The crowd which was gathering in Sunvoyage Square knew that there was going to be a killing, and that was why they were there. The mob will reliably show up if you can schedule any one of three things: fireworks, free beer or an execution.
        Today, what was on the books was, in practice, an execution, though the legal niceties would have it that the sentence to be inflicted today was not one of capital punishment but, rather, merely the administration of corporal punishment.
        Although corporal punishment was a standard feature of the judicial system of the kingdom of Kendama, it was subject to a severe constitutional restriction. If a court of law did order corporal punishment, then the beating administered on the orders of the court was limited to five blows "by a fish, or something similar."
        Laminthia the poetess had been so punished by court order, on account of the scandalous sapphic verses she had been writing. But, in her case, the punishment had been just five blows from a dead octopus. What's more, it hadn't even been a big octopus, either.
        As far as the Court of Constitutional Review was concerned, although an octopus was clearly not a fish, it was "something similar."
        Likewise, the Court was of the opinion that a whale was "not, on balance, dissimilar from our other finny friends."
        Despite many legal appeals seeking to reverse this judgment, and despite the strenuous objections of some dissident marine biologists, the Court had persisted in maintaining that a whale was "something similar" to a fish.
        The way was open, therefore, for someone sentenced to corporal punishment to be beaten not with a dry haddock, a lean sardine or a baby hammerhead shark, but with a whale.
        Consequently, prosecutors being the vindictive monsters that they are, whenever a sentence of corporal punishment was handed down for a very serious crime, the instrument used for the permitted five blows was always a whale.
        Recently, the security police had caught two Purehammer infiltrators at work in Stature's, the ruling city of Kendama.
        Purehammer fanatics were the ultimate enemies of Kendama's beloved bar and brothel culture. Their religion was inimical to pleasure in all its forms, and they took their holy mission to be the suppression of other people's joy and happiness. Usually by killing them. If they could.
        These Purehammer people, then, were poisonous. Consequently, their devil-worshiping religion was illegal in the kingdom of Kendama. You want to bow down to Taliban and behead people in his honor? Well, each to his own, but do it in your own toilet, dude. Not on our turf. Got that?
        So, when the two Purehammer infiltrators were caught, and were convicted of the crime of evalgelising people, spearheading the onslaught of the axis of evil and preaching apocalypse, the Court quite rightly sentenced them to corporal punishment, that is, to the five blows permitted by the Constitution.
        Public outrage at having the murderous Purehammer cultists at work on the sacred soil of Kendama was such that a whale would, necessarily, be the instrument of infliction. The mob would have accepted nothing less.
        When it had been decided that a whale was to be used as the bad boy beater, providing the said whale was, as always, the responsibility of Yard's brother, Bloke. It was Bloke who was the king's eldest son, so it was Bloke who was destined to inherit the throne. In token of this, he had been given the traditional title to which the heir apparent was entitled. He was the Prince of Whales, lord of the Cetacean Tower, and, as such, it was his duty to supply a whale if legal necessity required that one be provided.
        Any whale would do. For  the short sharp shock which corporal punishment aimed to supply (this at least was the theory), there was no necessity to supply one of the larger of the whales to be found out there in the planetary ocean. For the beating of the Purehammer criminals, the whale that Bloke's team ended up providing was an orca. The corpse of this brute had been found washed up on a beach to the south a couple of weeks back, and it was pretty stinky by the time it was delivered to Stature's.
        In Bloke's official budget, he had money to spend on whale catching, when the acquisition of whales was necessary. Getting a dead one off the beach was cheating, but a kind of cheating that Bloke's lawyers had told him he could get away with.
        Given that Bloke was a young man with a very active social life and flagrantly extravagant bar bills to pay, he didn't want to pay good cash for a very expensive fresh whale when he could get one off the beach for free.
        A whale having been obtained, and all the necessary engineering preliminaries finished, the act of judicial corporal punishment was carried out on Respect for the Aged Day.
        Sunvoyage Square was chosen as the venue for the simple reason that this was where certain activities always took places: royal weddings, heraldic announcements, executions and spontaneous gatherings of the mob.
        The technicalities of their sentence aside, the two captured devotees of the dark lord Taliban who were the stars of the show were definitely there for an execution. If you are going to be subjected to a beating, and if the implement used to beat you is a whale, and if the standard five strokes are inflicted upon you, then your chances of being alive at the end of the proceedings are precisely zero.
        Before the convicted felons were given their beating, they were mocked by having everything that was anathema to their religion paraded in front of them. Jubilant musicians played lutes, pan pipes and glockenspiels right before their eyes. A publican broke open a keg of beer, and the public imbibed.
        As the festivities began to get truly raucous, a secret conclave got underway in the privacy of the vomitorium.
        The subject that the members of the conclave were there to discuss was the wetworking of Pelican Yard.
        The vomitorium was just inside of Unch Hauzen, the entrance to Sunvoyage Square. It was huge, ancient and stank of urine. It stank of urine for the simple reason that it had long been used as an unofficial urinal. Compared to the heat of the day outside, the interior of the vomitorium was distinctly cool.
        Although it was fairly quiet inside the vomitorium, it was not quiet enough to hear the occasional drops of condensation falling from the ceiling. You couldn't hear the occasional drip drop of water because the raucous noise of the beer drinkers in Sunvoyage Square penetrated to this de facto public loo.
        Anciently, the vomitorium had been used as part of the rites of Mayazclapa, the unspeakably evil human sacrifice cult which was one of the blemishes on Kendaman history.
        When an enemy army had been defeated, its captive soldiers were cannibalized by the populace of Stature's, being eaten in fractions while still alive. Back in those days, Kendamans had always had teeth that were filed to razor-sharp points, the better for tearing at living flesh.
        Once the citizens had gorged themselves on raw and bleeding human flesh, they would troop into the vomitorium, where a feather down the throat would be used to induce vomiting. Once they had thrown up, they would return with empty bellies to the feast.
        The vomitorium was where Traven had ended up, briefing Lightfoot Sue. They had the place to themselves because the execution site in the center of the square was where everyone wanted to be. If there's a campfire down by the riverside at night, and happy campers are roasting marshmallows, then Marshmallow Central is where you want to be, not stuck out on the periphery.
        Having chosen the periphery, Traven had privacy, and used it to sell Lightfootsy on her mission, which was to kill Yard in public, striking a blow at the phallocentric tyranny.
        Lightfootsy having consented to do Traven's bidding, Traven was now in the process of ceremonially handing over the murder weapon, a nifty little dagger, just the thing for stabbing someone in the back.
        "See the handle?" said Traven. "This is God's penis bone."
        He was lying. But Lightfootsy, who was seriously dim, about as bright as a jar of dead flies, bought the story.
        "I'm on a mission from God," she said, taking the knife into her hands reverently.
        Traven had been wearing, as he usually did, a carpenter's apron, an unremarkable item of apparel which had a large pocket in the front, a convenient receptacle for hammers, nails, chisels and the like. Or, in Traven's case, any weapon he chose to carry concealed.
        Lightfootsy having been armed, Traven had her put on the apron herself, and told her to keep the knife in the pocket, out of sight.
        "God's penis bone will see you right," said Traven. "Take your time, get close to wrester boy, snuggle up and then, lass, let God's work be done."
        "May I kiss it?" said Lightfootsy.
        "The penis bone?" said Traven. "Well, usually, a woman does not get to kiss God's penis, or any part of it. But, since this is a special occasion, and you have a very special mission, you have that privilege ... just this once, though."
        So Lightfootsy, romancing God, reverently kissed the handle of the knife, the handle which she thought to be a fraction of the Sacred Substantiality of God.
        Traven waited patiently for her to be done. This was, evidently, the One True Kiss that she had been waiting for ever since she was born, and she was clearly determined to make the most of it.
        The handle of the knife that Lightfootsy was in the process of elaborately kissing was, yes, the bone of a penis, but the penis in question was not that of God. Some animals have a bone in the penis, this bone being called an oosic; animals so equipped include the dog, the raccoon, the bear and the walrus. Such is the size of a walrus's oosic that it can be used as the handle  of a knife, though one leading expert on the world of bladed weapons tells us that the oosic is "more popular than pretty."
        This history has already taken note of the fact that, at the time at which the Conclave of the Two took place, the penis of God, the penis of King David's personal God, Rafrica, was on loan at Glastonbury, Ataturk's leading fertility shrine.
        Lightfootsy being in no hurry to be done with her sacred kissing, we have time to play tourist and investigate the question of God's penis in a little detail, though not the fine detail that the topic is worthy of. (Would that there were world and time!)
        In physical form, this phallus, Rafrica's cock, was as long as a grown man's outstretched arms and as fat as a gorilla's head. It was scarlet and it vibrated on an eternal gong note, something that set your teeth on edge if you were in its presence. It floated free of its surroundings, hanging immovably in the thinness of the air.
        Only women were allowed into the presence of Rafrica's penis. They emerged from the holy of holies flushed, sweating and wreathed with smiles. They would be, for the rest of their lives, effortlessly multiply orgasmic.
        God's penis, while we're on the subject, did not have a penis bone. Rather, at its core, there was a rigid structure built out of seventy-two dimensional space, at one and the same time both physically confined within the precincts of Glastonbury and yet extending infinitely through the transcosmos.
        If this thing were ever to begin to fuck you, then annihilation would not even begin to describe the result.
        "God's patience," said Traven, who was having difficulty resisting the temptation to give Miss Slutty Kisser one in the chops, "is great. But it is not infinite. Are we done?"
        "Are we what?" said Lightfootsy.
        He had lost her. Don't blow it, Traven. This is a long shot, but she might pull it off. Don't fuck it up. Keep cool.
        "Immaculate daughter," said Traven, honoring Lightfootsy with Kendama's ultimate honorific for women, "the hour has come. Go forth and do. God's mission is yours. Go forth and complete it."
        At that point, the most stupendous cheering broke forth, so both Traven and Lightfootsy realized that the situation in the square had escalated. Lightfootsy's natural curiosity then took control, and she exited, going forth to do the will of God.
        Left to his own devices, Traven first piddled his bladder empty, then, in a gesture of stunning disrespect for the world he lived in, took a dump right on the dank floor of the vomitorium.
        If you haven't yet firmed up your Traven concept, then this act of ultimate delinquency will tell you that he was a bad hat. A very bad hat. As bad as they come. And proud of it.
        Traven's viewpoint now fades to black, and we have, next, an Eye of God view of Sunvoyage Square, where the long-anticipated climax is slowly approaching, though there is a way to go yet before we come to the moment of the desired consummation.