Makers Part 85

"Ooh, I'm jealous," Lester said. "He's my arch-rival, after all."

"I hadn't thought of it that way. He *is* kind of cute --"

"Hey!"

"In a slimy, sharky way. Don't worry, Lester. I miss you, you know?"

"Really?"

"Really. I think I'm about done here. I'm going to come home soon."

There was a long pause, then a snuffling sound. She realized he was crying. He slurped. "Sorry. That's great, babe. I missed you."

"I -- I missed you too. Listen, I've got to go meet this guy."

"Go, go. Call me after dinner and tell me how it goes. Meanwhile, I'm going to go violate the DiaB some more."

"Channel it, that's right."

"Right on."

Sammy met her in the lobby. "I thought we could go for a walk around the lake," he said. "There's a trail that goes all the way around. It's pretty private."

She looked at the lake. At twelve o'clock, the main gates of the Magic Kingdom; at three, the retro A-frame Contemporary hotel, at nine, the wedding-cake Grand Floridian Resort.

"Lead on," she said. He led her out onto the artificial white-sand beach and around, and a moment later they were on a pathway paved with octagonal tiles, each engraved with the name of a family and a year.

"I really liked your article."

"You said that."

They walked a while longer. "It reminded me of why I came here. I worked for startups, and they were fun, but they were ephemeral. No one expected something on the Web to last for half a century. Maybe the brand survives, but who knows? I mean, who remembers Yahoo!

anymore? But for sure, anything you built then would be gone in a year or two, a decade tops.

"But here..." He waved his hands. They were coming around the bend for the Contemporary now, and she could see it in all its absurd glory. It had been kept up so that it looked like it might have been erected yesterday, but the towering white A-frame structure with the monorail running through its midriff was clearly of another era. It was like a museum piece, or a bit of artillery on the field at a civil war reenactment.

"I see."

"It's about the grandiosity, the permanence. The belief in doing something -- anything -- that will endure."

"You didn't need to bring me someplace private to tell me that."

"No, I didn't." He swallowed. "It's hard because I want to tell you something that will compromise me if I say it."

"And I won't let you off the hook by promising to keep it confidential."

"Exactly."

"Well, you're on the horns of a dilemma then, aren't you?" The sun was nearly set now, and stones at their feet glittered from beneath, sprinkled with twinkling lights. It made the evening, scented with tropical flowers and the clean smell of the lake, even more lovely. A cool breeze fluffed her hair.

He groaned. She had to admit it, she was enjoying this. Was it any less than this man deserved?

"Let me try this again. I have some information that, if I pa.s.s it on to you, could save your friends down in Hollywood from terrible harm. I can only give you this information on the condition that you take great pains to keep me from being identified as the source."

They'd come to the Magic Kingdom now. Behind them, the main gates loomed, and a pufferbelly choo-choo train blew its whistle as it pulled out of the station. Happy, exhausted children ran across the plaza, heading for the ferry docks and the monorail ramps. The stones beneath her feet glittered with rainbow light, and tropical birds called to each other from the Pirates of the Caribbean Adventure Island in the middle of the lake.

"Hum," she said. The families laughed and jostled each other. "Hum. OK, one time only. This one is off the record."

Sammy looked around nervously. "Keep walking," he said. "Let's get past here and back into the private spots."

*But it's the crowds that put me in a generous mood.* She didn't say it. She'd give him this one. What harm could it do? If it was something she had to publish, she could get it from another source.

"They're going to sue your friends."

"So what else is new?"

"No, personally. They're going to the mattresses. Every trumped up charge they can think of. But the point here isn't to get the cops to raid them, it's to serve discovery on every single communication, every doc.u.ment, every file. Open up everything. Root through every email until they find something to hang them with."

"You say 'they' -- aren't *you* 'they'?"

It was too dark to see his face now, but she could tell the question made him uncomfortable.

"No. Not anymore." He swallowed and looked out at the lake. "Look, I'm doing something now -- something... *amazing*. The DiaB, it's breaking new ground. We're putting three-d printers into every house in America. What your friend Lester is doing, it's actually *helping*

us. We're inventing a whole new --"

"Business?"

"No, not just a business. A world. It's what the New Work was missing -- a three-d printer in every living room. A killer app. There were personal computers and geeks for years before the spreadsheet came along. Then there was a reason to put one in every house. Then we got the Internet, the whole software industry. A new world. That's where we're headed. It's all I want to do. I don't want to spend the rest of my life suing people. I want to *do stuff*."

He kicked at the rushes that grew beside the trail. "I want to be remembered for that. I want *that* to be my place in the history books -- not a bunch of lawsuits."

Suzanne walked along beside him in silence for a time. "OK, so what do you want me to do about it?"

"I thought that if --" He shut up. "Look, I tried this once before. I told that Freddy b.a.s.t.a.r.d everything in the hopes that he'd come onto my side and help me out. He screwed me. I'm not saying you're Freddy, but --"

Suzanne stopped walking. "What do you want from me, sir? You have hardly been a friend to me and mine. It's true that you've made something very fine, but it's also true that you helped sabotage something every bit as fine. You're painting yourself as the victim of some mysterious 'them.' But as near as I can work out, the only difference between you and 'them' is that you're having a little disagreement with them. I don't like to be used as part of your corporate head-games and power-struggles."

"Fine," he said. "Fine. I deserve that. I deserve no better. Fine. Well, I tried."

Suzanne refused to soften. Grown men sulking did not inspire any sympathy in her. Whatever he wanted to tell her, it wasn't worth going into his debt.

He gave a shuddering sigh. "Well, I've taken you away from your evening of fun. Can I make it up to you? Would you like to come with me on some of my favorite rides?"

This surprised her a little, but when she thought about it, she couldn't see why not. "Sure," she said.

Taking a guest around Disney World was like programming a playlist for a date or a car-trip. Sammy had done it three or four times for people he was trying to win over (mostly women he was trying to screw) and he refined his technique every time.