Hedia's brief smile was as cold as the emperor's charity. The spectators had been correct: this detail was impossible to achieve-by human efforts.

If the vision on stage is real, Hedia thought, then what I saw in my dream was real also.

Varus would probably tell her that her logic was flawed. She wasn't a philosopher, but she was correct. This is real, and the nightmare is real; and the nightmare isn't over.

Hedia touched her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, then reformed them into her aristocratic smile. Any observer would think that she was as pleased as her husband by the drama being acted on stage.

The present audience had lost all sense of decorum in its delighted amazement, but even whispers would be loud when multiplied by tens of thousands. Nonetheless, Hedia heard screams of terror over the applause.

She couldn't see the actors and technicians on the other side of the stage where now another world was spreading. If they were alive, they knew that what was happening was more than theatrical trickery.

They must be terrified, Hedia thought. They must be as frightened as I am.

She smiled calmly as she watched and waited. She had no better choice than to behave like a lady; and perhaps that was always the best choice anyway.

The city before her was as clear as coral viewed through the waters of the Bay of Puteoli. Hedia-the whole audience, she supposed-saw more than mere eyesight would have allowed if the place had been as close as the stone stage front. It wasn't huge, certainly not as big as Carce. It seemd more the size of Herculaneum on the slopes of Vesuvius, where a sometime friend of Hedia's had a vacation villa.

I should make a point of seeing Maternus again when I next visit Baiae, she thought. The pleasant memory helped calm her, though no one looking on would have realized the Patron's wife was in the least disturbed.

The buildings were shining towers, much higher than anything in Carce. The tallest of the lot was a smooth spire with no steps or stages, rising from the plaza which faced the seafront. Hedia had heard of the pyramids of Egypt, but those were described as being of stone and as broad as they were tall. This was a slender crystalline cone topped with a ball of the same blazing metal as had been used in the walls.