Glass Sculptures

Our spirits weren't quite as high the next morning when we stepped through the Iron Curtain into East Germany at Checkpoint Charlie. I had traveled through this gate in the Iron Curtain many times during the Anderson affair. It seemed to me that one never gets used to facing submachine guns and the overriding sense of the cheapness of life in the communist world that these guns signified. The tense feeling was impossible to suppress. I could close my eyes and still see the open muzzle stare into my face that I only faced once, and know what it has been made for.

As I made my way past the concrete barriers that were originally erected against tanks, the dark image behind that muzzle came to mind as on many previous occasions. It seemed that this part never gets any easier.

"What a contrasting world East Germany is!" said Sylvia once we were through.

I agreed. I couldn't help notice the contrast every time I passed into the East.

Going through the checkpoint turned out be a sobering experience for all of us: a creepy, frightening step through a gateway into a world that I had learned to loathe and yet had learned to treasure at the same time, because Steve and Ushi lived there. I felt the same feeling again this time around.

I telephoned Ushi as soon as we got to Leipzig after a two-hour drive on the autobahn. I meant to surprise her by phoning her from right outside her office. But it was mostly for security reasons that I phoned. I recalled that there was a public telephone booth in front of the great medieval castle called the Rathaus, where she worked. I knew that she could see the booth from her office window. She had mentioned it once before.

When she heard my voice she let out a shriek of delight. "Are you really here?" she asked.

"Just look out the window and watch me wave to you."

"Gosh, I can see you. Is it really you? Wave again! Why don't you come up, Pete?"

"Maybe you should come down, I have a still bigger surprise for you," I said. "Sylvia is here with me and Tony, and Heather, and Heather's future husband, Ross, a nuclear-power genius that Steve might want to meet. Except Ross has given up on science in America and became a birdwatcher for the military instead. Still he remains what he was, a genius."

"Wait please, I'll be right down," she said. "But first I must call Steve. We'll have to have lunch together."

"OK, that sounds fine, but supper is on me tonight," I warned her. "Can you recommend a place, one with dancing?"

"You bet I can!" she said and hung up.

We met her outside her place of work, right in front of the great copper-clad door of the Rathaus. The door looked as heavy as I remembered it. Its imposing size and weight provided a perfect introduction to the system that it guarded. Also, there was this contrast again, of the bombastic standing in opposition to the superlative that Ushi personified, someone delicate and beautiful. No embrace could have been warmer than ours, or a face more radiant than hers as she stepped through the giant door to greet us. She warmly embraced Sylvia, and then Heather. Afterwards she hugged Ross and Tony, too.

"Steve will meet us at Cafe Intourist," she said later. "He will come right after his last lecture."

I remembered the Cafe Intourist. I had dinner there, once. As I recalled, it was only a few blocks from the Rathaus, the right distance for walking, and of course for exchanging stories. And oh, did I have a story to tell her!

At first she said no. Then she said, "Italy sounds exiting!" When I mentioned Venice, the 'no' became a 'maybe.' When I finally explained the importance of the project to both the United States and the Soviet Union, she was with us one hundred percent. I added that the matter is so highly sensitive that it takes sensitive persons like her and Steve, to handle it.

She looked at me and shook her head. "This goes one step too far!" she protested. "I'm honored, but I can't accept. The responsibility is too tremendous. What if I fail?"

"What if someone else tried and failed more miserably?" I asked in return. "Can you think of anyone better qualified than you and Steve to do the right thing when there is no way of telling what the right thing is?"

She shook her head. Some tears came. Then I told her our submarine story, how close the cruise missile had come to Washington D.C. and that this happened less than three days ago.

"OK, but Steve won't go along with this," she said. "He never misses a semester opening. It's important to him to be there. He says that the first weeks are critical."

"The future of humanity is a stake," I said quietly. "Steve will adjust his priorities."

"Ok, I'll ask him for you, Peter."

We walked arm in arm into the restaurant. Ushi's eyes were still wet.

Steve was already there. He waved us to his table.

"Pete needs you in Italy tomorrow," she said to him bluntly and without a comment as if none was needed.

Steve looked stunned. "Another nudist beach project?" he asked jokingly.

I shook my head. "Something much bigger, Steve! The beach isn't important at the moment. Something much bigger is happening."

"Didn't I tell you, you blew those 90,000 bucks?" Steve said and began to laugh.

"Steve, hundreds of billions are at stake. It's that big a project. It could be a turning point in history. The future existence of mankind may hang in the balance! You had told me once to invite you to my opening show. I am inviting you now. We are about to stage the opening show for a new future for mankind."

Steve laughed, but immediately his smile faded. "You are not joking?"

Of course I had to repeat the whole long cruise missile story all over again.

"Venice," he repeated, "the SDI is being scrapped there!" He shook his head. "What a coincidence! Did you know that Venice killed Dante?"

"There is no connection," said Ross. "The project that we need your help with might open a whole new horizon that will resurrect Dante. The Venetian won't shut this one down."

"I hope you realize what this means to the Soviet Union," said Steve. "They feel terribly pressured by the SDI."

"Who has the SDI first, controls the world," said Ross.

I explained to Steve that the cancellation was perceived as a first step towards better relations, a sign of respect, and hopefully also a step closer to the end of the nuclear arms race. "My boss Fred invited you to become involved, because of your network of contacts that is reaching deep into the Soviet Union. He thinks it is of utmost importance that this gift to the Soviet Union is not being perceived as a trick of some sort, but is seen as an honest gesture, which it is."

"They may see it as a political ploy," commented Steve.

"Exactly! That's why Fred invited you to become a part of the team," said Ross. "You are respected as someone who plays no games, a scientist of absolute honesty and integrity."

"You tell me that your boss, Fred, invited me, but what about you? Is this what you really want me to do as a friend?" said Steve.

"Personally, I would love you to be involved for a totally different reason," I answered quietly. "The SDI cancellation is important. It's important to the President. But in the larger picture it isn't a big deal. I need you in Venice for one specific reason that goes far beyond what the President asked or Fred is even aware of as a possibility. It is something so big that I'm not even sure we can pull it off. With someone like you on my side it might be doable."

"Something bigger than the cancellation of the SDI, Peter? What could that possibly be?"

"The President wants us to cancel America's Strategic Defense Initiative as a gift to the Soviet Union in order to ease the pressure that has become a danger to us all," I said to Steve. "I personally want to put something vastly bigger in place for the scientists to tackle instead. I'm thinking of a real strategic defense initiative for the protection and the continued existence of all mankind. I'm thinking of something big, something that is truly global in its significance and that has become absolutely vital to be considered. It is so big that no politician has had the courage so far to touch it, much less run with it."

"OK, Pete, "stop the suspense. You've got me listening!"

"I want to put the start of a new renaissance on the worldwide agenda at the physicists conference in Venice. I need your help as someone that the physicists from around the world respect. What I must ask them to support to the best of their ability goes totally against their acquired axioms."

Steve nodded momentarily. "You want me to betray them?" he said moments later and looked away. He got out of his chair.

"Please," I said. "I want the opposite. I want to help them to stop betraying themselves."

"So what is this big thing that you want to announce and need my help with?" said Steve as he said down again. "It better be good."

"It could become the key-turning point for mankind," I said and began to smile. "It's the biggest thing for mankind to face since the last Ice Age. It fact, it is the biggest thing ever. It is the return of the Ice Age itself. The challenge is to create the technological infrastructures that enable a ten billion world-population to be supported by indoor agriculture for the next ninety thousand years. I have read a report by Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski from Warsaw on the coming Ice Age. He suggests that the transition period could be as close as fifty to a hundred and fifty years from now. With a forty-percent drop in global average temperatures most of our present agricultural potential will disappear. We might have to support almost ten billion people from indoor resources while we loose twenty percent more of the Earth's landmass to glaciation, and most of that in the Northern Hemisphere. This challenge that we face is the biggest challenge that has ever been thrust upon a species in the entire history of our planet. It is a challenge, because we have the ability master it. Otherwise it would be a catastrophe. If we were to fail of course, the consequences would be unimaginable."

"The Ice Age Challenge," Steve repeated. "Creating an Ice Age Renaissance? That's big alright."

"I like to propose to the scientists, Steve, that mankind needs to start a global strategic defense initiative to defend mankind from itself against its possible extinction. I would like to suggest on a world-forum platform that the time has come to get moving on this much needed initiative in a real and intensely dedicated manner. If we succeed we would close the door on nuclear war along the way. It would become obsolete forever, together with a whole lot of other nasty things of the type that are killing mankind today. I like to propose that we set a new stage for having the brightest future imaginable. That's what's at stake. Will you help me, Steve?"

Steve just nodded.

We argued back and forth over a lot of the details, all seven of us, until Ross and Steve stood up and shook hands. Ross smiled and embraced Steve.

We sat in that restaurant for a full two hours. Eventually we were talking about small stuff, the beach project, Puff the Magic Dragon, Tony's air show, submarines and Dante. Now and then, I strayed from the main conversation and became absorbed for a time in some lovely meaningless smalltalk with Ushi. It was good to see her again!

"It is nice to have you with us again," she said.

Oddly, these were virtually the same words with which I was greeted at the hotel when we checked in after lunch. The bellboy recognized me instantly. The captain too. He came over to us, to greet us.

"But the beach is closed now," the captain grinned. "Are you here on another 'diplomatic' assignment?" he asked.

I blushed.

He shook my hand and said he was delighted to see me back. He looked at Heather and Ross, then at me.

"We're visiting a friend," I replied.

"Ah?" he replied, as he handed the keys to the bellboy. "Have a nice visit. Will you stay long?"

"Till tomorrow, then Italy."

He bowed slightly after taking his tip.

"I smell trouble," said Ross. "He was interviewing you."

I suggested that we should call Steve and Ushi and get them to meet us somewhere, and leave the same night.

Ross disagreed. "This will put them in danger and ruin our whole mission on top of that."

We agreed to carry on as planned. We met Steve and Ushi for dinner and then returned with them to their apartment for a nightcap. There, practically in front of their house the surprise began just as Ross had feared. Ushi recognized the 'pickup wagon' being parked around the street corner. I had parked our car only three spaces behind it on the opposite side of the street. Ushi went up to the car and talked with the driver. "Herr Krausse! What a surprise!" she said and offered a kiss.

"Go away, Ushi," he said in a heavy tone of voice. "It's you they've come to arrest; you, Steve, and your friends. You're in deep trouble."

"Me!" Ushi joked. "No, Heinz."

"Treason!" he said. "You must get away from here."

"Where would we go, Heinz? How far do you think we would get?"

"I'm terribly sorry," he said in his drawn out German. "Just be careful, they're waiting for you upstairs."

"Thanks my friend!" she said, and tapped him on the shoulder.

The pickup squad must have wondered why none of us were the least bit surprised when the chief officer suddenly stepped into the room from out of the balcony while we sat at the table and had coffee. The squad had patiently waited there. Maybe they wanted to catch us exchanging secrets or something like that. Since nothing of the sort happened, or maybe the coffee smelled too good, they gave up waiting and came in.

"Nobody move!" the officer commanded us in broken English, pointing his gun at us. He said we were all under arrest. He was accompanied by two lesser-ranking uniformed officers. He himself wore a gray business suit and a crumpled raincoat. I was tempted to laugh. He resembled Lt. Colombo down to a hair, from the famous TV series. He even acted in the same manner, in the most predictable way. "I never thought that the real world would catch up with the comics," I said to myself. I found it difficult to take the man seriously, or to be scared of him. I was tempted to laugh. This though, would have gone too far.

It seemed that we all had our fun with him, even Ushi. However, it also seemed that our TV character in the

Lt. Colombo script was definitely more intelligent.

"Please comrades have a coffee," said Ushi gently, without even looking up at them. She had three extra cups on the table, and spoons. Evidently she knew that this was the wrong thing to say. She couldn't suppress a smile at me. It inspired a sense of compassion for them.

Of course there were accusations made, talk about bribery, disrespect for the law, conspiracy to commit espionage. Our passports were collected up. The man took off his coat and paced up and down the living room, lecturing Ushi and Steve on the virtues of patriotism while one of his uniformed fellows took our passports away with him, to have them checked.

Colombo shouted like a general driving a cavalry regiment into a charge. In that, he was unlike the quiet Colombo from the TV series. The whole neighborhood must have heard him. And then there was the weighty matter of the three extra cups! Ushi made gestures that she could explain them. But he rambled on about this being evidence that we were waiting for more spies from the CIA, and he wanted names. He had his note pad ready.

"Comrades, these cups were for you," said Ushi smiling. "I thought you would probably get cold hiding out on the balcony. You should have parked the pickup car further away."

That's when Ross stood up like he might have stood against the demonstrators in Pittsburgh. Compared to 'Colombo' Ross was a giant of a man. Ross put his hand on Colombo's shoulder. "I might as well confess, Sir. I'm the CIA man you are after."

The man made him sit down and be quiet.

"No, no, I really do work for the CIA," Ross insisted, "but not as a spy. I'm a naval observer stationed at the coast of North Carolina where a Soviet trawler launched a cruise missile three nights ago, against Washington, DC."

"Lies, lies," shouted the man before hearing Ross out. "Lies won't get anyone off the hook."

"I suppose you had better verify his story," said Ushi.

"That won't be possible," said Ross, "the Soviet Union denies that it happened."

"Oh, there are ways," said Ushi. "My boss, General Gerber, has connections. He will know."

Our little Colombo twitched and got pale when the name General Gerber was mentioned. He sent his other uniformed officer to the pay phone to talk to General Gerber!

Now we waited. While we waited hardly a word was spoken. Tony and Heather looked quite pale. The silence became tense. 'Colombo' paced the room again, and I had the same uncomfortable feeling that I have had during my first experience in East Germany, while waiting for my passport to be returned at the checkpoint. Only Steve didn't seem to be bothered in the least. He made himself a glass of soda water with lemon slices and ice cubes, and another one for me, and started telling me that someone had actually found a way of accelerating nuclear particles at a speed greater than the speed of light. And since Colombo who apparently had trouble writing in English, wrote every word down that was spoken, he became extremely occupied. Soon Steve began asking about the cruise missile crisis. "How close did the thing get to Washington?"

"Would you believe Arlington?" answered Ross.

Ross looked over Colombo's shoulder. "No, Arlington is spelled ending with I N G T O N," he corrected the police lieutenant, or whatever his rank was.

"I can see why your President goes to such extreme measures," said Steve. He added as a concession, "but giving the Soviet Union the Star Wars project as a gift, that's most generous and quite unexpected."

"That's what he wants to do, and that is why he needs to have the best scientist and journalist there, like Ushi and you," said Ross, "someone we can trust to cover the occasion without misunderstanding it."

"Arlington?" asked Tony. "I thought they shot the cruise down closer to Norfolk with three E-3 Sentry AWACs tracking it."

"It must have been one of their new stealth cruise missiles that are hard to see on radar," said Ross. "It was probably a naval adaptation of their modified version of the ASX-17. Its frame is made of synthetic fibers covered with a radar-absorbing paint. Also, its shape is designed so that its surface contains no flat area, but scatters whatever radar waves would be reflected back."

"Actually, the E-3 AWACs don't detect a stealth aircraft directly," said Tony, "because there is no radar reflection from a stealth aircraft. They can detect it only by a faint traveling void that a stealth aircraft creates when there is a highly reflective background beneath it."

This was Tony's contribution for the benefit of the lieutenant.

"The AWACs' computers are searching for shadows that change position," Tony continued. "The tracking officers then relay the position to the pilots with constant updates. To a pilot chasing one of these, its like chasing a fifteen foot kite going six hundred miles an hour at an altitude of less then two hundred feet. Just try to chase a thing like that with an F-15 in bad weather. You have to rely totally on the AWACs to guide you to within a few hundred feet of it until your own radar catches it to lock in the weapon systems. The F-15 Eagle is the most advanced flying computing center you can imagine. The computer tracks all radar sightings automatically, both above and below the aircraft, from close up to beyond visual range. The targeting is totally reliable. Once a lock has been established the target is taken care of. The computer does the rest. The system can track seven targets simultaneously. But when it comes to cruise missiles that are small and agile, and hard for the radar to keep in lock, the system breaks down. Then you have to go for visual and use your gun. Add bad weather and cloudiness, and you really don't know what you're shooting at. These cruise missile kites are really too small for visual tracking, at least they were so on the simulators."

"I've been told that it was a heat-locking air-to-air missile that got the cruise missile down," said Ross, "But why did they track it for so long? That is a mystery to me."

"That shows how difficult it is to respond in asymmetric situations," said Tony. "We get ourselves all set up and trained for the games that we expect to be played, and then someone comes along and plays a totally different game."

"Arlington is certainly too close for comfort," said Steve.

Ross had to help the policeman again with the spelling.

"That's why the President wants to give the Soviet Union this tremendous gift," said Ross to needle the policeman on. "The President obviously recognized that the US is proportionately safer to the degree that the Soviet Union feels more secure, itself."

"Proportionately is spelled ATELY at the end," Ross corrected the policeman.

"It will be a great honor for you as a journalist and for your country to be the first to publish this story," said Ross to Ushi.

Of course, all of this was written down.

Ushi smiled.

"And what is this gift?" the policeman asked.

"You wouldn't expect us to announce in advance what the President of the United States of America is going to give to the people of the Soviet Union as a gift?" I replied.

He wrote this down too. He wrote everything down, swiftly and neatly, though he evidently had trouble with the English spelling. Still, I wished I could write as neatly and as fast as he could. I admired him for that.

When Colombo's man returned from the telephone mission, he said that General Gerber was unavailable for the evening. That's when Colombo insisted that we had to be kept under arrest until everything could be verified. Consequently he dragged us all to the police station. Luckily for us, he let us go back and stay at the hotel where we had checked in. I told Colombo that we would rent the whole floor so that he would have to post only a single guard.

He agreed.

With this twist of events, the investigation seemed to have ended, at least for the moment. Also, Colombo didn't write things down anymore. At the hotel, life returned almost back to normal. We were able to order food, drinks, anything we liked that was available through room service. And since Steve and Ushi felt not the least apprehension, neither did I. Heather suggested that we turn the whole situation into a party. Even our police guard allowed himself the indiscretion of occasionally having a drink with us.

As it happened, nothing came out of the charges. Nor did we actually meet Ushi's boss. A policeman appeared early the next morning and gave us our passports back. With them he also brought a large document which he said is a special permit for Ushi and Steve to accompany us.

We left immediately, straight to the Autobahn, then south to Stuttgart and further south across the Alps. We had lunch in Stuttgart on top of the tower, the tallest structure in all of Germany as the waiter assured us, though it probably wasn't. Dinner was delayed that day until we got to Innsbruck, where we stayed for the night. We stayed in a hotel that seemed to date back to the imperial epoch of Austria. If it wasn't, it was meant to appear that way by its decor. Then, early the next morning, with the first sunlight, we were off again over the Brenner Pass to Venice. Whatever clothing we needed for the hot climate was purchased along the way, mostly in Italy, and most of that in Venice itself.

Heather and Sylvia were more than impressed with Venice. Ross and Tony, too. They found it romantic. Everyone loved the narrow streets without cars, alleyways connected with picturesque bridges across canals lined with old houses, a city of quaint cafes, shops, ice cream parlors, frescos, statues, churches, and tiny squares. Sylvia loved the cozy open markets, the market squares of the size of courtyards into which the sun rarely penetrated. But when the sunshine did penetrate, it bought the colors alive, the colors of the wares of the street vendors that sold everything from clothing to perfume, to paintings and musical instruments. Among them were tiny Espresso cafes, almost hidden, and ice cream 'palaces' that added to the color. Even I was impressed by the gentle atmosphere. But mostly it was the colors and the sunshine that made the place appear romantic. Most outdoor stands were draped over as a protection from the ever-present birds. I just couldn't decide whether the profusion of color that matched anything in the rainbow was not intended to secretly induce the sale of bright clothing to tourists that subsequently carried the color that had been lavished profusely in the markets into the narrow passageways that were the streets of Venice.

Only the buildings themselves were not so brightly colored as if the builders had no interest in 'attracting' the sunshine as did the tourist industry. The facades of the buildings were of darker hues that brought out the tones of countless passing years. Although Venice had been greatly transformed since my last visit, years earlier, its 'timeless' look had remained with a few modern touches added. The wooden bridge over the Grand Canal had been replaced with a modern steel and stained glass structure that combined the old era with the artistry of the New World. Also, the city was no longer dirty and decaying as I had vaguely remembered. It appeared to me as though the whole city had been renovated in preparation for a great festival. I didn't think much more about it. I just took it all in and enjoyed it as everyone else seemed to do.

I noticed a poster sometime later in a store-window that made it quite clear that my first impression had been correct. The face of the city had been uplifted for a type of festival. The official plan, as far as I could make out from the poster, was to create a New Venice, a modern-day Italian Babylon. The city had been groomed in a bid to become the capital of Europe from the Ural Mountains to Gibraltar. Famous art treasures had been loaned to the city's main gallery that I didn't know existed. Also, I noticed a bright-yellow poster on the tourist information board. It said something about an "Universal Expo." Central to that Expo, so it appeared, was the redevelopment of Venice's ancient arsenal. The arsenal was the first thing Ross commented on when he saw the poster. The poster said that the arsenal was being restored to become an exhibition center for folklore history, as well as for modern technology and a lot of "other" things.

"Those other things," said Ross, "might be things that may never become apparent to the average tourist who is unfamiliar with the Venetian Empire's history. Ross called the armory 'the first scientific laboratory for the development of feudalism'."

Ross told us that in historic times the Venetian armory had been a model for a new kind of production-intensive social structure. The workers of the armory had continued to receive their wages under this new 'social' system after they were old and were no longer able to work. By this imperial 'generosity,' catering to the workers minimal needs, the arsenal had been able to attract the best craftsmen from near and far and retain them, which the imperial state required for creating the fleets of ships that gave it is power. "Their small concession to humanist value, drawn from sheer necessity, illustrates the tremendous importance of the arsenal to the Empire," said Ross with a tone of disgust in his voice. "Without that, the Venetian Empire would not have existed. An empire needs the strength of society to do its dirty work."

Ross turned to me. "Now take another look at Venice," he said. "Take a careful look at the small drab houses along the narrow alley ways. The houses are probably damp. Notice the faint odor of mold in the air. In humanist terms Venice isn't a gem. It is a dump. It is a monument to inhumanity. It consumed people, from the smallest to the greatest. The executioner's platform has been removed of course, but its echo still lingers. Its corrupting influence gave Venice its power. If you look for it, you may sense its shadow. Venice has nothing to do with the goodness of living as a human being. In comparison with Florence, Venice is a sewer, which its canals indeed are."

"No wonder the imperial clique likes it here and feels invigorated coming to this city," Steve joked. "It's wonderfully devoid of human virtues. Of course, the tourists don't come here for art and culture that doesn't exist here. Nor do they come to be touched by its history. They come here to experience a façade prepared for the tourists and to experience streets without cars and motorcycles, a phenomenon that you can only find in Venice. But its history? Well, you really don't want to get into that, do you? It would bring images to mind of James Fenimore Cooper's book, ^The Bravo,^ and those will haunt you."

"I don't think the Venetians would want their real history to be known," said Ross. Ross evidently understood something about the real history of the culture of empire that the place, it people, and what the name Venice came to stand for. He said that the armory had been responsible for building, repairing, and arming the vast Venetian fleet, which he said was the lifeline of the Venetian Empire. "Without ships for merchants and soldiers it would have been impossible for the tiny City-Empire to carry on its so-called trade. The ships carried slaves and workers and soldiers. With them the empire built the logistical support bases from which it would exert military pressure against far away places in order to impose its terms of buying cheaply and selling at a king's ransom. The Venetians were waging war for commerce. They were looting the capitals of other empires by their highly developed skill in coercion. When the coercion failed, they resorted to threats, which they had the power to carry out. In some cases they were simply destroying the opposing city-states altogether when they proved 'uncooperative,' cities like Constantinoble and so one. Without the highest quality hardware, which was produced at the imperial armory, the Venetians' world of spying and economic raping, supported by psychological warfare for which Venice had become notorious, would have remained a world of empty dreams."

"The Venetian Empire would have never become a significant force without its Armory," Steve agreed.

Ross described the Armory as a crossover point between the Venetians' sick greed and the productive force of skilled laborers, by whose products expeditions were sent out to ruin the economies of entire regions, expeditions that would make and break empires, that would change history and prolong the dark ages.

"That's what Dante saw, and that's what probably got him killed," commented Steve.

It appeared to me that Sylvia's first impression of Venice was a totally different one. She described it like a gentle rose opening itself, unveiling a world of romance and intimate feelings. To her our brief encounter with the dark 'hues' of East Germany and its Iron Curtain lay far behind us and almost forgotten as though it didn't really belong to the real world. The world before her was a world of sunshine, singing, dancing, shopping for fine clothes, dining at fine restaurants, having wine with every meal, and walks after the meals along cobblestones promenades or among thousands of pigeons that seemed to eternally 'grace' the famous St. Marcus Square. Sylvia loved the St. Marcus Square, flanked on one side by the old Dodges Palace where the physicist's conference was to be held, with shops at the street level and on the opposite side of the square. St. Marcus Square quickly became her favorite place to be, and so it became ours.

Not far from the square, we found a most elegant open-air restaurant with tables arranged right along the edge of the lagoon. The restaurant turned out to be a grand place for looking at sunsets with the island of Lido in the distance, and a forest of brightly colored masts nearby to the immediate right, and sails in the city's marina. After the sun had set, the scene became bathed in the warm, mellow light of countless lamps, a sparkling maritime atmosphere with strings of lanterns decorating many a boat. The splendor of the light show added a lighthearted, holiday kind of feeling.

"Everything is perfect here," commented Sylvia.

And so it was for what it was. In every restaurant a bouquet of flowers graced the table, and a bottle of wine stood ready to be poured. The lanterns along the waterfront where we dined that evening were brightly painted. Their purple tinted glass-enclosures hung from fine ironwork. Sylvia commented on how colorful and graceful everything was. One really had to look to find something that was plain or drab. Not even the tablecloths in the restaurants were plain. Some had a soft-colored pattern woven into them, or flowers printed on them. The people too, were colorfully dressed, at least the natives were. The drabbest dressers seemed to be the tourists, loaded with cameras and bags, except for those who had evidently discovered the local clothing markets.

We decided that we wouldn't be tourists in this regard.

Ushi wore a deep blue dress for our first evening in Venice, with a light-blue ruffled collar that extended low around her neck, graced by a thin chain of gold. Heather was dressed in yellow that matched the charm of Venice and its brightness. It also reflected her 'brightness' as a human being that had a beauty all of its own. I was the exception. I simply wore a white shirt and black pants, the standard requirement for official business environments. Ross, on the other hand, looked like he'd just come from Jamaica. Tony came close. Steve was the most elegantly dressed of us men. His dark blue silk shirt matched Ushi's dress perfectly. Sylvia was dressed in white, simple in style, but elegant in appearance. Most of what we wore was purchased, courtesy of Uncle Sam. To buy these clothes seemed like robbing the bank, considering the economic crisis that was still brewing back home in the USA. Nevertheless, our expenditures represented but an infinitesimal fraction of what was spent each single day on defenses that might become unnecessary if we were to succeed in our mission, and in what we felt it could accomplish in addition to it.

After ordering dinner at our first night there, Heather unpacked the glass sculptures that she and I had bought earlier to celebrate our being in Venice together. We had bought them in a tiny arts store that was crammed to the ceiling with anything from die cast junk to marvelous art works of the finest glass. We were told that Venice had become famous for glass-art, produced by world-renowned maters and their apprentices who were masters themselves of this delicate art. Heather had noticed one of the sculptures in the window. According to the card, it was made by a Venetian master whose name I couldn't pronounce. It was nearly hidden by a porcelain bowl.

Actually the store had three more of the sculptures, similar ones, all made of perfectly clear optical glass shaped into smooth abstract forms. But their real attraction wasn't primarily in the form itself, but in the way in which the form worked to fracture the light. That's what fascinated me about them. To me, they represented our self-love becoming manifest in our love for each other in countless different ways. The more 'light' we put into our self-love for our humanity, the more fascinating became the sparkle of this light by refraction.

In this sense our trying to choose between the four sculptures that had been set before Heather and I became one of the loveliest experiences of our enchantment in Venice. The experience of choosing between the sculptures was unfolding slowly and gradually. I was drawn inwards by the beauty of what we faced, which evidently reflected something of the artist's beautiful soul.

The shop owner had taken us to a room in the back of the store where he had a box set up, draped in black velvet. He put the four sculptures on them. Several spotlights shone on them from above.

"A hundred thousand Lire each, or two hundred and fifty thousand Lire for all of them together," he said.

"First we must choose," said Heather.

If it had been up to me the choice would have been easily made. There was something magical about every one of them. Actually, it was up to me, and I was inclined to buy them all. One of them reminded me of our day at the SandCastle, the last day that Heather and I had shared. Looking at the sculpture, looking at Heather, I felt the same feeling again. God knows why. Maybe it was the way it sparkled.

With the sculpture standing between us, we were facing one-another with the same glowing sense of excitement that had stayed fast in my memory. It was a deep-reaching, gentle feeling, a mixture of peace, joy, and childlike anticipation of good things to come. Our days had sparkled like that with an innocent brightness from within. It had made the simplest things appear special, like drinking ginger ale, or picking wild flowers. In part, the excitement of being with Heather in those days came from not knowing what fascinating wonders would pop into view next. It was the same again in Venice and it was all brought to light in those sculptures.

Being in love with Heather was a force that made me infinitely more sensitive to the loveliness of this world, and this love had not ended, nor was it likely that it ever would. She was like a catalyst for its sunshine, and seeing her together with the sculptures added more magic to the moment. There was a blending of something that belonged together, which was also linked to myself, to my own self-love, and beyond that, to Ushi, Steve, Sylvia, Ross, and Tony.

Heather's flowing dark hair contrasted with the light. It blended with her radiant smile. It added to the sparkle in her eyes. It seemed as if Heather's bright and sparkling nature was brought into focus by the magic of the clear crystal glass. The magic was evidently in the artist's mind who created its shape in a way that it transposed the fractured light into the larger frame in which we all existed as one undivided whole, made up of stars and rays of light in which we find our individuality. Evidently the artist understood the dynamics of a human being and had created a perfect mirror for it.

The other sculptures had a similar effect on me, but in a different manner. They reflected the beautiful soul of Sylvia, the brightness of Ushi's smile, Steve's unfathomable depth of understanding, Ross' boundless knowledge of things, and Tony's enthusiasm and his infinite patience with my lack of 'omnipotence.' It appeared to me that this glass-art was designed to have this effect. It enabled one to look into ones soul, to explore ones self-love as a human being. It appeared as if the sculptures captured the qualities of respect, honor, intelligence, alertness, ingenuity, care, affection, and so forth, which we had recognized to be essential elements of our humanity. That's what we had learned to cherish as a resource for enriching one-another. It seemed that this glass-art presented a testimonial to the great Principle of Universal Love that we had now committed ourselves to build our lives on, and our hopes around. Had the artist recognized this principle too? Obviously the artist had recognized it before we had?

There was a great deal of power in this deep-reaching feeling that this glasswork inspired. I hoped that this feeling of something rich and its power that I saw unfolding when we looked at this sculpture, would resurface in some way in Sylvia's eyes when she unpacked the artistic work. As I handed her the gift-wrapped parcel at the restaurant I remembered the difficulty I had in deciding which one I should choose for her.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand Lire, for all of then," the storeowner had repeated to affirm the price as he stopped by while we were still deciding. In the far reaches of my mind it occurred to me that it was customary in this country to barter.

"Three hundred thousand Lire!" I replied.

"Mamamia! Three hundred thousand it is," he said in broken English and left us alone for another ten minutes.

While we admired our purchase, another place and another time came to mind that accented these lovely moments with a bitter taste. But the bitter taste didn't spoil anything. It made the precious moments more precious to hold on to.

The incidence had happened a long time ago. I had come to Java on a technical mission and taken a few days off afterwards to explore the countryside. The local travel agent had rented me his personal Land Rover that was large enough to sleep in. I had camped beside a meadow one night, just outside of a mountain village. In the morning I found myself almost surrounded with a profusion of flowers, a sea of delicate colors and shapes. The air was sweet with their odor. The whole scene sparkled with freshness in the bright light of the early morning sunshine. I got the camera loaded. The scene before me was a photographic delight. Some of the flowers had just opened their petals to the morning sun and to the ever-present insects that came to feed in this richly delicate world of color and fragrance.

To judge by the depth of my feelings for Heather, Ushi, and Sylvia, and in a different way for Tony and Steve, that profusion of loveliness in Java seemed closely related to our present world and our being together. The feeling of delight was also reflected in the sparkle of the sculptures in the way they fractured light. The sparkle brought those days in Java back to mind.

In my excitement of photographing the flowers I hadn't noticed a temple servant coming towards me, from the direction of a small temple built at the edge of the village. He came to pick flowers. He came with greedy eyes. He took bundles of them in a basket. His God obviously demanded many flowers, a rich offering of living things for a dark, dead, image of stone. He wasn't careful in picking them. He tore them out, almost viciously; at least that's how it appeared. I nearly intervened. Maybe I had become too sensitive, if this is at all possible. I stepped towards him, but then decided to leave him be. After all, this was his home, not mine.

As I remembered the episode in the store while we were looking at the sculptures, I also remembered Ushi's brightly sparkling eyes when she was telling me in Cozumel about her wanting to have a baby. There was the same sparkle in her eyes. I could only guess what wonders this little life would have drawn into focus against the brutal poverty of our world in which life had become so cheap and all things delicate, preciously fragile.

I hadn't intervened in Java. It would have been rude. But should I act the same in this larger arena, in response to this final impending sacrifice that mankind was allowing and supporting to be set up against itself, called nuclear war? This larger world IS my home, I thought. The impending sacrifice that is demanded is too immense in scope to be left to the private whims of some misguided utopian ideologues, or to the servant of some insane tyrants that lay claim to the world. There is too much beauty in living, too much to be loved. Nothing in the world can justify sacrificing any of that to the rituals of the game of nuclear bombing. I shuddered, wondering how much of humanity had already been sacrificed, yanked off like those flowers, and cast into dark places hidden from the sun in order to satisfy the insatiable greed and misused power and money of a tiny clique.

When the shop owner came back I gave him four hundred thousand and embraced Heather and told her that she should choose one of them as my wedding gift for her and for Ross. I had the feeling that she understood what this implied. We were both in tears after the embrace.

During our embrace the sculptures were being packed into ready made boxes lined with soft synthetic foam.

We left the store arm in arm, our faces wet with tears, my mind half in a daze, drunken with emotions. The music that we had heard in the store was still with me as we walked away. And what music it had been! It had been music for the Soul, a solo violin rendition of a melody that sounded like a meditation.

I couldn't decide whether the music had added to the wonders of the artwork, or whether the artwork had added a new dimension to the music, or whether perhaps our love had given a new meaning to both. Whenever our hearts met, a deep love emerged that was carried by a thirst for the beauty of life that was gradually becoming a fire again that could never be satisfied, a flow of love from heart to heart that promised to be always fresh and new, that had once been blocked by an impasse that appeared greater than either of us, but which had finally been resolved so it seemed. Just to have the privilege to experience this flow of love again, even if it is only now and then; to feel the bright sparkle of its moments; was coming to light as a greater treasure than any king might have possessed. And with it came this promise in her smile that this 'light' would continue no matter what the circumstances would be that might arise. I felt no urge to ask for more. Indeed, who could ask for more warmth than a fire that is burning, and for more light than the sunshine from our human soul?

In the end it was Heather's smile as we walked away from the store that interrupted my thoughts. What made her so beautiful was not her body wrapped in her fanciful yellow clothes. A person, who loves deeply, from the deepest recesses of the heart, is always beautiful. That's what Steve had once said as far as I remembered. That was most certainly true for her.

These thoughts brought to mind the words of the elderly Japanese man again that I met on the plane crossing the Atlantic. He had talked about a unity that I had but faintly understood. I was now slowly beginning to comprehend what he had really been saying about humanity being a spiritual species on a journey in a material universe, living by its spiritual principles. He had talked about our humanity as being totally spiritual, as being a light in the world that unfolds with joy and love, manifesting warmth, affection, generosity, sex, vitality; the spiritual gems of our being, which ennoble the world in which we live.

Ross unpacked the glass sculpture that Heather had chosen. He unpacked it right at the restaurant before dinner where our celebration of life was continuing. Here a new sparkle was added to the sparkle of the lanterns on the nearby ships in the lagoon. Ross showed the sculpture to Heather, then embraced her for a long time. There was a similar grand unpacking underway everywhere at our table, a sculpture for Ushi and Steve, one for Sylvia, and one for Tony. It had seemed to have been simpler for me to buy all four.

Heather glanced at me now and then as she admired hers in its new setting, while I admired the special sparkle in her eye that I had cherished from the day we first met, which had not dimmed, conveying a promise that nothing would ever stand between us again except the fire of love that takes away the darkness of our distance. My thoughts for each other had never been empty, and my feelings never shallow, except now, they seemed to have become deeper still. They had roots that were nourished by an overflowing loveliness, a delight rooted in our soul and in its living.

For me, the world was forever transformed by the riches of her touch, and was transformed anew whenever our hearts met or a new love entered the scene and enriched all loving universally. Each glance brought its own renewal of that love and all love. That's what made her so precious, and others likewise because of her, and me so rich for being touched by that uplifting love, though I knew that its essence was anchored in my own heart that I found but reflected in her world.

For a moment I wondered if this deeply drawn feeling of love was nothing more than an inward reflection of the romantic atmosphere of Venice that now by some magic had brought the sparkling moments of our love to the surface. Or maybe it was the gnawing thought that time was running out for us all, which had produced this effect, the feeling that everything that was beautifully human in the world might soon become lost. Maybe it was all but a reflection of our growing openness that allowed us to experience whatever had been blocked before.

Well, whatever the reason might have been, the end result was, that we enveloped one-another in love with an intensity that made no sense in a conventional way, and had no limits that I could see.

"Did you ever see a young man running," I asked Sylvia, "did you see him jumping through the park, handing a flower to an old lady. That boy is in love." I looked at her sculpture, at her, at Ushi, Steve, Tony, and Ross; the feeling I felt unfolding between us all included every one in the same way.

"Why is this day so wonderful?" I asked some time later. "Is it this place? Is it our mission? Is it the freedom we have between us? Or is it the hope we all share and work for?"

Steve answered and smiled, "We bring to each other the gift of love. Here the magic begins. People who love have a beautiful Soul. That alone makes them beautiful. Ones expression and ones spirit always matches the essence of the Soul that is our humanity. That is why we are surrounded by such beauty, because we embrace the essence of it as human beings."

Steve paused and looked around the table, at each one present and continued the explanation, turning to me. "It is the light of a beautiful soul that you find so exciting, and so you should, because it is beautiful. So, don't be surprised, Pete, by what you feel. What you feel is natural. Be careful, however, if what you feel appears to be too good to be true, because then you are rejecting its reality. What you feel can appear exceptional only in comparison to the background of the poverty that we have for so long endured. Love and beauty are not exceptional elements on the platform of reality that we have begun to explore. On the real platform life IS beautiful. On this platform there is no other state possible. Poverty and greed, even hate, are not found on this platform. They do not exist there."

Steve had made quite a speech in response to my question. Afterwards he proposed a toast to the truth that we had discovered about ourselves, about our love, and our world.

Tony also made a speech. In his speech he reminded me of the crabs we had seen on the beach near the SandCastle, which knew nothing about nuclear war and the failures in human relationships. He reminded me that I had told him how infinitely richer I felt than those crabs. He reminded me that I had felt richer than the crabs in spite of the pain that all the world's horrendous problems have caused us, which the crabs knew nothing about. He reminded me that I felt richer than they did for no other reason than for the privilege of being aware of this world, a world filled with people like Heather. Tony then extended this notion to include Sylvia, Ushi, Steve, and Ross.

I nodded, saying, "this is infinitely better than any old heaven could ever be."

"Oh, cut it," said Ross, "that's an ancient one."

"But it presents a valid idea," Steve came to the rescue, smiling.

We talked for some time after supper, way past the hour at which the sunset had faded. The air was still comfortably warm. Our day together had been beautiful right from the start. Or should I say, we were beautiful? We had smiled at each other, supported one-another, loved one-another, and this still continued. Ushi's faintly red-brown hair shimmered in the light of one of the many lanterns that lined the edge of the pier. Some strands of her hair were blowing into her face now and then by the warm gentle breeze. In the background, the water was ablaze with color; a profusion of reflected beams of light from a multitude of strings of colored lamps that graced the marina across the bay. Sylvia's smile blended with this profusion of lights. It shone with a light of its own that was brighter by its own right and more brilliant to me than all the other lights put together that we could see, and more brilliant even than the stars in the firmament.

I realized that what had happened to us all would have seemed unbelievable in the Old World just a half a year earlier. Steve was right when he promised back in Leipzig on the day we met that the unfolding of love would grow stronger and never stop unfolding out of the depth of its infinite principle.

I had my doubts then, but he was proven right already the very next week when I met Heather. Without Steve's focus on freedom and love, I wouldn't have dared to stop for Heather when she thumbed a ride of me. The loss, which this 'tragedy' would have incurred, was hard to imagine now. What would our life have been like without the good things Heather had set into motion with her love? Those first days with her had been wonderful days, days in which we shared or lives and our excitement with living all the way through the days of the naval hearing and the days of driving back to Pittsburgh. The resulting meeting of kindred hearts had sparked a celebration of love and life right from the start. It had become interrupted only at the end by an impasse, but the 'light' of the celebration hadn't grown dim.

"Now, just a few months later, we were all together in one place for an even greater celebration of the wonders of love. What we had achieved was far greater than what Erica had hinted at as being possible, or even greater than what Ushi had allowed and Steve had thrust into the practical sphere.

Steve had suggested when we first met that our dancing on the pinnacle of the world would change the world. It had changed us all indeed, from within, and now we stood at the threshold of changing the world from the depth of our 'dancing' on a mission of such magnitude that one almost couldn't dare hope that it might succeed.

Tony and Ross, it appeared, were dancing on this pinnacle in their own way, for their own reasons. Who could know what their stories entailed? Who could know what worlds upon worlds their loving had already embraced? We had created a world for ourselves that had never been created before on such a profound level, and yet this was the minimal platform on which we could possibly succeed. We were all aware that a single word spoken in the wrong tone could ruin everything at the conference. Our presence and our actions during the next day, unknown to the world, were destined to change the world for all times to come. Also there remained that lingering doubt that we might not succeed, though one way or the other the world would be changed by us.

Perhaps it was by reason of this doubt that I felt that our world seemed suddenly more beautiful and precious than any heavenly paradise could possibly be as we looked at the riches we had within ourselves. Would we have the chance to see the beautiful things unfold and bear out their full promise? Our world seemed precious in the light of this promise, and its wonders exceedingly fragile. I had a feeling that we have been cheating ourselves by having taken any of its profound wonders for granted. It seemed to me that we had barely begun to come to life.

"Should I ever die," I said to Ushi quietly, in order that Ross wouldn't hear me.

"Heavens forbid!" Ushi interrupted before I could finish.

I corrected myself, voicing the old saying again, and added that I would ask not to be shut up in some fancy old heaven, but would ask to have the privilege of coming back to the Earth again.

"Oh, Pete! This one has been worn out years ago!" Ross interrupted me and grinned.

"You'd better be careful," Sylvia intervened. "Unless we succeed with our mission you may be asking to return to a planet that's nothing more than a burnt-out rock or has become an Ice Age paradise for penguins. In that case you might find only few, rare human voices in the world, if any, and those would likely be sad voices that have lost their song."

Ushi cringed when she heard Sylvia talk that way.

"May it never come to that," said Ross.

"May the old saying never die and the reason for it ever vane," I added.

"I sincerely hope so," said Steve and raised his glass of wine for a toast.

I remembered that Steve had never raised his glass without a good reason. But this time no one cheered as we drank in honor of our heaven on Earth. I couldn't figure out for what reason no one cheered, except that I had this deep-seated uncomfortable feeling that we carried the responsibility for this grand future ourselves, especially during the next few days when our actions could tip the balance either way. If we failed, we could indeed set the stage for actions that might transform our treasured world into a desolate hell indeed. And even if we were to win, the question would still remain whether it is really possible for mankind to rouse itself sufficiently to create the needed Ice Age Renaissance that would assure our food supply in an Ice Age World, creating a New World starting now. The possibility that we might fall short of reaching that goal, or of even getting started, had the potential to become frighteningly real. Still, our potential to prevent this failure was equally real.