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Ond and Chu were very interested in relearning the Chu's Knot jump-code for getting home. Although it still wasn't quite safe for them to return to the Lobrane, they wanted to know that they could come home when the time came.
Azaroth assured Thuy that even if she hadn't yet written enough to remember the details of Chu's Knot, she was surely getting closer. According to Azaroth, the windings and crossings of the Knot were implicit in everything Thuy wrote, so that even when she thought she was writing about, say, what her mother, Minh, used to pack for her school lunches, she was really, at some deep level, writing about the Knot. Maybe so. The Knot still hadn't faded from Thuy's mind; often as she was drifting off to sleep, she saw it hovering before her, every loop and twist intact-but when she tried to focus on the details, they always slipped away.
The third time Thuy had seen Azaroth had been last month, right after he'd been leaning over Grandmaster Green Flash, assessing the state of the nanomachines on the dead man's skin. At that time, Azaroth had hopped over to Thuy and messaged her the news that Luty was working on turning Lobrane Earth into nants again. He said the Hibraners would do what they could to help stop Luty, but the real work was up to the Lobraners themselves. He said it would be a shame if the nants won, because then his people would never feel safe coming to visit again. He told Thuy to argue about any offers they made her in the Armory, because if she got into a fight, it would give her something heavy to write about for her metanovel, and if she found the Chu's Knot code, she could bring Ond and Chu back, and they might be the ones to turn the tide.
The weird events on the second floor of the Armory had indeed sparked a great Wheenk chapter, "Losing My Head"– which Thuy was in fact due to perform at Metotem in about an hour.
More and more, Thuy believed that her labyrinthine path through this postsingular world really was at some deep level tracing out the very design she'd seen Chu weave. So the reference to Azaroth on the storefront church's window made perfect sense. With ample time to spare before her reading, Thuy cut inside to check if the rebelida Бngel was go
Right away a silent, observant little girl toddled out from among the beat old metal chairs to stare at Thuy. The congregation consisted of working-class Latinos and Filipinos, many with families in tow. A glance into the orphidnet showed that only a few of them were kiqqies; Thuy could always pick out kiqqies by noticing who was using a lot of beezie agents-to Thuy, people's beezies looked like colored mushrooms on their backs and heads.
"Have some popcorn," said a comfortably ample woman, tugging the little girl out of Thuy's way. The woman wore purple lipstick and a shiny yellow silk dress. She handed Thuy a white paper bag she'd just filled from a movie-theater-style popper in a glass case. Fresh puffed kernels were blooming and cascading out of the metal popper's pan, fragrant with hot coconut oil, gritty with salt. A welcome treat. "Take a seat and enjoy the good words of Pastor Luis," said the woman. "We're glad to have you visit. I'm Kayla."
"Thanks," said Thuy, stepping further in and taking a seat in a lightly padded chair in the back row. Low-key gospel music was percolating from a three-person band: a languid shiny-haired dude with an electric guitar, a turbaned woman at a keyboard, and a classic mariachi guy strumming a bass.
Pastor Luis stood upon an inexpensive oriental carpet on the dais, a short man with thi
Pastor Luis was talking and gesturing without letup, his voice a rhythmic flow. At first Thuy couldn't make out what language he was speaking, but that didn't matter, for despite the man's unprepossessing appearance, there was an infectious energy to his motions, a hypnotic pulse to his expostulations. He was a kiqqie, with beezies bedecking him like shelf mushrooms on a forest-floor log.
Thuy relaxed and enjoyed for awhile, eating her popcorn, but then Luis paused and stared right at her, drawing info about her from the orphidnet.
"Welcome, sister Thuy," he called in a sweet-accented tenor, speaking English now. "Azaroth be with you. Chant with us, ay, I'm calling out the rebel angel Azaroth, ay, bossed around by the rulers of the Hibrane, guiding us to revolt against Babylon, a sword against the Pharisees, ay, our counselor against the gobbling all-consuming nants. Show us your face, Azaroth, caress us with your love, ay, warm our hearts in this low, wounded world. Lead us in the invocation, Sister Kayla!"
Broadly smiling, Kayla curvetted up the aisle, dress flashing. She took the microphone from Luis and began a chant:
I
Ita
Over and over, Kayla and the congregation repeated those same two lines, drawing out the sounds. Searching in the orphidnet, Thuy found the phrases to be couched not in Spanish, but in the Gaddang language of the Philippine island of Luzon, not all that far from good old Vietnam. Thuy's grandparents had landed on Luzon when they'd fled Vietnam in a leaky boat.
One of Thuy's beezies told her the lines were two folk riddles, meaning something like:
When he turns away he's coming to you.
You stare at him but you never see him.
And, continued the beezie, the answer to the first riddle was "a cuttlefish," and the answer to the second was "the sun," although it could just as well have been "a Hibraner" or, for that matter, "Chu's Knot." Everything was so very deeply intertwingled.
The chanted words overlapped, filling the air with vibrations like sacred Aums, calling another order of being into the room. Warm air eddied across Thuy; the hairs on the nape of her neck prickled up. Luis kicked aside the oriental rug to reveal a pattern inscribed on the floor, an octagon with a square drawn on the i
"Lots of news," he said to Thuy, talking right past the others. "I've been snooping around the ExaExa labs. First of all, humpty Luty's sending an attack shoon to bust up your reading. He doesn't want you spreading the word that he's living in the labs. And he'd like to snatch you." Image of a waist-high plastic golem shoon with slit eyes. "Second of all, Luty wants to launch his new nants tomorrow. He's got sudocoked-up agents all over town. So be very starky. Make a plea to the mass mind. If you're in on a big ExaExa riot, Thuy, you may finally see the light." And then he switched to Spanish and Gaddang, giving the congregation a message of self-reliance and good will.
"By 'see the light' do you mean finish Wheenk, or remember Chu's Knot, or both?" Thuy wanted to ask, but, oh shit, it was almost time for her reading! Was Luty really launching the nants tomorrow? Before Dick Too Dibbs even got into office?
Thuy tossed a couple of bucks in the collection plate and hurried out with a murmur of thanks. Down the street at Metotem Metabooks, Kittie was right inside the door, smilingly awaiting her.