The first banqueters ambled in, gentlemen with thick beards and bushy whiskers, though they were really rather young, some in pajamas and some in nothing at all. When six waiters brought in the cake and I got a glimpse of that most indecent of desserts, there was no longer any doubt: I had accidentally strayed into the wrong hall and was sitting at the banquet for Liberated Literature. On the pretext that I couldn't find my secretary I beat a hasty retreat and took the elevator down a floor to the Purple Hall (I'd been in the Lavender), which by now was packed. My disappointment at the modesty of the reception I hid as best I could. It was a cold buffet, and there was nowhere to sit; all the chairs had been removed, so to eat anything one had to display an agility common to such occasions, particularly as there was an impossible crowd around the more substantial dishes. Senor Cuillone, a representative of the Costa Rican section of the Futurological Association, explained with an engaging smile that any sort of Lucullean abundance here would have been quite out of place, considering that a major topic of the conference was the imminent world famine facing humanity. Of course there were skeptics who said that the Association's allotments must have been cut, since only that could account for such heroic frugality. The journalists, long accustomed to doing without, busied themselves among us, seeking spot interviews with various foreign luminaries of prognostication. Instead of the United States ambassador, only the third secretary of the Embassy showed up, and with an enormous bodyguard; he was the only one wearing a tuxedo, perhaps because it would have been difficult to hide a bulletproof vest beneath a pair of pajamas. I learned that the guests from the city had been frisked in the lobby; supposedly there was already a growing pile of discovered weapons there. The meetings themselves were not to begin until five, which meant we had time to relax, so I returned to my room on the hundredth.