Clotho: [You must not approach Atropos directly, either. I cannot emphasize that enough. He has been surrounded by forces much greater than himself, forces that are malignant and powerful, forces that are conscious and will stop at nothing to stop you. Yet we think that, if you stay away from Atropos, you may be able to block the terrible thing which is about to happen… which is, in a very real sense, happening already.] Ralph didn’t much care for the unspoken assumption that he and Lois were going to do whatever it was these two happy gauchos wanted, but this didn’t seem like exactly the right time to say so.
Lois: [“What is about to happen? What is it you wantfrom us?
Are we supposed to find Ed and talk him out of doing something bad?”] Clotho and Lachesis looked at her with identical expressions of shocked horror.
[Haven’t you been listening to-] I-you mustn’t even think of-] They stopped, and Clotho motioned Lachesis to go ahead.
[If You didn’t hear us before, Lois, hear us now.-stay away from Ed Deepneau! Like Atropos, this unusual situation has temporarily invested him with great power. To even go near him would be to risk a visit from the entity he thinks of as the Crimson King… and besides, he is no longer in Derry.] Lachesis glanced out over the roof, where lights were coming on in the dusk of Thursday evening, then looked back at Ralph and Lois again.
[He has left for I ____________________No words, but Ralph caught a clear sensory impression which was part smell (oil, grease, exhaust, sea-salt), part feel and sound (the wind snapping at something-perhaps a flag), and part sight (a large rusty building with a huge door standing open on a steel track).
[“He’s on the coast, isn’t he? Or going there.”] Clotho and Lachesis nodded, and their faces suggested that the coast, eighty miles from Derry, was a very good place for Ed Deepneau.
Lois tugged his hand again, and Ralph glanced at her, [“Did you see the building, Ralph?”] He nodded.
Lois: [“It’s of Hawking Labs, but it’s near there. I think it might even be a place I know-“] Lachesis, speaking rapidly, as if to change the subject: [Where he isor what he might be planning really doesn’t matter. Your task lies elsewhere, in safer waters, but you still may need to use all of your considerable Short-Time powers to accomplish it, and there still may be great danger.] Lois looked nervously at Ralph.
[“Tell them we won’t hurt anybody, Ralph-we might agree to help them if we can, but we won’t hurt anybody, no matter what.”] Ralph, however, told them no such thing. He was thinking of how the diamond chips had glittered at Atropos’s earlobes, and meditating on how perfectly he had been trapped-and Lois along with him, of course. Yes, he would hurt someone to get the earrings back.
That wasn’t even a question. But just how far would he go? Would he perhaps kill to get them back?
Not wanting to tackle that issue-not wanting to even look at Lois, at least for the time being-Ralph turned back to Clotho and Lachesis.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she got there first, [“There’s one other thing I want to know before we go any further. “I It was Clotho who replied, sounding slightly amused-sounding, in fact, remarkably like Bill McGovern. Ralph didn’t care for it much.
[What is that, Lois?] [“Is Ralph in danger, too? Does Atropos have something of Ralph’s we need to take back later on? Something like
Bill’s hat?”] Lachesis and Clotho exchanged a quick, apprehensive glance.
Ralph didn’t think Lois caught it, but he did. She’s getting too close for comfort, that look said. Then it was gone. Their faces were smooth again as they turned their attention back to Lois.
Lachesis: [No. Atropos has taken nothing from Ralph because, up until now, doing so would not help him in any way.] Ralph: [“What do -you mean, ’up until now’?”] Clotho: [You have spent your life as part of the Purpose, Ralph, but that has changed.] Lois: [“When did it change? It happened when we started seeing the auras, didn’t it?”] They looked at each other, then at Lois, then-nervously-at Ralph.
They said nothing, and an interesting idea occurred to Ralph: like the boy George Washington of the cherry tree myth, Clotho and Lachesis could not tell a lie… and at moments like this they probably regretted it. The only alternative was the one they were employing: keeping their lips zipped and hoping the conversation would move on to safer areas. Ralph decided he didn’t want it to move on-at least not yet-even though they were dangerously close to allowing Lois to find out where her earrings had gone… always assuming she didn’t know that already, a possibility that did not strike him as at all remote.
An old carny pitchman’s line occurred to him: Step right up, gentlemen… but if you want to play, you have to pay.
[“Oh no, Lois-the change didn’t happen when I started to see the auras. I think a lot of people catch a glimpse ’ into the Long-Time world If in of auras every now and again, and nothing bad happens to them. I don’t think I got knocked out of my nice safe place in the PurPose until we started to talk to these two fine fellows. What do you say, fine fellows? You did everything but leave a trail of breadcrumbs, even though you knew perfectly well what was going to happen. Isn’t that about the size of it?”] They looked down at their feet, then slowly, reluctantly, back up at Ralph. It was Lachesis who answered.
[Yes, Ralph. We drew you to us even though we knew it would alter your ka. It’s unfortunate, but the situation demands it.] Now Lois will ask about herself, Ralph thought. Now she must ask.
But she didn’t. She only looked at the two little bald doctors with an inscrutable expression completely unlike any of her usual Our Lois looks. Ralph wondered again how much she knew or guessed, marvelled again that he didn’t have the slightest clue… and then these speculations were swallowed in a fresh wave of anger.
[“You guys… man oh man, you guys… “He didn’t finish, although he might have, if Lois hadn’t been standing beside him: You guys have done quite a bit more than just mess with our sleep, haven’t you? I don’t know about Lois, but I had a nice little niche in the Purpose… which means that you deliberately made me an exception to the very rules you’ve spent your whole lives upholding. In a way, I’ve become as much a blank as this guy we’re supposed to find. How did Clotho put it? “All bets are off “How very fucking true.
Lois: [“You talked about using our powers. What powers?”] Lachesis turned to her, clearly delighted at the change of subject.
He pressed his hands together, palm to palm, then opened them in a curiously Oriental gesture. What appeared between them were two swift images: Ralph’s hand producing a bolt of cold blue fire as it cut the air in a karate chop, and Lois’s forefinger producing bright blue-gray pellets of light that looked like nuclear cough-drops.
Ralph: [“Yes, all right, we have something, but it isn’t reliable.
It’s like-”] He concentrated and created an image of his own: hands opening the back of a radio and removing a pair of AA batteries encrusted with blue-gray crud. Clotho and Lachesis frowned at him, not getting it.
Lois: [“He’s trying to say we can’t always do that, and when we can, we can’t do it for long. Our batteries go flat, you see.”] Understanding mixed with amused incredulity broke over their features.
Ralph: [“What’s so damned funny?”
Clotho: [Nothing… everything. you have no concept of both strange you and Lois seem to us-incredible, wise and perceptive at one moment, incredibly naie at the next, Your batteries, as you call them, need never go flat, because the two of you are standing next to a bottomless reservoir of power. We assumed that, since you have both already drunk from it, you must surely know about it.] Ralph: [“What in the world are you talking about?”] Lachesis made that curiously Oriental hand-opening gesture again.
This time Ralph saw Mrs. Perrine, walking stiffly upright within an aura the color of a West Pointer’s dress uniform. Saw a shaft of gray brilliance, as thin and straight as the quill of a porcupine, poke out of this aura.