ter to
the tip. "When that hit, they started going over to Muz-Azin in
droves, not only at Zurb but all over the Six Kingdoms. You ought to
have seen the house we had for Sunset Sacrifice, this evening! About
two hundred, and we used to get two thousand. It used to be all two
men could do to lift the offering box at the door, afterward, and all
the money we took in tonight I could put in one pocket!" The high
priest used language that would have been considered unclerical even
among the Hulguns.

Verkan Vall nodded. Even without the quickie hypno-mech he had taken
for this sector, he knew that the rabbit was domesticated among the
Proto-Aryan Hulguns and was their chief meat animal. Hulgun rabbits
were even a minor import on the First Level, and could be had at all
the better restaurants in cities like Dhergabar. He mentioned that.

"That's not the worst of it," Stranor Sleth told him. "See, the
rabbit's sacred to Yat-Zar. Not taboo; just sacred. They have to use
a specially consecrated knife to kill them--consecrating rabbit knives
has always been an item of temple revenue--and they must say a special
prayer before eating them. We could have got around the rest of it,
even the Battle of Jorm--punishment by Yat-Zar for the sin of
apostasy--but Yat-Zar just wouldn't make rabbits sick. Yat-Zar thinks
too well of rabbits to do that, and it'd not been any use claiming he
would. So there you are."

"Well, I take the attitude that this situation is the result of your
incompetence," Brannad Klav began, in a bullyragging tone. "You're not
only the high priest of this temple, you're the acknowledged head of
the religion in all the Hulgun kingdoms. You should have had more hold
on the people than to allow anything like this to happen."

"Hold on the people!" Stranor Sleth fairly howled, appealing to Verkan
Vall. "What does he think a religion is, on this sector, anyhow? You
think these savages dreamed up that six-armed monstrosity, up there,
to express their yearning for higher things, or to symbolize their
moral ethos, or as a philosophical escape-hatch from the dilemma of
causation? They never even heard of such matters. On this sector, gods
are strictly utilitarian. As long as they take care of their
worshipers, they get their sacrifices: when they can't put out, they
have to get out. How do you suppose these Chulduns, living in the
Caucasus Mountains, got the idea of a god like a crocodile, anyhow?
Why, they got it from