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  Old Dor had suggested he not do that - a good policy, no doubt, but he, Ralph, had really had no choice . . . because these two bald half-pints had messed in with him. They had, in a very real sense, gotten Bill McGovern killed.

  Clotho and Lachesis saw his anger and took a step backward (although they seemed to do it without actually moving their feet), their faces becoming more uneasy than ever.

  ['You two are the reason Bill McGovern's dead. That's the truth of it, isn't it?']

  Clotho: [Please . . . if you'll just let us finish explaining--]

  Lois was staring at Ralph, worried and scared.

  ['Ralph? What's wrong? Why are you angry?']

  ['Don't you get it? This little setup of theirs cost Bill McGovern his life. We're here because Atropos has either done something these guys don't like or is getting ready to--']

  Lachesis: [You're jumping to conclusions, Ralph--]

  ['- but there's one very basic problem: he knows we see him! Atropos KNOWS we see him!']

  Lois's eyes widened with terror . . . and with understanding.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  * * *

  1

  A small white hand fell on Ralph's shoulder and lay there like smoke.

  [Please . . . if you'll only let us explain--]

  He felt that change - that blink - happen in his body even before he was fully aware he had willed it. He could feel the wind again, coming out of the dark like the blade of a cold knife, and shivered. The touch of Clotho's hand was now no more than a phantom vibration just below the surface of his skin. He could see all three of them, but now they were milky and faint. Now they were ghosts.

  I've stepped down. Not all the way back down to where we started, but at least down to a level where they can have almost no physical contact with me. My aura, my balloon-string . . . yes, I'm sure they could get at those things, but the physical part of me that lives my real life in the Short-Time world? No way, Jose.

  Lois's voice, as distant as a fading echo: ['Ralph! What are you doing to your ]

  He looked at the ghostly images of Clotho and Lachesis. Now they looked not just uneasy or slightly guilty but downright scared. Their faces were distorted and hard to see, but their fear was none the less unmistakable.

  Clotho, his voice distant but audible: [Come back, Ralph! Please come back!]

  'If I do, will you quit playing games and be straight with us?'

  Lachesis, fading, disappearing: [Yes! Yes!]

  Ralph made that interior blink happen again. The three of them came back into focus. At the same time, color once more filled up the spaces of the world and time resumed its former sprint - he observed the waning moon sliding down the far side of the sky like a dollop of glowing mercury. Lois threw her arms around his neck, and for a moment he wasn't sure if she was hugging him or trying to strangle him.

  ['Thank God! I thought you were going to leave me!']

  Ralph kissed her and for a moment his head was filled with a pleasant jumble of sensory input: the taste of fresh honey, a texture like combed wool, and the smell of apples. A thought blipped across his mind (what would it be like to make love up here?) and he banished it at once. He needed to think and speak very carefully in the next few (minutes? hours? days?) and thinking about stuff like that would only make it that much harder. He turned to the little bald doctors and measured them with his eyes.

  ['I hope you mean it. Because if you don't, I think we'd better call this horserace off right now and go our separate ways.']

  Clotho and Lachesis didn't bother with the exchanged glance this time; they both nodded eagerly. Lachesis spoke, and he did so in a defensive tone of voice. These fellows, Ralph suspected, were a lot more pleasant to deal with than Atropos, but no more used to being questioned - to being put on their mettle, Ralph's mother would have said - than he was.

  [Everything we told you was true, Ralph and Lois. We may have left out the possibility that Atropos has a slightly greater understanding of the situation than we would really like, but--]

  Ralph: ['What if we refuse to listen to any more of this nonsense? What if we just turn and walk away?']

  Neither replied, but Ralph thought he saw a dismaying thing in their eyes: they knew that Atropos had Lois's earrings, and they knew he knew. The only one who didn't know - he hoped - was Lois herself.

  She was now tugging his arm.

  ['Don't do that, Ralph - please don't. We need to hear them out.']

  He turned back to them and made a curt motion for them to go on.

  Lachesis: [Under ordinary circumstances, we don't interfere with Atropos, nor he with us. We couldn't interfere with him even if we wanted to; the Random and the Purpose are like the red and black squares on a checkerboard, defining each other by contrast. But Atropos does want to interfere with the way things operate - interfering is, in a very real sense, what he was made to do - and on rare occasions, the opportunity to do so in a really big way presents itself. Efforts to stop his meddling are rare--]

  Clotho: [The truth is actually a little stronger, Ralph and Lois; never in our experience has an effort been made to check or bar him.]

  Lachesis: [- and are made only if the situation into which he intends to meddle is a very delicate one, where many serious matters are balanced and counterbalanced. This is one of those situations. Atropos has severed a life-cord he would have done well to leave alone. This will cause terrible problems on all levels, not to mention a serious imbalance between the Random and the Purpose, unless the situation is rectified. We cannot deal with what's happening; the situation has passed far beyond our skills. We can no longer see clearly, let alone act. Yet in this case our inability to see hardly matters, because in the end, only Short-Timers can oppose the will of Atropos. That is why you two are here.]

  Ralph: ['Are you saying that Atropos cut the cord of someone who was supposed to die a natural death . . . or a Purposeful death?']

  Clotho: [Not exactly. Some lives - a very few - bear no clear designation. When Atropos touches such lives, trouble is always likely. 'All bets are off,' you say. Such undesignated lives are like--]

  Clotho drew his hands apart and an image - playing cards again - flashed between them. A row of seven cards that were swiftly turned over, one after another, by an unseen hand. An ace; a deuce; a joker; a trey; a seven; a queen. The last card the invisible hand flipped over was blank.

  Clotho: [Does this picture help?]

  Ralph's brow furrowed. He didn't know if it did or not. Somewhere out there was a person who was neither a regular playing card nor a joker in the deck. A person who was perfectly blank, up for grabs by either side. Atropos had slashed this guy's metaphysical air-hose, and now somebody - or something - had called a time-out.

  Lois: ['It's Ed you're talking about, isn't it?']

  Ralph wheeled around and stared at her sharply, but she was looking at Lachesis.

  ['Ed Deepneau is the blank card.']

  Lachesis was nodding.

  ['How did you know that, Lois?']

  ['Who else could it be?']

  She wasn't smiling at him, precisely, but Ralph felt the sense of a smile. He turned back to Clotho and Lachesis.

  ['Okay, at last we're getting somewhere. So who flashed the red light on this deal? I don't think it was you guys - I have an idea that on this one, at least, you two aren't much more than the hired help.']

  They put their heads together for a moment and murmured, but Ralph saw a faint ocher tinge appear like a seam at the place where their green-gold auras overlapped and knew he was right. At last the two of them faced Ralph and Lois again.

  Lachesis: [Yes, that is basically the case. You have a way of putting things in perspective, Ralph. We haven't had a conversation like this in a thousand years--]

  Clotho: [If ever.]

  Ralph: ['All you have to do is tell the truth, boys.']

  Lachesis, as plaintively as a child: [We have been!]

  Ralph: ['The whole truth.']

  Lach
esis: [All right; the whole truth. Yes, it is Ed Deepneau's cord Atropos cut. We don't know this because we have seen it - we've passed beyond our ability to see clearly, as I said - but because it is the only logical conclusion. Deepneau is undesignated, neither of the Random nor of the Purpose, that we do know, and his must have been some sort of master-cord to have caused all this uproar and concern. The very fact that he has lived so long after his life-cord was severed indicates his power and importance. When Atropos severed this cord, he set a terrible chain of events in motion.]

  Lois shivered and stepped closer to Ralph.

  Lachesis: [You called us hired help. You were more right than you knew. We are, in this case, simply messengers. Our job is to make you and Lois aware of what has happened and what is expected of you, and that job is now almost done. As to who 'flashed the red light', we can't answer that question because we don't really know.]

  ['I don't believe you.']

  But he heard the lack of conviction in his own voice (if it was a voice).

  Clotho: [Don't be silly - of course you do! Would you expect the directors of a large automobile company to invite a lowly worker up to the boardroom so they could explain the reasons behind all the company's policies? Or perhaps give him the details on why they decided to close one plant and leave another one open?]

  Lachesis: [We're a little more highly placed than the men who work on automobile assembly lines, but we're still what you would call 'working joes', Ralph - no more and no less.]

  Clotho: [Be content with this: beyond the Short-Time levels of existence and the Long-Time levels on which Lachesis, Atropos, and I exist, there are yet other levels. These are inhabited by creatures we could call All-Timers, beings which are either eternal or so close to it as to make no difference. Short-Timers and Long-Timers live in overlapping spheres of existence - on connected floors of the same building, if you like - ruled by the Random and the Purpose. Above these floors, inaccessible to us but very much a part of the same tower of existence, live other beings. Some of them are marvellous and wonderful; others are hideous beyond our ability to comprehend, let alone yours. These beings might be called the Higher Purpose and the Higher Random . . . or perhaps there is no Random beyond a certain level; we suspect that may be the case, but we have no real way of telling. We do know that it is something from one of these higher levels that has interested itself in Ed, and that something else from up there made a countermove. That countermove is you, Ralph and Lois.]

  Lois gave Ralph a dismayed look that he hardly noticed. The idea that something was moving them around like chess-pieces in Faye Chapin's beloved Runway 3 Classic - an idea that would have infuriated him under other circumstances - went right by him for the time being. He was remembering the night Ed had called him on the telephone. You're drifting into deep water, he'd said, and there are things swimming around in the undertow you can't even conceive of.

  Entities, in other words.

  Beings too hideous to comprehend, according to Mr C, and Mr C was a gentleman who dealt death for a living.

  They haven't really noticed you yet, Ed had told him that night, but if you keep fooling with me, they will. And you don't want that. Believe me, you don't.

  Lois: ['How did you get us up to this level in the first place? It was the insomnia, wasn't it?']

  Lachesis, cautiously: [Essentially, yes. We're able to make certain small changes in Short-Time auras. These adjustments caused a rather special form of insomnia that altered the way you dream and the way you perceive the waking world. Adjusting Short-Term auras is delicate, frightening work. Madness is always a danger.]

  Clotho: [At times you may have felt that you were going mad, but neither of you was ever even close. You're much tougher, both of you, than you give yourself credit for.]

  These assholes actually think they're being comforting, Ralph marvelled, and then pushed his anger away again. He simply had no time to be angry now. Later, maybe, he could make up for that. He hoped so. For now he simply patted Lois's hands, then turned to Clotho and Lachesis again.

  ['Last summer, after he beat his wife up, Ed spoke to me of a being he called the Crimson King. Does that mean anything to you fellows?']

  Clotho and Lachesis exchanged another look, one which Ralph at first mistook for solemnity.

  Clotho: [Ralph, you must remember that Ed is insane, existing in a delusional state--]

  ['Yeah, tell me about it.']

  [- but we believe that his 'Crimson King' does exist in one form or another, and that when Atropos cut his life-cord, Ed Deepneau fell directly under this being's influence.]

  The two little bald doctors looked at each other again, and this time Ralph saw the shared expression for what it really was: not solemnity but terror.

  2

  A new day had dawned - Thursday - and was now brightening its way toward noon. Ralph couldn't tell for sure, but he thought the speed with which the hours were passing down there on the Short-Time level was increasing; if they didn't wrap this thing up soon, Bill McGovern wouldn't be the only one of their friends they outlived.

  Clotho: [Atropos knew that the Higher Purpose would send someone to try to change what he has set in motion, and now he knows who. But you must not allow yourselves to be sidetracked by Atropos; you must remember that he is little more than a pawn on this board. It is not Atropos who really opposes you.]

  He paused and looked doubtfully at his colleague. Lachesis nodded for him to go on, and he did so confidently enough, but Ralph felt his heart sink a little, just the same. He was sure the two bald doctors had the best of intentions, but they were pretty clearly flying on instruments, just the same.

  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 want from 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--]

  [- 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 [- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -.]

  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 not 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 is or what he might be planning really doesn't matter. Your task lies elsewhere, in safer waters, but you still may ne
ed 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.']

  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.