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 were a little afraid we would rub off the bloom. We just enjoyed it. We must have talked about a thousand things that night and smoked a couple of hundred cigarettes. After a while we started taking little catnaps--we'd gotten too much off our chests and come to feel too tranquil for even our excitement to keep us awake. I remember the first time I dozed waking up with a cold start and grabbing for Mother--and then hearing Pop and Alice gabbing in the dark, and remembering what had happened, and relaxing again with a smile. Of all things, Pop was saying, "Yep, I imagine Ray must be good to make love to, murderers almost always are, they got the fire. It reminds me of what a guy named Fred told me, one of our boys ..."