"What can I say? I am a book that is being read, yet I am neither the pages nor the printing on the pages, but only the meaning inherent in the shapes and sequences of the letters that comprise the printing." "Can't you give me a straight answer?" "It is difficult. You must think about what I say." "But the ideas recorded in a book are merely--thoughts. They have no tangible existence." "Nor have I." "You're not a product of my imagination!" "Hardly." "Are you giving me that line about 'All is Illusion'?" "No," the boy laughed spontaneously. "Are you a mutant, a new evolutionary development?" "No, nor am I a machine or a monster." "At least you're alive!" "That, I think, is a matter of definition." "Then, for the third time, what are you! Stop baiting me!" * * * * * Timmy's hand closed on Phil's--a firm, warm, dirty and somewhat calloused boy's hand that was unquestionably flesh, blood and bone. "Take it easy, Uncle Phil." Perhaps he had pushed too hard. The dancing eyes veiled themselves a little and the intangible, indescribable magnetism somehow faded. Phil, looking at him, was suddenly able to see him and to think of him once more as Timmy, a boy with unusual qualities, but the same boy he had watched for years. He shook his head and felt somewhat bemused, as he had done once before. "Look, let's get a fresh start, Tim, and stop going in circles." "O. K., Uncle Phil." He was an eleven-year-old again, responding obediently. "I've suspected for years that we didn't know the truth about you--that you were something special, something new." "Well--" Tim appeared to consider it gravely. "Yeah, I guess that's fair enough. I'm something new, all right." "For years, then, you've been concealing something--something that showed through whenever you made a slip." "Wanna bet on how many of those slips were deliberate?" Tim challenged, then joined Phil's rueful laugh. "Not all of them were, I got to admit, but most of them." "But today--apparently because Homer is dying--you've abandoned pretense, come out in the open." "Not all the way out, not yet. You've still got some shocks coming, Uncle Phil." "I don't doubt it, you young hoodlum. You were pretty overwhelming there for a few minutes. But why all the mystery? Why not just tell me?" "You explained why." "Overwhelming? Are you that terrific?" "I'm a humdinger, Bub. Think you can stand it now?" "I think the full blast would be better than any more of your 'gentle' hints." "That's what you think." Come now, the first shock had been fairly neatly delivered and fielded after all, the concept of difference proposed, established and accepted. "Well, here goes. You remember that spray of flowers I handed you in the car that night?" "I've had my suspicions about them ever since." "O. K.--now smell this pine cone." Phil looked at it with distrust.