“Maybe. I suppose. Haven’t even looked, to tell the truth-too many other things going on. I think we ought to get a little closer to the building.” This wasn’t a thing he wanted to do, but it seemed very important to do something. He could feel the deathbag all around them, a gloomy, suffocating presence that was passively opposed to forward motion of any kind. That was what they had to fight.
“All right,” she said. “I’m going to ask for Connie Chung’s autograph, and I’m going to be all giggly and silly while I do it. Can you stand that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because that will mean that if they’re looking at anybody, they’ll be looking at me.”
“Sounds good.”
He spared one last look at John Kirkland and the woman producer.
They were now discussing what events might cause them to break into the evening’s network feed and go live, totally unaware of the lumbering trilobites crawling back and forth on their faces.
One of them was currently squirming’slowly into John Kirkland’s mouth.
Ralph looked away in a hurry and let Lois pull him over to where His. Chung stood with Rosenberg, the bearded cameraman. He saw the two of them glance first at Lois and then at each other. The shared look was one part amusement and three parts resignationhere comes one of them-and then Lois gave his hand a hard little squeeze that said, Never mind me, Ralph, you take care of your business and I’ll take care of mine.
“Pardon me, but aren’t you Connie Chung?” Lois asked in her gushiest isn’t-this-the-living-end voice. “I saw you over there and at first I said to Norton, ’Is that the lady who’s on with Dan Rather, or am I crazy?” And then-”
“I am Connie Chung, and it’s very nice to meet you, but I’m getting ready for tonight’s news, so if you could excuse me-”
“Oh, of course, I wouldn’t dream of bothering you, I only want an autograph-just a quick little scribble would do-because I’m your number one fan, at least in Maine.”
His. Chung glanced at Rosenberg. He was already holding a pen out in one hand, much as a good O.R. nurse has the instrument the doctor will want next even before he calls for it. Ralph turned his attention to the area in front of the Civic Center and slid his perceptions up the tiniest bit.
What he saw in front of the doors was a semi-transparent, blackish substance that puzzled him at first. It was about two inches deep and looked almost like some sort of geological formation. That couldn’t be, though… could it? If what he was looking at was real (the way objects in the Short-Time world were real, at least), the stuff would have blocked the doors from opening, and it wasn’t doing that. As Ralph watched, two TV techs strolled ankle-deep through the stuff as if it were no more substantial than low-lying groundmist.
Ralph remembered the aural footprints people left behind-the ones that looked like Arthur Murray learn-to-dance diagrams-and suddenly thought he understood. The tracks faded away like cigarette smoke… except that cigarette smoke really didn’t go away; it left a residue on walls, on windows, and in lungs. Apparently, human auras left their own residue. It probably wasn’t enough to see once the colors faded if it was only one person, but this was the biggest public meetingplace in Maine’s fourth-largest city. Ralph thought of all the people who had poured in and out through these doorsall the banquets, conventions, coin-shows, concerts, basketball tourneys-and understood that semi-transparent slag. It was the equivalent of the slight dip you sometimes saw in the middle of much-used steps.
Never mind that now, sweetheart-take care of your business.
Nearby, Connie Chung was scribbling her name on the back of Lois’s light-bill for September. Ralph looked at that slaggy residue on the cement apron in front of the doors, hunting for a trace of Atropos, something which might register more as smell than sight, a nasty, meaty aroma like the alley which used to run behind Mr. Huston’s butcher-shop when Ralph was a kid.
“Thank you!” Lois was burbling. “I said to Norton, ’she looks just like she does on TV, just like a little China doll.” Those were my exact words.”
“Very welcome, I’m sure,” Chung said, “but I really have to get back to work.”
“Of course you do. Say hello to Dan Rather for me, won’t you?
Tell him I said ’Courage! ’”
“I certainly will.” Chung smiled and nodded as she handed the pen back to Rosenberg. “Now, if you’ll excuse us…”
If it’s here, it’s higher up than I am, Ralph thought. I’ll have to slide up a little bit farther.
Yes, but he’d have to be careful, and not just because time had become an extremely valuable commodity’. The simple fact was that if he went up too high, he would disappear from the Short-Time world, and that was the sort of occurrence which might even distract these newspeople from the impending pro-choice rally at least for awhile.
Ralph concentrated, but when the painless spasm inside his head happened this time, it didn’t come as a blink but as the soft lowering of a lash. Color bloomed silently into the world; everything stood forth with exclamatory brilliance. Yet the strongest of these colors, the oppressive key-chord, was the black of the deathbag, and it was a negation of all the others. Depression and that sense of debilitating weakness fell on him again, sinking into his heart like the pointed ends of a clawhammer. He realized that if he had business to do up here, he had better do it quickly and scoot back down to the Short-Time level before he was stripped clean of life-force.
He looked at the doors again. For a moment there was still nothing but the fading auras of Short-Timers like himself -… and then what he was looking for suddenly came clear, rising into his view as a message which has been written in lemon-juice rises into sight when it is held close to a candle-flame.
He had expected something which would look and smell like the rotting guts in the bins behind Mr. Huston’s knacker’s shop, but the reality was even worse, possibly because it was so unexpected. There were fans of a bloody, mucusy substance on the doors themselvesmarks made by Atropos’s restless fingers, perhaps-and a revoltingly large puddle of the same stuff sinking into the hardened residue in front of the doors.
There was something so terrible about this stuffso alien-that it made the color-bugs look almost normal by comparison. It was like a pool of vomit left by a dog suffering from some new and dangerous strain of rabies. A trail of this stuff led away from the puddle, first in drying clots and splashes, then in smaller drips like spilled paint.
Of course, Ralph thought. That’s why we had to come here. The little bastard can’t stay away from the place. It’s like cocaine to a dope addict.
He could imagine Atropos standing right here where he, Ralph, was standing now, looking… grinning… then stepping forward and putting his hands on the doors. Caressing them. Creating those filthy, filmy marks. Could imagine Atropos drawing strength and energy from the very blackness which was robbing Ralph of his own vitality.
He has other places to go and other things to do, of course-veri dai, is undoubtedly a buy day when you’re a supernatural Psycho like(’ him-but it must be hard for him to stay away from this place for long, no matter how busy he is. And how does it make him feel?
Like a tight fuck on a summer afternoon, that’s how.
Lois tugged his sleeve from behind and he turned to her. She was still smiling, but the feverish intensity in her eyes made the expression on her lips look suspiciously like a scream. Behind her, Connie Chung and Rosenberg were strolling back toward the building.
“You’ve got to get me out of here,” Lois whispered. “I can’t stand it anymore. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
[“Okay-no problem.”] “I can’t hear you, Ralph-and I think I can see the sun shining through you. Jesus, I’m sure I can!”