The Celestial Blueprint and Others Stories by Philip José Farmer

least that’s what my parish priest told me. He said it was a good thing, as it removed an evil from man’s temptation. He neVer did say why it was so evil. Maybe he didn’t know.
    “That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the Church has inadvertently given us a weapon whereby we may free Man from his bondage to the Skins and it has also given itself once again a chance to be really persecuted and to flourish on the blood of its martyrs.”
    “Blood?” said Lusine, licking her lips. “The Churchmen drink blood?”
    Rastignac did not explain. He could be wrong. If so, he’d feel less like a fool if they didn’t know what he thought.
    Meanwhile, there were the first steps to be taken for the unskinning of an entire planet.
    1
    Mucketter is the best translation of the 26th century French noun foutriquet , pronounced vfeutwikey.
    IX
    Later that day, the mucketeers surrounded the castle, but they made no effort to storm it. The following day one of them knocked on the huge front door and presented Mapfarity with a summons requiring them to surrender. The Giant laughed, put the document in his mouth, and ate it. The server fainted and had to be revived with a bucket of cold water before he could stagger back to report this tradition-shattering reception.
    Rastignac set up his underground so it could be expanded in a hurry. He didn’t worry about the blockade because, as was well known, Giants’ castles had all sorts of subterranean tunnels and secret exits. He contacted a small number of priests who were willing to work for him. These were congenital rebels who became quite enthusiastic when he told them their activities would result in a fierce persecution of the Church.
    The majority, however, clung to their Skins and said they would have nothing to do with this extradermal-less devil. They took pride and comfort in that term. The vulgar phrase for the man who refused to wear his Skin was “devil,” and, by law and logic, the Church could not be associated with a devil. As everybody knew, the priests have always been on the side of the angels.
    Meanwhile, the Devil’s band slipped out of the tunnels and made raids. Their targets were Giants' castles and government treasuries; their loot, the geese. So many raids did they make that the president of the League of Giants and the Business Agent for the Guild of Egg-stealers came to plead with them. And remained to denounce. Rastignac was delighted with their complaints, and, after listening for a while, threw them out.
    Rastignac had, like all other Skin-wearers, always accepted the monetary system as a thing of reason and balance. But, without his Skin, he was able to think objectively, and he saw its weaknesses.
    For some cause buried far in history, the Giants had always had control of the means for making the hexagonal golden coins called oeufs. But the Kings, wishing to get control of the golden eggs, had set up that elite branch of the Guild which specialized in abducting the half-living ‘geese.’ Whenever a thief was successful, he turned the goose over to his King. The monarch, in turn, sent a note to the robbed Giant informing him that the government intended to keep the goose to make its own currency. But even though the Giant was making counterfeit geese, the King, in his generosity, would ship to the Giant one out of every thirty eggs laid by the kidnappee.
    The note was a polite and well-recognized lie. The Giants made the only genuine gold-egg-laying geese on the planet because the Giants’ League alone knew the secret. And the King gave back one-thirtieth of his loot so the Giant could accumulate enough money to buy the materials to create another goose. Which would, possibly, be stolen later on.
    Rastignac, by his illegal rape of geese, was making money scarce. Peasants were hanging on to their produce and waiting to sell until prices were at their highest. The government, merchants, the league, the guild, all saw themselves