For the first time a concrete thought on all this came to Eddie--perhaps it was a girl, just an ordinary girl, only she was invisible. He had seen a movie once and while the invisible man in it had remained invisible, if you put some clothing on him you could see his shape. Eddie ran around the room with George's high hat, trying to find an invisible head. But after a time he felt silly. The hat kept falling to the floor every time he tried to put it on something. The voice giggled. _You're wasting your time, Eddie. I'm not invisible, not in the way you mean. Now that you didn't marry that Judy-thing, you have no ties. Right?_ "Umm." _No parents?_ "Nope." _No close relatives of any type?_ "A bunch of third cousins in Chicago I think." _They don't matter. Any close friends?_ Eddie looked down at the floor, where George was trying to get up. "I used to have one," he said. _But not now--not any longer. Good! Then you can come with me, Eddie. I had to make sure of that first. You ready?_ "Where are we going?" _Just have some patience and you'll see for yourself._ "Maybe I won't like it." "He's talking to himself again," George said. "Am I glad my cousin didn't marry _him_! Lucky Judy." _Ready, Eddie? Hah! A poet and don't know it!_ "Umm." Eddie began to feel dizzy but he reasoned that was because George had punched him in the nose not once but twice. Soon the floor came up to meet him because he no longer could keep his balance and then, as he sat there, everything began to grow hazy, foggy, unreal. Soon the room was only a shadow of a room and he could not even tell that the rug was blue. Less than a shadow, it seemed to dissolve in water--in very hot water, because it dissolved quickly. This Eddie did not know--but he dissolved with it.... * * * * * "Edam Hurst! Wake up!" Eddie sat up groggily. He was on a big comfortable couch and the voice came out of a loudspeaker on the wall. There were the couch and the loudspeaker, a closed door and Eddie--and outside of that the room, a small one, was empty. "You got it wrong," Eddie said. "Just a matter of pronouncing. Not Edam Hurst. Ed Amhurst. Get the difference?" "Subtle," the voice said. "It doesn't matter. There isn't another Edam Hurst or Ed Amhurst here. No confusion." "Well, where's the other voice? The woman." "Early cultural trait," the voice mused. "High sex-identification. Eeb did nothing to assert her femininity, yet he knew the voice for a woman's. Interesting, extremely interesting." "Of course she's a woman." "The timbre isn't that much different for you to know it as a certainty ever. High sex-identification in your time, young man. If I simply heard Eeb's voice I'd never know her sex--not just from her voice." "Well, she _is_ a woman." "Certainly, certainly--and a mighty troublesome one. First time something like this has happened in nearly a thousand years. What do you think we ought to do?"