[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.
This image was overlaid by one of a skinny woman encased in a smoggy brown aura. She was looking out a car window. A voiceLois’s-spoke: Oooh, Mina, isn’t that the dearest little house? A moment later there was a soft, indrawn whistle and a narrow ray of the woman’s aura poked out from behind her neck.
This was followed by a third image, brief but strong: Ralph reaching through the slot in the bottom of the information booth and gripping the wrist of the woman with the brambly orange aura… except that all at once the aura around her left arm no longer was orange. All at once it was the faded turquoise he now thought of as Ralph Roberts Blue.
The image faded. Lachesis and Clotho stared at Ralph and Lois; they stared back, shocked.
Lois: [“Oh, no! We can’t do that! it’s like-”]
Image: Two men in striped prison suits and little black masks tiptoeing out of a bank vault, carrying bulging sacks with the $ symbol printed on the sides.
Ralph: [“No, even worse. It’s like-”] Image: A bat flies in through an open casement window, makes two swooping circles in a silvery shaft of moonlight, then turns into Ralph Lugosi in a cape and old-fashioned tuxedo. He approaches t sleeping woman-not a young, rosy virgin but old Mrs. Perrine in a sensible flannel nightgown-and bends over to suck her aura.
When Ralph looked back at Clotho and Lachesis, both of them were shaking their heads vehemently.
Lachesis: [No No, no, no! You couldn’t be more wrong! Have you not wondered why you are Short-Timers, marking the spans of your lives in decades rather than in centuries? Your lives are short because you burn like bonfires! When you draw energy from yourfellow Short-Timers, it’s like-” Image: A child at the seashore, a lovely little girl with golden ringlets bouncing on her shoulders, runs down the beach to where the waves break. In one hand she carries a red plastic bucket. She kneels and fills it from the vast gray-blue Atlantic.
Clotho: [You are like that child, Ralph and Lois-your fellow Short-Timers are like the sea. Do you understand now?] Ralph: [“There’s really that much of this aural energy in the human race?”] Lachesis: [You still don’t understand. That’s how much there is-I Lois broke in. Her voice was trembling, although whether with fear or ecstasy, Ralph could not tell.
[“That’s how much there is in each one of us, Ralph. That’s how much there is in every human being on the face of the earth!”] Ralph whistled softly and looked from Lachesis to Clotho. They were nodding confirmation.
[“You’re saying we can stock up on this energy from whoever happens to be handy? That it’s safe for the people we take it from?”] Clotho: [Yes. You could no more hurt them than you could empty the Atlantic with a child’s beach-pat’ll Ralph hoped that was so, because he had an idea that he and Lois had been unconsciously borrowing energy like mad-it was the only explanation he could think of for all the compliments he had been getting. People telling him that he looked great.