Part 54 (2/2)
”Nothing serious -- she took a knock on the head and they want to hold her for observation.”
He pictured a copper's electrified billy-club coming down on s.h.i.+ning blond hair and felt like throwing up.
”Perry? Buddy. She's OK, really. I had our lawyer visit her in the prison infirmary and she swears she looks great. The lawyer's name is Candice -- take a cab to her office from the airport. OK?”
”Why is she in the prison infirmary, Tjan? Why can't she be moved to a real hospital?”
”It's just a liability thing. The police don't want to risk the suit if she goes complicated on them between hospitals.”
”Jesus.”
”Seriously, she's fine. We've got a good lawyer on the scene.”
But Perry had a bad feeling. The TSA goon picked up on it and gave him a little bit of extra attention. Acting nervous or agitated in an airport was a one-way ticket to a cavity search.
But then he was lifting off and headed for Madison, and though the time crawled on the one-hour flight, it was, after all, only an hour. He even napped briefly, though a sky marshall woke him shortly after for a random bag-search. His fellow pa.s.sengers -- badly dressed midwesterners and a couple of hipster students -- all turned their bags out in the cramped cabin and then got back in their seats for the landing.
Perry had meant to phone in a car reservation at O'Hare, but the extra search had eaten up the time he'd allocated for it, and now all the rental counters were sold out. Reluctantly, he got into a taxi and asked the driver to take him to the office of the lawyers that Tjan had hired.
The cabbie was a young African kid with a shaved head. He had a dent in one temple and more dents in one of his wrists, visible as he let his long hands drape over the steering wheel.
”I know where it is,” he said when Perry gave him the address. ”That lawyer, she is very good. She helped me with the Homeland Security.”
The kid was young, 21 or 22, with a studious air, despite his old injuries. He reminded Perry of the shantytowners, people who didn't always get medical attention for their ailments, people who were often missing a tooth or two, who had mysterious lumps from badly-set bones or scars or funny eyebrows like his. The midwesterners on the plane had been flawless as action-figures, but Perry's friends and this African kid looked like something carved out of coal and chalk.
Perry was one big jitter from the trip and the coffee and the pills for his arm, but he found himself drawn into conversation as they whizzed past the fields and malls, the factories and office-parks.
”I'm from Gulu, in Uganda. There has been civil war there for thirty five years. I studied chemical engineering through the African Virtual University wiki-program, and qualified for a Chavez scholars.h.i.+p here in Madison.” His accent was light but exotic, the African rolling of the Rs, the British-sounding vowel-s.h.i.+fts. ”But the Homeland Security didn't want to renew my visa last year. They said I had financial irregularities. I was paypalling to a friend in Kampala who withdrew it in s.h.i.+llings and sent it to my family in giros. Homeland Security said that I was *money laundering*. I thought I'd be sent away or put in prison, but Ms Candice wrote them a letter and they vanished.” He snapped his long, knuckly fingers for emphasis.
”Jesus. Well, that's good. She's going to help me get my girlfriend out of jail.” Perry realized he'd just called Hilda his girlfriend, which would be news to her, but there it was.
”You don't need to worry. She'll get your friend free.”
Perry nodded and tried to close his eyes and relax. He couldn't. What the h.e.l.l had happened to the world. It had seemed so exciting when his father was bringing home new shapes he'd spun off his CAD/CAM rig. When Perry had started to trade designs with people, to effortlessly find people on the net who wanted to collaborate with him and vice-versa. When Perry had started a business making cool art out of free junk and selling it off an Internet connection that was likewise free.
Free, free, free. No need to talk to a government, or grovel for a curator, or put up with an agent or a boss. He'd just a.s.sumed all along that he'd end up living in a world where all those parasites and bullies and middlemen would just blow away in the wind.
But they'd all found jobs in the new world. They weren't needed anymore, but that didn't mean that they went away. Now they were wanding him in airports and suing him for trademark infringement and busting his girlfriend and breaking his arm and giving ha.s.sle to this poor African kid who'd taught himself to be an engineer with a ferchrissakes *wiki*.
He dry-swallowed another pain-killer and then remembered that taking the pills meant he wouldn't be able to get a drink, which he could sure as s.h.i.+t use.
”My name's Perry,” he said.
”Richard,” the driver said. ”We're almost there, Perry. I wish you the very best of luck.”
”You too,” he said. The driver shook his hand warmly after getting his luggage out of the trunk, a limp handshake by North American standards, but gentle and friendly nonetheless. His dented wrist flexed oddly as the half-knit bones there moved.
The lawyer's office was not what Perry was expecting. It looked like someone's living room, with a couple of overstuffed sofas, a dozing cat, and the lawyer, Candice, who was a young-looking woman in her mid-twenties. She dressed in jeans and an oversized UW sweats.h.i.+rt, with a laptop perched on one knee. She had a friendly, open face, framed with lots of curly brown hair.
<script>