What happened over the next few minutes was an evolution.  Things happened behind my back, never in my sight.  When I returned to my place on the beach the machine with the oscilloscope screen was standing beside my chair.  It was wildly anachronistic, totally out of place.  The sun shone down on it and, while I watched, a seagull came and perched on it.  The bird flew away when I approached.  The machine was mounted on casters, which had sunk into the soft sand.  I stared at the moving dot on the screen and nothing happened.  When I straightened and turned around I saw a row of chairs about twenty meters down the beach, and sitting in them were wounded extras from the movie infirmary, waiting their turns on the table.  The trouble was, there were no tables to be seen.  It didn't seem to bother them.

Once I understood the trick, I started slowly turning in a circle.  New things came into view with each turn until I was back in the infirmary surrounded by objects and people, including Brenda and Wales, who were looking at me with some concern.

"Are you all right?" Brenda asked.  "The medico said you might behave oddly for a few minutes."

"Was I turning in circles?"

"No, you were just standing there, looking a million miles away."

"I was interfacing," I said, and she nodded, as if that explained it all.  And I suppose it did, to her.  Though she'd never been to Scarpa Island or any place as completely real as that, she understood interfacing a lot better than I did, having done it all her life.  I decided not to ask her if she felt the sand floor her feet seemed to be planted in; I knew it was unlikely.  I doubted she saw the seagulls that circled near the ceiling, either.

I felt a terrible urge to get out of there.  Shaking off Wales' offer of apologies and a drink, I headed for the studio gate.  The sand didn't end until I was back in the public corridors, where I finally stepped up onto good old familiar floor tiles, soft and resilient under my bare feet.  I was male again, and this time noticed it right away.  When I turned around, the sand that should have been behind me was gone.

But on the way to Texas I saw many tropical plants growing from the concrete floors, and I rode in a tube car festooned with vines and crawling with land crabs.  Usually you have to ingest a great deal of a very powerful chemical to see scenes like that, I reflected, watching the crabs scuttle around my feet.  It wasn't something I was eager to do again soon.

And it took a full day for the new cocoanut palm I found shading my half-built cabin to vanish in the night.

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