Makers Part 53

Perry was led out of the infirmary with his arm in a sling. His face was still painfully swollen, and he'd managed to turn an ankle as well. At least his hearing was coming back.

Kettlewell took Perry's good arm and gave him a soulful hug that embarra.s.sed him. Kettlewell led him outside, to where a big cab was waiting. In it were the family Kettlewell, Lester, and Suzanne. Lester had a couple bandages taped to his face and when Suzanne smiled, he saw her lips were stained red and one of her front teeth had been knocked out.

He managed a brave smile. "Looks like you guys got the full treatment, huh?"

Suzanne squeezed his hand. "Nothing that can't be fixed." Ada and Pascal looked goggle-eyed at them. Ada was popping Korean lotus-bean walnut cakes into her mouth from a greasy paper bag, and she offered them silently to Perry, who took one just to be polite, but found after the first bite that he wasn't really hungry after all.

Kettlewell and Perry fought about what to do next, but Kettlewell prevailed. He took them to a private doctor who photographed them and examined them and x-rayed them, doc.u.menting everything while Ada Kettlewell played camera-woman with her phone, videoing it all.

"I don't think suing the police is going to help, Landon," Perry said. Suzanne nodded vigorously. The three victims were in paper examining gowns, and the Kettlewells were still in street clothes, which gave them a real advantage in the self-confidence department.

"It'll help if we cash out a big settlement -- it'll bankroll our defense against the Disney trademark claims. IP lawyers charge more than G.o.d per hour. I got the injunction lifted, but we're still going to have to go to court, and that's not going to be cheap."

It needled Perry -- he didn't like the idea of being embroiled in the legal system in the first place, and while he could grudgingly admit a certain elegance in using cash settlements from the law to fund their defense in court, the whole business made him squirm.

Eva sat down beside him. "I can tell this sucks for you, Perry." Ada whispered the word *sucks* and giggled, and Eva rolled her eyes. "But there's fifty people we *didn't* bail out in there, who are all of them going to have to figure out their own way through the legal system. You can't run a business if your customers risk a solid beating and jail time just for showing up."

*I don't want to run a business,* he thought, but he knew that was petulant. He was the man with the roll of bills down his pants. "There are fifty people still in the slam?"

Kettlewell nodded. Suzanne had her camera out and she was recording. It had been a long time since Perry had really felt the camera's eye on him. It was one thing to be recorded by some friends for remembrance, but now Suzanne's camera seemed like the gaze of posterity. He needed to rise to it, he knew.

"Let's get them out. All of them."

Kettlewell raised his eyebrows. "And how do you plan on doing that?"

"We'll charge it to the business," Perry said. Lester chuckled and gave him a thump on the back. "It's a legit expense -- these are our *customers* after all."

Kettlewell shook his head at all of them, then he left the doctor's office. He already had his phone stuck to his head and was talking with the lawyer before he got out of earshot.

Perry and Lester and Suzanne and Eva exchanged mischievous glances, grinning with unexpected delight. Pascal, riding on Eva's hip, woke up and started crying and Eva handed him to Lester while she went for the diaper bag.

"Here we go again," Lester said, wrinkling his nose and holding the wailing Pascal at arm's length.

Suzanne got it all with her phone, then she flipped it shut and gave Lester a hard kiss on the cheek.

"Fatherhood would suit you," she said.

He went bright red. "Don't you get any ideas," he said. Suzanne laughed and skipped away, looking all of ten.

Perry felt huge. Larger than life. The adventure was beginning anew, with these good people whom he loved like family. He had the work and the people, and who needed anything more.

It was a feeling that lasted all the way back to the ride.

But then he surveyed the ride itself and found it in utter ruins, far worse than it had been left when he'd been dragged out of it. Every single exhibit was smashed, strewn here and there.

He couldn't believe it. He brought up the clean-up lights, flooding the place, and then he saw what he'd missed at first: the smashed exhibits were not smashed exhibits -- they were *replicas* of smashed exhibits. At every ride in the country, police had gone in smas.h.i.+ng, and every other ride in the country had faithfully reproduced the damage, dutiful printers churning out replica detritus and dutiful robots placing it with micrometer precision.

He began to laugh and couldn't stop. Lester came in and immediately got the joke and laughed along with him. They managed to stop laughing just long enough to explain it to Suzanne and Kettlewell, who didn't find it nearly as funny as they did. Suzanne took pictures.

Finally he got down to business, opening the change-log and rolling the ride back through the "revisions" to its unsmashed state. It would take the robots a long time to set everything right again, but at least he didn't have to oversee it.

Instead, he tracked down as many of the market-stall vendors as he could locate in the shantytown and made sure they were all right -- they were, though they'd lost some inventory. He comped them all a month's rent and made sure they knew that steps were being taken to keep it from happening again. He knew that they could make nearly as much money selling from a roadside or online, and he wanted to keep them happy. Besides, it wasn't their fault.

He was exhausted and his arm was really starting to gripe him. He found himself stopping in the street every few steps to rub his eyes and force himself on. Francis came on him when he was like that, leaning against the prefab concrete wall of one of the tall, twisty shanties, and he took Perry's car-keys away and drove him home. Perry was in too much of a state by the time he got there to think about how Francis would get back -- he was already lying in bed before it occurred to him that the old man with the gimpy leg probably walked the ten miles home.

He woke up later that night to s.e.x noises from Lester's room and he recognized Suzanne's voice. Later, he woke again to hear the tail end of another argument between Lester and Suzanne, and then Suzanne storming out of the apartment. *Oh, goody*, he thought. He lay on his back, trying to find sleep again -- the clock said 3AM -- and found thoughts of Hilda drifting unbidden into his mind.

It was silly -- they'd only spent one night together, and he had to admit that as great as the s.e.x had been, he'd had better with the fatkins gymnasts you could pick up down on South Beach. She was too young for him. She lived in *Wisconsin*. But there were touches in the ride that had originated with her instantiation -- he looked over the logs every now and then -- and he found himself contemplating them with sentimental smiles.

He fell asleep again and only woke when he rolled over on his bad arm and yelped himself awake. The smell of waffles, bacon and eggs was strong in the apartment. He couldn't be bothered to figure out how to shower with his cast on, so he pulled on a pair of shorts and let himself into the living room.

Lester was at the stove, cooking up half a pig and pouring maple batter into the waffle-iron. He waved a spatula at him and pointed out at the terrace. Perry stepped out and saw Suzanne and Tjan and Tjan's little kids -- what were their names? Lyenitchka and the little boy?

Man, the whole family was here.

"Your arm is broken," Lyenitchka said, pointing at him.

Perry nodded gravely. "That's true. Want to sign my cast?" He was pretty sure that he had a grease-pencil that would mark the surface, though the hospital had sworn that it would shed dirt, ink and anything else he threw at it.

She nodded vigorously. Tjan looked him over and gave a little wave, then Perry went back into the living room and asked his computer to find the grease-pencil.

"Thought you'd be busy in Boston," he said, while Lyenitchka painstakingly spelled out her name, going over the letters to get them to show up dark -- the cast surface really didn't want to suck up any tint.

"Boston came out OK. We had lawyers on tap at the start and the vibe was cool. I incorporated there, so it was easier than you guys had it. But some of the others were hit bad, like San Francisco and Madison."

"*Madison*?" Perry was alarmed by how alarmed he sounded.

"Ma.s.s arrests. The cops there are real hard-cases, with all this antipersonnel gear left over from the stem-cell riots."

Perry jerked and spoiled Lyenitchka's writing. He patted her head and set his arm back down where she could get at it. He groaned.

"They're mostly still in. We're trying to get them bailed out, but the judge at the arraignment set bail pretty high."

"I'll post it," Perry said. "I can put up my savings or something..."

Tjan looked uncomfortable. "Perry, there are 250 people in the lockup in Wisconsin. Some of them are going to skip out, it's nearly a certainty. If you bail them all out, you'll go broke. I mean, it's good to see you and I'm sorry you got hurt and all respect, but don't be an idiot."

Perry felt himself go belligerent. His hands went into fists and his broken wing protested. That brought him back to reality. He forced himself to smile.

"There's a girl in Madison, I want to make sure she's OK."

Tjan and Suzanne stared at him for a second. Then Lester clapped him across the back from behind him, startling him and making him squeak. "Big fella!" he crowed. "I should have known."

Perry gave him a mock glare. "*You* have no right to say *anything* on this score." He darted a glance at Suzanne and saw that she was blus.h.i.+ng. Tjan took this in and nodded, as though his suspicions had just been confirmed.

"Fair enough," Tjan said. "Let's make some inquiries about the young lady. What's her name?"

"Hilda Hammersen."