Patricia opened the patio's metal gate. "I'm going to take a walk," she said. She glanced at Lanier. "Unless you think we should stick together all the time."

"No, We're probably safe enough here. Go ahead."

Lanier watched her walk down the beach, stiff-legging through the sand past homorphs and even a few belted neomorphs. Nobody paid her much attention. He shook his head, smiling. "Could be Acapulco," he said, "with a few odd balloons drifting around."

Farley put her arm around him. "I've never been to Acapulco, but I don't think it had a sky that color."

"Lovebirds," Carrolson sniffed, glanced reproachfully at Heineman. "You never treat me that way."

"I'm an engineer," Heineman said. "I don't pamper, I just make things run right."

"You do indeed," Carrolson said.

"My God, listen to us, we're cheerful," Lanier said.

"Patricia isn't," Carrolson said. "I've seen her putting on her stern look when she sees you two. I think she's jealous, Garry."

"Christ." Lanier sat down in a patio chair and stared across the dazzling beach and intense green-blue sea to the knife-sharp horizon. "She's been an enigma since I first met her."

"Not to me," Farley said. All faces turned to her. "I understand her at least a little," she continued. "I was like her—less brilliant, but inner-directed. Stubborn. My life was miserable until I was twenty-five or twenty-six, and I decided to be more normal—exterior normal, anyway."

"She'll be twenty-four tomorrow," Carrolson said.

"That's her birthday?" Farley asked.

Carrolson nodded. "I've told Olmy and explained about birthday parties. He thinks it's a good idea. Apparently they don't have birthdays here—so few people are actually born, biologically speaking. There are naming days, maturity celebrations—mostly in Axis Nader. I gather that age doesn't mean as much to them as it does to us."

"So what kind of party will it be?"

"I suggested we keep it small—ourselves, Olmy, Ram Kikura. He agreed."

"Lenore, you're a marvel," Lanier said, unconsciously adopting Hoffman's tone of voice. Carrolson curtsied and dimpled her cheeks with her twisting index fingers.

"We're more than cheerful," Heineman said, staring at her. "We're absolutely nuts."

Patricia had gone about half a kilometer down the beach when she saw Oligand Toller standing on the sand ahead of her. He wore shorts, revealing blond-haired, well-shaped legs slightly bowed, and a loud Hawaiian-print shirt. "Do you like it?" he asked, modeling for her.

She gawped, not knowing what to say.

"Well, I tried," he said, seeming chagrined. "I'd like to talk with you, if you don't mind."

"I'm not sure—" she said.

"It might be important. For all of you."

She stood her ground, head bowed slightly, staring up at him, but said nothing.

"We can keep on walking," Toller said. "I'd like to explain some things before you meet with the President—if he can make time for us."