We sat there, safe, while figures rushed toward us from the KingDome. And the lattice reappeared in my mind. It had disappeared when I thought I was going to die, and now it was back, still closed tightly around whatever was hidden inside.

“It’s the lousy gravunits,” the driver said, in the same pleading voice he’d said okay okay okay. He twisted in his seat to look directly into my eyes. “They cut costs on materials. They cut costs on robotesting. They cut costs on maintenance because those lousy robounits break. The whole franchise’s going under. Two crashes in California last week, and the newsgrids paid to keep them quiet. I’m never riding in one of these things again. You hear me? Never again.” All said in the same low, pleading voice.

In my mind he was a crouching, black, squashed shape in front of the purple lattice.

“Mr. Arlen!” a woman cried, throwing open the aircar door. “Are y’all okay in there?” Her Southern accent was thick. Sallie Edith Gardiner, freshman congresswoman from Washington State, who was paying for this concert for her Liver constituents. Why did a congresswoman from Washington State sound like Mississippi?

“Fine,” I said. “No damage.”

“Well, it’s just shockin’, is what it is. Has it really come to that? That we can’t even make a decent aircar any more? Do you want to postpone the concert a bit?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” I said. The accent wasn’t Mississippi after all; it was fake Mississippi. She was all flaking gilded hoops in my mind. I thought suddenly of Carmela Clemente-Rice, clean pale ovals.

Why had the lattice in my mind disappeared when I thought I was going to die?

“Well, the truth is, Mr. Arlen,” Congresswoman Gardiner said, chewing on her perfect bottom lip, “a tiny delay for you might be a good idea anyway. There’s a little problem with the gravrail comin’ in from South Seattle. And just a tiny problem with the security ’bot system. We have techs workin’ on it now, naturally. So if you come this way we’ll go to a place you can wait…”

“My system was installed onstage yesterday,” I said, “if you can’t guarantee security for it—”

“Oh, of course we can!” she cried, and I saw she was lying. The aircar driver climbed out and leaned against the car, muttering under his breath. His prayerful pleading had finally turned to anger. I caught falling apart and fucking societal breakdown and can’t support so many fucking people before Congresswoman Gardiner threw him a look that would rot plastisynth. She hadn’t asked if he was hurt. He was a tech.

“Your wonderful equipment will be justfine,” Congresswoman Gardiner said. Fahn. “And we’re all lookin’ forward so much to your performance. You come this way, please.”

I powered my chair after her. She wouldn’t watch the performance. She’d leave after she introduced me and the grid cameras had their fill of her. Donkeys always left then.

But it didn’t happen that way.

I sat in my chair in an anteroom of the KingDome for two hours. I might have slept. People came and went, all telling me everything was fine. The lattice in my mind snaked in long slow undulations. Finally the congresswoman came in.

“Mr. Arlen, “I’m afraid we have an unpleasant complication. There’s been a just terrible accident.”

“An accident?”

“A gravrail crashed comin’ from Portland. There are … a number of Livers dead. The crowd heard about it, and they’re upset. Naturally.” Natchally. Her voice sounded upset, but her eyes were resentful. The first big event she’d sponsored since her election, and a lot of inconsiderate Livers had to go die and ruin it. An unpleasant complication. I would have bet a quarter million credits against her reelection.

“We’re goin’ to go ahead with the concert anyway, unless you object. I’m goin’ to introduce you in about five minutes.”

“Try drawing out your vowels slightly less,” I said. “It would be at least a little more authentic.”

I had underestimated her. Her smile didn’t waver. “Then five minutes is all right with you?”

“Whatever you say.” The lattice in my head was shaking now, as if in a high wind.

They had built a floating gravplatform at one end of the arena, with a wide catwalk to the upper room where I waited. The grav-train had crashed; the aircar had faltered. I knew that gravdevices didn’t really manipulate gravity, but magnetism; I didn’t understand how. What were the odds of three magnetic devices failing me in an evening? Jonathan Markowitz would know, to the twentieth decimal.

“—one of the premier artists of our times—” Congresswoman Gardiner broadcast from the stage. Tahms.

Of course, it might not have been the gravunit itself that failed in the train. A gravrail might have hundreds of different moving parts, thousands, for all I knew. What were they all made of?

“—with deep gratitude for the opportunity to bring y’all the Lucid Dreamer, I—”

I. I. I. The donkeys’ favorite word. In Huevos Verdes, at least they said we. And meant more than just the SuperSleepless.

Pale green grass rippled in front of the purple lattice. Grew over it, through it, around it. Took it over. Took over the world.

I clasped my hands hard in front of me. I had to perform in two minutes. I had to control the images in my mind. I was the Lucid Dreamer.

“—understandably grieved about the tragedy, but grief is one of the emotions the Lucid Dreamer—”

“What the fuck do you know about grief, you?” someone unseen screamed, so loud I jumped. Somebody in the audience had a voice magnifier as powerful as my own sound system. From where I sat I couldn’t see the audience, only Congresswoman Gardiner. But I heard a low rumble, almost like the Delta in flood.

“—pleased to introduce—”

“Get off, you bitch!” The same magnified voice.

I powered my chair forward. Halfway across the catwalk the congresswoman passed me, her head high, her lips smiling, her eyes burning with anger. There was no applause.

I powered my chair to the center of the floating platform and put my lenses on zoom. The KingDome was only half full. People stared at me, some sullen, some uncertain, some wide-eyed, but nobody smiling. I hadn’t ever faced anything like this. They were balanced on an edge, right between an audience and a mob.

“That a donkey chair you sit in, Arlen, you?” the magnified voice shrieked, and I identified its owner when several people turned to him. A man pushed him, hard; another glared; a third moved protectively in front of the heckler and stared hard-eyed at the platform. Somebody down front called faintly, unmagnified, “The Lucid Dreamer ain’t no donkey, him. You shut up!”

I said, so softly that everyone had to quiet to hear, “I’m no donkey, me.”

Another rumble went up from the audience, and in my mind I saw water flooding the Delta where I was born, the water not fast but relentless, unstoppable, rising as steeply as any Huevos Verdes curve of social breakdown.

“People are dead, them, in the lousy donkey trains nobody bothers to keep up!” the magnified voice cried. “Dead!”

“I know,” I said, still softly, and the lattice stopped shaking as my mind filled with slow, large shapes, moving with stately grace, the color of wet earth. I pressed the button on my chair and the concert machinery began to dim the stage lights.

I was supposed to give “The Warrior,” designed and redesigned and redesigned again to encourage independent risk taking, action, self-reliance. Stored in the concert machinery were also the tapes and holos and subliminals for “Heaven,” the most popular of my concerts. It led people to a calm place inside their own minds, the place all of us could reach as children, where the world is in perfect balance and we with it, and the warm sunlight not only falls on our skin but goes all the way through to the soul and draws us in to blessed peace. It was a concert of reconciliation, of repose, of acceptance. I could give that. In ten minutes the mob would be a yielding pillow.