Postsingular

"Talk to me, Chu," insisted Jil, still holding the boy's shoulders.

"The angels live in the Hibrane," said Chu in his usual flat tone. He looked frightened. "Angel Gladax is mad at me. The angels have always been coming here, but now we can see them better-thanks to the orphids. I found out how to jump a person to the Hibrane. Gladax doesn't like that. She told me not to share the jump-code. I didn't mean for Bixie to-"

"How?" interjected Craigor grimly. He was standing over Jil and Chu. "Tell us how! We have to go after Bixie."

"The orphidnet AIs and I did a timing-cha

"More jive about cuttlefish?" cried Craigor. "Where's my daughter, damn you!"

"Don't yell at him, Craigor, or I'll punch you in the mouth," said Ond, his voice very tight. "Chu already gave me a link to the jump-code. It looks like blue spaghetti and it sounds like chimes. I'll message the link to you right now, Jil." He twitched his head and hopped to one side, ducking the big angel, who still had that menacing ray sticking out of her forefinger. "Stop it, Gladax! We have to save Jil's daughter. I don't care about the subbies. See the jump-code, Jil? All right then. Now let Chu finish telling us how it works."

Craigor got hold of an oar and took out his anger by violently waving it around, stirring eddies in the air. This had a good effect; Gladax drew back a couple of meters, unable to navigate her body's subtle matter through the roiled-up air currents.

"You don't have to use the blue spaghetti anymore," said Chu, his voice maddeningly deliberate. "I have a new version almost done." He produced a bird's-nest of string from his pocket and sat down on the deck. Delicately he tied two loose ends of his intricate tangle, which resembled a woven bracelet. "The jump-code's in this knot," said Chu, staring at it with absorption. "Nice and tidy. I can remember this."

"Get to the point, Chu," puffed Craigor, still waving his oar. "Spaghetti, chimes, knot-how does someone use your freakin' code?"

"Well, I think when the angels do it, they stop thinking about themselves for a second," said Chu, looking small and uncomfortable amidst the legs of the agitated grown-ups. His fingers were rubbing his knot. "And then they concentrate on the code and-"

Chu disappeared too.

"We're going after them, Ond," yelled Jil. "Craigor, you watch Momotaro. Don't give me that moony hangdog look, Ond! Let's go!"

Ond's pursuers were yelling from the shore. An outboard motor sputtered and roared into life. Spotlights lit the water.

"Of course, Jil," said Ond. "I want to hide in the Hibrane. Let's pace up and down the deck; Gladax has trouble keeping up. Block out her messages or she'll distract you. Please don't hate me. I'd do anything for you."

"Okay then, Doctor Ьbergeek," said Jil, stepping lively toward the bow at Ond's side, still extremely upset about Bixie of course, but also feeling just a little jazzed by Ond's flattery and by the prospect of a wild trip through another dimension. "You better make this good. We space out and we slam the code, huh? Like meditating before doing a line of sudocoke. Too bad we don't have Chu's Knot."

"Just use the link I gave you," said Ond.

In the orphidnet Jil studied the tangled blue spaghetti and the ringing chimes. But try as she might, she remained stubbornly aboard the Merz Boat.

"We have to let go of our internal monologues," suggested Ond. "Focus on the spaces between our thoughts."

On a good, serene day, that wouldn't have been hard for Jil, but just now it was tough. Urgently casting about for mental leverage, she thought of the Zen koan where the teacher holds up a stick and says, "If you call this a mere stick, you deny its Buddha nature. If you don't call it a stick, you're lying. What do you call it? Quick!"

Jil broke the stick. She was neither here nor there, neither now nor then, not inside, not out. The chiming blue spaghetti buried her. She felt a twisting sensation and saw a series of ocean images, as if she were flying very low across an endless sea. Some creatures like birds stuck their heads above the surface, snapping at her. Subbies? Jil dodged them readily enough, energized by a pleasure/paranoia rush straight out of her sudocoke days. It was hard to say how long the jump lasted. But then something changed, she felt a nudge, and-hello!

She was in the Hibrane, with Chu and, yes, Ond beside her, standing in a grassy moon-silvered meadow with great trees at the edge. Her skin tingled and, just like that, her orphids were gone. No matter, her mind was blooming in some new way. The air filled with a vibrating soundless hum. A sealed window in Jil's head swung open.

Beyond the trees were the lamp-lit windows of a city like San Francisco. Nearby was a field and a hill. They'd landed in the Hibrane version of Golden Gate Park.

Everything here was big and slow; everything was alive. The grass rose to Jil's waist; the pines and eucalyptus trees towered like skyscrapers. The meadow itself was impossibly broad. On this world, Jil, Chu, and Ond were only a foot high.

Giant people and immense dogs cavorted ponderously beneath lampposts in the meadow, moving as if in slow motion. The brightly dressed Hibraners were playfully skimming a wooden triangle back and forth.

Jil could sense the i

Jil noticed a dark spot in the meadow, a dog the size of a buffalo, ruminatively chewing something on the ground. Oh, dear God, where was Bixie?

Without stopping to look into the dog's mind, Jil charged toward the great brute, calling her eleven-year-old daughter's name. Jil's footsteps were surprisingly loud and heavy on the soft ground. And she seemed to be moving as fast as a car might drive. The long-haired giants stopped playing and assumed attitudes of fear, as if Jil were a fierce demon from a nether world.

Spooked by little Jil's charge, the huge dog wallowed to his feet and began a deep, startled bark. On the ground between his legs was-only a stick.

"Mom!" came a sweet voice from the shadows of a park bench nearby. "I'm over here." Yes, it was Bixie, sitting upon a collapsed leather wineskin. Thanks to the telepathy, Jil could see Bixie in the dark-and she could sense her daughter's whole mind, sweet as a summer day. A moan of relief escaped Jil; she sped to embrace the girl.

"I'm scared of that dog," said Bixie, disentangling herself. "I'm glad you came, Mom."

"I want to take you home now," said Jil, hoping this was possible. With all their orphids gone, there was no chance of linking back into the Lobrane Earth's orphidnet. So how would they access the magic blue spaghetti code?

Ond and Chu came pounding across the moon-silvered grass, scared of the dog. They joined Jil and Bixie beneath the bench. Some of the lamp-lit Hibraner giants on the lawn were turning to flee; a couple of the others were ever so slowly hunkering down to stare at the Lobraners. The enormous dog continued his slow, thunderous barking, but showed no sign of wanting to attack.