Kettlewell looked at him. "Huh. Um. This is really my beat now. I suppose you could go keep Suzanne company."

"Gee, thanks."

"Something wrong with Suzanne?"

"Nothing's wrong with Suzanne," he said. "OK, off I go."

He set off on foot. The shantytown had woken up now, people getting ready for the hike to the early busses into places where the few remaining jobs were.

He took his phone out and tossed it from hand to hand. Then he called the number that he'd programmed in all those days ago in Madison but had never bothered to call. He forgot until the ringing started that it was another time-zone there -- an hour or two earlier. But when Hilda answered, she sounded wide awake.

"Nice of you to call," she said.

"Nice of you to answer." Her voice sent a thrill up his spine.

"We've got cops outside of the ride here," she said. "We've only been live for a week, too."

"They're at every ride," he said. "They shut us down too."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"What am *I* going to do about it?"

"Sure, this is your thing, Perry. We woke up and discovered the cops this morning and the first thing everyone did was wonder when you'd call with the plan."

"You're kidding. What do I know about cops?"

"What do any of us know about cops? All we know is we built this thing after you came and talked to us about it and now it's been shut down, so we're waiting for you to tell us what to do next."

He groaned and sat down on a curb. "Oh, c.r.a.p."

Then she sighed heavily at the other end. "OK, Perry, you need to pull it together. We need you now. We need something that explains what's going on, what to do next, and how to do it. There's a lot of energy out here, a lot of people ready to fight. Just point us in the right direction."

"I have a guy who's trying to figure that out right now."

"Perfect. Now you need to set up a conference call with every ride operator so we can talk this over. Get online and post a time and an address. I'll chat it up and make some calls. You make some calls too. Everyone likes to hear from you. They like to know you're on their side."

"Right," he said, getting back to his feet, turning around to get his computer out of his trunk. "Right. That's totally the right thing to do. I'm on it."

"Good man," she said.

A little pause stretched between them. "So," he said. "How you doing, apart from all this?"

Her laugh was merry. "I thought you'd never ask. I'm looking forward to your next visit, is how I'm doing."

"Really?"

"Of course really."

"You sounded a little p.i.s.sed at me there is all." He sounded like a lovesick teenager. "I mean --" He broke off.

"Your a.s.s needed kicking, was all." Pause. "I'm not p.i.s.sed at you, though. When are you coming for a visit?"

"Got me," he said. "I guess I should, right?" He really sounded like a teenager.

"You need to visit all the sites, check in on how we're doing."

Pause. "Plus you should come hang out with me some."

He almost pointed out all her warnings about only having a one-night stand and not missing the people he was away from and so forth, but stayed his tongue. The fact that she wanted him to come for a visit was overshadowing everything, even the looming crisis with the cops.

"It's a deal."

"Deal."

"Well, bye."

"Bye."

He almost said, "You hang up first," but that would have been too much. Instead he just kept the phone at his ear until he heard her click.

Suzanne was pointing and shooting like mad. Perry sat down on the cracked pavement beside her and unfolded his computer and started sending out emails, setting up a conference-channel. He gave Suzanne a short version of his talk with Hilda, being careful not to give a hint of his feelings for her.

"She sounds like a sensible girl," Suzanne said. "You should go and pay her another visit."

He blushed and she socked him in the shoulder.

"Take your call," she said. The cops were giving them the hairy eyeball, and Perry screwed in his headset.

The conference channel was filling up. Perry checked off names as reps from all the rides came online. There was a lot of tight, tense chatter, jokes about the fuzz.

"OK," Perry said. "Let's get it started. There's cops blockading every ride, right? Use the poll please." He posted a poll to the conference page and it quickly got to 100 percent green. "So I just found the cops outside of mine, too, and I'm not sure what to do about it. I've got some dough for a lawyer, but I can't afford lawyers for everyone. To make that work, we'd have to fly attorneys to every city with a ride in it, and that's not practical as I'm sure you can tell."

A half-dozen flags went up in the conference page. "I need someone to play moderator, 'cause I can't talk and mod at the same time. How about you, Hilda?"

"OK," she said. "I'm Hilda Hammersen, from the Madison group. Post one-line summaries of your points and I'll set a speaker order."

The conference page filled up. There was the official back channel at the bottom where the text was spilling by too fast for Perry to pa.r.s.e, and he knew that there were lots of unofficial back-channels in use, too. He covered the mic and sighed. He had nothing to say to these people. He didn't have any answers.

"Right. So who knows what we should do?" The back-channel went crazy. Hilda started green-lighting speakers with their flags up.

"Why are you asking us, Perry? You've got to run this." The voice was petulant and Perry saw that it was one of the Boston crew, which made him wonder what Tjan was going to do when he discovered that Perry was doing this.

The page pinkened and then sank into red. The other people on the call clearly thought this was BS, which was a relief to Perry. Hilda cued up the next speaker.

"We could set up information pickets at the gates to each ride hitting people up for donations for our legal defense -- get the press to cover it and maybe we could bring in enough to fight all the injunctions."

The pink lightened a little, went back to neutral white, turned a little green. Perry slowed down the back-channel a little and skimmed it:

:: No way could we bring in enough, that's like 30 grand each I get a couple hundred people here in the morning and that would mean a hundred and fifty bucks each