She went back to her room, where Lester was still working on his DiaB project. She took out her suitcase and packed with the efficiency of long experience. Lester didn't notice, not even when she took the blouse she'd hand-washed and hung to dry on the back of his chair, folded it and put it in her suitcase and zipped it shut.

She looked at his back working over the bench for a long time. He had a six-pack of chocolate pudding beside him, and a wastebasket overflowing with food wrappers and boxes. He shifted in his seat and let out a soft fart.

She left. She paid the landlady through the end of the week. She could send Lester an email later.

The cab took her to Miami. It wasn't until she got to the airport that she realized she had no idea where she was going. Boston? San Francisco? Petersburg? She opened her laptop and began to price out last minute tickets. The rush of travelers moved around her and she was jostled many times.

The standby sites gave her a thousand options -- Miami to JFK to Heathrow to Petersburg, Miami to Frankfurt to Moscow to Petersburg, Miami to Dallas to San Francisco.... The permutations were overwhelming, especially since she wasn't sure where she wanted to be.

Then she heard something homey and familiar: a large group of Russian tourists walking past, talking loudly in Russian, complaining about the long flight, the bad food, and the incompetence of their tour operator. She smiled to see the old men with their high-waisted pants and the old women with their bouffant hair.

She couldn't help but eavesdrop -- at their volume, she would have been hard-pressed *not* to listen in. A little boy and girl tore a.s.s around the airport, under the disapproving glares from DHS goons, and they screamed as they ran, "Disney World! Disney World! Disney World!"

She'd never been -- she'd been to a couple of the kitschy Gulag parks in Russia, and she'd grown up with Six Flags coaster parks and Ontario Place and the CNE in Toronto, not far from Detroit. But she'd never been to The Big One, the place that even now managed to dominate the world's consciousness of theme-parks.

She asked her standby sites to find her a room in a Disney hotel instead, looking for an inclusive rate that would get her onto the rides and pay for her meals. These were advertised at roadside kiosks at 100-yard intervals on every freeway in Florida, so she suspected they were the best deal going.

A moment of browsing showed her that she'd guessed wrong. A week in Disney cost a heart-stopping sum of money -- the equivalent of six months' rent in Petersburg. How did all these Russians afford this trip? What the h.e.l.l compelled people to part with these sums?

She was going to have to find out. It was research. Plus she needed a vacation.

She booked in, bought a bullet-train ticket, and grabbed the handle of her suitcase. She examined her welcome package as she waited for the train. She was staying at something called the Polynesian Resort hotel, and the brochure showed a ticky-tacky tiki-themed set of longhouses set on an ersatz white-sand beach, with a crew of Mexican and Cuban domestic workers in leis, Hawai'ian shirts, and lava-lavas waving and smiling. Her package included a complimentary luau -- the pictures made it clear this was nothing like the tourist luaus she'd attended in Maui. On top of that, she was ent.i.tled to a "character breakfast" with a wage-slave in an overheated plush costume, and an hour with a "resort counsellor" who'd help her plan her trip for maximal fun.

The bullet-train came and took on the pa.s.sengers, families bouncing with antic.i.p.ation, joking and laughing in every language spoken. These people had just come through a US Customs checkpoint and they were acting like the world was a fine place. She decided there must be something to this Disney business.

Death Waits waited, and waited and waited for the ride to come back online. He split his days between hanging out at home, writing about the story, running the fly-throughs from the other rides, watching what was happening in Brazil, answering his fan-mail; the rest of the time he spent with his new friends down at the site of the ride, encouraging them to pitch in and help Perry and Lester to get the thing back up and running. Fast, please. It was driving him bonkers not to be able to ride any longer. After everything he'd been through, he deserved a ride.

His friends were wonderful. Wonderful! Lacey especially. She was a nurse and a G.o.ddess of mercy. The money that flooded into his paypals whenever his friends let it be known that he needed more covered all his expenses. He never wanted for companionship, conversation, helpmeets, or respect. It was a wonderful life.

If only the ride would come online.

He woke next to Lacey, she asleep still, her hair spread out across the pillow in a fall of shiny black with blue highlights -- she'd given him a matching dye-job a few days before and they looked like a matched set now. He let his hands lazily trace her soft skin, the outlines of her tattoos, her implants and piercings. He felt a stirring between his legs.

Lacey yawned and woke and kissed him. "Good morning, my handsome man,"

she said.

"Good morning, my beautiful woman. What's the plan for today?"

"Whatever you want," she said.

"Breakfast, then down to the ride," he said. "I'll do my email and writing there today."

"Something before breakfast?" she asked, with a lopsided smile that was adorable.

"Oh yes, please," he said, his voice breathy.

The smell at the Wal-Mart was overpowering. It was one part sharp mold, one part industrial disinfectant, a citrus smell that made your eyes water and your sinuses burn.

"I've rented some big blowers," Perry said. "They'll help air the place out. If that doesn't work, I might have to resurface the floor, which would be rough -- it could take a week to get that done properly."

"A week?" Death said. Jesus. No way. Not another week. He didn't know it for sure, but he had a feeling that a lot of these people would stop showing up eventually if there was no ride for them to geek out over. He sure would.

"You smell that? We can't close the doors and the windows and leave it like this."

Death's people, standing around them, listening in, nodded. It was true. You'd melt people's lungs if you shut them up with these fumes.

"How can I help?" Death said. It was his constant mantra with Perry. Sometimes he didn't think Perry liked him very much, and it was good to keep on reminding him that Death and his buddies were here to be part of the solution. That Perry needed them.

"The roof is just about done, the robots are back online. The dividers should be done today. I've got the chairs stripped down for routine maintenance, I could use a couple people for that."

"What's Lester working on?" Death said.

"You'd have to ask him."

Death hadn't seen Lester in days, which was weird. He hoped Lester didn't dislike him. He worried a lot about whether people liked him these days. He'd thought that Sammy liked him, after all.

"Where is he?"

"Don't know."

Perry put dark gla.s.ses on.

Death Waits took the hint. "Come on," he said to Lacey, who patted him on the hand as he lifted up in his chair and rolled out to the van. "Let's just call him."

"Lo?"

"It's Death Waits. We're down at the ride, but there's not much to do around here. I thought maybe we could help you with whatever you were working on?"

"What do you know about what I'm working on?" Lester said.

"Um. Nothing."

"So how do you know you want to help?"

Death Waits closed his eyes. He wanted to help these two. They'd made something important, didn't they know that?

"What are you working on?"

"Nothing," Lester said.

"Come on," Death said. "Come on. We just want to pitch in. I love you guys. You changed my life. Let me contribute."

Lester snorted. "Cross the road, go straight for two hundred yards, turn left at the house with the Cesar Chavez mural, and I'll meet you there."

"You mean go into the --" Death didn't know what it was called. He always tried not to look at it when he came to the ride. That slum across the road. He knew it was somehow connected with the ride, but in the same way that the administrative buildings at Disney were connected with the parks. The big difference was that Disney's extraneous buildings were shielded from view by berms and painted go-away green. The weird town across the road was *right there*.