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steel tracks laid parallel to Route 528, and deposited north of Big Sand Lake. The haul required the collective energy of seventy-two GP diesel locomotives, five of which exploded en route and never saw service again.
    Although the park would be open until midnight, the couple decided to remain in their hotel, Martin being nauseated, Corinne exhausted. The next morning they climbed aboard the shuttle bus, where a sobering spectacle awaited them. Martin wasn’t the only one who’d come to Orlando out of desperation. Seated behind the driver was a withered old woman whose neck sported a goiter the size of a coconut. Beside her rested a bald young man with an oxygen mask strapped across his face. Nearly a third of the riders, in fact, exhibited various dire medical conditions, making the bus seem like nothing so much as an ambulance evacuating the survivors of some strange and far-reaching catastrophe.
    Within a half hour the City loomed up, its spires and parapets cutting into the sky like guided missiles poised for takeoff. Cameras dangling from their necks, the passengers headed for the main gate, a ponderous post-and-lintel affair plated with gold, encrusted with cultured pearls, and surmounted by the park’s logo: a many-towered, rainbow-roofed palace sitting atop a foundation of clouds. The breezes reeked of orange blossoms. A flock of pure white radio-controlled doves soared overhead, singing “Follow the Gleam” a cappella.
    The pilgrims lined up at the ticket booth. Upon shelling out fifty-five dollars, each visitor received a packet containing a folding map, a laminated eight-inch Key to the Kingdom good for all the major rides, and a spiral-bound
Visitor’s Guide to Celestial City USA.
A few yards away a band of demonstrators milled around, their T-shirts identifying them as the National Science Foundation’s strident splinter group, the Committee for Complete Disclosure of the Corpus Dei. LET US INTO THE BRAIN NOW , a protest sign demanded in capital letters, SCIENTIFIC CURIOSITY: A GIFT FROM GOD , a twenty-foot banner declared. As Martin wove through the mob, he inadvertently looked a demonstrator in the eye—a stocky, bearded man whose placard read ETERNITY ENTERPRISES: ENEMY OF TRUTH.
    â€œDon’t give them your business,” the scientist pleaded, brushing the sleeve of Martin’s Hawaiian shirt.
    â€œI’m sick,” he explained, breaking away and joining the other tourists. “I’m dying!” he cried, passing through the gate.
    â€œThey don’t deserve it!”
    As he entered the City, Martin was immediately struck by its aggressive cleanliness. Everywhere he turned, he saw rolling hills so expertly manicured they might have been transplanted from William Randolph Hearst’s private golf course. White marble fountains dotted the landscape, huge cherub-encrusted structures spewing what looked like luminous milk.
    The final paragraph of the
Visitor’s Guide to Celestial City USA
was titled “Hope for the Afflicted.”
Hope.
The word enthralled Martin. He and Corinne read the passage three times, standing in the shade of an olive tree.
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Although the City’s healing energies emanate primarily from our Main Attraction, the entire park possesses therapeutic powers, and the stricken visitor is advised to sample a full spectrum of Holyspots. In one famous case, Orville Hazelton, a New Orleans taxi driver, received relief from his duodenal ulcer symptoms after winning a cuckoo clocks at the Hammer of Jael nail-driving contest (located on the Millennial Midway, right across from the Stoning of Stephen rock toss), though the process became complete only after Mr. Hazelton beheld the Godform. In a second such instance, the rehabilitation of Wilma Alcott, a Kansas chicken farmer suffering from a rare liver ailment, began after she consumed a lobster dinner at the Last Supper cafe (on Straight and Narrow Lane, adjacent to the Manna from