"Oh, I can't tell a story to save my life."

"Well, what if we collaborate? Here, give me that pad and a pencil, and I'll rough something out."

"What's the story going to be about?"

"It'll be about-about life in Carrollboro."

Tug scrawled a three-by-three matrix of panels and, suddenly inspired, began populating them with stick figures and word balloons.

Sukey leaned in close, and Tug could smell intoxicating scents of raw woodsmoke and wild weather tangled in her hair.

9. "More ocarina!"

The two men stood in a semi-secluded corner backstage at the Keith Vawter Memorial Auditorium, illuminated only by the dimmest of caged worklights that seemed to throw more shadows than photons. All around them was a chaos one could only hope would exhibit emergent properties soon.

Don Rippey was bellowing at people assembling a set: "Have any of you guys ever even seen a hammer before?!?"

Janey Vogelsang was trying to make adjustments to two costumes at once: "No, no, your arrow sash has to go counterclockwise if you're a gluon!"

Turk Vanson was coaching a chorus of ocarina players. "Why the hell did I bother writing out the tablatures if you never even studied them!?!"

Crowds of other actors and dancers and musicians and crew-bosses and directors and makeup artists and stagehands and techies surged around these knots of haranguers and haranguees in the usual pre-chautauqua madness.

But Ozzie remained focused and indifferent to the tumult, in a most unnatural fashion. His lack of affect disturbed Tug. Despite Ozzie's youth and a certain immaturity, he could appear ageless and deep as a well. Now, with Sphinxlike expression undermined only slightly by the juvenile wispy mustache, he had Tug pinned down with machine-gun questions.

"You're sure you know all your cues? Did you replace those torn gels? What about that multiple spotlight effect I specified during the Boson Ballet?"

"It's all under control, Ozzie. The last run-through was perfect."

Oswaldo appeared slightly mollified, though still dubious. "You'd better be right. A lot is depending on this. And I won't be here to supervise every minute of the production."

"You won't be? I thought this spectacle was going to be your shining moment. Where are you going?"

The pudgy genius realized he had revealed something secret, and showed a second's rare disconcertment. "None of your business."

Oswaldo Vasterling turned away from Tug, then suddenly swung back, exhibiting the most emotion Tug had yet witnessed in the enigmatic fellow.

"Gingerella, do you like this world?"

Tug's turn to feel nonplussed. "Do I like this world? Well, yeah, I guess so… It's a pretty decent place. Things don't always fall out in my favor, or the way I'd wish. I lost my job and my home just a month ago. But everyone has ups and downs, right? And besides, what choice do I have?"

Oswaldo stared intently at Tug. "I don't think you really do care for this universe. I think you're like me. You see, I know this world for what it is-a fallen place, a botch, an imperfect reflection of a higher reality and a better place. And as for choices-well, time will tell."

On that note, Oswaldo Vasterling scuttled off like Professor T. E. Wogglebug in Baum's The Vizier of Cockaigne.

Tug shook his head in puzzlement at this Gnostic Gnonsense, then checked his watch. He had time for one last curtain-parting peek out front.

The well-lighted auditorium was about a third full, with lots more people flowing in. Ozzie might make his nut after all, allowing him to continue with his crazy experiments…

Hey, a bunch of Tug's old crowd! Pete, Pavel, Olive-essentially, everyone who had helped him move out of The Wyandot. Accidental manifestation, or solidarity with their old pal?

Wow, that move seemed ages ago. Tug experienced a momentary twinge of guilt. He really needed to reconnect with them all. That mass o-mail telling them he was okay and not to worry had been pretty bush league. But the Tom Pudding experience had utterly superseded his old life, as if he had moved to another country, leaving the patterns of decades to evanesce like phantoms upon the dawn…

Tug recognized Lee Smolin in another section of seats, surrounded by a claque of bearded nerds. The physicist's phiz was familiar, the man having attained a certain public profile with his CBC documentaries such as The Universal Elegance…

The voice of Harmon Frawley, director-in-chief, rang out, "Places, everyone!"

Tug hastened back to his boards.

He found Sukey Damariscotta waiting there. She wore purple tights and leotard over bountiful curves. Tug's knees weakened.

"Doing that bee-dee together this afternoon was lots of fun, Tug. Let's keep at it! Now wish me luck! I've never portrayed a membrane before!"

Sukey planted a kiss on Tug's cheek, then bounced off.

Glowing brighter than any floodlight, Tug turned to his controls. He tilted the monitor that showed him the stage to a better viewing angle.

And then "Mystery Mother and Her Magic Membranes" was underway.

Under blood-red spotlights Pudding person Pristina Immaculata appeared, raised from below through a trap, an immense waterfall of artificial hair concealing her otherwise abundant naked charms, Eve-style. Pristina's magnificent voice, Tug had come to learn, made Yma Sumac's seem a primitive instrument.

Warbling up and down the scale, Pristina intoned with hieratic fervor, "In the beginning was the Steinhardt-Turok model, and the dimensions were eleven… "

A rear-projection screen at the back of the stage lit up with one of Franchot Galliard's B &W stag films, the infamous orgy scene from Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, involving Irish McCalla, Julie Newmar, Judy Holliday and Carole Landis.

Low-hanging clouds of dry-ice fog filled the stage. Tug's hands played over his controls, evoking an empyrean purple realm. A dozen women cartwheeled across the boards. The imperturbable South-Pacifican Tatang wheeled out on a unicycle, barechested and juggling three machetes.

"I shift among loop gravity, vacuum fluctuations and supergravity forever!"

After that, things got weird.

Tug was so busy at his boards that he paid little heed to the audience reaction, insofar as it even penetrated his remove. Retrospectively, he recalled hearing clapping, some catcalls, whistles and shouts of approval. All good reactions.

But then, at the start of the second hour, the riot began.

What triggered it seemed inconsequential to Tug: some bit of abstruse physics jargon, recited and then pantomimed by a bevy of dancers wearing fractal-patterned tights. But the combined assertion of their words and actions outraged Lee Smolin and his clan. No doubt Oswaldo Vasterling had penned the speech with just this result in mind.

On his monitor, Tug saw the performance come to a confused halt. He abandoned his station and raced out front.

The staff of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics had jumped to their feet and were shaking their fists at the stage, hollering insults.

Others in the audience told the dissenters to shut up and sit down. This enraged the unruly scientists further. Some bumrushed the stage, while others engaged in fisticuffs with the shushers. Gee, those guys could sure punch surprisingly hard for a bunch of electron-pushers.

The brawl spiralled outward from the principled nucleus, but without rhyme or reason. Soon the whole auditorium was churning with fighters and flighters.

Turk Vanson rushed onstage followed by his stalwart ocarina players. "We've got a fever, and my prescription is-more ocarina! Blow, guys, blow!"

The musicians launched into "Simple Gifts," practically the nation's second anthem ever since the tenure of Shaker Vice-President Thomas McCarthy during President Webster's second term. But the revered music had no effect.