Once she got Walt inside her room, she breathed a sigh of relief. She released the distortion field. He was visible again.
She removed the top sheet from the bed. She wrestled his body onto the bed.
She ripped the sheet into strips. She worked rapidly. She was still able to hold off fatigue; she felt no need of sleep. She was ravenously hungry.
With the strips of sheet, she tied Walt securely. She used a knot that would require cutting to be undone. She pulled the strips tight. They did not interfere with free circulation, but there was no possibility of them being slipped. She had no intention of not finding Walt there when she came back.
She surveyed her handiwork with satisfaction.
Whistling softly she left the room and walked down the corridor. She stopped whistling abruptly and glanced around in embarrassment. She had remembered the old adage: 'A whistling girl and a crowing hen are sure to come to some bad end'.
There seemed to be something indecent about whistling in public.
The fact that she had, colored her emotions with uneasiness.
She realized that there might be a million such superstitions—many of them not recognized as superstitions at all—buried in her personality. Her brain might be highly efficient, but was it efficient enough to overcome all the emotional biases implanted by twenty-four years of environment? Was even her knowledge of the real nature of the world—was mankind's—sufficient to overcome such biases?