"Is this your first visit to one of our discussion evenings?" he said, giving Dallen a formal smile.

"Yes, but I only came to…" Dallen broke off as he realised he was speaking to a holomorph. The visual illusion was perfect, only betrayed by a slight studio quality to the voice. It had been beamed at Dallen's ears too accurately, robbing it of any acoustic interaction with the considerable volume of sound coming from rooms on either side of the hall.

"In that case let me introduce myself," the holo-morph said. "I am Karal London, and I offer you some wonderful news — you, my friend, are going to live for ever."

"Is that a fact?" Dallen replied uneasily, loathe to converse with the unseen computer which was directing the holomorph's responses.

"Not only is it a fact, my friend — it is the single most important truth in the cosmos. You will have ample opportunity to discuss it during the evening — and there is a comprehensive range of study aids, all available to you free of charge — but let me begin by asking you one vital question. What is…?"

The question was lost to Dallen as the door at his right opened and the buoyantly curvaceous figure of Rick Renard appeared, martini glass in hand. He grinned on seeing Dallen, walked straight to the holomorph and shoved his knee into the vicinity of its groin.

"Out of the way, you silly old fart" he commanded, stepping into the solid image and causing it to flow and fragment. "This really balls the whole system. Old Karal programmed the set-up himself before he left for Orbitsville, but he was too conceited to allow for anybody being disrespectful enough to stand right inside him. The computer just doesn't know how to react."

"I'm not surprised," Dallen said, reluctantly amused.

"Wait to you see this." Renard edged backwards a little, allowing London's image to reassemble itself in front of him, now apparently with four arms, two of which belonged to Renard and were waving like those of a Balinese dancer.

"…long been postulated that mind is a universal property of matter, so that even elementary particles would be endowed with it to some degree," the grotesque image was saying in London's voice. "We now know that mind is a universal entity or interaction of the same order as electricity or gravitation, and that there exists a modulus of transformation, analogous to Einstein's bask equation, which equates mind stuff with other entities of the physical world…"

The superimposed image abruptly vanished, leaving the floor to a triumphant Renard. "The programme can't cope, you see. Old Karal should have stuck to his physics."

"He didn't expect sabotage."

"What did he expect? People come here for some free booze and a bit of discreet lusting after Silvia — not to be lectured by a miserable bloody apparition. Come on, old son, you look as though you could use a drink."

"It's been one of those days."

"Yeah." Renard paused, his gold-freckled face looking uncharacteristically solemn. "I've only just heard about your wife and kid."

"I don't want to talk about that."

"No. It was just that I… Ah, hell" Renard led the way into the room from which he had emerged and went to a long sideboard which was serving as a bar. Dallen asked him for a weak Scotch and water, and while it was being prepared took the opportunity to look around. There were about two dozen people in the room, most of them men, who were standing in groups of three or four. He recognised several faces from various City Hall departments, but was unable to see Silvia.

"She's around somewhere," Renard said knowingly, flashing his narrow bow of teeth.

Dallen concealed his annoyance over having his screens penetrated so easily. "Why are these people here? They can't all be theoretical physicists."

"Metaphysicists would be more like it. Karal claims there are special particles called mindons which are harder to detect than neutrinos because they exist in what he calls mental space. It's all a bit abstruse for a mere botanist, but apparently our brains have mindon look-alikes in mental space — where most of the physical laws are different — which enable us to survive death. Karal doesn't talk about dying — he refers to it as becoming discarnate.

"It's all supposed to be very comforting and uplifting," Renard added as he handed Dallen a clinking glass. "Personally, I prefer this stuff or an occasional dab of jinks."

"Felicitin?" Dallen was only mildly curious. "Can you get it right here in Madison?"

Renard shrugged. "A dealer comes through from the west coast once a month, so somebody in town must be really hooked on the stuff."

"Who's got that kind of money?"

"Dealers don't talk. Felicitin isn't illegal, as you know, but heavy users generally get up to some highly illegal activities sooner or later. You can sometimes spot them, though, if you know what to look for."

Dallen sipped his drink and was a little surprised to find it had been mixed exactly to his specification. Renard was on his best behaviour. How, he wondered, would you pinpoint a person who was really dosing up on felicitin? Look out for someone who was always cool and calm, exuding that air of serene confidence…? A memory picture flickered briefly behind his eyes — tall young man with Nordic good looks, expensively tailored, relaxed, smiling. Dallen concentrated until he had identified the image as that of Gerald Mathieu, the deputy mayor, then frowned and peered into his glass as a coldness developed in his stomach.

"I hope this isn't super cooled ice," he said. "I've heard this stuff can be bad for you."

Renard smiled. "It's always the ice — never the booze."

Dallen nodded, becoming aware of a man and woman purposefully moving closer to him. He turned and saw the rotund figure of Peter Ezzati, the city's salvage officer, accompanied by his equally plump wife, Libby. While they were shaking hands he noticed that the woman's eyes were following his with a kind of melting intensity and he guessed with a sinking feeling that she was a tragedy buff, a professional sympathiser.

"Is this your first time here, Carry?" Ezzati said. "Are you enjoying it?"

"I'm a bit vague about what fm supposed to enjoy."

"The talk, mainly. Karal can be quite convincing about his mindons, if you follow his argument right through, but it's the conversation I like. You get guys here whose minds aren't limited to sport and sex, who can talk about anything. For instance, what do you think about these green flashes they're getting on Orbitsville?"

Dallen was baffled. "I’m afraid I…"

"You're the first policeman we've had at the meetings" Libby Ezzati put in, her gaze still a channel for moist compassion.

"I'm not a policeman," Dallen explained. "I work for the Deregistration Bureau."

Libby shot an accusing glance at her husband, as though charging him with having told her lies. "But you can arrest people, can't you?"

"Only lor things like being on land where there's an exclusion order in force."

"That's another thing" Ezzati said. "Is it true they're pulling the deregister line in to a forty kilometre radius of Madison?"

Dallen nodded. "The population here is shrinking. There's enough good farming land within the radius."

"I don't like it — it's all part of a process." Ezzati considered what he had just said and appeared to raid it significant. "All part of a process."

"Everything is part of a process" Dallen said.

"I'm not talking philosophy — I'm talking people."

"You're talking piffle, darling," Libby told her husband, and having allied herself with Dallen decided it was rapport time. "You know. Carry, Kipling had a vital message for all of us when he pointed out that God never wasted a leaf or a tree…"

"Rick is the botanist around here." Dallen walked away quickly and went back into the hall where the rematerialised holomorph of Karal London was addressing two new arrivals… discarnate mind composed of mindons interacts with matter only very weakly, but that doesn't call its existence into question. After all, we have yet to detect the graviton or the gravitino… Coming out of the beam of sound, Dallen went into the room opposite and found it populated like the one he had left, small groups standing and talking earnestly in an ambience of low-placed lights and amber drinks.