[“I remember, jimmy,”] Jimmy appeared to smile, and then his eyes slipped closed again.
Lachesis placed his hands against the dying man’s cheeks and moved his head a bit, like a barber getting ready to shave a customer. At the same moment Clotho leaned even closer, opened his scissors, and slid them forward so that the long blades held jimmy V.'s black balloon-string. As Clotho closed the scissors, Lachesis leaned forward and kissed jimmy’s forehead.
[Go in peace, friend.] There was a small, unimportant snick!
sound. The segment of the balloon-string above the scissors drifted up toward the ceiling and disappeared. The deathbag in which Jimmy V. lay turned a momciitary bright white, then winked out of existence just as Rosalie’s had done earlier that evening. jimmy opened his eyes again and looked at Faye. fie started to smile, Ralph thought, and then his gaze turned fixed and distant. The dimples which had begun to form at the corners of his mouth smoothed out.
“Jimmy?” Faye shook jimmy V.'s shoulder, running his hand through
Lachesis’s side to do it. “You all right, jimmy?… Oh shit.”
Faye got up and left the room, not quite running.
Clotho: [Do you see and understand that what we do, we do with love an respect? That we are, in fact, the physicians of last resort?
It is vital to our dealings with you, Ralph and Lois, that you understand that”]. [“Yes.”] [“Yes.”] Ralph hadn’t intended to agree with anything either one of them said, but that phrase-the physicians of last resort-sliced cleanly and effortlessly through his anger. It felt true. They had freed jimmy V. from a world where there was nothing left for him but pain.
Yes, they had undoubtedly stood in Room 317 with Ralph on a sleety afternoon some seven months ago and given Carolyn the same release.
And yes, they went about their work with love and respect-any doubts he might have had on that score had been laid to rest when Lachesis kissed jimmy V.'s forehead. But did love and respect give them the right to put him-and Lois, too-through hell and then send them after a supernatural being that had gone off the rails Did it give them the right to even dream that two ordinary people, neither of them young anymore, could deal with such a creature?
Lachesis: [Let us move on from this place. It’s going to fill up with people, and we need to talk.]
[“Do we have any choice?”]
[There is always a choice.”] came back quickly, colored with overtones Of surprise.
Their answers [)’es, of colirve.”
Clotho and Lachesis walked toward the door; Ralph and Lois shrank back to let them pass. The auras of the little bald doctors swept over them for a moment, however, and Ralph registered the taste and texture: the taste of sweet apples, the texture of light bark.
As they left, side by side, speaking gravely and respectfully to each other, Faye came back in, now accompanied by a pair of nurses.
These newcomers passed through Lachesis and Clotho, then through Ralph and Lois, without slowing or seeming to notice anything untoward.
In the hall outside, life went on at its usual muted pace. No buzzers went off, no lights flashed, no orderlies came sprinting down the hallway, pushing the crash-wagon ahead of them, No one cried “Stat!” over the loudspeaker. Death was too common a visitor here for such things. Ralph guessed that it was not welcome, even under such circumstances as these, but it was familiar and accepted. He also guessed that jimmy V. would have been happy enough with his exit from the third floor of Derry Home-he had done it with no fuss or bother, and he hadn’t had to show anyone either his driver’s license or his Blue Cross Major Medical card. He had died with the dignity that simple, expected things often hold. One or two moments of consciousness, accompanied by a slightly wider perception of what was going on around him, and then poof. Pack up all my care and woe, blackbird, bye-bye.
They joined the bald docs in the hallway outside Bob Polhurst’s room.
Through the open door, they could see the deathwatch continuing around the old teacher’s bed.
Lois: [“The man closest to the bed is Bill McGover, a friciil o. ours. There’s something wrong withe him. Something awful. If we do what you want, could you-?”] But Lachesis and Clotho were shaking their heads in unison.
Clotho: [Nothing can be changed.] Yes, Ralph thought. Dorrance knew: done-bun-can’the-undone.
Lois: [“When will it happen?”] Clotho: [your friend belongs to the other, to the third. To the one Ralph has already named Atropos. But Atropos could tell you the exact hour of the man’s death no more than we could. He cannot even tell whom he will take next. Atropos is an agent of the Random.] This phrase sent a chill through Ralph’s heart.
Lachesis: [But this is no place for us to talk. Come.] Lachesis took one of Clotho’s hands, then held out his free hand to Ralph. At the same time, Clotho reached toward Lois. She hesitated, then looked at Ralph.
Ralph, in his turn, looked grimly at Lachesis.
[“You better not hurt her.”] [Neither of you will be hurt, Ralph.
Take my hand.] I’m a stranger in paradise, Ralph’s mind finished.
Then he sighed through his teeth, nodded to Lois, and gripped Lachesis’s outstretched hand. That shock of recognition, as deep and pleasant as an unexpected encounter with an old and valued friend, washed over him again, Apples and bark; memories of orchards he had walked through as a kid. He was somehow aware, without actually seeing it, that his aura had changed color and become-at least for a little while-the gold-flecked green of Clotho and Lachesis.
Lois took Clotho’s hand, inhaled a sharp little gasp over her teeth, then smiled hesitantly.
Clotho: [Complete the circle, Ralph and Lois. Don’t be afraid.
All is well. Boy, do I ever disagree with that, Ralph thought, but when Lois reached for his hand, he grasped her fingers. The taste of apples and the texture of dry bark was joined by some dark and unknown spice. Ralph inhaled its aroma deeply and then smiled at Lois.
She smiled back-no hesitation in that smile-and Ralph felt a dim, far off confusion. How could you be afraid? How could you even hesitate when what they brought felt this good and seemed this right-, I empathize, Ralph, but hesitate am,way, a voice counselled.
[“Ralph? Ralph.'’] She sounded alarmed and giddy at the same time. Ralph looked around just in time to see the top of the door of Room 315 descending past her shoulders… except it wasn’t the door going down; it was Lois going up. All of them going up, still holding hands in a circle.
Ralph had just gotten this through his head when momentary darkness, sharp as a knife-edge, crossed his vision like a shadow thrown by the slat of a venetian blind. He had a brief glimpse of narrow pipes that were probably part of the hospital’s sprinkler system, surrounded by tufted pink pads of insulation. Then he was looking down a long tiled corridor. A gurney cart was rolling straight at his head… which, he suddenly realized, had surfaced like a periscope in one of the fourth-floor corridors.
He heard Lois cry out and felt her grip on his hand tighten.
Ralph closed his eyes instinctively and waited for the approaching gurney to flatten his skull.
Clotho: [Be calm! Please, be calm.” Remember that these things exist on a different level of reality from the one where you are now.”
Ralph opened his eyes. The gurney was gone, although he could hear its receding wheels. The sound was coming from behind him now.
The gurney, like McGovern’s friend, had passed right through him.
The four of them were now levitating slowly into the corridor of what had to be the pediatrics wing-fairy-tale creatures pranced and gambolled up and down the walls, and characters from Disney’s Aladdin and The Little mermaid were decaled onto the windows of a large, brightly lighted play area. A doctor and a nurse strolled to ward them, discussing a case. I “-further tests seem but only if we can make at least ninety percent sure that-” The doctor walked through Ralph and as he did Ralph understood that he had started smoking again on the sly after five years off the weed and was feeling guilty as hell about it. Then they were gone.
Ralph looked down just in time to see his feet emerge from the tiled floor. He turned to Lois, smiling tentatively.
[“It sure beats the elevator, doesn’t it?”] She nodded. Her grip on his hand was still very tight.
They rose through the fifth floor, surfaced in a doctor’s lounge on the sixth (two doctors-the full-sized kind-present, one watching an old F Troop rerun and the other snoring on the hia’eous Swedish Modern sofa), and then they were on the roof.
The night was clear, moonless, gorgeous. Stars glittered across the arc of the sky in an extravagant, misty sprawl of light. The wind was blowing hard, and he thought of Mrs. Perrine saying Indian summer was over, he could mark her words, Ralph could hear the wind but not feel it… although he had an idea he could feel it, if he wanted to.
It was just a matter of concentrating in the right way…
Even as this thought came, he sensed some minor, momentary change in his body, something that felt like a blink. Suddenly his hair was blowing back from his forehead, and he could hear his pants cuffs flapping around his shins. He shivered. Mrs. Perrine’s back had been right about the weather changing. Ralph gave another interior blink and the push of the wind was gone. He looked over at Lachesis.
[“Can I let go of your hand now?” Lachesis nodded and dropped his own grip. Clotho released Lois’s hand. Ralph looked across town to the west and saw the pulsing blue runway lights of the airport. Beyond them was the gridwork of orange arc sodiums that marked Cape Green, one of the new housing developments on the far side of the Barrens.
And someplace, in the sprinkle of lights just east of the airport, was Harris Avenue.
[“It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Ralph?”] He nodded and thought that standing there and seeing the city spread out in the dark like this was worth everything he had been through since the insomnia had started.
Everything and then some, But that wasn’t a thought he entirely trusted.
He turned to Lachesis and Clotho.
[“All right, explain. Who are you, who is he, and what do you want us to do?”] The two bald docs were standing between two rapidly turning heat ventilators which were spraying brownish-purple fans of effluent into the air. They glanced nervously at each other, and Lachesis gave Clotho an almost imperceptible nod. Clotho stepped forward, looked from Ralph to Lois, and seemed to gather his thoughts.
[Very well. First, you must understand that the things which are happening, while unexpected and distressing, are not precisely unnatural.
My colleague and I do what we were made to do,-Atropos does what he was made to do,-and you, my Short-Time friends, will do what you were made to do.] Ralph favored him with a bright, bitter smile, [“There goes.freedom of choice, I guess.”] Lachesis: [You mustn’t think so! It’s simply that what you call freedom of choice is part of what we call ka, the great heel of believing.
Lois: [“We see as through a glass darkly… is that what ’You mean?”] Clotho, smiling his somehow youthful smile: [The Bible, I belier,l(.
And a very good lea-of putting it.] Ralph: [“Also pretty convenient for guys like you, bul I(,is puss 0/1 that for otv. We have a saying that isn’t from the Bible, gentlemen, but it’s a pretty good one, just the same.-Don’t gild the lilly. I hope you’ll keep it in mind.”] Ralph had an idea, however, that that might be a little too much to ask.
Clotho began to speak then, and he went on for a fair length of time.
Ralph had no idea how long, exactly, because time was different on this level-compressed, somehow. At times there were no words at all in what he said; verbal terms were replaced with simple bright images like those in a child’s rebus puzzle. Ralph supposed this was telepathy, and thus pretty amazing, but while it was happening it felt as natural as breath.
Sometimes both words and images were lost, interrupted by puzzling breaks -in communication. Yet even then Ralph was usually able to get some idea of
