"No!" exclaimed Chu, battening down his mind.

The angel held up her sallow, knobby index finger and glared at Chu. "I don't want to hurt you," she said. "I'm sure you're a very nice little boy. But you have to give me the jump-code now."

Still Chu refused. Looking grim, Gladax extended a ray from her finger. Chu sat up, but Gladax was all around him. She poked the ray into his skull; it slid in like a skewer into butter; Chu froze. Gladax began slowly feeling around the core of his brain, trying to reach the link to his orphidnet storage location. Chu began twitching all over. Messaging that she was sorry, Gladax kept on all the same. Chu found his voice and screamed for Nektar. But she wasn't home.

***

As Ond neared the house, he could see the lynch mob only a block behind him. Feeling for Nektar in the orphidnet, he was surprised to discover that she'd left home in her car and had driven right past him and, for that matter, past the mob. He hadn't noticed. And now when he messaged her, she told him she was on her way to be in the physical presence of her friend Jose-and that she was leaving him for good. Before he could say anything, she'd closed the connection.

For the first time, Ond accepted that he might have made a mistake in releasing the orphids.

In his house at last, Ond found little Chu convulsing on the living room floor, with a white-haired Hibrane angel woman probing at his brain. Ond cradled the boy in his arms.

"Stop it!" exclaimed Ond. "Please!" The angel's face wasn't cruel. Perhaps she'd listen to reason. "You're hurting my son! What do you need?"

The Hibraner sighed, interrupted her slow stirring of Chu's brain, and studied Ond. "Ond Lutter?" she messaged presently. "I'm Gladax. You're the man who stopped the nants, yes?"

"Yes. Three years ago. Take your finger out of Chu's head. Talk to me. We can work things out."

"Your son stole our jump-code," said Gladax. "I have to erase it. I don't want to hurt him, but he's so stubborn. What else can I do?" Though her voice was stern, her resolve was wavering. With a frown, she withdrew the energy ray from within Chu's head.

"Are you okay, Chu?" asked Ond, hugging his son tighter than ever.

"I still have the link to the chimes and the blue spaghetti," murmured the boy. "She didn't erase them yet. Here." In a flash, Ond absorbed Chu's message containing the encrypted link.

"Got it," said Ond, just to make sure Gladax knew.

"Jitsy little gnomes!" exclaimed the Hibraner, annoyed. "If I let you pollute our world with your horrible machines, there's no reason for my dangerous journey to your brane."

"Look, I'm the guy who stopped the nants," said Ond. "You said it yourself. I can help you. And Chu can help too. You don't want to scramble our brains. We're a resource."

Gladax frowned, not liking the situation. "Yes, Ond, you were the hero of Nant Day, but now you've made these orphid nanomachines. I don't want seething beasties in my home brane."

There was a hugger-mugger of voices outside. Someone was honking a car horn. Hector Rojas.

"My friend is here for me," said Ond quickly. "Chu and I have to leave this instant. We'll go back to Jil Zonder's boat. I'll do what I can to protect your world, Gladax, I promise. And remember, you need an expert on your side."

"Oh, all right then," messaged Gladax after a long pause. "But no broadcasting that link. Or I addle your brain for real, no gentle probing like with Chu. I'll be watching you very closely, Ond Lutter."

"Watch me all you like," said Ond. "And leave poor Chu alone. How could you do that to him, anyway? Don't you have children of your own?"

"A nephew," messaged Gladax, showing a little smile. "He's bright, but headstrong. Always does the opposite of what I tell him. He jumps branes every day-as if it were perfectly safe! As if Subdee was nothing to worry about! Yes, yes, I have to remember that you gnomes have emotions too. Run along before that mob gets hold of you."

"Do you want to hear about the cuttlefish and how I found the angels' jump-code?" Chu asked his father as Ond carried him to the door.

"I heard a little from the orphidnet AIs," said Ond. How fragile the boy seemed, how precious. "I call them beezies."

"The beezies are good," said Chu in his toneless little voice. "But that angel woman was being mean to me. Gladax. I wouldn't let her erase the jump-code. I almost have a way to learn that code by heart."

"Strong Chu," said Ond, touched by his son's courage. "I want to hear all the details. We're going to need them. But you rest for now. We don't want to rile Gladax."

"Okay," said Chu.

People were yelling just down the hill. Almost here. Moving faster than he would have thought possible, Ond got himself and Chu into the backseat of Hector's sporty car. Hector peeled out and slewed away from the crowd, following up with a high-speed doughnut move to shake a car trying to tail them.

***

On the way to the boat dock on Third Street, Chu couldn't stop thinking about the Hibraners' jump-code, no matter what Gladax and Ond had said. The more he thought about the code, the simpler it got. Pretty soon he could fit it all into his head. And then he had a really good idea. The core structure of the blue-spaghetti-and-chimes pattern was just a special kind of knot with a few hundred crossings. He rummaged in his pants pocket and found a piece of string, determined to make the pattern real.

"What are you doing?" Ond asked him.

Chu didn't answer for now. His fingers were weaving his piece of string into an intricate Celtic-style knot. But before he finished, he began feeling dozy.

He slouched against his father in the car's backseat, and before he knew it, he was in the orphidnet yet again. He reached out to find Momotaro and Bixie. They were running around on the Merz Boat playing with a neat new toy that Jil called a shoon. Jil had just now made it out of smart plastic, a soft robot shaped like a little man. Smart, graceful Jil was good both with her hands and with high-level animation code. The shoon's name was Happy. Chu's virtual form joined the game. Happy and the kids could see him. They played a hide-and-seek game called Ghost in the Graveyard.

The game felt a little creepy because there was one of those oversized angels lagging along behind Chu, doing his best to keep up. He wasn't bossy and old like Gladax; he wore colorful pants and a shirt with a big collar. He messaged that his name was Azaroth; he said he was working as an interbrane cuttlefisherman. He had a sketchy beard and a tight cap on his head with a ponytail wadded up on top. He told Chu that Chu should go ahead and pass his jump-code to everyone he knew, because it would be fun to have lots of Lobraners visiting their world no matter what Gladax said. Azaroth wasn't scared of Gladax, because she was his aunt. He said he was a rebel angel.

***

After her initial half hour of panic, Jil had relaxed and started using the orphidnet, dipping in and out. When she went in, it was like sleeping, as if the orphidnet users were dreamers pooling together in the collective unconscious of the hive mind. It wasn't actually like a sudocoke high; it didn't have that somatic rush. This said, it wasn't hard to imagine geeks getting seriously hooked on the orphidnet. But for Jil, the orphidnet was a manageable tool. She had begun directing her dreamy visions for a purpose: she wanted to find out how to market Yu Shu athletic shoes.