immediately see it, however; he was scowling up into the sky.
At that instant, another bright green ray quilled out of his aura.
It shot across the weedy clearing beside the cellar-hole like a brilliant flashlight beam and into Lois's mouth and nose. The bill in her hand shook briefly.
["Oh, God, that's so good."']
"Goddam jet-jockeys from Charleston Air Force Base!" the wino cried disapprovingly. "They ain't s'pored to boom the sound-barrier till they get out over the ocean! I damn near wet my-" His eye fell on the bill between Lois's fingers, and his scowl deepened. "Sa-aay, what kind of joke you think you pullin here? I ain't stupid, you know.
Maybe I like a drink every now n then, but that don't make me stupid."
Give it time, Ralph thought. It will.
"No one thinks you're stupid," Lois said, "and it's no joke.
Take the money, sir."
The bum tried to hold onto his suspicious glower, but after another close look at Lois (and a quick side-glance at Ralph), it was overwhelmed by a large and winning smile. He stepped toward Lois, putting out his hand to take the money, which he had earned without even knowing it.
Lois raised her hand just before he could close his fingers on the bill. "Just mind you get something to eat as well as something to drink. And you might ask yourself if you're happy with the way you're living."
"You're absolutely right!" the wino cried enthusiastically. His eyes never left the bill between Lois's fingers. "Absolutely, ma'am!
They got a program other side of the river, detox and rehab, you know.
I'm thinking about it. I really am. I think about it every damn day."
But his eyes were still tacked to the twenty, and he was almost drooling. Lois gave Ralph a brief, doubtful look, then shrugged and let the bill pass from her fingers to his. "Thanks! Thanks, lady!"
His eyes shifted to Ralph. "Dis lady a real princess! I jus hope you know dat!"
"As a matter of fact, I do,"
Ralph favored Lois with a fond glance. he said.
Half an hour later, the two of them were walking between the rusty steel rails as they curved gently past the Municipal Golf Course... except they had drifted up a little higher above the Short-Time world after their meeting with the wino (perhaps because he had been a little high himself), and walking was not exactly what they were doing.
There was little or no effort involved, for one thing, and although their feet were moving, to Ralph it felt more like gliding than walking. Nor was he entirely sure they were visible to the Short-Time world; squirrels hopped unconcernedly about their feet, busy gathering supplies for the winter ahead, and once he saw Lois duck sharply as a wren almost parted her hair. The bird veered to the left and upward, as if realizing only at the last moment that there was a human in its flight-pattern. The golfers didn't pay them any mind, either. Ralph's opinion of golfers was that they were self-absorbed to the point of obsession, but he thought this lack of interest extreme, even SO. If he had seen a couple of neatly dressed adults strolling along a defunct GS amp;WM spur-line in the middle of the day, he thought he might have taken a brief time-out to try and think guess what they were up to and where they might be going.
I'd be especially curious about why the lady kept on muttering "Stay where you are, you darned old thing" and hitching at her skirt, Ralph thought, and grinned. But the golfers didn't even spare them a glance, although a foursome bound for the ninth hole passed close enough so that Ralph could hear them worrying over a developing softness in the bond market. The idea that he and Lois had become invisible again-or at least very dim-began to seem more and more plausible to Ralph. Plausible... and worrisome. Time goes faster when you're high, Old Dor had said.
The trail became fresher as they went west, and Ralph liked the drips and splashes which made it up less and less. Where the goop had fallen on the steel rails, it had eaten away the rust like corrosive acid. The weeds it had fallen on were black and dead-even the hardiest of them had died. As Ralph and Lois passed Derry Mum's third green and entered a tangle of scrawny trees and undergrowth, Lois tugged at his sleeve. She pointed ahead. Large splotches of Atropos's spoor gleamed like sick