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self-selected amnesia to which I had
once been addicted – had been proven to have certain adverse
psychological side-effects. Not only had their private use been
proscribed, but even law enforcement agencies, who had used
mem-erase to access the minds of suspected criminals, had been
denied its advantages. As a result of the ban, the simulated
scenarios of memory-tapes were viewed in some circles with a
certain stigma.
    I selected the ersatz
memories of a fictitious vid-star, lay back and for the next hour
lived a life of success, fame and love.
    ~
    I awoke early the
following morning, booked some time alone with the crystal and
strolled along the palm-lined boulevard to the museum.
    On the few occasions
when the crystal had been exhibited in the past, I had been loath
to experience it – the mere fact of Cassandra Quebec's death had
been painful enough, without subjecting myself to the emotional
reality of it. But twenty years had passed since the incident; I
was older and perhaps wiser now, and I considered myself ready to
have the experience.
    Not that I was without
misgivings. I held, perhaps irrationally, a fierce dislike for the
man who had married Quebec and who was ultimately responsible for
the accident that killed her. Added to which, Maltravers'
production of the crystal had elevated him from the minor artisan
he was to the status of a world celebrity. Perhaps what had
prevented me from experiencing the crystal before now, quite apart
from the emotional trauma I would have to undergo, was the thought
that I would be participating in the metaphorical aggrandizement of
man at the expense of woman.
    That morning at
breakfast in the revolving restaurant I had been invited to the
table of a group of Hoppers – rich artisans and their hangers-on,
who skipped the globe from one artists' colony to the next. They
were shrill and opinionated, and I sought the protection of
silence, offering nothing to the debate about Maltravers and the
reason for his return. I heard one claim that he was returning to
seek artistic rejuvenation from the locale of his wife's horrific
death; another, that he intended to end his life here, as befits
the artistic temperament.
    The truth, I
suspected, was neither. It was my guess that Nathaniel Maltravers
was staging the spectacle of his return for no other reason than
that, in the years since Cassandra Quebec's death, his own artistic
and popular success had floundered. The dozen or so 'major' works
he had released upon the universe had flopped abysmally. His return
was probably nothing more than a cheap ruse to gain publicity.
    The Death of
Cassandra Quebec remained his first and last  great
work.
    The museum, which
housed the crystal and a thousand other works of art, was an onyx
cathedral raised above the desert on flying cantilevers and
approached along a sweep of gently ascending steps. It was cool and
hushed within, and I took my time and strolled towards the crystal
wing. I paused at the arched entrance, showed my pass to the
security guard and stepped inside. The chamber was empty; I was
quite alone. Before me, in pride of place in the centre of the
room, was the crystal – in fact a thousand alien stones fused into
one faceted, centimetre-thick disc perhaps two metres across.
Visually, it was a mere swirl of colour, a coruscating vortex of
argent and indigo. Only to the touch would the crystal discharge
the stored emotions of its creators.
    I must have heard a
hundred different reports about Cassandra Quebec's death, and
staged and re-staged the tragedy in the theatre of my mind. I was
on Nova Francais when I first read about the accident; the article
was in a journal almost two years old, and the shock of the news
was compounded by the fact that I had learned about it so late.
    Her arrival at
Sapphire Oasis, with her husband and new-born baby, made world
news. It was her first public appearance since the birth of her
daughter; the film of their approach in an open-top