The congress went on for almost a month. Sleep deprivation, and perhaps an overreliance on kava, made Art and Nirgal increasingly haggard and groggy, until Nadia started coming by at night and putting them to bed, pushing them onto couches and promising to write summaries of the tapes they had not reviewed. They would sleep right there in the room, muttering as they rolled over on the narrow foam-and-bamboo couches. One night Art sat up suddenly from his couch: “I’m losing the content of things,” he said to Nadia seriously, still half dreaming. “I’m just seeing forms now.”

“Becoming Swiss, eh? Go back to sleep.”

He flopped back down. “It was crazy to think you folks could do anything together,” he murmured.

“Go back to sleep.”

Probably it was crazy, she thought as he snuffed and snored. She stood up, went to the door. She felt the mental whirr in her head that told her she was not going to be able to sleep, and walked outside, into the park.

The air was still warm, the black skylights stuffed with stars. The length of the tunnel suddenly reminded her of one of the full rooms on the Ares, here vastly enlarged, but with the same aesthetics employed: dimly lit pavilions, the dark furry clumps of little forests. . . . A world-building game. But now there was a real world at stake. At first the attendants of the congress had been almost giddy with the enormous potential of it, and some, like Jackie and other natives, were young and irrepressible enough to feel that way still. But for a lot of the older representatives, the intractable problems were beginning to reveal themselves, like knobby bones under shrinking flesh. The remnant of the First Hundred, the old Japanese from Sabishii— they sat around these days, watching, thinking hard, with attitudes ranging from Maya’s cynicism to Marina’s anxious irritation.

And then there was the Coyote, down below her in the park, strolling tipsily out of the woods with a young woman holding him by the waist. “Ah, love,” he shouted down the long tunnel, throwing his arms wide, “could thou and I with fate conspire— to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire— would we not shatter it to bits, and then— remold it nearer to the heart’s desire!”

Indeed, Nadia thought, smiling, and went back to her room.

• • •