Art meanwhile ran around in his usual manner. Up early, supply drinks and food, and information concerning the work ongoing in other rooms. It seemed to him that things were going pretty well. Most of the subgroups took the responsibility to fill in their blank seriously, writing and rewriting drafts, hammering them out concept by concept, phrase by phrase. They were happy to see Art when he came by in the course of the day, as he represented a break, some food, some jokes. One judicial group tacked foam wings on his shoes, and sent him with a caustic message along to an executive group with whom they were fighting. Pleased, Art kept the wings on; why not? What they were doing had a kind of ludicrous majesty, or majestic ludicrousness— they were rewriting the rules, he was flying around like Hermes or Puck, it was perfectly appropriate. And so he flew, through the long hours into the night, every night. And after all the sessions had closed down for the evening, he went back to the Praxis offices he shared with Nadia, and they would eat, and talk over the day’s progress, and make a call to the travelers to Earth, and talk with Nirgal and Sax and Maya and Michel. And after that Nadia would go back to work at her screens, usually falling asleep there in her chair. Then Art would often go back out into the warehouse, and the buildings and rovers clustered around it. Because they were holding the congress in a warehouse tent, there was not the same party scene that had existed after hours in Dorsa Brevia; but the delegates often stayed up, sitting on the floors of their rooms drinking and talking about the day’s work, or the revolution just past. Many of the people there had never met before, and they were getting to know each other. Relationships were forming, romances, friendships, feuds. It was a good time to talk, and learn more about what was going on during the daytime congress; it was the underside of the congress, the social hour, out there scattered in concrete rooms. Art enjoyed it. And then the moment would come when he would suddenly hit the wall, a wave of sleepiness would roll over him and sometimes he wouldn’t even have time to stagger back to his offices, to the couch next to Nadia’s; he would simply roll over on the floor and sleep there, waking cold and stiff to hurry off to their bathroom, a shower, and back to the kitchens to start up that day’s kava and java. Round and round, his days a blur; it was glorious.

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