Boland said admiringly, surveying the giant underground warehouse. The officers and noncoms stood on a balcony about halfway up the wall. The ceiling was a solid expanse of light, allowing Wolfe to oversee the preparations already under way. Thousands upon thousands of puppets stood in ranks before them. All of them were at his service. All the puppeteers, costumers, and prop makers had volunteered to stay in Welcome and help battle the Insurgents to save their beloved Oscar Wingle. Daivid felt a proprietary pride as he counted up his forces. The ‘local color’ marionettes, who resembled the normal races of beings who might visit Wingle World were the most numerous. Wingle had explained to him that they wandered the park as friendly fellow tourists, or helped frightened children find the parents from whom they had been separated, in a comforting way that the gigantic yellow chick, Beak-Beak, being prepped just beyond, never could. Like Beak-Beak, the remaining puppets weren’t based upon real creatures, but licensed characters in the Wingle Company stable instantly recognizable to anyone who had ever grown up in range of a family entertainment center or a crystal amphitheater.
