I pumped his hand, which was still cold and particularly clammy in the close heat of the Florida night. "Julius," I said, startled at how much like a bark it sounded. _Careful_, I thought, _no need to escalate the hostilities._ "It's kind of you to say that. I like what you-all have done with the Pirates." He smiled: a genuine, embarrassed smile, as though he'd just been given high praise from one of his heroes. "Really? I think it's pretty good -- the second time around you get a lot of chances to refine things, really clarify the vision. Beijing -- well, it was exciting, but it was rushed, you know? I mean, we were really struggling. Every day, there was another pack of squatters who wanted to tear the Park down. Debra used to send me out to give the children piggyback rides, just to keep our Whuffie up while she was evicting the squatters. It was good to have the opportunity to refine the designs, revisit them without the floor show." I knew about this, of course -- Beijing had been a real struggle for the ad-hocs who built it. Lots of them had been killed, many times over. Debra herself had been killed every day for a week and restored to a series of prepared clones, beta-testing one of the ride systems. It was faster than revising the CAD simulations. Debra had a reputation for pursuing expedience. "I'm starting to find out how it feels to work under pressure," I said, and nodded significantly at the Mansion. I was gratified to see him look embarrassed, then horrified. "We would _never_ touch the Mansion," he said. "It's _perfect_!" Dan and Lil sauntered up as I was preparing a riposte. They both looked concerned -- now that I thought of it, they'd both seemed incredibly concerned about me since the day I was revived. Dan's gait was odd, stilted, like he was leaning on Lil for support. They looked like a couple. An irrational sear of jealousy jetted through me. I was an emotional wreck. Still, I took Lil's big, scarred hand in mine as soon as she was in reach, then cuddled her to me protectively. She had changed out of her maid's uniform into civvies: smart coveralls whose micropore fabric breathed in time with her own respiration. "Lil, Dan, I want you to meet Tim Fung. He was just telling me war stories from the Pirates project in Beijing." Lil waved and Dan gravely shook his hand. "That was some hard work," Dan said. It occurred to me to turn on some Whuffie monitors. It was normally an instantaneous reaction to meeting someone, but I was still disoriented. I pinged the elf. He had a lot of left-handed Whuffie; respect garnered from people who shared very few of my opinions. I expected that. What I didn't expect was that his weighted Whuffie score, the one that lent extra credence to the rankings of people I respected, was also high -- higher than my own. I regretted my nonlinear behavior even more. Respect from the elf -- _Tim_, I had to remember to call him Tim -- would carry a lot of weight in every camp that mattered.