"Me, too," said a middle-aged woman with soft, graying curls. "It was the best time of my life."

"You were?" Chuck asked, stopping right there in the street. "Can you tell me how to get there?"

"Well," the man said, dejectedly. "Not exactly. I mean, it kind of found me."

"Will you look at that?" Sean exclaimed, looking in the window of a store. Curious, the other Visitors gathered around the glass with him. Inside, a tiny train that looked almost exactly like theirs was riding little rails that ran through a beautiful landscape filled with glittering, magical scenes. Sean almost sighed with pleasure as he turned away. "That's a fine one. I'd always liked trains as a lad."

"Me, too," Chuck said. "My dad had a layout that filled half our basement."

The young man who earlier held the door for them came running up beside them. He held out a package wrapped in brown paper to Sean. "For you, great Visitor!"

Sean eyed him suspiciously. "And what's this?"

"The train you admired, sir! A gift."

"That's not necessary," Sean said, clearly uncomfortable. "Please, I can't take this." He handed it back. The young man's face fell.

"Oh, please, sir," he said, plaintively. "It would mean a lot to me."

Sean looked from Chuck to Keir to Pipistrella, who was nodding encouragingly at him. "Well, all right, and thank you very much. It's most kind of you."

Spotlights hit the group from above. As Sean threw up his arm to protect his eyes, flashbulbs erupted. A newspaper swirled into existence before their eyes. The headline read: visitor accepts gift from local man! Hiramus seized it from the air and read it, frowning. Suddenly, the group was surrounded by reporters.

"Tell me how it felt, Master Sean," said the first reporter, a man in a fedora with a card that said press in the hatband. "And you, young man, what possessed you to make a gift to the Visitor?"

All the crowd started shouting questions, not waiting for answers.

"Oops, we're caught up in a Walk of Fame Dream now!" Bergold said. He took Sean and Chuck by the arms and turned them to continue walking along the street. Chuck glanced back. Thousands of people lining the street on both sides were held back by cordons and rows of police linking arms. The mob of newsmen stayed close behind them. Though Bergold steered them in and out of shops, hotel lobbies and more museums, they could not shake off the reporters, who continued to write in their notebooks or talk into oversized microphones every time one of the Visitors or their companions did anything at all. The spotlights somehow stayed above them, bathing them in a pale, flattering light.

Everyone around Chuck was young and handsome.

"Limelight," Bergold explained. "It gives those who stand in it a healthy, youthful glow."

"Oh," Chuck said. "I just thought we'd gone through another wave of change."

"No, that's just the limelight," Bergold assured him. "Makes everything it touches more attractive, but does nothing for the inside. Still, everyone will want to share it with you. Many of them will do anything to achieve that."

Every time Chuck stopped to look at something, passersby stopped to stare, either at him or what he was studying. If he admired something in a store window, one of them would jump to buy it for him.

After the relief of losing a lot of his luggage, he was suddenly burdened down with gifts from people who wanted to be under the spotlights for just a moment. He admitted that the warm glow felt good. It was a pity it didn't have any lasting effects on the hole inside him.

"Help me!" a high-pitched voice screamed. A woman wearing a scarlet evening dress torn up the side seam came running towards the group. Chuck and his companions gawked. Behind her stalked a gigantic lizard breathing lightning, a skeleton wielding a scimitar, a man in a white tie, and a hundred zombies. A car came streaking out of nowhere, zoomed past the woman, and plowed into the giant lizard. It picked the car up and chomped off the front end. Four men fell out of the shredded compartment, plummeting sixty feet to the ground. They lay still, their heads twisted to frighteningly wrong angles. The woman stopped, paralyzed, as the monsters marched inexorably toward her.

"We've got to help," Sean said, running out to her. The moment he put his arm around her and tried to help her get away, a voice over a loudspeaker shouted, "Cut!"

The monsters stopped moving. The woman threw her hair back. The corpses on the ground got to their feet. "Places, please!" the voice commanded.

As if by magic, the woman was a hundred yards up the street. The monsters spread to three different points and paused. The car and its occupants waited, hidden behind the facade of a building. Chuck noticed then that none of the buildings were real. He and the others were back where they'd first seen the woman. A man in jodhpurs and a beret came out, grabbed Sean's arm, and held him in place. He held up a megaphone and shouted into it. "All right . . . action!"

The sequence was repeated again, this time with the car striking the woman and knocking her to the ground. The car swerved into the monster, who zapped it with its lightning, ate half of it and dumped the contents on the ground.

The director groaned, and lifted the megaphone to his lips. "Cut! Too nasty! Let's try it again!"

As Chuck watched with fascination, the scene was repeated over and over, with subtle variations.

The woman was chased into the arms of the monsters. Men perished in a terrible car wreck, accompanied by booming action music. It ended every time with the director crying out, "No! Try it again!"

"What do you want to have happen?" Chuck asked curiously, while the director waited for his crew to take its places for the eighth time.

"I'm trying for a positive ending," the director said. "All right! For the last time, let's get it right, people!"

Suddenly, the whole scene seemed to come together. The woman outran all the monsters except the vampire, who handed her a picnic basket. The car came out of its hiding place at the same breakneck speed, but it missed crashing into the lizard. It came to a stop, and one man got out. He ran to the woman. They embraced passionately, then sat down with the picnic basket in what had become a meadow. The music playing was a piano concerto.

"What happened?" Persemid asked.

"Directed dreaming," Keir explained. "Somewhere in the Waking World, some sleeper who is capable of lucid dreaming is redoing his dream over and over until he gets the result he wants."

"Can people do that?" Chuck asked, fascinated, watching the man uncork a bottle of champagne and spray the wine all over himself. The director groaned and threw up his hands. He had to retake the whole scene from the entrance of the monsters.

"Oh, yes," Keir assured him. "It's a good deal of work, but requires a kind of control that would make one a being of influence here in the Dreamland."

Chuck was impressed. "I wish I was that organized." More likely, he thought, he wondered if he would bother to take the time to learn how to do it. But the idea was planted. He hoped he could remember when he came out of his trance. The next time he came here, he could go straight to Enlightenment.

Chapter 27.

Though they left the set where the director was still trying to get his scene to go the way he wanted, the Visitors did not escape from the air of theatricality that suffused this part of Ephemer. The sidewalks were lined with concrete handprints and terrazzo starbursts, and the buildings were covered with silver tinsel that glittered when it fluttered in the wind. Every store had its own spotlights to single out each customer and make him feel special.

Chuck and his companions continued to be minor celebrities wherever they went. He'd stopped accepting gifts, but the donors seemed to be delighted just to be in his presence. Chuck was getting tired of them. He wasn't having any fun sightseeing with so many people watching him, and the gifts, however generously meant, weren't filling in the steadily-growing gap in his heart.

The waving, white beams from a quartet of carbon-arc lights pointing straight up beside the doorway of the next building must have been visible for miles. But it wasn't the glitter that astonished Chuck. It was the shape of the building. It was in the form of a gigantic hat.

"We've got a reservation here for dinner," Keir said. "You'll like it. It's different."

"I guess so," Persemid said, wonderingly.

To Chuck's relief, the crowd following them stopped on the sidewalk, letting them walk unaccompanied under the canopy past a uniformed doorman who gave them a snappy salute. They could finally have a little time to themselves.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen!" A large blob of matter oozed up to them and coalesced into an unctuous maitre d' wearing a pencil-thin mustache and a tuxedo. "Your table awaits!"

Morit took Blanda by the arm and pulled her into the Big Hat after the Visitors. A harried-looking man in glasses stopped them.

"Let us by," Morit said. "The rest of our party is in here."

"That would be the Waking Worlders?" the man asked, flipping through the pages on a clipboard.

"Ah, yes, that's right." He looked up at them through the thick lenses of his spectacles. "I'm sorry, but you are not in this scene."

"Certainly we are," Morit said, glaring. "We go where we please."

"Sorry," said the man, flipping a few more pages. "You can't go in. This is a closed set."

"Aarrgh!" Morit growled. He lowered his shoulder and tried to charge past the man. The clipboard in the man's hand became a high wall with spikes sticking outward. Morit ignored them, shoving the wall back a fraction of an inch at a time. Blanda clung to his arm, looking apologetic. "For Nightmare's sake, woman, push!"

"Security!" the man shouted. Two guards in gray uniforms and hats appeared as out of nowhere, took Morit's arms and turned him, heading him out the door. Flashbulbs burst in his face, dazzling his eyeballs. The headline on the swirling newspaper read: elysian couple try to crash dinner!

The next thing he knew, he and Blanda were in line at a cafeteria full of people in costumes, human-sized animals with vastly oversized heads, sitting and chatting.

"Central Casting!" he exclaimed. "How humiliating."

When Keir and his clients entered the dining room, a kettle drum began its low roll. Big, round searchlights hit them in the eyes. A waiter, clad in an impeccable, short black coat and a white napkin over one arm appeared and bowed before them.

"This way, ladies and gentlemen," he said, with the confidence of all good waiters, sweeping a hand to indicate they should follow him through the mass of tables. He whispered to Chuck, who was the closest behind him. "Is the back of my coat all right?"

"Fine," Chuck said, glancing at the perfect expanse of black serge. Not so much as a dust mote marred it.

"Thanks," the waiter said, nervously. Then his back straightened, and he began to glide through the crowd, gesturing ahead of him with a hand. He came to a halt at a table covered by snow-white cloth.

A model of efficiency, he deftly seated the ladies first without ever seeming to slight the men. Chuck was impressed.

Waiter: (with a liquid accent) And here you are, m'sieur. Sank you.

Persemid: Merci beaucoup.

Waiter: (raising his hands to heaven) Ah! Madame 'as a sharming accent! Bon! S'il vous plait, peruse the menu. I will describe to you the especials. Per'aps you would like to begin with one of our celebrated opening acts? A trio of cheeses in full harmony, a well-aged ham, piquant hors d'oeuvres?

Chuck looked around him at what the other diners were having. The glasses and platters didn't seem to be filled with any substance that he could see, yet men and women dipped spoons into bowls and sipped, or sawed with knife and brought bite to lips with fork. What seemed to sustain them most was attention. The happiest- and healthiest-looking people in the restaurant were the ones at the tables in the center. Chuck could hear one of the waiters spooling out a line of almost sycophantic praise to a mink-clad woman and cashmere-suited man at a two-top just a few feet away. The man grew visibly more handsome, and the woman's complexion went from wan to rosy. Other tables were visited by reporters or fellow diners, to the enhancement of the ones seated there. The poor folk who sat around the perimeter, out of the charmed circle, who had gone without attention for a long time seemed listless and gaunt. Some were so obscure that they faded away completely.

Chuck decided that they must all be actors. He'd heard they lived on praise. That would explain the dog. Accompanied by the same fanfare and roll of drums, a large German shepherd was escorted to his own table, where a monogrammed silver bowl awaited. His supporters, men and women, but mostly women, crowded into the banquette seats around him. Not one of them was a dog, in any sense of the word, yet the tray the waiter brought to their table contained only bowls. The groupies ate from them face-down just like the dog.

Sylphlike creatures attached themselves to people who looked prosperous or successful, gaining substance from reflected glory until they were completely solid and entitled to tables in their own right.

One of these fragile-looking women battened onto Chuck's arm like a limpet. She had red, red lips and sharp white teeth like a succubus, and her luscious body was encased in a peach satin gown so tight it looked as though it was painted on. Chuck felt weak just from having her touch him. She fluttered her eyelashes seductively. He felt his pulse race.

Sylph: (breathily) And who are you?

Chuck: (nervously) Nobody special.

Sylph: Oh. (lets go) What a shame.

She tossed her lovely hair and undulated away. Chuck watched her go, half with regret and half with relief. He didn't want to be anyone's meal ticket, or meal, for that matter.

He decided he'd better find the lavatory before dinner. He cleared his throat, which brought the waiter to his side, pencil poised.

Chuck: Where can I wash my hands?

Waiter: That way, m'sieur. (points stage right) Chuck: Thanks.

Chuck pushed back from the table and started toward the discreet little sign the waiter had indicated. It was embarrassing having a spotlight follow him to the toilet. He tried to pretend he was just having a look around.

The restaurant's decor was mostly dark brown wood. Framed images of glamorous men and women crowded the panels. They were all smiling, but he realized that the eyes in the photographs slewed back and forth, keeping an eye on one another.

He smiled and stood back to let someone else out of the men's room, then stepped inside.

On the other side of the door, he found a forest of wooden braces, not a hallway. He glanced back.

The restaurant was nothing but painted canvas! The whole thing was one big movie set, just like the jet that had brought him to the Dreamland. A knot of people holding sheaves of paper or pacing nervously waited to go out through one of the two doors fixed into the scenery flat. Chuck started to say something, when a young woman with round wire glasses on her serious face came rushing over to him.

"What do you want?" she whispered.

"I need . . . you know," Chuck said, a trifle embarrassed. She nodded sharply, and sent him through the supports to a sixty-foot trailer at a short distance from the set. It looked like a miserable cardboard box. For a moment Chuck thought he might be better off finding a spot in the bushes, but inside the trailer was astonishing luxury. He was going to have to learn not to judge by initial appearances.

Chrome gleamed in between panels of red and yellow enameled tile that shone so perfectly he could see his reflection in every square. Every stall door had a star on it, and the seat within, well, it was a throne in truth, not just in jest.

When he came out, two women in casual clothes descended upon him. He was shocked, not expecting to see them in the men's room. They didn't give him time to protest. One of them pushed him into a canvas chair while the other smacked him in the face with a huge powder puff. The dust made him cough. When she was finished with that, she picked up a small pencil and outlined the corners of his eyes. The second woman pulled his hair back and started to comb it with brutally efficient strokes. Chuck glanced at his reflection in the wall-sized mirror. He still looked thirty, thirty- five years old. He sighed a little for lost youth.

"Too long," she muttered, twisting his hair. "No time. Got to add something . . . there!" She reached into a huge fishing tackle-box that Chuck had not noticed before, and came up with a little band. She pulled back his hair and gathered it into a little ponytail at his neck. "Better. All right, you're done!"

The other woman, who had been dusting broad shadows on his jawline with a triangular sponge, jumped back. The door opened, and Chuck felt himself propelled toward the restaurant once again.

"You'll never believe what just happened to me," Chuck began, as he sat down, but Keir plopped a huge leatherbound book into his hands.

Keir: Choose your meal first. The menu contains your script. You'll have to read from it exactly as it's written, or they start over and make you read it again, and we'll be here all night.

Chuck looked at the page, and realized that what was printed on it was exactly what people had been saying since he came into the restaurant. He ran a finger down the page.

Pipistrella: (blankly) Why is it so bright in here?

Persemid: (groans) Chuck gawked. That was exactly what was typed in the book before him.

Waiter: And what may I bring you?

Keir: (looking around at everyone) Try the specials of the house.

Chuck: I think I'll have the rhubarb.

He frowned. He hated rhubarb. The maitre d' came bustling up, waving his arms. He shouted into a megaphone.

Maitre D': Cut! Try again.

Keir: Put some life into it or we'll never get out of here.Chuck: (brightly) I think I'll have the rhubarb!

He smiled at the people at his table. Around him, the noise grew louder.