bureaucratic guard dog. It wasn't as if he wanted an exit-visa from Albania, after all; just a goddam I.C.U. pass would do.
There was a slot in the base of the glass booth. Ralph reached through it and grasped the woman's wrist before she could pull it away.
There was a sensation, painless but very clear, of those orange hooks passing directly through his flesh without finding anything to catch on. Ralph squeezed gently and felt a small burst of force-something that would have been no bigger than a pellet if it had been seen-pass from him to the woman. Suddenly the officious orange aura around her left arm and side turned the faded turquoise of Ralph's aura. She gasped and jerked forward on her chair, as if someone had just dumped a paper cup filled with ice-cubes down the back of her uniform.
["Never mind the computer. just give me a couple of passes, please.
Right away."
"Yes, sir," she said at once, and Ralph let go of her wrist so she could reach beneath her desk. The turquoise glow around her arm was turning orange again, the change in color creeping down from her shoulder toward her wrist.
But I could have turned her all blue, Ralph thought. Take her offer.
Run her around the room like a wind-up toy.
He suddenly remembered Ed quoting Matthew's Gospel-to Herod, When he said that he was mocked, was exceeding through a mixture of fright and shame filled him. Thoughts of vampirism recurred as well, and a snatch from a famous old Pogo comic strip: We have met the enemy and he is us.
Yes, he could probably do almost anything he wanted with this orange-haloed grump; his batteries were fully charged.
The only problem was that the juice in those batteries-and in Lois's, as well-was stolen goods.
When the information-lady's hand emerged from beneath the desk, it was holding two laminated pink badges marked INTENSIVE CARE/VISITOR.
"Here you are, sir," she said in a courteous voice utterly unlike the tone in which she had first addressed him. "Enljoy your visit and thank you for waiting."
"Thank you," Ralph said. He took the badges and grasped Lois's hand.
"Come on, dear. We ought to ["Ralph, what did yoU DO to her?"] ["Nothing, I guess-I think she's all right."] get upstairs and make our visit before it gets too late."
Lois glanced back at the woman in the information booth. She was dealing with her next customer, but slowly, as if she'd just been granted some moderately amazing revelation and had to think it over.
The blue glow was now visible only at the very tips of her fingers, and as Lois watched, that disappeared as well.
Lois looked up at Ralph again and smiled.
I "Yes... she is all right. So stop beating up on yourself ["Was that what I was doing?" ["I think so, yes... we're talking that way again, Ralph."] I "I know,"] ["Ralph?"] ["Yes?"] I "This is all pretty wonderful, isn't it?"] ["Yes." Ralph tried to hide the rest of what he was thinking from her: that when the price for something which felt this wonderful came due, they were apt to discover it was very high.
["Stop staring at that baby, Ralph. You're making its mother nervous."]
Ralph glanced at the woman in whose arms the baby slept and saw that Lois was right... but it was hard not to look. The baby, no more than three months old, lay within a capsule of violently shifting yellow-gray aura. This powerful but disquieting thunder light circled the tiny body with the idiot speed of the atmosphere surrounding a gas giant-Jupiter, say, or Saturn.
["Jesus, Lois, that's brain-damage, isn't it?"] ["Yes. The woman says there was a car accident."] ["Says? Have you been talking to her?"] ["No. It's -." ["I don't understand."] ["Join the club."] The oversized hospital elevator labored slowly upward. Those inside-the lame, the halt, the guilty few in good health-didn't speak but either turned their eyes up to the floor-indicator over the doors or down to inspect their own shoes. The only exception to this was the woman with the thunderstruck baby. She was watching Ralph with distrust and alarm, as if she expected him to leap forward at any moment and try to rip her infant from her arms.
It's not just that I was looking, Ralph thought. At least I don't think so. She felt me thinking about her hah-. Felt me... sensed me... heard me... some damned thing, anyway.
The elevator stopped on the second floor and the doors wheezed open. The woman with the baby