“Bianka understands that she and Lydia will have, uh, certain creative conflicts, in order to help each other resolve challenges they want to work out. But they’ll love each other just the same. And—”

Seven broke off again—and groaned. Josef suddenly appeared, wearing a toga. He strode angrily across the room and stood in front of Oversoul Seven. “Here you are in one of my dreams again,” he said almost threateningly. “Or I’m in one of yours. I can never tell the difference. I’m in terrible trouble, and you’ve got to help me.”

Cyprus dematerialized diplomatically.

Seven said, “Josef, you do this all the time, come and bother me when you’re not supposed to. What is it now?”

Josef began to stride nervously back and forth, scratching his dream head and glowering at Seven. “I never know when I’ll have one of these crazy dreams, and I never know what to do in them,” he said. “But I knew I’d find you somehow. Now my wife is going to have a baby at any moment. How will I get my painting done? She’s made my studio over into a nursery, just to rub it in.” He glowered at Seven again. His brown moustache quivered. “I wasn’t cut out to be a father,” he wailed. “I wasn’t even cut out to be a husband.” He sat down on the bed, and Seven grinned: The bed creaked just like a real one; not bad for a hallucination, he thought. But Josef put his head in his hands and looked about ready to cry.

“Come on,” Seven said, “we’ve been through all this ten times. You said that you wanted to be a father, so you could understand corporeal creativity as well as creativity through art … so you could help form a new life and study living art.”

“Well, I take it all back,” Josef moaned. “A painter has enough problems; he has no right to father babies. Paintings don’t cry and smell and take a woman’s attention.”

“Why, you’re jealous of Tweety already,” Seven exclaimed, almost scandalized.

“Bianka’s giving her my old studio,” Josef shouted, “I didn’t know she was going to do that.”

“Tweety’s going to be your greatest model,” Seven said. “She might even coax you into being a really good artist.”

“I’d rather use the cat for a model,” Josef said, thundering now. “And this is all your fault.”

“We Oversouls get blamed for everything,” said Seven, shrugging his fourteen-year-old shoulders. “You told me that you wanted to be a father. You and Lydia met in the dream state and settled on each other as parent and child. Bianka went along for her own reasons, but it was all your idea.”

Josef looked up, craftily. “Someone told me once that if a woman was shown a black cat, she’d lose her baby,” he said.