and festooned with multicolored streamers. The stage itself had to be about one hundred thirty feet wide and over fifty feet deep. At the flanks of the stage were two gargantuan LED display screens that towered nearly as high as the canopy. Whatever happened on the stage was obviously seen in great detail and living color by the crowd below.

As I looked up at the canopy, I saw, hanging from a central beam amid the array of lights, an elaborately forged, elongated mammoth metal orb, the top half of its black integument perforated at regular intervals by rectangular apertures. "What the fuck is that?" I whispered in amazement.

Yanni heard me. "That's the Great Censer," he said. "Before the orgy, it'll be filled with all sorts of incense, tons of it. Then the incense will be lit, and the censer lowered, and then it'll swing back and forth over the stage during the ceremony and then for the rest of the night. So much smoke comes out of it that it fills the stage and sometimes the whole wood." He spread his arms to indicate the entirety of the tree-lined arena. "If the wind blows right, you can smell the incense all over the island, especially in Elysium, and if you're in the wood the smell can be so strong it'll make you loopy, like you're in a trance."

"Fucking amazing!" I whispered while still looking up at the censer, detecting amid the crisscrossing beams of aluminum the mechanism that would, at the desired moment, lower it toward the stage and then set it swinging, its pungently intoxicating exhalations doing their part to waft away every last bit of inhibition and restraint.

Yanni and I rounded the stage, passing behind the black bulk of one of the display screens and climbed a flight of metal stairs that led to the stage. We halted at the top, observing the bustle of activity on the black metal deck that augured, like the ziggurat in the distance, the spectacle that was to happen tonight.

At the rear of the stage, hanging against its back wall, was a great black banner which sported a large white pentagram ringed by a circle. An identical pentagram had been etched into the metal deck near the bow of the stage. A few feet in front of us, near the front of the stage but to the right of its center, a teenage boy and girl, presumably Acolytes, stood at the top of a wide portable metal staircase which was parked against the rim of a Brobdingnagian metal firepit. A much larger brother to the firepits that surrounded the circle of worship below, it rested on a veritable monolith of dark gray slate. The boy was emptying sacks of a white granular substance into the firepit while the girl poured a clear liquid from plastic containers onto the gritty mass. A line of their companions, children of various ages, handed over the sacks and containers from a great pile on the stage, and, as the contents were dumped into the firepit, the empties were handed back down.

"That's the Great Cauldron," Yanni said, indicating the giant firepit. "That's where Maya will light the ceremonial flame."

My nose began to catch the unmistakable odor of rubbing alcohol. "What's that they're putting into the pit?" I asked.

"A combination of salts," Yanni replied. "They soak it with alcohol and let it dry, and then, just before everything gets going tonight, they soak it again. At the beginning of the ceremony, an Acolyte will hand Maya a torch and she'll throw it into the cauldron. The flame will rise, and then, as the ceremony goes on, Maya will throw herbs into the flame and recite the incantation."

"What's the incantation like?"

Yanni shrugged. "I can't do it as well as Maya," he replied, a bit sheepishly, "and I can never remember it all. Besides, when you're here tonight, you'll hear Maya do it from top to bottom. He paused a moment. "But it can get really exciting, even hypnotic. Maya chants and the whole crowd gets into it, and chants in return. It can really make you feel like you're part of something, something a whole lot bigger than just yourself."

I held my tongue, not saying that the something bigger was a mass of pederasts. As we watched the group of youths minister to the firepit, another group of Acolytes appeared on the stage lugging stacks of rubber-sheathed exercise mats. They laid the mats on the stage, covering the pentagram etched into the deck, and then began attaching the mats to one another, forming a vast quilt. That construct was covered with a gargantuan blanket, the corners of which had grommets that were secured to cleats built into the deck of the stage. The Acolytes then salted the whole affair with dozens of pillows of varying colors and sizes, and I immediately guessed the space, situated directly over the malign power of the pentagram, was to be used for an orgy within the orgy, most likely, judging by all I so far knew of this place, a mass of naked and smooth young bodies.

"When the incantation is done," Yanni explained, the children chosen to go to Paradise for the orgy with the Master and Maya enter the stage. They'll be dressed in these lovely outfits of white gossamer, and when they're hit by the lights of the stage" -- hand indicated the lights overhead and then the footlights -- "you can see everything, all their cocks and pussies. It's really very beautiful."

Yanni had divined my thoughts once again. Is there anything this sick fucker can't figure out about me? I thought.

As Yanni spoke, however, I regarded him, thinking that his explanation and obvious fondness for the memories it evoked did more to reveal his true pedophile nature than anything I had yet seen or heard him say. Well, I had to discount seeing him have sex with a preteen boy aboard an airplane, and seeing him have sex with several boys in a video, but what he was uttering was pretty revealing nonetheless. Still, while he went on, I couldn't help but once again think of how sick I had to be when I admitted to myself how much I liked this kiddy-fucker psycho, even while he waxed rhapsodic about the sight of naked boys and girls. What the fuck was wrong with me?

"Then the children will perform a ritual dance," Yanni continued, "one they've been practicing the whole week. Two of the children will have been named lord and lady of the orgy. By the time dance ends, the white gossamer will have been cast aside and they're all naked, and the lord and lady will fuck, usually in a standing position at the front of the stage. When they're about to come, two other children will approach them bearing cups -- we call them cupbearers, obviously -- and the boy cupbearer will collect the cum of the lord as he comes, and the girl cupbearer will collect the juices of the lady as she comes. If the lord and lady piss while they come, so much the better; that's considered a double blessing for the orgy. Anyway, then Maya approaches with a large chalice, and the cupbearers pour what they've collected into the chalice, and then, in front of the whole congregation, Maya will drink the love juices, and that's the signal for the orgy to begin. The people down there will start the orgy" -- he indicated the great black circle below -- "and the children up here will orgy." He indicated the pillow-bedecked mats assembled over the now unseen pentagram. "Then, after a while, when the orgy is going strong, Maya will lead the children from the stage back to the Main House, to Paradise, and she and the Master will preside over the orgy there until they're ready to take the children into his bedchamber for a night of love."

I could hardly take in what Yanni was saying, my mind once again reeling from the intricate depravity of this place. Whatever one might think or regard as one's convictions, the ritualized debauchery to be found here had to give one pause. Was what went on here any different from any other religion, any other form of slapping a saddle on the minds of men? When Joseph Smith, an inveterate con man, had cooked up a religion by claiming he had been divinely directed to find golden plates that pointed a new way to the truth, golden plates that were the source of new holy writ, but later conveniently disappeared; when he ensconced himself in a room and then emerged to say God had commanded plural marriage, was it any different from the crock of shit the Master was trying to sell? Probably not. But this was the first religion I knew of that raised to high devoutness the act of fucking kids.

You had to hand it to him, I thought. The Master, a prophet just as fraudulent, but even more devious than those who had come before him, had definitely come up with a whole new angle, one that worked out best for him. For sure.

We walked onto the stage, and, as always, everyone knew Yanni and Yanni knew everyone. As he exchanged greetings and occasionally introduced me to that one or this one, we moved across the length of the deck, which was adorned with large black metal multi-tiered candle racks, the waxy stalks varying in thickness and length, from squat votives to thick pillars nine to twelve inches in length to slender tapers well over a foot long. I noted that the candle racks on the right side of the stage all bore white candles while the racks on the far side of the stage bore black candles, momentarily wondering over the significance. Amid the candle racks were great wicker baskets, as wide as a hammock and tall as a man is high, stuffed with all manner of wildflowers, arrangements of chicories, cornflowers, daisies, marigolds, poppies and more, assailing one's eyes with their riots of color. There were also set here and there on the deck large brass incense burners, each about chest high, their perforated tops spiked with hundreds of incense sticks, waiting to be lit but already redolent, my nose twitching from the smell of frankincense, jasmine, lavender and sandalwood. The bellies of the burners had been forged to display images of dozens of bodies writhing in frenzied copulation.

Despite the sight of the obscene burners, though, my eyes were drawn to the center of the stage, the area between the now concealed pentagram on the deck and the pentagram on the banner fixed to the rear wall. Just behind the waxing heap of pillows, a group of a dozen sweating, well-muscled boys and girls in their late teens were muscling into place a collection of Taiko drums. Five black okedo-daiko drums, adorned by red roping, were set in a straight line several feet behind the area reserved for the kiddy orgy. Beyond the first line of drums, six chu-daiko drums, their cowhide heads two feet across and their barrels thirty inches in height, were arranged in a gently sloping curve, set on a tilt on large wooden stands. Further beyond, at the rearmost of the stage, a large, raised platform bearing an enormous wooden stand awaited a monster Odaiko drum, which hovered just above the stand, its barrel wrapped in padded canvas bands, gently swaying as its young minders, with shouts and commands, supervised it being lowered into place. An undeniable work of art, its drumhead measured nine feet across, and, as it softly thudded into place and the canvas bands fell away, an array of lights was switched on, its barrel of lacquered Zelkova elm gleaming like a great ligneous mirror.

Awed by the beauty of the drum, my mouth fell open a bit as I studied its details: the creamy whiteness of the drumhead, the enormous black nails that fixed the cowhide to the barrel, and the eddies and whorls of the highly polished wood. Though I'd been told stories of such drums, I had never before seen them in person, much less heard them played. Knowing the drums were to be struck with a frenzy matching the sexual congress that was to take place on the stage and arena below, I was suddenly if only briefly more excited at the prospect of hearing the drums given voice than seeing the oceanic tangle of undulating bodies.

Yanni noticed my fascination. "Tonight, Lucifer will be struck eight times," he said, "and then the drums will sound, and the fires will be lit, which are the signals for people to start coming to the wood. The bonfire can be seen from every part of the island and the drums can be heard all over too. And they'll be played throughout the ceremony, throughout the incantation, and then throughout the union of the lord and lady, and the imbibement of the sacred juices by the High Priestess, and finally signal the beginning of the orgy itself."

"It must be something," I admitted in a loud whisper, nearly overwhelmed not just by the drums but by the entirety of this beehive and its immoral purpose.

"It is," Yanni agreed, gesturing at the youngsters managing the placement of the great drum. "You'll hear them play. The Master sent them to Japan to learn how. But I can't describe it to you; you have to see it for yourself. The drums, the flames, the smoke, the smells, the words, and then the sex. It's magic."

For once, I had no doubt, and felt no appetite to express any sort of dubiousness. Though I was certain Yanni's description was beggared by the actual spectacle, it gave me enough of an idea to believe that whatever happened in the wood that night would be an extravaganza that beat down any Catholic mass, any stem-winding revival and surely anything I'd ever sat through in a synagogue.

I couldn't resist a little bit of teasing, though. I turned to Yanni, a wry smile on my face. "Boy," I said, "for a non-believer, you sure seem taken by all this mumbo-jumbo."

Yanni laughed. "Yeah, I guess so," he admitted.

"Why?"

Yanni shrugged. "People need something to believe in," he said. "Wanting to believe in something is a part of us. At least, I think so. The Master once told me about an article he once read, that some scientists believe there's what they call a god gene, something inside our bodies that makes us want to believe -- in something, anything." He shrugged again. "I mean, I don't know if that's true. But if it is true, it's not enough to just want to believe; people need a way to believe. When Maya set out to create our faith, she realized that from the start -- and the Master too. I remember once hearing him say that one of the reasons the Catholic church lasted so long was because their mass was so beautiful and so meaningful, a way to keep the believers fascinated by the beauty of worship."

I teased Yanni again. "So, everyone here tonight is just a sucker, a rube for the Master to fleece," I said, saying it perhaps more sharply than I meant to.

"Don't be such a bitch," Yanni retorted in his usually good-natured way. "I didn't say anything about anybody getting rooked; the Master only said that about Catholics. Here, the belief is genuine, just like I guess it was with Catholics. I know the belief is genuine because I see it every day. As for me, I'll admit, like I told you before, I don't know if there's a god or any kind of higher power. I believe in me, and I believe in the Master, and I believe in love, and the truth of love, and that's reality." He paused a moment, thinking. "But if I were to believe in something, it would be this." He looked around, his eyes taking in all of the sacred wood. "And I have to hand it to Maya; what she's created is beautiful. If anyone wants to believe, this is the way to get them to do it." He smiled at me. "And, like I said, whatever brings anyone to the truth is a good thing."

I returned his smile and chuckled, shaking my head. "I think you give yourself too little credit," I said. "You're more of a zealot than you know."

Yanni laughed again. "Maybe," he admitted. "But I'll probably say the same thing about you one day."

He had me there, so I shut up. Smiling at me, he led me the rest of the way across the stage. We passed groups of boys and girls shoving huge speakers into place, and, as we made our way through the darkened backstage area, passed large collections of musical instruments, and saw a group of youngsters flipping the switches and pulling the levers of a control panel that regulated the lighting and sound system. We traversed the length of some corridors, passing a number of compartments, and eventually arrived at another flight of metal stairs. We descended and found ourselves on another grassy expanse at the aft of the stage. We walked to the line of firs, entered a gap in the trees, passed under an arch identical to the one that had ushered us into the wood, and then emerged onto the great meadow.

We walked on, drawing closer to the Main House, the ground beginning to crest as we approached a slab of stone steps. We heard peacocks cawing as we arrived on the steps, a wide bank of gray granite, then ascended to a terrace shrouded by blue wisteria trees and smelling of frangipani. The trees, surrounded by beds of sweet alyssum, grew out of square patches cut into the deck of the terrace, and the abundance of sweet-smelling blossoms further bolstered my suspicion the island had to be located in some tropical zone, but, of course, I couldn't be completely sure. There were stone benches adjacent to some of the trees, their backs carved into elaborate representations of copulating couples.

As we walked past one of the benches, we heard a low moan emanating from within a thick cluster of multicolored sweet peas. Upon hearing the moan, Yanni grinned and put a finger to his lips, signaling me to be quiet. Leading the way, he stepped up to the bench, and, while on his knees on the seat of the bench, leaned against its back. I joined him. He grinned slyly at me and then very carefully parted the vines, revealing a small clearing under the spreading branches of the tree.

Within the clearing, a lone young girl, lying naked on a bed of lily-of-the-valley, was masturbating. She was pale and pretty, her head topped by a bowl-cut auburn mane that fell to her shoulders, her full lips as pink as the areolas of her small breasts and lips of her cunt. Her abdomen was six small hills of hard muscle. The bronze chain around her belly, bedecked with a number of rubies and at least one diamond I could see, indicated she was twelve or younger, but judging by her breasts and the near-pristine state of her quim, I guessed not much younger. Only a tiny sprig of light brown hair adorned her pussy mound. Her yellow bikini bottom was bunched around one of the slender ankles of her long legs. Intent on her onanism, her eyes were closed, the fingers of one hand vigorously at work on her snatch, the index finger rubbing her rosy clit while the others spread the blushing lips below. The fingers of her other hand were splayed over one of her breasts, the index finger flicking a stiff salmon-colored nipple. Seeing her, I couldn't help but think she made a very compelling picture and whatever had her touching herself had to be as enthralling because, as her young body writhed from her own ministrations, she was oblivious to our presence.

Yanni softly touched my shoulder, then signaled we ought to retreat, leaving the girl to her pleasure. He gently allowed the vines to move back into place and we quietly backed away from the bench, walking a few feet before he spoke. "Well," he said, "that was pretty."

Inwardly, I agreed. The scene had reminded me of something Balthus might paint, or David Hamilton might photograph. The girl alone was a work of art. I was loath to admit that, though. "Who was she?" I simply asked.

"Her name is Radha," Yanni said with a smile," and I bet I know who she was thinking of."

"Who?"

"Her lover Serena," Yanni said. "She got admitted to the Guardian School, so now she's one of Lina's people, and she's away on a mission now, so Radha must be missing her, especially since they don't have much time left before fall, when Serena moves to the Guardian School and Radha moves to Squire Hall."

"A mission?" I said. "What kind of mission?"

Yanni laughed. "You know I can't tell you that," he said. "You can ask Lina, but she won't tell you either."

I flared suddenly, once again giving way to judgment. Looking back, I don't know why. Perhaps it was due to some stubborn cleavage to an idea of what constituted a proper childhood, but, as soon as the words fell out my mouth, I regretted them. I didn't want another unpleasant moment between Yanni and I. "It's bad enough you fuck these kids," I spat. "But I can hardly believe you send them out to kill."

Yanni looked at me, and, once again, seemed to know where I was at. A small smile bowed his lips. Damn his acute perception! I thought.

"They do it willingly," Yanni said softly, seemingly unperturbed by my sudden flash of moral certainty. "We don't tell them any fairy stories about the world. We don't lie to them about anything, including the power of their own bodies. In most cases, they already know a lot of the truth, having lived it in all sorts of horrible ways before coming here. And we don't lie to them about what it takes to defend everything they're given, everything all of us have here. We let them be children in every way possible, but we trust them with what I guess you think of as adult knowledge -- and sometimes adult responsibilities." He paused a moment. "And they understand; understand it all. Just because they're kids doesn't mean they don't have any brains. Our being honest with them and trusting them makes them a lot more mature, even at younger ages, than the kids in your world."

I couldn't dispute that. All I had seen so far had been a confirmation of what Yanni was saying. Was sex that transformative to a young life? Did the flowering of the libidos of the children here actually lead them to attain new heights in body and mind that were at best rarefied among the youths of the outside world? Were they, on the one hand, full of love while also capable of dispassionately meting out the Master's justice? Did they possess such an unsettling strength? Were they the paladins of a new age?

"When there's a mission that needs doing outside the compound," Yanni continued, "you should see how eagerly the Guardians accept the job once they're chosen. It's considered an honor. And I know what you're thinking." His expression was suddenly one of exasperated dismissiveness. "It's not because they want to get away. It's because they want to do their part to protect the Master and all he's built, built for all of us. They want to make whatever contribution they can to preserving Philo-Sophia."

"I actually wasn't thinking that," I retorted sincerely.

If there was anything I had so far appreciated about this place, it was exactly that everyone here was as fervent in their belief as the Muslim firebrands who strapped explosives to their bodies, and that Lina's Guardians were the vanguard of that fanaticism, the wall of living flesh that would gladly tumble down onto the razor-sharp points of a thousand spears for the sake of their beloved Master and his holy mission.

Yanni seemed mollified. "Well, it's like I said before," he said. "Everybody here is willing to do anything to protect the Master and everything we've all built together. You can get on your high horse, but that doesn't change the fact that sending the Guardians to handle something tricky is very effective. It's not often that someone with enemies will expect that a kid will be sent to do the job on him." He fell silent a few moments, thinking. "And I'll tell you something else, just so you know. Sending kids out to do that kind of work is something that happens very rarely. There are adult Guardians, after all, and you can't be a full-fledged Guardian unless you're very skilled -- at all sorts of things. When kids go out on missions, it's usually to do something more mundane, like reconnaissance or infiltration. When a kid is sent to do wet work it's because there's no other way to get the job done, and then the kid has to be very, very good."

"So, is it mundane work Serena was sent out to do?" I asked.

Apologetic now, Yanni shook his head and spread his hands. "I truly don't know," he said. "And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. There's simply no reason for me to know. But I'm pretty sure that's the case. One, Lina isn't stupid, and that's true of all her people. Like I said, there's no way they'd send a kid out on a dangerous mission, like killing somebody, unless that kid was already very skilled. Two, Serena isn't even a cadet yet. She's a graduate of the Guardian program at Page Hall, yes, but she won't enter the actual Guardian School until the fall, like I said before. So, being chosen for a mission this early means she somehow fit into the mission profile. To do what, I don't know, but my guess is it's something mundane, meant more for initial training than anything serious. As promising as Serena may be, right now she has no real training and no skills, not like what she'll undergo when she actually starts at the Guardian School. And, besides, no one her age is naturally that good."

Good at killing, I thought. I mused Yanni was talking like the merciless head of an espionage cabal, which was perhaps not too far off the mark. I kept quiet, though, considering what he was saying.

"But I get where you're coming from," Yanni said. "It always tears Lina up when she has to send her people out on a mission, especially the younger ones. In the old days, she used to do a lot of that work herself. But as the Guardians got bigger and bigger, it was hard for her, at first, to delegate stuff, and, in a way, it still is. She doesn't get much sleep when something like that is going on. So, she spends her free time exercising or shooting her guns or having sex, so she won't have to think about it too much. She worries until everybody she's sent out comes back safe and sound."

I so wanted to ask more questions about Lina, her past and her command responsibilities, but thought better of evincing, even in a small way, my intense attraction to Yanni's sister. "Why did you say Radha and Serena don't have much time left together?" I merely asked.

"Well, they do and they don't," Yanni said, then paused to organize his thoughts. "You see, when a kid turns eight and they enter Page Hall, they're assigned a companion, someone older who shows them the ropes and looks after them. After a while, though, they're expected to find a lover, someone their own age who'll be closest to them, someone with whom they can share everything. And that's what Radha and Serena have been to each other. But in the fall, like I said, Radha will be going to Squire Hall, and Serena will be at the Guardian School, so they'll be apart. Officially, they'll still be lovers, at least for a while, but no one will be surprised if either or both of them" -- he paused again, considering the right phrase -- "find other lovers."

"Girl lovers or boy lovers?" I asked.

"That's up to them," Yanni replied. "Everybody here is pretty much bi, which is only natural, anyway. But some people swing more one way than the other way. For instance, I love women and girls, but I'm more into men and boys."

"I never would have guessed," I said with a teasing smile.

Yanni laughed. "Wiseguy," he said. "Anyway, nobody has to find a new lover. In fact, when it comes to a situation like the one Radha and Serena are in, they can decide they want to stay together even while they're living and studying apart. But, you know, people change and grow, especially if what they're experiencing is different, and being in the Guardian School is a lot different than being in Squire Hall. So, nobody would hold it against them if they took new lovers or didn't take any lovers at all. I mean, even if they do find new lovers, Radha and Serena will always be close; they've already shared too much not to be. But whether they find new lovers or not, eventually, for our world to grow and stay strong, it's pretty certain someday they'll have babies. And that'll happen if they stay together, find new lovers or even if they're single."

"How does that work?" I asked.

Yanni shrugged. "When a girl or a woman is ready," he said, "she can have a baby. If she has a female lover or more than one lover or even if she's single, she can choose a boy or a man to impregnate her. She and her lover or lovers will raise the child, but the male who impregnated her has the right to be in the child's life, especially if he's one of her lovers. That's something that's strongly encouraged here. Happy and strong families aren't just something we talk about, like in the outside world. Here, being part of a family really means something."

"I don't doubt it," I said dryly, "especially since being in a family here means indulging in incest."

Recognizing what I said for a mild jab, Yanni merely smiled. "That's right," he agreed.

Despite my pose of dubiousness, I considered the polyamorous dynamic Yanni had described, and grudgingly admitted to myself it sounded more sensible than the often hypocritical and miserable monogamy that was the prevailing ethos of my world, which, if my own sexual adventures were any guide, I had never held in high regard in any case. For the moment, though, my increasingly wafer-thin bias won out. I wasn't about to concede agreement on this point or any other. I was the not-so-dispassionate reporter, after all.

"More children to add to the life and love of the compound," I said sarcastically.

Yanni was amused. The bastard could tell my heart wasn't in it. "That's right," he said again.

We walked a bit more and came to the rear verandah of a rectangular granite and wood block of a house set into the terrace. "This is the Pool House," Yanni said. "The Main House's outdoor swimming pool is just past here."

As we ascended some steps to round the clean, sharp lines of the Pool House, the outdoor swimming pool came into view. I stared open-mouthed at its magnificence. I had seen it on the video of the Summerfinding Orgy, of course, but seeing it in person was altogether different, like looking at pictures of the Taj Mahal before finally making the trip to Agra. The pool itself was Olympic-sized, its sides banked by dozens of chaise longues of various sizes. Behind the longues were a line of cube-shaped cabanas topped by two-tiered, white-painted steel roofs. Lamps hung from the ceilings of the cabanas and clear, bulb-shaped lights hung from just within the bottom rim of their rooves. The side walls were a transparent netting sheathed by white polyester curtains softly muttering under the influence of the morning breeze. The curtains of some of the cabanas had been drawn aside, secured to corner pillars by loops, allowing me to see each cabana was equipped with a few cushioned white rattan chairs, and a matching hamper and shelf unit. On the shelves were stacks of fluffy towels, containers of baby oil, cocoa butter, flavored and scented lotions, lube, and baskets filled with all manner of sex toys. Dominating each cabana was a king-sized bed garnished with a plush comforter and a dozen or more overstuffed pillows. All within the cabanas rested on large water-absorbent carpets.

Behind the platoon of longues and cabanas at either side of the pool were long, tall walls of bleached gray granite festooned with silvery chrome shower heads. Set into the walls below the shower heads, at about the height of an adult's chest, were chrome, single-handle shower volume control valves, below which blocks of the wall protruded to serve as shelves. Over a hundred feet away, crowning a flight of steps at the head of the pool, was an enormous open-air loggia, its white columns supporting a flat roof over which flowed a sheet of water, a waterfall that cascaded down into the pool with an oddly soothing roar.

A slight gasp was drawn from me by the splendor of it all, but that gasp died in my throat as we descended some steps at the side of the Pool House and set foot on the pool deck. As I turned my head to my right, my eyes fell first on an immense circular whirlpool bath set into the center of the near end of the swimming pool. My head then rose to face the front of the Pool House, a flight of three steps leading to a wide porch backed by tall glass doors that looked into a living room equipped with a gargantuan wall-mounted TV monitor. The living room was flanked on one side by a kitchen and on the other by a bedroom dominated by a massive bed. But what immediately arrested my attention and strangled my gasp were the three naked young girls having sex on a large chaise longue situated at the center of the recessed porch of the Pool House, one of whom was Emilia.

Yanni grinned and said: "Well, I guess they decided to skip breakfast and eat each other."

The three girls had thrown aside their bikini bottoms, which were lying scattered on the deck beside the chaise longue. The sex they were sharing was decidedly energetic, the three of them writhing with abandon. Emilia was at the left end of the threesome. Their bodies were covered in a thin sheen of sweat; it was obvious they'd been going at it for quite a while already. The curly red-haired girl at the right end, her belly encircled by a silver chain, was locked in a deep kiss with the brown-haired girl in the middle, whose own silver chain indicated she was also thirteen or older. While they kissed, the red-haired girl fondled the left breast of the brown-haired girl while her other hand was buried between her own legs, vigorously teasing her clit.

Yet it was eight-year-old Emilia who was in charge. She was setting the pace by straddling the right leg of the brown-haired girl, her bald pussy grinding into the flesh of the girl's thigh while she bent over to bring her mouth to bear on the girl's right breast, her tongue roving over the hardened nipple while the fist of her right hand was completely submerged in the girl's oozing cunt. The two older girls seemed to move in rhythm to the dance of Emilia's tongue, the undulations of her torso and pumping of her fist.

A loud moan rose from the mouth of the brown-haired girl in the middle as she came, her juices spurting out over Emilia's fist, coating her lower arm in a luster brightened by the rays of the morning sun. Emilia's mouth detached from the girl's breast as she, with a loud moist squelch, withdrew her fist from the girl's quim. Leaving a large puddle of her own sap on the girl's thigh, Emilia rose to her knees while she and the red-haired girl shifted the middle girl, who was obviously still recovering from her shattering orgasm, into lying across the width of the longue. The red head straddled the brunette, her mouth and tongue diving into the pussy of the girl on the bottom while she lowered her own dripping snatch onto the girl's waiting lips. As the two teenagers began their sixty-nine, Emilia moved to the plump ass of the red head, her hands spreading the cheeks before her tongue speared deep inside the girl's asshole. As Emilia ate deeply and well from the red head's rosette, she kept one hand on the older girl's ass while her other hand snaked down to her own pristine twat. Slightly muffled by the ass cheeks in which her face was buried, the moans elicited from Emilia by her own fingers rose from her throat to join with the keens of the other two girls.

I marveled at how eagerly and skillfully Emilia ate the older girl's ass. It was plain this eight-year-old moppet was more adept at sex than most adults far beyond her age. I was transfixed by the sight of these three young girls reveling in thoroughly wanton lust. I couldn't turn away, and, truth be told, didn't want to. I felt my own juices again begin to flow; the sticky sweet moistness elicited by my arousal seeping into the crotch of my already-dampened bikini bottoms.

The sight of such compelling depravity had me rooted. I was slightly startled when Yanni stepped close to me and whispered in my ear. "I told you Emilia was talented," he said. "Some people say that when Gem retires from being Chief Girl Lover, Emilia will be her successor."

The pleasure the three girls were sharing crested to orgasm, cries and whimpers rising to howls and shrieks, juices spraying from the cunts of the two older girls as the red head fell away from the brunette and collapsed onto the surface of the longue, now drenched with sweat and vaginal juice. As she tipped over, her ass came away from Emilia's face. The eight-year-old got to her feet, her trim little ass facing me. The two other girls, as obviously spent as they were, made a game attempt to rally, rising to their knees to apply their tongues to Emilia's hairless pussy. Emilia threw her head back and ground her twat into the mouths of her two lovers, her slim torso pumping back and forth in rhythm with the ministrations of the twisting tongues of the older girls.

Despite my best efforts, my earlier promise to be as blasé as possible about whatever I saw here, I was absolutely amazed, dumbstruck. Emilia was putting on a master class, all right. I had proudly, if not always openly, considered myself something of a libertine before coming to this place, but this little girl, only eight years old, was putting me to shame. It wasn't just her obvious skill and imaginativeness that was astounding, but also her seemingly effortless stamina. Though covered in sweat, she didn't seem to flag at all, easily moving from one depraved act to another. I would have been wasted after the first come, not to mention the three or four I had already seen each of the girls enjoy. And we stumbled across them when they had already been going at it for a while! I thought.

Emilia opened her bladder and began forcefully pissing on the two other girls, her urine, yellow and pungent, splashing against and cascading down the faces of her lovers. The two girls squealed with delight and eagerly lapped up Emilia's offering, rivulets of what they weren't able to drink coursing down their jaws and over their throats and down to their chests as their tongues continued to spear out to lick Emilia's clit and pussy lips. Though younger than the other girls by several years, it was plain this was Emilia's game, and she was thoroughly enjoying every bit of it.

A movement at the corner of an eye turned my head and I saw Yanni, his eyes glazed with lust as he watched the girls. He had pushed down the front of his bikini bottoms, and his cock was fully erect, firmly grasped by the fingers of one hand as he pumped himself to orgasm. As Emilia loosed her stream of piss, a jagged moan escaped his mouth, and he shot his load, several ropes of pearly white jism bursting forth from his glans to arch across the deck of the Pool House porch, trails of his seed landing on the polished wooden floor.

I so wanted to masturbate as well, to simply stick my hands in my bikini bottoms and furiously frig myself to a quick but shatteringly intense come. In that moment, I actually wanted many things. I wanted to go to Yanni and take his lovely, moistened cock in my mouth, to taste his cum, swallow down every drop that was left, and, before the sensations of the first climax were done, use my mouth to bring him to a second orgasm. He hadn't been lying the night before when he said he came a lot. I couldn't remember ever seeing a man (and I had been with many men) come as copiously as he had just now. I wanted to wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his torso and have him fuck me right there, our bodies pounding against one another while the girls watched, perhaps letting them know they didn't have the monopoly on sexual abandon. And I wanted to go to the girls, slide my lips all over Emilia's tapering back and gorgeous little ass while I reached out to the other two and the four of us fell into a pile of exploring fingers and tongues and writhing limbs. But I, hero and coward both, resisted, the carapace of my civilization proving, at least at that moment, too adamantine to crack.

Yanni's moan at the moment of his climax finally caused the girls to notice our presence. Emilia was the first to speak. "Yanni!" she declared. "Isn't it pretty? We were on our way to breakfast when we just decided to love. Come join us!" Noticing me then, Emilia turned to face me. "Please!" she said. "Join us! I so want to share love with you, pretty lady!"

The two other girls, their hair matted by sweat and faces still bedewed by Emilia's urine, nodded vigorously. "Yes, do!" they said in unison. "Please join us!" They stared at me with undisguised lust, the brunette reaching down to her pussy to brazenly masturbate while looking at me.

My mouth fell open, but nothing came out. I had no idea what to say or what to do. Had they been adults, I wouldn't have hesitated. I would have grabbed Yanni's cock and pulled him along behind me before diving us into that pile of inviting flesh. But they were children! Weren't they? Beautiful, naked, outrageously alluring and sexual children, yes, but still children. I momentarily closed my eyes and felt my head tremble from the sudden assault of the choices that confronted me. I have to get better at handling moments like this, I thought, especially since they seem to happen with some regularity in this place.

As I re-opened my eyes, Yanni saved me once again, slipping his softening cock back into his bikini bottoms and then approaching the girls. He kissed Emilia on the mouth, softly and tenderly, while she wrapped her arms around his neck. He pulled away from her to bend down to kiss the other two girls. As their tongues met and Yanni reached out to fondle their young breasts and knead their erect nipples, it was obvious he wasn't a stranger to any of their bodies.

Yanni stood up. "Babies," he said, "I would love to, and I think all of you know I normally would, but we" -- he gestured in my direction -- "have an appointment for breakfast. The Goddesses are waiting for us."

At the mention of the Goddesses, the eyes of all the girls widened. Even thoroughly debauched Emilia seemed impressed. "Oh," she said, a prominent note of disappointment in her voice and a longing in her big brown eyes as she looked at me.

"Babies," Yanni said to the girls, "what you shared was so beautiful. We'll have to love very soon -- all of us." A large wet spot on the front of his bikini bottoms now, Yanni turned from the girls, walked over to me, and took me by a hand, beginning to lead me away. "Love, babies!" he called back to them. "Always love!"

"Love!" they cried in return, repeating the mantra. "Always love!"

As Yanni and I walked away, I turned to glance back at the girls, and saw Emilia, on her hands and knees as she descended into a renewed tangle of arms and legs, looking at me, her eyes on my retreating ass and then shifting upward to stare at my face. I blushed and quickly turned away, willing myself to banish from my mind the thought that such a beautiful little girl lusted after me and would likely, if I ever succumbed to her lust, give me pleasures I had never before imagined.

"Who were they?" I asked Yanni as we walked on.

Yanni smiled. "My, you're curious," he said.

"It's my job to be curious," I whispered in slightly fierce retort.

Yanni kept on smiling, an irritatingly knowing smile. "The red-haired girl is Bronwyn, and the brunette is Paloma," he said. "They're both thirteen. They were lovers at Page Hall, and they're still lovers now that they're heading into Squire Hall. Bronwyn was brought to the compound a few years ago, when she was five. Peaches found her in an orphanage in Ireland. She's been one of the elite models since she was nine. Paloma was brought to the compound in the same group that included Leah."

"Gem's lover Leah?" I asked.

Yanni nodded. "That's right," he said. "It was Imara who brought them. They were both four years old then and that was when the Master first fucked them. Like Leah, Paloma became one of the Master's adopted daughters, so she's a member of the Holy Family." He thought a moment. "Though I guess you could say Leah is doubly a member of the Holy Family since she's Gem's lover and she attends the family brunch every White and the family orgy afterward." His face briefly scrunched into an expression of dismissiveness, and he shrugged. "Well, anyway, because Paloma is one of the Master's daughters, he'll put babies in her someday. When she's not in school, she spends a lot of time at the Greenhouse." He gestured toward the north, presumably in the direction of the greenhouse he had mentioned. "She likes to grow things."

My head turned at the mention of a new name. "Who's Imara?" I asked.

Yanni thought how to answer. "That's a long story," he finally said, "and I don't know how much you wanna hear."

"Tell me everything," I said eagerly.

"I'm trying to remember how the Master and Imara are related," Yanni said. "It's a little bit complicated." He thought a few moments more and then resumed, speaking slowly while gesturing with a finger to pick out the details. "Imara's father is the Master's grandfather, and her mother was a young girl the Master's grandfather lived with and was fucking. I forget her name. Angela, Angelique? I don't know; something like that. Anyway, the Master's grandfather had three children with this girl, two sons and then Imara, so that would make Imara the Master's half-aunt. I think that's right. Anyway, she may be the Master's aunt, but she's younger than he is, like four years younger, I think." A sudden flash of realization hit. "Yeah, that's right. I remember now. The Master was the one who popped Imara's pussy cherry when she was eleven, and he was fifteen at the time."

"There's gotta be a story about that," I remarked.

Yanni laughed. "Yeah," he said. "it's a pretty hot story too. I can tell you about that whenever you want."

"I'll remember that promise," I said with a smile.

Yanni grinned. "I know you will," he said. "Anyway, Imara grew up like the Master, in a family that lived naked and shared love all the time. The Master's said that the way his grandfather and father lived inspired a lot of what he did later on. Anyway, when Imara's father died, she took over his businesses and this big ranch where their family lived. All of that is in another country, by the way. And don't bother asking me where because I'm not going to tell you. Anyway, Imara had children with her father before he died, and then with both of her brothers, six kids in all. Her two daughters, Isa and Katie, live here on the compound. They're adopted daughters of the Master too, so they're also members of the Holy Family. You'll meet them.

"Anyway, in addition to her own kids, Imara has access to a lot of children where she lives and she adopts" -- he crooked his fingers to make quotation marks -- "a lot of them, and they live at her place just like the kids who live here, naked and sharing love, helping to keep her place running. The best of them she sends to us in groups a few times a year. That's how Paloma and Leah came here.

"Imara's a partner in some of the Master's businesses, like the kiddy porn and elite sacred prostitutes and some of the Club Serenus locations, so she not only takes a cut of those businesses, but also a percentage of what each kid she sends earns, whether that kid is a model or works in one of the Club Serenus locations. She comes to visit us here a few times a year. I don't know if you'll get to meet her, though. We don't expect her again until the fall." He regarded me, considered a thought for a moment, and then added: "Too bad, really."

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Because I know she'd love you," Yanni stated. "You're just her type -- at least when it comes to other women. She'd love your curly black hair and your tight bod, especially your tits and your great ass."

I blinked in slightly surprised annoyance at hearing that: Yanni's assessment of what another woman would find alluring about me. I quickly calmed down, though, once again realizing the way he talked was a reflection of the way he had been raised, the life he had so far lived and the world he lived in now. And, truth be told, a small part of me (okay, not so small) was flattered by his evaluation of my pulchritude.

"Oh?" I said, suddenly equable. "Wouldn't Imara and I have the opportunity to talk about art or books or current events?"

Yanni smiled. "Don't be mad," he said, once again maddeningly detecting my mood and its sudden willed shift. "She'd think you were hot, is all, just like I do. And she'd probably make it her mission to make you come over and over. I mean, all of us love to fuck, but Imara is something else. I've seen her suck and fuck for hours. One time, during a Grand Orgy, she was up for four straight days making it with men and women and boys and girls and dogs and horses, and she just kept on going. Her skin was sticky from all the cum and juices and piss on her body. I mean, there was so much dried cum on her that it was peeling off her body, like, you know, when you get a sunburn, and then, a few days later, you can peel your skin off?"

Amazed, I nodded dumbly.

Yanni nodded in return. "Anyway," he continued, "finally, she just took a shower, and then had a cat nap, and then she was at it again for another three days. The Master says she's one of the most sexual persons he's ever known, even when she was a kid herself -- and that's saying something since the Master has known some real freaks, himself included." He paused a moment and then added: "It was Imara who introduced the Master to golden showers, scat and bestiality when he was fifteen and she was only eleven years old."

I marveled once again, resisting the impulse to shake my head. Hearing about Imara overwhelmed me, knocked me flat. How could a woman -- how could anyone? -- possess such sexual stamina? Seven days of non-stop sex with adults and children and animals? How had she lived through it? I couldn't imagine approaching, much less replicating, such a feat. It would damn sure waste me, I thought. And to hear she would be attracted to me, that she would lunge at me like an army heaving itself toward an enemy capitol, that she would batter down my defenses until I was a quivering mass under the onslaught of her fingers, lips and tongue, had me wondering if I could survive her.

Once, during a depraved sojourn on the French Riviera, I had known a Parisian chef who originally hailed from the Ivory Coast. Slender and tall, his glowing obsidian flesh had encased an athletic physique much like Yanni's. He had sported an eleven-inch cock, and, upon first seeing his organ, I almost recoiled from the fear of what it might do to me. Yet, a far larger part of me was overwhelmingly curious and aroused, and, after our first coupling, I was eagerly allowing him in all my holes; our many fucks always proved to be very welcome mind-scramblers.

But here, I thought, sex wasn't just some taboo adventure; it was something that brought one to the edge of existence, that truly teetered between Eros and Thanatos, taking one to the shrouded vale between life and death. Maybe that's the way it should be, I thought. Perhaps sex should be, at its best, a yearning for the sweet release of death while simultaneously a sweaty, sticky and altogether vibrant affirmation of life. I had read once that the feudal Japanese regarded the moment of orgasm, what they called the "clouds and the rain," as the moment when men were closest to the gods. I began to see what those old samurai were talking about, and how, in this place, that ideal was lived every day, particularly by sexual athletes like Emilia and Imara -- as well as Imara's nephew the Master. I had thought myself a libertine of the first order, but here, in this place, I was an amateur, a rube, a hayseed bested by eight-year-old girls, by women and girls who had children with their fathers, brothers and sons.

I once again mentally slapped myself, booting such thoughts from my mind until I could properly sort them. While fighting off a headache, I took a deep breath.

"What did you mean when you said Bronwyn and Paloma are still lovers even though they're heading into Squire Hall?" I asked, yet again shifting the subject. I prided myself om a logical mind that could sift through bullshit and often caught people in contradictions and lies. But here I had to keep dancing to stop myself from falling, maybe willingly, into this welter of depravity. "Did you mean they've declared their intention to remain lovers?"

Yanni shook his head. "No," he said. "I just meant they face the same choice that Radha and Serena face, though in a different way. Bronwyn and Paloma declared for each other when they were nine and they've been together ever since, and now they're both going into Squire Hall, but they'll still be together instead of being apart. But they're growing up. Chances are they'll stay together, I think, but they can always share love with whoever they want -- and people do change as they get older. So, who really knows what will happen? They might stay together, they might not, and, when they're ready to have babies, either one of them or both of them, they'll have to pick someone to put the seed in them. But who knows when that will happen? If it does happen, it could happen tomorrow, or next year, or years from now. Whatever happens, it's up to them. Whatever decision they make is theirs alone."

I nodded in genuine understanding. I couldn't help but think Yanni was describing a very enlightened social dynamic. Allowances were made for the vicissitudes of childhood, but the children were expected to develop and exercise the discipline and maturity to make good choices, not just for themselves, but also for the community that had nurtured and reared them. They weren't belittled or ignored or simply warehoused in schools where they were taught next to nothing, as was typically the case in my world, but actually respected and trusted.

I slapped myself yet again. Respected and trusted? I shouted at myself. They run around naked and have sex with each other at the drop of a hat! They're used to make child pornography and are the victims of the depraved lusts of a pack of pedophiles, all under the cover of some half-baked religion cooked up by the Master and his daughter/wife and their confederates! No, the evidence presented by my eyes, of an island full of confident and strong and happily lustful children who were cherished and loved, had to be false, had to be discounted.

My own experiences and supposedly open mind notwithstanding, I was yet unable to break free of a lifetime of notions, to extract myself from years of pain, so, rather than confront any of that at that moment, I shifted the subject once again. "You said Bronwyn is an elite model," I said. "I've heard you use that phrase a few times now. What does it mean to be an elite model?"

"A kid can become a model pretty much the same way they can become a Guardian," Yanni replied. "Announcements are made about upcoming photo sets and vids in our newspaper, and any kid can apply to be in them. You'd probably be surprised how many kids do apply. Just like being a Guardian, it's considered an honor, but unlike being a Guardian, there's also a bit of stardom and glamor that goes with it. Some kids, the really beautiful ones or the ones that are really talented, get invited to appear. Anyway, however a kid becomes a part of a production, some of them are asked to keep appearing, so their compound duty is working at the Studio. And some of those kids become very popular with our customers, and those are the elite models, the ones whose photo sets and vids bring in the most money. Bronwyn, for example, was Top Girl Model for a few years, from the time she was nine, but for the last year or so Leah has been Top Girl Model."

"What do you mean when you say talented?" I asked. "You mean sexually talented?"

"Yeah," Yanni said, nodding. "All the kids here are taught love from the time they're five. Their love instructors at the Academy are constantly evaluating their skills, and the best ones are considered for inclusion in a production. Part of the duties of the Chief Boy and Girl Lover is going over the grade reports of the love instructors, so they can decide who'll be invited to participate in the Master's afternoon orgies and be his nightly lovers as well as appear in the productions at the Studio. For the work at the Studio, they meet with Anna to go over the upcoming projects, evaluate the candidates, and decide who'll appear in what."

"How much do they bring in?"

Yanni shrugged. "Again," he said, you'll have to ask Rola about exact figures, but the Master mentioned to me not too long ago that Leah's vids are nearly ten percent of the kiddy porn operation's gross right now."

I nodded. "What's compound duty?"

"A lot of the kids who live here -- at least the ones who don't get jobs with the town or work for their family businesses -- have jobs that help keep the Master's organization and the Main House running. When a kid turns eight and enters Page Hall, he or she is expected to get a job or perform compound duty, something that contributes to the life of Philo-Sophia, and they do that every day except White, usually in the afternoons after school. The job could be anything, like gardening or maintenance or working in an office or working in a family business. Like Paloma, for instance. She always liked growing things, so she got a job at the Greenhouse, and she's been doing that ever since. But if a kid has compound duty or works for the town, there's always a chance for promotion or, if they're talented at something, re-assignment to a more appropriate job. And, when they get older, there are courses they can take and apprenticeships to prep them for some future permanent job, if that's what they want. For more complex jobs, Philo-Sophia will pay for college and advanced degrees if that's necessary, like what happened with my sister Rola." He paused a moment, thinking. "The Guardians and the models have sort of a different schedule, though, because their jobs are so important. They work longer hours and go to school in the afternoon. The Academy has teachers stationed at the Studio and at the cathedral to teach them."

"When they work their jobs," I asked, "do the kids get paid for their work or are they like little slaves? And what about the adults at their permanent jobs? Do they get paid?"

"We don't have slaves here!" Yanni shot back with an undisguised exasperation. "I've told you over and over everyone here is a part of Philo-Sophia and everyone is valued, not just for the love they can share, but for all they can contribute throughout their lives to everything we are and everything we're trying to build and do."

"Okay, okay," I said, spreading my hands in supplication. "What do I know? I'm the one asking the questions, remember?"

Yanni was instantly soothed. I had to admit I liked that about him, among many other things. He seemed incapable of sustaining anger or harboring grudges, which was unlike most people I had encountered. From the moment I'd met him, I had felt comfortable with him, had simply known he would share with me every bit of himself, and would reveal whatever he could about this cockeyed realm, that whatever precautions he had to take while talking to me were undertaken with a reluctance that was imposed from without. There were no agendas between us, just a simple sharing during which I found myself breathing in deep, sweet draughts of air that filled my lungs and lulled the anxieties that constantly afflicted me. His affection for me, in turn, was palpable, and, despite his stated desire to have sex with me, I also knew that his warmth sprang not just from his cock but from his innate self, all of which was a welcome change from my having to be constantly on guard in the wicked world I usually inhabited.

In that moment, I admitted to myself Yanni had been right about one thing when offering his assessments about me: having known each other less than a day, we were friends, true friends, which was a state I'd rarely enjoyed in this life. I would miss him deeply when I left the island, presuming I did leave. Yet, regarding him then, I still couldn't completely square my incontestable fondness for him with everything I knew him to be: an unrepentant pedophile, a supervisor of a vast criminal empire, and a pillar of a veritable theocracy of twisted depravity.

Thinking about all that, my pussy began to drip yet again. Was all of that, as well as his generosity and kindness and sweet nature, part of why I liked him? I wondered. Was I, in my own way, as evil as he? Had he been right about the rest? Had I come home? My eyes glanced down at his lovely cock, now concealed by his yellow bikini bottoms, but its glans and shaft clearly outlined as they pressed against the golden fabric, and I thought that if he offered it to me again, I might indeed find the opportunity too overpowering to resist.

"You're right, I'm sorry," Yanni said with a nod while reaching out to lightly caress my shoulder. "Well, in answer to your question, yes, everybody is paid. There's not much need for money here, though, since -- for right now, anyway -- nearly everything is provided, and all the salaries, for the kids and the adults, are banked, and people can access their money anytime, like if they want to buy things for their houses or for themselves." He smiled lewdly. "Buy sex toys and stuff like that. I think you've seen we don't have much need for clothes."

The salacious smile still on Yanni's face, he suddenly pirouetted, brazenly displaying his lean but muscular body, his protuberant genitals and the hardness of his exquisite buttocks. As he came to the end of his twirl, he stopped and thought a moment. "But people can always buy their own sexy stuff to wear," he added, "either online or at a few stores in town. Everyone here is pretty much a freak, and I don't mean just when it comes to kids."

I laughed. Here I was ruminating on how much intimacy had grown between us in so short a time and he pulled one of his little capers. He was insufferable and I loved him for that. I reached up with a hand, lightly caressed a side of his face, raised myself up onto my toes and kissed his cheek. "You're the limit," I whispered with obvious feeling.

As my lips came away from his cheek, Yanni regarded me and then returned my kiss, his lips meeting mine ever so softly, like the brush of a butterfly's wings. A moment passed between us and had he taken things just a bit further, I had no doubt I would have soon been on my knees, pulling down his bikini bottoms and eagerly gobbling down his cock before begging him to spear my sex with his organ. But then, strangely, he pulled away, not even the length of a hand between us, and regarded me again. "I love you too," he said, caressing my face and then running a hand through my curly black tresses.

We resumed walking and he took my hand in his. I wasn't at all disappointed or offended. I knew what had stayed him, and was sort of glad of it, finding myself looking forward to what I, despite my earlier declaration of being solely about business while here, was now certain lay in our future: a moment of such overpowering passion that would render me a liar. I had always been very sexual, even when I'd been a young girl, and I knew my friendship with Yanni included the desire to have sex with him. As he himself had said, we weren't in love, but we did love one another. Amid all that I couldn't yet bear to brook, I could admit that much to myself as well as that, having seen him naked and having sex (with a young boy, no less!), I wanted our bodies to come together in a sweat-soaked animal congress, the two of us grappling while his penis sank to its hilt in my flowing cunt.

Indeed, I wanted more. Would Lina ever join us? I wondered. Would I someday find myself tasting her juices while Yanni's cock filled my mouth, or better yet, feasting on her perfect pink twat while Yanni fucked me doggy style, his cock greased by my pussy before he plunged it into my asshole? And then, like the approach of a dark bank of clouds over the horizon, I momentarily considered the rest of what Yanni had predicted. Would I, while I was here, have sex with the Master? Would I, despite my protestations, eagerly give my body to his? Would I willingly deliver my innermost self, my very soul, to his holy pedophile cock?

Such a consideration was too much for my poor little mind to withstand at that moment, and so I was all business again. "So, what happens with all their wages?" I asked.

I detected a sudden wariness on Yanni's part. "I told you," he said quickly. "It gets banked."

"Yes, but where? Some place other than here?"

Yanni pursed his lips, considering his answer for a moment. It struck me he was pondering just how much detail to provide. "No, not someplace else," he finally replied, deliberately uttering each word, and then, with a slight rush, he added: "We have our own bank."

Those last words caused my head to snap around and regard Yanni in a new spasm of amazement, but, before I could blurt a new set of questions, he went on, seeming to want to pummel me into silence with a fresh gusher of information before I could organize my thoughts to pose questions that would further explore the implications of what he had just revealed.

"Everybody here, as soon as they start working," Yanni said, "whether they work for the compound or the town or themselves, not only earns a salary, but also contributes part of their salary to an investment fund in which everybody has a share. The kids are taught in school about finance: money and saving and investing, and, when they get old enough, they can make their own decisions about what they want to do with their own money. And if anyone ever decides they want to leave the compound, for example, they'll leave with at least a considerable amount of cash. But no one's ever left." He said the last a little proudly.

Yanni hadn't put me off. While taking in all he was explaining, a portion of my brain was devoted to formulating questions. "You said you had your own bank, though," I said. "What does that mean?"

Yanni briefly glanced at me and pursed his lips again, plainly uncertain about how much he should tell me. "Just that," he replied while staring ahead. "Years ago, when the Master started to become a big-time doper, there was so much cash coming in he needed a way to handle all that money."

"You said that before," I retorted, an amused smile crossing my face. "But what you mean is he needed a way to wash his money."

My smile and the light fashion in which I had tossed my retort seemed to put Yanni more at ease, and, with a small smile of his own bowing his lips, he said: "Yeah, well, that too."

"So, how did that situation lead to what we're talking about?" I asked, persisting.

"Well, like a lot of dopers, he bought businesses so he could launder his money. Like I told you before, the trailer park was one of the businesses he bought, and the titty bars and the sex clubs, and other businesses as well."

I nodded but stayed silent, the blinking of my eyes and the suddenly sweet expression on my face daring Yanni to expand on his answer.

"Well," Yanni continued, "one of the other businesses was a small local bank that was about to go bust, and soon enough, most or all of the money he earned, from his legitimate and illegitimate businesses, was flowing through there. I mean, it was a legit bank, licensed and everything; regular people had their money in there. But, once the Master took it over, it was a gangsta bank as well. He and his dad, and later Rola, were always really careful about how they managed that whole deal, setting up front companies all over the country, and then all over the world, and those front companies would deposit their money, the Master's money, in the bank. After a while, other dopers and hoods the Master knew or got to know made arrangements with him to have their money deposited there as well, and the bank got richer and richer and bigger and bigger."

"And the authorities never cottoned on to any of this?" I asked.

Yanni shook his head. "No," he said. "Like I said, the Master knew what he was doing, and everything was hidden really well, not just his business, but the business of the other hoods he allowed to put their money there, and later he taught Rola all he knew. I mean, there were routine audits from time to time, but nothing ever came of them because, despite all the dirty money, the bank was really well run. Like always, the Master picked good people and let them do their thing, and everybody, not just the hoods but the people who ran the bank, were all making so much money it was no problem for them to look the other way." He turned to me then, loosed his hand from mine, spread his arms and added: "But don't ask me any details about any of that. I don't know the details because there's no reason for me to know. The only people who know everything, especially since the Master's dad retired, are the Master and Rola, and I think by now Rola knows more than anybody, including the Master."

I tried to mollify Yanni yet again. "His dad retired from being a hood?" I teased.

A wry smile on his face, Yanni emitted a small snort. "Wiseguy," he chided gently. "Yeah, he retired from being a hood."

"Okay," I said agreeably. "I'll ask Rola."

A narrowing of his eyes, yet another pursing of his lips and a click of his tongue made plain Yanni's skepticism regarding that course of action. "She's not gonna tell you anything about any of that, dopey," he declared.

"There's no harm in asking," I replied breezily. "All she can do is say no." I paused a moment and then asked: "But you still haven't told me how all that led to what we're talking about."

"Oh," Yanni said. "Well, like I said, the bank got bigger and bigger, and it's still around. The bank is how the Master got really rich. I mean, like billions of dollars rich." He paused a moment, thinking, then added: "And powerful."

"How so?" I asked.

"The bank always took a cut of everything. If you were a hood and put your money there, then you had to allow the bank to structure your deposits in such a way that they didn't attract any unwanted attention, and the bank charged for that. In time, those kinds of depositors didn't just put their money in the bank; they started going to the bank for financing and for investment, and the bank, like any other bank, charged for that too. And the more money that was made, by everybody, the more others of that same sort of customer came to the bank for the same services."

I was astounded yet again. "Do you mean to say," I asked, "that the Master is a financier of the criminal underworld?"

"More than that," Yanni replied, again shaking his head. "The bank finances deals of all kinds all over the world, some of them worth tens of billions of dollars. It puts people together, puts their organizations together, and it earns a finder's fee for that; it provides financing, taking a percentage of all the business it creates, and then launders the profits through investments in anything you might imagine, taking a cut of that too. The bank operates pretty much everywhere now and does business with all kinds of people."

"What kind of people?"

Yanni shrugged. "Arms dealers, billionaires, big-time dopers and hoods, terrorists, rogue governments," he said. "I'm not gonna tell you any more than that. Let's just say all kinds of people who are up to all sorts of shit." He regarded me. "And the bank knows everything about them -- or at least knows everything about their money, which is the same thing, I suppose."

"What's the name of this financial colossus?"

"I'm not gonna tell you that either, but you can find that out easily enough, and, when you do, you'll be surprised. It's a pretty well-known company. It advertises on TV and everything. You've probably got one of their credit cards in your wallet." He paused a moment and then added: "Once, the Master and I were talking about business -- I forget about what, exactly -- and I asked him how he felt about all that, about how big the bank had gotten and how it did business with all these hoods all over the world, some really vicious and crazy people. And he said: `Yanni, the world is the street.' And that I understood."

I pondered the implications of all Yanni had just said and a pit opened up in my innards. I was now more than amazed or astounded. I was staggered, ready to admit that the Master, if he wasn't an actual god, was certainly a Jungian archetype of crime, a figure that made Arthur Conan Doyle's Dr. Moriarty seem like a cheap grifter and put Bond villains to shame. Though he wasn't threatening global destruction for his own crazed ends, he had risen, by the dint of his efforts and wiles, to wend his way into the most dangerous councils, an umbilical of cash that snaked its way into the simmering cauldron in which the planet was perpetually boiling.

Yanni, in telling me about the bank, truly hadn't revealed much, but, after all I had heard and seen, I simply knew that what he had shared was just the crown of a massive and relentless iceberg. The Master's reach extended everywhere and to everyone; he had a finger in every unholy pie. Knowing this brutal and savage world as I did, I was certain he lay in bed not just with children, but also with the most exalted pooh-bahs and dreaded combines. They used him as he used them. But what none of them suspected or at least seriously considered was that he had amassed his riches and hidden power not just to impenetrably shield himself from ever-pliable human justice, and the designs of associates and competitors, but to literally re-make the world in his image.

I had before considered the possible victory of the world the Master had created but had assuaged my admittedly ambivalent apprehension over such a possibility by also considering the ancient and not-so-ancient forces that would be arrayed against such a triumph. But now I realized with a sudden flash that the Master himself was a cog (how big a cog, I was determined to discover) among the powers that unwittingly stood in the way of his thoroughgoing revolution. All that I was seeing and hearing, all that had so far been built, was part of a plan conceived long ago and now long in its gestation, but still not fully birthed. The Master aimed at nothing less than bringing down the world around him, not with stolen nuclear weapons or silly glass globes bearing a deadly pathogen, but through its own manifold failings, its hopelessly tangled Gordian Knot of avarice and hatreds and impunities, and all the calamities and disasters that sprang from those poisoned coils. At the end, even if the Master didn't truly believe himself to be a god, he would become one. In the new beginning, he would be the creator, his holy pedophile cock filling the pussies and assholes of children forever and forever. Amen.

I felt a sudden shiver. The utter diabolical monstrousness of such a plan! I thought. What a fiendish genius! I couldn't yet deduce the conception or evolution of the Master's design nor all its surely innumerable facets, but I was, in that sudden instant, certain of its existence. None of this was an accident. Not one bit of it had been left to chance; all that lay around me was the product of an infernal vision. My pussy began to drip again. Was it possible? Could he succeed?

Damn near stupefied, I turned to Yanni. I had no intention of asking him anything about my sudden insight. Perhaps I underestimated him, but, as certain as I was a plan existed, I was also certain Yanni at best had only a dim awareness of it. How did I know this? At that moment, I couldn't say. But I was certain that as obviously valuable as Yanni was to the grand design, there was, as Yanni himself had observed, no reason to burden him with the function of all its spinning gears. No, all the answers likely lay with a very small group of people: the Master, of course, and his daughter/wife Maya, and Yanni's sister Rola, maybe Lina as well, and, someday, with young Gem.

I was abruptly animated by a renewed determination. I would interview them all, learning all they knew. I didn't yet know how I would get past their expected wariness, but with the confidence that seized me at my best moments, I felt sure I would, and then pen a work that would sink the world in its own filth. No one would be able to look away. My cunt sap was really flowing now, and worried that Yanni's sensitive nose would detect the aroma of my arousal and wonder over its source, I strove to contain my excitement.

"So, then," I began, trying to recapture the casualness I had earlier fostered, "what sort of presence does the bank have here on the island?"

"There's a branch office here on the island, and, like any bank anywhere, it's wired into the international financial system. All the money the people here earn is banked there, and whenever and however they want to use that money, they go there like people anywhere would go to the bank to do whatever. But no one has to carry cash because we have an electronic payment system."

I shook my head in wonderment. "You mentioned an investment fund before," I asked. "How much is in this investment fund? Or is that another question I should ask Rola?"

"Yeah, you should," Yanni said, waving off my question, "`cause her office manages all of that. She told me once, though, that the investment fund has many, many billions of dollars under management."

I was poleaxed, my mouth falling open in astonishment. Trying to maintain control, I quickly shut my mouth and resisted the urge to shake my head while contemplating such an enormous fortune, a mountain of money that could buy anything and anyone -- and throw up a magic shield impenetrable to nearly every force the outside world might bring to bear. I lowered the boil of my questions to simply consider all Yanni had just said. What had occurred to me the day before as well as just a few moments before, that this wasn't just some crazy cult, had been thoroughly reified. This place was nothing less than an alternate stab at civilization, a living, breathing Walden II with naked children and open-air orgies thrown into the bargain. I wondered if B.F. Skinner would approve and then thought Aldous Huxley might. Orgy-porgy, indeed!

Who would believe such a crazy fucking story? I thought, once again despairing over the reception my tale might meet. Who would believe that a biker princeling, a mid-level dope dealer who fucked kids and produced kiddy porn for a hobby, along with his gaggle of motley hangers-on, had achieved all this? This place wasn't a mere haven, a retreat for a collection of sickos, but a veritable alternative to the prevailing way of life. I'd never been much of a fan of early twenty-first century civilization, but it was all I knew. The Master's world had to be destroyed if all that existed was going to survive. What he had created posed that much of a challenge, I suddenly realized. He put pikers like Sun Myung Moon and L. Ron Hubbard to shame. He was a Gore Vidal novel come to life.

The world outside was such a shithole, such a compromised, crowded, filthy, murderous, ruinous cloacal mess, constantly verging on self-destruction or outright collapse, that I wondered who might not choose an existence that seemed like paradise in comparison. Embodied in this world, the Master's vision was so complete, so thoroughgoing, that I wondered who might not willingly dispense with the staid and stagnant morality of so-called civilization -- which damn near everyone knew was a sham, anyway -- in order to live naked and free, cum and juices flowing amid the congress of bodies shining in the glow of great bonfires. No, it couldn't be allowed, it had to be stamped out, wiped from existence. Like Carthage, it had to be razed for all time, its ground salted so nothing here would ever grow again. But who would lend me credence? I was certain to be as reviled as Cassandra, as discounted as a latter-day Madwoman of Chaillot.

We were halfway across the length of the pool, and, at the center of the line of cabanas, stopped before one that was rather larger than the others, an open-air salon unto itself. The carpet on its floor was a riot of multicolored medallions woven into a vast field of burgundy and a bordering band of dark navy. At the rear of the cabana was a large white rattan sectional sofa, small white pillows dotting its white sponge cushions. Set between the arms of the sofa was a matching table. Curiously (or not so curiously), there was no bed, but, in the area before the furniture, there was a rolling hurst of many pillows of all sorts, which was no doubt where the congress of bodies usually transpired. I was certainly looking into the cabana reserved for the Master, nothing less than a royal enclosure. What was that line from Plutarch? I thought. After smashing the Persian Empire and putting its Great King Darius to flight, Alexander had entered the plenipotent's tent, descended into its bath, and amazed by its opulence, had reportedly said: "This, it seems, is royalty."

While I peered into the playpen of this realm's king of kings, a cry from behind us turned our heads back to the three girls, still romping on the chaise longue on the front porch of the Pool House. In the distance, we could see Bronwyn and Paloma once again in a sixty-nine. But this time Bronwyn was on her back, her arms wrapped around Paloma's ass and her legs bent, obscuring Paloma's head as the brunette feasted on the red head's cunt. As Paloma ate, she was on her elbows and knees, her hands grasping the backs of Bronwyn's upper legs while the red head, her head between Paloma's legs, devoured her lover's pussy in turn. Behind them, little Emilia, now wearing a strap-on dildo, its black straps hanging a bit loosely on her slim frame, was fucking Paloma, delivering with loud grunts thrusts so determined and powerful that I was once again left marveling she was only eight years old. From where we stood, though, I couldn't tell if her strokes were plunging into Paloma's twat or asshole.

"They're still going at it," I remarked. "They're going to miss breakfast if they don't quit soon."

"No, they won't," Yanni said in a soft voice that was underlain by a seriousness that caused me to turn my head to regard him. "Here," he continued," love always comes first. That's why you've seen what you've seen and why you're seeing what you're seeing now. No matter who you are or where you are, you can love; whether that means you're going to love yourself or share love with someone else, you can love. No one else who happens to be around will think it bad or rude or say anything mean. In fact, they'll probably watch and play with themselves and maybe get invited to join the love -- or just go about their business. Whatever. Here, love is that common and also that special. There's no reason for fear or restraint or shame. Nothing has to be hidden. Whenever you're in the mood or feel the need, just love." He gestured in the direction of the copulating girls. "What you're seeing now could have happened anywhere: at home, at school, anywhere. And they can go at it as long as they like. They'll never get in trouble for sharing love. And when they're done, they can go to the dining hall" -- he gestured up at the Main House -- "and ask to be fed, and they'll be fed. As long as they don't neglect whatever responsibilities they might have -- to themselves, to others, to Philo-Sophia -- no one will ever stop them from sharing love whenever and however they want, for as long as they want."

Yanni had described this dynamic before, but this time his voice had been low and even throughout, suffused, I could tell, with the depth of his belief. What could I say to any of that? I regarded him. "Love," I whispered. "Always love."

Yanni smiled at me. "That's right," he said.

We turned, crossed what remained of the vast length of the pool, walking past the waterfall and up the first of the long flight of steps leading up to the Main House to find ourselves adjacent to one of the front columns of the loggia, a massive coach light affixed to its front. I looked inside the loggia as we passed and saw there was a well-stocked bar at its near end and a black wooden sofa, chairs and table at its far end. At the rear of its center was a large fireplace before which was a gigantic plush black carpet dotted with pillows that lay on a floor of burnt-orange terracotta tiles. Resting on the carpet while occupying the center of the loggia was a large, black-curtained cabana that contained a king-sized bed which sported its own collection of overstuffed pillows. Past the cabana, near the front edge of the loggia and facing the sheet of water falling into the pool, was a large chaise longue. It was instantly apparent to me that the loggia and its accoutrements were, like the huge white cabana on the pool deck, yet another place reserved for the Master to enjoy his wicked pleasures.

It was only after looking at the longue for a few moments, however, that I realized it must be the very one I had seen in the video of the Summerfinding Orgy. It was on that spot, I thought, that the Master had lain while his own daughter Gem had ridden his face and his kiddy porn model Bella had ridden his cock.

What must it have been like, I couldn't help wondering, to have been here on that rainy night, to see the Master's muscular body moving in erotic rhythm with two preteen girls while surrounded by the gleaming and writhing bodies of other children, all of them lost to sexual rapture? Where would I have been? What would I have been doing? While watching the video in the SUV, I had masturbated like mad while sitting on and soaking the front bench seat. I pictured myself completely naked doing the same in the loggia, my eyes glittering evilly and my mouth hanging open as my head turned from one iniquitous tableau to another. I saw myself sitting on the couch at the far end of the loggia, my legs spread and my cunt exposed, one hand squeezing a breast while the other furiously kneaded my clit and the lips of my flowing pussy. Eventually, my eyes would fall on the Master rutting with his daughter and the other little girl, his tongue busy in a pristine preteen snatch while his cock drove in and out of another juvenile twat. I saw myself tipping my head back, gritting my teeth, my chest heaving as my fingers coaxed an ever-intensifying swell of sensation, my whole body trembling as I came. My splayed vagina would spray the table, the room, the whole universe with my juices. And, as I came down from the smashing climax, I would collapse back onto the couch, turning my head in an attempt to see through the sheet of falling water, to see if Lina, having her pussy and asshole eaten at the head of the pool by two young girls, had looked up at all to notice me as I orgasmed.

I forced my mind to pull away from such musings and we moved past the loggia. We ascended the long flight of coral-mottled stone steps to a vast verandah at the rear of the Main House. The verandah was occupied here and there by groupings of off-white outdoor furniture that fashionably matched the weather-bleached granite of this part of the structure. We crossed the verandah to arrive at bank of towering glass doors topped by arched windows. A quick glance through the glass gave me a hint of the immensity of the ballroom, now occupied by a multitude of children and teenagers and adults sitting at long tables while eating their breakfasts. The buzz of conversation and laughter could be heard through the glass. At the center of the bank of doors, affixed to the stone exterior, was a large gray metal shelf unit, its compartments filled with sandals and sneakers. Yanni began removing his sneakers, placing them in an empty compartment, and I followed suit.

As we placed our footwear in the slots, something I had noted occurred to me. "Yanni," I said, "I've noticed that almost everyone here wears those little athletic socks. Why is that?"

"The Master read that warm feet make for better orgasms," Yanni replied. "Apparently, studies have shown that when feet are cold, people come quicker and their comes aren't as good. So, that's why pretty much everybody here wears those socks, to keep their feetsies warm when love happens. No one has to wear them, but pretty much everybody does."

"Just because the Master read something somewhere?" I retorted, shaking my head slightly and clicking my teeth.

"The Master spends a lot of his time fucking and making his art, but he reads a lot too, especially about sex," Yanni said, the usually ariose quality of his voice bearing a slight edge.

I guessed my little comment had touched a nerve. I couldn't detect any defensiveness on Yanni's part, but there was a definite, sudden need to explain one of the many aspects of his living god.

"Because the Master reads so much," Yanni added, "I remember Maya once said he knows a lot about some things and at least a little about everything else. I've been with him a long time, and, like anybody else, he's made mistakes here and there, but he's really smart and he usually makes the right decisions, which is more than you can say about a lot of people. He's wise too. I mean, I've gone to him with my problems all my life, all of us have, and he always knows just what to do. Because he's a pedophile and all that, you may not think much of him, not that you know much so far, but, as far as I'm concerned, he's the most impressive, the most remarkable person I've ever known."

I laughed. "You probably won't be surprised to hear I'm not surprised to hear you say that," I said.

Yanni returned my laugh. "No, I guess not," he said. "But, yeah, the Master reads a lot about sex. He says mastery of anything worthwhile is a never-ending process, and if there's one thing the Master deserves to be called the Master it's sex. No one else I've ever known can fuck, can love, like him. His holy cock can take you places you've never been before, and you'll want to go back to again and again. And everybody here feels the same way. So, yeah, everybody tends to listen when he shares something he's learned or expresses and opinion, whether it's about sex or whatever else."

Yanni was beginning to repeat himself, but I didn't want to say that, so I merely smiled. "Did he bring tablets down from a mountain?" I teased, gesturing at a peak miles distant that dominated the southern end of the island.

Yanni grinned and laughed again. "Fuck off," he said. "Make fun now, but you'll see."

I laughed along with Yanni, but my cynical self didn't allow me to admit I was more impressed and sympathetic than I let on. If I had observed one thing during my time on this earth it was that most people didn't know what the fuck they were doing. It didn't matter who they were or what they did. Bankers, cops, doctors, lawyers, journalists, judges, politicians, teachers; if they weren't hoods, they were invariably losers and sad sacks. They were all too distracted, too worried, too lazy, too blasted, too hardened to care about anything other than themselves -- and oftentimes couldn't muster the energy or the sense to do even that. Tragedy, death and stupid criminal waste were always the result, quiet desperation crushing everyone in sight amid the unending series of calamities. It was no wonder people worshipped athletes. However monstrous they might be in private, at least they knew what to do on the field.

So, moms got smoked and kids went hungry. Schools didn't teach and the dummies they produced swung nightsticks in the streets or had their faces smashed in jail cells. Doctors sawed off the wrong limbs, lawyers sold themselves like whores, politicians promised the moon to idiot voters while lining their pockets, and scribblers like me dropped barrels of ink writing about it all. I was no exception, I knew. I could write; I could tell a good story. I could even say, if I was being charitable, that my work had, for brief moments, occasionally shone a light on very small dark corners of the world. But why? To do my part to bring to life the First Amendment? To make the world a better place? What a sick fucking joke! I had done it all in the service of my ambition, my infernal career -- the only thing I had going, really -- all in the hope of someday laughing my hard-bitten ass off while I was handed prizes and cashed in for rubbing everyone else's face in shit.

Compared to where I came from, this crazy place worked. The Master was no god; was, by my lights, more deeply flawed and thoroughly evil than anyone I had ever before encountered or heard of, and yet he, unlike the rest of the bumbling mass, simply seemed to know what he was doing. He had so far survived and flourished, had even, it could be said, triumphed. He had created a horror show, to be sure, but one couldn't deny that what Yanni believed and babbled about was, in rather terrifying ways, bolstered by identifiable truths. The Master had willed a world into being, created his own heaven and earth, and surely by his lights, it was all good. His verbal droppings were regarded as holy writ. His creatures believed in him body and soul, and, somewhere upstairs, on the eve of the seventh day, he rested.

Yanni opened one of the doors and waved me through, following behind as he pulled the door closed, the tall pane of glass reverberating in its wooden frame as the bolt clicked home. As we entered the gargantuan ballroom, my ears detected a slight shift in the hum of conversation, a descent to lower, hushed tones, and patches of abrupt silence here and there. While some pointed, most did not turn their heads. The implicit politeness in the lack of the crowd's response to my sudden presence might have made one almost believe I was a regular denizen, but my stupefaction was touched by a shade of paranoia, and I was certain I was the fresh topic of conversation at every table.

In an instant, the assessment gathered by my ears was, at least with regard to some of the patrons, supplanted by the evidence provided by my eyes. As I scanned the room, I saw a number of the habitues openly having sex. At the table directly in front of us, one boy, whose silver chain told me he was in his early teens, was on his feet energetically fucking a younger boy up the ass. The long brown hair of the older boy was divided into two sections, tied into pigtails on either side of his head, the tresses secured by hair ties gilded by glittering yellow plastic marbles. In addition to his transparently sheer yellow panties, the front of which was lowered to allow his cock access to the younger boy's ass, he wore sheer yellow hose on his legs that rose to his upper thighs. The younger boy, his eyes closed and mouth parted in obvious pleasure, braced himself against the side of the long table, his hands gripping its edge as the links of his bronze chain softly sang, and the tight pristine flesh of his buttocks jiggled with every stroke. His own yellow panties, the top of which was adorned by a lacy filigree, had been pulled down from his ass to his thighs, the satiny material stretching with every downstroke and contracting with every upstroke delivered by the older boy. As they fucked, the younger boy's exposed cock, hard and jutting, repeatedly bobbed toward and then away from the table.

To our left, a few tables away, another boy whose silver chain indicated he was in his early teens was fucking a girl who was around his same age. She sat on the end of a table, her bare ass flat against its surface and her legs akimbo, feet flying everywhere, as the boy's torso pumped back and forth, his hard young cock sliding in and out of her lightly haired pussy. Slightly farther away, I saw two girls, both flat chested and whose bronze chains indicated they were certainly no older than eleven or twelve, lying on a love seat situated in the space between two of the glass doors, eating each other out in a very energetic sixty-nine. And, farther toward the other end of the dining hall, I saw a slender raven-haired woman, her willowy waist encircled by a golden chain, sitting at the end of one of the benches while a preteen boy and preteen girl licked and sucked her fully erect cock.

In spite of myself, I did a double take. What the fuck? I thought. Was there no end to the catalogue of depravities in this place? I tried to seem nonchalant, but my eyes couldn't help but stray to the perversions all around, particularly the trans woman who was so plainly enjoying the sensations imparted by the tongues of the two children. Her eyes closed and head thrown back in pleasure, she caressed the heads of the children as they savored her curved but bulging organ.

Yanni had moved away a bit, greeting the people he knew, which, of course, was everyone, really. Seeing I had lagged and the sights that suddenly had me rooted, he came back to me. "I told you," he whispered. Love always comes first. No matter what they're doing or where they are or how many others are around, everybody here can share love whenever they want. There's no fear, there's no guilt, there's no shame -- only love."

"Always love," I again whispered in reply.

Yanni smiled and repeated the mantra. "That's right," he said. "Always love."

I looked around again and saw he wasn't exaggerating. While more of the regulars were concentrating on their meals than not, I saw many caresses and kisses and fondles exchanged, none seeming to elicit much attention beyond those sharing the gestures. In this world, sex truly was as natural as breathing. My eyes were drawn back to the sylphlike trans woman, who was now grasping her cock, pumping its stout length while the boy and girl, on their knees and their mouths opened, waited for the gift of her semen.

Yanni saw where I was looking. "That's Amanda, but everybody calls her Mandy," he said. "She's one of the love instructors at the Academy and one of the proctors at Page Hall."

I turned to Yanni. "Love instructors," I queried. "You mentioned that before."

Yanni nodded. "We believe sex, the sharing of love, is fundamental to living, really living," he said. "It's as essential as eating well or getting good sleep. It's as important as learning to count or learning to read. So, like I said before, all the kids here are instructed in sex, in the sharing of love, from the time they're five years old until they're eighteen, at least one hour a day for six days out of the week. It's as big a part of the school curriculum as English or history or mathematics." He smiled. "By now, you oughta know we encourage practice, as much practice as possible so everybody can achieve their own level of mastery."

"Brave new world," I whispered as I watched Mandy's jism erupt onto the faces and into the mouths of the boy and girl.

"What?" Yanni asked.

"It's a novel about the world in the future," I explained. "It foresees something like this."

"Really?" Yanni exclaimed, a bit surprised. "That's another book I'll have to read." He regarded me. "You read a lot, don't you?"

I smiled at him. "I used to," I replied a bit wearily. "Then I became a reporter and got more used to telling stories than reading them."

Yanni puzzled over my remark and then dismissed it. "Okay, well," he said, "follow me."

As Yanni began to move, I reached out and touched one of his arms, bringing him to a halt. I subtly indicated the two boys fucking at the table nearby. He observed the two boys, the pace of their fuck obviously accelerating toward climax as we watched. The older boy, his pigtails bouncing as he delivered his strokes, pumped his hips harder and faster while the younger boy lifted his ass and forcefully shoved it against the gyrating torso of his lover.

"You know everyone here," I whispered to Yanni while indicating the boys with an arch of my eyebrows. "Who are they?"

Yanni opened his mouth to reply, but, as he did so, the rutting boys popped. The younger boy, now stroking his own cock, shot across the width of the table, at least a few of his spurts striking the face of a young teen girl sitting at the other side. Her conversation with another girl sitting next to her interrupted by the sudden blast of boyish cum, the girl started a bit, her body jumping slightly from where she sat, but then, with a smile, she simply wiped the streaks of splooge from her face with a finger, which she casually popped into her mouth. "Mmm," I heard her say with a low moan. "Tasty." The girl next to her also smiled and leaned over to lick from her face the few streaks of semen her friend (or lover?) hadn't collected with her finger.

The strokes of the older boy shortened and then stopped, the sides of his buttocks collapsing into shallow bowls of flesh as he exploded in the younger boy's ass. He took several deep breaths, his chest and abdomen rising and falling as his orgasm crested and then began to subside. Drawing back his hips, his long and now thoroughly moistened cock, having wilted only a bit, slid out of the younger boy's asshole. The older boy then crouched, and, his cock still dangling, applied his mouth to the younger boy's rosette, and began sucking and slurping his own cum out of the orifice. After only a few moments, the older boy detached his mouth from the asshole and rose to his full height. The younger boy turned around, and the two of them embraced and began kissing, their tongues grappling as they exchanged the flavors of the ass-infused spunk. Their mouths parted and then it was the turn of the younger boy to crouch so he could take into his mouth the white-coated cock of his lover. As the younger boy tongued and sucked the older boy's penis, he grabbed at the sheer yellow panties, lowering them further so the fingers of one of his hands could caress his lover's balls while his other hand firmly pressed itself into the flesh of the older boy's ass.

While smiling at the sight, Yanni spoke. "The older boy is named Drew," he finally said, "and the younger boy is named Ethan, but everyone calls him Syrup."

"Let me guess," I said. "The Master gave him that name."

"Sort of," Yanni affirmed. "The Master said that Ethan's cum was thick and creamy, like syrup on pancakes, so Ethan picked that name for himself." He gestured at the boys with a subtle shake of his head. "You saw how much cum he shot, and how much Carey and Imogene liked it."

I nodded. I considered the two girls, who, after consuming the cum that had come their way, had returned to their breakfast conversation as if getting splashed with boy jizz was nothing remarkable. As for Ethan, or Syrup, he had indeed, despite being an obviously young boy, shot an impressive load.

"How old is he?" I asked.

"Nine," Yanni replied. "Drew is twelve."

I suddenly thought of Sweet, of the copious load of cum I had seen that lovely eleven-year-old boy shoot into Yanni's mouth the day before. Was every boy here a ravenous and relentless satyr? I thought. Was every girl an insatiable and incessant nymph? Trained from the age of five in the sexual arts! I marveled. It was no wonder how, even before the havoc of puberty, the children here were sybaritic virtuosos. The boys ejaculated like racehorses and the girls flowed like raging rivers. Sex, in all its practices and possibilities, was not a furtive and frighteningly perplexing mystery, something hidden and rarely discussed that nonetheless wrought a barely comprehensible madness, but simply a vital part of life -- of living, as Yanni had said -- that was open to and shared by all.

Another jot of doubt spotted my thoughts. Before coming here, a part of me had wondered whether I would find a legion of terrified and wary children, so thoroughly pummeled into an existence of sexual exploitation and slavery that approaching them would be like corralling skittish geese and eliciting anything would be like pulling nails from old timbers. Yet, after the passage of less than twenty-four hours, the evidence provided by my eyes had blown that expectation to hell. The children here were undeniably happy, polite, well-fed, well-spoken and well-adjusted, even educated, a far cry from the state of affairs in my own world.

I considered I might be passing through a Potemkin village, that I was the lone spectator of an elaborate comedy that kept the truth under wraps. But I instinctively knew that wasn't so. My association with Yanni alone convinced me there was no artifice afoot. After years of dealing with hoods and tricksters of all sorts, some occupying the most exalted positions in the land, I could spot a liar. Yanni was many things, to be sure, most prominently a sick fuck pedophile zealot, but he was no liar, and neither, I was beginning to realize, was anyone else here.

Was there indeed something to what Yanni had so fervently maintained? I thought. Was everything I was seeing, which I had been conditioned to believe was so depraved and evil, the way we were truly meant to live? Was it natural? Was it beautiful? Was I the one actually living in darkness, futilely grasping at the shadows on the wall of the cave? At that moment, I found myself hoping Yanni was right, that all I knew and believed was nothing but a castle built from sand, slowly sinking into the shore as the irresistibly onrushing waves did their work. I found myself so wanting to believe, so I could accept, without guilt or shame, the prospect of finding myself in a tangle of young arms and legs, young cocks throbbing and shooting in my holes while young tongues licked every inch of my body, and young pussies poured their freshness into my eager and busy mouth. What bliss that had to be! I thought. Such innocently unrestrained joy! I closed my eyes and willed those thoughts away.

The sudden intrusion of Yanni's voice did a better job of whisking away my musings, and what he said indicated that, at least for once, he wasn't again reading my mind. "Drew is Syrup's companion at Page Hall," he said. "But Syrup and Timur, a boy Syrup's age, declared for each other at the Walpurgisnacht Orgy last spring, so they're lovers now and they'll be sharing a room when the new school year begins."

"I presume Timur isn't here now," I said.

"No," Yanni replied. "Timur is at the Studio this morning. He's one of the boys in the orgy video that features Pop."

"I presume Drew has a lover," I said.

Yanni nodded. "Yes," he said. "Drew's lover is Rifaat, who is Timur's older brother, but he was chosen to be one of the Master's lovers last night, so he's upstairs at the Master's apartments right now." He pointed up at the ceiling of the ballroom to indicate the lofty eyrie of the Master.

I once again gestured at the boys with my eyebrows. "Are they dressed similarly because they're companions?" I asked.

"Yes and no," Yanni said. "I mean, it's often the case when a kid arrives at Page Hall and is assigned a companion to show them the ropes, he or she will emulate that companion. But, in Drew and Syrup's case, they're both members of the Ladyboys."

I scrunched my eyebrows in confusion. "What are the Ladyboys?" I asked.

"They're one of the boy fraternities at Page Hall," Yanni answered. "Like most everyone else, the boys in that fraternity wear whatever color the day happens to be, but they go in for feminine attire, like panties and hose and such." He again subtly gestured at the two boys, who were still moving together, Drew now vigorously fucking Syrup's mouth while the fingers of Syrup's left hand speared in and out of Drew's asshole.

I might have kept on standing there, watching Drew and Syrup, but Yanni's voice again intruded, bringing me out of my trance.

"Miles is a member of the Ladyboys too," Yanni said. "And so is Pop. But Miles lives with his mom and granddad, not at Page Hall. And Pop lives with me."

Miles, I thought, that lovely boy we had encountered earlier today and had seen fucking the mysterious Algaia. Well, that explained his attire and told me he wasn't that much of an outlier, after all. I turned back to Yanni. "Tell me about the fraternities," I said.

For the first time, I saw Yanni display a hint of apprehension. "Gladly," he said in reply. "But the morning's getting on and the Goddesses are waiting. I'll tell you all about the fraternities -- and the sororities -- another time."

Yanni touched my arm, silently beckoning me onward. I simply nodded at him, and we finally turned away, proceeding to an end of the ballroom where there was a cold bar and a hot bar. The former was equipped with metal tubs of cereal and a vast array of fruit while the latter featured, in its own metal tubs, steaming piles of cream of wheat, grits, oatmeal and scrambled eggs. Slightly beyond was a long table draped by a white cloth, bearing at its center a magnificent arrangement of flowers in a great vase. The table was piled high with pyramids of bagels, biscuits, bread and muffins on silver platters as well as a great bowl filled with a small mountain of hard-boiled eggs. There were slabs of butter, pots of jam and orange marmalade, and great metal urns that dispensed coffee, milk, orange and vegetable juice, and cold and hot water. While there was a considerable selection of teas in their little bags, I saw no refined sugar, though there was a bowl of sliced lemons.

At the end of the ballroom was a large pass-through below which was a long table where trays, flatware, plates and cups were gotten, and where eggs were made to order as well as bacon, sausages, flapjacks and waffles were being served. To our right, next to the pass-through, was a large blackboard affixed to the wall on which the day's menu items had been written with multi-colored chalk, some of the items accompanied by skillfully drawn cartoon renditions of the dishes. That day's lunch was to be varieties of soup and a garden salad along with a selection of paninis, and the main course at dinner was boeuf bourguignon with vegetable risotto. Studying the menu, I shook my head in wonder. No institutional slop was being ladled out here. If the Master's world ever suffers revolt, I thought, it certainly won't be over the food.

Further on from the great blackboard and the pass-through was a set of commercial kitchen doors, both of them constantly swinging as kids of various ages, wearing long white aprons over their yellow bikini bottoms, shuttled back and forth between the kitchen within and serving areas without, bringing out platters and tubs loaded with food and taking back the empties. Yanni led me to the kitchen doors, the two of us briefly navigating our way through the squad of bustling stewards until we found ourselves in a huge restaurant-grade kitchen. The place was an industrial beehive, an attractive, thirtyish brunette woman shouting commands in English and German at a group of chefs and small army of servers. Wearing a short toque on her head, an apron around her curvaceous body and rubber clogs on her feet, it was plain she was the unchallenged monarch of this domain.

"That's Beata," Yanni informed me. "She's in charge of food service. She's actually really nice, but she gets crazy at mealtimes, and she hates people being in her kitchen who don't belong here." He nudged me gently. "C'mon, let's go before she notices us. We'll take the long way around."

Leaving Beata's shouts behind, our feet sinking into the heavy-duty black rubber mat covering the floor of the kitchen, we headed toward its quieter rear and then passed through a vast pantry, emerging into a long corridor that led to a private dining room, the entrance to which was manned by two Guardians, a boy and girl who appeared to be about fifteen or sixteen.

"This is Evan and Rachel," Yanni said to me as we approached the long-haired, heavily armed teenagers who were crowned with tactical comms headsets. "They're in charge of Maya's security."

Despite his youth, Evan already stood at Yanni's height. His chestnut brown hair, secured into a ponytail, fell around a handsome face. Like Yanni, his body was lean but muscular, and the bulge contained by his black leather briefs, its six- or seven-inch length stretching from his crotch to the center of where a leg met his torso, provided a hint of a hard young cock nearly as formidable. A few inches shorter than Evan, Rachel's honey-blonde mane was also tied into a ponytail. She was blue-eyed and pretty. Her breasts were small, no more than A-cups, which might give one the impression she was younger than her years, but the rest of her body -- arms, abs and legs -- was an athletic, sinewy mass of muscle. Whatever the difference in height between the boy and girl, it was Rachel who I found the more daunting.

My eyes briefly lingered on Rachel's face, something about her striking me as familiar. In an instant, it came to me. She was one of the two girls I had seen eating Lina in the video of the Summerfinding Orgy. She had been on her knees in the water of the shallow end of the pool, her hands at the sides of Lina's upper legs while her mouth and tongue avidly explored her commandant's cunt. I momentarily felt a pang of envy, thinking this teenage girl undoubtedly knew very well the flavors of Lina's pussy.

As Yanni introduced Evan and Rachel to me, they merely nodded, but stood back, signaling we were to be allowed through. As we passed into the dining room, I heard Rachel say into her headset: "Ida Tarbell is with the Goddesses. I repeat, Ida Tarbell is with the Goddesses." No doubt Lina was listening because the next words out of Rachel's mouth were: "Copy that."

Yanni and I found ourselves at the end of a long dark wood table, which was bare of cloth or service, and surrounded by twenty or more high-backed chairs. It was adorned only by an enormous silver urn stuffed with a striking arrangement of multi-colored flowers. Yanni led me around and past the long oaken slab, and we passed through another entryway to arrive at a large but still cozy breakfast nook.

As we entered, the wall to our right, which was covered by obviously expensive wallpaper featuring a forest lake scene, was dominated by a carved oak sideboard with wrought iron accents that even my inexpert eye told me had to be an antique likely several centuries old. Our heads turned to the left, and we saw a large circular oak table set before a curved picture window that allowed a view of the length of the southern half of the island, the white-speckled blue of the ocean beyond. At the center of the window, one could see the peak of the tallest mountain at the island's southern tip, its summit lancing up into the sky like the great bared tooth of a dragon. The light in the room flowed from an identical picture window facing east, through which one could see the row of tall cypresses on either side of the long road I had traversed the evening before, its length eventually lost under the thick canopy of forest, the green of which ultimately gave way to the roiling cobalt of the sea.

A group of six women, bare chested and wearing the ubiquitous yellow bikini bottoms, sat around the circular table, talking and laughing in low tones as we entered. One of the women was cradling an infant, which was quietly suckling at one of her breasts. Noticing our presence, the women fell silent as their heads turned to gaze at us -- at me -- and then the Master's wives, the Goddesses, rose as one to offer their greetings.