“I never heard such nonsense in any of my lives or before or after,” Seven said, scandalized. “Gods come into being because they want to.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Ram-Ram said impatiently. “That doesn’t mean birth is easy. Any birth is hard, and a god’s birth is—well, spectacular, and harder than most. The files show this to be true. The statistics make it clear. Interviews with divine personages confirm the facts.”

“Haven’t you ever examined your own existence?” Seven asked. “I mean, I understood that all godologists were part divine. Albeit minor god connections. But still. What about your own birth? Or births?”

“Examining my own existence wouldn’t be scientific,” Ram-Ram said severely. “I do have a counterpart on earth, a psychologist who’s examining existence from a human standpoint. Granted, I don’t give him a lot of attention, and I’m not even sure if he acknowledges the existence of the soul, but—”

Seven bristled despite himself, but he said politely, “If you’ll excuse me, dividing yourself in half in order to study the whole seems silly to me. I hope I’m not hurting your feelings, but what happened to the art of godology? Now it’s a science?”

“It always was. Art is too neither-here-nor-there. We want to be more specific. And a scientist’s feelings can’t be hurt, because he’s too objective to have feelings to be hurt,” Ram-Ram said rather proudly. “Now do you want to see this case history or don’t you? It’s Jesus of Nazareth: Case History 9871.”

“Okay. That would be fine,” Seven said, using his snappiest earth vernacular because he saw that, scientist or no, Ram-Ram’s feelings were hurt. “I would really appreciate it,” Seven added heartily.

Ram-Ram’s face brightened, but he coughed, cleared his throat, and began to speak in his professorial style.

“The birth data are all here,” he said. “Christ was carried in the womb of time and he had to fight his way through centuries, misplacing stars, galaxies, even; warping the universe, falling through black holes, tumbling from one to the other; seeking, seeking, seeking that one time and space, that one earthly womb, that one microscopic slit in the soil of time …”

Seven tried not to yawn. He was thinking that overall he liked Jeffy-boy’s Ram-Ram better. At least he had a sense of humor. But the godologist went on, quite carried away by his own presentation. He kept interrupting himself, saying. “Yes, yes, yes,” or, “Indeed, that’s the way it was,” then continuing, growing more excited until Seven became quite alarmed. Again, privately, he wondered if Ram-Ram was really mad. More, Seven couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and right then and there he resolved never again to “lecture at” Will in his dream classes. Not that he ever really did, of course, but—