“Honestly,” she said. But she felt uneasy. Her gaze flew about. She turned and craned her neck to see the back of the camper.

Inside his Lawrence image, Seven was nervous, too. The camper was a duplicate of the real one. He’d placed everything as carefully as possible, but undoubtedly he’d forgotten something. Nobody was perfect. The ruse had to hold until she was safely dead, to protect her from that panic—and if she found just one item wrong or missing, it could make her question the entire episode. Not that it would, he thought hastily. He could always think up a good explanation. Still he wished that she’d stop looking around like that. “Why don’t you read me a few of your poems and practice for your reading?” he asked. “We’ll be there soon.”

“I left my notebook in back.”

“No, it’s behind me,” Lawrence said. He reached around the seat and brought out the freshly materialized book.

She was smiling. Oversoul Seven was so relieved that the Lawrence image was grinning from ear to ear. Seven felt much more like himself now, and far ahead somewhere it seemed to him that he heard Ma-ah calling.

Lydia laughed, and pulled her visor cap further on her head to shield her eyes from the sun. “This is one of my childrens’ poems. It came so easily that I can hardly lay claim to it, really,” and she read:

The future rises up
Like a camel’s hump,
A part of the beast
Like his ears or his feet.

Who rides the present,
Wiseman or dunce,
Rides future and past,
Aha, all at once.

“A great little poem,” Lawrence said. “And true, too.”

“Is it? Yes, I suppose it is,” she said. “I did a series of children’s poems and called them Sumari Songs for Children. I don’t even know why I called them that. The title just came to me. I always considered them odd in some crazy fashion. The book sold amazingly well, too. My own kids were young when I wrote them. Funny, as I said that, I had the feeling that Anna was upset. Now, I mean. I heard her voice way back in my mind—”

“I’m sure she’s all right,” Lawrence said.

“Mmm. I suppose.” She looked out. “Strange that there isn’t much traffic. We seem to have the road to ourselves.”

“She’s sinking,” Mrs. Only said to Anna.

She had minutes left. Lawrence said, “We’re coming to a tunnel. There’s a terrific place on the other side that I want to show you.”

“Oh?”

Seven materialized the tunnel quickly; because Lydia’s physical senses would be experiencing their final darkening. She shouldn’t be aware of it now, yet the final severing might possibly alert her to the physical situation and renew her panic.

“Oh, how dark it is,” she cried, astonished.

“Tunnels are,” Lawrence said.