Stephen King - Insomnia

[“CLOTHO! LACHESIS!”

He was burning like an electric arc, and suddenly all the strength ran out of Lois’s legs like water. She took one step backward and collapsed onto the park bench. Her head was whirling, her heart full of terror, and below everything was that vast exhaustion. Ralph saw it as a sunken ship; Lois saw it as a pit around which she was forced to walk in a gradually tightening spiral, a pit into which she must eventually fall.

[“CLOTHO. LACHESIS LAST CHANCE I MEAN IT!”] For a moment nothing happened, and then the doors of the Portosans at the foot of the hill opened in perfect unison. Clotho stepped from the one marked MEN, Lachesis from the one marked WOMEN. Their auras, the brilliant green-gold of summer dragonflies, glimmered in the ashy light of day’s end. They moved together until their auras overlapped, then walked slowly toward the top of the hill that way, with their white-clad shoulders almost touching. They looked like a pair of frightened children.

Ralph turned to Lois. His aura still blazed and burned.

[“Stay here.”]

[“Yes, Ralph.”] She let him get partway down the hill, then gathered her courage and called after him.

[“But I’ll try to stop Ed if you won’t. I mean it.

Of course she did, and his heart responded to her bravery… but she didn’t know what he knew. Hadn’t seen what he had seen.

He looked back at her for a moment, then walked down to where the two little bald doctors looked at him with their luminous, frightened eyes.

Lachesis, nervously: [We didn’t lie to you-we didn’t.] Clotho, even more nervously (if that was possible): [Deepneau is on his way.

You have to stop him, Ralph-you have to at least try.] The fact is I don’t have to do anything, and your faces show it, he thought. Then he turned to Lachesis, and was gratified to see the small bald man flinch from his gaze and drop his dark, pupilless eyes.

[“Is that so? When we were on the hospital roof you told us to stay away from Ed, Mr. L. You were very emphatic about that.] Lachesis shifted uncomfortably and fidgeted with his hands.

El… that is to say we… we can be wrong. This time we were.] Except Ralph knew that wrong wasn’t the best word for what they had been; self-deceived would be better. He wanted to scold them for it-to tell the truth, he wanted to scold them for getting him into this shitting mess in the first place-and found he couldn’t.

Because, according to Old Dor, even their self-deception had served the Purpose; the side-trip to High Ridge had for some reason not been a side-trip at all. He didn’t understand why or how that was, but he intended to find out, if finding out was possible.

[“Let’s forget that part of it for the time being, gentlemen, and talk about why all this is happening. If you want help from me and Lois, I

think you better tell me.] They looked at each other with their big, frightened eyes, then back at Ralph.

Lachesis: [Ralph, do you doubt that all those people are really going to die? Because if you do-] [“No, but I’m tired of having them waved in my face. If an earthquake that served the Purpose happened to be scheduled for this area and the butcher’s bill came to ten thousand instead of just two thousand and change, you’d never even bat an eye, would you? So what’s so special about this situation? Tell me!”] Clotho: [Ralph, we don’t make the rules any more than you do. We thought you understood that.] Ralph sighed.

[“You’re weaseling again, and not wasting anybody’s time but your own.] Clotho, uneasily: [All right, perhaps the picture we gave you wasn’t completely clear, but time was short and we were frightened.

And you must see that, regardless of all else, those people will die if you can’t stop Ed Deepneau!] [“Never mind all of them for now,I only want to know about one of them-the one who belongs to the Purpose and can’t be handed overjust because some undesignated pisher comes along with a headful of loose screws and a planeful of explosive.

Who is it You feel you can’t give up to the Random? Who? It’s Day, isn’t it? Susan Day.] Lachesis: [No. Susan Day is part of the Random.

She is none of our concern, none of our worry.] [“Who, then?”

Clotho and Lachesis exchanged another glance. Clotho nodded slightly, and then they both turned back to Ralph.

Once again Lachesis flicked the first two fingers of his right hand upward, creating that peacock’s fan of light. It wasn’t McGovern Ralph saw this time, but a little boy with blond hair cut in bangs across his forehead and a hook-shaped scar across the bridge of his nose. Ralph placed him at once-the kid from the basement of High Ridge, the one with the bruised mother. The one who had called him and Lois angels.

And a little child shall lead them, he thought, utterly flabbergasted.

Oh my God. He looked disbelievingly at Clotho and Lachesis.

[“Am I understanding? All this has been about that one little boy?”] He expected more waffling, but the reply from Clotho was simple and direct: [Yes, Ralph.] Lachesis: [He’s at the Civic Center now. His mother, whose life you and Lois also saved this morning, got a call from her babysitter less than an hour ago, saying she’d cut herself badly on a piece of glass and wouldn’t be able to take care of the boy tonight after all. By then it was too late to find another sitter, of course, and this woman has been determined for weeks to see Susan Day… to shake her hand, even give her a hug, if possible. She idolizes the Day woman.] Ralph, who remembered the fading bruises on her face, supposed that was an idolatry he could understand. He understood something else even better: the babysitter’s cut hand had been no accident. Something was determined to place the little boy with the shaggy blond bangs and the smoke-reddened eyes at the Civic Center, and was willing to move heaven and earth to do it. His mother had taken him not because she was a bad parent, but because she was as subject to human nature as anyone else. She hadn’t wanted to miss her one chance at seeing Susan Day, that was all.

No, it’s not all, Ralph thought. She also took him because she thought it would be safe, with Pickering and his Daily Bread crackpots all dead. it must have seemed to her that the worst she’d have to protect her son from tonight would be a bunch of sign-waving pro-lifers, that lightning couldn’t possibly strike her and her son twice on the same day.

Ralph had been gazing off toward Witcham Street. Now he turned back to Clotho and Lachesis.

[“You’re sure he’s there? Positive?” Clotho: [Yes. Sitting in the upper north balcony next to his mother with a McDonald’s poster to color and some storybooks. Would it surprise you to know that one of the stories is The Five Hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins?]

Ralph shook his head. At this point, nothing would surprise him.

Lachesis: [It’s the north side of the Civic Center that Deepneau’s plane will strike. This little boy will be killed instantly if steps are not taken to prevent it… and that can’t be allowed to happen.

This boy must not die before his scheduled time.] Lachesis was looking earnestly at Ralph. The fan of blue-green light between his fingers had disappeared.

[We can’t go on talking like this, Ralph-he’s already in the air, less than a hundred miles from here. Soon it will be too late to stop him. That made Ralph feel frantic, but he held his place just the same.

Frantic, after all, was how they wanted him to feel. How they wanted both of them to feel.

[“I’m telling you that none of that matters until I understand what the stakes are. I won’t let it matter.”] Clotho: [Listen, then.

Every now and again a man or woman comes along whose life will affect not just those about him or her, or even all those who live in the Short-Time world, but those on mani, levels above and below, the Short-Time world-These people are the Great Ones, and their lives always serve the Purpose. If they are taken too soon, everything changes. The scales cease to balance. Can you imagine, for instance, how different the world might be today if Hitler had drowned in the bathtub as a child? You may believe the world would be better for that, but I can tell you that the world would not exist at all If it had happened. Suppose Winston Churchill had died of foodpoisoning before he ever became Prime Minister? Suppose Augustus Caesar had been born dead, strangled on his own umbilical cord? Yet the person we want you to save is of far greater importance than any of these.] [“Dammit, Lois and I already saved this kid once!