Seven blinked. This conversation with Cyprus had obviously been going on for some time, and he had only now become aware of it. “Of course. It’s obvious,” he said, desperately trying to cover up.

“But you so often overlook the details,” Cyprus said. “When you help one personality, you help all the others. Unconsciously, each feels the effects. For that matter, each personality helps the other, and when you’re in contact with one, you’re also in communication with each of them—”

“But who helps me?” Seven asked petulantly. “I’ve been pelted around like a volleyball—”

“A most apt Earth description,” Cyprus said, smiling. “But what makes you think you haven’t been helped?”

“How long have we been talking like this?” Seven asked, ignoring the question.

“In whose terms?”

“In any terms,” Seven said. “You’re just dancing rings around me. And you think it’s funny. Ma-ah and Lydia are in real trouble; and maybe Proteus, who knows? And I get stuck inside Ma-ah, just trapped there except for now—and only let out when somebody needs me. It’s not at all fair, examination or not.”

“You make your own reality,” Cyprus reminded him, gently. “We all do. Each consciousness does. So, dear Seven, try to remember what you’ve forgotten. Or better still, just take it for granted that you really know what you’re doing, and go on from there.”

“Take what for granted?” Seven asked. “There you go again.”

“Your … predicament.”

“Ma-ah’s in a predicament. And Lydia. And Proteus. I’m not, except for this ridiculous examination.”

Cyprus could no longer contain her amusement. She sighed. “Oh, Seven, you’ll have to go back to Ma-ah for a while. Outside of your present context of operations, I’m sure you’ll agree with me. You still don’t understand.”

“But I want to know what’s happening to Josef,” Seven objected. “And I don’t want to go back inside Ma-ah. You have no idea how terribly confining that is, and I keep getting lost in her till I think I’ll never get out. Couldn’t we take a break? A recess? And look in on Josef ?” Oversoul Seven had adapted the fourteen-year-old image again. He found it most effective in dealing with Cyprus.

She smiled and said, “All right. But remember, this is to be a very brief vacation. Think of Josef’s painting.”

The landscape of the farm and grounds was on the easel. Josef was in the process of applying a series of transparent glazes to it. Bianka, the eighteen-year-old Hosentauf daughter, sat on the messed bed, watching. (As he saw her, Seven moaned.) Josef was obviously showing off, standing with strong thighs apart, leaning backward, staring at the painting with his heavy brows lowered dramatically—and very conscious of Bianka’s admiring glances.