“This isn’t any time for a sermon,” Josef said mentally. “I don’t even know if I’m really seeing you or not, but whenever I do see you, then I’m either dreaming or delirious—”

“You’re always delirious,” Seven answered. “Here.” He hallucinated a bottle of brandy. Josef sat up in his spirit body—unknowingly in this case—and drank, sputtering as he did so, while Seven made a quick mental trip to Josef’s house to see what was going on there now. A steam bath. The boiling water steamed up the windows and froze into a glittering glaze in which the candlelight danced. The chimney smoke made a low dark ceiling so that the members of the family went scuttling beneath it; bent over, coughing and spluttering. Bianka was in the master bedroom on the second floor. She looked like a terrified big blonde-haired doll. Her hair, braided for the birth, was wet with perspiration and steam; her light blue eyes vacant one moment, and scared to death the next. Her mother, Mrs. Hosentauf, kept yelling “It’s almost time” to three female cousins who kept moaning for no good reason that Seven could discover.

A huge half-finished painting stood on a heavy wooden easel by the hall window, and the rags hanging there stank of the turpentine that Josef cleaned his brushes in, daily, so that Bianka would think he’d been busy painting. All the other rags and pieces of cloth were piled in the bedroom, preparatory to the birth. Seven, invisible, kicked these aside and went over to Bianka.

He’d seen more births than he could remember, and he knew at once that Bianka’s pains right now were caused by fear and foreboding. She was close, though, he saw, with some very definite feelings of disquietude, and he’d have to accelerate time considerably for Lydia; because when the baby was due—well, Lydia had to be there. Yet he tried to forget his concern about the future birth, so he could concentrate on Bianka’s present.

She never saw him. Shaking his head, half vexed with her and Josef and Lydia as well, Seven said mentally, “Bianka, you aren’t due yet. Your pains are caused by fear. Breathe deeply. Let yourself go. There now, there’s nothing to it. That’s right.” He sent ripples of energy to her belly, watched them travel to her uterus and down her thighs. Bianka began to doze. Seven patted her stomach good-naturedly and when she began to quiet down, he went downstairs.

The men, Elgren Hosentauf and his brothers, were in the barns along with sawdust and hay, animal breath and manure, and—Seven saw—vodka. The four men were huddled together, squatting and laughing, in one of the cow’s stalls; warm and cozy, with pitchforks ready in case one of the women came to fetch them, in which case they would say they’d been working all the time.