“Oh, I’ve been so busy, I forgot,” Seven apologized. “He has to meet you all, too.” Seven was growing younger himself, more buoyant, as the bits of the puzzle began to come together for him, and suddenly it occurred to him that … they saw him as an old man when … in their terms, symbolically, he felt like one. What was it that Cyprus told him to remember … her very last words? “Well, no matter,” he said. “Watch.”

Mentally he called Josef’s name so clearly and truly that it echoed through Josef’s sleep. “What? What is it? Oh, it’s you again,” Josef said. He sat up, out of his body without realizing it. Bianka was sleeping beside him.

“Follow my voice. We’re, uh … having a party,” Oversoul Seven said.

“Can she come too?” Josef asked.

“No, there’s too many already,” Seven said.

“I don’t know, then. I’d hate to have her wake up and find me gone.”

“Your body will be there,” Seven said, reasonably enough, he thought.

“My body!” Josef cried.

“Hurry, we haven’t got all night,” Seven said, with just a touch of severity. And in the next instant a blinking Josef stood with all the others. “What? What? How did I get here?” he asked. Then he recognized the courtyard. “This is my painting … What are all these people doing in my painting?”

“Is that Josef?” Ma-ah asked.

“Why, he’s the boy we followed down the tunnel that night,” Josef yelled, pointing at Proteus. “There was a man there, too, with a funny name—”

Proteus turned white. “Window? Was that his name?”

“Right. Right. It was Window,” Josef said. “Does he appear in your dreams too?” he asked, indicating Seven.

“Not in mine,” Lydia said. “My, you look familiar. I’m sure I’ve seen you before. If only I could remember…. Are you an artist? I had a son sometime or someplace … who could have been an artist. I wonder how he is—” Lydia broke off. Suddenly she was looking into Roger’s bedroom, and she knew quite clearly who he was. Memories of her life, but not of her death, rushed back to her. Roger was grinning, looking very relaxed and boyish for a man of fifty. He stood painting at an easel set up by his bed. The easel seemed quite incongruous and out of place compared with the white ruffled curtains at the windows. It seemed to be very early in the morning. He was talking to someone in the next room, through the open door. Lydia was quite astonished. Roger, painting before going to work in the morning? Roger—who had let his artistic ability just vanish through the years?