A long uneasy silence. "I never underestimate you, Aunt Gladax," said Azaroth finally, his face a polite mask.

"It'll be easier for me to addle Thuy if she cooperates," said Gladax. "I really don't want to hurt the girl. Can't you have a word with her?"

"No use," said Azaroth, barely glancing at Thuy. "You've seen how she is."

"Feisty," muttered Gladax. "Too smart for her own good." She shook her head. "Let's do the easy thing first. Let's talk to the damned flowers." Moving like molasses, Azaroth and Gladax made their way outdoors.

Alone in the tai chi room, Thuy began stretching her bonds in earnest. Rather than struggling at random, she pulsed her kicks and shoves to match the rubber's resonant rate. With each pulse she extended her legs and arms a little further. And then she broke the rhythm with a double pulse, catching the material on its way in. This was enough. A band snapped.

Gladax was berating her gardener and her flowers, while Azaroth, watching Thuy from the corner of his eye, did his best to block Gladax's line of sight. Wriggling like an eel, Thuy got free of the broken net and thudded heavily to the straw mat. Fortunately she landed well. Sticking close to the floor, she wormed down the length of the room to the harp, a gilded triangle resting on one corner. This instrument was strung with thirty-four furiously vibrating strings that seemed somehow higher-dimensional.

The harp's front edge was a fluted wooden column with a scrolled capital, the rear edge was a tapering hollow-bodied wooden soundbox, and the crosspiece on top was an elegant S-curve. The flat inner side of the soundbox bore a masterful oil painting of a teeming garden of Eden. Two lovers were listening to the music of a winged, pale blue demon playing his own little harp. The lovers looked familiar. Like Jayjay and Thuy? Impossible. From what Gladax had said about inheriting the harp from her ancestors, the instrument must have been five or six hundred years old.

Thuy took the harp in both hands; although shoulder-high, it felt light. She tiptoed towards the door connecting the tai chi room to the rest of the house.

The harp's sound rose in pitch and-just like a fairy-tale harp-she cried out to Gladax in a woman's voice. "Mistress! Save me!"

Thuy laid her hand across the harp strings. The space-warping tubes tingled against her, but when she pushed forcefully enough they fell still. And now her telepathy was working again. For just a moment she could sense the strange otherworldly mind of the harp. The harp was an intelligent being from another order of reality. Gazing into her mind was like standing at the lip of a high, windy cliff. Thuy grew dizzy; she tottered on her feet. But then a veil dropped and the harp was once again a manageable triangle of wood.

Out in the garden Azaroth had clamped his aunt in a bear-hug. He was talking to her; he was pleading for her to let Thuy be. Good Azaroth.

According to Ond's overly elaborate plan, at this point he and Chu were supposed to appear through a tunnel they'd dug through the floor. But there hadn't been any dogs in the boys' video game simulation of the house. Teeping the street, Thuy saw them backed up against the house's front steps by two huge mastiffs.

Lugging the now silent harp, Thuy made her way through winding hallways to Gladax's front door. The heavy door was locked, so Thuy kicked a big hole in the stucco wall next to the door.

As she emerged, one of the dogs came up the steps. Thuy set down the harp, sprang at the beast and thumped him on the side of his head. The monster shook off the blow; he had a skull like a boulder. But Thuy kept up her attack, raining blows. Yes, the dogs were big, but they were slow. And when Thuy began punching their soft noses, the brutes turned tail, and ran up the street.

"Come on !" Thuy yelled to Ond and Chu, standing there at the bottom of the steps. "Help me carry the harp. We're heading home!"

The three of them trotted two blocks down the hill, Ond holding one end of the painted harp. The dogs were loudly barking-but they weren't going to attack again. At the bend of the street they found a vest-pocket park with a bench and a bed of chrysanthemums. Catching their breath on the bench, the three had a view west over the pastel buildings of the city toward the ocean, the bay, and the Hibrane version of the Golden Gate Bridge. The waters lay sullen and gray below the wintry afternoon sky. But the city looked peaceful and human-scale. It was nice to think there were no digital computers here.

"We have to focus on my Knot now," said Chu.

"Yes," said Thuy. She'd been here-how long? Only an hour by the slow Hibrane clocks-but six hours of her body's time, six hours of Lobrane time. Was Jayjay okay? Surely the Big Pig hadn't released the nants yet, had she?

"I'll be glad to get home," said Ond. He patted the hollow soundbox of the harp, which gave off a resonant echo. "Good work getting this, Thuy. I'm betting it'll make the nants obsolete. You'll strum it and universal extra memory will-unfurl."

"That's what you keep saying," said Thuy, feeling a bit doubtful. "What if Gladax hops down here and kills us? Or follows us back home."

"Azaroth's her only heir," said Ond. "When he really works on her, he can always get her to give in."

Thuy teeped cautiously toward Gladax's garden. The old woman and her nephew were sitting on a bench laughing. Perhaps everything was going to be all right after all. Or-a sudden paranoid thought-maybe this was a triple cross, and the Hibraners were in fact glad to get rid of the magic harp. Maybe the harp wanted Thuy to take it to the Lobrane.

"There's more to this harp than you realize," Thuy told Ond. "She's alive. She's an alien."

"Maybe so," said Ond in a soothing tone, not really believing her. "We have to go forward anyway, Thuy. Our plan is Earth's only hope."

"Your plan, " snorted Thuy. "A fat lot of help you two have been with it so far."

"We're scared of dogs, okay?" said Chu. "Ond's right, it's time to go."

The three of them focused on Chu's Knot, trying to relax enough to enter the interbrane gap. But with all the worries, it was hard to get underway. Hard to get their heads in the right place. They took a break and talked a little more.

"Did you guys see a weird ocean when you came across?" Thuy asked Ond.

"That's the Planck frontier," said Ond. "Physics below the Planck length is a scale-inverted image of the physics above the Planck length. If someone were to shrink down below that foamy frontier, they'd feel like they were expanding into another cosmos. The world of the subdimensions."

"The Hibraners call it Subdee," said Chu. "And those bird-headed men are the subbies. Subbies from Subdee. Thanks to them it's dangerous to jump branes."

"They poke up their heads to eat our information," said Ond.

"More than information," said Chu. "They want to eat our bodies too."

"I hate the subbies," said Thuy.

A single ray of sun broke through the clouds to illuminate the little park.

"I want to jump back right now," said Chu. "I want my orphidnet. Let's ride the sunbeam. That's how to do it. And remember to use my Knot to point you the right way. The subbies aren't the only thing to worry about. You can get lost between the two branes. There's a lot of different directions in hyperspace."