Alexandria insisted that they go the Lubkins’. The idea somehow caught her interest and brought a glinting life to her eyes. She had always gotten into the spirit of holidays with more zest than he, and now the early weeks of December lifted her mood. Nigel mentioned it to Hufman. The doctor, relying on lab reports, thought she might have reached a stable plateau. Perhaps the drugs were working. The disease might go no further.

As if on cue, Alexandria improved more. She bought a dress that artfully exposed her left breast and found a shirt for Nigel with ruffled black-and-tan sleeves. Nigel felt conspicuous in it when they arrived at the Lubkins’ party, but within half an hour he had knocked back the better part of a bottle of a Chilean red he’d found at the bar. Alexandria was her old self; she took up a corner position in the living room and the guests, mostly JPL-related, gradually accumulated around her. Nigel talked to a few people he knew but somehow the flow of words between mind and tongue never got going. He prowled Lubkin’s home, staring out at the evening fog that seeped uphill toward them through a stand of jacaranda trees. The house was in the new style, worked stone and thin planking, with huge oval windows overlooking the hazy view of Pasadena.

“Say, Nigel, I thought you’d like to know Mr. Ichino.” Nigel turned woodenly. Lubkin’s introduction had come unexpectedly and Nigel was not prepared for the short, intense man who held out a hand. He normally thought that Japanese faces were impassive and unreadable, but this man seemed to radiate a quiet intensity before he’d even said anything.

“Ah, yes”—they shook hands—“I gather you’re to look into the telemetry and computer hookups to Houston.”

“Yes, I shall,” Ichino said. “I have been overseeing the general aspects of the problem so far. I must say your programming for the Snark search pattern was admirable.”

At this last sentence Lubkin stiffened.

“I am sorry,” Ichino said quickly. “I shall not mention such terms again in public.”

Lubkin’s face, drawn and strained, relaxed slightly. He nodded, looked at the two men indecisively for a moment and then murmured something about looking after the drinks and was gone. Ichino compressed his lips to hide a smile. A glance passed between him and Nigel. For an instant there was total communication.

Nigel snickered. “Art has been defined”—he sipped at his wine—“as adroitly working within limitations.”

“Then we are artists,” Mr. Ichino said.

“Only not by choice.”

“Correct.” Mr. Ichino beamed.

“Have you picked up the, ah, object yet?”

“Picked up…?” Mr. Ichino’s walnut-brown forehead wrinkled into a frown. “How could we?”

“Radar. Use Arecibo and the big Goldstone net together.”

“This will work?”

“I calculate that it will.”

“But everyone knows we cannot follow deep space probes with radar.”

“Because they’re too small. Admittedly we’ve never seen the, the thing, so we don’t know its size. But I used the apparent luminosity of its fusion flame and estimated what mass that exhaust was pushing around.”

“It is large?”

“Very. Couldn’t be smaller than a klick or two on a side.”

“Two kilometers? Using Arecibo we could easily—”

“Precisely.”

“You have told Dr. Lubkin of this?”

“No. I rather thought somebody would’ve looked into it by now.”

From the look on Mr. Ichino’s face, Nigel could see quite clearly that the usual Lubkin style was still in force; Lubkin was doing what he was told. Innovation be damned and full speed ahead.

A tray of edibles passed by. Nigel took some violet seascape paste and smeared it on a cracker. He felt suddenly hungry and scooped up a handful of wheatmeats. He asked the waiter after more of the Chilean red. Ichino was partway through a delicately phrased recital of what was happening in the Snark search—apparently, damned little—when the red arrived. Nigel allowed an ample quantity to slosh into his glass and gestured expansively: “Let’s move round a bit, shall we?”

Ichino followed quietly, ice tinkling in his watery drink. Nigel ducked down a hallway, nudged open a door that was ajar. The family rec room. He peered around at the usual furniture netting, console desk and sim-sensors.

“Big screen, isn’t it?” He crossed over to the pearly blank 3D. He thumbed it on.

—A man in an orange and black uniform, holding a long, bloody sword, was disemboweling a young girl—

—The thing in silvered dorsal fins made an explicit gesture, grinning, eyes fixed. Male? Female? Ambig? It murmured warmly, twisting—

“Bit juicy, looks like,” Nigel said, switching away. “Perhaps we should not be witnessing his private channel selections …” Mr. Ichino said.

“True enough,” Nigel said. He flipped over to full public circuits. “Haven’t seen one this big in quite a while.”

A gaudy picture swam into being. The two men watched it for a few moments. “Ah, he’s a hibernation criminal, you see,” Nigel said, “and he is set on destroying this underwater complex, so’s the woman there, the one in red—” He stopped. “Dreadful stuff, isn’t it?” He spun the dial.

—The oiled bodies snaked in long lines. They formed the sacred annular circles under the glare of spots, off-camera, which did not wash out the log fire that blazed angrily at the center, sparks showering upward. Feet pounded the worn earth. A hollow gong carried the beat. Spin. Whirl. Stamp. Sing.

“Even worse than before,” Mr. Ichino said mildly. He reached out to the dial. Nigel stopped him. “No,” he said.

—Chanting, spinning in a dizzy rhythm, the bodies glistened with sweat. Their ragged chorus swelled into new strength.Running living leaping soaringBrimming loving flying dyingOnly once and all togetherJoyful singing love forever

Annular circles orbited about the central fire. Spin. Whirl. Stamp. Sing.

“Overall,” Nigel drawled, “I think I would prefer opium as the religion of the masses.”

“But you err there, sir,” a voice said from the doorway. A roly-poly man stood there with Alexandria. His eyes glimmered out from folds of flesh and he laughed deeply.

“Bread and circuses we need. We cannot provide infinite bread. So—” He spread his hands expansively. “Infinite circuses.”

Introductions: he was Jacques Fresnel, French, completing two years of study in the United States. (“Or what’s left of it,” Nigel added. Fresnel nodded uncertainly.) His subject was the New Sons in all their branches and tributaries. So Alexandria had struck up a conversation with him and, sensing an interesting confrontation, led him to Nigel. (And Nigel, despite the fact that the New Sons were not a favorite topic, felt a surge of happiness at this sign of her new liveliness. She was mixing and enjoying things again, and socializing better than he was at this party.)

“They are, you see, sir, the social cement,” Fresnel said. He held his glass between two massive hands as though he would crush it, and gazed at Nigel intently. “They are necessary.”

“To glue together the foundations,” Nigel said blandly. “Correct, correct. They have only this week unified with numerous Protestant faiths.”

“Those weren’t faiths. They were administrative structures with no parishioners left to keep them afloat.”

“Socially, unification is paramount. A new binding. A restructuring of group relationships.”

“Nigel,” Alexandria said, “he thinks they are a hopeful sign.”

“Of what?”

“The death of our Late Sensate culture,” Fresnel said earnestly.

“Passing into—what?—fanaticism?”

“No no.” He waved the idea away. “Our declining Sensate art is already being swept aside. No more emptiness and excesses. We shall turn to Harmonious-Ascendant-Ascetic.”

“No more Nazis gutting blonds for a thrill on the Three-D?”