elevator, doesn't it?"] She nodded. Her grip on his hand was still very tight.
They rose through the fifth floor, surfaced in a doctor's lounge on the sixth (two doctors-the full-sized kind-present, one watching an old F Troop rerun and the other snoring on the hia'eous Swedish Modern sofa), and then they were on the roof.
The night was clear, moonless, gorgeous. Stars glittered across the arc of the sky in an extravagant, misty sprawl of light. The wind was blowing hard, and he thought of Mrs. Perrine saying Indian summer was over, he could mark her words, Ralph could hear the wind but not feel it... although he had an idea he could feel it, if he wanted to.
It was just a matter of concentrating in the right way...
Even as this thought came, he sensed some minor, momentary change in his body, something that felt like a blink. Suddenly his hair was blowing back from his forehead, and he could hear his pants cuffs flapping around his shins. He shivered. Mrs. Perrine's back had been right about the weather changing. Ralph gave another interior blink and the push of the wind was gone. He looked over at Lachesis.
["Can I let go of your hand now?" Lachesis nodded and dropped his own grip. Clotho released Lois's hand. Ralph looked across town to the west and saw the pulsing blue runway lights of the airport. Beyond them was the gridwork of orange arc sodiums that marked Cape Green, one of the new housing developments on the far side of the Barrens.
And someplace, in the sprinkle of lights just east of the airport, was Harris Avenue.
["It's beautiful, isn't it, Ralph?"] He nodded and thought that standing there and seeing the city spread out in the dark like this was worth everything he had been through since the insomnia had started.
Everything and then some, But that wasn't a thought he entirely trusted.
He turned to Lachesis and Clotho.
["All right, explain. Who are you, who is he, and what do you want us to do?"] The two bald docs were standing between two rapidly turning heat ventilators which were spraying brownish-purple fans of effluent into the air. They glanced nervously at each other, and Lachesis gave Clotho an almost imperceptible nod. Clotho stepped forward, looked from Ralph to Lois, and seemed to gather his thoughts.
[Very well. First, you must understand that the things which are happening, while unexpected and distressing, are not precisely unnatural.
My colleague and I do what we were made to do,-Atropos does what he was made to do,-and you, my Short-Time friends, will do what you were made to do.] Ralph favored him with a bright, bitter smile, ["There goes.freedom of choice, I guess."] Lachesis: [You mustn't think so! It's simply that what you call freedom of choice is part of what we call ka, the great heel of believing.
Lois: ["We see as through a glass darkly... is that what 'You mean?"] Clotho, smiling his somehow youthful smile: [The Bible, I belier,l(.
And a very good lea-of putting it.] Ralph: ["Also pretty convenient for guys like you, bul I(,is puss 0/1 that for otv. We have a saying that isn't from the Bible, gentlemen, but it's a pretty good one, just the same.-Don't gild the lilly. I hope you'll keep it in mind."] Ralph had an idea, however, that that might be a little too much to ask.
Clotho began to speak then, and he went on for a fair length of time.
Ralph had no idea how long, exactly, because time was different on this level-compressed, somehow. At times there were no words at all in what he said; verbal terms were replaced with simple bright images like those in a child's rebus puzzle. Ralph supposed this was telepathy, and thus pretty amazing, but while it was happening it felt as natural as breath.
Sometimes both words and images were lost, interrupted by puzzling breaks -in communication. Yet even then Ralph was usually able to get some idea of what Clotho was trying to convey, and he had an idea Lois was understanding what was hidden in those lapses even more clearly than he was himself.
[First know that there are only four constants in that area of existence where your lives and ours, the lives of the -[overlap.
These four constants are Life, Death, the Purpose, and the Random. All these words have meaning for you, but you now have a slightly different concept of Life and Death, do you not?