… or perhaps of Centurions on a visit of state.

They looked over at Ralph and Lois, who stood holding hands in the doorway like children who have lost their way in a fairy-tale wood, and smiled at them.

[Hello, woman.] That was Doc #1. He was holding the scissors in his right hand.

The blades were very long, and the points looked very sharp.

Doc #2 took a step toward them and made a funny little half-bow.

[Hello, man. We’ve bee waiting for you.] Ralph felt Lois’s hand tighten on his own, then loosen as she decided they were in no immediate danger. She took a small step forward, looking from Doc #1 to Doc #2 and then back to #1 again, [“Who are you?”] Doc #1 crossed his arms over his small chest. The long blades of’ his scissors lay the entire length of his white-clad left forearm.

[We don’t have names, not the same as Short-Timers do-but you call us after the fates in the story this man has already told you. That these names originally belonged to women means little to us, since we are creatures with no sexual dimension. I will be Clotho, although I spin no thread, and my colleague and old friend will be Lachesis, although he shakes no rods and has never thrown the coins.

Come in, both of you-please!] They came in and stood warily between the visitor’s chair and the bed. Ralph didn’t think the docs meant them any harm-for now, at least-but he still didn’t want to get too close. Their auras, so bright and fabulous compared to those of ordinary people, intimidated him, and he could see from Lois’s wide eyes and half-open mouth that she felt the same. She sensed him looking at her, turned toward him, and tried to smile. My Lois, Ralph thought. He put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her briefly.

Lachesis: [We’ve given you our names-names you may use, at any rate,-won’t you give us yours?] Lois: [“You mean you don’t already know? Pardon me, but I find that hard to believe.”] Lachesis: [We could know, but choose not to. We like to observe the rules of common Short-Time politeness wherever we can. We find them lovely, for they are passed on by your kind from large hand to small and create the illusion of long lives.] [“I don’t understand.”] Ralph didn’t, either, and wasn’t sure he wanted to. He found something faintly patronizing in the tone of the one who called himself Lachesis, something that reminded him of McGovern when he was in a mood to lecture or pontificate.

Lachesis: [It doesn’t matter. We felt sure you would come. We know that -you were watching us on Monday morning, man, at the borne of I At this point there was a queer overlapping in Lachesis’s speech.

He seemed to say two things at exactly the same time, the terms rolling together like a snake with its own tail in its mouth: [May Locher. [the finished woman.] Lois took a hesitant step forward.

[“My name is Lois Chasse. My friend I’s Ralph Roberts. And now that we’ve all been properly introduced, maybe you two fellows will tell us what’s going on around here.”] Lachesis: [There is another to be named!

Clotho: [Ralph Roberts has already named him.] Lois looked at Ralph, who was nodding his head.

[“They’re talking about Doc #3. Right, guys?”] Clotho and Lachesis nodded. They were wearing identical approving smiles. Ralph supposed he should have been flattered, but he wasn’t. Instead he was afraid, and very angry-they had been neatly manipulated, every step down the line. This was no chance meeting; it had been a setup from the word go. Clotho and Lachesis, just a couple of little bald doctors with time on their hands, standing around in Jimmy V."s room waiting for the Short-Timers to arrive, ho-hum.

Ralph glanced over at Faye and saw he had taken a book called 50 Classic Chess Problems out of his back pocket. He was reading and picking his nose in ruminative fashion as he did so. After a few preliminary explorations, Faye dove deep and hooked a big one. He examined it, then parked it on the underside of the bedside table.

Ralph looked away, embarrassed, and a saying of his grandmother’s Popped into his mind: Peek not through a keyhole, lest ye be vexed.

He had lived to be seventy without fully understanding that; at last he thought he did. Meanwhile, another question had occurred to him.

[“Why doesn’t Faye see us? Why didn’t Bill and his friend see us, for that matter? And how could that man walk right through me? Or did I just imagine that?”] Clotho smiled.

[You didn’t imagine it. Try to think of life as a kind of building Ralph-what you would call a skyscraper.] Except that wasn’t quite what Clotho was thinking of, Ralph discovered. For one flickering moment he seemed to catch an ’ image from the mind of the other one he found both exciting and disturbing: an enormous tower constructed of dark and sooty stone, standing in a field of red roses.

Slit windows twisted up its sides in a brooding spiral.

Then it was gone.

[You and Lois and all the other Short-Time creatures live on the first two floors of this structure. Of course there are elevators-no, Ralph thought. Not in the tower I saw in your mind, my little friend.

In that building-if such a building actually exists-there are no elevators, only a narrow staircase festooned with cobwebs and doorways leading to God knows what.

Lachesis was looking at him with a strange, almost suspicious curiosity, and Ralph decided he didn’t much care for that look. He turned back to Clotho and motioned for him to go on.

Clotho: [As I was saying, there are elevators, but Short-Timers are not allowed to use them under ordinary circumstances. You are not

[ready] [prepared] --I The last explanation was clearly the best, but it danced away from Ralph just before he could grasp it. He looked at Lois, who shook her head, and then back at Clotho and Lachesis again. He was beginning to feel angrier than ever. All the long, endless nights sitting in the wing-chair and waiting for dawn; all the days he’d spent feeling like a ghost inside his own skin; the inability to remember a sentence unless he read it three times; the phone numbers, once carried in his head, which he now had to look up A memory came then, one which simultaneously summed up and justified the anger he felt as he looked at these bald creatures with Iding, their darkly golden eyes and almost blinding auras. He saw himself peering into the cupboard over his kitchen counter, looking for the powdered soup his tired, overstrained mind insisted must be in there someplace -He saw himself poking, pausing, then poking some more.

He saw the expression on his face-a look of distant perplexity that could easily have been mistaken for mild mental retardation but which was really simple exhaustion. Then he saw himself drop his hands and simply stand there, as if he expected the packet to jump out on its own.

Not until now, at this moment and at this memory, did he realize how totally horrible the last few months had been. Looking back at them was like looking into a wasteland painted in desolate maroons and grays.

[“So you took us onto the elevator… or maybe that wasn’t good enough for the likes of us and you just trotted us up the fire stairs.

Got us acclimated a little at a time so we wouldn’t strip our gears completely, I imagine. And it was easy. All you had to do was rob us of our sleep until we were half-crazy. Lois’s son and daughter-in-law want to put her in a theme-park for geriatrics, did you know that?

And my friend Bill McGovern thinks I’m ready for juniper Hill.

Meanwhile, you little angels-”] Clotho offered just a trace of his former wide smile.

[We’re no angels, Ralph.] [“Ralph, please don’t shout at them.”] Yes, he had been shouting, and at least some of it seemed to have gotten through to Faye; he had closed his chess book, stopped picking his nose, and was now sitting bolt-upright in his chair, looking uneasily about the room.