"Don't you realize even yet," Conrad went on, "that as soon as he goes, you'll go, too—present, past, future, wherever you are, you'll go up in the air like puffs of smoke?"
"What do you mean?" Ninian quavered, her soft, pretty face alarmed.
Martin answered Conrad's rueful smile, but left the explanations up to him. It was his show, after all.
"Because you will never have existed," Conrad said. "You have no right to existence; it was you yourselves who watched him all the time, so he didn't have a chance to lead a normal life, get married, have children...."
Most of the cousins gasped as the truth began to percolate through.
"I knew from the very beginning," Conrad finished, "that I didn't have to do anything at all. I just had to wait and you would destroy yourselves."
"I don't understand," Bartholomew protested, searching the faces of the cousins closest to him. "What does he mean, we have never existed? We're here, aren't we? What—"
"Shut up!" Raymond snapped. He turned on Martin. "You don't seem surprised."
The old man grinned. "I'm not. I figured it all out years ago."