“Ah!” he shouted, plummeting through her. Though the delicious tunnel of her was mortal, ended finally with a bone, still he felt as if he went traveling through and beyond flesh; his seed impatiently shooting into places he could not imagine, yet carrying him too. He felt this. No thoughts were involved, only a luxurious joyous, tormenting acceptance and acquiescence. Here, now, you could push, shove, thrust, yell, laugh, shout—

“Ow! Oh!” Bianka cried, dizzy with him.

Her cry brought him back. He was finished, triumphant, yet scared. Awed, as he always was. You could get lost in that tunnel. You did get lost in it. Ahh, who cared?

And so the seed was planted; and an opening was made in the tunnel that leads to other realities.

In one of these, Oversoul Seven was talking to Lydia. “Do you feel better about things now?” he asked.

“You’ll have to forgive me for staring,” she said. “But I’ve never read any etiquette rules for talking to your own soul, and it’s a bit disconcerting. And what am I supposed to call you? Besides, I didn’t know that souls looked like people.”

“I’m a people soul,” Seven said. “What did you want me to look like?”

“You’re laughing at me and that’s not fair.”

“I’m your soul,” Seven said, reasonably. “And you have a very funny sense of humor. Actually, I just form myself into an image so you can relate to me, or so we can relate to each other. You’d find talking to someone you couldn’t see much more disconcerting, with your background. I could look like a ghost, but I prefer not to. That’s too conventional.”

“And this place?” Lydia asked. “It’s so beautiful. The trees and hillside. I can feel the grass under my feet. Is all this real?”

“You need a location. You’d get upset if you thought you weren’t anywhere,” Seven said. “You always need a where to put yourself in, at least at your present stage of development.” He coughed, remembering to cover his mouth because Lydia was still concerned about manners. “I seem to be in an in-between stage myself, so I can sympathize,” he said.

“And this conversation?” Lydia stood up, musing, very aware of her body, the lithe form, of herself moving (yet, in what terms?). “I need the words, too. Is that what you’re going to tell me next?” she asked.

He grinned.

“And I suppose if I believed in heaven—”

“Then you’d experience it for a while,” Seven said, “Until you got bored or finally listened. It can get quite complicated.”

“Can? It is now,” she said, still musing. “How strange. Oh God—Anna and Roger down there, still caught in all of that, and I can’t tell them. But of course it’s not down there, is it?”

“No, it’s right here,” Seven said. “A different kind of focus.”