He poked his head through Lois’s front door and called, “Yo!

Anybody home?”

“Come on in, Ralph!” Lois called back. “We’re in the living room! “Ralph had always imagined a hobbit-hole would be a lot like Lois Chasse’s little house half a block or so down the hill from the Red Apple-neat and crowded, a little too dark, perhaps, but scrupulously clean. And he guessed a hobbit like Bilbo Baggins, whose interest in his ancestors was eclipsed only by his interest in what might be for dinner, would have been enchanted by the tiny living room, where relatives looked down from every wall. The place of honor, on top of the television, was held by a tinted studio photograph of the man Lois always referred to as “Mr. Chasse.”

McGovern was sitting hunched forward on the couch with a plate of macaroni and cheese balanced on his bony knees. The television was on and a game-show was clattering through the bonus round.

“What does she mean, we’re in the living room?” Ralph asked, but before McGovern could answer, Lois came in with a steaming plate in her hands.

“Here,” she said. “Sit down, eat. I talked with Simone, and she said it’ll probably be on News at Noon.”

“Gee, Lois, you didn’t have to do this,” he said, taking the plate, but his stomach demurred strongly when he got his first smell of onions and mellow cheddar. He glanced at the clock on the walljust visible between photos of a man in a raccoon coat and a woman who looked as if so-do-dee-oh-do might have been in her vocabulary-and was astounded to see it was five minutes of twelve.

“I didn’t do anything but stick some leftovers into the microwave,” she said. “Someday, Ralph, I’ll cook for you. Now sit down.”

“Not on my hat, though,” McGovern said, without taking his eyes from the bonus round. He picked the fedora up off the couch, dropped it on the floor beside him, and went back to his own portion of the casserole, which was disappearing rapidly. “This is very tasty, Lois.”

“Thank you.” She paused long enough to watch one of the contestants bag a trip to Barbados and a new car, then hurried back into the kitchen. The screaming winner faded out and was replaced by a man in wrinkled pajamas, tossing and turning in bed. He sat up and looked at the clock on the nightstand. It said 3:18 a.m a time of day with which Ralph had become very familiar.

“Can’t sleep?” an announcer asked sympathetically. “Tired of lying awake night after night?” A small glowing pill came gliding in through the insomniac’s bedroom window. To Ralph it looked like the world’s smallest flying saucer, and he wasn’t surprised to see that it was blue.

Ralph sat down beside McGovern-Although both men were quite slim (scrawny might actually have described Bill better), between them they used up most of the couch.

Lois came in with her own plate and sat down in the rocker by the window. Over the canned music and studio applause that marked the end of the game-show, a woman’s voice said, “This is Lisette Benson.

Topping our News at Noon, a well-known women’s rights advocate agrees to speak in Derry, sparking a protest-and six arrests-at a local clinic. We’ll also have Chris Altoberg’s weather and Bob McClanahan on sports. Stay tuned.”

Ralph forked a bite of macaroni and cheese into his mouth, looked up, and saw Lois watching him. “All right?” she asked.

“Delicious,” he said, and it was, but he thought that right now a big helping of Franco-American spaghetti served cold right out of the can would have tasted just as good. He wasn’t just hungry; he was ravenous. Seeing auras apparently burned a lot of calories.

“What happened, very briefly, was this,” McGovern said, swallowing the last of his own lunch and putting the plate down next to his hat.

“About eighteen people showed up outside WomanCare at eight-thirty this morning, while people were arriving for work, Lois’s friend Simone says they’re calling themselves The Friends of Life, but the core group are the assorted fruits and nuts that used to go by the name of Daily Bread. She said one of them was Charles Pickering, the guy the cops caught apparently getting ready to firebomb the joint late last year.

Simone’s niece said the police only arrested four people. It looks like she was a little low.”

“Was Ed really with them?” Ralph asked.

“Yes,” Lois said, “and he got arrested, too. At least no one got Maced. That was just a rumor. No one got hurt at all.”

“This time,” McGovern added darkly.

The News at Noon logo appeared on Lois’s hobbit-sized color TV, then dissolved into Lisette Benson. “Good afternoon,” she said.

“Topping our news on this beautiful late-summer day, prominent writer and controversial women’s rights advocate Susan Day agrees to speak at Derry’s Civic Center next month, and the announcement of her speech sparks a demonstration at WomanCare, the Derry women’s resource center and abortion clinic which has so polarized-”

“There they go with that abortion clinic stuff again!” McGovern exclaimed. “Jesus!”

“Hush!” Lois said in a peremptory tone not much like her usual tentative murmur. McGovern gave her a surprised look and hushed.

“-John Kirkland at WomanCare, with the first of two reports,” Lisette Benson was finishing, and the picture switched to a reporter doing a stand-up outside a low brick building. A super at the bottom of the screen informed viewers that this was a LIVE-EYE REPORT.

A strip of windows ran along one side of WomanCare. Two of them were broken, and several others were smeared with red stuff that looked like blood. Yellow police-line tape had been strung between the reporter and the building; three uniformed Derry cops and one plainclothesman stood in a little group on the far side of it.

Ralph was not very surprised to recognize the detective as John Leydecker.

“They call themselves The Friends of Life, Lisette, and they claim their demonstration this morning was a spontaneous outpouring of indignation prompted by the news that Susan Day-the woman radical pro-life groups nationwide call ’America’s Number One BabyKiller is coming to Derry next month to speak at the Civic Center.

At least one Derry police officer believes that’s not quite the way it was, however.”

Kirkland’s report went to tape, beginning with a close-up of Leydecker, who seemed resigned to the microphone in his face.

“There was no spontaneity about this,” he said. “Clearly a lot of preparation went into it. They’ve probably been sitting on advance word of Susan Day’s decision to come here and speak for most of the week, just getting ready and waiting for the news to break in the paper, which it did this morning.”

The camera went to a two-shot. Kirkland was giving Leydecker his most penetrating Geraldo look. “What do you mean ’a lot of preparation’?” he asked.

“Most of the signs they were carrying had His. Day’s name on them.

Also, there were over a dozen of these.”

A surprisingly human emotion slipped through Leydecker’s policeman-being-interviewed mask; Ralph thought it was distaste. He raised a large plastic evidence bag, and for one horrified instant Ralph was positive that there was a mangled and bloody baby inside.

Then he realized that, whatever the red stuff might be, the body in the evidence bag was a doll’s body.

“They didn’t buy these at K-mart,” Leydecker told the TV reporter.

“I guarantee you that.”

The next shot was a long-lens close-up of the smeared and broken windows. The camera panned them slowly. The stuff on the smeared ones looked more like blood than ever, and Ralph decided he didn’t want the last two or three bites of his macaroni and cheese.

“The demonstrators came with baby-dolls whose soft bodies had been with what police believe to be a mixture of Karo syrup and red food-coloring,” Kirkland said in voice-over. “They flung the dolls at the side of the building as they chanted anti-Susan Day slogans. Two windows were broken, but there was no major damage.”