| OCR Text |
Show Acting Alone Page 396 of the Council of the Twelve - even of its secret thirteenth member - as of divine origin. And there was little chance of their sharing what minimal information each of them necessarily possessed in order to do his job. They would never be indiscreet in exchange for mere money, for they were all versed and steeped in scripture and in the Revealed Doctrine of the Tithe and understood full well the ultimate triviality of all worldly chattels that are not directly channeled back into the coffers of the church. And if, Father in Heaven forbid, things ever got extremely unpleasant, the missionaries would never break under physical interrogation, for under stress or great amounts of pain or loss of blood or other bodily fluids they relinquished even that single filament of personality allowed them, their eyes went completely out like spent lightbulbs, and their mouths quoted scripture endlessly, reflexly, verse after verse after verse, until they passed out from fatigue or died of dehydration or, as once or twice had happened, were compelled to stop by external means like bullets or garrottes. He was pretty certain _that these missionaries possessed no energies that weren't channeled directly and undivertibly back into the church; but, after appraising the young, preposterously healthy bodies of the particular contingent that was sent out to Cheyenne Mountain, the Elder had decided, just to be on the safe side, that it might not be imprudent to install a few ranks of dummy bicycle generators out behind the mess tent (of course dummies! - how power a complex that extensive with mere foot-powered generators?), something to keep the automatons' bodies occupied and out of some unimaginable trouble (certainly not sexual trouble, with their harsh upbringings) when doing nothing between shifts and Intruder Alert drills. A lot of their time would be spent |
