"The looks didn't get her here," Persemid said, with some asperity. "Even though she annoys me, too, she has talent."

"My mistake, ma'am," Kenner said, blithely. Nothing seemed to spoil his good humor.

Thanks to him, the group had picked up an extra passenger, a beautiful young lady. He really did run strongly to type. This girl slightly resembled the last girl, who resembled the first one on the train platform back in Rem: small-boned, small-featured except for large eyes, and a pretty cupid's-bow mouth that smiled often, except that she had very dark skin and short, kinky hair. She caught Chuck looking at her, and gave him a knowing, familiar smile. He had a funny feeling that he knew her from somewhere, but how could he?

Keir arrived back with Pipistrella, who greeted them all with a happy smile.

"Forgive me," she said, artlessly. "I got into a conversation with the nicest man. He said he was from Porlock. The time just flew." She waved her hands. "I don't know where it went."

The others didn't say anything. The engineer, on the lead dimetrodon, signaled and moved the train of behemoths out into traffic.

In between museums, Chuck continued to be concerned about the mysterious shadow. He'd had a sensation that someone or something had been following him even before he'd been attacked in Phantasie. He didn't want to get beaten up again. Surely the talents he'd been developing in managing influence would come in handy.

While they lumbered along the boulevard, Chuck tried to put the whammy on himself. The best thing, he thought, would be if he could render his skull in some kind of hard rubber, so blows would bounce right off. The others looked at him strangely when he hit himself in the head a few times, but didn't ask for an explanation. With a little experimentation he achieved a satisfactory texture, but no alteration he made remained past more than two changes of influence. It was so frustrating to know that though he had so much power the locals considered him a kind of god, yet he was still very small against the combined forces of billions of other minds. He'd just have to keep looking behind him, whether or not he could keep eyes in the back of his head.

"Not another art gallery," Chuck groaned, as Keir marched them past the uniformed guards at the door of another palatial building. Persemid looked prim with amusement, and Pipistrella gave Chuck one of her blankest looks.

"This one's different," Keir said, producing a handful of tickets and herding them inside.

The surroundings were very much what Chuck had come to expect: a wide, high-ceilinged hall painted white, with a few, a very few, people staring at some impenetrable frames containing a splosh of paint or two, and maybe a curled-up statue that looked like it was suffering horrible internal distress.

"Cheer up," Kenner said, bringing up the rear of the group with another of his endless string of women clinging to his arm, "maybe there'll be some nude figures! That last bunch had a few really great babes!"

Persemid shot him a laser-hot look of disgust, to which the Dreamlander paid no attention. He was too busy explaining the architectural features of the hall to the young woman.

Keir guided them through the anteroom and past lines of people battling among themselves for tickets. Shouting and screaming filled the air to the very ceilings of the marble chamber, and echoed until Chuck's ears rang. Men rolled on the ground, trying to take possession of a single ticket, punching and throwing one another against walls. Chuck was puzzled as to why anyone would put up any kind of fight to get into an exhibition. So far on the tour, the group had ended up seeing scads of artwork, more than Chuck had ever dreamed existed in any world, physical or immaterial. Lots of what he'd seen was desperately bad, but all of it told one a great deal about the maker. Keir had told them time and again to reflect. By the expression on his face, it left as bad a taste in Sean Draper's mouth as Chuck's own, and the Irishman was as confused as he as to what all the shouting was about. Keir looked happy and excited, but the others felt frankly skeptical.

This time Chuck thought the majority was right. On the walls of the first room, the frames looked hundreds of times more expensive than their contents.

"It's all junk!" Chuck exclaimed.

"Don't be so judgmental!" the guide said, ignoring their protests as he herded them along. "You don't know what you're looking at. Here are some very insightful pieces. This is a place where real accomplishments are displayed. Some in symbolic ways, others literally. Not merely for their artistic merit."

"That's certain," said Hiramus, with a sour expression.

"Look, that's part of a vacuum cleaner nozzle," Chuck pointed out. He could even read the brand name on the attachment at the end.

"Ah, but you don't know what it represents! There's more to a piece than its simple physical existence," Keir said. "It's the story behind it that is really interesting. Tales of success in an otherwise ordinary life. Well worth your time to study."

How interesting could that be? Chuck thought, wondering if the whole place was full of pot roasts and wobbly bike rides. Keir took him by the shoulders and set him in front of a picture at the end of a row.

"Now, look, really look." With a firm nod, Keir stalked away to capture his next client.

With a sigh, Chuck stepped close to a frame surrounding a battered cookbook stained with gravy.

There was nothing special about it that he could detect, except maybe the strong smell of cooking.

He was plunged directly into a suburban-style kitchen, cheap yellow curtains on the windows, dated contact paper on the walls, and the air full of steam. As he blinked to clear the hot clouds from his eyes, a young woman in limp sweat pants was wiping the hair out of her face with the back of her hand. She leaned over the counter to frown at the very cookbook that Chuck had just seen displayed on the wall. A pot was boiling furiously on the stove, giving off heavy, spicy fumes. He didn't think it smelled edible. Evidently, neither did the young woman. Picking up a measuring cup, she approached the pot fearfully, glanced into it, and with trembling hands, poured in the contents of the cup, then stirred energetically with a wooden spoon. Suddenly, with a sound like harp strings played in glissando, the steam cleared, the kitchen brightened, and a wonderful aroma rose from the saucepan.

The astonished expression on the young woman's face said, as clearly as if she had spoken aloud, "It worked!" Chuck almost cheered for her.

He didn't know how he had returned any more than how he had been caught up, but he found himself back in the gallery looking at the cookbook on the wall. It had told him his story, and in spite of his skepticism, had touched his heart. He was eager to try again.

In the next frame over, a dried clump of daisies hung against a backdrop of faded gingham. They told him the story of the romance between two young people that began at a summer picnic with the gift of flowers. The young man gathered them up shyly and gave them to his girl. She offered her lips for a timid kiss that turned warmer, until the two of them sprang apart, surprised and delighted. The couple sat together, not physically far from the hundreds of other attendees, but miles and miles away in their own world.

Years passed from that first simple gift. In moments, Chuck saw the couple grow up, marry and have children, then grandchildren, and retire into golden sunshine that coalesced into the faded bunch of daisies framed on the wall. The next picture was different, but equally compelling, as were all that followed. Chuck found he enjoyed the mini-movies. He didn't understand each and every one he saw, but he cared what happened to the people whose possessions he was viewing. Now he knew why his fellow patrons at the gallery were staring so intently at each display. They were getting the story behind the piece. It was a lot more fun than he'd anticipated. Rather than skipping from place to place as something caught his eye, Chuck discovered he didn't want to miss a single one. Each work seemed to sweep him away for hours or years, yet when he surfaced again he felt as if he'd been standing before it for mere seconds. He was ashamed for complaining in advance that he'd be bored. Keir must think he was the worst kind of whiner.

Included in this display was a very small picture of the Eiffel Tower. It looks like a plain photograph, maybe even a cheap postcard. What was it doing here?

"Look closer," Keir said, appearing at his shoulder. "It's the maker's very first attempt to look inside himself, a signal moment in his life."

Something about it struck Chuck as familiar. Then he did peer closer. It was his jigsaw puzzle, neatly put together and framed. He'd lost track of it. He felt his pockets, but the puzzle was gone.

"It's there," Keir said, nodding at the wall. "You've made progress. That's a marker of where you came from, when you took your first steps into something you could see but not believe in. It's a good start. It belongs here."

"Wow," Chuck said, filled with pride. "That's mine." He looked at the man standing next to him, just coming out of his study of a red leather dog collar. Chuck nudged him and nodded toward the frame. "That's mine."

"It is?" the man asked, curious.

"Yes," Chuck said, feeling as though he should say something profound, but nothing came to mind.

The man leaned over and raised his spectacles to get a better look.

"And how long will something like that be displayed?" Sean Draper wanted to know.

"As long as there is living memory," Keir said. "It's now part of the Collective Unconscious. You might see it in one of your own dreams." Sean must have looked a question at him that no one else could hear, because Keir changed into the plump maternal form as he walked over to the tall man and put a comforting arm around his waist. They talked together in low voices. Keir gestured to an open hall at the right, and they walked into it. Chuck watched them go, curious again why the defensive and laconic Draper was with the group. He couldn't hear what they were saying to one another. The level of noise in the hall had risen. People were murmuring to one another. He wanted to know the end of the story that the jigsaw puzzle began. He leaned closer to get involved when a hand grabbed his, surprising him out of his thoughts.

"Chuck Meadows? Aren't you the Chuck Meadows?" a man's voice asked.

"Yes, I am," Chuck said. "Do I know you?" The man pumped his hand up and down.

"No, you don't, Master Chuck, but I had to come and tell you what I thought of your work.

Fabulous! Astonishing! Moving. My wife just cried when she saw it."

"Well, thanks," Chuck said, not knowing how to respond. "That's nice of you, but it was nothing, - really."

"A great moment in time!" raved a stout, bearded man wearing a tweed jacket. He waved a meerschaum pipe in the air. "I am Fortescue Alarum, a critic for the Ephemer Ephimerides. Really a profound revelation. I must go look at it again."

"Oh, come on," Chuck said, embarrassed. "It's not a Monet watercolor." But the stout man plunged back into the mob surrounding Chuck's little puzzle.

More people crowded around him, offering compliments until Chuck felt his face redden to his collar. He began to wonder if his little puzzle was anything special, or if all these people were crazy.

He was glad to see Master Morit and his wife pushing their way through the crowd to the display.

They were back in only a few moments. Chuck didn't have to hear the byplay to know that the surly man thought it was rubbish, but his wife wanted him to come and say something nice anyhow.

"Nice," Morit said at last, and it was a concession.

"Thanks," Chuck said. "I know the thing itself is unimportant, but Keir made me think about what it meant. I was just trying to see the story itself. I wanted to know how it came out." He looked back at the now impenetrable crowd.

"It's no use," Morit said, scowling. "You will never make it. All those silly people will use it up until there's nothing left. Sleeper-sent mobs." People who were bustling forward to have a look would glance toward him occasionally, beaming. Chuck smiled back. He liked being where people appreciated him. He and the Nightshades went to a slightly less crowded wall to continue studying other people's pieces. This wasn't a bad place at all.

Chapter 26.

"Master Chuck!" It was the stout man in tweeds. "Pardon the interruption. I was so moved by the moment you have captured for us, that I immediately went for the curator. He surely would want to know that you are here. May I present Dante Fidget?" He moved slightly to the right, shouldering Morit aside, to allow another man through.

Master Dante was an energetic man with bright blue eyes, pleasant, knobbly features, a nearly bald pate, and grasshopper-quick movements. He seized Chuck's hand in his large, bony one and threw his other arm around Chuck's shoulders.

"Such a pleasure, Master Chuck!" he said. "Why didn't you let us know you would be in these parts? We would have organized a banquet in your honor!"

"Oh, that's not necessary," Chuck said. "Really, the fuss everyone's making is just unnecessary . .

"You're too modest," Alarum said, with a superior smile. "Isn't that the most appealing manifestation? I shall have to make a note in my article."

"Admirable," said Master Dante, rubbing his hands together. "I really must introduce you to your fellow creators, you know. Please, come this way." With his arm still around Chuck's shoulders, he led the way out of the crowd. Chuck had a brief glimpse of the sour look on Morit's face as the couple was left behind in the wake of fulsome praise and compliments.

"Master Chuck, Evy Liston, Torgol Snooze, Berrita and Lugi Noddingoff," said the curator, with pride, drawing him into a small circle of people standing just a little apart from the masses. Chuck recognized the shy housewife, the beefy mustachioed salesman, and the romantic couple whose simple stories had moved him so much when he'd stepped into the world of their artifacts. The little group clustered around him. "Chuck Meadows, everyone."

"Oh!" said Evy Liston, pleasure on her small, tawny face. "How very nice to meet you!" She put out a narrow, soft hand. Chuck took it delicately and gave it a gentle shake.

"A pleasure," Chuck said. "Are any of you from the Waking World, too?" He gestured in a general way toward his navel.

"I am," Evy said, putting a protective hand on her midsection. "This is my third time here. And you?"

"First time," Chuck said. "I'm a novice."

"Oh, not with such an achievement behind you!" she exclaimed.

Chuck clicked his tongue impatiently. The elderly Noddingoffs just smiled at him. Torgol Snooze was an energetic man, much as Chuck recalled from the frame containing a tattered receipt book.

"Good to meet you, Chuck. I can call you Chuck, can't I?"

"Sure."

"Chuck, you're the man of the hour. We're all old news around here, but the bigwigs still treat us like treasures ourselves. Thought I'd let you in on the way things are. Savvy?"

"Uh, right," Chuck said, only half understanding the other man.

"You've got to hang around with the right people. Got it?" Master Torgol laid a knowing finger beside his nose and tapped it. "C'mon. We'll get you started, won't we, people?"

"Oh, yes," Mistress Evy said.

"Right!" said Master Torgol. He pulled Chuck familiarly by the arm through one gallery after - another, with the other creators in tow. In the third chamber a man and a woman in white wigs and gold satin clothes from the period of Louis XVI were peering at a rebuilt engine block through gold quizzing glasses. Torgol stopped beside them.

"Your excellencies, may I present Chuck Meadows?" he said, bowing graciously. "The Count and Countess Znoorg."

"Ah, Meadows!" the satin-clad man said, putting aside his eyeglass and presenting Chuck with a hand like a dead fish. "Excellent! This is a most excellent opportunity for both you and us. I will earn grand kudos from bringing you to the attention of other persons of excellence. Master Aloisius!" he called. A man with shoulder-length black hair and a small beard and wearing dark blue and white robes paused in his conversation with Bergold to turn around to peer at them. "I would like to make you known to a truly excellent artist, Master Chuck. Master Chuck, the Astronomer Royal."

"Well, this is a pleasure," Master Aloisius said, coming over to grip Chuck's hand with steel fingers. "My friend from the Ministry of History and I were just saying that there were quite a number of stars here today. I am studying them at close range, for a change. Ha ha ha!" He swept his hand around. Chuck noticed for the first time that the room was filled with men and women who had a certain quality that drew the eye. He'd have to call it star quality.

The Count of Znoorg and the Astronomer Royal carried him off to introduce him around. Suddenly, he found a champagne glass in his hand, shaking hands with people.

Keir was there, too, with most of the other first-class passengers. Though he was still wearing his everyday gray homespun, the guide looked perfectly at home. Pipistrella veritably shone, like one of the stars themselves. She looked gorgeous with her long, blonde hair falling over a dress of buttercup yellow, tripping around airily in tall sandals of sunshine and crystal. Persemid trailed after her, glowering darkly, but she, too, looked natural, even comfortable in these settings. Her normal costume of draperies swirled with an artistic air. Chuck wondered if he was the only one who felt out of place.

He stuck his hands in his pockets.

His sense of displacement couldn't last long, though, because statesmen, fellow artists, patrons of the arts, and aristocrats kept coming over to congratulate him. He protested, but they seemed even more impressed that a Visitor could be such a modest individual. People whispered and giggled nervously behind their hands as he went by. He glared at them at first, thinking they were making fun of him, but the awed looks on their faces were enough to convince him they thought he was someone really special. A star. A celebrity. Chuck found himself beginning to enjoy the heady feeling. Praise seemed to make his head light enough to lift him right off the floor.

Reporters clustered around him, scribbling in little notebooks.

"So, what's next for you, Master Chuck?" asked a female reporter wearing a big-shouldered 1940's suit.

"Well," Chuck said, trying to remember what it had meant to him when he'd made the jigsaw puzzle. He folded his arms, and put his chin in his hand. "I want to build on my past successes. Uh, I intend to let the artistic milieu inspire me to greater heights of understanding . . ."

In the midst of the fog, he caught himself about to say something pretentious when Persemid glanced at him over the shoulder of the woman he was talking to, and raised her eyebrows.

"When this is all over," she said, "you'll still only be you. Keep that in mind."

Chuck frowned at her. He couldn't forget just how flawed he was. It was tempting to pretend, but not so easy around people who knew him before he was celebrated. He landed squarely on his feet. It was a hard comedown.

The museum was getting far too crowded. Chuck began to feel as though he was being crushed by the atmosphere. He waded through the galleries, literally feeling as though he was slogging through mud, bogged down by the adoring regard of the patrons. He spotted Keir near the front door chatting with Hiramus. As he moved toward it, others jumped out of his way.

"How about something to eat?" Chuck asked. "I'm starved."

"Right this way!" Keir said, reaching for the handle.

"Not me," said Kenner brightly, walking with his girl. "Jennie here is going to show me a new place." He winked. Nearby, Mr. Bolster and Mrs. Flannel were still looking at pictures. They didn't seem to mind the crowd.

A young man hurried ahead of him to open the door, "For the Great Visitors," he said, proudly. A pair of very cute teenaged girls let out shrieks and giggles when Chuck looked their way. He shook his head. The rest of Keir's clients followed behind. All of them looked grateful to be outside.

The buzz had hit the streets of Ephemer before Chuck and his companions did. Everyone they passed wore shy smiles, or gave them a salute or thumbs-up. There must be something more special about that gallery than Chuck had deduced. How could they all know what was going on without being told? Unless they were more advanced than other Dreamlanders he'd met so far.

"I don't suppose that Ephemer is close to Enlightenment, is it?" Chuck asked, hopefully.

"Only in the dictionary," Keir said, flatly.

"C'mon, Keir. This wasn't the real thing. I want to reach it before I have to go home . . . all right, I am at home. Or, rather, part of me is home . . ." Chuck gave up. "You know what I mean! I want to reach Enlightenment."

"I've been there," a young man said, overhearing their conversation. He started walking beside Chuck, keeping pace with him. He had a goofy smile on his face. "It was wonderful!"