Eventually, the Deputy Secretary had been convinced. Steve could tell that the man was a 'fellow traveler' in terms of his own predilections, but he also had an advanced sense of self-preservation. One probably did not become the Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection by taking too many personal risks.

Another element that had been part of the deal that Steve had negotiated with the Deputy was what was about to happen.

The Standing Committee member's eyes went wide as her mouth gaped open before him. He was one of the Deputy's senior associates, and had seemed to be the one least convinced that the whole idea was a good one. Soon one of the more loyal junior associates would be taking his place on the Committee. The man was pleading loudly with anyone who would listen that he would be fiercely loyal from here on out.

His pleas fell on deaf ears as Karen lowered him into her mouth.

For her own enjoyment, as well as that of her audience, she took her time closing her mouth, rolling the half-shrunken man around inside, and finally swallowing him down.

The Deputy Secretary giggled as he watched.

"That was amazing!" he said to Steve, with as much enthusiasm as the latter had seen in any of Karen's worshipers.

"We have a deal!" he added, shaking Steve's hand.

* * *

China is a country where information is strictly controlled, but where the government is still hard-pressed to curtail the power of gossip. The People's Republic, however, knew that they would need to keep this deal under wraps. As a result, the Deputy Secretary and Karen had come to the decision to relocate her to a place that was unlike Tanna island with the one exception of its remoteness.

The Katok Monastery fit the bill of what they were looking for. It was located on the borders of Tibet, where the prying eyes of the press and gossipers could be held at bay. It was a Buddhist establishment which had been taken over by the communist Chinese regime. After the initial repressions, it had been slowly permitted to once again practice the old ways, but with a new face. Monks returned there to once again take up their ceremonies and scholarship.

That was until Karen and the Deputy had other ideas for them.

* * *

She emerged from the specially-made shipping container, which was about eight times the volume of a standard-size container. It had allowed her to come to China and travel secretly from the port of Beihai by rail into Sichuan province to Chengdu and then by road up to the monastery. It was a welcome change. She was a little irritated by the lack of comfort, but more than that, the indignity. Now, however, she stood in the open, and breathed in the mountain air. That mountain air buffeted her as she adjusted her eyes to the bright light.

She saw that she stood in a mountain valley. Before her feet, hundreds of monks knelt down with their hands splayed out on the ground. They lined up alongside the path that went from the massive truck that had transported her, up to the vast monastery complex further up the hill.

The Deputy emerged from his official limousine, his great coat whipping in the wind. He grinned up at her, once again appreciating the great size difference between them.

"Your temple, my Goddess," he announced to her.

She smiled. This pleased her. But she still wanted him to show the crowd how this was going to be.

"Goddess is right, Yang," she said calling the Deputy by his family name, as if it were his given. "Show them how it's done, if you don't want to disappear down my gullet right now."

"Oh, but I am still too large, your worshipfulness," he objected, playfully. "I will not yet fit through your serene throat without excessive discomfort to you."

It was regrettable, but it was true that adult human beings were generally still too large for Karen to swallow down without first being shrunk - especially if they decided to put up a fight. Also, even though she had gobbled down a good share of Tanna's population before leaving there, the degree to which each shrunken human added to her size seemed to be diminishing. She longed for the day when people didn't first require to be shrunken down, or when any struggle on their part was going to be futile.

"You wouldn't be if I chewed you up first," she told him.

"Quite so, your majesty," he agreed.

Much of this dialogue in English would have been lost on the many monks who remained silent and kneeling. Those who did understand English had been placed at the back, where the dialogue was drowned out by the buffeting winds. But they would understand the symbolic meaning of what was about to happen.

They, of course, knew who Yang Xiadou, Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection was. As China's Minister of Supervision, he wielded much power behind the scenes of the politburo, and they had every reason to believe that he represented the Chinese government as a whole - that government which had deprived them of the sacred religious freedoms which they had once been able to cherish. Once, many decades ago.

What they did not know was who this gigantic woman was, or what she represented. They had been told that they had to come out to the road and kneel before the massive arriving truck, which would arrive with the visiting dignitary from Beijing. Seeing this tremendous person emerge had been a shock, but they knew that they had to keep their faces to the ground, and that they were not to make any exclamations.

But what they saw next shocked them worse. The Deputy Secretary, the face of the repressive regime, knelt down before the gigantic woman's sandals, and placed his lips on her foot. Despite the orders to remain silent, a murmur could be heard among the crowd of kneeling monks.

Yang Xiadou put his lips on her foot ten times. It felt wonderful, and his coat and trousers hid the excitement he felt. To the monks it would seem that the leadership of the most populous nation on earth - their oppressive overlords - were now submitting to this woman, who must truly be a goddess. As far as Yang was also concerned, this was exactly that. Before his plans were complete, she would indeed be a goddess, with the fate of millions in her stomach.

"Rise," she said, "and show me to my palace."

"Gladly," she said, beaming, once he had gotten up from the ground before her. He maintained a stiff forward bow to continue to conceal his excitement.

"Please," he said, gesturing towards the path up to the majestic monastery.

The monastery was a great edifice. It had recently been renovated and expanded by the government to be a tourist attraction. That was before the government had changed policies and wiped a great deal of the advertisements and information from the internet. Even the internet archives, and individuals' travel-blog posts had been hacked in order to make it seem as if the monastery had never existed.

It certainly did, however, exist. There were numerous lower buildings with white walls and red tiled roofs around the lower hillside. Between these was a great marble staircase, which Karen now ascended. Thankfully, the staircase had been modified so that she could have a sure foothold.

Uphill from the white-walled buildings stood the massive main building with red walls and two square gold-plated towers on each side of a great doorway. Before the doorway, at the top of the stairs was a flagstone-tiled square on which a welcoming party awaited Karen's arrival.

Among the welcoming party were senior monks and communist party officials, the latter all loyalists of the Deputy Secretary. They were standing in a semi-circle in the square, at the center of which stood a young boy, perhaps five years of age. He was dressed in fine silk monks' robes.

He was the 12th Panchen Lama, the reincarnation of a spirit said to have led regional Buddhism for nearly seven centuries. Though he was a pretender in the eyes of the worldwide diaspora of Tibetans, this was the official Panchen Lama designated by the Chinese government. To the monks and the local population, however, the boy was a living god. The boy had also been instructed in this, but he was also taught to always do his duties. He had recently been informed that his duties would soon be coming to fulfillment, and he knew what his duty was.

The boy knelt down as the great woman ascended the stairway. She smiled down at the small boy.

Behind her, the Deputy Secretary's entourage, her own small group of personal devotees, and the hundreds of monks, had followed her up the staircase. More monks looked from the opened windows of all the surrounding buildings - the lower white-walled buildings, and the red-walled great hall. The boy god and the great Goddess were the center of everyone's attention.

Karen held out her hand to the boy, palm upward.

Choekyi Yeshe, the boy lama, looked at her with awe. He knew what was about to happen, and he shivered with nervousness as much as from being cold. The ceremonial silk robes did little to hold back the cold mountain wind blowing down from the Tibetan peaks. The Goddess smiled at him, however, indicating to him in a somewhat auntly way that all was going to be alright. He would be quite warm soon enough, and there would be nothing to worry about.

He crawled into her outstretched hand. She was warm to the touch, and he felt inclined to assume a fetal position in the cup of her hand. He knew his duty, however, and returned to the kneeling position that he had assumed in the cold flagstone square.

She raised him up to her face. He wasn't the first toddler that had been given to her, nor even the first to come to her willingly. She had truly loved how the Tanna mothers had raised so many willing morsels for her. But this boy was supposed to be a god, as well as the supreme symbol of his people. Symbolically, then, she was swallowing them all.

She drew him close and kissed him on the small top of his head. He looked up, and saw her wink at him, before opening her mouth, ready to accept his sacrifice.

The entire audience knelt, knowing that this was the passing of one god into another. A few anointed their trousers with their families' seed.

Choekyi crawled onto her tongue, the softest and most inviting red carpet that the boy had ever seen. It was soft, warm and wet. He took off the silk robe, and threw it behind him, leaving himself naked. He lay down, settling his unblemished five-year-old skin against her soft warm tongue.

As the silk robe was caught up by the wind and flew off to the Tibetan peaks, her mouth closed in on him, enveloping his cold body in her dark warmth.

She surveyed the crowd of, now, thousands, surrounding her, watching her closed mouth with their own mouths agape. This, more than the first time she had taken a man's service (Mike Hardt), or a man life (Dave the cable technician), or a people's devotion (Tanna Island), was her making moment.

She closed her eyes and swallowed. She was a Goddess swallowing a god. In so doing, she was taking her place at the top of the world. That world submit at her feet and would pray to follow the boy god into her stomach.

She felt both the boy passing smoothly down her gullet, as well as the rush of small men clamoring to kiss her feet with devotion. She turned around to face the valley with her back toward the monastery, and stretched out her arms and hands to either side like wings. The thousand or more robed monks all bowed, knelt and prayed to her. She owned them; she owned it all, just like the small god-boy whom she could feel arriving in her stomach.

She was the Goddess.