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not all airports are located in the Alps.
    Michaelmas descended just behind Watson and Campion, into a batting of light reflected from every surface, into a cup of nose-searing cool washed brilliance whose horizon was white mountaintops higher than the clouds. The field was located high enough above the Aar, and far enough from the city itself, to touch him with the sight of the Old City on its neck of land in the acute bend of the river, looking as unreally arranged as a literal painting. It was with that thought, blinking, that he managed to locate him-self in time, space, and beauty, and so consider that his soul had caught up with him.
    There was a considerable commotion going on at the shuttle lounge debarking ramp.
    Movement out of the lounge had stopped. Watson had been right about any number of details : it was likely that half the journalists in Europe were on the scene, and there was a gesticulating, elbowing crowd of them there, many of them in berets and trenchcoats, displaying the freelance spirit.
    Even the people with staff jobs had caught the infection either here or much earlier, and there was the usual jostling with intent to break directed at any loosely held piece of equipment. There was a bewildering variety of that — sound and video recorders both flat and stereo, film cameras, and old minicams as well as holograph recorders —as if every pawnbroker on the continent were smiling this morn-ing. Most of the people down here had to be working on speculation. There weren't enough media contracts or staff jobs in the world to support that mob, or, truth to tell, speculation markets either.
    The current compromise pronunciation of his name seemed to be 'Mikkelmoss!' and emerged most often from the gaggle of voices. Lenses glittering like an array of Assyrians, they tried to get to him in the lounge or cannily waited for him to ensnare himself among them. Michael-mas could feel himself blushing, his round cheeks hot under his crinkling eyes. He could not help smiling, either, as he discovered a staff cameraman for Watson's client network actually shooting for a zoom close-up of him over Watson's shoulder. It was Campion who raised his comm unit to block that shot; Watson had his head down and was work-ing his way through the crowd with effective hips and shoul-ders.
    The first man to get to Michaelmas —a wiry, shock-headed type with blue jaws, body odour, and an elaborate but obsolescent sound recorder—clutched a hand-rail, planted his feet to block passage fore and aft, and shot his microphone forward. "Is true dzey findet wreckidge Kolonel Norwoot's racquet?" "What is your comment on that, sir, please?" came from a BBC man down on the ground beside the ramp with a shotgun microphone, an amplifier strapped over his mouth and phones on his ears. His camera was built into his helmet, exposure sensors flashing.
    And so forth. Michaelmas made his way through them, working his way towards Customs and the cab rank, feeling a sudden burst of autumn chill as someone opened a door; smiling, making brief reasonable comments about his own lack of information. Domino was saying to him:
    "Remem-ber, Mickeymouse—you are but a man." As he cleared the fringes of the crowd, Domino also said : "You have a suite at the Excelsior and an eight a.m. appointment with your crew director. That is forty-eight minutes from . . . now."
    Michaelmas re-set his watch.
    It was a beautiful drive into the city with the road winding its way down to the river, looping lower and lower like a fly fisherman's line until unexpectedly the cab crossed the stonework bridge and they were in the narrow streets of the Old City.
    Michaelmas loved Switzerland. He loved the whole idea of Switzerland. He sat back among the cushions with the cab's sunroof open at his request. He beamed through the rented windows at the people going about their business and out of the fairy-tale buildings that were still preserved, with hidden steel beams and other