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grid at the five-foot cylinder’s octopal crest said, “Welcome. Kindly accompany me to the forever-revel.”
    Doors without handles were set into the translucent, off-white walls on either side. The hall curved gradually upward, tracing the interior contours of the cylindrical palace. They stopped at one of the doors, and the drone spoke a series of numbers; the door slid aside, and they entered the party.
    Odors of hundreds of perfumes, sweat, steam, tobacco, wine, antiseptics. A kaleidoscopic vista, a circular cavern floor-to-wall-to-ceiling-to-wall with people; mists, streams of warm water running through mid-air in nulgrav currents, phosphorescence and sparks flaring and shifting into protean, eye-pleasing patterns overhead.
    Most guests invited to Chaldin’s forever-revel considered themselves honored and attended eagerly. The palace was legendary. In the eighteen-year history of the levitated edifice everyone invited had accepted—though all were fully aware that they would never meet their host. Chaldin never attended. The party was managed by a human majordomo and a concealed central computer which was aided by its agent-extensions, the drones.
    The palace had a number of reputations--wonderful, horrible, and every shade between. Ben had never before acquired an invitation, but he had done considerable research into the forever-revel. It presented an intriguing game board for the exercise of his distinctive skills. It appeared that some of the stories told about the palace were true and some were gross exaggeration. It had never lived up to the aggrandized achievements in decadence that were attributed to it by certain journalists. The tales of baby-drowning contests were entirely false, though the rumors of a tasting room for exotic diseases had some truth in them. The stories of mandatory initiation into a bestiality cult were fabricated, though it cannot be denied that guests so inclined were provided with certain unusual species of specially trained animals. The allegation that all guests must swear fealty to Beelzebub was unfounded gossip; yet it was true that Lady Seth founded a forever-revel sect devoted to the worship of the holo portrait of Professor Chaldin, before whose monumental image peculiar nocturnal activities, which would be considered reprehensible by the Denver status quo, drew a healthy number of participants…and it was to this gigantic, jovial three-dimensional bust of Chaldin that Ben’s eyes were drawn as they entered the revel hall…
    The moving face was seamed; deep furrows ran down from the corners of his mouth, and the unnaturally wide eyes, vividly blue, gave the impression of a ventriloquist’s dummy. The dyed black hair was cut into a fashionable cube with jaw-length sideburns. He was very much older, Ben guessed, than first glance suggested. The huge, semi-transparent eyes on the forty-foot head rolled back and forth in mirth; the blue pupils against the overbearing whites of the eyes were like choking madmen writhing in white hospital sheets. The mouth snapped open and clacked shut in repetitious imitations of mirth, roughly following the rhythms of the seamless flow of thudding electro-rock. There was an identical bust, like a moving mirror image, going through the same actions, backwards, at the opposite end of the hall. The taped holo image repeated its actions, seeming to observe and cackle at the antics of the crowd below.
    Ben and company had stepped from a door in a tall porcelain hummock protruding seamlessly from the floor; similar exit chutes were situated at intervals about the contrivance. Voice slightly amplified above the noise of crowd and pulsing music, the drone-cyber politely explained how they could use the exit chute to find the rooms they had been assigned, how to order food, drink, and drugs from the panels set into the white hummocks nearer the floor. They were instructed in the use of the hallucinogenic sauna, the pools, the