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him. Nathan speaks with distress, "You say he carved up the audience? Who was it—do you remember?"
    Bill stares, then shakes his head. A gust of wind.sweeps the street, throwing grit in Bill's eyes. He squints. "No, I don't remember his name. But he sure won the argument."
    "I'll have to find out who it was," Nathan mutters. "Believe me, carving people up and winning arguments is not what Zeteticism is all about. Zeteticism has more in common with the martial arts—the true master avoids confrontation; he does not seek it out."
    Bill shrugs. "Well, the ZI guy seemed like a winner, anyway." He grins, adding, "And the way your cult is growing, I figure I'm better off on the inside than on the outside."
    "Our cult, hm? You've gotten too much of your information from the television news people."
    Bill's breathing halts—the bastard dares to defame Bill's own profession! It takes a moment to find words that are polite. He shakes his head. "Well, 'cult' might be the wrong term. But you are the people who run the no-smoking courses, right? And you're the ones who talk about how the cosmetic industry makes people think they need more specialized products just so they can sell more junk. Right?
    Nathan winces. "The press has a breathtaking capacity for oversimplifying. You know that, right? Everyone knows that. Then why does everyone forget it every time the press says something?" Nathan's voice suggests frustration. Yet his tone remains lighthearted. He accepts this oddity of human behavior without cynicism or anger. "In answer, we do run clinics on advertising and media manipulation, and we do discuss the cosmetics industry. As for the question of human wants and desires, we might ask a question like this: Do people want more cosmetics, which persuades the companies to invent more of them? Or do the companies invent more of them, and persuade the people they want more? Anyone who thinks the persuasions flow strictly one way or the other is not fully connected to reality. There's a feedback loop here, almost as delicately balanced as a regional ecology." His arms sweep as he declares, "We teach people to deal with the best approximations of reality they can construct—and reality is always far more complicated than the press coverage suggests."
    Watching that theatrical sweep of the arms, Bill remembers why he knows the name Nathan Pilstrom. He stares for a moment at the man smiling at him: Nathan Pilstrom is the founder of the Zetetic Institute. Bill almost stumbles as they step across the threshold into the Institute.
    Meeting the founder so unexpectedly leaves him surprised, yet the surprise drowns in the shock of his view in this entranceway. His thoughts of Nathan swirl away, swept aside as the walls now surrounding him imprint themselves upon him. Bill gasps.
    He has seen pictures of the Jewel Hall, but no picture can capture it. Clusters of the world's finest gems blaze across the walls, forming starry galaxies beyond price. Bill's mouth hangs wide as he traces a series of emerald droplets across the arching ceiling.
    Nathan leads him to a central section of the wall. "Take one," he offers.
    "What?!"
    Nathan rubs his hand across the wall. "Take one."
    Bill reaches for a black opal: could it be the Flame Queen? His fingers close around it. He clutches it tight—and his fingers close through the lustrous stone until they touch. A feint sensation of electricity tingles through his hand.
    Nathan chuckles. "As you apparently know, the Zetetic Institute gives seminars and training on a wide variety of topics. What you haven't seen yet is the connecting theme behind all those topics." Nathan leads him forward again, toward a far door. "The Zetetic theme is that in the Information Age, correct information is the key resource. Men must act in harmony with the best information they have. We strive to develop ever better methods for coping with the vast quantities of information that inundate us every day." He spreads his arms to