it to the roof was who they were and what they wanted. They slipped those questions with a lot of philosophical blather, but I imagine they got a little sweaty on the backs of their necks for awhile, just the same.
Next we got all that background on the Purpose and the Random-fascinating, but nothing we exactly needed in order to drive out to High Ridge and persuade Gretchen Tillbury to cancel Susan Day's speech. Hell, we would have done better-saved time-getting the road-directions from them that we ended up getting from Simone's niece."
Lois looked startled. "That's true, isn't it?"
"Yeah. And all the time we were talking, time was flying by the way it does when you go up a couple of levels. They were watching it fly, too, you can believe that. They were timing the whole scene so that when they finished telling us the things we did need to know, there would be no time left to ask the questions they didn't want to answer. I think they wanted to leave us with the idea that this whole thing was a public service, that saving all those lives is what it's all about, but they couldn't come right out and say so, because-"
"Because that would be a lie, and maybe they can't lie."
"Right. Maybe they can't lie."
"So what do they want, Ralph?" He shook his head. "I don't have a clue, Lois. Not even a hint." She finished her own coffee, set the cup carefully back down in its saucer, studied her fingertips for a moment, then looked up at him. Again he was forcibly struck by her beauty-almost levelled by it. "They were good," she said. "They are good. I felt that very strongly.
Didn't you?"
"Yes," he said, almost reluctantly. Of course he had felt it. They were everything Atropos was not.
"And you're going to try to stop Ed regardless-you said you could no more not try than you could not try to duck a baseball someone chucked at your head. Isn't that so?"
"Yes," he said, more reluctantly still.
"Then you should let the rest of it go," she said calmly, meeting his blue eyes with her dark ones. "It's just taking up space inside your head, Ralph. Making clutter."
He saw the truth of what she said, but still doubted if he could simply open his hand and let that part of it fly free. May I be you had to live to be seventy before you could fully appreciate how hard it was to escape your upbringing. He was a man whose education on how to be a man had begun before Adolf Hitler's rise to power, and he was still a prisoner of a generation that had listened to H. V.
Kaltenborn and the Andrews Sisters on the radio-a generation of men that believed in moonlight cocktails and walking a mile for a Camel. Such an upbringing almost negated such nice moral questions as who was working for the good and who was working for the bad; the important thing was not to let the bullies kick sand in your face. Not to be led by the nose.
Is that so? Carolyn asked, coolly amused. How fascinating. But let me be the first to let you in on a little secret, Ralph: that's crap. it was crap back before Glenn Miller disappeared over the horizon an it's crap now. The idea that a man's got to do what a man's got to do, now... there might be a little truth to that, even in this day and age, It's a long walk back to Eden in any case, isn't it, sweetheart?
Yes. A very long walk back to Eden.
"What are you smiling about, Ralph?"
He was saved the need to reply by the arrival of the waitress and a huge tray of food. He noticed for the first time that there was a button pinned to the frill of her apron. LIFE IS NOT A CHOICE, it read.
"Are you going to the rally at the Civic Center tonight?" Ralph asked her.
"I'll be there," she said, setting her tray down on the unoccupied table next to theirs in order to free her hands.
"Outside.
Carrying a sign. Walking roundy-round."
"Are you a Friend of Life?" Lois asked as the waitress began to deal out omelets and side-dishes.
"Am I livin?" the waitress asked.
"Yes, you certainly appear to be," Lois said politely.
"Well, I guess that makes me a Friend of Life, doesn't it?
Killing something that could someday write a great poem or invent a drug that cures