The Green Ripper
Poor lithe assassin. She had gone out into the world with an empty head, and somebody had crammed a single frightful idea into it, dressed up with a lot of important-sounding rhetoric. She couldn't know the frightfulness of the idea because she had nothing by which to measure it. Fifteen to forty groups of from eight to fifteen? From a hundred and twenty to six hundred of them. So take the smallest number, cut it in half, and think about sixty people like this one, armed, mobilized, superbly equipped, and aimed at the pressure points of our culture.
I remembered one of Meyer's concepts about cultural resiliency. In the third world, the village of one thousand can provide itself with what it needs for survival. Smash the cities and half the villages, and the other half keep going. In our worbl, the vii" lage of one thousand has to import water, fuel, food, clothing, medicine, electric power, and entertainment. Smash the cities and an the viBages die. And the city itself is frail. It has little nerve-center nodules. Water plant, power transmission lines, telephone switching facilities.
I was begmmog to learn the purpose behind Brother Titus, and the reason for all the extraordinary caution.
And if that extraordinary caution carried over to an things, and assuming the trailer was not bugged, then Stella would be asked to give a report about her lovemaking with Brother Thomas.
"Oh, all we did was talk. He asked ~ lot of questions and we talked, and then after all that, he didn't want to. He said he wasn't gay, but he just didn't feel like it."
She had begun to use her hooker skills, and I had begun to respond to her. After all, what the helL She was skillful and knowing. To her I was a tumescence of a certain length and girth, differing hardly at all from the many hundreds of others. Emotions need not be involved. I would think only of sensation. It did not have to have anything to do with mind and memory. As I began to switch roles from submission to domination, I told myself I could not, in any circumstances, Mink about the face and body and love of Gretel Howard.
I sagged back beside Stella and she said, "Hey, what happens?"
'Em sorry."
"Did something about me put you off, honey?"
"No. It wasn't anything like that I Vhat then?"
'I don't know."
This sure isn't turning out to be one of my better nights."
'Tm sorry."
"Look, Fm not sore. You know what I think it was? It was being conned into shooting Nicky like you did. Something like that, if you're not used to it, can really shake you up inside. And then me coming in here like this when you weren't expecting
The Green Ripper it. And after all, Brother, you are not some eighteen-year-old guy who can get it off before he's unzipped. These things happen. Don't worry about me. I lost it too. Too much talking."
"rm sorry."
'4Let's just talk. I kind of like talking to you. And maybe we can have a little nap, and after that maybe we'll both be okay again, you know? How about that?"
'`All right."
"You sure I didn't spoil it for you somehow?',
'`No. You're... an attractive woman."
'`I'm not much. Eve got a pretty good body, compared to most. But I've got this tough yellowy skin, and if you look close, one eye points out a little bit, the right one. And the receding jaw. You know, I was saving up for an operation, a fellow that puts some kind of bone from your hip or someplace back here by the corners of your jaw and that pushes it forward, and then they fix your bite. I saw before-and-after pictures. It would really make a big difference. But that's vanity, isn't it? 1~11 be twenty-six in two months. I used to think about marriage and babies. I think I'd be okay with babies. Better than they were with me, I know.- My dad broke two fingers on my left hand once, grabbing me when he lost his temper. They say if you've been abused, you abuse your own. I can't believe that. I'd be okay with kids. But there's no point in even thinking about it now, is there? By this time next year, I'll probably be dead. Like Nicky. He just went a little ahead of the rest of us."
"Are they supposed to be suicide missions?"
'`Not really. Everybody is supposed to do their best to get away. And we'll be given a staging area to go to where we can be regrouped and re- equipped and given new assignments. But if a person keeps doing it, how many times can you get away?"
"Everything will be in a state of confusion."
"You can believe it."
"But you know who is going to suffer the most, don't you?"
"Sure. The bottom layer of society. The poor and the minorities and the old ones. They won't have the money to take care of themselves when the food and the water and the medicines run out. They won't be able to run. That's when they'll rise up against the state. Then there'll be some kind of burning and killing. That's when the whole thing goes to hell for sure."
"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.