Oversoul Seven concentrated as hard as he could, bringing his consciousness entirely into focus. They were in Lydia’s study. Autumn leaves fell past the windows so fast that Seven blinked. Then, enlarging his visual he saw that the room was a flurry of activity. Three men were banging drawers open, and throwing their contents on the blue rug. “You could have picked a quieter place,” Seven said. “What’s going on here? And is this another of those conversations that have been going on without my conscious knowledge? They always confuse me.”

“Lydia’s family has sold the house,” Cyprus said. “She deeded it to them, so that they could do what they wanted with their inheritance without waiting for her to die—”

“Couldn’t you put that more delicately?” Seven asked, grumpily.

“That’s how Lydia put it, as you’d know if you’d been keeping good track of her,” Cyprus said.

“But I have,” Seven protested. “She had another stroke. It practically catapulted me out of Ma-ah, and I helped her, Lydia, that is; in fact, until then I couldn’t get out of Ma-ah.” Seven said, suddenly remembering, “You told me to identify with Ma-ah as completely as I could, and I agreed. But I didn’t realize how completely I could identify with her, or I might not have agreed so readily.” He shivered. “All that body around all the time,” he said.

“They have their bodies around them all of the time,” Cyprus pointed out. She kept changing almost imperceptibly from a beautiful woman of indeterminate age to a handsome man of indeterminate age. Every once in a while there was a moment when the two images merged, blended, achieved oneness and stability.

“You seem to be having some trouble with your own physical form,” Seven said. “If that was me, acting like that, you’d give me three demerits.”

“I know more of myself than you do of yourself,” she said. “So it’s much more difficult, in fact, almost impossible, to create a physical image to express my known reality. But I’ve told you that before.”

“You certainly have good answers,” Seven said. The two of them were sitting nicely on the couch. Suddenly Seven sprang up: “Look at that,” he shouted. “That lughead just dumped the entire contents of Lydia’s shell collection on the floor! That’s no way to do,” he yelled at the mover. And in a flash the shells flew back into the drawer.

“Seven, stop that,” Cyprus said urgently.

The mover turned around, and stared at the drawer. “I could have sworn that I dumped all that stuff out,” he said, turning toward the other mover.

“Put it back,” Cyprus ordered. “Now.”

The shells went from the drawer, singly, to the floor while the mover’s back was turned. When he looked back, the drawer was empty. “Why, I did,” he yelled. “I mean … I could swear—”