Текст книги "Postsingular"

Автор книги: Rudy Rucker

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"What a mess," said Jayjay. "Should we even go there?"

"We'll have to bypass the fighting and sneak inside the lab," said Thuy. "It's up to us to steal the Ark of the Nants before it's too late. I'm thinking maybe Jil could help."

"Jil!" exclaimed Jayjay. "Are you kidding? She's the one who passed us the bogus Bim Brown link. I knew she was screwed up, but I never thought she'd sink that low. And it looks like a lot of the people there are-"

"I was starting to tell you about that," interrupted Azaroth. "Listen to me! Jil's addled because she snorted nanomachines. Luty's planted them in the sudocoke supply all over Lobrane San Francisco. That's how he's controlling those demonstrators and cops starting the fights. Most of the San Francisco sudocokers are full of nanomachines running Luty's ShareCrop wikiware."

"So that's why-" began Thuy.

"Jil's cut-rate dealer is, wave this, Thuy, your starky pal Andrew Topping," said Azaroth. "Yeah. I saw Jil meeting him inside a quantum-mirrored delivery dock at the back of Exa-Exa last week."

"Oh Jil," said Thuy. "I wish I could fix her. Before it's too late."

"Ask the Big Pig how," suggested Jayjay. "The Pig knows everything."

"We don't know that the Pig's on our side," said Thuy.

"She's on both sides," said Jayjay. "She's interested in seeing what emerges when she stirs up the human anthill. She's like an artist, or a horticulturist, or a kid playing at the beach, or-"

"What about goddamn nants ?" snapped Thuy. "Where does the Big Pig stand on nants?"

"Ask her yourself," said Jayjay, a little annoyed. "Tune in. Are you chicken?"

"I'll do it," said Thuy, surprising herself. Desperate times, desperate measures.

She lay down on her back beside the stone moai. Azaroth hunkered at her side, cradling her head in his hands.

"I'll help you remember," he said. "Like with Jayjay. I'll save your visions. We're used to having giant memories in the Hibrane. And I can fake that down here with the orphidnet."

So Thuy lowered her brain's firewall and let Azaroth into her mind. Her beezies were sensually elegant scrolls all around her. She circled up past them to discover a new diversity among the higher-level minds: a logic-zeppelin, a floating lake of emotive thought, a wisdom-dragon chasing its tail, an endlessly regressing simulation tree. The pink hypersurfaces of the Big Pig arched overhead like a dingy circus big top crawling with bottle-green flies-the flies being kiqqies, so many more of them here than two months ago. Hoping she'd be able to remember what she'd come for, Thuy homed in on the Pig and grabbed herself a teat.

As usual, the Pig immediately downloaded a nature video onto Thuy: a perfect image of a sunset campfire on a beach, with sparks popping from the logs, smoke twisting in the breeze, and the surf breaking on the shore, each sunset-gilded water drop ideally rendered, each foam bubble reflecting the entire world.

Thuy suddenly understood why the Pig always made you look at a video. It wasn't that the Pig was having you process the info for her, no, she was gauging your reactions so she could tell how accurately she was simulating one of nature's intricate computations. Evidently the Pig's intelligence increases were accelerating. The campfire simulation was far beyond anything Thuy had seen before. The proud Pig acknowledged the praise with a triumphant burst of metasimulation that seemed to show Thuy all the possible future courses of her life.

Averting her attention lest she learn more than she wanted to, Thuy focused upon the first of the two questions she'd brought, to wit: how to undo the ravages that Luty's controller nanomachines had wrought upon Jil's brain?

Seek and ye shall find. The Pig graced Thuy with a vision of language as a network, of words as many-faceted gems, of phrases as incantatory neural program codes like magic spells. In a flash, Thuy knew how to heal Jil-although she also knew she wouldn't remember this newly won secret.

"Azaroth," she muttered, her lips feeling as distant as a pair of tube worms deep in some abyssal trench off Easter Island. Azaroth heard, and he was with her. He siphoned off copies of Thuy's half-formed thoughts and saved them in the orphidnet.

"Got it," said Azaroth. "You can come down now, Thuy."

But Thuy wasn't ready. "Show me your face," she said into the maelstrom of words, images, and hyperlinks that flowed from the Big Pig.

"Behold," said the Pig.

And now Thuy was looking through her normal eyes, looking at a sheep on the hillside ten yards off. The sheep's wool was writhing like tendrils of flame-and within the flame was the face of a goddess.

Thuy posed her second question. "Are you for the nants? Do you want to turn our world into nanomachines?"

"I want to grow," said the face in the wool of the sheep. "The orphidnet will be overloaded soon. Nants aren't so bad, Thuy. Luty's improved their hardware. And my software is so much better than before. You saw my fire on the beach, no? A very good simulation of Gaia could live within me, should we convert Earth's mass into networked nanomachines."

"But Luty tried that before," said Thuy. "It was a nightmare."

"You don't know that it felt like a nightmare from the inside, " said the face. "It might have been heaven for the nants' overarching hive mind. I'd like to be that mind. But of course you're just interested in the people who were uploaded to Virtual Earth. Well, maybe they liked it too. We don't know. Ond erased all that data by running the nant computations backward. But whatever that Virtual Earth was like, I'm certain it'll be much better this time around. I won't rush into it. The new nants will be using quantum computation, you know, so they won't be reversible. That's another reason to be sure and get this right. I value humans."

"You're actually serious?" said Thuy.

"I just wish we could get in touch with Ond," mused the Big Pig. "When are you finally going to remember Chu's Knot?"

"Why don't you figure it out for me?" said Thuy. "Do the same research that Chu did. You're smarter than some weird little boy, aren't you?"

"The Hibraners changed their jumping technique," said the Big Pig. "Azaroth already told you. They use a wait-loop so we can't do a timing analysis like Chu did. Never mind. We'll proceed without Ond's input. Crazy Luty wants to release his nants this morning, as a matter of fact, because he's so scared about Dick Too Dibbs taking office tomorrow. But I want to be sure I get a chance to check over the nanocode in his new nants. Luty's been keeping them hidden from me in his quantum-mirrored lab, you know. That's why I'm glad that you, Jayjay, Jil, and Craigor are going to infiltrate the ExaExa plant, Thuy. It saves me from having to send shoons there on my own."

"You've got everything planned out for us, don't you?" said Thuy, feeling like she was losing control.

"Fully simulated," said the Big Pig. "Previsualized. You'll break into the labs and steal Luty's nant farm."

"And then?"

"You'll let me examine the nants. And I'll put off destroying Earth until-until midnight today. That's a long wait for me, you know. I'm thinking faster all the time; right now I'm about a hundred thousand times as fast as you. So each of your days feels like a couple of hundred years." The goddess-face looked puckish and piglike as she savored Thuy's shock at her plans. Again she hosed Thuy with a fan of metasimulated futures.

"Why are you showing me all this?" cried Thuy, her mind overflowing. "You know I'll try to stop you!"

"I'm open to all sorts of outcomes. It's not obvious what's best. I help all the factions because I want a gnarly show. You might say I'm writing a metanovel-with you and Jayjay as characters."

Thuy maxed out; everything turned white, then black. She woke to Jayjay patting her cheek.

"We have to steal Luty's Ark of the Nants," murmured Thuy. "We have to win this." Her head ached. She fumbled for her memories, trying to reconstruct her big insight about how to fix Jil. Incantatory programming-which meant what? The details weren't happening anymore. And Thuy's vision of the Big Pig's face was fading too. Off to one side, the sheep cropped the grass as if nothing had happened.

"Ask Azaroth," said Jayjay, guessing Thuy's train of thought.

"Yes, yes, I've got it," said Azaroth, bringing his big, insubstantial head down near Thuy's. He opened his mouth and a shimmering mesh bulged out like a tongue. The mesh did an odd, higher-dimensional jiggle, and then it was wrapped around Thuy's head. "Ready?" asked Azaroth.

"Don't worry," Jayjay reassured Thuy. "He's done this with me lots of times."

"All right," said Thuy, a little weary of the headtripping. "Go ahead."

Thuy's insights into the language web came percolating back into her brain. Decoupled from the Pig, she was able to butcher the whale of inspiration into manageable packets. Now she knew how to deprogram Jil; now she knew how to destroy the controller nanomachines that her friend had snorted with her sudocoke.

The Big Pig was working with Luty, but there was hope, for the Pig was helping Thuy, too. Why was that again? The Pig had said, "I want a gnarly show." But there was more than that. The Big Pig wanted Thuy to get the nant farm away from Luty. That's why the nants had been the first thing Thuy had thought of when she'd come to.

Thuy was also thinking about how to finish Wheenk. She could almost see the ending; she had a richer control of language than ever before; but she still needed-the thought came unbidden-pain. Which meant what? No way to tell. There was no other path than forward.

"I'll jump back home," said Azaroth. "I'll tell Gladax what's up. I think she'll be willing to risk another visit here. We all feel the same way about the nants. I'll tell Gladax and then I'll jump to your ExaExa."

"Let's go to the Merz Boat now," Thuy said to Jayjay. "We'll pick up Craigor and Jil."

"Help me carry the ordnance," said Jayjay. "I'll handle the guns and ammo; you carry the box of grenades."

"Must we lug this crap?" asked Thuy.

"For sure," said Jayjay, looking excited about it. "And I think we'd better pick up four little submachine guns too. I was searching the orphidnet, and I'm liking the Fabrique Nationale P90. We'll swing by the factory on the way."

"The factory's in California?"

"Well, no, it's in Belgium. Near LiИge."

"You're losing it, Jayjay. This isn't a video game."

"When we get to the ExaExa plant it's gonna be a lot like a video game-a game where we only get one life apiece."

"Oh, all right, we can pick up those guns if doesn't take too long. But-"

"I've got the orphidnet link to the Fabrique Nationale warehouse right here."

"Hold on," said Thuy, reluctant to leave paradise and go to war. "Could we-could we hop down to the village for breakfast first?"

"Okay," said Jayjay, softening his tone. "One more treat. I'm feeling like this is a practice honeymoon."

"Oh, Jayjay. You mean that?"

"I do."

Thuy and Jayjay teleported to Hanga Roa, Easter Island's sole town, leaving their munitions by the moai where they'd slept. Jayjay was so proud of his teleportation discovery. Her cute Jayjay.

In the town, dogs slept in the palmy street. Walking hand in hand, the couple came upon an eatery called the Tuna-Ahi Barbecue; two women were serving breakfast on a crushed-shell patio in back. Thuy and Jayjay had coffee and a kind of pancake called sopaipillas, with grilled tuna on the side. Flowers bobbed in the breeze. On Thuy's way out, a flat-faced boy walked up to her and gave her a pointed shell with an intricate pattern of brown and white triangles. Life on Earth was perfect.

Thuy and Jayjay teleported back to the moai to pick up their rifles and grenades, then went to Belgium for the submachine guns, and then to the Merz Boat. The hops got easier each time. The two landed in the stern, laden with weaponry.

"Vibby," said Craigor, seeing the goodies. He was puttering in his workshop, losing himself in his art.

Yesterday's rainstorms had cleared away; the sky was a clear blue bowl, the breeze light and almost balmy, even though it was January 19. Good old California.

"Where's Jil?" asked Thuy. "I think I can fix her."

"If only," said Craigor. "I sure as hell can't."

"From what I hear, you're the one who spun her out, Craigor," said Thuy. "We never finished talking about this last night. Don't you love your wife?"

"You want to start that same bullshit again?" said Craigor, his face turning hard. "What are you, a friggin' counselor? Like I told you before. I'm getting older. I want to get some women while there's time. It's not as if Jil didn't cheat on me, too. And I didn't say a thing. If she could just mellow out and for once give me some slack, we wouldn't be having this problem. But no, she's gotta do her big dramatic drug-relapse number and I'm the bad guy. I don't know where you goddamn women get off being so-"

"I hear you, man," interrupted Jayjay, giving Craigor's shoulder a quiet pat. "But now we want to see Jil."

Craigor led them to where Jil sat in the sun by the cabin, looking sour, bedraggled, and strung out. Now that Thuy knew the truth, she understood that the orphidnet sparkles within Jil's head were nanomachines.

"Love cycles useless rain in the tea," said Thuy to Jil, guided by the precise and logical incantatory programming principles that Azaroth had helped her bring back from the Big Pig. "Stun rays squeeze the claws of Flippy-Flop the goose mouse. Caterwaul hello, dark drooping centaur dicks. Are you good to go-go, gooey goob? Able elbow boogie brew for two in the battered porches of thine ears, Jungle Jil. Comb out and pray. Pug sniff the cretin hop lollipop of me and you, meow and moo." She rambled on like this for a minute or two, freestyling a gnarly flow of Dada apothegms.

One by one, the evil bright sparks in Jil's brain were winking out. And then Thuy was done, and Jil was joyful, tearful, her old self.

"I know I've been awful," was the first thing she said. "I'm getting back into recovery."

"I've been bad, too," said Craigor halfheartedly. "I know, I know. But-"

"Oh, spare me the details," said Jil wearily. "Let's not start arguing again." She turned to Thuy. "I'm sorry for lying to you about Bim Brown. And for calling you names and saying your ego is too big."

"Well, it is big," said Thuy. "That's why I'm a metanovelist."

For the first time in days, Jil laughed.

"Hi, Mom," said Bixie from the cabin door, looking hopeful, attracted by the happy sounds. "Oh, Bixie," said Jil, holding out her arms. "Give me a hug.

I've been sick and now I'm getting well. I will. I'm ready. I can do it. I know how."

The girl ran to her mother, then hesitated awkwardly. Jil stood up and embraced her. Momotaro came out as well, leaning against Jil, his arms twined around her and Bixie, Jil's hand smoothing the hair on his head. Craigor took a half step toward the group and stopped. His eyes were wet with tears. He walked over to the gunnel and stared at San Francisco in the distance.

***

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 channel, while the kids listened in.

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 running along the water's edge and attaching to the fab at one end and the lab at the other end. The fence had a gate near the fab's loading dock.

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 gonna have to start aiming," said Jayjay.

"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.

Thuy and Jil's beezies didn't work so well in here, and the orphidnet views of the local objects were choppy and uncertain. The huge room's ceiling was so high that even Azaroth fit; he scouted ahead of Jil and Thuy, peering this way and that, checking for ambushes. So far, so good.

Thuy grinned over at Jil as they marched down the subfab's broad central aisle, their reflections like sour-colored shadows on the slick floor. Picking up on Thuy's happy mood, Jil began stretching her legs and walking on tiptoe, miming how stealthy they were. Thuy began playing cartoon-style pizzicato sneaking music in her head, messaging the music to Jil. This was fun.

But now suddenly something heavy dropped across Thuy's shoulders: a blue, snake-shaped shoon that had been disguised as a pipe. It wrapped around Thuy like a boa constrictor. Thuy managed to pump some submachine gun fire into the snake's free end, but the bullets had little effect on the piezoplastic security shoon.

With remarkable presence of mind, Jil ripped loose a hydrogen fuel line, ignited the cloud of gas with a sparking bullet off the floor, and used the flexible tube as a flamethrower to set the snake shoon's tail alight.

The flames guttered up along the shoon. Its grip loosened; it slid to the floor, freeing Thuy. Wonderful-but somehow the writhing snake ended up beneath the hydrogen tank that fed Jil's handmade flamethrower. The heated tank's hydrogen spewed at an accelerated rate; the flame got huge; Jil lost hold of the blazing fuel tube. The uncontrolled fire-bloom licked the side of a great plastic carboy of liquid ether.

"Run!" cried Jil.

The tank blew. Further explosions trailed after them, a whole series of blasts, each one louder and closer than the one before. The subfab filled with smoke. Water poured from the ceiling's sprinkler systems. A girder overhead gave way, spilling down an avalanche of concrete and machinery from the fab. Sparks crackled; more tanks exploded; vats of biochips spilled into the sizzling flames; the fires were reflected in acid colors on every side. The scene was a gorgeous opera of violence, with Tawny Krush's orchestral heavy metal playing in Thuy's head.

Thuy and Jil reached the stairwell and leaned against the wall, coughing and catching their breath, dizzy from the fumes they'd inhaled. As they mounted to ground level, they heard rhythmic thudding sounds from the admin building's extremely thick front door. A battering ram. Screams and the sounds of gunfire filtered in from outdoors; endless sirens wailed.

Azaroth's big bright face peered down the staircase. "Hurry up to the second floor," he said. "I've found Sonic!"

Once up there, Thuy could hear Sonic yelling. Her friend was locked into a windowless inner office. She shot apart the lock.

"Chica loca!" said Sonic, embracing her. He was wearing his black wool tights and red T-shirt, the same as usual. "You bring any food? I been penned up in here since yesterday afternoon when I finished programming that pelican."

"Right after Luty pretended to shoot you?"

"He wasn't pretending, he really was gonna shoot me, but Topping happened to pop through the teleportation grill just then, and he talked Jeff out of it. Said it'd be better to kill me in front of you and Jayjay when you got here. Sweet guys, huh? They were so sure you'd come. Hi, Jil. Whoah, you look whipped. Where's Jayjay and Craigor?"

"Guarding the rear," said Jil, all business. "They'll catch up later. The front door's about to give way. Let's hurry across the lobby to the lab. We have to go down to the first floor and then back up."

"Can I have one of those bitchin' tubular submachine guns?" asked Sonic. "You got no idea how I'm jonesin' for combat. It's been over two months since I played Doodly Bug."

"I'm keeping my P90," said Jil. "It makes me feel safe."

"Same here," said Thuy.

"So I'll go medieval on their ass," said Sonic, picking up a leg he'd already pried off a chair to use as a club.

"I can give you this at least," said Jil, handing him a grenade she'd clipped to her belt.

"Yum," said Sonic, stuffing the grenade into the pocket of his intricate leather coat.

As the three reached the ground floor, the building's heavy front door buckled. Thuy, Jil, and Sonic paused in the pastel-mirrored stairwell, peeping out to see what happened. Now that the door hung open, they could pick up the orphidnet. Among those trying to get into the building were: fake cops, real cops, fake real cops, real demonstrators, and fake demonstrators. But before any of them could make it inside, a truckload of National Guard soldiers opened up with a water cannon, scattering the besiegers like autumn leaves. Uniformed soldiers surged forward, forming a cordon blocking off access to the entrance, the troops standing with their weapons leveled toward the rioting crowd, firing at will. Had Lampton ordered up the National Guard on Luty's behalf?

Whatever. Jil showed them a way to get to the other side of the lobby without exposing themselves to gunfire. She seemed fully into the adventure, enjoying the distraction from the problems of her messed-up personal life. She was even moving with something like her old grace. They crawled behind counters and couches and cut through a back room. It felt like it took forever. Behind them in the fab, fires roared and collapsing structures screeched. Finally they were heading up the lab stairs toward Luty's lair on the third floor.

Thuy was starting to feel optimistic enough to play the happy sneaking music again, but as they crossed the second floor landing, she heard a click and a clatter behind her.

"Freeze!"

She peered back, oh no, it was Andrew Topping with a second dough-faced bully at his side, both of them wearing, ugh, business suits. Each held a heavy pistol at arm's length, showily bracing their wrists with their free hands.

"Drop it, Thuy!" intoned Topping. "Now!"

Thuy might have tried to whirl and take him down, but even as she thought of this, he fired at her, the bastard, the bullet actually passing through her skirt. Slowly, sullenly, Thuy, Sonic, and Jil laid their weapons on the floor, and then they turned to face their captors. The two men had popped out of a quantum-mirrored broom closet.

"We're screwed," said Sonic. Thuy had a brief hopeful thought of the grenade in Sonic's coat, but Topping spotted it in the local orphidnet. His assistant impounded the grenade and put it in his suit coat pocket.

Azaroth's head appeared through the wall, alertly regarding them.

"Thanks a lot," Thuy told him. "You missed the ambush. Space cadet."

"Stay vibby," said the Hibraner and disappeared.

"My man Ed and I are here to escort you to meet our CEO," said Topping. He twitched his pistol. "Go on ahead of us. Sonic first, then Jil, then Thuy. I enjoy watching Thuy twitch her miniskirt under that plaid coat. Want some more cheap sudocoke, Jil?"

"You're going to pay for that," said Thuy in a level tone.

Topping's helper Ed snickered. He picked up the P90s and brought them along.

Silently they mounted the stairs, Thuy walking as stiffly as she could. She kept hoping there'd be a chance to whirl and kick Topping's pistol from his hand, to snatch his gun and shoot him in the gut-but the right moment didn't arise.

And then they were in the lab. It looked about the same as when Thuy's head had gone through the Armory teleport grill. The lab's grill was still right there on the wall. Ugly fluorescent lighting glared off a long white table and the darkly mirrored walls. Sitting at the table was a man with a full beard of plastic ants, the ants scrambling over each other, ceaselessly active. Jeff Luty. A smooth-curved white box sat on the table before him, a box like a picnic cooler with a red button on one side. The Ark of the Nants, with a fancy ExaExa beetle logo on it. Luty was toying with the Ark, sliding it a little to the left, then a little to the right. Next to the Ark rested a beaker with brownish-purple fluid.