you as a boy any longer."

"That is because your mind is filled with uncertainties, mine with
certainties. You have never before met anyone in whom certainty was a
clear truth unquestioned on any level of any remote corner of the mind.
I am such a one."

Phil sat down helplessly. There was no point in standing. Whatever Tim
was, he was not going to be dominated by tricks.

"_What are you?_"

"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 bec