The interviews had been going on for centuries, or for only moments, according to your point of view. Oversoul Seven frowned, put an Out To Lunch sign on the door, and said to his teacher, Cyprus, “Everyone wants to be a god. I never saw anything like it. I don’t trust any of the applicants either; they’re all too anxious.” For the present, Oversoul Seven looked like a guru, because that was what the earth applicants expected. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the waiting-room coffee table, and smiled despite himself. “I do sort of look like Christ, too, don’t you think?”

Cyprus was thinking so fast that she kept changing form constantly. She paused long enough to say, “If Lydia is all ready to be born again, then I really don’t see why you’re going to all this trouble on her behalf at a time like this. You’ll be graded on how smoothly you help Lydia begin her new life, and if the affair is vital to her, it also makes up your own most important work for this semester. So I don’t see where this search for the gods fits in at all.”

“How do you think I feel, getting sidetracked like this? But my earth peoples’ education has really hit a snag, just because of their god concepts. The earth gods are just senile. Too bad and all, but what can you do? When you toss gods into time, well, they get tinged by it just like anyone else. It just, uh, takes longer. And even though Lydia is one of my personalities, she has to discover the answers for herself.”

“I hope you remember that, Seven,” Cyprus said. “And I also hope you remember that you’re dealing with subjective realities this semester. I suppose the Out To Lunch sign has something to do with earth customs? Even so, I’m not sure that I approve of the setting you’ve created for the interviews.”

Seven said broodingly, “Well, it’s the replica of a doctor’s waiting room that Lydia visited in her twentieth-century life. I’m trying to use earth symbolism as much as possible to give her a sense of security between lives; she gets awfully skittish. I was pleased with this environment—physician of the soul, that sort of thing.”

Cyprus said, “That kind of venture can get quite complicated.” She paused, giving Seven time to comment, and when he didn’t, but just blushed guiltily, Cyprus disappeared. Her voice, coming from nowhere in particular, said, “Apparently you have no real problems with Lydia, though—at least nothing that you can’t handle—so you can carry on quite well alone. Just so Lydia gets born on time.”

“All right, come back,” Seven yelled, symbolically speaking, because actually the entire conversation thus far took place soundlessly, and wordlessly as well.