“That sort of thing. Lang’s Metropolis reshot in Las Vegas. It’s not that illusion takes the place of reality, but that out-and-out hallucination takes the place of illusion. Activities of the human brain it’s needed the whole of evolution to control are here let out to play. I love it.”

“Dick, I thought you might. And what about our congress of science films?”

“The same thing applies. In many ways, more so.” Dick smiled knowingly, always happy when he could provoke me. “Sooner or later, like everything else, science is going to turn into television.”

“Does that sound sinister?”

“Very. Exciting, though. What’s that idea you’re always trotting out…?”

Dick liked me to repeat this weather-worn prophecy of mine whenever his confidence flagged or he found himself in a place where no one recognised him, the ultimate in sensory deprivation for the TV personality.

“I forget … that you might be responsible for the first major scientific discovery to be made on television?”

“That’s it. It could happen here. Rio is a total media city.”

From the air-conditioned bar he gazed contentedly at the procession of giant floats that moved along the Avenida Atlantica advertising the star film of the festival, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Through the crowded traffic edged a fleet of silver spacecraft, resembling the demonstration models of an interplanetary nightclub. In their abbreviated foil space suits, the crews of hip-rolling young women flashed cocktail-waitress smiles at the crowds of tourists. For some reason, only the beggars and cripples squatting outside the beach hotels bothered to watch them. Waves of amplified music rose above the clamour of police sirens and the cries of lottery salesmen. Two light aircraft flew above the beach, and towed pennants advertising rival film attractions. Challenging them, giant fragments of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” drummed against the façades of the hotels and rolled out to sea to wake Poseidon himself.

The carousel disappeared into the din and haze, instantly forgotten. Apart from Dick and the families of beggars, no one had paid any attention to the floats. Everything in Rio was dominated by the beach. This was no strip of basking sand on the Mediterranean model but a linear, open-air city in its own right, filled with thousands of sunbathers, kite and watch salesmen, ice-cream vendors and marauding beggar troupes, and a complete league of football teams playing on almost full-sized sand pitches. No one swam. The morose Atlantic breakers hurled themselves against the Richard Strauss crescendos, wave for wave, daring the film executives and festival organisers to match their epic reach.