two fingers of his right hand in a V and then flicking them upward, creating a -red arc in the air. Within it, Ralph saw a human figure. Beyond it, dimly glimpsed, as if seen through a mist of blood, was the Red Apple Store. He started to ask who that was standing in the foreground, on the curb of Harris Avenue... and then, suddenly, he knew. He looked up at Atropos with shocked eyes.
["Jesus, no." No, you can't."'] The grin on Atropos's face continued to widen.
[You know, that's what I kept thinking about you, Short-Time.
Only I was wrong. You are, too. Watch.] Atropos moved his spread fingers slightly wider. Ralph saw someone wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap come out of the Red Apple, and this time Ralph knew immediately whom he was looking at. This person called to the one across the street, and then something terrible began to happen. Ralph turned away, sickened, from the bloody arc of the future between Atropos's small fingers.
But he heard it when it happened.
[The one I showed you-first belongs to the Random Shorts-to me. another words. And here's my promise to you: if you go on getting in my way, what I've just shown you is going to happen. There's nothing you can do, no warning you can give, that will stop it from happening.
But if you leave off now-if you and the woman simply stand aside and let events take their course-then I will stay my hand.] The vulgarities which formed so large a part of Atropos's usual discourse had been left behind like a discarded costume, and for the first time Ralph had some clear sense of how truly old and malevolently wise this being was.
[Remember what the junkies say, Shorts.-dying is easy, living is hard. It's a true saying. If anyone should know, it's me. So what do you think? Having any second thoughts?] Ralph stood in the filthy chamber with his head down and his fists clenched. Lois's earrings burned in one of them like small hot coals.
Ed's ring also seemed to burn against him, and he knew there wasn't a thing in the world to stop him from taking it out of his pocket and throwing it into the other room after the scalpel. He remembered a story he'd read in school about a thousand years ago.
"The Lady or the Tiger?" it had been called, and now he understood what it was to be given such a terrible power... and such a terrible choice. On the surface it seemed easy enough; what, after all, was one life against two thousand?
But that one life-!
Yet really it isn't as if anyone would ever have to know, he thought coldly. No one except maybe for Lois... and Lois would accept my decision. Carolyn might not have done, hut they're very different women.
Yes, but did he have the right?
Atropos also read this in his aura-it was spooky, how much the creature saw.
[Of course you do, Ralph-that's what these matters of life and death are really about: who has the right. This time it's you. So what do you say?] ["I don't know what I say. I don't know what I think. All I know is that I wish all three of you had LEFT ME THE FUCK ALONE!"] Ralph
Roberts raised his head toward the root-riddled ceiling of Atropos's den and screamed.
Five minutes later, Ralph's head poked out of the shadows beneath the old, leaning oak. He saw Lois at once. She was kneeling in front of him, peering anxiously through the tangle of roots at his upturned face. He raised a grimy, blood-streaked hand and she took it firmly, holding him steady as he made his way up the last few stepsgnarled roots that were actually more like ladder-rungs.
Ralph wriggled his way out from under the tree and turned over onto his back, taking the sweet air in great long pulls of breath. The thought air had never in his whole life tasted so good. In spite of everything else, he was enormously grateful to be out. To be free.
["Ralph? Are you all right?"] He turned her hand over, kissed her palm, then put her earrings where his lips had been.
["Yes. Fine. These are yours."] She looked at them curiously, as if she had never seen earrings, these or any others-before, and then put them in her dress pocket.
Part III THE CRIMSON KING CHAPTER 27
["You saw them in the mirror, didn't you, Lois?"] ["Yes, and it made me angry...