Postsingular

got smart too."

"How do you mean?"

"Lazy eight. It's how we do telepathy in the Hibrane. Better than orphids. Too hard to explain right now. Can you tell me the jump-code so I can pass it on to Chu and Ond? Maybe they can even make your air smart too."

"And that would be good?"

"Oh yes. Hylozoic."

"All I know is that Chu posted the blue spaghetti version of the jump-code right before he left," said Thuy, not quite sure she should help this strange-talking alien.

"That part I know," said Azaroth. "But all the Lobrane links to the spaghetti jump-code are dead now. I'm asking if you yourself know the short version by heart. Chu's Knot."

"I don't exactly remember the Knot," said Thuy.

"That humpty Gladax," said Azaroth, shaking his head. "Up in the Hibrane, she cut up Chu's Knot-I'm talking about his tangled piece of string, right-and then she addled the Knot-knowing away from him." Image of old Gladax focusing her narrow eyes upon a wildly bouncing Chu in that exercise room. She strikes an old-fashioned harp at one end of the room. The bouncing stops. Gladax leans over Chu, an energy ray poking from of her finger. Slowly, precisely, she reaches into Chu's head, crooning to keep the boy still.

"Ond was so worried; he went to Gladax's house," continued Azaroth. Image of sad-faced Ond Lutter kneeling tiny on the front porch of Gladax's huge, organic-looking mansion at dawn, the house's pillars like the trunks of trees. "Gladax promised that Chu would be okay, and she got Ond to teach her how to erase all the Lobrane records of Chu's jump-code too. So that's why your blue-spaghetti links don't work anymore. Meanwhile Gladax wants Chu to live with her like a houseboy or a pet. She thinks he's a lucky amulet against the nants. A nanteater. And Ond's staying on as Gladax's tutor, so he can be near Chu. But I'm working on a deal. I want Gladax to free those two to work with me. And I'd like to give them Chu's Knot so that someday they can come back and fix your world."

"Gladax wants to keep Chu because of what he did on Nant Day?" said Thuy, not following most of this. "She's that worried about nants?"

"Most Hibraners think machines are jitsy." Azaroth gestured at Sonic's tired old game display and at Jayjay's equally obsolete cell phone. "But I glow your tech, even if it is stupid." Image of a beggar kneeling to walk on rough-carved wooden stilts that are exactly the same length as his shins would be if he walked erect. "I'd like to be more than a cuttlefish poacher some day," continued Azaroth. "I'd like to program video games we can use with our telepathy. That's another reason why I want to get Ond and Chu free from Gladax. They'll be grateful and they'll help me write a game. I'd like to be able to offer them the Chu's Knot jump-code. Remember it for me, Thuy."

"Look, Azaroth, you jump branes all the time. Why can't you just tell Ond and Chu the jump-code that you use?"

"I don't know the code like a machine row of beads. I know it like I breathe. We've always been able to visit the Lobrane, but each jump is a little dangerous-these creatures called subbies live in between the branes and they try and catch you. I'm here so often because of the cuttlefish-cuttles are extinct on our world, you wave. We admire them as a religious symbol, but we overdid it and ate all of ours. Hibraners pay a lot for Lobrane cuttles. I'm agile. The subbies never catch me or any of the cuttlefish I send home."

"So why don't you send Ond and Chu back to the Lobrane just like the cuttlefish you steal," suggested Thuy. She paused for a moment, then plowed ahead. "And maybe send me to the Hibrane so I can have a look, too."

"I can't just brute-force jump a Lobrane human from brane to brane. The cuttlefish die when I jump them over to the Hibrane, you wave? To make it safe, a person has to jump all glowy with their personal pulse."

"Why didn't you pay better attention to Chu's Knot when he made it?"

"I was too excited about having you gnomes finally see us."

"And why is it that you're invisible over here?"

"You ask too many questions, Thuy! The branes are out of phase with each other, like two voices singing in different keys. And when we Hibraners jump across, we only change our phases by a little bit, so we show up catawampus akimbo to you. You guys and your cuttles, you're a darker kind of matter, and when you jump, you rotate through the full phase shift to match. Chu and Ond showed up chewy as a cuttlefish. Come on now, Thuy, stop stalling. I bet you can remember the Knot. A smart woman like you."

Charmed by the chatty alien, Thuy tried once again to remember the precise details of Chu's Knot. Surely the delicate filigree was intact somewhere in her memory? But it kept slipping away.

"I can't quite get it," she said after a bit.

"Maybe you should write a story about seeing the Knot," suggested the Hibraner. "Art's the way to know what you don't."

"I've been talking with people about a new style of writing," said Thuy. She was an inveterate participant in online writers' groups. "Metastories and metanovels-we're all thinking about a new art form using the orphidnet."

"Start with Orphid Night," urged Azaroth. "Time zero. And unroll from there. Tell all your personal experiences, spill your starky guts. I'll hang in the background, setting you up for the big spike."

"Is Gladax evil?" asked Thuy as an afterthought.

"No. It's just that she's old and she worries too much," said Azaroth. "She's the mayor of Hibrane San Francisco, did you know that? I know her so well because she's my aunt; she's my father's dead brother Charminder's widow. She's part Dutch and mostly Chinese. Bossy and picky, but she's always nice to me. I bet she roots out my memory record of this conversation." He laughed recklessly. "Good old Gladax!"

And then Sonic came back to the apartment and Azaroth left.

***

Thuy popped out of her flashback. She'd saved it all into the Wheenk database; it felt like a good, solid take. Thinking less formally now, and no longer for the record, she recalled the two other times she'd seen Azaroth.

The second time had been back in September. Azaroth had slid ever so slowly down a slanting sunbeam from a sunset-reddened cloud, behold! This time he'd encouraged Thuy to start sleeping with Kittie instead of with Jayjay, which didn't turn out to be that great of an idea. But at the time, Azaroth had said the switch would give Thuy more to write about, also that breaking up with Jayjay would help Thuy beat her Big Pig addiction, which had been soaking up increasing amounts of her energy and time. Oh, and Azaroth had encouraged Thuy to start linking her scattered metastories together into a single cohesive metanovel.

By then Azaroth had also talked Gladax into letting Chu and Ond range freely around the Hibrane equivalent of San Francisco. They did no harm, and the Hibraners enjoyed seeing the tiny gnomes around town. And, just as Azaroth had hoped, Chu was helping him develop a telepathy-based game. Azaroth used the word "teep" to mean "do telepathy." Apparently he and Chu somehow used a stream of water for their game's server-computer. And Ond was advising Gladax on efficient ways to access the vast pool of Hibrane teep info. Hibrane telepathy was based on some weird quirk of the brane's physics, and had no Weblike orderliness built in.