A silent dog appeared out of the gloom, wagged its tail and half of its body in friendliness. "Nice doggy," Fred said nervously. It sniffed his trouser leg, lost interest, and moved off into the darkness. It was after midnight. How long after, he didn't know. Once a police car had come speeding by, its red lights ogling insanely, its spotlight weaving into the bushes at the side of the road. He had lain very still in the ditch until it passed. It hadn't slowed down. Later it had come back and he had again pressed his body into the earth beside the road. Off to the right now he saw the silhouette of the giant tree that had been the landmark of the picnic spot. A few minutes later he could see the gate that led to the meadow. He squeezed through it and picked out the path worn by the cars the day before. Some winged creature dipped down, shied away from him, and swept off into the darkness. A soft gurgling sound became audible. The brook. The spot where his mother and Curt had vanished, was ahead. He reached it. He wasn't quite sure until he studied the ground and went back in memory to check on little details. Then he was certain. He had reached his goal. He knew why he had come, of course. Here he was closer to his mother than anyplace else. Here, in some unguessed way, he might get to her. What would he do when morning came? He sat down and pulled his knees up under his chin, wrapping his arms around them. Morning was far away. It might never come--for him. If and when it did he would cope with it. "Mom," he whispered. "Mom...." _Crrroak!_ The sound of the frog broke the silence. The croak of a frog that was part of the universe--the universe that was basically illogical. More.... Fred sobbed. The universe was insane. Police looking for you. Doctors with their standards of sanity and insanity. Right now they were looking for him to protect him from himself. They didn't want to know why things were done. To them even the reason would be part of the insanity. They dealt in tags. Words. Their science was an illusion within an illusion. Meaningless inside a universe of meaninglessness. _Crrroak_, the frog said cautiously. And a night creature came down on silent wings, to weave back into the darkness. That was the reason for pragmatism. He could see it now. He had always thought his father made pragmatism his God because it was the intellectual thing to do. But now he could see the reason for it. Reality was a jungle in which Reason had to cope with Unreason, and there was no criterion except workability. Belief was an instinctive way of thought. It was like the appendix. Scientists claimed that long ago man ate tree bark. And the appendix had had a use. If so, that use was gone, but the appendix remained. Before surgery had become a common thing, thousands of people died from appendicitis. The organ that had once been necessary had become a hazard to living. Belief was something like that.