"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. Scrappy activists get a lot of love in this country, too. Not everyone wants a big corporation to spoon-feed them." "Off in hippie college-towns you'll always find people with enough brains to realize that their neighbors aren't the boogieman. But there ain't so many hippie college towns these days. I wish you two luck, but I think you'd be nuts to walk out the door in the morning expecting anything better than a kick in the teeth." That made Perry think of Death Waits, and the sense of urgency came back to him. "OK, we have to go now," he said. "Thanks, Francis." "Nice to meet you, young woman," he said, and when he smiled, it was a painful thing, all pouches and wrinkles and sags, and he gimped away with his limp more pronounced than ever. They tracked down the crew at the tea-house's big table. Everyone roared greetings at them when they came through the door, a proper homecoming, but when Perry counted heads, he realized that there was no one watching the ride. "Guys, who's running the ride?" They told him about Brazil then, and Hilda listened with her head cocked, her face animated with surprise, dismay, then delight. "You say there are *fifty* rides open?" "All at once," Lester said. "All in one go." "Holy mother of poo," Hilda breathed. Perry couldn't even bring himself to say *anything*. He couldn't even imagine Brazil in his head -- jungles? beaches? He knew nothing about the country. They'd built *fifty* rides, without even making contact with him. He and Lester had designed the protocol to be open because they thought it would make it easier for others to copy what they'd done, but he'd never thought -- It was like vertigo, that feeling. "So you're Yoko, huh?" Lester said finally. It made everyone smile, but the tension was still there. Something big had just happened, bigger than any of them, bigger than the beating that had been laid on Death Waits, bigger than anything Perry had ever done. From his mind to a nation on another continent -- "You're the sidekick, huh?" Hilda said. Lester laughed. "Touche. It's very nice to meet you and thank you for bringing him back home. We were starting to miss him, though God alone knows why." "I plan on keeping him," she said, giving his bicep a squeeze. It brought Perry back to them. The little girls were staring at Hilda with saucer eyes. It made him realize that except for Suzanne and Eva, their whole little band was boys, all boys. "Well, I'm home now," he said. He knelt down and showed the girls his cast. "I got a new one," he said. "They had to throw the old one out. So I need your help decorating this. Do you think you could do the job?" Lyenitchka looked critically at the surface. "I think we could do the gig," she said. "What do you think, partner?"