Postsingular

***

And then Thuy, Jayjay, Jil and Craigor got down to making plans about how to snatch the Ark of the Nants away from Luty, carrying out the conversation via a private message cha

Just as Thuy had hoped, Jil knew a secret way to get into ExaExa; the fab had an emergency basement-door exit. The door exited to a subterranean flight of stairs leading up to a flat cellar door set into the ground, the cellar door camouflaged by a thin layer of mud, sand, and gravel so as to blend in with the Bay's edge. The Bay-side exposure of the campus was secured by high wire fences ru

The plan was to start with Jayjay teleporting the four of them and all their weapons to that hidden cellar door behind the fab. The women would head into the subfab-that is, the basement-armed with grenades and P90 submachine guns. The guys would hang by the cellar door, firing the two rifles to drive back the guards. The women would wend their way through the plant to Luty's lab, and when the time was ripe, Jayjay and Craigor would teleport up to the summit of the lab's domed roof and blast their way in. Communication would be patchy, what with the quantum-mirror varnish covering all the inside surfaces of ExaExa. But they figured Azaroth could act as a go-between.

Meanwhile the ExaExa riot was growing wilder and bloodier. More and more police units kept arriving at the sun-splashed campus, but more and more Luty-controlled sudocokers were turning up as well. According to the news, the National Guard was coming next.

"Why can't you let the police and the soldiers catch Luty?" said Bixie aloud. "Don't go there, Mommy and Daddy."

"We've gotta do our part," said Craigor. "We might make the difference. You guys are old enough to remember Nant Day, right?"

"Yes," said Bixie. "San Francisco came apart. Everything got eaten up."

"Remember the giant ads in the sky?" said Momotaro, lowering his voice and making a goony face. "Hi, I'm Dick Dibbs! Come live with me on Virtual Earth!"

"The nants ate me," recalled Bixie. "But then I came back, and I couldn't remember what Virtual Earth was like. But I still remember the nants biting me." She shuddered.

"Why haven't they caught that freak Jeff Luty?" said Momotaro. "Why do they let him stay free so he can do the same thing over and over again?"

"He's rich," said Craigor with a shrug. "Different rules for those boys. Maybe, I don't know, maybe all this time he's been bribing President Lampton. After all the things we've been saying against Dick Too Dibbs, it's starting to look like Too Dibbs might be better than Lampton at catching Luty. That's why Luty wants to release the nants today."

"I still don't see why it has to be you and Ma that go fight him," said Momotaro, still talking out loud.

"Kids, please," messaged Jayjay. "I promise I'll teleport your parents right back here if things get bad. But remember that Luty might be listening to us."

More hugs and tears, and then the four grown-ups teleported to the Bay side of the ExaExa labs, landing right where Jil had said they'd find the hidden door. A couple of Luty's cop-costumed security guys appeared, some fifty yards off. Craigor and Jayjay opened fire with their rifles, driving them back.

"Why didn't I bring a shovel," muttered Jil, frantically kicking at the blank muddy ground. "I'm such an idiot. It was right here-or, no, maybe a little further."

Thuy skipped back and forth until she felt a hollowness underfoot. "Found it!" she sang. She and Jil dropped to their knees, clawing at the sticky mud, which was wet from yesterday's rain. Sure enough, they uncovered a cellar door. It was hinged on the right-hand side but bolted and locked on the left.

A bullet whizzed past Thuy, making a tearing sound in the air.

"We're go

"Us or them," said Craigor, lying on his stomach, carefully squeezing off a round. Someone screamed.

"How does this thing work?" said Thuy, studying her sleek, futuristic P90 submachine gun. "Oh, this must be the safety. Here we go." She fired a burst into the flat door's lock, some of the bullets ricocheting past Jil's legs.

"Yow."

"Sorry. Help me lift it."

Grunting with the effort, the two women swung the muddy metal door up and over to the side.

"Beautiful," said Jayjay.

The four of them took shelter in the stairwell. But now they found a fresh obstacle; the fire door in the subfab wall was a

smooth sheet of steel with no handle or keyhole.

"Grenade," said Craigor, pleased at the thought.

Jayjay and Craigor reloaded their rifle magazines, then popped out of the stairwell and unleashed a serious barrage of automatic fire in the direction of the guards. During the resulting lull, the four lay down by the fab wall. And now Craigor pitched a grenade into the stairwell.

A great ball of flame bloomed, accompanied by a satisfying ker-whump. As the smoke cleared, the four scurried back into the stairwell. The door to the subfab gaped raggedly open.

"Good luck," said Craigor. "And, Jil, we had some fine years together. Nothing will ever take that away." He stepped toward her as if to kiss her.

Jil shook her head and pushed him away. "Not now, Craigor. I'll be fine. We'll talk later." "See you," said Thuy to Jayjay, ducking the jinx of heartfelt last words. "And where the hell is Azaroth?"

Just as she said this, Azaroth appeared, coming down out of the sky over the Bay. He'd tweaked his body image so that he resembled a sure-enough winged seraphim.

"Can you kill people?" Thuy asked Azaroth as he alit by the stairwell.

"I don't have that level of mana, " said Azaroth. He'd already let his shape flow back to his usual form, that of a topknotted young Sikh in hippie garb. "Only Aunt Gladax has enough. She has this way of poking Lobraners in their heads and disrupting their brain signals. I told her that the really heavy shit is coming down today, and that she needs to jump here right away, but of course she wants to finish her morning tai chi exercise first. Aunt Gladax is a little set in her ways."

"She doesn't think this is urgent?" cried Thuy, as a bullet whizzed right through Azaroth, fortunately with no ill effects. "If the nants take over here, I bet they'll find a way to jump to the Hibrane and eat you too!"

"Don't worry, Gladax will come," said Azaroth. "She hates Luty and the nants. But-like I say, she's set in her ways. She wants to be sure she's totally focused before she does the jump. She's paranoid about the subbies. She'll be here in time. She'll kick butt."

"What if I'm already dead by then?" said Thuy, not liking the pleading tone she heard in her own voice.

"In a way, death is an illusion," began Azaroth, but, seeing anger in Thuy's face, he shut up.

The women headed into the subfab, their sleek black P90 submachine guns at the ready. The subfab was an immaculate high-ceilinged concrete basement, its ceiling, walls, and floor quantum-mirrored with thick coatings of square-root-of-NOT varnish. The space was arrayed with blocks of heavy support machinery: electrical generators, vats of chemicals, filtering systems, particle-monitoring equipment, vacuum pumps, and pressurized tanks of gas. The ceiling was festooned with miles of color-coded pipes, tubes, cables, and wires. The subfab was a mad scientist's dream.