“Hell, that makes sense,” said George, wiping the perspiration from his face. “It makes sense, you know.” And then to Seven: “But why does he have to go into one of those damn trances to find it out?”

“Be quiet, George,” Seven whispered, “you’ll distract him.”

“George?” Monarch asked, incredulously. “You’re George? The George?”

George was always embarrassed for Window when he spoke for Christ or Monarch; he couldn’t look him in the face. Grinning, he said, “The George? Well, I’m George anyhow.”

“I’m deeply honored,” Monarch said.

“He is The George,” Leona whispered mentally, “and he isn’t. I can tell. Something’s … distorted.”

“And then, obviously you aren’t trying to steal the Codicils,” Monarch replied to George, with relief.

Seven interrupted, “We’re trying to make sure that the Codicils do appear in your time. You must be dream travelers. I sense someone else with Monarch…”

But Monarch gasped. The room’s walls were fading, the objects falling away into images and the images into shapes that gently disintegrated. “Leona, are you with me?” he called mentally. He felt her presence—even as his body called him back to the bedroom at the museum.

For an instant, all expression vanished from John Window’s eyes as Monarch’s consciousness fled from his counterpart’s mind; and Window felt as if he’d suddenly wakened in a new world without knowing which world it was. But no, he thought, the world was the same. George, Seven and Diggs were still staring at him; only he had changed. Christ was gone!

Almost incredulous, Window rummaged through his inner awareness. The paranoid Christ was nowhere to be found. “I’m not Christ any more,” he said. “He’s gone for good—”

Awed, George just muttered, “Yeah,” because there was no doubt about it: Before his eyes, Window was turning into … someone else. Or into himself. Even Seven gasped. Window’s eyes seemed to go click, click, click, as if changing or reflecting several different focuses before settling on one … and that one focus represented Window’s characteristics reshuffled, put together in a new way. Then Window’s eyes were calm, resolute, sure of themselves; no longer sifting or listless or frightened.

The process hardly took a moment. When Window’s eyes started their transformation, Gregory Diggs had started to say, “My God,” and by the time he’d completed the two words, the process was over.

But as if in response, innumerable vital yet individually minute alterations took place in John Window’s posture, manner, in his lips and nose and ears … as if the man called Window was suddenly put together right, and all of the tensions and struggles that divided him had been resolved. Quite simply, George, Diggs, and Seven all knew that Window was now completely sane whether or not he had been before; and that this man was Window, regardless of the status of Christ or Monarch.