Postsingular

"It won't be easy," teeped Azaroth. "That's why we keep practicing our starky moves inside Chu's video game. But I promise that once you do get hold of the harp, I'll run to Gladax and make sure she lets you keep it for a while. Deep down she really does want you to succeed. It's just that she's too pessimistic and selfish to make it easy."

"The nanteater has a plan," repeated Chu.

***

"Have you ever run into Hibrane versions of yourselves?" Thuy asked Ond and Chu. They'd left the hideout to walk down the street, picking their way around the giant, slow-motion shoppers. They'd dropped their telepathic animal disguises, and Azaroth wasn't with them-all part of the plan.

The rain had let up; it was a cool and cloudy afternoon of the winter holiday season. "Do you think there's two Onds, two Chus, and two Thuys?" continued Thuy.

"Two Jayjays is what you're really thinking about," said Ond, teeping into her head. "I'm guessing the two branes aren't so much like mirror images as they are like different metanovels on the same themes. There's no reason to suppose all the characters will be the same."

"Thuy misses her boyfriend," said Chu in a bratty tone.

"I'm worried about him, okay?" said Thuy. Surely the orphids had cleaned the nanoslime off Jayjay by now. But what if he was dead. What if that one brief roll in bed and shared meal of pho was to be Thuy and Jayjay's last time together? "I'm capable of worrying about other people, Chu. You could learn from me."

"It's not my fault I'm autistic," said Chu, making his voice very small.

"Don't pick on him," said Ond. "It's not easy being Chu."

"Sorry," said Thuy. "I'm all keyed up." She studied a group of giants calmly inching down the sidewalk their way. The San Francisco Highbraners were so used to seeing Ond and Chu around town that the Lobrane gnomes didn't attract all that much notice here.

"I do too worry about other people anyway," said Chu. "I worry about Bixie and about Nektar. I worry about Ond. Will Nektar ever want him back?"

"We'll sort it out when we get home," said Ond. "It's okay, Chu, I'll find someone."

"The night we came here, Ond messaged 'I love you' to Jil," confided Chu. "Do you think Jil loves Ond back, Thuy?"

"I've never heard Jil talk about Ond," said Thuy. "But we do know that she's breaking up with her husband. Could be that Ond has a chance."

"Craigor tried to make babies with Nektar," said Chu, who was bursting with all the information he'd gleaned from his merge with Thuy. "But now they don't like each other. Sex and love don't make sense."

"You're learning," said Thuy.

"While you were asleep I looked under your clothes and my weenie got stiff," Chu now told Thuy.

"That's more than enough, Chu," said Ond.

"Why not say everything, since we can read each others' minds?"

"We have that issue with the orphidnet, too," mused Thuy. "It's all a matter of what you call attention to. Being polite means not emphasizing certain things."

"You mean like-"

"I mean shut up." Thuy flashed a grin at Chu so he wouldn't take this to heart. Good for him if he thought she was sexy.

They'd come to the end of the interesting part of this street. "You want to turn around and walk back?" Ond asked Thuy.

"Sure," said Thuy. "Sooner or later she's bound to notice us." They were waiting for Gladax to pop up and capture Thuy. Part of the plan. But Gladax was being slow on the uptake, which gave Thuy time to examine the stores.

The clothes on display were funkier than at home, each item unique, and everything very colorful. Things weren't so industrialized here in the Hibrane. With no digital computers, the vibe was much more kicked back.

The leathers and wools were individually tweaked by craftspeople called coaxers. Fashion coaxers got into telepathic synch with animals' bodies so as to influence the colors and textures of the creatures' skin or hair. They coaxed fiber plants as well: cotton, sisal, flax. Some of the coaxed fabrics harbored special psychic properties. For instance, you could buy underwear that emanated shame-and-outrage vibes, positioning you as forbidden fruit.

Down the block, some well-dressed Hibraners were enjoying a late lunch in a cozy restaurant. Each plateful of food was teep-tagged with the history of how the ingredients had been produced, plus images of the chef 's preparation process, plus eating advice: "I'm crisp and lemony"; "Pry up this trout cheek to get a nice nugget of meat"; "Dip me in that green sauce."

Next door was a bar, but Thuy found it hard to teep inside, as the drinkers' vibes were screened off by the aggressive mental stylings of a so-called distractor. The distractor was visible in the doorway, a black swami with a shaved head and his muscular arms crossed. He wore a calfskin coaxed to resemble a leopard pelt. He was a living hub of links, assessing people's interests and instantly routing them to minds and scenes likely to divert their focus of attention. It took a real effort to teep past him.

But Thuy managed, and teeped a flashy woman sitting inside the bar with a man. The woman was a paid escort named Balla. Balla's vibes were delicious; she'd honed the skill of offering her short-term partners an emotional sense of intimacy and shared history-magically divorced from empathy and commitment. Seeing Balla slowly brush back a lock of hair, Thuy had the brief impression that she knew this woman-though of course the illusion was as thin as the skin of a balloon.

And then the distractor spun Thuy's attention across the street into an art gallery. Roundish sculptures like river-tumbled stones were teep-tagged to project exalted emotional states: wonder, transcendence, sensual pleasure, bliss-the vibes polished by years in the currents of the meditative artist's mind.

A bit further down the street, the Metotem Metabooks location housed something like a bookshop-but with no paper and no printed words. Although the telepathic Hibraners sometimes used the shorthand of language, they seemed never to trouble themselves with writing out words in phonetic form. Why transcribe grunts when you can read minds? Hibrane authors were more like cartoonists or directors, assembling blocks of mental states, creating networks of glyphs. Their works were embedded as teep-tags within handicraft items: tie-dyed scarves, bead necklaces, carved bits of wood.

Picking up on Thuy's thoughts, the owner, who actually looked a bit like a giant Darlene, stepped slowly from the store. "You're fresh from the Lobrane?" she boomed, then switched to teeping. "I'm Durga. And you're a metanovelist? Would you like to record something for me to sell?"

"Go ahead, Thuy," urged Ond. "Chu and I come here all the time. Show Wheenk to Durga. It's beautiful; you should be proud. And if you share, it'll enhance understanding between the two branes."

"Do we get a snack today?" Chu asked Durga.

Durga found some doll-sized teacups that were just right for them, although her spice cookies were the size of garbagecan lids. She broke one in pieces for them. Chu took a seat in one of the big soft chairs, studying a little metal pig that contained an animal adventure tale expressed from the point of view of a piglet. Ond and Thuy sat next to him on the big chair, Ond fondling a felt decoupage wallet that encoded a rambling, anecdotal survey of Hibrane science.