Oversoul Seven was mentally yelling, “Go back to your body,” but George never heard him, lost as he was in his resolute determination to reach the Codicils. “He has been out too long,” Seven said to Cyprus. “Why doesn’t he take the warning?”

“Because he’s stubborn, like someone else I know,” Cyprus said.

George saw a plaque. The light became almost blinding. For a moment, he was afraid that he could somehow disappear in its sensed vastness. His consciousness felt as if it were being pulled back to his body at an incredible rate. He looked down … his dream body gyrated over his physical one, then he blanked out for a moment, and blinking, sat up.

Cyprus and Seven turned into two bits of light on George’s brass gaslamp.

“Well, he’s all right now,” Seven said. “But I’m not stubborn, if that’s what you mean.”

George sat up and lit his pipe.

“We’ll discuss that later,” Cyprus said. “Right now, I want to be sure that you understand what you have to do about the Codicils.”

“Right-o,” said Seven, grinning. “At least I think I do. Somehow even though George failed this time, I have to help him get the Codicils in the twenty-fifth-century museum and bring them back to the 1890s—”

“He can’t bring back the plaque,” Cyprus interrupted. “That object can’t exist in George’s time, but the ideas can….”

“You mean, he has to memorize them?” Seven cried.

“Not necessarily.”

“But he’ll never memorize all the stuff I saw on that plaque,” Seven protested. “He’s bound to forget some things and distort others, and—”

“He’ll be translating them into his own time scheme,” Cyprus said gently. “After that, though, the Codicils have to be discovered in the time of George’s grandson.”

George put out his pipe, lay down, promptly fell asleep, and started snoring.

“But how?” Seven cried. “I’m really confused now. And if I don’t get it all right, that awful probable Earth will come into being in George’s world’s future.” He sighed. “Cyprus, you’ve given me too much to handle this time.”

“Nonsense,” Cyprus answered, looking nowhere in particular. “You can always do more than you think you can. You know about Framework Two now. It’s really quite simple. George has to find the Codicils in the twenty-fifth-century museum, and write them down in his journal in the 1890s so that his grandson can find them in the attic in the twentieth century and put them on microfilm in the bomb shelter. Then they can be found by Monarch in the twenty-fifth century, as they are in that probable future. Nothing could be simpler!”