With its complex, gripping feet and its unstable tentacle legs, Osbourne's city wrecker could walk straight up the sides of buildings. When it did this, the tripod's stage tipped and dropped like a falling elevator. That fluttered the floating veils of the backup dancers.

Of course all this dramatic stunting was entirely safe, since it had been simulated a million times within immersive worlds. Still, a city-crushing metal monster looked very remarkable in daylight, especially if one was ten years old.

As the city breaker cakewalked through the chosen streets, it fired dust-glittering beams into the doomed buildings-lasers of some kind, she'd been told. The lasers were entirely for show, for the buildings had been booby-trapped by busy Dispensation operatives. It was a pleasure to see such professional work. The useless old buildings literally curtsied to the public as they fell. The precisely wrecked structures fell with a soft mock intelligence, as if they were truly tired of standing there and genuinely glad to make way for the Shock of the New.

Radmila dutifully mimed her awed rapture at these catastrophic goings-on. The demolition was conforming to schedule, but her pride was rather hurt. Radmila knew there was something kitschy and cheesy and intensely Californian about surfing over the city on a dance stage. This overbaked and overpriced public spectacle revealed a kind of childishness in the culture. To simply destroy a badly damaged building should not require any dancing bimbos. The Dispensation was a military-entertainment complex, it always had to throw its marked cards into the magician's hat, its disappearing rabbits, its custard pies…As an artist, she felt that this was demeaning to her.

And yet, it always pleased Radmila to have a popular hit. Show business did have its native satisfactions for her: shoulders back, chin up, big smile, deep breath, just go… Do it: perform, be there in public, be public. In certain timeless, gratifying zones of raw sensation, Radmila absorbed showbiz right through her own skin.

Performance was a spiritual act. The unfolding ensemble: that happy roar from the crowds, the rank smell of the smoke, the dust and her own sweat, the physical effort of her dancing, the pervasive rhythms…Los Angeles was a mystical city by nature. It required its sacraments.

Radmila felt herself vanish into the ambient substance of the spectacle. She could feel herself just…holding it all up. And then letting it fall: with one almighty, dust-hurling thump.

With a final bone-blasting flourish of her soundtrack, Radmila wire-walked off the top of the rollicking tripod, capered straight up the side of a building, and "vanished into thin air."

Ascending into the heavens was something of a Family cliche. Still, when it came to live street art, the best tricks were the oldest ones.

Safely out of the public eye-if one didn't count the flying spycams of the amateur fans, those pests, those nuisances-Radmila fled to her portable trailer.

There she powered down her spangled demolition costume, disembarked from it, dumped the wig, and sat before the darkened makeup mirror, half naked, panting for breath and chugging ice water.

She sponged off her makeup, wrapped herself in anonymous black security gear, and ventured over to Glyn's trailer.

Glyn was still running the event's dying spasms of street choreography, flicking her puck across an urban weave of placemarks and camera angles. "You were really on today," Glyn told her.

"Yeah, the good people of La-La Land, they sure love those big-budget effects."

Glyn casually peeled up a screen, deployed some police muscle, and smoothed it back again. "No, Mila. Those street crowds love you. I checked their skin responses, their pulse rates, everything. They always love to watch some big weird machine kick some ass, but without you in their picture to give them something to care about, nothing much matters to them."

"Oh, that was just my slutty costume talking. Hot and sexy never really suits me."

Glyn sighed. "I am waiting so hard for the day when you stop doing that."

"Stop what?"

"When you stop putting yourself down ! You were terrific out there! You were close to perfect! Why can't you be happy about that for one minute? Stop selling yourself short all the time! I swear to God that drives me crazy."

"I'm not perfect. Toddy would have been superperfect."

"That is not the issue. Theodora is history. And anyway, Toddy was never as good as you think she was. Yes, she was a big popular star-so what? She was like any pop idol-she was a scared, hungry woman who needed the public to love her. And the public did love Toddy, because Toddy loved her public. She was the love-slave of those unwashed morons. She loved them more than she loved you, me, or herself."

"I should aspire to that level of artistry."

"Have you completely lost your mind? That is not 'artistry'! And you could give a damn about the public, Mila. You wouldn't care if the public all got killed! And they still connect with you. That's the amazing part."

Glyn scratched at her control screen. "You will never be a great actress, but you've got some true rapport, you're a true pop star. You're like the Gothic Bride of Shiva. The people here love it whenever you strut out and shake your ass and smash up our city. They know you're very dark inside. Because you are. You're very dark. And so are they."

" You're dark inside."

"Yes, I am dark inside. So sue me."

"All right, so what's eating you today, Glyn? Why are you being like this? I guess it wasn't my performance." Radmila laughed. "You know why I aced all that? Because she wasn't watching me. Just for once. She's really gone! I never felt so free!"

Glyn sent a half-riotous crowd of fans stumbling down the street in a cavalcade of glowing dots. "I finally figured out what to do with myself."

"You got any gin in here?"

"I will never marry," Glyn told her somberly. "I will never have a child. Because I am a monster. I cannot bear to have Toddy's children with Toddy's spare body."

"You got any performance drinks? Maybe a little taurine, some vitamin B?"

"No. No, and hell no. And also, hell no, shut up and listen to me."

Radmila sat down to listen. She put her cheek in her hand.

"Given that fact," said Glyn, "that I will never marry and I will never leave the Family…and given the fact that you married into the Family and you can't leave it, either…well, we have to do something big. She built this huge tradition, and now she's gone. We are her heirs. That means it's all up to us."

"I'm listening to you," Radmila said.

"It's too bad that you can't stand your husband anymore. That's a big drawback."

"I can stand John," Radmila protested. "John is the smartest guy in the Family. He's smarter than you."

"Yes, John is smart," Glyn said, "but John's always in the Adriatic, or he's in orbit, or he's doing a charity tour of refugee camps, or he's working late hours at the bank, or he's in bed with one of your sisters. John is never going to be there for us. Anyway, John is not a star. John can't do the things you can do."

"John's a knight in shining armor. John is gallant to the ladies."

"John is a poor little rich boy who wants to rule the world. He's a mess inside."

"That is not true," Radmila said stoutly. "There were two years-well, twenty months-when I was delirious about him. I don't care if I live for two hundred years, I'll never love like that again. If I'd been burned into ashes and thrown out the airlock and scattered into orbit, it would have been worth it to me. I was so completely happy. It was worth my whole life, every heartbeat, just to learn that love was possible."

Glyn silently rolled her eyes.