Seven turned back into his fourteen-year-old image. “I told you, it’s your choice, really,” he said. “You can become Tweety at the physical birth or just before, or just after. Babies have a body consciousness, and the self or spirit comes in when it wants to, so to speak, of course. But the body consciousness gets lonely if you wait too long; it needs support. But really, you’ll just know the proper time.”

Lydia smiled and took the form of the old woman she’d been before her death. She had a visor cap set askew on cropped white hair; she wore a pair of slacks, a shirt, and held a cigarette in her hand. “Funny, such a comfortable image in a way,” she said. “It sort of heightens the contrast, when I think of being a child again. On the other hand, it makes me feel older than Josef, who’s going to be my father. I hope I can handle him all right.”

“That’s no way for a daughter to talk,” Seven said. He started to laugh, but suddenly Lydia turned serious.

She said soberly, “Remember, though, you promised to do something special for me, or for Tweety; to give us some kind of knowledge to compensate for all the distortions we’ve discovered about the gods. And it must be something a child can understand.”

“I promised, and I’ll do it,” Seven said. “And it will give you some inner guidelines to begin your new life.”

“And you won’t forget me, I mean, me, Lydia?” she asked.

“Never. And besides, it doesn’t work that way. Good-bye for now, dear Lydia,” he said, and Lydia disappeared.

Oversoul Seven waited somewhat nervously for Cyprus to materialize.

“I see you have your work cut out for you,” she said, reappearing.

“Have I? I’ll say I have,” Seven said, grinning all over his fourteen-year-old face. “Aren’t they something, though, my personalities? Aren’t they unique? I do hope they manage everything all right.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

A Birth