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?"
'`Not in this book. In another of her books there is a chapter about sharing. She says that making love should be a simple function, and not be given too much importance in this era. She says that when we were all alive in earlier centuries, it was different. We were all faithful to JUSt one person, and it was good and natural and right. And when we come back to earth again, in future centuries, it will probably be like that again. But now, in this world, if we begin to think too much of some other person, it will make us weak in our duty as soldiers in the Army of the Lord. We might forget our own mission in trying to save another person from hurt."
"Ig this sharing okay in the other camps that aren't special? Like when my little girl was here?"
"Oh, no. You have to be celibate your first few years in the Church. You must give up everything for the Church. But we in special training have proved we will not be weakened by sexual pleasure, and if we wish *, it is permitted."
The Green Ripper
"As long as you spread it around."
'As that some kind of a dirty joke to you?"
'A didn't know any other way to say it, Nena."
"You must call me Sister Nena, nothing else."
"How did you come to get selected for this training?"
'everyone in the Church is watched. Actually they are testing all of us all the time, keeping track of the ones with the strongest faith and the strongest, quickest bodies. When they told me I had been selected for special training, I didn't even know what kind of training it would be. Now I know, and Ill do whatever they ask of me."
'Mike blow up some kindergartens?"
"You really don't understand, do you? The most bloody, savage, awful acts that seem the most pointless, they're the ones that are most productive. They revolt and shock everyone, and that puts terrible pressure on the central government and local governments to crack down on ad the people who are nonconformist in any way. When that happens, the resentment makes rebels out of the conformists too, and pretty soon the whole structure crumbles."
"And you can do these terrible things, Sister Nena?"
'A might be asked to do things that will make me feel sort of sick to my stomach. But I'll be proud of the chance to do them. I'm exalted to think 1~11 be part of something that's going to change the world. I'm proud of finally finding something in my life that makes sense, Brother Thomas. Has your life really made sense to you?"
"Sense? I don't know. I've had a few laughs. I've had some real good days. And some black black ones. Who says things have to make sense?"
"We want it to. Every one of us. We don't understand it, and Sister Elena Marie sorts it all out for us."
"Well, I wish I could go see the lady and let her explain it all to me."
"You saw the tape. Didn't that help?"
'A guess so. A little bit."
"Brother Thomas, we are all getting very fond of you, you know. We are enjoying having you with us. Please don't have doubts. Just don't think about it. Be open. And when the time comes, Brother Persival will have a mission for you, and you will want to perform it properly and please us all."
'Is that a first name or a last name? Persival."
"I really don't know. One of the rules of the Church is that everyone has just one name. And you can pick any part of your first name or last name, or you can make up a name, and then it is yours forever."
"Don't you get a lot of duplications?"
"Of course. What difference does that make? We don't pay taxes and we're not on social security and there is no payroll."
"Then it could be tough locating my little girl Kathy."
The Green Ripper
'En all the regular camps there must be hundreds of Kathys. People are supposed to forget their last names. So even if they paged her in all the regular camps, she might not answer."
"The boss lady has two names."
'YPlease don't call her that! She is the only person who is allowed to have two names. The only one in the whole Church."
I had untangled myself, and the feeling was coming back into my legs. She was back on the bed. By the way she moved I could see she no longer had an anlde problem.
"Well, take care of yourself, Sister Nena."
She smiled at me. "Sure. Sister Stella is very fond of you, did you know that?"
'A thought we were all very fond of each other. Isn't that the house rule?"
She pursed her lips as she stared at me. "Sometimes when you sound sarcastic you are like another person."
"In what way?"
'Y don't really know."
I changed the subject. "Better stay off that ankle as much as you can."
"It's okay now. But thanks for carrying me."
I stepped down out of the trailer and closed the tin door. The misty rain had stopped. I did not see anyone around. I took a bath in the creek and changed to my other set of clothes and washed out the coveralls.
As I scrubbed away, I thought about my very few options. I could stay here and keep my head down and try to get a line on where their headquarters might be located, then try to sneak away somehow and report to that memorized phone number. I could plan and carry out some kind of group ambush, kill every one of them, and then hunt through an their stuff for clues about the rest of the organization. But even if I could see myself executing an these crazies, little girls and all, my ability to do it was questionable. They were trim and tough and wary. Splendid reflexes. I could hang around until my mission, and then defect once I was at sea on the boat I was going to have to buy. By that time things would be popping all over the country, am patently. Sniping, fires, explosions, massacres, and God knows what all.
<
br /> And once again I saw Gretel's face, the way the fever had wasted her, saw her chest pumping as the machine breathed for her, saw the laugh-lines around her dying eyes.
And I thought then of a provisional plan. Nicky was dead. Maybe they would find out I wasn't what I had pretended to be. If so, the odds might be improved between now and then. Nine to one read better than ten to one... a little better. Keep the eyes open. Improvise.
John D MacDonald - Travis Mcgee 18 - The Green Ripper Page 15