['Dammit, Lois and I already saved this kid once! Didn't that close the books, return him to the Purpose?']
Lachesis, patiently: [Yes, but he is not safe from Ed Deepneau, because Deepneau has no designation in either Random or Purpose. Of all the people on earth, only Deepneau can harm him before his time comes. If Deepneau fails, the boy will be safe again - he will pass his time quietly until his moment comes and he steps upon the stage to play his brief but crucially important part.]
['One life means so much, then?']
Lachesis: [Yes. If the child dies, the Tower of all existence will fall, and the consequences of such a fall are beyond your comprehension. And beyond ours, as well.]
Ralph stared down at his shoes for a moment. His head seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. There was an irony here, one he was able to grasp easily in spite of his weariness. Atropos had apparently set Ed in motion by inflaming some sort of Messiah complex which might have been pre-existing . . . a by-product of his undesignated status, perhaps. What Ed didn't see - and would never believe if told - was that Atropos and his bosses on the upper levels intended to use him not to save the Messiah but to kill him.
He looked up again into the anxious faces of the two little bald doctors.
['Okay, I don't know how I'm supposed to stop Ed, but I'll give it a shot.']
Clotho and Lachesis looked at each other and smiled identical (and very human) broad smiles of relief. Ralph raised a cautioning finger.
['Wait. You haven't heard all of it.']
Their smiles faded.
['I want something back from you. One life. I'll trade the life of your four-year-old boy for--']
6
Lois didn't hear the end of that; his voice dropped below the range of audibility for a moment, but when she saw first Clotho and then Lachesis begin shaking their heads, her heart sank.
Lachesis: [I understand your distress, and yes, Atropos can certainly do as he threatens. Yet you must surely comprehend that this one life is hardly as important as--]
Ralph: ['But I think it is, don't you see? I think it is. What you two guys need to get through your heads is that to me, both lives are equally--']
She lost him again, but had no problem hearing Clotho; in the depth of his distress he was almost wailing.
[But this is different! This boy's life is different!]
Now she heard Ralph clearly, speaking (if speech was what it was) with a fearless, relentless logic that made Lois think of her father.
['All lives are different. All of them matter or none matters. That's only my short-sighted, Short-Time view, of course, but I guess you boys are stuck with it, since I'm the one with the hammer. The bottom line is this: I'll trade you, even-up. The life of yours for the life of mine. All you have to do is promise, and the deal's on.']
Lachesis: [Ralph, please! Please understand that we really must not!]
There was a long moment of silence. When Ralph spoke, his voice was soft but still audible. It was, however, the last completely audible thing Lois heard in their conversation.
['There's a world of difference between cannot and must not, wouldn't you say?']
Clotho said something, but Lois caught only an isolated [trade might possibly be]
phrase. Lachesis shook his head violently. Ralph replied and Lachesis answered by making a grim little scissoring gesture with his fingers.
Surprisingly, Ralph replied to this with a laugh and a nod.
Clotho put a hand on his colleague's arm and spoke to him earnestly before turning back to Ralph.
Lois clenched her hands in her lap, willing them to reach some sort of agreement. Any agreement that would keep Ed Deepneau from killing all those people while they just stood here yattering.
Suddenly the side of the hill was illuminated by brilliant white light. At first Lois thought it came down from the sky, but that was only because myth and religion had taught her to believe the sky was the source of all supernatural emanations. In reality, it seemed to come from everywhere - trees, sky, ground, even from herself, streaming out of her aura like ribbons of fog.
There was a voice, then . . . or rather a Voice. It spoke only four words, but they echoed in Lois's head like iron bells.
[IT MAY BE SO.]
She saw Clotho, his small face a mask of terror and awe, reach into his back pocket and bring out his scissors. He fumbled and almost dropped them, a nervous blunder that made Lois feel real kinship for him. Then he was holding them up with one handle in each hand and the blades open.
Those four words came again: [IT MAY BE SO.]
This time they were followed by a glare so bright that for a moment Lois believed she must be blinded. She clapped her hands over her eyes but saw - in the last instant when she could see anything - that the light had centered on the scissors Clotho was holding up like a two-pronged lightning-rod.
There was no refuge from that light; it turned her eyelids and upraised, shielding hands to glass. The glare outlined the bones of her fingers like X-ray pencils as it streamed through her flesh. From somewhere far away she heard a woman who sounded suspiciously like Lois Chasse, screaming at the top of her mental voice: ['Turn it off! God, please turn it off before it kills me!']
And at last, when it seemed to her that she could stand no more, the light did begin to fade. When it was gone - except for a fierce blue afterimage that floated in the new darkness like a pair of phantom scissors - she slowly opened her eyes. For a moment she continued to see nothing but that brilliant blue cross and thought she had indeed been blinded. Then, as dim as a developing photograph at first, the world began to resurface. She saw Ralph, Clotho, and Lachesis lowering their own hands and peering around with the blind bewilderment of a nest of moles turned up by the blade of a harrow.
Lachesis was looking at the scissors in his colleague's hands as if he had never seen them before, and Lois was willing to bet he never had seen them as they were now. The blades were still shining, shedding eldritch fairy-glimmers of light in misty droplets.
Lachesis: [Ralph! That was . . . ]
She lost the rest of it, but his tone was that of a common peasant who answers a knock at the door of his hut and finds that the Pope has stopped by for a spot of prayer and a little confession.
Clotho was still staring at the blades of the scissors. Ralph was also looking, but at last he lifted his gaze to the bald doctors.
Ralph: [' . . . the hurt?']
Lachesis, speaking like a man emerging from a deep dream: [Yes . . . won't last long, but . . . agony will be intense . . . change your mind, Ralph?]
Lois was suddenly afraid of those shining scissors. She wanted to cry out to Ralph, tell him to never mind his one, to just give them their one, their little boy. She wanted to tell him to do whatever it took to get them to hide those scissors again.
But no words came from either her mouth or her mind.
Ralph: ['. . . in the least . . . just wanted to know what to expect.']
Clotho: [. . . ready? . . . must be . . . ]
Tell them no, Ralph! she thought at him. Tell them NO!
Ralph: ['. . . ready.']
Lachesis: [Understand . . . terms he has . . . and the price?]
Ralph, impatient now: ['Yes, yes. Can we please just . . .']
Clotho, with immense gravity: [Very well, Ralph. It may be so.]
Lachesis put an arm around Ralph's shoulders; he and Clotho led him a little further down the hill, to the place where the younger children started their downhill sled-runs in the winter. There was a small flat area there, circular in shape, about the size of a nightclub stage. When they reached it, Lachesis stopped Ralph, then turned him so he and Clotho were facing each other.
Lois suddenly wanted to shut her eyes and found she couldn't. She could only watch and pray that Ralph knew what he was doing.
Clotho murmured to him. Ralph nodded and slipped out of McGovern's sweater. He folded it and laid it neatly on the leaf-strewn grass. When he straightened again, Cloth
o took his right wrist and held his arm out straight. He then nodded to Lachesis, who unbuttoned the cuff of Ralph's shirt and rolled the sleeve to the elbow in three quick turns. With that done, Clotho rotated Ralph's arm so it was wrist-up. The fine tracery of blue veins just beneath the skin of his forearm was poignantly clear, highlighted in delicate strokes of aura. All of this was horribly familiar to Lois: it was like watching a patient on a TV doctor-show being prepped for an operation.
Except this wasn't TV.
Lachesis leaned forward and spoke again. Although she still couldn't hear the words, Lois knew he was telling Ralph this was his last chance.
Ralph nodded, and although his aura now told her that he was terrified of what was coming, he somehow even managed a smile. When he turned to Clotho and spoke, he did not seem to be seeking reassurance but rather offering a word of comfort. Clotho tried to return Ralph's smile, but without success.
Lachesis wrapped one hand around Ralph's wrist, more to steady the arm (or so it seemed to Lois) than to actually hold it immobile. He reminded her of a nurse attending a patient who must receive a painful injection. Then he looked at his partner with frightened eyes and nodded. Clotho nodded back, took a breath, and then bent over Ralph's upturned forearm with its ghostly tree of blue veins glowing beneath the skin. He paused for a moment, then slowly opened the jaws of the scissors with which he and his old friend traded life for death.
7
Lois staggered to her feet and stood swaying back and forth on legs that felt like lumber. She meant to break the paralysis which had locked her in such a cruel silence, to shout at Ralph and tell him to stop - tell him he didn't know what they meant to do to him.
Except he did. It was in the pallor of his face, his half-closed eyes, his painfully thinned lips. Most of all it was in the blotches of red and black which were flashing across his aura like meteors, and in the aura itself, which had tightened down to a hard blue shell.
Ralph nodded at Clotho, who brought the lower scissorblade down until it was touching Ralph's forearm just below the fold of the elbow. For a moment the skin only dimpled, and then a smooth dark blister of blood formed where the dimple had been. The blade slid into this blister. When Clotho squeezed his fingers, bringing the razor-sharp blades together, the skin on either side of the lengthwise cut snapped back with the suddenness of windowshades. Subcutaneous fat glimmered like melting ice in the fierce blue glow of Ralph's aura. Lachesis tightened his hold on Ralph's wrist, but so far as Lois could tell, Ralph did not make even a first instinctive effort to pull back, only lowered his head and clenched his left fist in the air like a man giving a Black Power salute. She could see the cords in his neck standing out like cables. Not a single sound escaped him.
Now that this terrible business was actually begun, Clotho proceeded with a speed which was both brutal and merciful. He cut rapidly down the middle of Ralph's forearm to his wrist, using the scissors the way a man will to open a parcel which has been heavily taped, guiding the blades with the fingers and bearing down with the thumb. Inside Ralph's arm, tendons gleamed like cuts of flank steak. Blood ran in freshets, and there was a fine scarlet spray each time an artery or a vein was severed. Soon fans of backspatter decorated the white tunics of the two small men, making them look more like little doctors than ever.
When his blades had at last severed the Bracelets of Fortune at Ralph's wrist (the 'operation' took less than three seconds but seemed to last forever to Lois), Clotho removed the dripping scissors and handed them to Lachesis. Ralph's upturned arm had been cut open from elbow to wrist in a dark furrow. Clotho clamped his hands over this furrow at its point of origination and Lois thought: Now the other one will pick up Ralph's sweater and use it as a tourniquet. But Lachesis made no move to do that; he merely held the scissors and watched.
For a moment the blood went on flowing between Clotho's grasping fingers, and then it stopped. He slowly drew his hands down Ralph's arm, and the flesh which emerged from his grip was whole and firm, although seamed with a thick white ridge of scar-tissue.
[Lois . . . Lo-isssss . . . ]
This voice was not coming from inside her head, nor from down the hill; it had come from behind her. A soft voice, almost cajoling. Atropos? No, not at all. She looked down and saw green and somehow sunken light flowing all around her - it rayed through the spaces between her arms and her body, between her legs, even between her fingers. It rippled her shadow ahead of her, scrawny and somehow twisted, like the shadow of a hanged woman. It caressed her with heatless fingers the color of Spanish moss.
[Turn around, Lo-isss . . . ]
At that moment the last thing on earth Lois Chasse wanted to do was turn around and look at the source of that green light.
[Turn around, Lo-isss . . . see me, Lo-isss . . . come into the light, Lo-isss . . . come into the light . . . see me and come into the light . . . ]
It was not a voice which could be disobeyed. Lois turned as slowly as a toy ballerina whose cogs have grown rusty, and her eyes seemed to fill up with Saint Elmo's fire.
Lois came into the light.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
* * *
1
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 accom-plished. 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, passed. 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 . . . is on. He felt good, but I could be wrong. I couldn't see him. His aura was too bright. He told me to give these back to you.']
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 - I 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 tak
e 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 and 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.