The blanket shifted slightly as she did and Ralph got a look at the crown of its head.
There was a deep crease in the tiny skull. A red scar ran the length of it. To Ralph it looked like a rill of tainted water standing at the bottom of a ditch. The ugly and confused yellow-gray aura which surrounded the baby was emerging from this scar like steam from a crack in the earth. The baby's balloon-string was the same color as its aura, and it was unlike any other balloon-string Ralph had seen so far-not unhealthy in appearance but short, ugly, and no more than a stub.
"Didn't your mother ever teach you any manners?" the baby's mother asked Ralph, and what cut him wasn't so much the admonotion as the way she made it. He had scared her badly, "Madam, I assure you-"
"Yeah, go on and assure my fanny," she said, and stepped out of the car. The elevator doors started to slide closed. Ralph glanced at Lois and the two of them exchanged a moment of brief but total understanding. Lois shook her finger at the doors as if scolding them, and a gray, meshlike substance fanned out from its tip. The doors struck this and then slid back into their slots, as they were programmed to do upon encountering any barrier to their progress.
["Madam!ill The woman stopped and turned around, clearly confused. She shot suspicious glances about her, trying to identify who had spoken.
Her aura was a dark, buttery yellow with faint tints of orange spoking out from its inner edges. Ralph fixed her eyes with his.
["I'm sorry if I offended you. This is all very new to my friend and me. We're like children at a formal dinner. I apologize.
He didn't know just what she was trying to communicate-it was like watching someone talk inside a soundproof booth-but he sensed relief and deep unease... the sort Of unease people feel when they think they may have been observed doing something they shouldn't. Her doubtful eyes remained on his face a moment or two longer, then she turned and began to walk rapidly down the corridor in the direction of a sign reading NEUROLOGICAL SURVEY.
The gray mesh Lois had cast at the door was thinning, and when the doors tried to close again, they cut neatly through it. The car continued its slow upward journey.
["Ralph... Ralph, I think I know what happened to that baby."] She reached toward his face with her right hand and slipped it between his nose and mouth with her palm down. She pressed the pad of her thumb lightly against one of his cheekbones and the pad of her index finger lightly against the other. It was done so quickly and confidently that no one else in the elevator noticed. If one of the three other riders had noticed, he or she would have seen something that looked like a neatness-minded wife smoothing away a blot of skin-lotion or a dollop of leftover shaving cream.
Ralph felt as if someone had pulled a high-voltage switch inside his brain, one that turned on whole banks of blazing stadium lights.
In their raw, momentary glow, he saw a terrible image: hands clad in a violent brownish-purple aura reaching into a crib and snatching up the baby they had just seen. He was shaken back and forth, head snapping and rolling on the thin stalk of neck like the head of a Raggedy Andy doll -and thrown The lights in his head went black then, and Ralph let out a harsh, shuddery sigh of relief. He thought of the pro-life protestors he'd seen on the evening news just last night, men and women waving signs with Susan Day's picture and WANTED FOR MURDER on them, men and women in Grim Reaper robes, men and women carrying a banner which read LIFE, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CHOICE.
He wondered if the thunderstruck baby might have a differing opinion on that last one. He met Lois's amazed, agonized eyes with his own, and groped out to take her hands.
["Father did it, right? Threw the kid against the [")'es. The hah. Couldn't stop coming." ["And she knows. She knows, but she hasn't told anyone.
["No... but she might, Ralph. She's the knowing about it."] ["She might also wait until he does it again. An next time he might finish the job." A terrible thought occurred to Ralph then; it shot across his mind like a meteor scratching momentary fire across a