When I was down to counting the minutes before I would probably pitch forward onto my face, I was saved by misadventure. Sister Nena took a good fast run to clear a creek, jumped well, and landed on a stone that turned as her foot struck *. She fell heavily on gravel, equipment clanking, and moaned as she reached for her right ankle. Her olive complemon was a yellow-white, her eyes squeezed by pain. I was first to reach her, and carefully unlaced
The Green Ripper the sodden sneaker and eased it off, then peeled the sock down and off her foot.
Chuck knelt beside me, and The others stood around looking down at her. "Busted?" he asked.
I told her to hold on tight, and I slowly manipulated the ankle joint. She sucked air. I made her work it herself. I knew from wide experience it wasn't bad.
"Just a little sprain, I ark, but you shouldn't walk on it right away."
Chuck looked around at the slope of The land, the direction of distant peaks. "About a half mile back," he said.
Barry was wearing a macho silk scarf, off-white. Chuck wrapped The ankle tightly and tied it in place. I said I could carry her back. She said she could hobble and hop. She said it was her own damn clumsiness. Barry said he'd carry her. I said he could take over when I got tired. I didn't tell him I was already so tired I wondered if I could make a half mile by myself. Suddenly Me sun was covered and the rain began to fall again. Chuck took my pack, hefted it, looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and dumped out the remaining rocks. Two of them. Apple-size. Barry took the weapon. Nena stood up on one foot, with Stella helping her balance. I bent and put my shoulder in her middle and had her lean forward as I stood up with her, my right arm wrapped around her legs lust above her knees. She was smallish but solid. The rain rem freshed me. It cooled me off. I made pretty good time. A few times I lost my footing on the uneven ground, and when I caught myself it would drive my shoulder into her middle, making her gasp. And each time I apologized, and each time she told me not to bother. SteDa walked behind me, telling Nena how soon she would be up and around, which I knew was true. Barry offered twice to take over, but I said I was fine. I made it back in with her and, at Chuck's direction, took her to the trailer she shared with Stella. It was larger and older than mine. I bent over and knelt and perched her on the edge of her bunk, and she thanked me with an unanticipated shyness.
After the noon meal they went out again in the rain, but I was excused.
'we're doing some target work'" Chuck explained. "We do it in bad weather when sound doesn't carry well and there's less chance of hikers around the perimeter."
'] could use some brushup on that."
"You're not cleared for live ammo, Brother."
'brother Persival is the one who'd clear me?"
'~hen you're ready."
'~What kind of weapon is that?"
He showed it- to me but didn't let me handle it. "Pretty good. Better than it looks. It's Russian. Ka- lashnikov Assault Rifle. It's got a good reach, and it's fast and accurate enough. Of course, for real long-range accuracy, we've got better stuff. Scopes
The Green Ripper and all. Haris is the best one here at that game. He can hit a pie plate at a thousand meters on a still day."
"Good for Brother Haris."
'Is that being sarcastic or something, Brother?"
"No. I mean it's good shooting."
"Yes, it is." Off he trotted, tootling his whistle.
The camp seemed empty. I knew that Nena was in her quarters. I wandered around, wondering who was watching me. Somebody had to be on the gate. Alvor the silent one, if they hadn't rotated the duty. Persival had to be somewhere.
I thought it out during my aimless stroll in the misty rain. I had not passed any test. I had not proved anything to anybody. So somebody wanted to know how badly I wanted to take off. Would I go down the road or start out cross-country? What would Tom McGraw do? They had an Tom's money, and they were trying to locate his girl. So why not use up a piece of the rainy afternoon calling on the pretty little woman he had carried back to camp? Ask her how she was doing.
I rapped on the door and she called, "Come in?"
"How you doing?"
"Okay, I guess. I was so damn mad at myself. Sister Nena, the gazelle. See how she floats through the air." She was on the bunk. She had been reading.
'~What's the book?"
She closed it and handed it to me. Worn binding, dog-eared pages. The Loving Elect by Sister Elena Marie. "Hasn't anyone given it to you yet?"
'first I ever heard of it."
"You should read it. You should have your own copy. I guess somebody just forgot. It's wonderful. She's a great woman, truly great. I miss seeing her. I used to see her when I was in the regular camps. She used to visit. She still does that sometimes, I think."
"How long ago was that?"
"Five years. More than five. Nearly six."
"Back when you were twelve years old?"
She laughed. "Hardly. I'm t~venty-eight."
"You don't look it. Nobody would guess. Were you at more than one of the regular camps?"
"Oh, sure. You get moved around. They don't want you to sink roots anywhere except in the Church. And a lot of us get moved because family has come to try to take us home. When we're already home in the best sense of the word. My mother spent a lot of time and money trying to find me and take me away. But that was a long time ago."
"Where is she now?"
"I wouldn't have the faintest clue, Brother. She is nothing to me. I have no interest in her."
"She's your mother, dike Fm Kathy's father."
'7hat's a biological happenstance, Brother Thomas. I don't think we'll discuss that further. You have
The Green Ripper no right of approval or disapproval over anything I do or think or am."
'Tm just trying to understand is ale"
'~Don't try. Just accept. You're not open enough, Brother. You are closed up tight Sister Elena Marie says there are answers which have to come before the questions."
"Makes no sense to me."
&e looked at me with exasperation. "Will you try something with me? Will you let me try to show you something? Will you really try to cooperate, by that I mean letting things happen that try to happen?"
"Sure. Try what?"
"Can you sit there, on the floor, and cross your legs Buddha style?"
I sat and managed it, with a certain amount of creaking, saying, 'untangling myself will be some" thing else again."
She smiled and settled down in front of me, not wincing at all as she moved her taped ankle into position, so close that our Knees touched. "We take each other's hands like this, so that you are feeling the pulse here, in my left wrist, and I am feeling your pulse in your left wrist. Let the hands and forearms rest like this. Yes, so there's no strain. After a little while, if we are doing it right, our pulse rates will become identical, and quite slow. Like sixty beats per minute. Now you look into my eyes, not in any sharp focus because then you look at one eye or the other. Kind of unfocus a little, so you see them both. Unfocus as if you were looking beyond me. You can feel my pulse? Good. Now what you have to do is take long slow breaths. On each in- halation you say three words very slowly and distinctly inside your head. We are one. And you say it silently and in the same rhythm as you exhale. 1311 match my breathing to yours, and then it should stay matched without my thinking about it. You say the words until they are meaningless, just sounds, like a mantra. What you have to do is concentrate on looking into my eyes and trying to hear the silent words I am saying. Try to hear my words inside your head and I try to hear yours inside mine. Stay aware of the pulse and the slow breathing. Keep your back straight and your eyes just a little unfocused. And try to kind of... give yourself to it, and let it happen. Start now. No, wait. I forgot. Don't let any outside thoughts come into your head. If you start to think of anything beside pulse, breathing, looking, listening, and the words, it sets you back. Okay. Go."
So I felt like an idiot. Sitting on the Boor of an old trailer, doing some kind of mantra thing with a flaky female terrorist. But I did as directed. When Meyer was into hypnosis, he had me doing some odd things. I was difficult at first, until I realized that it wouldn't hurt me to try to cooperate. Then he could manage it. It delighted him. Going under seemed to make a little roaring sound in my head,
The Green Ripper reminiscent of the first few seconds before one passes out. I did as I was told, looking into Nena's dark wide eyes, and soon the little roaring sound started, taking me into a different level of con- sciousness. We are one. Quite suddenly I could hear her voice inside my head instead of my own. And I could no longer see the rest of her face with my peripheral vision, only her eyes. The breathing seemed to be becoming much slower. Her pulse was a very slow steady throb against my finger pad. It was all sensation, without thought. Going on and on and on.
I was aware that she had ended it. Her hands were gone from mine. Contact broken. It was like coming slowly up from the bottom of a deep clear POOL seeing the sunlight on the surface above. I gave myself a slow shake, like an old wet dog, and looked at her.
She was flushed, and looking at me oddly.
'~What's the matter?" I asked her. uncorked pretty good."
'] know. Better than with most people when it's the first time. I didn't expect that. Knowmg your background. Only the most sensitive and imaginative and intelligent people go into semuanh balk so quick."
"Semu-what?"
'?t's an Indonesian phrase. It means everything is all right. Don't worry. Be reassured. Sister Elena
Marie says it is synergy. One person plus one person equals more than two persons."
"Were you telling me Pm some kind of dummy?"
"No. It's just very strange you should get so deeply into it the very first time. It was... very stirring. And it makes a person feel very sexy."
"I noticed." She was still frowning at me. I felt certain she would report this unexpected facility to Persival and it would rekindle his doubts. I said, quickly, "I wed to have this partner Pd go netting with. I wed to get these headaches all the time. He said he could hypnotize me out of them, and he tried and toed and tried, and when he was about to give up, I finally went under. It helped a lot. So when you started this semu-something, it felt like it did when he was putting me under, so I let myself go."
She stopped frowning and gave a brisk little nod. "Of course. That would be it, wouldn't it? We we it to reinforce the joining together. When people be" gin to have doubts, when they begin to think they're not strong enough for what the Church demands, then they can do semuanja balk and be strengthened and refreshed. When I listen to Sister Elena MaAe on the tape, I get sort of the same feeling Not as intense, but it's there. That farawayness. Brother Persival says it's that quality that made her such a success when she was an evangelist. When she used to broadcast, with a choir of two hundred voices, from the Tabernacle
The Green Ripper in Biloxi. That was before she founded the Church of the Apocrypha, before she had taken the name Sister Elena Marie."
"What did her name used to be?"
"I wouldn't tell you except she was so well known a lot of people know it. She was Bobbie Jo Annison. She started preaching the gospel when she was sixteen. They got up to over a hundred and fifty stations toward the end, and she took in mil- lions of dollars for good works. But she decided it was not the true faith, and there were too many ad- visers trying to run things, and the government was after her for taxes and all. And she decided that it was vanity that had taken over for piety, being on the air so much. So she quit and she founded our Church. Maybe it was about nine years ago, or ten. There used to be things in the magazines. Whatever happened to Bobbie Jo Annison? I expect you heard the name before."
'It sounds kind of familiar, but I was never much for turning on television for anything at all."
"She is the greatest woman who ever lived."
"You mean that?"
'I would die for her. I probably will die for her, and be reborn into my own identity in the next in- carnation. That's the reward for dying for the Church. Sometimes, after I have prayed a long time, and very hard, suddenly I can hear her voice inside my head saying my words in her voice to the
Lord. Sister Stella can make that happen too. It's wonderful when it happens." Her face glowed.
"Speaking of Stella, maybe you can tell me the ground rules around here. I don't want to get into trouble."
"Because she came to your bed? No, there is no objection. It could have been suggested to her. I didn't ask and she didn't tell mu If the two of you slept only with each other, that would be bad."
'Is that rule in Sister Elena Marie's book?"