“That’s no attitude,” Seven started to say, but all of a sudden he couldn’t get his footing, and with good reason. He was trying to stand up in three different rooms at once. So, seeing his predicament, he dematerialized and regained his balance. Then he realized what was wrong. He was seeing too many times at once, because in one room Lydia was dying in the twentieth century: He recognized at once the surroundings in the old peoples’ rest home where she died, but it took a minute for him to put the picture into the correct sequence. In the second room, transposed over the first one, Lydia was being born as Tweety in the seventeenth century, and that was where she belonged in her Now. And in the third room, she was dying again in the life that she was just beginning.

“Seven, stop drifting,” Cyprus called from the second room, and sheepishly Seven returned, and stood by Tweety’s bedside. He grinned: The baby’s head was as fresh as a peach, only two soft open eyes staring up at him, quite like a peach suddenly given sight, he thought; and looking out from itself.

“Will I lose all of my own memories?” Lydia asked anxiously. “I will, won’t I?”

“Now don’t start worrying about that again,” Cyprus answered. “If Seven can remember who he is, you certainly can. Attaining to your soulhood is much more taxing in its way; but you don’t have to worry about that yet.”

Seven frowned. “I wish you’d stop just staring at that baby, Lydia,” he said. “You have to identify with her sooner or later. Procrastinating doesn’t help matters. You aren’t thinking of putting it off at this late date, are you?”

Lydia’s eyes flew open. “I never thought of that. I didn’t realize that I still could change my mind,” she exclaimed.

Cyprus said sternly, “Seven! You aren’t helping matters one bit. You’re just making the whole thing more difficult.”

Seven grimaced, took the form of an earnest young man, and paced the room. “Well, maybe,” he said. “But Lydia’s one of my personalities after all. She has the right to know that she can change her mind, though it’s true that such things are frowned upon. You’d have to get a replacement now, Lydia, and someone who’s interested in seventeenth-century life. People are very touchy about which centuries they get born into, and the seventeenth century isn’t a favorite, in case you’re interested. Some wouldn’t touch it with a—”

“Seven, that’s enough,” Cyprus interrupted. “Lydia, try to relax. Just because you’re fond of the seventeenth century, Seven doesn’t have to be, of course. But he isn’t being very diplomatic, either.”