“My first guess was a scientific treatise of some sort,” Ram-Ram said, as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “but afterward I realized that a different kind of manuscript must be involved. In any case, I had my chance and muffed it. But now it’s almost as if I went back in time and changed a version of me, by helping you.”

“I’m not any version of you,” Jeffery shouted.

“Of course you’re not. You’re too literal-minded,” Ram-Ram said. “Still, your future will be more like the future I might have had …”

Oversoul Seven was having difficulties following the conversation. For one thing, he was losing his focus on earth time, so that objects appeared and disappeared according to when they had existed, or would exist, in any given space; and particularly in the space that was Jeffery’s living room. He heard Jeffery’s voice, but sometimes it was speaking yesterday, sometimes tomorrow, and Oversoul Seven couldn’t find a proper present at all.

Beside him, Cyprus waited. “You’re too far to the left of today,” she said.

Seven called somewhat anxiously, “I can’t seem to find any today to start with.”

“Any time is a present time if you’re there. Stop where things seem to be ‘right now,’ and call that today.”

“All right, if you say so,” Seven whispered. “But now it’s a different present than it was before. I got confused; or I get confused. I mean, you’re in a different present time than I am.”

“No matter,” she said. “I’m on a platform above time. And theoretically, you should be, too. But tell me when you are.”

“I’m to the left of time from your viewpoint, uh, I think,” came Seven’s hasty reply.

“All right; that’s Jeffery’s past. Now back up a bit further.”

Seven was growing dizzy. Chairs and tables changed their positions according to their locations at any given time. Jeffery’s figure appeared at the window; then, at the door. Ram-Ram disappeared entirely. The living room flickered bright, then dark, as nights and days flashed by.

“Now,” Cyprus directed.

Seven tried to stop things as quickly as he could. Then he grinned. It was Jeffery’s room at night, before … before what? For he saw himself and Cyprus, both in adult male images, out on Jeffery’s patio.

“That image suits me rather well,” he said to the Cyprus on the platform above time.

“Shush. Listen and watch,” she said.

“I think I have it all straight,” said the earlier image of Seven who stood with the male Cyprus.

“All what straight?” asked the “present” Seven.