Dave looked. The sunset colors were still vivid. He stepped forward and
peered through the crystalline glass. Before him was a city, bathed in
orange and red, towering like the skyline of a dozen cities he had
seen--and yet; not like any. The buildings were huge and many-windowed.
But some were straight and tall, some were squat and fairy-colored and
others blossomed from thin stalks into impossibly bulbous, minareted
domes, like long-stemmed tulips reproduced in stone. Haroun-al-Rashid
might have accepted the city, but Mayor Wagner could never have believed
in it.

"Look at the sky," the old man suggested again, and there was no mockery
in his voice now.

Dave looked up obediently.

The sunset colors were not sunset. The sun was bright and blinding
overhead, surrounded by reddish clouds, glaring down on the fairy city.
The sky was--blotchy. It was daylight, but through the clouds bright
stars were shining. A corner of the horizon was winter blue; a whole
sweep of it was dead, featureless black. It was a nightmare sky, an
impossible sky. Dave's eyes bulged as he looked at it.

He turned back to Sather Karf. "What--what's the matter with it?"

"What indeed?" There was bitterness and fear in the old man's voice. In
the corner of the room, Nema looked up for a moment, and there was fear
and worry in her eyes before she looked back to her weaving of endless
knots. Sather Karf sighed in weariness. "If I knew what was happening to
the sky, would I be dredging the muck of Duality for the likes of you,
Dave Hanson!"