“And who takes charge after that’s all over?”
“The Church has plans, Brother. Big plans. You just wait. Big plans.” Her voice trailed away and her breathing changed and deepened. A woman of her times. Ready to aim the Circle of Fire, belly high Happy to be caressed, glad to make love. Good with babies, and no good with tunnels.
I had blundered into something extraordinary. A
The Green Ripper cult that was a cover for a deadly activism. Supported by curious international cooperations. I wished I could talk to Meyer about it. I really had nothing to go on. I knew the temporary location of nine people and a cache of arms and explosives. One out of fifteen or forty of unknown size and location, of unknown target date. Meyer had said, many times, that we run a strange kind of country in the mod- ern world. Customs and Immigration are in a sense token services. Any plausible-looking person can find many ways to come and go unimpeded. Anything that can be flown or Boated can be brought in or taken out. We are a wide place in the road in the middle of the world, and they wander through, back and forth, marveling at the lack of restraints. It is, Meyer pointed out, a paradox. The openness which endangers our system is the product of the policy which says that to close our borders and enforce all our rules and back them up with guns would change the system just as completely as any alien force.
I hoped there were enough tough young men like Max and Jake. I hoped somebody had this whole operation taped and wired. I hoped there were long lenses peering through the pine forests, and a lot of career people making little marks on important maps.
Gray daylight was seeping into the trailer when I awakened. She was standing beside the bunk, pull ing the long T-shirt down over her head, smoothing it to the contours of her hips with the backs of her hands.
She smiled and leaned and kissed me lightly. “Hey, we slept too long. I got to go on kitchen duty. We11 try it another time?”
“Sure.”
“Listen, don’t worry about me saying anything, okay? I mean about you couldn’t get it up. You’re worried about a lot of things. All this is new to you, right? And your daughter missing and all. Anybody asks me, I’ll say we like to screwed ourselves to death.”
“Thanks, Sister.” :
Don’t you worry about a Ding. Everything is going to be okay for you here. We’ll an be looking out for you, Brother Thomas.”
I heard the door close and she was gone. I rolled up in the two scratchy blankets and thought about Gretel in her agony, Gretel on fire. I knew how she would react if I could tell her she had been a victim of some kind of crazy political action cult, of people who wanted to remake the world by tearing it down and starting all over again. Cave people, trying to reinvent penicillin, Zippo lighters, and disco.
It has nothing to do with me, I told Gretel. I never think about stuff like this. It hurts my head. I think about the blue sea and tan ladies and straight
The Green Ripper gin with lots of ice. I think about how high out of the water a marlin might go, and how much of Meyer’s chili I can eat, and how very good piano sounds in the nighttime. I think about swimming until I hurt, running until I wheeze, driving good cars and good boats and good bargains. Sure, I do my little knightlike thing, restoring goodies to the people from whom they were improperly wrested, doing battle with the genuinely evil bastards who prey on the gullible, helpless, and innocent. I was going to keep on doing that from time to time, to support you and me, girl, in the style we like best, if you had consented. I know from nothing about terrorism, funny churches, and exotic murder weapons, like the one they killed you with.
But here I am. In a sense, I was hunting for you.