'this kind? Guns and bombs?"
'1t's God's work."
"You said you joined the Weather Underground, didn't you?"
'I didn't join them. It was sort of like cooperative, you know? They bought me a plane ticket out to Portland, and a fellow met me at the airport and drove me practically all day in an old car way down into empty country where they were. I thought I was in pretty good shape, you know? Talk about pooped! I used to get so tired I'd cry. But by three months, I could like run all day, you know? And I felt really alive. Then, when I could move right, they started all the other stuff. Weapons, marksmanship, cover and concealment, grenades, booby traps, reading a compass and maps, and all that. They taught me stuff I never heard of. You know, I could go into the average kitchen anywhere in the States, and in about twenty minutes I could build a bomb you wouldn't believe, just using what's already there."
Y forget where you said you went after that." irst I went back to Miami, and they took me... someplace where I met Sister Elena Marie, and it was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. She's fantastic. She knew all about me. She even seemed to know what I was thinking. She told me I was doing very well and I was one of the special ones planned by God for a special purpose. They got me a passport to Amsterdam and I went with a Brother who'd been there before and from there by car to Sofia, and he turned me over to some sort of official who took me out to the camp. It was a lot the same as Oregon, except different weapons and a lot of stuff I can't talk about And, well, I got back to Miami, let me see, this is right after Christmas, and so it must have been seven months ago, and so I've been here six months. And maybe it will be six more before we... begin."
'Begin?"
"You know. We have to be given our assignments and we have to have a lot of time studying and working and planning so that it will all be au- tomatic. Then we'll just, you know, go do them. It has to be all coordinated in order to work. We an have to be terribly, terribly careful."
41 saw you practicing something, you and Nena, and I think it was Haris and Ahman. Chuck was coaching and timing you."
Ah, hey, you shouldn't have seen that! Please don't tell anybody, or somebody will get in trouble for not figuring out maybe you could see it. We didn't know what would happen with you, and we
The Green Ripper thought you would probably be kiDed. Maybe that's why somebody got careless. But there is always the very small chance you could get away, and if you could make somebody believe you when you told what you saw, then it might make big problems here."
'~What were you doing? Your assignments?"
"Oh, no. That's just the Circle of Fire. It's all in the speed, getting ready. Then it's tricky how you set the weapons. You put them on full automatic but you have to learn to give just the quickest little touch. Bzzzzt, bzzzzt, bzzzzt, like not more than five or six shots each burst. You touch the trigger when the targets are thick enough in front of you. You keep it at belly level, because that's the way the most damage is done in a crowd."
Yes, indeed, I thought. Get the adults in the belly, the kids in the chest, and the littlies in the head bones.
'mill that be your assignment?"
"Oh, no. That would be a waste of people like us. They say there are people to do that who know how to do just that, and they're willing to do it. I think there's a special place where they train. They don't need as much physical training or training in a lot of different kinds of things. We were just doing it as a kind of a training exercise. That's all. So we can do it if we have to someday."
"It would be hard to do."
'`I know. I know." Her tone was subdued and thoughtful.
I didn't know where to take it from there. I had to assume the trailer was bugged. Yet she would know if it were, and she wasn't sufficiently guarded. She wasn't hesitant in the way people are who know the tape is turning.
"It's hard to see the point in doing it at all."
"Doing what?"
'Novell, killing innocent people."
'Innocent of what, Brother? If you kill soldiers or police, it doesn't make enough difference. They signed up to take that risk. The people in this country are oppressed and they don't know it, and they don't give a damn. All the rest of the world is involved in a bitter struggle, and here the people are fat, happy, and dumb. The captive press and the television keep telling them they are the best people in the world in the best country in the world. The dirt and pain and sickness and poverty are all covered up. No person has a chance against the capitalist bureaucracy. We've learned that little attacks here and there are meaningless. Like fighting a pillow. They actually think they're free, the fools, even while they are supporting a regime that exports arms all over the world to the other oppressors. We have to make this fat dumb happy public sit up and take notice of the hidden tyranny that is oppressing them. How do we do that?"
Such a lot of it was by rote, repeated from
The Green Ripper memory in a sentence structure alien to her usual patterns. "How do we do it, Sister?"
"We make the oppressors visible to the people by giving them reason to show how cruel and tough they can be. We force them to react. Like Chicago and Kent State, but much much more."
"By going out and kiUing people?"
'`That isn't the purpose, Brother. To kill people. Our civilization has gotten too complicated. It's full of machines and plastics. Brother Persival says it is very sick, and like a sick person, it can't survive if a lot of other things happen to it."
"Such as?"
"Oh, we won't go after things that are really protected, like army places and shipyards and nuclear power plants and government buildings. That's dumb. You can bring everything tumbling down by going after things that would take years to fix. Big gas pipelines and oil pipelines. Bridges and tunnels and big computer places. Refineries and chemical plants and control towers. TV stations and newspaper pressrooms. Blow 'em up and burn 'em down. Targets of opportunity. Anyway, it's all being worked out. And then we'll know what our part of it is. I hope I don't get stuff to do that's too hard. I mean I want to be able to get it done. Then if I get away, okay, and if I don't, okay. But Ed hate to mess up. I hope I don't get a tunnel. I get really itchy going through tunnels. I think of all that water coming down on me."
"How do you do a tunnel?"
"Two people and two vehicles, right? Lee one is an old truck. You've got a good big load of explosives, labeled something else. It takes a big blast. The lead car stops and you stop the truck and yank the wire that starts the three-minute timer. Then you run and get in the lead car and get out of there. It's the same for some kinds of bridges. I really don't want to do a tunnel. They make me so nervous 111 do something wrong."
She had turned onto her side, worked her head onto my shoulder. Her arm lay across my chest, her knees against the side of my thigh. She sighed and said, Y didn't have any interest in sex at all until I was in training overseas. Then it started to all come back. It's like that with most of the women who join. I mean the Church becomes the most important love life you have, and it wipes out every~bing else for a while. Then it's never as important again as it once was to you." She kissed the side of my throat and said, 'enough of all this talking already? You want to make * now?" She snugged the length of her body against me. This was a frightening little engine of destruction, all trained, primed, touthoned, waiting only for someone to aim it at a target. Her breath had a faint scent of the deerburger onions. Her hair smelled clean, and her body had a slight coppery odor of perspiration. I remembered noticing at the table that her fingernails were chewed down to the quick.