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 assumed 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 hassle 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 shit 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 sweatshirt, with a laptop perched on one knee. She had a friendly, open face, framed with lots of curly brown hair. "You must be Perry," she said, setting the laptop down and giving him an unexpected hug. "That was from Hilda. I saw her a couple hours ago. She was very adamant that I pass it on to you." "Nice to meet you, he said, accepting a cup of tea from an insulated jug on a cardboard side-board. "Hilda is all right?" "Sit down," the lawyer said. Perry's stomach turned a somersault. "Hilda's all right?" "Sit." Perry sat. "She was gassed with a neurotoxin that has given her a temporary but severe form of Parkinson's disease. Normally it just renders people immobile, but one in a million has a reaction like this. It's just bad luck that Hilda was one of them." "She was *gassed*?" "They all were. There was a hell of a fight, as I understand it. It really looks like it was the cops' fault. Someone told them that there were printed guns in the ride-location and they used extreme and disproportionate force." "I see," Perry said. His blood whooshed in his ears. Printed guns? No frigging way. Sure, ray-guns in some of the exhibits. But nothing that fired anything. He felt tears begin to stream down his face. The lawyer moved to his sofa and put her arm around his shoulders.