Unless you're a good cultist, and convince yourself by auto-suggestion that all your bodily ills have been miraculously—if temporarily—baked out.
After Maxwell had been given the treatment, I tried again to get Blekeke pinned down to answering some of my questions, but it was no good.
He was obliging, cooperative and friendly as hell, but his heart just wasn't in it. He had to tell us about the improvements in the Ray, and when I threw specific questions at him, he always managed to answer with some reference to the Ray and start all over again—and it was all pure gibberish.
I gave up. We parted with mutual benedictions, and John Maxwell and I walked away, toward the one-track road leading to the old mansion.
"What do you do in a situation like this?" I asked him.
He shrugged. "Try somebody else."
We walked up the front steps of the mansion, and I punched the doorbell.
It was no go there, either. The cultist who opened the door, whom I remembered as a shoe salesman from Boise, informed us firmly and none too politely that no one could enter without the explicit and written permission of President Matl Blekeke. He showed no sign of recognizing me. He slammed the door.
I gave emphatic utterance to an unprintable word and said, "Let's go back to town."