lying on the lawn, propped up on his elbows. "She thought you wouldn't find out she signed the petition."
Ed leaped over the walk, bent over Ralph, and shook his clenched fists over his head like the bad guy in a silent movie. "No-No-Noo!"
he cried.
The Jefferson Airplane had been replaced by the Animals, Eric Burdon growling out the gospel according to John Lee Hooker: Boom-boom-boom-boom, gonna shoot ya right down. McGovern uttered a thin cry, apparently thinking Ed meant to attack Ralph, but instead Ed sank down with the knuckles of his left hand pressed into the grass, assuming the position of a sprinter who waits for the starter's gun to explode him out of the blocks. His face was covered with beads of what Ralph at first took for sweat before remembering the way Ed had paced back and forth through the spray from the sprinkler. Ralph kept looking at the spot of blood on the left lens of Ed's glasses. it had smeared a little, and now the pupil of his left eye looked as if it had filled up with blood.
"Finding out that she signed the petition was fate! Simple fate!
Do you mean to tell me you don't see that? Don't insult my intelligence, Ralph! You may be getting on in years, but you're far from stupid. The thing is, I go down to the supermarket to buy baby-food, how's that for irony, and find out she's signed on with the babvkillers." The Centurions! With the Crimson King himself! And do you know what? I... just... saw... red...
"The Crimson King, Ed? Who's he?"
"Oh, please." Ed gave Ralph a cunning look." 'Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men." It's in the Bible, Ralph.
Matthew, chapter 2, verse 16. Do you doubt it-? Do you have any fucking question that it says that?"
"No. If you say so, I believe it," Ed nodded. His eyes, a deep and startling shade of green, darted here and there. Then he slowly leaned forward over Ralph, planting one hand on either side of Ralph's arms. It was as if he meant to kiss him. Ralph could smell sweat, and some sort of aftershave that had almost completely faded away now, and something else-something that smelled like old curdled milk. He wondered if it might be the smell of Ed's madness.
An ambulance was coming up Harris Avenue, running its flashers but not its siren. It turned into the Red Apple's parking lot.
"You better," Ed breathed into his face. "You just better believe it."
His eyes stopped wandering and centered on Ralph's.
"They are killing the babies wholesale," he said in a low voice which was not quite steady. "Ripping them from the wombs of their mothers and carrying them out of town in covered trucks. Flatbeds for the most part. Ask yourself this, Ralph: how many times a week do you see one of those big flatbeds tooling down the road? A flatbed with a tarp stretched across the back? Ever ask yourself what those trucks were carrying? Ever wonder what was under most of those tarps?"
Ed grinned. His eyes rolled.
"They burn most of the fetuses over in Newport. The sign says landfill, but it's really a crematorium. They send some of them out of state, though. In trucks, in light planes. Because fetal tissue is extremely valuable. I tell you that not just as a concerned citizen, but as an em Ralph, ployee of Hawking Laboratories. Fetal tissue is... more... valuable... than gold."
He turned his head suddenly and stared at Bill McGovern, who had crept a little closer again in order to hear what Ed was saying.
"YEA, MORE VALUABLE THAN GOLD AND MOPE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES!" he screamed, and McGovern leaped back, eyes widening in fear and dismay.
"DO YOU KNOW THAT, YOU OLD FAGGOT?"
"Yes," McGovern said. "I... I guess I did." He shot a quick glance down the street, where one of the police cars was now backing out of the Red Apple lot and turning in their direction. "I might have read it somewhere. In Scientific American, perhaps."
"Scientific American!" Ed laughed with gentle contempt and rolled his eyes at Ralph again, as if to say You see what I have to deal with.
Then his face grew sober again. "Wholesale murder," he said, "just as