tation, after decades of repression
and in spite of dozens of assorted psychological blocks--and here was
Pop interrupting it for the sake of a lot of trivial organizational
gossip about Joes and Bills and Georges we'd never heard of and what
they'd say or think!

But then all of a sudden I realized that I didn't really care, that it
didn't feel like a Big Grief any more, that just starting to tell about
it after hearing Pop and Alice tell their stories had purged it of that
unnecessary weight of feeling that had made it a millstone around my
neck. It seemed to me now that I could look down at Ray Baker from a
considerable height (but not an angelic or contemptuously superior
height) and ask myself _not_ why he had grieved so much--that was
understandable and even desirable--but why he had grieved so _uselessly_
in such a stuffy little private hell.

And it _would_ be interesting to find out how Joseph A. Bigelow had
felt.

"How does it feel, Ray, to kill a million people?"

* * * * *

I realized that Alice had asked me the question several seconds back and
it was hanging in the air.

"That's just what I've been trying to tell you," I told her and started
to explain it all over again--the words poured out of me now. I won't
put them down here--it would take too long--but they were honest words
as far as I knew and they eased me.

I couldn't get over it: here were us three murderers feeling a trust and
understanding and sharing a communion that I wouldn't have believed
possible between _any_ two or three people in the Age of the Deaders--or
in _any_ age, to tell the truth. It was against everything I knew of
Deathland psychology, but it was happening just the same. Oh, our
strange isolation had something to do with it, I knew, and that
Pullman-car memory hypnotizing my mind, and our reactions to the voices
and violence of Atla-Alamos, but in spite of all that I ranked it as a
wonder. I felt an inward freedom and easiness that I never would have
believed possible. Pop's little disorganized organization had really
got hold of something, I couldn't deny it.

* * * * *

Three treacherous killers talking from the bottoms of their hearts and
believing each other!--for it never occurred to me to doubt that Pop and
Alice were feeling exactly like I was. In fact, we were all so sure of
it that we didn't even mention our communion to each other. Perhaps we
w