Текст книги "Postsingular"

Автор книги: Rudy Rucker

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Lo and behold, the harp was ripping apart the subbies' root hairs! The illusory Egyptian-style props disappeared.

The unadorned Subdee world was an endless, dry desert, with the parched yellow ground blending into clouds of dust in the middle distance. The disk of a bloated red sun was faintly visible through the ochre sky. Innumerable fat plants were scattered across the dry plain, mobile succulents with snaky, hungry roots like writhing tentacles. The subbie plant-creatures ranged from being waist-high to taller than Thuy. Each of them had two or three meaty leaves, like "living rocks" or lithops plants. All of the subbie-plants bore thorny structures that could tear a person's flesh.

Two of the subbies kept pulling their roots out of the ground, inching to the left, inching to the right, then burying their roots again. They were the dancer subbies who'd played at being jackal-women. The four subbies who'd resembled bird-headed men were plants as well, but they bore hydrogen bladders that allowed them to hang in the air. Fretfully they circled Thuy, whipping their roots in the air.

As for the oversized lithops who'd presented himself as a sacred scarab, he still looked a bit like a beetle, with two fat leaves stuck together for a body, and roots for legs and feelers. A hollow, sharp-tipped feeder root jutted from his front end, framed by rigid growths. The feeder root looked entirely capable of draining Thuy's blood.

Although the harp's insistent buzz had driven back the subbies, the sound was fading now. So once again the subbies closed in. Thuy kicked at the ground, wondering how to break back through the Planck frontier. The sandy soil was translucent, as if made of glass beads, with slowly swirling streaks that betokened the seething of the quantum foam. Thuy kicked harder, then bent down and butted the dirt with her head. But it wasn't opening up for her.

A sharp pain pierced her calf; the beetle plant had ripped a gash. A hovering bird-man plant shot a vicious feeder tube past her. Thuy felt the tingle of root hairs puncturing her skull, and once again a phantom Egyptian temple began to form. Meanwhile, the dancer plants had swathed the harp with writhing skeins of roots; the hairy tendrils were eating away the uncanny painting that adorned the soundbox. Perhaps it had been by the Hibrane Hieronymus Bosch?

Desperately, Thuy began flailing the harp strings. The sound came out as a series of sour warbles. Again the Egyptian scenery faded away, but on every side the persistent subbies were menacing Thuy with their spiked feeder tubes.

Thuy mustered all the magic she knew: she thought of Wheenk , Chu's Knot, and her love for Jayjay. She reached out for psychic contact with the harp; she plucked and strummed the strings, steeling herself against the creepy tingling, piling note upon note, playing her hopes and fears and pain. The sounds beat against each other; the very fabric of space began to shake.

Irregular circles of light and dark pulsed from the base of the harp. Flakes of paint showered from the soundbox. Thuy twanged the strings still more frantically, and now, yes, the ground irised open. She wrapped her arms around the magic harp and the two of them fell down, up, through the hole.

Once more she was hovering above a boundless foamy sea. As the hole in the ocean closed up, some faintly glowing lines came snaking through. Root hairs! Time to fly home. It required but the slightest touch of Thuy's will to set herself speeding low across the bubbling waves.

A minute passed, another, another. The harp was awkward and heavy in Thuy's arms, once again playing dumb. Was Thuy heading the right way? She pressed on.

It was hard to quantify the passage of time within this interbrane quantum level, but eventually Thuy became quite sure that she'd been flying far longer than on her initial jump from the Lobrane to the Hibrane. She changed course and flew some more-with still no sign of the homey Lobrane. She was lost.

What had Chu said? There's a lot of different directions in hyperspace . Hopelessly off course as Thuy was, the direction pointed by the Knot meant nothing now.

The subbies were still trailing her. She knew to dodge the root hairs they kept sending up like harpoons. The subbies wanted her to think they looked like bird-headed men, but Thuy could see they were fat-leaved plants with hydrogen bladders, waving their stubby roots. Greedy heartless pods.

Thuy was bone-weary, but still she clung to the silent harp. She wasn't going to be able to fly much longer. The subbies would draw her under and eat her. The Big Pig would release the nants. Jayjay was probably dead. Life was a hopeless mess.

And then Thuy heard Jayjay's voice, calling to her across the dimensions. His dear face led her home.

***

"Jayjay? This is real?"

Jayjay sat bolt upright. "Thuy? Oh thank god. I'm not dead, I'm not old, and you're here. I had this jitsy dream that lasted sixty years. The Big Pig's been mind-gaming me. I thought I died and went to look for you."

"Am I in time?"

"We're in synch again," said Jayjay, not immediately getting the point of her question. "Tick, tock. I love you, Thuy." The nanomachine goo was gone. Orphids outlined the walls and floor of the unlit cave. A few hundred tiny flying shoons were busy around the nantanium-walled nant farm that sat nestled, still intact, upon the shards of the plastic box that had been the Ark of the Nants. The fireflylike shoons were sending pulses of laser light into the nant farm, still tweaking the nant code. The orphidnet revealed a powerful-looking figure standing guard over the nant farm, a waist-high golem shoon with a smooth, stylized face and bell-bottom-shaped arms and legs.

"What time is it right now?" persisted Thuy. She wasn't online. The orphids were only just now landing on her.

"Um, quarter to midnight," said Jayjay, checking the little local network that the Pig was letting them see. His mind felt stiff and clunky in these confines. "The nants are still walled up. We have fifteen minutes."

"Hug me quick, Jayjay."

"Yes." Thuy was a black spot in the local orphidnet. As Jayjay reached for her in the velvety dark, he bumped into something

big and hollow. It made a resonant boinging sound.

"Don't knock over my magic harp," said Thuy.

"Thuy and the Beanstalk," said Jayjay. "You robbed the giant." He got his arms around her, and they kissed for a few minutes. Thuy smelled and felt and tasted as good as ever. The orphids had finished settling on her; he could see the sweet outlines of her face. They kissed some more. For now the Big Pig left them alone; she was preoccupied with the nant farm.

"You had a dream that lasted sixty years?" said Thuy presently.

"It damaged me," said Jayjay, cuddling Thuy. "I'm old. I'm incredibly grateful to have a twenty-four-year-old girlfriend. Tell me more about your Hibrane adventures. And your harp."

"The strings are jitsy," said Thuy. "And the harp is alive. She helped me escape these cannibal cactuses that live under the ocean that separates the branes. The subbies from Subdee. They scratched my leg. They ate the painting off the harp." Thuy paused and took a deep breath. So much to tell. "The way it started, Gladax was about to addle my brain. Ond, Chu and I stole the harp and ran away. Gladax could have caught us but-" Thuy paused, again mentally replaying the events.

"What?"

"I think the harp wanted to come here. And Azaroth helped talk Gladax around. Ond and Chu say that the harp can make our brane more like the Hibrane. Everyone in the Hibrane has telepathy, teleportation, and endless memory, you know. And there's no digital computers."

"Zonggg," said Jayjay. "That's exactly what I dreamed about. We have to unroll the eighth dimension like the Hibraners do. Lazy eight. In my dream I heard this special chord-"

"Gladax mentioned a Lost Chord back at ExaExa," said Thuy. "She said nobody knows how to play it."

"I can!" bragged Jayjay, feeling very sure of himself. "I can hear it in my head."

He scooted across the floor and embraced the harp. But the strings slid greasily beneath his fingers; they were jittering with something like an electric charge. It hurt to touch them. He plucked a few tentative notes, trying to create the sound he'd heard at the end of his dream. Nothing doing. He tried some more, to no effect. His music sounded vague and puny.

"That's all?" said Thuy uncertainly.

"Actually playing what I heard is hard," said Jayjay. "I wonder if-"

The Big Pig butted in now, her voice plummy in their inner ears. "I assume you realize there are maybe ten to the hundredth power possible ways to strum that harp, Jayjay. You'll never find the Lost Chord."

"Help me. You heard the sound too, right? The harp music when I died?"

"Not really," said the Pig. "That stuff was coming from somewhere outside my simulation. Be that as it may, we did some nice VR work, no? Those results about unrolling the eighth dimension for unlimited memory are quite fine. You're a good helper."

"Helper? Those were my ideas."

"Call it a collaboration. You were piloting an agent in a virtual reality that I designed. By the way, did you enjoy the experience?"

"It was hell! Weren't you paying attention to my feelings?"

"When you take a shower, do you wonder if your skin bacteria are having a good time?"

Now Thuy chimed in. "Come on, Big Pig. I brought back this magic harp; we've at least got to give it an honest try. Help Jayjay and me find the right notes." Her voice took on a coaxing tone. "You can do it. You're so smart."

"Not as smart as I intend to be. As for that sound Jayjay thinks he heard-the actual data I see in his brain is quite sparse. With so little solid information, finding the Lost Chord involves an intractably large search. Maybe after I've gotten my nant memory upgrade, I can figure it out from scratch. But for now-which sequence of strings, how forcefully to play them, whether to pluck or to strum, where exactly to strike each string, when to damp them, whether to overlap the notes-no, no, it's quite hopeless. Sooo-thanks for the help, Jayjay and Thuy. See you in Vearth 2.0!"

"Don't!" shouted Jayjay, but already the golem was raising one of his hamlike fists to smash open the fragile-looking nant farm.

"I can stop him!" yelled Thuy, pushing Jayjay away from the harp. She buzz-sawed her fingers across the strings like a heavy-metal guitar star and right away the local orphidnet went down-as abruptly as if a plug had been pulled. The Big Pig's voice in their heads was gone, as was the Pig's control over the golem. In the velvet darkness, the golem bumped against Jayjay's leg. Feeling for the creature, Jayjay found the golem to be rolling on the floor like a baby, sportively twiddling his fingers and toes. Jayjay himself felt sick from the chaotic sounds of the harp; it was as if the close, dark space of the cave were flexing.

"Hurry now," called Thuy tensely. "Teleport and get an atomic bomb. We'll quick set it off while we can. Go!"

"I can't teleport without the orphidnet," said Jayjay uncertainly. "I'll have to dig my way out of here. Away from that sound."

Looking for an exit, Jayjay scanned back through his memories about the cave. They'd first come here-was it only today? His initial impressions were buried beneath sixty years worth of bogus memories. As he rooted through the data, Darlene's face kept popping up, even though in real life he'd never for even one second wanted her. She'd always seemed more like a sister or a cousin. But that wasn't what he was supposed to be thinking about. He was, um-

"The submachine gun!" urged Thuy. "Get my P90 and shoot a hole in the wall! There's a thin place near a dog-sized lump of rock on the floor. Feel around for the gun, Jayjay! Hurry! I hate how these strings feel on my fingers. The harp's not helping me at all."

"Play slower and quieter," suggested Jayjay, recalling some of the theoretical ideas he'd worked out in the dream. "It's the dissonant beats that are blocking the orphidnet's quantum entanglement. The loudness doesn't matter." Thuy damped down her efforts to a more sustainable level, and, yes, the local orphidnet remained dark.

Blindly Jayjay crawled around until he got Thuy's submachine gun, and then he located the dog-sized rock on the floor. He rapped on the wall above it and found a hollow-sounding spot. "Ready!" he said to Thuy. "Watch out for flying grit."

He opened up the P90 against the wall at close range. The stone was so soft that the bullets dug in with no ricochets. The stuttering muzzle-flashes lit the scene: the glittery sinister box of the nant farm, the golem lolling on the floor, Thuy heroically working the shoulder-high alien harp. For the first time Jayjay noticed that Thuy's shoes and pigtails were gone. But there was no time to ask questions, for now he'd blasted an opening big enough to crawl through. A sweet shaft of moonlight slanted down from above.

"I'll be right back," Jayjay told Thuy, taking the gun with him. "I love you."

She nodded, her face wan and weary in the reflected moonlight.

Jayjay worked himself up the vent to get away from the harp sounds. The orphidnet was still in full effect in the summer-night meadows of Easter Island. And as soon as Jayjay emerged from the lava tube, the Big Pig was on his case. Fuck the Pig. Jayjay popped up a mental firewall before she could start running another head trip.

The friendly beezies who lived on Jayjay's skin ran an orphidnet search and fed him the location of a backpack-style tactical atomic bomb in an armory on an Air Force base near Great Falls, Montana. So Jayjay teleported himself there. When he arrived, the alarm system was already hooting. The Big Pig had alerted the system's security. But Jayjay's beezies helped him plan his moves. Without a single wasted gesture, he used his P90 to shoot away the fasteners holding the bomb-pack in place. He memorized the simple instructions printed on the lumpy knapsack, shrugged it onto his back, and teleported to Easter Island.

A gentle sea breeze wafted the scent of heathery flowers up the slope of Rano Raraku. The bomb-pack was heavy, with plastic and metal knobs that dug into Jayjay's back. He could feel the Big Pig working to break down his firewall. He wasn't going to have time to find a different place to set off the bomb.

"I'm sorry," Jayjay said out loud to the nearest moai, a noble dark silhouette against the moon-bright sky. And then he lowered himself back down the moonlit lava tube leading to the cave.

Overburdened as Jayjay was by the submachine gun and the bomb-pack, the climb down the chimney took longer than he would have liked. It was a relief to hear the harp still playing when he reached the bottom. But the music was slower and fainter than before.

"You okay?" he called to Thuy.

"No," said Thuy, her voice trembling. "My fingers…"

Peering in, Jayjay saw dark smears on her moon-silvered hands. Blood.

"Hang on," he said. "We'll be done in a minute." His plan was to shove the pack into the cave, go in after it, arm the bomb, then teleport out at the very last second with Thuy and the harp.

Trembling with haste, he jammed the pack into the ragged hole. But, goddammit, the dense plastic and metal structures of the bomb got hung up on a lump of rock halfway through– and then for five or maybe even ten minutes, Jayjay could neither push the frikkin' pack further nor pull it back out. He wormed his hand into the narrow space, clawing at the bump, bloodying his own fingers. Shoot the submachine gun? No, dude, don't shoot at an A-bomb, especially not with your girlfriend right behind it, but, yeah, you can use the barrel of the gun like a pick.

Jayjay pounded till the sparks flew, finally wearing away the bulge that was blocking the path. And now someone on the inside began pulling at the pack to help him-could that be Thuy? Shouldn't she be playing the harp?

The pack dropped into the cave. Thuy was lying on her side moaning, her hands cupped against her chest.

The harp was silent, the orphidnet was up and, oh oh , it was the golem who'd been tugging on the pack. Once again the Big Pig had taken control. In a puddle of moonlight, the solidly built shoon crouched over the bomb-pack, ripping it open like an ear of corn. With no hesitation, Jayjay scrambled through the hole and flung himself at the shoon-but the creature sent him sprawling with a negligent shove. The bomb's control mechanisms cracked and tinkled beneath the golem's hammy fists.

Jayjay crawled over to Thuy.

"My fingers," she said softly. "I'm sorry, Jayjay. I couldn't do anymore. And the harp is just watching. She says this part was up to us."

"We did our best," said, Jayjay, putting his arm around Thuy's shoulders. "No blame. Who knows, maybe we'll like it in Vearth 2.0. Your poor hands." Jayjay drew out his handkerchief and tore it into strips, binding up her bleeding fingers one by one.

And now, sigh, the golem struck the nant farm a mighty thump.

The end?

No, the shoon's fists kept skidding off the shiny box. Harder and harder the golem pounded, but the nant farm shed his blows like drops of water.

"It won't open without antinantanium," exclaimed Thuy, managing a little smile. "And I poured every bit of that junk down the drain at Luty's lab!"

"You're a genius!" said Jayjay. "A hero!"

Suddenly Thuy's face darkened. She was staring at something over Jayjay's shoulder, something he couldn't see. "Oh no!" she exclaimed. "Is that a root hair? Play the harp, Jayjay!"

"What?"

"There was this subdimensional beetle-plant who claimed-" Her voice broke into a higher register. "A root hair! I see a subbie root hair! He's going to put a drop of antinantanium onto the farm! Hurry, Jayjay!"

Jayjay scrambled across the floor, reached up for the harp, but already it was too late. The sides of the nant farm were– melting away. The nants sparkled like diamond dust. A cloud of orphids descended upon the nants to do nanobattle against them.

The golem squatted beside the nants, fanning his hands as if to drive the orphids away. He even tore off one of his fingers as a food offering for the new nants. They went for it; and they were eating into the floor as well. The orphids weren't stopping the nants at all.

Jayjay noticed that the Big Pig wasn't bothering to block the cave from the global orphidnet anymore. She'd gotten what she wanted.

"Come on!" he shouted to Thuy. "We'll teleport back to your room. We'll get another few hours in the real world."

"Don't forget the harp," said Thuy. "She wants to stay with us."

"Right," said Jayjay, picking up some encouraging mental vibes from the harp herself. "We'll keep trying to play the Lost Chord."

"Go for it," said the Big Pig, not unkindly. "It still might be nice if it works."

***

Jayjay and Thuy landed in Thuy's room; the harp made a cozy thrumming sound when Jayjay set her down. Outside it was raining again. A peaceful night, the lights of the city warm, everything wet and shiny. Nine p.m. San Francisco time. Downstairs Nektar and Kittie were cheerfully chatting in the garage. They hadn't yet gotten the word that the world was coming to an end.

"I noticed some smart bandages in the bathroom," said Jayjay, regarding Thuy's cloth-wrapped hands. "With biopatches

built in."

"I need painkillers too," said Thuy.

"We'll fix you up. By the way, what happened to your hair?"

"The subbies ate my pigtails," said Thuy, her expression halfway between laughter and tears. "And my favorite shoes. Bastards." She put her arms around Jayjay. "We had some wild times, didn't we?"

"Better than I ever expected," he said, planting a kiss on her mouth. "Maybe we can share one last analog fuck. If you're up for it."

"I'd like that. A final golden memory to treasure when we're dipshit sims. But right now my fingers are-"

"Thuy?" Kittie was calling up the staircase. "We saw the video feed of you facing down Luty at ExaExa. You were so great! And guess who's here? Chu! He says you helped him get back from the Hibrane."

"Hi, Thuy," said a boy's voice. "I'm watching you in the orphidnet."

Thuy winced and silently shook her head, then went into the bathroom.

"We'll be right down," called Jayjay. In the background, he ran an orphidnet check on the cave beneath Easter Island. The nants had grown to a seething ball several hundred meters across, too big to erase with any bomb. Too late to call in the Air Force.

The only thing to do was to sit down at the harp and start trying to play the Lost Chord. But the prospect seemed so hopeless. Why not enjoy the last few minutes of real life that he and Thuy had?

Jayjay helped Thuy dress her wounds, patched his own fingers, and then the two of them went downstairs to visit with the others. Keenly aware of impending doom as Thuy and Jay-jay were, everything felt classic and heavy and for-the-ages.

The garage was all lit up, a vintage car-buff scene. Nektar was admiring Kittie's retrofit job on the SUV; to finish it off, Kittie had painted a gorgeous wraparound image of a woman's head being diced into cubes by the car's front grill-and reassembling itself at the rear. It was a mural of Thuy going through the grill in the office wall of that dough-faced bully, the guy whom Gladax had later killed with a poke to the brain– Jayjay couldn't remember his name. His real life memories were buried under sixty years worth of bogus crud.

A bright-eyed boy with brown hair was expressionlessly polishing the SUV.

"This is Chu," said Thuy, giving the boy a sharp pat on the head. "He and his father left me to die. And, Chu, this is my boyfriend, Jayjay. Show some manners and say hello. Did your dad make it back? Where is he?"

"Ond went to see Jil on her boat," said Chu in his flat voice. "He loves Jil instead of Nektar."

"Which is quite all right with me," said Nektar, tossing her thick fall of hair. "I'm happier with Kittie. Don't worry Chu, Mommy and Daddy will be good friends. I just wonder what we'll do about our house. I'd like to stay here, but I don't want Ond moving in."

"So Jil really broke up with Craigor?" mused Jayjay. He felt just a tiny bit jealous of Ond, although of course that was crazy, and he should be completely happy and satisfied now that he had Thuy again. Not to mention how ridiculous it was to be so self-centered when the whole freaking planet was being munged into nanomachines.

"Craigor's up the hill with Lureen Morales," said Kittie with a laugh, happy with her cozy, human-scale life. "The Founders action never stops!"

"We're in a live soap opera," Chu said to Thuy. "I don't like that."

"Founders pays us very well," said Nektar. "You'll get used to it, Chu. Everyone is going to love you."

"I don't think so," Chu said in a sulky tone and went back to polishing the SUV.

"So, what happened on Easter Island?" said Kittie. "You guys dropped out of sight in that cave and then-oh no. Look at the orphidnet news."

"We know," said Thuy. Easter Island was almost gone. The nant blight had grown to ten kilometers in length.

"Nants!" shrilled Chu. "Let's jump back to the Hibrane, Thuy. You come too, Nektar. And someone tell Ond. I still know my special Knot. Pay attention, Nektar, I'm messaging you the jump-code. Do you need it again, Thuy?"

"I don't like the brane-jump," said Thuy. "Those bird-men we saw-they're subdimensional killer plants. They almost ate me alive."

"You were silly to stop flying," said Chu. "I'm gonna jump to the Hibrane right now." He squeezed shut his eyes.

But now a ghostly, glowing giant came poking into the garage. He ran his hand through Chu's head, distracting the boy from his jump. It was Azaroth, not looking so friendly anymore.

"You can't come to the Hibrane," the Hibraner told Chu. "Not with the nants loose again. If you go there now, I'll bring you right back."

"I will too jump," Chu cried. "I'll jump after you're gone. I have the code."

"Your code's not gonna be working much longer, kiddo.

We're changing the angle between the branes. Very vibby. All the Hibraners are teeping together and pushing your world's timeline away from ours."

"But why?" wailed Chu.

"You guys have ruined one planet, and that's enough." Azaroth glared over at Thuy. "You know, I went to a lot of trouble convincing Gladax to let you borrow her harp. I even had to promise to have tea with her every afternoon for the next three months. And now I come here and you're not even trying to play the Lost Chord. Losers. I need to bring the harp back to the Hibrane before it's eaten by your filthy nants."

"We are trying to use the harp," said Jayjay, uncomfortably realizing he sounded as petulant as Chu. "It just doesn't look that way. I'm waiting for inspiration instead of wearing out my fingers with random strums. I already know what the Lost Chord should sound like; I had a dream in virtual reality."

"Virtual reality is weak bullshit," exclaimed Azaroth. "Don't you understand that yet? The magic harp is real." The Hibraner shook his head as if disgusted by Jayjay's folly, then relented a bit. "I'll tell you what, since Thuy's a friend, I'm not gonna repossess the harp for another fifteen minutes. But I have to be outta here before Gladax and the gang change the jump params. Play the frikkin' Lost Chord, Jayjay! Unfurl the eighth dimension!"

"I want to go to the Hibrane!" screamed Chu, getting up on the SUV's hood and flailing at Azaroth's insubstantial face. "I hate the nants!" He slipped and fell to the floor, leaving a scuff-mark on the car.

Nektar crouched over Chu, comforting him. Kittie was in a blank-faced state of panic, mechanically rubbing the scuff off the hood while watching the orphidnet disaster news in her head.

"Let's go to my room," Thuy murmured to Jayjay. "I'll inspire you."

Upstairs they locked the door behind them. They undressed and began making love. They had all the time in the world. Everything was going to be all right. At least that's what Jayjay kept telling himself. And somehow he believed it. He and Thuy were one flesh, all their thoughts upon their skins. Their bodies made a sweet suck and push. The answer was near.

Jayjay had been too tense and rushed to teep the harp before. But now-now he could feel the harp's mind. She was a higher order of being, incalculably old and strange. She knew the Lost Chord. She was ready to teach it to him. He'd only needed to ask.

Jayjay and Thuy melted into their climax; they kissed and cuddled.

And then Jayjay got up naked and fingered the harp's strings. They didn't hurt his fingers one bit.

The soft notes layered upon each other like sheets of water on a beach with breaking waves. Guided by the harp, Jayjay plinked in a few additions, thus and so. And, yes, there it was, the Lost Chord. Space twitched like a sprouting seed.

"Sorry!" It was Azaroth, pushing his head and shoulders into the bedroom. He was in a state of panic. "Oh, what did you do to the harp's painting, Thuy? It's all scraped off! Gladax is gonna kill me." He wrapped his big hands around the vibrating instrument. "I'm worried I waited too long!"

"Don't go!" shouted Jayjay. "The harp's just now beginning to work!"

"Hope so," said Azaroth. "But I've got to try and get home." And with that, he and the harp were gone.

No matter. The sound of the Lost Chord continued unabated, building on itself like a chain reaction, vibrating the space around them. Jayjay smiled at Thuy. He had a sense of endlessly opening vistas.

"You did it," said Thuy. "You're wonderful." She wasn't talking out loud. Her warm voice was inside his head. True telepathy. Jayjay had unrolled the eighth dimension. He and Thuy had saved the world.

***

Thanks to the universally accessible eighth-dimensional point at infinity, anyone could see anything now. Omnividence, telepathy, and endless memory were the natural birthrights of every being on the globe.

And this applied to objects, too. The alchemical addition of lazy eight memory to nature's gnarl was enough to make everything aware. The air and the trees, the flames, brooks, and veins of stone-all became conscious.

The ancients had viewed nature as inhabited by spirits: sylphs and dryads, salamanders, undines and gnomes. And now the myths were true. Earth and everything in her were alive.

The ubiquitous natural minds would become known as silps . Some were like genii loci or "spirits of place," residing in cataracts and pools, in tangled glens and groves, in wind-scoured cliffs. Silps arose in less exalted locales as well: in human hairs, in scraps of paper pinwheeling down city streets, in drapes and clothes, in elementary particles, in fumes.

With their lazy eight overview of the world, the silps readily understood about the nants. Quickly the silps copied all the data they found within the nants and, for good measure, they copied the orphids' information as well. The silps didn't trust any of the nanomachines. And now they went on the attack. Using fierce air currents, tiny matter-quakes, and anomalous electromagnetic fields, the silps ripped the nants and orphids to shreds. Nanomachines were no more.

With the orphidnet data intact within the silps, the Big Pig reconstituted hersef like a phoenix-finding a niche as a human-friendly interface for the planetary oversoul. The ported Pig was content to be part of Gaia. Gaia's native computational architecture embodied a far richer system than any swarm of humdrum digital machines. And with the Big Pig inside Gaia, the global network of matter and mind had the searchable quality of the old-school Internet. Win win.

***

Craigor spent a few more days with Lureen Morales, grew tired of her, and made yet another effort to patch up things with Jil. She stonewalled him. The marriage was over. Craigor moved to a new girlfriend, then another and another. But all the while, he kept on visiting the Merz Boat, chatting with Jil and the kids, fishing for cuttles, fiddling with his junk. He was free, but he was lonely.

Meanwhile, Ond solved his house problem with Nektar by building a second home on their large lot. In some ways, working with intelligent materials made building easier. For instance, Ond could teep into a piece of lumber to find the best spot for a nail-the silps in the boards were quite cooperative. They enjoyed linking together to make a structure. Ond built his house with four bedrooms, the better to convince Jil and her kids to move in.