"I'm not maimed! I've just got a cut lip!"

Pris started up the car and we drove out into traffic. "I'm going to forget the Lincoln. I'll never think of it again as living; it's just an object to me from this minute on. Something to market."

I nodded.

"I'm going to see to it that Sam Barrows buys it. I have no other task in life but that. From now on all I will think or do will have Sam Barrows at the core of it."

If I felt like laughing at what she was saying I had only to look at her face; her expression was so bleak, so devoid of happiness or joy or even humor, that I could only nod. While driving me to the doctor to have my lip stitched up, Pris had dedicated her entire life, her future and everything in it. It was a kind of maniacal whim, and I could see that it had swum up to the surface out of desperation. Pris could not bear to spend a single moment without something to occupy her; she had to have a goal. It was her way of forcing the universe to make sense.

"Prig," I said, "the difficulty with you is that you're rational."

"I'm not; everybody says I do exactly what I feel like."

"You're driven by iron-clad logic. It's terrible. It has to be gotten rid of. Tell Horstowski that; tell him to free you from logic. You function as if a geometric proof were cranking the handle of your life. Relent, Pris. Be carefree and foolish and stupid. Do something that has no purpose. Okay? Don't even take me to the doctor; instead, dump me off in front of a shoeshine parlor and I'll get my shoes shined."

"Your shoes are already shined."

"See? See how you have to be logical all the time? Stop the car at the next intersection and we'll both get out and leave it, or go to a flower shop and buy flowers and throw them at other motorists."

"Who'll pay for the flowers?"

"We'll steal them. We'll run out the door without paying."

"Let me think it over," Pris said.

"Don't think! Did you ever steal anything when you were a kid? Or bust something just for the hell of it, maybe some public property like a street lamp?"

"I once stole a candy bar from a drugstore."

"We'll do that now," I said. "We'll find a drugstore and we'll be kids again; we'll steal a dime candy bar apiece, and we'll go find a shady place and sit like on a lawn for instance and eat it."

"You can't, because of your lip."

I said in a reasonable, urgent voice, "Okay. I admit that. But you could. Isn't that so? Admit it. You could go into a drugstore right now and do that, even without me."

"Would you come along anyhow?"

"If you want me to. Or I could park at the curb with the motor running and drive you the second you appeared. So you'd get away."

"No," Pris said, "I want you to come into the store with me and be right there beside me. You could show me which candy bar to take; I need your help."

"I'll do it."

"What's the penalty for something like that?"

"Life everlasting," I said.

"You're kidding me."

"No," I said. "I mean it." And I did; I was deeply serious. "Are you making fun of me? I see you are. Why would you do that? Am I ridiculous, is that it?"

"God no!"

But she had made up her mind. "You know I'll believe anything. They always kidded me in school about my gullibility. 'Gullible's travels,' they called me."

I said, "Come into the drugstore, Pris, and I'll show you; let me prove it to you. To save you."

"Save me from what?"

"From the certitude of your own mind."

She wavered; I saw her swallow, struggle with herself, try to see what she should do and if she had made a mistake-- she turned and said to me earnestly, "Louis, I believe you about the drugstore. I know you wouldn't make fun of me; you might hate me--you do hate me, on many levels--but you're not the kind of person who enjoys taunting the weak."

"You're not weak."

"I am. But you have no instinct to sense it. That's good, Louis. I'm the other way around; I have that instinct and I'm not good."

"Good, schmood," I said loudly. "Stop all this, Pris. You're depressed because you've finished your creative work with the Lincoln, you're temporarily at loose ends and like a lot of creative people you suffer a letdown between one--"

"There's the doctor's place," Pris said, slowing the car.

After the doctor had examined me--and sent me off without seeing the need of stitching me up--I was able to persuade Pris to stop at a bar. I felt I had to have a drink. I explained to her that it was a method of celebrating, that it was something which had to be done; it was expected of us. We had seen the Lincoln come to life and it was a great moment, perhaps the greatest moment, of our lives. And yet, as great as it was, there was in it something ominous and sad, something upsetting to all of us, that was just too much for us to handle.

"I'll have just one beer," Pris said as we crossed the sidewalk.

At the bar I ordered a beer for her and an Irish coffee for myself.

"I can see you're at home, here," Pris said, "in a place like this. You spend a lot of time bumming around bars, don't you?"

I said, "There's something I've been thinking about you that I have to ask you. Do you believe the cutting observations you make about other people? Or are they just off-hand, for the purpose of making people feel bad? And if so--"

"What do you think?" Pris said in a level voice.

"I don't know."

"Why do you care anyhow?"

"I'm insatiably curious about you, for every detail and tittle."

"Why?"

"You've had a fascinating history. Schizoid by ten, compulsive-obsessive neurotic by thirteen, full-blown schizophrenic by seventeen and a ward of the Federal Government, now halfway cured and back among human beings again but still--" I broke off. That was not the reason, her lurid history. "I'll tell you the truth. I'm in love with you."

"You're lying."

Amending my statement I said, "I _could_ be in love with you."

"If what?" She seemed terribly nervous; her voice shook.

"I don't know. Something holds me back."

"Fear."

"Maybe so," I said. "Maybe it's plain simple fear."

"Are you kidding me, Louis? When you said that? Love, I mean?"

"No, I'm not kidding."

She laughed tremulously. "If you could conquer your fear you could win a woman; not me but some woman. I can't get over you saying that to me. Louis, you and I are opposites, did you know that? You show your feelings, I always keep mine in. I'm much deeper. If we had a child, what would it be like? I can't understand women who are always having children, they're like mother dogs... a litter every year. It must be nice to be biological and earthy like that." She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. "That's a closed book to me. They fulfill themselves through their reproductive system, don't they? Golly, I've known women like that but I could never be that way. I'm never happy unless I'm doing things with my hands. Why is that, I wonder?"

"No knowing."

"There has to be an explanation; everything has a cause. Louis, I can't remember for sure, but I don't think any boy ever said he was in love with me before."

"Oh, they must have. Boys in school."

"No, you're the first. I hardly know how to act... I'm not even sure if I like it. It feels strange."

"Accept it," I said.

"Love and creativity," Pris said, half to herself. "It's birth we're bringing about with the Stanton and the Lincoln; love and birth--the two are tied together, aren't they? You love what you give birth to, and since you love me, Louis, you must want to join me in bringing something new to life, don't you?"

"Guess so."

"We're like gods," Pris said, "in what we've done, this task of ours, this great labor. Stanton and Lincoln, the new race... and yet by giving them life we empty ourselves. Don't you feel hollow, now?"