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.”