CHAPTER 28

Clotho: [You have your visible sign, Ralph-are you satisfied?] Ralph looked down at his arm. Already the agony, which had swallowed him as the whale had swallowed jonah, seemed like a dream to him, or a mirage.

He supposed it was this same sort of distancing which allowed women to have lots of babies, forgetting the stark physical pain and effort of delivery each time the act was successfully accomplished.

The scar looked like a length of ragged white string rippling its way over the bulges of his scant muscles.

[“Yes. You were brave, and very quick. I thank you for both.”] Clotho smiled but said nothing.

Lachesis: [Ralph, are you ready? Time is now very short.] [“Yes, I’m-“]

[“Ralph! Ralph!”]

It was Lois, standing at the top of the hill and waving to him. for a moment he thought her aura had changed from its usual dove-gray to some other, darker color, and then the idea, undoubtedly caused by shock and weariness, assed. He trudged up the hill to where she stood.

Lois’s eyes were distant and dazed, as if she had just heard some amazing, life-changing word.

[“Lois, what is it? What’s wrong? is it my arm? Because if that’s it, don’t worry. Look.” Good as new."’] He held it out so she could see for herself, but Lois didn’t look.

She looked at him instead, and he saw the depth of her shock.

[“Ralph, a green man came.”] A green man? He reached out and took her hands, instantly concerned.

[“Green? Are you sure? It wasn’t Atropos or-”] He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to.

Lois shook her head slowly.

[“It was a green man. If there are sides in.this, I don’t know which one this… this person… I’s on. He felt good, hut I could be wrong.

I couldn’t see him. His aura was too bright. He told me to give these back to you. “I She held out her hand to him and tipped two small, glittering objects from her palm to his: her earrings. He could see a maroon speck on one, and supposed it was Atropos’s blood. He started to close his hand over them, then winced at a tiny prick of pain.

[“You forgot the backs, Lois.”] She spoke in the slow, unthoughtful tones of a woman in a dream.

[“No, I didn’t.] threw them away. The green man said to. Be careful. He felt… warm… but I don’t really know, do I?

Mr. Chasse always said I was the most gullible woman alive, always willing to believe the best of everybody. Of anybody.”] She reached out slowly and grasped his wrists, looking earnestly into his face all the while.

“I just don’t know.”

Vocalizing the thought seemed to wake her up, and she stood blinking at him. Ralph supposed it was possible-just barely-that she actually had been asleep, that she had dreamed this so-called green man, But perhaps it would be wiser to just take the earrings.

They might mean nothing, but then again, having Lois’s earrings in his pocket couldn’t hurt… unless he poked himself with them, that was.

Lachesis: [Ralph, what is it? Is something wrong?] He and Clotho had lagged behind, and so had missed Ralph’s conversation with Lois.

Ralph shook his head, turning his hand to hide the earrings from them.

Clotho had picked up McGovern’s sweater and brushed away the few bright leaves which had been clinging to it. Now he held it out to Ralph, who unobtrusively slipped Lois’s no-back earrings into one of its pockets before putting it on again.

Time to get going, and the line of warmth up the middle of his right arm-along the scar-told him how he was supposed to begin.

[“Lois?”] [“Yes, dear?”] [“I need to take from your aura, and I need to take a lot. Do you understand?”] [“Yes.”] [“Is it all right?”] [“Yes, of course.”] [“Be brave-it won’t take long.”] He put his arms on her shoulders and clasped his hands behind her neck. She copied the gesture, and they slowly leaned together until their foreheads were touching and their lips less than two inches apart. He could smell some perfume still lingering about her-coming perhaps from the dark, sweet hollows behind her ears.

[“Ready, dear?”]

He found what came in return both odd and comforting.

[“Yes, Ralph. See me. Come into the light. Come into the light an take the light.” Ralph pursed his lips and began to inhale.

A band of smoky brilliance began to flow from her mouth and nose and into him. His aura began to brighten at once, and it continued to do so until it had become a dazzling, cloudy corona around him. And still he went on inhaling, breathing with something that was beyond breath, feeling the scar on his arm grow hotter and hotter until it was like an electric filament buried in his flesh. He could not have stopped even if he had wanted to… and he didn’t.

She staggered once. He saw her eyes lose focus and felt her hands loosen for a moment on the back of his neck. Then her eyes, large and bright and full of trust, returned to his, and her grip firmed again.

At last, as that titanic intake of breath finally began to crest, Ralph realized her aura had grown so pale he could hardly see it.

Her cheeks were milk-white and the gray. had come back into her hair, so much that the black was now almost gone. He had to stop it, had to, or he was going to kill her.

He managed to pull his left hand free of his right, and that seemed to break some sort of circuit; he was able to step back from her.

Lois swayed on her feet and would have fallen, but Clotho and Lachesis, looking quite a bit like Lilliputians from Gulliver’s Travels, grabbed her arms and lowered her carefully to the bench again.

Ralph dropped to one knee before her. He was frantic with fear and guilt, and at the same time filled with a sense of power so great that he felt as if a single hard jolt might cause him to explode, like a bottle filled with nitroglycerine. He could knock down a building with that karate-chop gesture now-maybe a whole row of them.

Still, he had hurt Lois. Perhaps badly.

[“Lois.” Lois, can you hear me? I’m sorry."’] She looked up at him dazedly, a woman who had blasted forward from forty to sixty in a matter of seconds… and then right past it and into her seventies, like a rocket overshooting its intended target.

She tried a smile that didn’t work very well.

[“Lois, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, and once I did, I couldn’t stop. “I Lachesis: [If you’re to have any chance at all, Ralph, you must go now. He’s almost here.]

Lois was nodding agreement.

[“Go on, Ralph-I’m just weak, that’s all. I’ll hefine. I’mjust going to sit here until my strength comes back.”] Her eyes shifted to the left, and Ralph followed her gaze. He saw the wino they’d frightened away earlier. He had returned to inspect the litter-baskets at the top of the hill for returnable cans and bottles, and although his aura did not look as healthy as that of the fellow they had met out by the old trainyards earlier, Ralph reckoned he would do in a pinch… which, for Lois, this definitely was.

Clotho: [We’ll see that he wanders over this way, Ralph-we don’t have much power over the physical aspects of the Short-Time world, but I think we can manage that much.] [“You’re sure?”] [Yes. I [“Okay.

Good.”] Ralph took a quick look at the two little men, noted their anxious, frightened eyes, and nodded. Then he bent and kissed Lois’s cool, wrinkled cheek. She gave him the smile of a tired old grandmother.

I did that to her, he thought. Me.

Then you better make sure you didn’t do it for nothing, Carolyn’s voice responded tartly.

Ralph gave the three of them-Clotho and Lachesis were now flanking Lois protectively on the bench-a final glance, and then began to walk down the hill again.

When He reached the toilets, he stood between them for a moment, then leaned his head against the one marked WOMEN. He heard nothing.

When he tipped his head against the blue plastic wall of MEN, however, he heard a faint, droning voice raised in song: “Who believes that my wildest dreams And my craziest schemes will come true.