The lower floors were given over to Chooka’s famous Frab joint, where, for a sufficient sum, a consummate expert graciously MC’d the well-known vices for the hungry and upon occasion invented new vices for the satiated. But the celler of Chooka Frood’s house was the phenomenon that had inspired her most lucrative industry.

The war explosions that had turned the building into a rainbow crater had also fused the ceramic glazes, the metals, glasses, and plastics in the old plant; and a molten conglomerate had oozed down through the floors to settle on the floor of the lowest vault and harden into shimmering pavement, crystal in texture, phosphorescent in color, strangely vibrant and singing.

It was worth the hazardous trip to Bastion West Side. You threaded your way through twisting streets until you reached the streak of jagged orange that pointed to the door of Chooka’s Rainbow House. At the door you were met by a solemn person in XX^th Century formal costume who asked: “Frab or Fortune, sir?” If you replied “Fortune” you were conducted to a sepulchral door where you paid a gigantic fee and were handed a phosphor candle. Holding the candle aloft, you walked down a steep stone staircase. At the very bottom it turned sharply and abruptly disclosed a broad, long, arched cellar filled with a lake of singing fire.

You stepped onto the surface of that lake. It was smooth and glassy. Under the surface glowed and flickered a constant play of pastel borealis. At every step the crystal hummed sweet chords, throbbing like the prolonged over-tones of bronze bells. If you sat motionless, the floor still sang, responding to vibrations from distant streets.

Around the rim of the cellar, on stone benches, sat the other fortune-seekers, each holding his phosphor candle. You looked at them, sitting silent and awed, and suddenly you realized that each of them looked saintly, glowing with the aura of the floor; and each of them sounded saintly, their bodies echoing the music of the floor. The candles looked like stars on a frosty night.

You joined the throbbing, burning silence and sat quietly, until at last there came the high chime of a silver bell repeated over and over. The entire floor took up the resonance, and the strange relationship of sight and sound made the colors flare up brilliantly. Then, clothed in a cascade of flaming music, Chooka Frood entered the cellar and paced to the center of the floor.

“And there, of course, the illusion ends,” Lincoln Powell said to himself. He stared at Chooka’s blunt face; the thick nose, flat eyes, and corroded mouth. The borealis flickered around her features and tightly gowned figure, but it could not disguise the fact that although she had ambition, avarice, and ingenuity, she was utterly devoid of sensitivity and clairvoyance.

“Maybe she can act,” Powell muttered hopefully.

Chooka stopped in the middle of the floor, looking much like a vulgar Medusa, then lifted her arms in what was intended for a sweeping mystic gesture.