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Leigh-Cheri’s crown, and Haleakala’s, a shallow observer might be inclined to compare him to a connoisseur of rubies trapped under a coal chute. Upon more careful examination, however, one would have to report that he took a very nearly delicious pleasure in smuggling his curls about, their blaze concealed from the cold eye of the law by the thinnest millimeter of pigment.
    And, of course, Bernard, as all men, carried around in his trousers the most renowned redhead of all—characteristically funny and dangerous.

21
    ABOARD ALOHA AIRLINES FLIGHT 23, Bernard wasn’t the only admirer of Leigh-Cheri. From the seat in front of her, a young man with a long, wavy beard, aloha shirt, and hibiscus blossoms intertwined in his ponytail had turned around to engage her in conversation. He was on his way to the Care Fest, he said, to teach meditation techniques at a workshop. The young man tried to interest Leigh-Cheri in his program. He offered to give her personal instruction in meditation, free of charge. She seemed to be seriously considering it.
    Bernard leaned forward until his freckled chin rested atop Leigh-Cheri’s seat. “Yum,” he said.
    The Princess flinched, but did not glance back. The young man in front began showing her his puka shell necklace. While fingering the pukas, he spoke quietly to her of deep relaxation, inner peace, and the wisdom of letting things flow.
    “Yum,” repeated Bernard. He said it very close to the royal ear.
    This time she spun around. Her expression was indignant. “I beg your pardon.”
    Bernard smiled as sweetly as a retarded jack-o’-lantern. “It’s my mantra.”
    Leigh-Cheri glowered at him, as only someone of the redheaded persuasion can glower. He was dressed all in black and had bad teeth. He was wearing Donald Duck sunglasses. Kiddie glasses. She turned back to the meditation instructor, who at once ceased scowling at Bernard and gave her a sympathetic look.
    “There are only two mantras,” said Bernard. “Yum and yuk. Mine is yum.”
    It sounded halfway logical, but the Princess refused to respond. She squeezed Gulietta’s hand. She asked the junior guru in front how meditation could help alleviate suffering in the world.
    “Yum,” said Bernard. “Yuu-mmmm.” Leigh-Cheri ignored him. The other passengers regarded him strangely.
    “Do you need anything, sir?” asked the stewardess.
    Bernard shrugged. He looked out of the window. He looked at the rosy rim of the big volcano. Haleakala—“House of the Sun.” If Haleakala was where the sun called home, what was the moon’s address? Did the moon live in France on Main Street?

22
    IT WAS HALEAKALA, erupting in tandem with a lesser volcano, that created the island of Maui. It must have been a show. The crater was seven and one half miles across, the cone more than ten thousand feet high, yet Haleakala had a presence at which even the most impressive measurements didn’t hint.
    Such an eerie, unfamiliar place was Haleakala that there was a tendency to associate it with other worlds, outer spaces. Indeed, an unusually large percentage of visitors who camped there overnight in order to view the famous Haleakala sunrise, the sun awakening in its own bedroom, swore to having seen oddly lighted forms in the sky. To the dormant volcano, with its crumbly cromlechs, its lunar contours, its black and red sands, supernatural properties came to be attributed. Many regarded it a universal center, an intergalactic connecting point, a cosmic bean-hill, the earth terminal for spaceships of all degrees of substance and visibility. So many people claimed to have seen UFOs buzzing Haleakala that it turned into a mecca for flying-saucer fans and would-be cosmic cosmopolitans. Individuals, entire cults with outer-space orientations settled in the valleys near the base of the mountain.
    When word of the impending Care Fest spread from Lahaina into the Maui interior, the various flying-saucer groups banded together to insist that they be