Part 64 (2/2)
*You should just shut the f.u.c.k up about Disney on the f.u.c.king Internet, you know that, kid?*
Lester got up and went to find Kettlewell and Tjan and Suzanne -- oh, especially Suzanne -- again. He didn't think for one second that Death would have invented that. In fact, it was just the sort of brave thing that the gutsy little kid might have had the b.a.l.l.s to report on.
Every step he took, he saw that ruin of a face, the compound fracture, the luminous blood around his groin. He made it halfway to the guesthouse before he found himself leaning against a shanty, throwing up. Tears and bile streaming down his face, chest heaving, Lester decided that this wasn't about fun anymore. Lester came to understand what it meant to be responsible for people's lives. When he stood up and wiped his face on the tail of his tight, glittering s.h.i.+rt, he was a different person.
Sweating in the suffocating afternoon heat, his re-casted arm on fire, Hilda had shown him the article about Death Waits while they were being screened for their connection at O'Hare. The TSA guy was swabbing his cast with a black-powder residue detector, and as Perry read it, he let out an involuntary yelp and a jump that sent him back for a full round of tertiary screening. No date with Dr. Jellyfinger, though it was a close thing.
Hilda was deep in her own phone, probing ferociously at it, occasionally picking it up and talking into it, then poking at it some more. Neither of them looked out the windows much, though in his mind, Perry had rehea.r.s.ed this homecoming as a kind of tour of his territory, picking out which absurd landmarks he'd point out, which funny stories he'd tell, pausing to nuzzle Hilda's throat.
But by the time he'd absorbed the mailing-list traffic and done a couple phoners with the people back in Madison -- particularly Ernie, who was freaking about Death Waits and calling for tight physical security for all their people -- they were pulling in at the ride. The cabbie, a Turk, wasn't very cool about the neighborhood, and he kept slowing down on the side of the road and offering to let them out there, and Perry kept insisting that he take them all the way.
”No, you can't just drop me here, man. For the tenth time, I've got a f.u.c.king *cast* on my *broken arm*. I'm not carrying my suitcase a mile from here. I live there. It's safe. G.o.d, it's not like I'm asking you to take me to a war-zone.”
He didn't want to tip the guy, but he did. The cabbie was just trying to play it safe. Lots of people tried to play it safe. It didn't make them a.s.sholes, even if it did make them ineffectual and useless.
While Perry tipped him, Hilda pulled the suitcase out of the cab's trunk and she'd barely had time to shut the lid when the driver roared off like he was trying to outrun a sniper.
Perry grimaced. This was supposed to be a triumphant homecoming. He was supposed to be showing off his toys, all he'd wrought, to this girl. The town was all around them and they were about to charge in without even pausing to consider its Dr Seuss wonderment.
”Wait a sec,” Perry said. He took her hand. ”See that? That was the first shanty they built. Five stories now.” The building was made of prefab concrete for the first couple stories, then successively lighter materials, with the roof-shack made of bamboo. ”The designs are experimental, from the Army Corps of Engineers mostly, but they say they'll stand a force-five hurricane.” He grimaced again. ”Probably not the bamboo one, of course.”
”Of course,” Hilda said. ”What's that one?” She'd picked up on his mood, she knew he wanted to show her around before they ended up embroiled in ride-politics and work again.
”You've got a good eye, my dear. That's the finest BBQ on the continent. See how the walls are a little sooty looking? That's carbonized ambrosia, a mix of fat and spice and hickory that you could sc.r.a.pe off and bottle as perfume.”
”Eww.”
”You haven't tried Lemarr's ribs yet,” he said, and goosed her. She squeaked and punched him in the shoulder. He showed her the tuck-shops, the kids playing, the tutor's place, the day-care center, the workshops, taking her on a grand-circle tour of this place he'd help conjure into existence.
”Now there's someone I haven't seen in far too long,” Francis said. He'd aged something fierce in the last year, booze making his face subside into a mess of wrinkles and pouches and broken blood-vessels. He gave Perry a hard hug that smelled of booze, and it wasn't even lunchtime.
”Francis, meet Hilda Hammersen; Hilda, meet Francis Clammer: aeros.p.a.ce engineer and gentleman of leisure.”
He took her hand and feinted a kiss at it, and Hilda good-naturedly rolled her eyes at this.
”What do you think of our lovely little settlement, then, Ms Hammersen?”
”It's like something out of a fairy-tale,” she said. ”You hear stories about Christiania and how good and peaceful it all was, but whenever you see squatters on TV, it's always crack houses and drive-bys. You've really got something here.”
Francis nodded. ”We get a bad rap, but we're no different really from any other place where people take pride in what they own. I built my place, with my two hands. If Jimmy Carter had been there with Habitat for Humanity, we would have gotten no end of good press. Because we did it without a dead ex-president on the scene, we're crooks. Perry tell you about what the law does around here?'
Perry nodded. ”Yeah. She knows.”
Francis patted his cast. ”Nice hardware, buddy. So when some Bible-thumping do-gooder gives you a leg up, you're a folk-hero. Help yourself, you're a CHUD. It's the same with you people and your ride. If you had the backing of a giant corporation with claws sunk deep into kids' brains, you'd be every package-tour operator's wet dream. Build it yourself in the guts of a dead shopping center, and you're some kind of slimy undercla.s.s.”
”Maybe that's true,” said Hilda. ”But it's not necessarily true. Back in Madison, the locals love us, they think we do great stuff. After the law came after us, they came by with food and money and helped us rebuild. Sc.r.a.ppy activists get a lot of love in this country, too. Not everyone wants a big corporation to spoon-feed them.”
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