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.
He jerked out of his thoughts to listen to a car on the road. It slowed down. It stopped by the gate. A car door slammed. A man appeared briefly in the light of the headlamps. Captain Waters—alone.
He loomed a moment later inside the pasture in the light of a flashlight. He occasionally flashed it on his face so he would be recognizable.
Fred felt an impulse to slip away into the darkness. He hadn't been seen. Captain Waters was just hoping he might be here.
A stronger impulse made him remain as he was. The entire pattern of Captain Waters' approach indicated understanding—or at least the willingness to understand.
The bobbing flashlight came closer. It speared out and touched him; then abruptly went out. Footsteps approached. A dark form emerged from the gloom.
"Hello, Fred," Captain Waters said quietly. "I came to keep you company. I'll just sit quiet and not bother you."
"Okay," Fred said.