He hadn’t seen Lois dip into the waitress’s aura, but this time everything happened in front of him. The auras of the newspeople were like small but brightly colored Japanese lanterns glowing bravely in a vast, gloomy cavern. Now a tight beam of violet light speared out from one of them-from Michael Rosenberg, Connie Chung’s bearded cameraman, in fact. It divided in two an inch or so in front of Lois’s face. The upper branch divided in two again and slipped into her nostrils; the lower branch went between her parted lips and into her mouth. He could see it glowing faintly behind her cheeks, lighting her from the inside as a candle lights a jack-o’-lantern.
Her grip on him loosened, and suddenly the leaning pressure of her weight was gone. A moment later the violet beam of light disappeared.
She looked around at him. Color-not a lot, but somewas returning to her leaden cheeks.
“That’s better-a lot better. Now you, Ralph!”
He was reluctant-it still felt like stealing-but it had to be done if he didn’t want to simply collapse right here; he could almost feel the last of Nirvana Boy’s borrowed energy running out through his pores. He curled his hand around his mouth now as he had in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot that morning and turned slightly to his left, seeking a target. Connie Chung had backed several steps closer to them; she was still looking up at the bedsheet banner hanging from the canopy and talking to Rosenberg (who seemed none the worse for wear as a result of Lois’s borrowing) about it. With no further thought, Ralph inhaled sharply through the curled tube of his fingers.
Chung’s aura was the same lovely shade of wedding-gown ivory as those which had surrounded Helen and Nat on the day they’d come to his apartment with Gretchen Tillbury. Instead of a ray of light, something like a long, straight ribbon shot from Chung’s aura.
Ralph felt strength begin to fill him almost at once, banishing the aching weariness in his joints and muscles. And he could think clearly again, as if a big cloud of sludge had just been washed out of his brain.
Connie Chung broke off, looked up at the sky for a moment, then began to talk to the cameraman again. Ralph glanced around and saw Lois looking at him anxiously. “Any better?” she whispered.
“All kinds,” he said, “but it’s still like being zipped up in a body-bag.”
“I think-” Lois began, and then her eyes fixed on something to the left of the Civic Center doors. She screamed and shrank back against Ralph, her eyes so wide it seemed they must tumble from their sockets.
He followed her gaze and felt his breath stop in his throat.
The planners had tried to soften the building’s plain brick These had either sides by planting evergreen bushes along them been neglected or purposely allowed to grow until they nterlaced and threatened to entirely hide the narrow strip of grass between them and the concrete walk which bordered the drive-through.
Giant bugs that looked like prehistoric trilobites were squirming in and out of these evergreens in droves, crawling over each other, bumping heads, sometimes rearing up and pawing each other with their front legs like stags locking horns during mating season. They weren’t transparent, like the bird on the satellite dish, but there was something ghostly and unreal about them, just the same. Their auras flickered feverishly (and brainlessly, Ralph guessed) through a whole spectrum of colors; they were so bright and yet so ephemeral that it was almost possible to think of them as weird lightning-bugs, Except that’s not what they are. You know what they are.
“Hey!” It was Rosenberg, Chung’s cameraman, who hailed them, but most of the others in front of the building were looking. “She okay, bud?”
“Yes,” Ralph called back. He still had his hand curled around his mouth and lowered it quickly, feeling foolish. “She just-”
“I saw a mouse!” Lois called, smiling a daffy, dazed smile… an “Our Lois” smile if Ralph had ever seen one. He was very proud of her. She pointed toward the evergreen shrubs to the left of the door with a finger that was almost steady. “He went right in there. Gosh, but he was a fat one! Did you see him, Norton?”
“No, Alice.”
“Stick around, lady,” Michael Rosenberg called. “You’ll see all kinds of wildlife here tonight.” There was some desultory, almost forced laughter, and then they turned back to their tasks.
“God, Ralph!” Lois whispered. “Those… those things…
He took her hand and squeezed it. “Steady, Lois.”
“They know, don’t they? That’s why they’re here. They’re like vultures.”
Ralph nodded. As he watched, several bugs emerged from the tops of the bushes and began to ooze aimlessly up the wall.
They moved with dazed sluggishness-like flies buzzing against a windowpane. Then moved quickly and left slimy trails of dimmed and faded color behind them. Other bugs crawled out from beneath the bushes and onto the small strip of lawn.
One of the local news commentators began strolling toward this infested area, and when he turned his head, Ralph saw it was John Kirkland. He was talking to a good-looking woman dressed in one of those “power look” business outfits which Ralph found-under normal circumstances, anyway-extremely sexy.
He guessed she was Kirkland’s producer, and wondered if Lisette Benson’s aura turned green when this woman was around.
“They’re going toward those bugs!” Lois whispered fiercely at him.
“We have to stop them, Ralph-we have to!”
“We’re not going to do a damned thing.”
“But-”
“Lois, we can’t start raving about bugs nobody can see.
Besides, the bugs aren’t there We’ll end up in the nuthatch if we go for them.” He paused and added: “I hope.”
They watched as Kirkland and his good-looking colleague walked onto the lawn… and into a jellylike knot of the twitching, crawling trilobites. One slid onto Kirkland’s highly polished loafer, paused until he stopped moving for a second, then climbed onto his pantsleg.
“I don’t give much of a shit about Susan Day, one way or the other.”
WomanCare’s the story here,” Kirkland was saying. “"not her-crying babes wearing black armbands. “Watch out, John,” the woman said dryly.
“Your sensitivity Is showing.”
“Is it? Goddam.”
The bug on his pants leg appeared bound for his crotch. It occurred to Ralph that If Kirkland were suddenly given the power to see what was shortly going to be crawling over his balls, he would probably go right out of his mind.
“Okay, but be sure to talk to the women who run the local powernetwork,” the producer was saying. “Now that Tillbury’s dead, the ones that matter are Maggie Petrowsky, Barbara Richards, and Dr. Roberta Harper. Harper’s going to introduce the Big Kahuna tonight, I think… or maybe in this case it’s the Big Kahunette.”
The woman took a step off the sidewalk and one of her high heels skewered a lumbering color-bug. A rainbow of guts spewed out of it, and a waxy-white substance that looked like stale mashed potatoes.
Ralph had an idea the white stuff had been eggs.
Lois pressed her face against his arm.
“And keep your eyes open for a lady named Helen Deepneau,” the producer said, taking a step closer to the building. The bug stuck on the heel of her shoe flopped and twisted as she walked.
“Deepneau,” Kirkland said. He tapped his knuckles against his brow. “Somewhere, deep inside, a bell is ringing.”
“Nah, it’s just your last active brain-cell rolling around in there,” the producer said. “She’s Ed Deepneau’s wife. They’re separated. If you want tears, she’s your best bet. She and Tillbury were good friends. Maybe special friends, if you know what I mean.”
Kirkland leered-an expression so foreign to his on-camera persona that Ralph felt slightly disoriented. One of the color-bugs, meanwhile, had found its way onto the toe of the woman’s shoe and was working its way up her leg. Ralph watched in helpless fascination as it disappeared beneath the hem of her skirt. Watching the moving bump climb her thigh was like watching a kitten under a bathtowel.