and briefly touched the cap. Its owner's name had been Billy Weatherbee. His final thought had been of ice cream.
Ralph's hand tightened over Lois's.
["Ralph, what is it? I can hear you thinking-I'm sure I can-but it's like listening to someone whisper under his breath."] ["I was thinking that I want to bust that little bastard's chops for him, Lois.
Maybe we could teach him what it's like to lie awake at night.
What do you think?" Her grip on his hand tightened. She nodded.
They reached a place where the narrow corridor they'd been following branched into diverging paths. That low, steady buzz was coming from the left hand one, and not very far up it, either, by the sound.
It was now impossible for them to walk side by side, and as they worked their way toward the end, the passage grew narrower still.
Ralph was finally obliged to begin sidling along.
The reddish exudate Atropos left behind was very thick here, dripping down the jumbled stacks of souvenirs and making little puddles on the dirt floor. Lois was holding his hand with painful tightness now, but Ralph didn't complain.
["It's like the Civic Center, Ralph-he spends a lot of time here."] Ralph nodded. The question was, what did Mr. A. come donx,n this aisle to commune with? They were coming to the end now, it was blocked by a solid wall of junk, and he still couldn't see what was making that buzzing sound. It was now starting to drive him crazy; it was like having a horsefly trapped in the middle Of Your head. As they approached the end of the passage, he became more and more sure that what they were looking for was on the other side of the wall of junk which blocked it-they would either have to retrace their steps and try to find a way around, or break through.
Either choice might consume more time than they could afford.
Ralph felt nibbles of desperation at the back of his mind.
But the corridor did not dead-end; on the left there was a crawlspace beneath a dining-room table piled high with dishes and stacks of green paper and...
Green paper? No, not quite. Stacks of bills. Tens, twenties, and fifties were piled up in random profusion on the dishes. There was a choke of hundreds in a cracked gravy-boat, and a rolled-up five-hundred-dollar bill poking drunkenly out of a dusty wineglass.
["Ralph! My God, it's a fortune!"]
She wasn't looking at the table but at the other wall of the passageway. The last five feet had been constructed of banded gray-green bricks of currency. They were in an alleyway which was literally made of money, and Ralph realized he could now answer another of the questions that had been troubling him: where Ed had been getting his dough. Atropos was rolling in it... but Ralph had an idea that the little bald-headed sonofabitch still had trouble getting dates.
He bent down a little to get a better look into the crawlspace underneath the table. There appeared to be yet another chamber on the other side, this one very small. A slow red glow waxed and waned in there like the beating of a heart. It cast uneasy pulses of light on their shoes.
Ralph pointed, then looked at Lois. She nodded. He dropped to his knees and crawled beneath the money-laden table, and into the shrine Atropos had created around the thing which lay in the middle of the floor. It was what they had been sent to find, he hadn't a single doubt about it, but he still had no idea what it was. The object, not much bigger than the sort of marbles children call croakers, was wrapped in a deathbag as impenetrable as the center of a black hole.
Oh, great-lovely. Now what?
["Ralph." Do you hear someting? It's very faint.
He looked at her dubiously, then glanced around. He had already come to hate this cramped space, and although he was not claustrophobic by nature, he now felt a panicky desire to get away squeezing into his thoughts. A very distinct voice spoke up in his head. It's not j I just what I want, Ralph,-it's what I need. I'll do my best to hang in with you, hut if you don't finish whatever the hell it is you're supposed to be doing in here soon, it won't make any difference what either of us want-I'm just going to take over and run like hell.
The controlled terror in that voice didn't surprise him, because this really was