Rising early, he checked out his cameras, wiping the lenses with Kleenex, then squeezed a boil, using the same tissue to absorb the discharge. He was thirty-eight years old and still plagued with skin blemishes, this being no small factor in going through life with a camera in front of his face. His body was lean but without muscle tone, the only definition coming from the rumpled clothes that he pulled from a pile at the foot of his bed.

Before leaving, he set his darkroom timers, then shuffled through piles of papers looking for the engraved invitation. It was to be a birthday party. The fourth birthday of the Thorn child. From all the ghetto areas of London busloads of crippled children and orphans were already on the way to Pereford.

The drive through the English countryside was relaxing and Jennings lit up an opium joint to free his mind. After a while the road seemed to be moving beneath him, the car standing still, and he released his hold on reality, exploring the corners of his mind. His fantasies were still life, like the pictures he took. The subject was himself, always frozen in heroic gesture. Crossing an icepack with sled dogs, rubbing Copper-tone on Sophia Loren.

For a mile outside the Thorn estate, policemen directed traffic and checked credentials; stuporously Jennings gazed straight ahead while they double-checked his invitation to make sure it was real. He was accustomed to this treatment and knew that all he had to do to avoid it was to appear presentable. But this was part of his ammunition. He could better observe people because they preferred to pretend he wasn't there.

Finally ushered through the great wrought-iron gates, Jennings blinked hard, trying to shake the opium illusions before he realized that the illusion was real.

The entire estate had been turned into a sumptuous carnival. The lawns were teeming with color and life, small bodies running between circus tents and carousels, while vendors moved through, hawking cotton candy and taffy apples, their voices lost in the waltz-wheeze of organ music that pumped children up and down on swans and pink horses. There was a fortune teller's booth with many of London's most important dignitaries queued up before it, Shetland ponies running free, even a baby elephant painted with red dots accepting peanuts from hordes of squealing children. Photographers ran everywhere, out of their minds with greed, but to Jennings there was nothing there to photograph. Only the facade. The brick wall that everyone else took for reality.

"What's the matter, mate? Run out of film?"

It was Hobie talking, the stringer for the News Her-aid, feverishly reloading beside the hot-dog table, as Jennings casually approached and took a handful of food.

"Just waiting for his canonization," Jennings replied with distaste.

"How's that?"

"I don't know if we've got just the heir to the Thorn millions here, or Jesus Christ himself."