"There was some question about whether they'd be erased before I could show them to anyone, and I knew there was no way I'd be given the chance to re-create them independently. It seemed prudent to have a backup copy." "A backup copy in my hands?" "Well, at least I knew you wouldn't give it up without a fight." Sammy shrugged and offered her a sunny smile. "We'd better go rescue that postcard from the basket before Lester develops a domestic instinct and takes out the trash, then," Suzanne said, pushing away from the table. Shayna brought the bill and Sammy paid it, overtipping by a factor of ten, which endeared him further to Suzanne. She couldn't abide rich people who stiffed on the tip. Suzanne walked them through the shantytown, watching their reactions closely. She liked to take new people here. She'd witnessed its birth and growth, then gone away during its adolescence, and now she got to enjoy its maturity. Crowds of kids ran screeching and playing through the streets, adults nodded at them from their windows, wires and plumbing and antennas crowded the skies above them. The walls shimmered with murals and graffiti and mosaics. Sammy treated it like he had his theme park, seeming to take in every detail with a connoisseur's eye; Guignol was more nervous, clearly feeling unsafe amid the cheerful lawlessness. They came upon Francis and a gang of his kids, building bicycles out of stiffened fabric and strong monofilament recycled from packing crates. "Ms Church," Francis said gravely. He'd given up drinking, maybe for good, and he was clear-eyed and charming in his engineer's coveralls. The kids -- boys *and* girls, Suzanne noted approvingly -- continued to work over the bikes, but they were clearly watching what Francis was up to. "Francis, please meet Sammy and his colleague, Herve. They're here for a story I'm working on. Gentlemen, Francis is the closest thing we have to a mayor around here." Francis shook hands all around, but Sammy's attention was riveted on the bicycles. Francis picked one up with two fingers and handed it to him. "Like it? We got the design from a shop in Liberia, but we made our own local improvements. The trick is getting the stiffener to stay liquid long enough to get the fabric stretched out in the right proportion." Sammy took the frame from him and spun it in one hand like a baton. "And the wheels?" "Mostly we do solids, which stay in true longer. We use the carbon stiffener on a pre-cut round of canvas or denim, then fit a standard tire. They go out of true after a while. You just apply some solvent to them and they go soft again and you re-true them with a compass and a pair of tailor's shears, then re-stiffen them. You get maybe five years of hard riding out of a wheel that way."