'You mean you're running away from the hospital?

'You could call it that.

'What kind of clothes?

'Any kind at all. I haven't got a stitch.

She hesitated for a moment. Maybe she should ask the senator. But the senator wasn't home. He hadn't returned from the hospital and there was no telling when he would.

When she spoke again, she made her voice calm and hard. 'Let me get this straight. You were the one who disappeared from the hospital, and without your clothes. And you say you aren't going back. You're on the lam, you say. You mean someone's hunting you?

'For a while, he said, 'the police were after me.

'But they aren't now?

'No. Not for the moment. We gave them the slip.

'We?

'I misspoke. I mean I got away from them.

She took a deep breath, committing herself. 'Where are you?

'I'm not absolutely sure. The city's changed since I knew it. I figure I'm out at the south end of the old Taft bridge.

'Stay there, she said. 'Watch for my car. I'll slow down and be looking for you.

'Thanks…

'Just a moment. Something occurred to me. You're calling from a public booth?

'That's right.

'You need a coin to operate that kind of phone. Without any clothes, where did you get that coin?

A sour grin split his face. 'The coins drop into little boxes. I'm afraid I used a stone.

'You broke open the box to get a coin to use the phone?

'Just a natural criminal, he said.

'I see. You'd better give me the number of the phone and stick close to it so I can call you if I can't find you — if you aren't where you think you are.

'Just a moment. He looked at the plate above the phone and read off the number. She found a pencil and copied the number on a newspaper margin.

'You realize, she said, 'you're taking a chance on me. I've got you nailed to that phone and the number can be traced.

He made awry face. 'I realize that. But I've got to take the chance. You're the only one I have.

— This woman? Quester asked. She's a female, is she not?

— Yes, said Changer. Very much a female. Beautiful, I'd say.

— I grasp faintly at the connotation, Thinker said. The concept's new to me. A female is a being to whom one can demonstrate affection? The attraction, I take it, must be a mutual one. A female you can trust?

— Sometimes, said Changer. It depends on many things.

— I do not understand your attitude towards females, Quester grumbled. They are no more than continuators of the race. In the proper time and season…

— Your system, Thinker said, is inefficient and disgusting. If the need arises, I am my own continuator. The present question seems to be not the social or biological importance of this female, but is she someone we can trust?

— I don't know, said Changer. I think so. I've made a bet we can.

He crouched behind a clump of bushes, shivering. His teeth had a tendency to chatter. The wind, blowing from the north, had a touch of frost in it. He shifted his feet under him cautiously, trying to ease their soreness. He had stubbed his toes running in the dark and he'd stepped on something sharp and now his feet complained.

Out in the front of him stood the phone booth, the sign above it glowing dimly. Beyond the booth ran the street, practically deserted. Once in a while a ground car went thrumming along it, but always travelling fast. The bridge boomed hollowly as the cars passed over it.

Blake hunkered closer behind the bushes. Christ, he thought, what a situation! Squatting out here, naked and half frozen, waiting for a girl he'd seen only twice to bring him clothes and not entirely sure she would.

He grimaced, remembering the phone call. He had been compelled to crank up his courage to make it and he would not have blamed her if she'd not listened to him. But she had listened. Frightened, naturally, and perhaps somewhat suspicious, but who wouldn't be? A total stranger calling with a silly, if not embarrassing plea for help.

He had made no claim on her. He knew that. And to make it even more ridiculous, this was the second time he'd been forced to call upon the senator's household for clothing to get him home. Although this time, he'd not be going home. The police would be watching and they'd nail him before he could get close.

He shivered and wrapped his arms about himself, in a futile attempt to conserve his body heat. From above him came a purring noise and he glanced quickly up. A house came slanting across the trees, losing altitude, perhaps heading for one of the downtown parking lots. Light shone from its windows and the sound of laughter and of music came to him. There were carefree, happy people up there while he crouched, shivering in the cold.

He watched the house until it disappeared, dropping east and lower.

And what did he do now? What did the three of them do now? Once he got the clothes, what would be his next move?

From what Elaine had said, he apparently was not as yet publicly identified as the man who had fled the hospital. But within hours the story would be out. Then his face would be staring from every printed page and would be on dimensino. In such a case he could not hope to escape being recognized. Either Thinker or Quester could take over the body, of course, and then there'd be no face to recognize, but either one of them would have to stay even more strictly out of sight than he. The climate was against them — too cold for Thinker and too hot for Quester, and there was the further complication that it was up to him to absorb and store up the energy that maintained and powered the body. There might be food that Quester could handle, but to determine it, research and testing would be needed. There were places, close to power sources, where Thinker could suck in energy, but they'd be hard to find and still stay undetected.

Would it be safe, he wondered, to try to contact Daniels? Thinking about it, he decided that it would be most unsafe.

He knew the answer he would get — return to the hospital. And the hospital was a trap. There he would be subjected to endless interviews and further medical probing and, perhaps, a psychiatric treatment. He would not be in charge of himself. He would be politely guarded. He'd be a prisoner. And while man might have fabricated him, he fiercely told himself, he was not owned by man. He must remain himself.

And what about that self? Not man alone, of course, but man and two other creatures. Even if he wished, he never could escape those other minds that, with him, held joint ownership to this mass of matter which did service as their bodies. Now that he thought about it, he knew he did not wish to escape those minds. They were close to him, closer than anything else had ever been or could be. They were friends — well, perhaps not exactly friends, but collaborators existing in the common bonds of a single flesh. And even if they had not been friends and collaborators, there was yet another consideration he could not ignore. It had been through his agency that they were in this mess and, in light of that, he had no course but to stick with them to the end.

Would she come, he wondered, or would she turn her information over to the police or hospital? He could not bring himself to blame her, he told himself, if she did turn him in. How could she know that he was not mildly mad, or perhaps more mad than mildly? She might very well believe that she would be acting in his interest if she informed upon him.

Any moment now a police cruiser might come shrieking up and disgorge a freight of cops.

— Quester, Changer said, we may be in trouble. It's taking her too long.

— There are other ways, said Quester. If she fails us, we will find other ways.