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 explaiming-I 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.
Part II THE SECRET CITY CHAPTER 18
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 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 nonetheless 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 horse race 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