"I hate to say this. I was married to her and I never really felt as if I knew her. She was such a private person. And I was wondering how... I mean, if she was... well, when you were out of town with her if..."

"Why, practically every night Lindy and me, we'd go to a cocktail lounge or a disco and pick us up a couple of Travoltatype kids and bring them back to the room and purely bang them out of their little wits."

For a moment he looked startled, and then he laughed.

"Okay. Okay. It isn't exactly what I was going to ask. I think I wanted to ask you if you ever got to know her. If you and she ever talked about me or being married, or if she was happy."

"Roy, believe me. I never got to know her. I thought she was just about the most repressed woman I ever came in contact with. She could rattle on for an hour about how Tuchman researched the fourteenth century, but if you told her she had pretty legs and a nice bod, she'd look at you as though you did something nasty on the rug. You know what? I couldn't believe she'd given birth to a kid because I could never quite imagine her screwing anybody. I think something messed her up when she was little."

"I've wondered about that."

She studied him, head tilted.

"Make for a pretty tough kind of marriage, huh?"

"We managed."

"Sure. Look, I think if I get somewhere among the holy, they can get me back here somehow. How about you drop me off at the Manse? Can you do that?"

"They won't let me drive through the gate. You'll get wet going from the gate to the entrance."

"Maybe there will be a Christian with an umbrella."

It was three-thirty when he dropped her off at the guard cubicle, and after she showed her credentials, a man took her inside and apparently phoned the Manse, because minutes later a man came trotting out of the Manse and opened an umbrella before coming to get Carolyn. When Roy saw that, he headed back toward the County Line Motel, hoping he could get through.

The Reverend Sister Mary Margaret Meadows had come down to the lounge and taken Carolyn Pennymark back up to her third-floor suite. As they talked generalities, Carolyn was trying to devise a way to describe this woman in this setting. A large woman. A very large woman. A very large pink woman with golden hair and a lovely smile and a contralto voice which could probably shatter beer mugs if she gave it a good try.

"Many many times," Mary Margaret said, 'we get discouraged, but there would be no point at all in denying you people a chance to talk to us, would there?"

"Just what are "you people"?"

"From the media, dear. We try our best to explain but then they go away and what they do... there's an expression you would know... oh yes, they take a cheap shot. That is to say, they take some very minor thing and make it sound as if we were rural barbarians down here. I think it is because of how quickly this all grew from practically nothing."

"May I take notes?"

"Of course, my dear. They don't ever stop to realize that maybe the Eternal Church of the Believer grew so fast from its small beginnings when my father was the only pastor because it said something to people they badly needed to hear. It gave them some simple rules which make life simpler in a terribly confusing era."

"And you agree with all those rules, Sister?"

"In essence, yes."

"In other words, you've sought no medical help for your father?"

Mary Margaret turned red with anger and visibly brought it under control. She smiled and said, "What was that phrase again? Cheap shot. You can take cheap shots and there is no way to stop you except by ordering you out, and I am not going to do that. I want to make you understand. Years and years ago Matthew Meadows had an older brother he worshipped.

That brother went into the hospital with a fever. They said he would be out in a few days, but he died there, suddenly. A friend who stayed home with the same symptoms recovered quickly. I am not talking about logic now. Where the mind and the body are so interrelated, nobody really knows how much the mind has to do with curing the illnesses of the body. We do know, from independent surveys, that the Church membership is, on the whole, a healthier and longer-lived group than the public at large."

"There could be other variables."

"Of course. We know that. But we are slowly, slowly relaxing our stipulations about seeking medical help. It used to be you went to a doctor with an open wound or a broken bone.

We are adding a little bit at a time. A sore that won't heal. A sudden weight loss. Great thirst combined with weariness. My father would never've let that happen but he... has not been in touch with these things lately."

"What about not voting, not belonging to clubs or political parties?"

"What about it? The world is very diverse. A willing and suggestible person can be talked into diffusing his energies in a dozen pointless directions. Most people would love a good reason to say no to solicitations, and we provide the reason.

The Church is all the organization people really need, outside the home."

This is a very elegant place to live."

"Is that a question? I would agree. Yes, it is. I find it quite pleasant. But not necessary to my spiritual health."

"How much money does the Church take in in a year?"

"I think that probably Mr. Efflander knows, and my brother, and Reverend Deets. But I pay very little attention to that. It's fair to tell you that if I did know, I wouldn't tell you."

"Why not?"

"I would tell you only if I could also tell you how much the Church spends each year in good works, and you would promise to publish both figures."

"Fair enough, I guess. Do you have any comment to make about the death of Linda Rooney Owen?"

Her eyes widened.

"Did they find her body?"

"Not yet."

"Then legally it is a disappearance, isn't it?"

"Legally, yes."

"We live in strange times, Miss Pennymark. People find their lives so difficult, with so many demands for so few rewards, that they often just merely... walk away from their life and never return."

"Lindy was content with her life and her work. Would you have any idea why she came down here?"

"I must say I don't like people coming down here and pretending to be somebody they are not. It would indicate to me that they are after some kind of scandal that doesn't exist."

"Now just a minute, Sister. Are you trying to tell me that with that whole band of fifty golden Angels you keep on tap, young healthy and beautiful girls, and all the staff men around here and the students and visiting clergy and the guys from the stores and working in security, you never have any kind of trouble?"

"Of course there's problems from time to time. Human nature is a problem, Miss Pennymark, as you may have noticed in your travels. The more mature people are, the better they are able to manage their lives. But the problems of young people adjusting to life wasn't the reason Mrs. Owen came down here, was it?"

"I wouldn't think so. I don't know why she came."

"Are you happy in your work?"

"What? Well... sure."