Around the ride, the market-stalls were coming back, rebuilt from a tower of fresh-sawed lumber stacked in the parking-lot. This was a lot more efficient, with gangs of vendors quickly sawing the lumber to standard sizes, slapping each one with a positional sensor, then watching the sensor's lights to tell them when it was properly lined up with its mates, and then slipping on corner-clips that held it all together. Suzanne watched as a whole market stall came together this way, in the space of five minutes, before the vendors moved on to their next stall. It was like a high-tech version of an Amish barn-raising, performed by bandanna-clad sketchy hawkers instead of bearded technophobes. She found Perry inside, leaning over a printer, tinkering with its guts, LED torches clipped to the temples of his glasses. He was hampered by having only one good arm, and he pressed her into service passing him tools for a good fifteen minutes before he straightened up and really looked at her. "You come down to help out?" "To write about it, actually." The room was a hive of activity. A lot of goth kids of various ages and degrees of freakiness, a few of the squatter kids, some people she recognized from the second coming of Death Waits. She couldn't see Death Waits, though. "Well, that's good." He powered up the printer and the air filled with the familiar smell of Saran-Wrap-in-a-microwave. She had an eerie flashback to her first visit to this place, when they'd showed her how they could print mutated, Warhol-ized Barbie heads. "How's Lester getting on with cracking that printer?" *Why don't you ask him yourself?* She didn't say it. She didn't know why Lester had come to her place after the flood instead of going home, why he stiffened up and sniffed when she mentioned Perry's name, why he looked away when she mentioned Hilda. "Something about firmware." He straightened his back more, making it pop and gave her his devilish grin, the one where his wonky eyebrow went up and down. "It's always firmware," he said, and laughed a little. Maybe they were both remembering those old days, the Boogie Woogie Elmos. "Looks like you've got a lot of help," Suzanne said, getting out a little steno pad and a pen. Perry nodded at it, and she was struck by how many times they'd stood like this, a few feet apart, her pen poised over her pad. She'd chronicled so much of this man's life. "They're good people, these folks. Some of them have some carpentry or electronics experience, the rest are willing to learn. It's going faster than I thought it would. Lots of support from out in the world, too -- people sending in cash to help with replacement parts." "Have you heard from Kettlewell or Tjan?" The light went out of his face. "No," he said. "How about from the lawyers?" "No comment," he said. It didn't sound like a joke. "Come on, Perry. People are starting to ask questions. Someone's going to write about this. Do you want your side told or not?"