JAMES PATRICK KELLY

Glass Cloud

One of the hottest new writers in science fiction, James Patrick Kelly was born in Mineola, New York, and now lives with his family in Durham, New Hampshire. Kelly made his first sale in 1975, and has since become a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine; his stories have also appeared in Universe, Galaxy, Amazing, Analog, The Twilight Zone Magazine, and elsewhere. His first solo novel, Planet of Whispers, came out in 1984. His most recent book is a novel written in collaboration with John Kessel, Freedom Beach. He is currently at work on a new novel, tentatively entitled Look into the Sun. His story “Friend,” also in collaboration with Kessel, was in our First Annual Collection; his story “Solstice” was in our Third Annual Collection; and his story “The Prisoner of Chillon” was in our Fourth Annual Collection.

Here, in an intense and compelling story set in his native New Hampshire, he shows us that sometimes even a man at the very top of his profession can receive an offer he can’t refuse.

 

GLASS CLOUD

James Patrick Kelly

Phillip Wing was surprised when he found out what his wife had been doing with her Wednesday afternoons. “You’ve joined what?”

“A friend invited me to sit in on a study group at the mission.” Daisy refilled her glass from a decanter. “I’ve been twice, that’s all. I haven’t joined anything.”

“What are you studying?”

“Sitting in, Phil—it’s not like I intend to convert. I’m just browsing.” She sipped her wine and waited for Wing to settle back. “They haven’t said a word about immortality yet. Mostly they talk about history.”

“History? History? The Messengers haven’t been here long enough to learn anything about history.”

“Seven years. First contact was seven years ago.” She sighed and suddenly she was lecturing. “Cultural evolution follows predictable patterns. There are interesting correlations between humanity and some of the other species that the Messengers have contacted.”

Wing shook his head. “I don’t get it. We’ve been together what? Since ’51? For years all that mattered was the inn. They nuke Geneva, so what? Revolution in Mexico, who cares?”

“I care about you,” she said.

That stopped him for a moment. Absently, he filled his glass from the decanter and took a gulp before he realized that it was the synthetic Riesling that she was trying out as a house wine. He swallowed it with difficulty. “Who’s the friend?”

“What?”

“The friend who asked you to the mission. Who is he?” Wing was just guessing that it was a man. It was a good guess.

“A regular.” Daisy glanced away from him and nodded at the glow sculpture on the wall. “You know Jim McCauley.”

All he knew was that McCauley was a local artist who had made a name for himself in fancy light bulbs. Wing watched the play of pastel light across her face, trying to see her as this regular might see her. Daisy was not beautiful, although she could be pretty when she paid attention to detail. She did not bother to comb her hair every time the wind caught it nor did she much care about the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Hers was an intelligent, hard-edged, New Hampshire Yankee face. She looked like someone who would know about things that mattered. Wing had good reasons for loving her; he slid across the couch and nuzzled under her ear.

“Don’t tickle.” She laughed. “You’re invited, you know.” She pulled back, but not too far. “The new Messenger, Ndavu, is interested in art. He’s mentioned the Glass Cloud several times. You really ought to go. You might learn something.” Having made her pitch, she kissed him.

*   *   *

Phillip Wing had no time to study history; he was too busy worrying about the Second Wonder of the World. Solon Petropolus, erratic scion of the Greek transportation conglomerate, had endowed the Seven Wonders Foundation with an immense fortune. The foundation was Petropolus’s megalomaniacal gift to the ages. It commissioned constructions—some called them art—on a monumental scale. It was the vulgar purpose of the Wonders to attract crowds. They were to be places where a French secretaire or a Peruvian campesino or even an Algerian mullah might come to contemplate the enduring spirit of Solon Petropolus, the man who embalmed himself in money.

Wing had spent five years at Yale grinding out a practitioner’s degree but when he graduated he was certain that he had made a mistake. He was offered several jobs but not one that he wanted. He had studied architecture with the impossibly naïve hope that someday, someone would let him design a building as large as his ambitions. He wanted to build landmarks, not program factories to fabricate this year’s model of go-tubes for the masses too poor to afford real housing. Instead of working he decided to spend the summer after graduation hiking the Appalachian Trail. Alone.

As he climbed Webster Cliff in Crawford Notch, he played a poetry game against his fatigue. A zephyr massages the arthritic tree. It was only a few kilometers to the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Mispah Spring Hut where he would spend the night. Plodding promiscuously into a tangerine heaven. Wing made it a game because he did not really believe in poetry. Stone teeth bite solipsistic toes. A low cloud was sweeping through the Notch just as the late afternoon sun dipped out of the overcast into a jagged band of blue sky on the horizon. Something strange happened to the light then and for an instant the cloud was transformed. A cloud of glass.

“A glass cloud,” he muttered. There was no one to hear him. He stopped, watching the cloud but not seeing it, experiencing instead an overpowering inner vision. A glass cloud. The image swelled like a bubble. He could see himself floating with it and for the first time he understood what people meant when they talked about inspiration. He kept thinking of the glass cloud all the way to the hut, all that night. He was still thinking of it weeks later when he reached the summit of Kahtadin, the northern terminus of the trail, and thought of it on the hover to Connecticut. He did some research and made sketches, taking a strange satisfaction from the enormous uselessness of it. That fall Seven Wonders announced the opening of the North American design competition. Phillip Wing, an unregistered, unemployed, uncertain architect of twenty-seven had committed the single inspiration of his life to disk and entered the competition because he had nothing better to do.

Now as he looked down out of the hover at Crawford Notch, Wing could not help but envy that young man stalking through the forest, seething with ambition and, at the same time, desperately afraid he was second-rate. At age twenty-seven Wing could not imagine the trouble a thirty-five-year old could get into. Schedules and meetings, compromises and contracts. That eager young man had not realized what it would mean to capture the glittering prize at the start of a career, so that everything that came after seemed lackluster. That fierce young man had never been truly in love or watched in horror as time abraded true love.

A roadbuster was eating the section of NH Route 302 that passed through the Notch. Its blades flayed the ice-slicked asphalt into chunks. Then a wide-bladed caterpillar scooped the bituminous rubble up and into trucks bound for the recycling plant in Concord. Once the old highway had been stripped down to its foundation course of gravel, crews would come to lay the Glass Cloud’s underground track. After thaw a paver the size of a brachiosaurus would regurgitate asphalt to cover the track. Route 302 through Crawford Notch was the last phase of the ninety-seven kilometer track which followed existing roads through the heart of the White Mountain National Forest.

“Won’t be long now,” said the hover pilot. “They’re talking a power-up test in ten weeks. Three months tops.”

Wing said nothing. Ten weeks. Unless another preservationist judge could be convinced to meddle or Seven Wonders decided it had spent enough and sued him for the overruns. The project was two years late already and had long since gobbled up a generous contingency budget. Wing knew he had made mistakes, although he admitted them only to himself. Sometimes he worried that he had wasted his chance. He motioned to the pilot who banked the hover and headed south toward North Conway.

The hover was the property of Gemini Fabricators, the lead company in the consortium that had won the contract to build the Cloud and its track. Wing knew that the pilot had instructions to keep him in the air as long as possible. Every minute he spent inspecting track was one minute less he would have to go over the checklist for the newly completed docking platform with Laporte and Alz. Laporte, the project manager, made no secret of his dismay at having to waste valuable time with Wing. Laporte had made it clear that he believed Wing was largely to blame for the project’s misfortunes.

The hover settled onto its landing struts like an old man easing into a hot bath. Wing waited for the dirty snow and swirls of litter to subside. The job site was strewn with coffee cups, squashed beer bulbs, and enough vitabulk wrap to cover Mount Washington.

Wing popped the hatch and was greeted by a knife-edged wind; there was no welcoming committee. He crossed the frozen landing zone toward the field offices, a group of linked commercial go-tubes that looked like a chain of plastic sausages some careless giant had dropped. The Seven Wonders tube was empty and the telelink was ringing. Wing would have answered it except that was exactly the kind of thing that made Laporte mad. Instead he went next door to Gemini looking for Fred Alz. Wing suspected that some of the project’s problems arose from the collusion between Laporte and Alz, Gemini’s field super. A woman he did not recognize sat at a CAD screen eating a vitabulk doughnut and staring dully at details of the ferroplastic structural grid.

“Where is everybody?” said Wing.

“They went to town to see him off.”

“Him?”

“I think it’s a him. A Messenger: No-doubt or some such.”

“What was he doing here?”

“Maybe he was looking for converts. With immortality we might actually have a chance of finishing.” She took a bite of doughnut and looked at him for the first time. “Who the hell are you anyway?”

“The architect.”

“Yeah?” She did not seem impressed. “Where’s your hard hat?”

Wing knew what they all said about him: that he was an arrogant son-of-a-bitch with a chip on his shoulder the size of the Great Pyramid. He spent some time living up to his reputation. The engineer did not stay for the entire tirade; she stalked out, leaving Wing to stew over the waste of an afternoon. Shortly afterward, Alz and Laporte breezed in, laughing. Probably at him.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Phil,” Laporte held up both hands in mock surrender, “but there’s good news.”

“It’s two-thirty-eight! This plugging project is twenty-one months late and you’re giving tours to goddamned aliens.”

“Phil.” Alz put a hand on his shoulder. “Phil, listen to me for a minute, will you?” Wing wanted to knock it away. “Mentor Ndavu has made a generous offer on behalf of the commonwealth of Messengers.” Alz spoke quickly, as if he thought Wing might explode if he stopped. “He’s talking major funding, a special grant that could carry us right through to completion. He says the Messengers want to recognize outstanding achievement in the arts, hard cash and lots of it—you ought to be proud is what you ought to be. We get it and chances are we can float the Cloud out of here by Memorial Day. Ten weeks, Phil.”

Wing looked from Alz to Laporte. There was something going on, something peculiar and scary. People did not just hand out open-ended grants to rescue troubled projects for no reason—especially not the Messengers, who had never shown more than a polite interest in any of the works of humanity. Three years of autotherapy had taught Wing that he had a tendency to make conspiracy out of coincidence. But this was real. First Daisy, now the Cloud; the aliens were getting close. “Could we do it without them?”

Alz laughed.

“They’re not monsters, Phil,” said Laporte.

*   *   *

A tear dribbled down Wing’s cheek. His eyes always watered when he sniffed too much Focus. The two-meter CAD screen that filled one wall of his studio displayed the south elevation of the proposed headquarters for SEE-Coast, the local telelink utility. There was something wrong with the row of window dormers set into the new hip roof. He blinked and the computer replaced the sketch with a menu. A doubleblink changed the cursor on the screen from draw to erase mode. His eyes darted; the windows disappeared.

He had known that the SEE-Coast project was going to be more trouble than it was worth. Jack Congemi was trying to cram too much building onto too small a site, a sliver of river front wedged between an eighteenth-century chandlery and a nineteenth-century hotel. If he could have gotten a variance to build higher than five stories, there would have been no problem. But SEE-Coast was buying into Portsmouth’s exclusive historic district, where the zoning regulations were carved in granite.

It was a decent commission and the cost-plus fee contract meant he would make good money, but like everything he had done since the Cloud, Wing was bored with it. The building was pure kitsch: a tech bunker hiding behind a Georgian facade. It was like all the rest of his recent projects: clients buying a safe name brand and to hell with the vision. Of course they expected him to deliver stick-built at a price competitive with Korean robot factories. Never mind that half the local trades were incompetent and the other half were booked.

At last he could no longer bear to look at the monster. “Save it.” He closed his eyes and still saw those ugly windows burned on the insides of his lids.

“Saved,” said the computer.

He sat, too weary to move, and let his mind soak in the blackness of the empty screen. He knew he had spent too much time recently worrying about the Cloud and the Messengers. It was perverse since everything was going so well. All the checklists were now complete, pre-flight start-up tests were underway and Seven Wonders had scheduled dedication ceremonies for Memorial Day. The opening of the Second Wonder of the Modern World would have been reason enough for a news orgy, but now the Messengers’ involvement was beginning to overshadow Wing’s masterpiece. Telelink reporters kept calling him from places like Bangkok and Kinshasa and Montevideo to ask him about the aliens. Why were they supporting the Cloud? When would they invite humanity to join their commonwealth and share in their immortality technology? What were they really like?

He had no answers. Up until now he had done his best to avoid meeting the alien, Ndavu. Like most intelligent people, Wing had been bitterly disappointed by the Messengers. Their arrival had changed nothing: there were still too many crazy people with nukes; the war in Mexico dragged on. Although they had been excruciatingly diplomatic, it was clear that human civilization impressed them not at all. They kept their secrets to themselves—had never invited anyone to tour their starships or demonstrated the technique for preserving minds after death. The Messengers claimed that they had come to Earth for raw materials and to spread some as-yet vague message of galactic culture. Wing guessed that they held humanity in roughly the same esteem with which the conquistadors had held the Aztecs. But he could hardly admit that to reporters.

“Something else?” The computer disturbed his reverie; it was set to prompt him for new commands after twenty minutes of inactivity.

He leaned back in his chair and stretched, accidentally knocking his print of da Vinci’s John the Baptist askew. “What the hell time is it, anyway?”

“One-fourteen-thirty-five AM, 19 February 2056.”

He decided that he was too tired to get up and fix the picture.

“Here you are.” Daisy appeared in the doorway. “Do you know what time it is?” She straightened the Baptist and then came up behind his chair. “Something wrong?”

“SEE-Coast.”

She began to massage his shoulders and he leaned his head back against her belly. “Can’t it wait until the morning?”

The skin was itchy where the tear had dried. Wing rubbed it, considering.

“Would you like to come to bed?” She bent over to kiss him and he could see that she was naked beneath her dressing gown. “All work and no play…”

The stink of doubt that he had tried so hard to perfume with concentration enhancers still clung to him. “But what if I wake up tomorrow and can’t work on this crap? What if I don’t believe in what I’m doing anymore? I can’t live off the Glass Cloud forever.”

“Then you’ll find something else.” She sifted his hair through her fingers.

He plastered a smile on his face and slipped a hand inside her gown—more from habit than passion. “I love you.”

“It’s better in bed.” She pulled him from his chair. “Just you keep quiet and follow Mother Goodwin, young man. She’ll take the wrinkles out of your brow.”

He stumbled as he came into her arms but she caught his weight easily. She gave him a fierce hug and he wondered what she had been doing all evening.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said softly, “about this party. I give in: go ahead if you want and invite Ndavu. I promise to be polite—but that’s all.” He wanted to pull back and see her reaction but she would not let him go. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“That’s one of the things I want,” she said. Her cheek was hot against his neck.

*   *   *

Piscataqua House was built by Samuel Goodwin in 1763. A handsome building of water-struck brick and granite, it was said to have offered the finest lodging in the colonial city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Nearly three hundred years later it was still an inn and Daisy Goodwin was its keeper.

Wing had always been intrigued by the way Daisy’s pedigree had affected her personality. It was not so much the old money she had inherited—most of which was tied up in the inn. It was the way she could bicycle around town and point out the elementary school she had attended, the Congregational Church where her grandparents had married, the huge black oak in Prescott Park that great-great-Uncle Josiah had planted during the Garfield administration. She lived with the easy grace of someone who was exactly where she belonged, doing exactly what she had always intended to do.

Wing had never belonged. He had been born in Taipei but had fled to the States with his Taiwanese father after his American mother had been killed in the bloody reunification riots of 2026. His father, a software engineer, had spent the rest of a bitter life searching in vain for what he had left on Taiwan. Phillip Wing had gone to elementary schools in Cupertino, California; Waltham, Massachusetts; Norcross, Georgia; and Orem, Utah. He knew very little about either side of his family. “When you are old enough to understand,” his father would always say. “Someday we will talk. But not now.” Young Phillip learned quickly to stop asking; too many questions could drive his father into one of his binges. He would dose himself to the brink of insensibility with memory sweeteners and stay up half the night weeping and babbling in the Taiwanese dialect of Fujian. His father had died when Wing was a junior at Yale. He had never met Daisy. Wing liked to think that the old man would have approved.

Wing tried hard to belong—at least to Daisy, if not to Piscataqua House. He had gutted the Counting House, a hundred-and-ninety-five-year old business annex built by the merchant Goodwins, and converted it into his offices. He was polite to the guests despite their annoying ignorance about the Cloud; most people thought it had been designed by Solon Petropolus. He helped out when she was short-handed, joined the Congregational Church despite a complete lack of religiosity, and served two terms on the city’s Planning Board. He endured the dreaded black-tie fund raisers of the National Society of Colonial Dames for Daisy’s sake and took her to the opera in Boston at least twice a year even though it gave him a headache. Now she was asking him to play host to an alien.

An intimate party of twenty-three had gathered in the Hawthorne parlor for a buffet in Ndavu’s honor. Laporte had flown down from North Conway with his wife, Jolene. Among the locals were the Hathaways, who were still bragging about their vacation on Orbital Three, Magda Rudowski, Artistic Director of Theater-by-the-Sea, the new city manager, whose name Wing could never remember, and her husband, who never had anything to say, Reverend Smoot, the reformalist minister, and the Congemis, who owned SEE-Coast. There were also a handful of Ndavu’s hangers-on, among them the glow sculptor, Jim McCauley.

Wing hated these kinds of parties. He had about as much chat in him as a Trappist monk. To help ease his awkwardness, Daisy sent him out into the room with their best cut-glass appetizer to help the guests get hungry. He wandered through other people’s conversations, feeling lost.

“Oh, but we love it up north,” Jolene Laporte was saying. “It’s peaceful and the air is clean and the mountains…”

“… are tall,” Laporte finished her sentence and winked as he reached for the appetizer. “But it’s plugging cold—Jesus!” Magda Rudowski laughed nervously. Laporte looked twisted; he had the classic hollow stare, as if his eyes had just been fished out of a jar of formaldehyde.

“Don’t make fun, Leon,” Jolene said, pouting. “You love it too. Why, just the other day he was saying how nice it would be to stay on after the Cloud opened. I think he’d like to bask in his glory for a while.” She sprayed a test dose from the appetizer onto her wrist and took a tentative sniff. “How legal is this?”

“Just some olfactory precursors,” Wing said, “and maybe twenty ppm of Glow.”

“Maybe I’m not the only one who deserves credit, Jolene. Maybe Phil here wants a slice of the glory too.”

Daisy wheeled the alien into the parlor. “Phillip, I’d like you to meet Mentor Ndavu.” Wing had never seen her so happy.

The alien was wearing a loose, black pinstriped suit. He might have been a corporate vice-president with his slicked-back gray hair and long, ruddy face except that he was over two meters tall. He had to slump to fit into his wheelchair and his knees stuck out like bumpers. The chair whined as it rolled; Ndavu leaned forward extending his hand. Wing found himself counting the fingers. Of course there were five. The Messengers were nothing if not thorough.

“I have been wanting to meet you, Phillip.”

Wing shook hands. Ndavu’s grip was firm and oddly sticky, like plastic wrap. The Messenger grinned. “I am very much interested in your work.”

“As we all are interested in yours.” Reverend Smoot brushed past Wing. “I, for one, would like to know…”

“Reverend,” Ndavu spoke softly so that only those closest to him could hear, “must we always argue?”

“… would like to know, Mentor,” continued Smoot in his pulpit voice, “how your people intend to respond to the advisory voted yesterday by the Council of Churches.”

“Perhaps we should discuss business later, Reverend.” Ndavu shot a porcelain smile at Laporte. “Leon, this must be your wife, Jolene.”

Daisy got Wing’s attention by standing utterly still. Between them passed an unspoken message which she punctuated by tilting her head. Wing’s inclination was to let Smoot and Ndavu go at each other but he took firm hold of the Reverend’s arm. “Would you like to see the greenhouse, Magda?” he said, turning the minister toward the actress. “The freesias are just coming into bloom; the place smells like the Garden of Eden. How about you, Reverend?” Glowering, Smoot allowed himself to be led away.

A few of the other guests had drifted out into what had once been the stables. Daisy’s parents had replaced the old roof with sheets of clear optical plastic during the Farm Crusade, converting the entire wing into a greenhouse. In those days the inn might have closed without a reliable source of fresh produce. Magda Rudowski paused to admire a planter filled with tuberous begonias.

Reverend Smoot squinted through the krylac roof at the stars, as if seeking heavenly guidance. “I just have to wonder,” he said, “who the joke is on.”

Wing and Magda exchanged glances.

“How can you look at flowers when that alien is undermining the foundations of our Judeo-Christian heritage?”

Magda touched Smoot’s sleeve. “It’s a party, Reverend.”

“If they don’t believe in a god, how the hell can they apply for tax-exempt status? ‘Look into the sun,’ what kind of message is that? A year ago they wouldn’t say a word to you unless you were from some government or conglomerate. Then they buy up some abandoned churches and suddenly they’re preaching to anyone who’ll listen. Look into the sun my ass.” He took two stiff-legged steps toward the hydroponic benches and then spun toward Wing and Magda Rudowski. “You look into the sun too long and you go blind.” He stalked off.

“I don’t know what Daisy was thinking of when she invited him,” Magda said.

“He married us,” said Wing.

She sighed, as if that had been an even bigger mistake. “Shall I keep an eye on him for you?”

“Thanks.” Wing thought then to offer her the appetizer. She inhaled a polite dose and Wing took a whiff himself, thinking he might as well make the best of what threatened to be bad business. The Glow loosened the knot in his stomach; he could feel his senses snapping to attention. They looked at each other and giggled. “Hell with him,” he said, and then headed back to the parlor.

Jack Congemi was arguing in the hall with Laporte. “Here’s just the man to settle this,” he said.

“Congemi here thinks telelink is maybe going to put the trades out of business.” Laporte spoke as though his brain were parked in lunar orbit and he were hearing his own words with a time delay. “Tell him you can’t fuse plasteel gun emplacements in Tijuana sitting at a console in Greeley, Colorado. Makes no plugging difference how good your robotics are. You got to be there.”

“The Koreans did it. They had sixty percent completion on Orbital Three before a human being ever set foot on it.”

“Robots don’t have a union,” said Laporte. “The fusers do.”

“Before telelink, none of us could have afforded to do business from a beautiful little nowhere like Portsmouth.” Congemi liked to see himself as the local prophet of telelink; Wing had heard this sermon before. “We would have all been jammed into some urb hard by the jump port and container terminals and transitways and maglev trunks. Now no one has to go anywhere.”

“But without tourists,” said Wing, “inns close.”

Congemi held his hands out like an archbishop blessing a crowd. “Of course, people will always travel for pleasure. And we at SEE-Coast will continue to encourage people to tour our beautiful Granite State. But we are also citizens of a new state, a state which is being born at this very moment. The world information state.”

“Don’t care where they come from.” Laporte’s voice slurred. “Don’t care whether they’re citizens of the plugging commonwealth of Messengers, just so long as they line up to see my Cloud.” He poked a finger into Wing’s shoulder as if daring him to object.

It was not the first time he had heard Laporte claim the Cloud as his. Wing considered throwing the man out and manners be damned. Instead he said, “We’ll be eating soon,” and went into the parlor.

For a time he was adrift on the tides of the party, smiling too much and excusing himself as he nudged past people on his way to nowhere. He felt angry but the problem was that he was not exactly sure why. He told himself that it was all Daisy’s fault. Her party. He aimed the appetizer at his face and squeezed off a piggish dose.

“Phillip. Please, do you have a moment?” Ndavu gave him a toothy grin. There was something strange about his teeth: they were too white, too perfect. He was talking to Mr. and Mrs. Hatcher Poole III, who were standing up against the wall like a matched set of silver lamps.

“Mentor Ndavu.”

“Mentor is a title my students have given me. I am your guest and we are friends, are we not? You must call me Ndavu.”

“Ndavu.” Wing bowed slightly.

“May I?” The Messenger turned his wheelchair to Wing and held out his hand for the appetizer. “I had hoped for the chance to observe mind-altering behavior this evening.” He turned the appetizer over in his long spider-like hands and then abruptly sprayed it into his face. The entire room fell silent and then the Messenger sneezed. No one had ever heard of such a thing, a Messenger sneezing. The Pooles looked horrified, as if the alien might explode next. Someone across the room laughed and conversation resumed.

“It seems to stimulate the chemical senses.” Ndavu wrinkled his nose. “It acts to lower the threshold of certain olfactory and taste receptors. There are also trace elements of another substance—some kind of indole hallucinogen?”

“I’m an architect, not a drug artist.”

Ndavu passed the appetizer on to Mrs. Poole. “Why do you ingest these substances?” The alien’s skin was perfect too; he had no moles, no freckles, not even a wrinkle.

“Well,” she said, still fluttering from his sneeze. “they are nonfattening.”

Her husband laughed nervously. “I take it, sir, that you have never eaten vitabulk.”

“Vitabulk? No.” The Messenger leaned forward in his wheelchair. “I have seen reports.”

“I once owned a bulkery in Nashua,” continued Hatcher Poole. “The ideal product, in many ways: cheap to produce, nutritionally complete, an almost indefinite shelf life. Without it, hundreds of millions would starve—”

“You see,” said Wing, “it tastes like insulation,”

“Depends on the genetics of your starter batch,” said Poole. “They’re doing wonders these days with texturization.”

“Bread flavor isn’t that far off.” Mrs. Poole had squeezed off a dose that they could probably smell in Maine. “And everything tastes better after a nice appetizer.”

“Of course, we’re serving natural food tonight,” said Wing. “Daisy has had cook prepare a traditional meal in your honor, Ndavu.” He wished she were here chatting and he was in the kitchen supervising final preparations. “However, some people prefer to use appetizers no matter what the menu.”

“Prefer?” said Poole, who had passed the appetizer without using it. “A damnable addiction, if you ask me.”

*   *   *

Two white-coated busboys carried a platter into the parlor, its contents hidden beneath a silver lid. They set it on the mahogany sideboard beneath a portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne brooding. “Dinner is served!” The guests lined up quickly.

“Plates and utensils here, condiments on the tea table.” Daisy’s face was flushed with excitement. She was wearing that luminous blue dress he had bought for her in Boston, the one that had cost too much. “Cook will help you find what you want. Enjoy.” Bechet, resplendent in his white cook’s hat, placed a huge chafing dish beside the silver tray. With a flourish, Peter the busboy removed the lid from the silver tray. The guests buzzed happily and crowded around the sideboard, blocking Wing’s view. He did not have to see the food, however; his hypersensitized olfactories were drenched in its aroma.

As he approached the sideboard, he could hear Bechet murmuring. “Wieners, sir. Hot dogs.”

“Oh my god, Hal, potato salad—mayonnaise!”

“Did he say dog?”

“Nothing that amazing about relish. I put up three quarts myself last summer. But mustard!”

“No, no, I’ll just have to live with my guilt.”

“Corn dog or on a bun, Mr. Wing?” Bechet was beaming.

“On a bun please, Bechet.” Wing held out his plate. “They seem to like it.”

“I hope so, sir.”

The guests were in various stages of gustatory ecstasy. The fare was not at all unusual for the wealthy; they ate at least one natural meal a day and meat or fish once a week. For others, forty-five grams of USDA guaranteed pure beef frankfurter was an extravagance: Christmas dinner, birthday treat. One of the strangers from the mission was the first to go for thirds. Ndavu had the good manners not to eat at all; perhaps he had orders not to alarm the natives with his diet.

The party fragmented after dinner; most guests seemed eager to put distance between themselves and the Messenger. It was a strain being in the same room with Ndavu; Wing could certainly feel it. Daisy led a group of gardeners to the greenhouse. Others gathered to watch the latest episode of Jesus On First. The religious spectacle of the hard-hitting Jesus had made it one of the most popular scripted sports events on telelink. The more boisterous guests went to the inn’s cellar bar. Wing alone remained trapped in the Hawthorne parlor with the guest of honor.

“It has been a successful evening,” said Ndavu, “so far.”

“You came with an agenda?” Wing saw Peter the busboy gawking at the alien as he gathered up dirty plates.

Ndavu smiled. “Indeed I did. You are a very hard man to meet, Phillip. I am not sure why that is, but I hope now that things will be different. Will you visit me at the mission?”

Wing shrugged. “Maybe sometime.” He was thinking to himself that he had the day after the heat death of the universe free.

“May I consider that a commitment?”

Wing stooped to pick up a pickle slice before someone—probably Peter—squashed it into the Kashgar rug. “I’m glad your evening has been a success,” he said, depositing the pickle on Peter’s tray as he went by.

“Before people accept the message, they must first accept the Messenger.” He said it like a slogan. “You will forgive me if I observe that yours is a classically xenophobic species. The work has just begun; it will take years.”

“Why do you do it? I mean you, personally.”

“My motives are various—even I find it difficult to keep track of them all.” The Messenger squirmed in the wheelchair and his knee brushed Wing’s leg. “In that I suspect we may be alike, Phillip. The fact is, however, that my immediate concern is not spreading the message. It is getting your complete attention.”

The alien was very close. “My attention?” Rumor had it that beneath their perfect exteriors lurked vile creatures, unspeakably grotesque. Evolutionary biologists maintained that it was impossible that the Messengers were humanoid.

“You should know that you are being considered for a most prestigious commission. I can say no more at this time but if you will visit me, I think we may discuss…”

Wing had stopped listening to Ndavu—saved by an argument out in the foyer. An angry man was shouting. A woman pleaded. Daisy. “Excuse me,” he said, turning away from Ndavu.

“No, I won’t go without you.” The angry man was the glow sculptor, McCauley. He was about Wing’s age, maybe a few years older. There was gray in his starchy brush of brown hair. He might have been taken for handsome in a blunt way except that his blue and silver stretchsuit was five years out of date and he was sweating.

“For God’s sake, Jimmy, would you stop it?” Daisy was holding out a coat and seemed to be trying to coax him into it. “Go home. Please. This isn’t the time.”

“You tell me when. I won’t keep putting it off.”

“Something the matter?” Wing went up on the balls of his feet. If it came to a fight he thought he could hold his own for the few seconds it would take reinforcements to arrive. But it was ridiculous, really; people in Portsmouth did not fight anymore. He could hear someone running toward the foyer from the kitchen. A knot of people clustered at the bottom of the stairs. He would be all right, he thought. “Daisy?” Still, it was a damned nuisance.

He was shocked by her reaction. She recoiled from him as if he were a monster out of her worst nightmare and then sank down onto the sidechair and started to cry. He ought to have gone to her then but McCauley was quicker.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He took the coat from her nerveless hands and kissed her quickly on the cheek. Wing wanted to throw him to the floor but found he could not move. Nobody in the room moved but the stranger his wife had called Jimmy. Something in the way she had said his name had paralyzed Wing. All night long he had sensed a tension at the party but, like a fool, he had completely misinterpreted it. Everyone knew; if he moved they might all start laughing.

“Shouldn’t have…” McCauley was murmuring something; his hand was on the door. “Sorry.”

“You don’t walk out now, do you?” Wing was proud of how steady his voice was. Daisy’s shoulders were shaking. Her sculptor did not have an answer; he did not even stop to put on his coat. As the door closed behind him Wing had the peculiar urge to call Congemi out of the crowd and make him take responsibility for this citizen of the world information state. His brave new world was filled with people who had no idea of how to act in public.

“Daisy?”

She would not look at him. Although he felt as if he were standing stark naked in the middle of the foyer of the historic Piscataqua House, he realized no one was looking at him.

Except Ndavu.

*   *   *

“I said you’ve had enough.” The dealer pushed Wing’s twenty back across the bar. “There’s such a thing as an overdose, you know. And I’d be liable.”

Wing stared down at the twenty, as if Andy Jackson might offer him some helpful advice.

“The cab is waiting. You ought to go home.”

Wing glanced up without comprehension, trying to bring the man into focus.

“I said go home.”

Wing could not go home. The morning after the party he had moved out of Piscataqua House. Now he was living in his go-tube at a rack just off the Transitway. A burly hack appeared beside Wing and put an arm around him. The next thing he knew he was standing outside the flash bar.

“Is cold, yes?” The hack stamped his feet against the icy pavement and smiled; his teeth were decorated with Egyptian hieroglyphs. He was wearing thin joggers and the gold sweat suit of the Rockingham Cab Company.

“Exit 6. Stop Inn.” The cold made it easier for Wing to think. He squeezed into the wedge-shaped pedicab; the big hack slithered onto the driver’s crouch and slid his feet into the toe clips. A musty locker-room smell lingered in the passenger compartment. There was no space heater but after a few minutes of the hack’s furious peddling the smell turned into a warm stink.

They were caught briefly in the usual jam on Islington Street. About twenty protesters had gathered in front of what had once been the Church of the Holy Spirit and was now the Messengers’ mission to the states of New Hampshire and Maine. A few carried electric candles; others brandished hand-lettered signs that said things like “NO RELIGION WITHOUT GOD” and “LOOK INTO THE BIBLE.” The rest circulated among the stalled bicycles and pedicars, distributing anti-Messenger propaganda. On a whim Wing opened his window just wide enough to accept a newsletter. “Go with Jesus,” said the protester. As the pedicab rolled away, he unfolded the newsletter. All he could read by street light were headlines: “SCIENCE SAYS NO IMMORTALITY” and “ALABAMA BANS ALIENS” and “HOW THEY REALLY LOOK.”

“J-freaks always back up traffic here,” said the hack. “Wouldn’t read this crap if you paid me.” He jerked his thumb at the mission. “Ever scan the message?”

“Not yet.”

“No worse than any other church; better than some. The beetles’ll feed you, give you a warm bed. Course, they don’t explain nothing, except to tell you there’s no such a thing as pleasure. Or pain.” He laughed. “Maybe that’s the beetle way, but it ain’t the way life tastes to me.”

As they approached Exit 6, they passed through a neighborhood of shabby go-tube parks and entered the strip. The strip was an architectural tumor that had metastasized to Transitway exits from Portsmouth, Virginia to Portsmouth, New Hampshire—a garish clump of chain vitabulk joints, clothes discounters, flash bars, surrogatoriums, motels, data shops, shoe stores, tube racks, bike dealers, too many warehouses, and a few moribund tourist traps selling plastic lobsters and screaming T-shirts. What was not malled was connected by optical plastic tunnels, once transparent but now smudged with sea salt and pollution. In the midst of it all squatted a US Transit Service terminal of bush-hammered concrete that was supposed to look like rough-cut granite. Docked at the terminal were semis and container trains and red-white-and-blue USTS busses in all sizes, from the enormous double-decked trunk line rigs to local twenty-passenger carryvans.

The Stop Inn was on the far edge of the strip, a six-story plastic box that looked like yet another warehouse except for the five-story stop sign painted on its east facade. There were hook-ups for about forty go-tubes on the top three floors and another forty fixed tubes on the bottom three. The stairwell smelled of smoke and disinfectant.

Wing and Daisy had customized their go-tube on spare weekends right after they had been married but they had only used it twice: vacations at the disneydome in New Jersey and the Grand Canyon. Somehow they could never find time to get away. The tube had an oak rolltop desk, a queen-sized Murphy bed with a gel mattress and Wing’s one extravagance: an Alvar Aalto loveseat. The ceiling was a single sheet of mirror plastic that Wing had nearly broken his back installing. At the far end was a microwave, sink, toilet and mirror set in a wall surround of Korean tile that Daisy had spent two months picking out. A monitor and keyboard were mounted on a flex-arm beside the bed. The screen was flashing; he had messages.

“Phillip.” Ndavu sat in an office at an enormous desk; he looked like a banker who had just realized he had made a bad loan. “I am calling to see if there’s anything I can do to help…”

Wing paused the message and poured himself two fingers of scotch—no water, no ice.

“… I want you to know how sorry I am about the way things have turned out. I have just seen Daisy and I must tell you that she is extremely upset. If there is anything I can do to help resolve the problem, please, please let…”

“Yeah,” Wing muttered, “get the hell out of my life.”

“… you did promise to stop by the mission. There is still the matter of the commission I mentioned…” Wing deleted the message. He finished his drink before bringing up the next message in the queue.

“We have to talk, Phil.” Daisy was sitting in shadow; her face was a low-res blur. She sounded like she had a cold. “It’s not fair, what you’re doing. You can’t just throw everything away without giving me a chance to explain. I know I waited too long but I didn’t want to hurt you … Maybe you won’t believe this but I still love you. I don’t know what to say … it can’t be like it was before but maybe…” There was a long silence. “Call me,” she said.

Wing drew a breath that burned his throat worse than the whiskey and then he smashed the keyboard with his fist, pounding at the delete key again and again until her face went away. His hand was numb and there was blood smeared on the keys.

*   *   *

The Messengers’ mission on Islington Street sprawled over an entire block, an unholy jumble of architectural afterthoughts appended to the simple neogothic chapel that had once been the Church of the Holy Spirit. There was a Victorian rectory, a squat brick-facade parochial school built in the 1950s, and an eclectic auditorium that dated from the oughts. The fortunes of the congregation had since declined and the complex had been abandoned, successfully confounding local redevelopers until the Messengers bought it. The initiates of northern New England’s first mission had added an underground bike lockup, washed the stained glass, repaired the rotted clapboards, and planted an arborvitae screen around the auditorium and still Wing thought it was the ugliest building in Portsmouth.

In the years immediately after first contact there had been no contact at all with the masses; complex and secret negotiations continued between the Messengers and various political and industrial interests. Once the deals were struck, however, the aliens had moved swiftly to open missions for the propagation of the message, apparently a strange brew of technophilic materialism and zen-like self-effacement, sweetened by the promise of cybernetic immortality. The true import of the message was a closely held secret; the Messengers would neither confirm nor deny the reports of those few initiates who left the missions.

Wing hesitated at the wide granite steps leading to the chapel; they were slick from a spring ice storm. Freshly sprinkled salt was melting holes in the ice and there was a shovel propped against one of the massive oak doors. It was five-thirty in the morning—too early for protesters. No one inside would be expecting visitors, which was fine with Wing: he wanted to surprise the Messenger. But the longer he stood, the less certain he was of whether he was going in. He looked up at the eleven stone apostles arranged across the tympanum. Tiny stylized flames danced over their heads, representing the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. He could not read the apostles’ expressions; acid rain had smudged their faces. Wing felt a little smudged himself. He reached into his back pocket for the flask. He took a swig and found new courage as a whiskey flame danced down his throat. He staggered into the church—twisted in the good old-fashioned way and too tired to resist Ndavu anymore.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom Wing saw that there had been some changes made in the iconography. Behind the altar hung a huge red flag with the Buddhist Wheel of Law at its center and the words “LOOK INTO THE SUN” embroidered in gold thread beneath it. A dancing Shiva filled a niche next to a statue of Christ Resurrected. Where the Stations of the Cross had once been were now busts: Pythagoras, Plato, Lao-tze. Others whose names he did not recognize were identified as Kabalists, Gnostics, Sufis, and Theosophists—whatever they were. Wing had not known what to expect but this was not quite it. Still, he thought he understood what the Messengers were trying to do. The Romans had been quick to induct the gods of subjugated peoples into their pantheon. And what was humanity if not subjugated? That was why he had come, he thought bitterly. To acknowledge that he was beaten.

A light came on in the vestry next to the altar. Footsteps echoed across the empty church and then Jim McCauley stepped into the candlelight and came to the edge of the altar rail. “Is someone there?”

Wing swayed down the aisle, catching at pews to steady himself. He felt as empty as the church. As he approached the altar he saw that McCauley was wearing a loosely tied yellow bathrobe; his face was crinkled, as if he had just then come from a warm bed. With Daisy? Wing told himself that it did not matter anymore, that he had to concentrate on the plan he had discovered an hour ago at the bottom of a bottle of Argentinean Scotch: catch them off guard and then surrender. He saluted McCauley.

The man gathered his yellow bathrobe more tightly. “Who is it?”

Wing stepped up to the altar rail and grasped it to keep from falling. “Phillip Wing, A.I.A. Here to see the head beetle.” McCauley looked blank. “Ndavu to you.”

“The mentor expects you, Phillip?”

Wing cackled. “I should hope not.”

“I see.” McCauley gestured at the gate in the center of the altar rail. “Come this way—do you need help, Phillip?”

In response Wing vaulted the rail. His trailing foot caught and he sprawled at McCauley’s feet. The sculptor was wearing yellow plastic slippers to match the robe.

“Hell no,” Wing said and picked himself up.

McCauley eyed him doubtfully and then ushered him through the vestry to a long flight of stairs. As they descended, Peter Bornsten, the busboy from Piscataqua House, scurried around the corner and sprinted up toward them, taking steps two at a time.

“Peter,” said McCauley. “I thought you were shoveling the steps.”

Peter froze. Wing had never seen him like this: he was wearing janitors’ greens and had the lame expression of a guilty eight-year-old. “I was, Jim, but the ice was too hard and so I salted it and went down to the kitchen for some coffee. I was cold,” he said lamely. He glared briefly at Wing as if it were his fault and then hung his head. The Peter Bornsten Wing knew was a careless young stud whose major interests were stimulants and nurses.

“Go and finish the steps,” McCauley touched Peter’s forehead with his middle finger. “The essence does not experience cold, Peter.”

“Yes, Jim.” He bowed and scraped by them.

McCauley’s slippers flapped as he walked slowly down the hallway that ran the length of the mission’s basement. Doorways without doors opened into rooms filled with cots. It looked as if there were someone sleeping on every one. Wing smelled the yeasty aroma of curing vitabulk long before they passed a kitchen where three cooks were sitting at a table around four cups of ersatz coffee. At the end of the hall double doors opened onto an auditorium jammed with folding tables and chairs. A door to the right led up a short flight of stairs to a large telelink conferencing room and several small private offices.

McCauley went to one of the terminals at the conference table and tapped at the keyboard. Wing had a bad angle on the screen; all he could see was the glow. “Phillip Wing,” said McCauley and the screen immediately went dark.

Wing sat down across the table from him and pulled out his flask. “Want some?” There was no reply. “You the welcoming committee?”

McCauley remained standing. “I spread the message, Phillip.”

Someone else might have admired the calm with which McCauley was handling himself; Wing wanted to see the bastard sweat. “I thought you were supposed to be an artist. You had shows in New York, Tokyo—you had a career going.”

“I did.” He shrugged. “But my reasons for working were all wrong. Too much ego, not enough essence. The Messengers showed me how trivial art is.”

Wing could not let him get away with that. “Maybe it’s just you that’s trivial. Maybe you didn’t have the stuff to make art that meant anything. Ever think of that?”

McCauley smiled. “Yes.” Daisy came into the room.

It had been twenty-two days since he had last seen his wife; Wing was disgusted with himself for knowing the number exactly. After the party he had worked hard at avoiding her. He had tried to stay out of the arid precincts of her Portsmouth while lowering himself into the swamp around its edges. He had reprogrammed the door to the Counting House to admit no one but him and had changed his work schedule, sneaking in just often enough to keep up appearances. He had never replied to the messages she left for him.

“What is she doing here?” Wing was tempted to walk out.

“I think it best that you wait alone with him, Daisy,” said McCauley.

“Best for who?” said Wing.

“For her, of course. Look into the sun, Daisy.”

“Yes, Jim.”

“Phillip.” He bowed and left them together.

“Look into the sun. Look into the sun.” He opened the flask. “What the hell does that mean anyway?”

“It’s like a koan—a proverb. It takes a long time to explain.” Daisy looked as though she had put herself together in a hurry: wisps of hair fell haphazardly across her forehead and the collar of her mud-colored jumpsuit was turned up. She settled across the table from him and drummed her fingers on a keyboard, straightened her hair, glanced at him and then quickly away. He realized that she did not want to be there either and he took another drink.

“Keep your secrets then—who cares? I came to see Ndavu.”

“He’s not here right now.”

“All right.” He pushed the chair back. “Goodbye, then.”

“No, please.” She seemed alarmed. “He’s coming. Soon. He’ll want to see you; he’s been waiting a long time.”

“It’s good for him.” Wing thought she must have orders to keep him there; that gave him a kind of power over her. If he wanted to he could probably steer this encounter straight into one of the revenge fantasies that had so often been a bitter substitute for sleep. No matter what he said, she would have to listen.

“Are you often like this?” she said.

“What the hell do you care?” He drank and held out the flask. “Want some?”

“You haven’t returned my calls.”

“That’s right.” He shook the flask at her.

She did not move. “I know what you’ve been doing.”

“What is it you’re waiting to hear, Daisy?” Saying her name did it. The anger washed over him like the first wave of an amphetamine storm. “That I’ve spent the last three weeks twisted out of my mind? That I can’t stand to live without you? Well, plug yourself. Even if it were true I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”

She sat like a statue, her face as smooth and as invulnerable as stone, her eyes slightly glazed, as if she were meditating at the same time she pretended to listen to him. His anger surged, and he veered out of control.

“You’re not worth it, you know that? It gets me right in the gut sometimes, that I ever felt anything for you. You pissed on everything I thought was important in my life and I was dumb enough to be surprised when you did it. Look at you. I’m suffering and you sit there like you’re carved out of bloody ice. And calling it good breeding, no doubt. Fine. Great. But just remember that when you die, you bitch, you’ll be nothing but another stinking puddle on the floor.”

Then Wing saw the tear. At first he was not even sure that it was hers: her expression had not changed. Maybe a water pipe had leaked through the ceiling and dripped on her. The tear rolled down her cheek and dried near the corner of her mouth. A single tear. She held her head rigidly erect, looking at him. He realized then that she had seen his pain and heard his anger and that her indifference was a brittle mask which he could shatter, if he were cruel enough. Suddenly he was ashamed.

He leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. He felt like crying too. “It’s been hard,” he said. He shivered, took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.” He wanted to reach across the table and wipe away the track of her tear with his finger but she was too far away.

They sat without speaking. He imagined she was thinking serene Messenger thoughts; he contemplated the ruins of their marriage. Ever since the party Wing had hoped, secretly, desperately, that Daisy would in time offer some explanation that he could accept—even if it were not true. He had expected to be reconciled. Now for the first time he realized that she might not want a reconciliation. The silence stretched. The telelink rang; Daisy tapped at the keyboard.

“He’s in his office,” she said.

*   *   *

Ndavu’s grin reminded Wing of the grin that Leonardo had given his John the Baptist: mysterious, ironic, fey. “We do not, as you say, keep the message to ourselves.” Ndavu’s wheelchair was docked at an enormous desk; the scale of the Messenger’s office made Wing feel like a midget. “On the contrary we have opened missions around the world in the last year where we assist all who seek enlightenment. Surely you see that it would be irresponsible for us to disseminate transcendently important information without providing the guidance necessary to its understanding.” Ndavu kept nodding as if trying to entice Wing to nod back and accept his evasions.

Wing had the feeling that Ndavu would prefer that he settle back on the couch and think about how lucky he was to be the first human ever invited to tour a Messenger starship. He wondered if the initiates would be jealous when they found out that an unbeliever was going to take that prize. “Then keep your goddamned secret—why can’t you just give us plans for the reincarnation computer and loan us the keys to a starship?”

“Technology is the crux of the message, Phillip.”

Daisy sat beside Wing in luminous silence, listening to the conversation as if it were the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream. “Is she going to be reincarnated?” Her serenity was beginning to irk him, or maybe it was just that he was beginning to sober up to a blinding headache. “Is that the reward for joining?”

“The message is its own reward,” she murmured.

“Don’t you want to be reincarnated?”

“The essence does not want. It acknowledges karma.”

“The essence?” Wing could feel a vein throbbing just above his right eyebrow.

“That which can be reincarnated,” she said.

“There are no easy answers, Phillip,” said Ndavu.

“Great.” He shook his head in disgust. “Does anyone have an aspirin?”

Daisy went to check. “Everything is interconnected,” the Messenger continued. “For instance I could tell you that it is the duty of intelligence to resist entropy. How could you hope to understand me? You would have to ask: What is intelligence? What is entropy? How may it be resisted? Why is it a duty? These are questions which it took the commonwealth of Messengers centuries to answer.”

Daisy returned with McCauley. “What we will ask of you,” continued Ndavu, “does not require that you accept our beliefs. Should you wish to seek enlightenment, then I will be pleased to guide you, Phillip. However you should know that it is not at all clear whether it is possible to grasp the message in the human lifespan. We have only just begun to study your species and have yet to measure its potential.”

McCauley stood behind the couch, waiting inconspicuously for Ndavu to finish dodging the question. He rested a hand on Wing’s shoulder, as if he were an old pal trying to break into a friendly conversation. “Excuse me, Phillip,” said McCauley. Just then Wing remembered something he had forgotten to do. Something that had nagged at him for weeks. He was sober enough now to stay angry and the son of a bitch kept calling him by his first name.

“I’m very sorry, Phillip,” said McCauley with a polite smile, “but we don’t have much use for drugs here. However, if you’re really in need we could send someone out…”

Wing shot off the couch, turned and hit his wife’s lover right in the smile. Astonished, McCauley took the punch. The sculptor staggered backward, fists clenched, and Daisy gave a strangled little scream. Ndavu was grotesquely expressionless. It was as if his face were a mask that had slipped, revealing … nothing. Wing had never seen the Messenger look quite so alien.

“That’s okay.” He sat down, rubbing his knuckles. “I feel much better now.”

McCauley touched his bloody lip and then turned and walked quickly from the office. Daisy was staring at Ndavu’s abandoned face. Wing settled back on the couch and—for the first time in weeks—started to laugh.

*   *   *

The Messengers had done a thorough job; Wing’s cabin on the starship was a copy of the interior of his go-tube—with a few differences. The gravity was .6 earth normal. The floor was not tongue-and-grooved oak but some kind of transparent crystal; beneath him reeled the elephant-skin wrinkles of the Zagros mountains. And Daisy slept next door.

Wing stared like a blind man at the swirling turquoise shallows that rimmed the Persian Gulf; Ndavu’s arduous briefing had turned his sense of wonder to stone. He now knew everything about a planet called Aseneshesh that a human being could absorb in forty-eight hours without going mad. When he closed his eyes he could see the aliens Ndavu called the Chani. Tall and spindly, they looked more like pipe cleaner men than creatures of flesh and bone. Starving apes with squashed faces and pink teeth. He found them profoundly disturbing—as much for their similarities to homo sapiens as for their differences. Wing could imagine that they had once been human but had been cruelly transformed over eons of evolutionary torture.

He knew a little of their history. When glaciers threatened to crush their civilization, most had chosen exile and had left the planet in an evacuation organized by the Messengers. Something had happened to those that remained behind, something that the Messengers still did not understand. Even as they slid into barbarism, these Chani began to evolve at an accelerated rate. Something was pushing them toward a biological immortality totally unlike the hardware-based reincarnations of the Messengers. Their cities buried and their machines beyond repair, they had huddled around smoky fires and discovered within themselves the means to intervene in the aging process—by sheer force of mind they could tilt the delicate balance between anabolism and catabolism. They called it shriving. With their sins forgotten and their cells renewed, the Chani could lead many lives in one body, retaining only a few memories from one life to the next. What baffled the materialist Messengers was that shriving was the central rite of a religion based on sun worship. Believe in Chan, the survivors had urged the astonished commonwealth upon their rediscovery centuries after the evacuation: look into the sun and live again.

Although they embraced some of the concepts of the Chani religion, the Messengers could hardly accept shriving as a divine gift from a class G1 main sequence star. Despite intensive and continuing research, they were unable to master the biology of rejuvenation. The only benefits they were able to derive from the Chani’s evolutionary breakthrough were delta globulins derived from blood plasma, which acted to slow or even halt the aging process in many of the commonwealth’s species. The Messengers could not synthesize the intricate Chani globulins, which left the self-proclaimed goddess and ruler of the Chani in control of the sole source of the most valuable commodity in the commonwealth. That deity was the thearch Teaqua, the oldest living being in the commonwealth. Teaqua, who had sent Ndavu to earth to fetch her an architect. Teaqua, who was dying.

“She wants a tomb, Phillip, and she claims Chan told her a human must build it.” Ndavu had given up his wheelchair in the starship’s low gravity. As he spoke he had walked gingerly about Wing’s cabin, like a barefoot man watching out for broken glass. “You will design it and oversee its construction.”

“But if she’s immortal…”

“No, even the Chan die. Eventually they choose death over shriving. We believe there must be physical limits related to the storage capacity of their brains. They say that the weight of all their lives becomes too heavy to carry. Think of it, Phillip: a tomb for a goddess. Has any architect had an opportunity to compare? This commission is more important than anything that Seven Wonders—or anyone on earth—could offer you. It has historic implications. You could be the one to lead your entire world into the commonwealth.”

“So why me? There must be thousands who would jump at this.”

“On the contrary, there are but a handful.” The Messenger seemed troubled by Wing’s question. “I will be blunt with you, Phillip; one cannot avoid the relativistic effects of the mass exchanger. You will be taking a one-way trip into the future. What you will experience as a trip of a few weeks duration will take centuries downtime, here on this planet. There is no way we can predict what changes will occur. You must understand that the earth to which you return may seem as alien as Aseneshesh.” He paused just long enough to scare Wing. “You will, however, return a hero. While you are gone, your name will be remembered and revered; we will see to it that you become a legend. Your work will influence generations of artists; school children will study your life. You could also be rich, if you wanted.”

“And you’re telling me no one else could do this? No one?”

“There is a certain personality profile. Our candidate must be able to survive two stressful cultural transitions with his faculties intact. Your personal history indicates that you have the necessary resilience. Talent is yet another qualification.”

Wing snickered. “But not as important as being a loner with nothing to lose.”

“I do not accept that characterization.” Ndavu settled uneasily onto the loveseat; he did not quite fit. “The fact is, Phillip, that we have already been refused twice. Should you too turn us down, we will proceed to the next on the list. You should know, however, that our time is running out and that you are the last of our prime candidates. The others have neither your ability nor your courage.”

Courage. The word made Wing uncomfortable; he did not think of himself as a brave man. “What I still don’t understand,” he said, “is why you need a human in the first place. Build it yourself, if it’s so damned important.”

“We would prefer that. However Teaqua insists that only a human can do what she says Chan wants.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Of course it is absurd.” Ndavu made no effort to conceal his scorn. “We are talking about fifty million intelligent beings who believe that the local star cares for them. We are talking about a creature of flesh and blood who believes she has become a god. You cannot apply the rules of logic to religious superstition.”

“But how did they find out about humans in the first place?”

“That I can explain,” Ndavu said, “only if you will promise to keep my response a secret.”

Wing hesitated; he was not sure if he wanted to know Messenger secrets. “How do you know I’ll keep my promise?”

“We will have to learn to trust one another, Phillip.” Ndavu unvelcroed the front of his jumpsuit; his chest was pale and smooth. “It is a problem of cultural differences.” Wing backed away as the Messenger pushed a finger into the base of his neck. “Teaqua asked if we knew of any beings like the Chani, and we told her. Homo sapiens and the Chani share a unique genetic heritage,” said Ndavu as his sternum unknit. “There are no other beings like you in the commonwealth.” Wing pressed himself flat against the far wall of the cabin; the handle on the door of the microwave dug into him. “Genes are the ultimate source of culture.”

Wing heard a low squishing sound, like a wet sponge being squeezed, as something uncoiled within the exposed body cavity. “I-I understand,” he gasped. “Enough!”

The Messenger nodded and resealed himself. He stood, shuffled across the cabin and held out his hand. Wing shook it gingerly.

“You have qualities, Phillip,” said Ndavu. “You are ambitious and impatient with the waste of your talents. The first time I saw you, I knew you were the one we needed.”

Wing felt like throwing up.

“Will you at least think it over?”

Now he was alone with an intoxicating view of the earth, trying to sort fact from feeling, wrestling with his doubts. It was true: he had been increasingly uneasy in his work. Even the Glass Cloud was not all he had hoped it would be. A tomb for a goddess. It was too much, too fantastic. Thinking about it made Wing himself feel unreal. Here he sat with the earth at his feet, gazing down at the wellspring of civilization like some ancient, brooding god. A legend. He thought that if he were home he could see his way more clearly. Except that he had no home anymore, or at least he could never go home to Piscataqua House. The thought was depressing; was there really nothing to hold him? He wondered whether Ndavu had brought him to the starship to feed his sense of unreality, to cut him off from the reassurance of the mundane. He would have never been able to take this talk of gods and legends seriously had he been sitting at his desk at the Counting House with the rubber plant gathering dust near the window and his diploma from Yale hanging next to John the Baptist. Wing could see the Baptist smiling like a messenger as he pointed up at heaven—to the stars? A one-way trip. So Ndavu thought he was brave enough to go. But was he brave enough to stay? To turn down such a project and to live with that decision for the rest of his life? Wing was afraid that he was going to accept because there was nothing else for him to do. He would be an exile, he would be the alien. Wing had never even been in space before. Maybe that was why Ndavu had brought him here to make the offer. So that the emptiness of space could speak to the coldness growing within him.

Wing stood and walked quickly out of the cabin as if to escape his own dark thoughts. He took a moment to orient himself and then swung across the gravity well to the next landing. There was an elaborate access panel with printreader and voice analyzer and a numeric keypad and vidscanner; he knocked.

Daisy opened the door. Her room exhaled softly and she brushed the hair from her face. She was wearing the same mud-colored jumpsuit; he could not help but think of all the beautiful clothes hanging in her closet at Piscataqua House.

“Come in.” She stood aside as he entered. He was surprised again at how exactly her cabin duplicated his. She observed him solemnly. He wondered if she ever smiled when she was alone.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, answering the unspoken question. “I don’t even want to think about it. I wish he would just go away.”

“He won’t.”

He read the sympathy in her expression and wondered exactly why Ndavu had brought her along. “What I could use is a drink.”

“What did you want to talk about?” She sat next to him.

“Nothing.” He felt like blurting out Ndavu’s secret; he thought it might make a difference to her. But he had promised. “I don’t know.” Wing scratched his ear. “I never told you that it was a nice party. The hot dogs were a big hit.”

She smiled. “Snob appeal had something to do with it, don’t you think? I’m sure that most of them like vitabulk just fine. But they have to rave about natural or else people will think they have no taste. At the mission we’ve been eating raw batch and no one complains. After a while natural seems a little bit decadent—or at least a waste of time.”

“The essence can’t taste mustard, eh?”

Before Ndavu, she might have detected the irony in his voice and bristled at it; now she nodded. “Exactly.”

“But what is the essence? How can anything be you that can’t taste mustard, that doesn’t even have a body?”

“The essence is that part of mind which can be reproduced in artificial media,” she said with catechetical swiftness.

“And that’s what you want when you die, to have your personality deleted, your memories summarized and edited and re-edited until all you are is a collection of headlines about yourself stored in a computer?” He shook his head. “Sounds like a lousy substitute for heaven.”

“But heaven is a myth.”

“Okay,” he said, trying to match her calm but not quite succeeding, “but I can’t help but notice that the Messengers are in no hurry to have their essences extracted. They use the Chani globulins to keep themselves alive as long as they can. Why? And since they can’t explain shriving, how do they know heaven is a myth?”

“Nothing is perfect, Phil.” He was surprised to hear her admit it. “That’s the most difficult part of the message. We can’t claim perfection; we can only aspire to it.”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time at the mission?”

“Ndavu is very demanding.”

“And what about Piscataqua House? Who’s minding the inn?”

She looked blank for a moment, as if trying to remember something that was not very important. “The inn pretty much takes care of itself, I guess.” She frowned. “Business is terrible, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“We’ve been in the red for over a year. Nobody goes any place these days.” She tugged at a wrinkle in the leg of her jumpsuit. “I’ve been thinking of selling or maybe even just closing the old place up.”

Wing was shocked. “You never told me you were having problems.”

She stared through the floor for a moment. The starship’s rotation had presented them with a view of the hazy blue rim of earth’s atmosphere set against star-flecked blackness. “No,” she said finally. “Maybe I didn’t. At first I thought the Cloud might turn things around. Bring more tourists to New Hampshire, to Portsmouth—to the inn to see you. Ndavu offered a loan to hold me over. But now it doesn’t matter much anymore.”

“Ndavu!” Wing stood and began to pace away his anger. “Always Ndavu. He manipulated us to get his way. You must see that.”

“Of course I see. You’re the one who doesn’t see. It’s not his way he’s trying to get. It’s the way.” She leaned forward as if to stop him and make him listen. He backed away. “He has disrupted dozens of lives just to bring you here. If you had given him any kind of chance, none of it would have happened. But you were prejudiced against him or just stubborn—I don’t know what you were.” Her eyes gleamed. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I think he wanted me to fall in love with Jim McCauley.”

Wing gazed at her in silent horror.

“And he was right to do it; Jim has been good for me. He isn’t obsessed with himself and his projects and his career. He finds the time to listen—to be there when I need him.”

“You let that alien use you to get to me?”

“I didn’t know at the time that he was doing it. I didn’t know enough about the message to appreciate why he had to do it. But now I’m glad. I would have just been another reason for you to turn him down. It’s important that you go to Aseneshesh. It’s the most important thing you’ll ever do.”

“It’s so important that two other people turned him down, right? I should too. Just because I fit some damned personality profile…”

“He said it that way only because you haven’t yet accepted the message. He’s not just some telelink psych, Phil, he can see into your essence. He knows what you need to grow and reach fulfillment. He knew when he asked you that you would accept.”

Wing felt dizzy. “If I leave with him and go uptime or whatever he calls it—zapping off at the speed of light—I’ll never see you again. You’ll be downtime here, and you’ll be dead for centuries before I get back. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“It means I’ll always miss you.” Her voice was flat, as if she were talking about a stolen towel.

He crossed the room to her, dropped to his knees, took her hands. “You meant so much to me, Daisy. Still do, after everything.” He spoke without hope, yet he was compelled to say it. “All I want is to go back to the way it was. Do you remember? I know you remember.”

“I remember we were two lonely people, Phil. We couldn’t give each other what we needed.” She made him let go and then ran her hand through his hair. “I remember I was unhappy.” Sometimes when they were alone, reading or watching telelink, she would scratch his head. Now she fell absently into the old habit. Even though he knew he had lost her, he took comfort from it.

“I was always afraid to be happy.” Wing rested his head in her lap. “I felt as if I didn’t deserve to be happy.”

The stars shone up at them with an ancient, pitiless light. Ndavu had done a thorough job, Wing thought. He’s given me good reasons to go, reasons enough not to stay. The Messengers were nothing if not thorough.

*   *   *

Wing was dreaming of his father. In the dream his father was asleep on the Murphy bed in the go-tube. Wing had just returned from a parade held to honor him as the first human to go to the stars and he was angry that his father had not been there. Wing shook him, told him to wake up. His father stared up at him with rheumy, hopeless eyes and Wing noticed how frail he was. Look at me, Wing said to the old man, I’ve done something that was much harder than what you did. I didn’t just leave my country, I left the planet, my time, everything. And I adjusted. I was strong and I survived. His father smiled like a Messenger. You love to dramatize yourself, said the old man. You think you are the hero of your story. His father began to shrink. But surviving takes a long time, he said and then he was nothing but a wet spot on the sheet and Wing was alone.

The telelink rang, jolting Wing awake. He cursed himself for an idiot; he had forgotten to set the screening program. The computer brought up the lights of his go-tube as he fumbled at the keyboard beside his bed.

“Phillip Wing speaking. Hello?”

“Mr. Wing? Phillip Wing? This is Hubert Fields; I’m with the Boston desk of Infoline. Can you tell me what’s going on there?”

“Yes.” Wing tapped a key and opened a window on the telelink’s monitor. He could see the skyline of Portsmouth against a horizon the color of blue cat’s-eye; the status line said 5:16 AM. “I’m sitting here stark naked, having just been rudely awakened by your call, and I’m wondering why I’m talking to you.” The pull of earth’s gravity had left him stiff and irritable.

Fields sounded unperturbed; Wing could not remember if he had ever been interviewed by this one before. “We’ve had confirmation from two sources that the messenger Ndavu has offered you a commission which would require that you travel to another planet. Do you have any comment?”

“All I can say is that we have discussed a project.”

“On another planet?”

Wing yawned.

“We’ve also had reports that you recently toured the Messenger starship, which would make you the first human to do so. Can you describe the ship for us?”

Silence.

“Mr. Wing? Can you at least tell me when you’ll be leaving earth?”

“No.”

“You can’t tell us?”

“I haven’t decided what I’m doing yet. I’m hanging up now. Make sure there’re two l’s in Phillip.”

“Will we see you at the ceremonies today?”

Wing broke the connection. Before he could roll back into bed the computer began playing his Thursday morning wakeup: the Minuet from Suite No. 1 of Handel’s Water Music. It was 5:30; today was the dedication of the Glass Cloud.

He squashed the gel mat with its nest of blankets and sheets back into the wall of the go-tube. Most of his clothes were scattered in piles on the oak floor but Daisy had bought him a gray silk Mazzini suit for the occasion which was still hanging in its garment bag on the towel rack. Twice he had returned it; she had sent it back to him both times. He tried it on: a little loose in the waist. Daisy had not realized that he had lost weight since he had moved out.

Wing walked briskly across the strip to the USTS terminal where he was just in time to catch the northbound red-white-and-blue. It seemed as though everybody in the world had offered to give Wing a ride to North Conway that day, which was why he had perversely chosen to take a bus. He boarded the 6:04 carryvan which was making its everyday run up Route 16 with stops in Dover, Rochester, Milton, Wakefield, Ossipee, and North Conway. The spectators who would flock to the dedication were no doubt still in bed. They would arrive after lunch in hovers from New York or in specially-chartered 328 double-deckers driving nonstop from Boston and Portland and Manchester. Some would come in private cars; the Vice-President and the Secretary of the Interior were flying in from Washington on Air Force One. New Hampshire state police expected a crowd upwards of half a million, scattered along the ninety-seven kilometers of the Glass Cloud’s circuit.

A crowd of angry locals had gathered at the bus stop in Ossipee. They hustled a clown on board and then banged the side of the carryvan with open hands to make the driver pull out. The clown was wearing a polka-dotted bag that came down to her ankles and left her arms bare; the dots cycled slowly through the spectrum. She had a paper-white skin tint and her hair was dyed to match the orange circles around her eyes. A chain of tiny phosphorescent bananas joined both ears and dangled beneath her chin. A woman up front tittered nervously; the man across the aisle from Wing looked disgusted. Even New Hampshire Yankees could not politely ignore such an apparition. But of course she wanted to be noticed; like all clowns she lived to provoke the astonished or disapproving stare.

“Seat taken?” she said. The carryvan accelerated abruptly, as if the driver had deliberately tried to make her fall. The clown staggered and sprawled next to Wing. “Is now.” She laughed, and shoved her camouflage-colored duffle bag under the seat in front of her. “Where ya goin?”

Wing leaned his head against the window. “North Conway.”

“Yeah? Me too. Name’s Judy Thursday.” She held out her hand to Wing.

“Phillip.” He shook it weakly and the man across the aisle snorted. The clown’s skin felt hot to the touch, as if she had the metabolism of a bird.

They rode in silence for a while; the clown squirmed in her seat and hummed to herself and clapped her hands and giggled. Eventually she opened the duffle bag and pulled out a small grease-stained cardboard box. “Popcorn? All natural.”

Wing gazed at her doubtfully. The white skin tint made her eyes look pink. He had been on the road for two hours and had skipped breakfast.

“Very nutritious.” She stuffed a handful into her mouth. “Popped it myself.”

She was the kind of stranger mothers warned little children about. But Wing was hungry and the smell was irresistible. “They seemed awfully glad to see you go back there,” he said, hesitating.

“No sense of humor, Phil.” She put a kernel on the tip of her tongue and curled it into her mouth. “Going to the big party? Dedications are my favorite; always some great goofs. Bunch of us crashed the dedication of this insurance company tower—forget which—down in Hartford, Connecticut. Smack downtown, tallest building, the old edifice complex, you know? You shoulda seen, the suits went crazy. They had this buffet like—real cheese and raw veggies and some kinda meat. We spraypainted the entire spread with blue food coloring. And then I got into the HVAC system and planted a perfume bomb. Joint must still smell like lilacs.” She leaned her head back against the seat and laughed. “Yeah, architecture is my life.” She shook the popcorn box at Wing and he succumbed to temptation. The stuff was delicious.

“Hey, nice suit.” The clown caught Wing’s sleeve as he reached for another handful and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. “Real silk, wow. How come you’re riding the bus, Phil?”

Wing pulled free, gently. “Looking for something.” He found himself slipping into her clipped dialect. “Not sure exactly what. Maybe a place to live.”

“Yeah.” She nodded vigorously. “Yeah. Beautiful country for goofs. The whole show is gonna be a goof, I figure. What do you think?”

Wing shrugged.

“I mean like what is this Glass Cloud anyway? A goof. No different from wrapping the White House in toilet paper, if you ask me. Except these guys got permits. Mies Van der Rohe, Phil, you know Mies Van der Rohe?”

“He’s dead.”

“I know that. But old Mies made all those glass boxes. The ones that got abandoned, they use ’em for target practice.”

“Not all of them.”

“I think Mies musta known what would happen. After all, he had four names. Musta been a goof in there somewhere.” She offered him another handful and then closed the box and stuck it back in her bag. The carryvan rumbled across the bridge over the Saco River and headed up the strip that choked the main approach to North Conway.

“These guys on the link keep saying what a breakthrough this gizmo is and I keep laughing,” she continued. “They don’t understand the historical context, Phil, so why the hell don’t they just shut up? Nothing new under the sun, twist and shout. The biggest goof of all.” Wing noticed for the first time that her pupils were so dilated that her eyes looked like two bottomless wells. The van slowed, caught in strip traffic; even in daylight the flash bars seemed to pulse with garish intensity.

“Me, I thought it was kinda unique.” Wing could not imagine why he was talking like this.

“Oh, no, Phil. No, no. It’s the international style in the sky, is what it is. Study some architecture, you’ll see what I mean.” The carryvan crawled into a snarl of USTS vehicles near the old North Conway railroad station which had been moved to the airport and converted to a tourist information center. An electroluminescent banner hung from its Victorian gingerbread cornice. Green words flickered across it: “Welcome to North Conway in the Heart of the Mount Washington Valley Home of the Glass Cloud Welcome to…” Hovers were scattered across the landing field like seeds; tourists swarmed toward the center of town on foot. The line of busses waiting to unload at the terminal stopped moving. After ten minutes at a standstill the carryvan driver opened the doors and the passengers began to file out. When Wing rose he felt dizzy. The clown steadied him.

“Goodbye, Judy,” he said as they stood blinking in the bright May sunshine. “Thanks for the popcorn.” He shielded his eyes with his hand; her skin tint seemed to be glowing. “Try not to get into too much trouble.”

“Gonna be a real colorful day, Phil.” She leaned up and kissed him on the lips. Her breath smelled like popcorn. “It’s a goof, understand? Stay with it. Have fun.”

He fell back against the bus as she pushed into the crush of people, her polka dots saturated with shades of blue and violet, her orange hair like a spark. As she disappeared the crowd itself began to change colors. Cerulean moms waited in bathroom lines with whining sulphur kids in shorts. Plum grandpas took vids while their wrinkled apricot wives shyly adjusted straw hats. Wing glanced up and the sky went green. He closed his eyes and laughed silently. She had laced the popcorn with some kind of hallucinogen. Exactly the kind of prank he should have expected. Maybe he had suspected. Was not that why he had taken the bus, to give something, anything, one last chance to happen? To make the final decision while immersed in the randomness of the world he would have to give up? Maybe he ought to spend this day-of-all-days twisted. He kept his eyes closed; the sun felt warm on his face. Stay with it, she had said. “Have fun,” he said aloud to no one in particular.

*   *   *

“It’s a tribute to the American genius.” The Vice-President of the United States shook Wing’s hand. “We’re all very proud of you.”

Wing said, “Get out of Mexico.”

Daisy tugged at his arm. “Come on, Phillip.” Her voice sounded like brakes screeching.

The Vice-President, who was trying to pretend—in public at least—that he was not going deaf, tilted his head toward an incandescent aide in a three-piece suit. “Mexico,” the aide repeated, scowling at Wing. The Vice-President at ninety-one was the oldest person ever to hold the office. He nodded sadly. “The tragic conflict in Mexico troubles us all, Mr. Wing. Unfortunately there are no easy answers.”

Wing shook Daisy off. “We should get out and leave the PMF to sink or swim on its own.” The Vice-President’s expression was benignly quizzical; he cupped a hand to his ear. The green room was packed with dignitaries waiting for the dedication to begin and it sounded as if every one of them was practicing a speech. “I said…” Wing started to repeat.

The Vice-President had leaned so close that Wing could see tiny broken veins writhing like worms under his skin. “Mr. Wing,” he interrupted, “have you stopped to consider how difficult we could make it for you to leave this planet?” He kept his voice low, as if they were making a deal.

“And what if I don’t want to leave?”

The Vice-President laughed good-naturedly. “We could make that difficult too. It’s a beautiful spring day, son. Could be your day … if you don’t go screwing yourself into the wrong socket. Ah, Senator!” Abruptly Wing was staring at the great man’s back.

“What is the matter with you?” Laporte appeared beside Daisy and he was hot, a shimmering blotch of rage and four-alarm ambition. “You think you can just stagger in, twisted out of your mind, insult the Vice-President—no, don’t say anything. Once more, once more, Wing, and you’ll be watching the Cloud from the ground, understand? This is my project now; I’ve worked too hard to let you screw it up again.”

Wing did not care; he was too busy being pleased with himself for mustering the courage to confront the Vice-President. He had been certain that the Secret Service would whisk him away the moment he opened his mouth. Maybe it had not done any immediate good but if people kept pestering it might have a cumulative effect. Besides it had been fun. The crowd swirled; like a scene-change in a dream Laporte was gone and Daisy was steering him across the room. He knew any moment someone would step aside and he would be looking down at Ndavu in his wheelchair. He glanced at Daisy; her mouth was set in a grim line, like a fresh knife wound across her face. He wondered if she were having fun, if she would ever have fun again. What was the philosophical status of fun vis-a-vis the message? A local condition of increased entropy …

“I must have your consent today, Phillip,” said Ndavu, “or I will have to assume that your answer is no.” His face looked as if it had just been waxed.

Wing had stopped worrying about the slithery thing that lived inside the Messenger. It was easier on the digestion to pretend that this human shell was Ndavu. He picked a glass of champagne off a tray carried by a passing waiter, pulled up a folding chair and sat. “You leaked my name to telelink. Told them about the project.”

“There is no more time.”

Wing nodded absently as he looked around the room. “I’ll have to get back to you.” The Governor’s husband was wearing a kilt with a pattern that seemed to tumble into itself kaleidoscopically.

Ndavu touched his arm to get his attention. “It must be now, Phillip.”

Wing knocked back the champagne: ersatz. “Today, Ndavu.” The glass seemed to melt through his fingers; it hit the floor and bounced. More plastic. “I promise.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a little green man wearing a bow tie, gray morning coat, roll-collar waistcoat, and striped trousers, “if I may have your attention please.”

A woman from the mission whispered to Ndavu, “The Vice-President’s chief of protocol.”

“We are opening the doors now and I want to take this opportunity to remind you once again: red invitations sit in the north stands, blue invitations to the south, and gold invitations on the platform. We are scheduled to start at two-fifteen so if you would please begin to find your seats. Thank you.”

Daisy and Wing were sitting in the back row on the platform. On one side was Luis Benalcazar, whose company had designed both the Cloud’s ferroplastic structure and the computer program that ran it; on the other was Fred Alz, the construction super. Laporte, as official representative of the Foundation and Solon Petropolus, sat up front with the Vice-President, the Secretary of the Interior, the Governor, the junior Senator and both of New Hampshire’s congresspeople, the chief selectman of North Conway, a Hampton fourth-grader who had won an essay contest, the Bishop of Manchester, and a famous poet whom Wing had never heard of. Ndavu’s wheelchair was off to one side.

The introductions, benedictions, acknowledgements and appreciations took the better part of an hour.… A technological marvel which is at one with the natural environment … The afternoon seemed to get hotter with every word, a nightmare of rhetoric as hell.… the world will come to appreciate what we have known all along, that the Granite State is the greatest … On a whim he tried to look into the dazzling sun but the colors nearly blinded him.… their rugged grandeur cloaked in coniferous cloaks … When Wing closed his eyes he could see a bright web of pulsing arteries and veins.… this magnificent work of art balanced on a knife edge of electromagnetic energy … Daisy kept squeezing his hand as if she were trying to pump appropriate reactions out of him. Meanwhile Benalcazar, whose English was not very good, fell asleep and started to snore.… Reminds me of a story that the Speaker of the House used to tell … When they mentioned Wing’s name he stood up and bowed.

He could hear the applause for the Cloud several moments before it drifted over the hangar and settled toward the landing platform. It cast a cool shadow over the proceedings. Wing had imagined that he would feel something profound at this dramatic moment in his career but his first reaction was relief that the speeches were over and he was getting out of the sun.

The Cloud was designed to look like a cumulus puff but the illusion was only sustained for the distant viewer. Close up, anyone could see that it was an artifact. It moved with the ponderous grace of an enormous hover, to which it was a technological cousin. But while a hover was a rigid aerobody designed for powered flight, the Cloud was amorphous and a creature of the wind. Wing liked to call it a building that sailed. Its opaline outer envelope was ultrathin Stresslar, laminated to a ferroplastic grid based on an octagonal module. When Benalcazar’s computer program directed current through the grid, some ferroplastic fibers went slack while others stiffened to form the Cloud’s undulating structure. The size of the envelope could be increased or decreased depending on load factors and wind velocity; in effect it could be reefed like a sail. It used the magnetic track as a combination of rudder and keel or, when landing, as an anchor. Like a hover its envelope enclosed a volume of pressurized helium for lift: 20,000 cubic meters.

The Cloud slowly settled to within two meters of the ground, bottom flattening, the upper envelope billowing into the blue sky. Wing realized that people had stopped applauding and an awed hush had settled onto the platform. The Hampton schoolgirl climbed onto a folding chair and stood twisting her prize-winning essay into an irretrievable tatter. Wing himself could feel the gooseflesh stippling his arms now; the chill of the Cloud’s shadow was strangely sobering. The Secretary of the Interior sank slowly onto his chair, shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand and stared up like a coal miner in Manhattan. Pictures would never do the Cloud justice. The Governor whispered something to the Bishop, who did not seem to be paying attention. Wing shivered. Like some miracle out of the Old Testament, the Cloud had swollen into a pillar that was at least twenty stories tall. It had accomplished this transformation without making a sound.

Fred Alz nudged Wing in the ribs. “Guess we got their attention, eh Phil?” The slouch-backed old man stood straight. Wing supposed it was pride puffing Alz up; he could not quite bring himself to share it.

Daisy squeezed his hand. “It’s so quiet.”

“Ssshh!” The Governor’s husband turned and glared.

The silence was the one element of the design that Wing had never fully imagined. In fact, he had been willing to compromise on a noisier reefing mechanism to hold down costs but Laporte, of all people, had talked him out of it. Not until he had seen the first tests of the completed Cloud did Wing realize the enormous psychological impact of silence when applied to large bodies in motion. It gave the Cloud a surreal, slightly ominous power, as if it were the ghost of a great building. It certainly helped to compensate for the distressing way the Stresslar envelope changed from pearl to cheapjack plastic iridescence in certain angles of light. The engineers, technicians, and fabricators had worked technological wonders to create a quiet Cloud; although Wing approved, it had not been part of his original vision. The reaction of the crowd was another bittersweet reminder that this was not his Cloud, that he had lost his Cloud the day he had begun to draw it.

The octagonal geometry of the structural grid came clear as the pilot hardened the Cloud in preparation for boarding. Ndavu wheeled up noiselessly and offered his hand in congratulations. They shook but Wing avoided eye contact for fear that the alien might detect Wing’s estrangement from his masterpiece. A hole opened in the envelope and a tube snaked out; the ground crew coupled it to the landing platform. Ndavu shook hands with Alz and spoke to Luis Benalcazar in Spanish. Smiling and nodding, Benalcazar stooped toward the Messenger to reply. “He says,” Ndavu translated, “that this is the culmination of his career. For him, there will never be another project like it.”

“For all of us,” said Alz.

“Thank you,” Benalcazar hugged Wing. “Phillip. So much.” A woman with a microcam came to the edge of the platform to record the embrace. Wing pulled away from Benalcazar. “You, Luis,” he tapped the engineer on the chest and then pointed at the Cloud. “It’s your baby. Without you, it’s a flying tent.” “Big goddamn tent yes,” said Benalcazar, laughing uncertainly. Laporte was shaking hands with the congressman from the First District. The chief of protocol stood near the entrance of the tube and began motioning for people to climb through to the passenger car suspended within the envelope. Before anyone could board, however, Ndavu backed away from Wing, Benalcazar, and Alz and began to clap. Daisy stepped to the Messenger’s side and joined in, raising hands over her head like a cheerleader. People turned to see what was going on and then everyone was applauding.

It felt wrong to Wing—like an attack, as if each clap were a blow he had to withstand. He thought it was too late to clap now. Perhaps if the applause could echo backward through the years, so that a nervous young man on a stony path might hear it and take sustenance from it, things might have been different. But that man’s ears were stopped by time and he was forever alienated from these people. These people who did not realize how they were being manipulated by Ndavu. These people who were clapping for the wrong cloud. Wing’s cloud was not this glorified special effect. His cloud was forever lonely, lost as it wandered, windborne, past sheer walls of granite: a daydream. You can’t build a dream out of Stresslar and ferroplastic, he told himself. You can’t share your dreams. He thought that Daisy looked very pretty, clapping for him. She was wearing the blue dress that he had bought for her in Boston. She had been mad at him for spending so much money; they had fought over it. The glowing clearwater blue of the material picked up the blue in her eyes; it had always been his favorite. Daisy had taken five years of his life away and he was back now to where he had been before he met her. She was not his wife. This was not his cloud. These were not his people. He found himself thinking then about the alien goddess Teaqua, a creature of such transcendent luminosity that she could order Messengers to run her errands. He wondered if she could look into the sun.

“Tell him to stop it,” Wing said to Daisy. “Tell him I’ll go.”

The applause ended. Several hours later on Infoline’s evening report, Hubert Fields noted in passing that the architect was not among those who boarded the Glass Cloud for its maiden voyage.