Postsingular

"I don't have time to talk," said the pelican in a matter of fact tone. "Because Jil is about to-"

"The kids are in bed," hollered Jil, popping out of the cabin door. She was totally wired, jerking around like a puppet on strings. Again Thuy noticed the spots of light inside Jil's head. "Don't get so close to that shoon, Thuy. We better kill it." Moving faster than seemed possible, Jil snatched up Jayjay's machete and ran at the hapless shoon. Before anyone could even think of stopping Jil, she'd lopped off the pelican's head. Jil whistled sharply and her Happy Shoons set to work eating the dead shoon's remains.

"Dammit, Jil," said Craigor in dismay. "Why did you have to-"

Jil whooped and flung the machete high into the air. It landed point first and stuck quivering in the deck. "Party time! Jil saved the ship!"

The others exchanged glances.

"Sleepy time," said Craigor with a weary sigh. "Thuy, do you want to bunk in the kitchen with Jayjay? That's where we've been keeping him. The floor bulges up to make beds when you ask."

"I totally don't want to sleep near those two," Thuy messaged Jayjay while favoring Craigor with a Mona Lisa smile. Her beezie agents were showing her all kinds of freaky scenarios that might unfold, should she and Jayjay sleep in the long cabin.

"Maybe we'll crash on the couch in your workshop, Craigor," said Jayjay aloud.

"I'll do better than that," said Jil, watching them with manic eyes. It was as if some external force were ru

"Thanks, Jil," said Thuy in a studiously neutral tone.

"Come on, baby," said Craigor, leading Jil back toward their bedroom. "Calm down."

Once Jayjay and Thuy were alone together in the crooked igloo, Jayjay tried to kiss Thuy, but she pushed him away. Not only were thousands of Founders fans watching them, Craigor and Jil might be tuned in too. And maybe their kids. Not to mention the fact that Thuy was hungry. All she'd had for supper was a bag of popcorn.

"Teleport us to San Francisco," she told Jayjay. "To my room in Nektar's garage. Kittie's not around. I guess you know that she and I aren't hooking up anymore."

"Yeah, I know," said Jayjay. "I've been watching you. But what if that fifth attack shoon comes after us? Sonic mentioned a giant ant."

"We'll teleport again," said Thuy. "Even though you still haven't told me how teleportation works." "It's a nonlinear interpolation via the entanglement matrices

of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen field," said Jayjay. And then he laughed, proud of how he could shuck the physics jive.

In the long cabin, Jil and Craigor's voices were rising in argument.

"Come on, smart guy," Thuy told Jayjay. "Entangle our butts outta here."

"We'll do the hop like before," Jayjay messaged her. "You visualize both places: your source location and your target. Thanks to the orphidnet, you can get the realtime target images almost right. But it takes one of my special interpolators to make a target look so real that you can actually teleport there."

Thuy focused on her calm, dry room in Nektar's garage. She overlaid it with the dank, crooked hut Jil had lodged them in. Jayjay passed her an interpolator: a glowing larva which busied itself with Thuy's image of her garage room, heightening the scene's reality. And now Thuy began mentally sewing the two scenes together. Thuy's bedroom door was the igloo's window; her kitchen sink was a bump on one of the little hut's curving walls; the street sounds of San Francisco were nanomapped into the splashing of the sea. Thuy drew the links tighter. She folded in upon herself, becoming a single hypercomplex particle. Somewhere in the distance she seemed to glimpse an endless sea. Where was she? Her mind and body blossomed.

Thuy and Jayjay were in the room over Nektar's garage. The night had turned beautiful and moonlit; all the clouds were gone. Thuy sca

Naked under the sheets, Thuy's skin tingled. Jayjay's caresses were beautiful balm; Thuy felt pliant and monumental. It was wonderful to have Jayjay kissing her. For a moment they paused, staring into each others' eyes. Thanks to the orphidnet, they were visible in realtime to thousands of outsiders. Oh, well. Jay-jay entered Thuy and rocked until her sweet ache unknotted into trembling release. And, yes, he was coming too.

"I love you," said Jayjay a moment later.

"And I love you," said Thuy. "It was sad being alone."

"The Big Pig-I'm not hooked on her like before," said Jay-jay. "She's just a tool now, an info source. I spend weeks working out what my Big Pig visions mean. Deciphering the visions is the part I was missing before. I'd get high, and the next day I'd get high again."

"I don't think Big Pig trips could help me write my metanovel," said Thuy. "Not even if I had Azaroth helping me remember my visions. Did I tell you that, according to Azaroth, when Wheenk is done, I'll remember Chu's Knot? He'd speed me up if he could, but I don't see there being a shortcut. A metanovelist is like a farmer cultivating a field every day for a year. Maybe an inventor is more like a rock hound finding a gem and polishing it the same afternoon."

"Wheenk ties into Chu's Knot?" said Jayjay equably. "Everything fits, huh? Wheenk will be a masterpiece. You're the only person I've met who really seems smarter than me. Oh, and be sure to write about what a good lover I am."

"The Founders audience knows the full anatomical details," said Thuy. "I kind of watched us in the orphidnet just now." She felt sheepish admitting this.

"Me too," said Jayjay. "Being a star makes me feel powerful."

"Do you think you could jump us to the Hibrane?"

"Not yet," said Jayjay. "The problem is, there's no orphids in the Hibrane to feed me a target image. And Jil's memories of the Hibrane are so vague. I don't know what's going to happen to her."

"What does it vaguely look like in the Hibrane?"

"It's San Francisco, but everything is big and moves really slow. They don't have computers, and life is mellow. They wear bright-colored clothes. It's as if the 1970s kept on going there."

"Peace and wow," said Thuy, giggling. "I've noticed that about Azaroth's outfits. I mean, his flyaway-collar shirts are so-" She was interrupted by scritching and scrabbling noises from the stairs.

"The fifth attack shoon!" exclaimed Jayjay.

"The giant ant," confirmed Thuy, peering into the orphidnet. The four-foot-long plastic ant was halfway up the stairs, mandibles agape. Instantly Thuy was out of the bed, scampering around her room, pulling on her backup pair of striped yellow-and-black tights, her black miniskirt, her yellow sweater, her red plaid coat, and her beloved Yu Shu athletic shoes with the dragon heads.

"Teleport us," she messaged Jayjay as she readjusted her high pigtails in the mirror. "Happy Sun Pho Parlor on Valencia Street."