The land was beautiful, but it had not turned out to be the easy pickings he had hoped for when he had defected from the Ndelante and headed north. There were unpeopled ruins, that was true: He could see what must have been the pre-Crash location of Santa Ynez, rectangular trac-ings all overgrown and no lights at all.

The ruins were bigger than the modern version of the town, but nothing like the promise of the L.A. Basin, where kilometer after kilometer of ruins - much of it unlooted -stretched as far as a man could walk in a week. And if one wanted some more exciting, more profitable way of getting rich, there were the Jonque mansions in the hills above the Basin. From those high vantage points, Los Angeles had its own fairyland aspect: Horizon to horizon had sparkled with little fires that marked towns in the ruins. Here and there glowed the incandescent lights of Jonque outposts. And at the center, a luminous, crystal growth, stood the towers of the Peace Authority Enclave. Wili sighed. That had all been before his world in the Ndelante Ali had fallen apart, before he discovered Old Ebenezer's con.... If ever he returned, it would be a contest between the Ndelante and the Jonques over who'd skin him first.

Wili couldn't go back.

But he had seen one thing on this journey north that made it worth being chased here. That one thing made this landscape forever more spectacular than LAs. He looked over Santa Ynez at the object of his wonder:

The silver dome rose out of the sea, into the moonlight. Even at this remove and altitude, it still seemed to tower. People called it many things, and even in Pasadena he had heard of it, though he'd never believed the stories.