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one would still exist, only in an infinite number of pieces!"
    "With entropy drawing those further apart."
    Gabriel tried to brush that aside with his hand, but he was still chained, so he only shook his head. "Entropy belongs to the fallen world. With a celestial creature, the parts might well reconstitute themselves. That's why dismemberment isn't permanent."
    "The soul-fragments would try to reunite," Mephistopheles said, "but lacking cohesion, how would they adhere?"
    Gabriel's eyes widened. "You've discovered how a soul is more than the sum of its parts?"
    Mephistopheles opened his hands and created a screen of light, on which he illuminated a series of filaments and dots. "Consider this a model of a soul, extremely simplified for purposes of instruction. The various attributes are these dots, and this—" he changed the color of the filaments, "—is the string which binds them all together, fastening them to one another and giving them order."
    Gabriel struggled to lean closer. When he tried to point, his hands hit the end of the chain again, so he created a light pointer of his own and selected parts of the diagram. "You unhook it from one end and begin unraveling—"
    "It's not raveled," Mephistopheles said. "The knitting reference in psalms is a metaphor, although maybe human souls are knit. I haven't tested theirs. Ours resemble beadwork."
    Gabriel frowned. "What anchors the ends?"
    "Nothing, ironically. The ends of the 'string' coil around themselves. The soul parts do have a natural attraction to one another, but it's not terribly difficult to pinch them apart."
    "I wouldn't have guessed that." Gabriel hummed. "Have you mapped which parts of the soul are which?"
    "It wasn't necessary for our purposes."
    Gabriel's pupils widened. "If I were you, I'd attempt inactivating them one at a time to determine what attributes the test subject failed to manifest."
    "That's an idea." Mephistopheles took a step closer, one wing inadvertently brushing the light image so it rippled like a reflection pool. "Prior to now I'd only stimulated them individually to test for a reaction, but the results were difficult to interpret. It would take a prohibitive time to deduce by attrition because there are so many aptitudes one would need to screen to detect an absolute lack of one."
    Gabriel leaned back, breathing hard and still riding a wild joy. "You've proposed a microfilament binding together these beads. You cut the string, but wouldn't the structure just reform?"
    "Maybe." Mephistopheles's face transformed with a slow but unstoppable grin, blue eyes bright beneath his curls. "But if one were to reach inside and slide the beads one at a time off the severed string, they'd scatter."
    "Are they undifferentiated enough that you can't—"
    "—keep them together once they're off the string? That's the theory. If someone were sufficiently dedicated—"
    "Yes, but can the beads even retain their shape once separated from the string, which one assumes is their sustenance?" Gabriel shook his head. "Based on what happens after an angel gets injured, I would hypothesize the residual parts would dissipate after about twenty-four hours anyhow, leaving only a narrow window of time to reconstitute the angel in the first place." He frowned as he thought. "The string is our subconscious cohesion?"
    "And the beads are personality traits fitted together seemingly at random."
    "With the various admixtures determining the choir—"
    "—so that God could manufacture an infinite variety of creatures with a very few base components."
    "And presumably no one is entirely lacking any single trait—"
    "—but with different angels amplifying differing aspects of the Almighty—"
    "—meaning that spread out over all creation, every aspect of God is illuminated by at least one soul—"
    "And also, in theory, if one could 'harvest' these traits form already living angels and somehow restring them—a new angel!"
    They both stood breathless, eyes