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species and its ominous implications for eco-systems around the globe. He castigated government supported over-fishing, which he claimed had seriously depleted the oceans and threatened future food supplies. But he saved his longest, loudest tirade for chemical pollutants, focusing on the damage they were causing to animal and human reproductive systems.
    “Mass extinction!” he said. “That’s what’s next, you know!”
    From time to time, Marilyn noted, The Wizard’s words melted into nothing short of gibberish. Sheer nonsense.
    “The molecular structures get into the water supply, where they compound with pollutants, becoming cancer receptors. That eventually enables their entrance into the astral pathway . . .”
    Method, she knew, lurked behind The Wizard’s bouts of madness. The psychology literature called the tactic fatiguing obscurities . The effort listeners made to make sense of something that made no sense at all was so mentally draining and disorienting that it helped to maintain them in a trance state.
    “In closing,” The Wizard said, almost an hour after taking the podium, “I hope you see why the work we’ll undertake together tomorrow is so vitally important. We have to begin somewhere, somehow, to right what has gone so terribly wrong over the course of the last century. We must spread the word. We must begin to take better care of our planet. For the Earth too is mortal, and we are all earthbound.”
    Finally ! Marilyn thought. Someone had finally uttered the cult’s name, however slyly.
    The messianic frenzy in The Wizard’s eyes disappeared, replaced by a soft, avuncular twinkle. He smiled as he described a few of the events slated for the following day, the first day of the Eco-Warrior Boot Camp. Then he began extolling the virtues of the farm and the people who operated it.
    “There are twelve hundred of us here now. A hundred sets of disciples dedicated to the vital work of preserving the planet.”
    He emerged from behind the podium to pace in front of the first row of seats, like an army general reviewing his troops.
    “We live a simple life as God intended, and for that reason, Natural High Farms is a spiritual place, transcendent, magical.”
    He stopped in front of John, who sat two seats to Marilyn’s left in the first row. The Wizard bent down on one knee and stared into John’s face, their eyes mere inches apart.
    I don’t believe it ! she thought. He suspects John already !
     

    John grew uncomfortable with the cult leader staring him in the face for so long. “What?” he said at last.
    But The Wizard, alias L. Rob Piper, gave him no answer. The cult leader’s unblinking blue eyes brimmed with energy, searching, it almost seemed, for something tiny swimming behind John’s cornea in the vitreous fluid. Another ten seconds ticked by in perfect silence.
    At last The Wizard spoke to him. “We can do something about that insomnia problem.”
    The hoods above John’s eyes retracted with surprise. His voice barely managed a whisper. “What did you say?”
    “We have a special herbal medicine to help you sleep.”
    John shook his head to clear it. Because what’d he’d heard from the mouth of The Wizard wasn’t possible. It really wasn’t possible. A dream-like sensation of falling caused him to grip the sides of his plastic chair. “How did you know about my—”
    John halted his own words as The Wizard rose. The cult leader stepped past Marilyn to the end of the first row. In front of little Mick, the teenage rap lover, he dropped down on one knee and repeated the eye-to-eye investigation.
    Ten or twelve seconds passed in silence before The Wizard spoke to him. “We also have an herbal treatment for peptic ulcers.”
    Mick’s jaw dropped as if he were entering the first plunge on a star amusement park ride. “Get out, dude! You are freakin’ me! You’re like psychic! How’d you do that?”
    The Wizard stood, smiling broadly. “Goodnight, everyone. God bless.