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I thought about it, and she was right, very accurate, in fact, and I nodded.
She nodded, too. "And that's how they'll think: the stereotype of a woman's role in that kind of situation. And it's exactly what I will do – until I know they've seen and noticed me. Then I can do exactly what you did; why not?"
I was considering what she'd said, and Becky persisted, unable to wait. "Why not, Miles; why can't I?" She paused for an instant, then said, "I can. You'll be beaten up, you'll have a bad minute or so, but then… Miles, why couldn't it work?"
I was afraid. I didn't like this at all; this was real, genuinely and simply a matter of life or death for us, and I saw that we were going at it in a spur-of-the-moment, improvising way. We had to think, be certain, and make sure of what we were doing – take the time to be right, and know we were right. Yet now, like soldiers suddenly caught in enemy fire, the most important thinking of our lives had to be improvised on the spot under terrible strain, with the penalty for anything less than perfection being death or worse. There was no time for more careful pla
"Miles, come on!" Becky whispered. She was standing, reaching across the desk, yanking at my sleeve. "You don't know how much longer we have!"
There was a light tapping at the outer door of my office, and from the hallway outside I heard Ma
"I'm sorry, Ma
He didn't answer, and now there was no guessing how much longer we'd be alone. I hated what we were going to do, hated pi
It didn't take long, four minutes, maybe, and while I was pulling down my sleeves, Becky buttoning the sleeves of her dress, she gestured with her head – "Miles, look."
I turned to look, narrowed my eyes to make sure I was seeing it, and then I knew I was. The yellow-white bones on the floor looked – different. I can't say how, but, looking at them now, there was simply no doubt that they'd changed.
It may have been the colour, though I couldn't be sure, but it was more than that, too. The sense of sight is more subtle than we're accustomed to think; it sees more than we credit it for. We say, "I could tell by looking," and though sometimes we can't explain how that could be, it is usually true. Those bones had lost hardness, although I don't even quite know what I mean by that, or how we could see it. Their form hadn't changed, but – they'd lost some degree of rigidity or firmness. Like an ancient wall of loosened bricks, its form still unchanged to the eye, but the mortar crumbling, some strength had left them. Whatever was holding each bone together, giving it its form and shape, was weakening. And the eye could tell it.
Trying not to hope too much, ready for disappointment, not yet able to trust what my eyes saw, I stared. Then suddenly, in the flick of an eye, on a little inch-long segment of the ulna, one of the two bones of the forearm, in the nearest figure on the floor, a patch of grey appeared. Nothing more happened for the beat of a heart; then the patch lengthened, and continued to lengthen, extending in both directions, shooting out along the yellow-white bone. And then – it was like an animated-cartoon sequence in which a picture is sketched impossibly fast, the lines flashing out in all directions faster than the eye can follow. On both figures on the floor under our eyes the grey shot out along the bones, following their lines with enormous speed – the entire rib cage of one in the flash of an eye. Then the bone-whiteness was gone, and for a suspended instant of time the two skeletons lay there composed – in perfect completeness – of a grey weightless fluff. The instant ended, and they collapsed – a puff of air would have done it – into a formless little heap of dust and nothingness on the floor.
For an instant longer I stood staring, wild with elation; then the breath sucked into my lungs, and I yelled out, "Ma
The hallway door of my office opened instantly, and they came in – hurrying – their faces utterly calm and composed. I pointed with the toe of my shoe, and they stopped, stared for a moment, then Ma
There on the brown rug, yellow-white and reproduced down to the last useless detail, lay two skeletons, red-daubed on the shoulders, a handful of dark hair filtering through their bones. Face down on the floor, they gri
Ma
"All right, Miles" – Ma
I just nodded, and we all moved out then, through the door to the building hallway. I didn't care whether we took the elevator or stairs, but Ma
Chapter nineteen
They had Chet Meeker and the little stout man first. Becky and I were in the middle, Ma
Stepping onto the landing, begi
They yelped and swung toward me as Ma