The Metatron was not amused. “In the years before his death, El perceived the need for such improved channels and funded research programs aimed at tunneling through the barrier of Radical Semantic Disconnect. He laid in place infrastructure for such communication to be further developed and exploited following his death. While imperfect, these modalities function well enough for us to understand that the recent activities of the aforementioned Process have created serious disruption to activities being undertaken by El that are of considerable importance not only to him but to you as well.”

This last part was kind of a mysterious assertion that the robot seemed in no temper to elaborate upon.

“Can you say more about the nature of these activities and of how they’ve been disrupted?” Corvallis asked. He threw Zula a look.

The two of them had been dealing with each other for so long that she could guess what he was thinking and where he was going with the question.

Currently, time in Bitworld was running somewhat slower than in Meatspace. A few months earlier in Bitworld time, something had happened on the grounds of the palatial structure that Dodge had built and that El had occupied. A gap had been made in a wall. Two processes—anomalous ones—had gone out through it and not returned.

In Meatspace, this had happened right around the time of Maeve’s death. Being enormously distracted, neither Zula nor Corvallis had paid much attention. The weeks since had been taken up with mourning and memorials.

But if she was now reading Corvallis right—and she was pretty good at reading him—he was wondering whether the departure of the two anomalous processes from El’s domain was related to whatever it was the Metatron had come here to gripe about.

“A direct, planned intervention by the renascent process identified with Richard Forthrast,” said the Metatron, “literally in El’s backyard, tampering with a developmental program that has been in the works for decades.”

“Give us a minute, please,” C-plus said, and put both hands on the armrests of his chair to push himself up. Zula followed suit. But the Metatron was quicker. “Of course,” it said, and stood up and walked out of the room.

Corvallis turned to look at her.

“Those two weird ones,” Zula said. “In the Garden, or whatever you think of it as.”

“I think of it as the R & D lab where Verna made new self-replicating processes, a long time ago,” Corvallis said. “Starting with birds and bees. The two processes we’re talking about now were much more ambitious. It took her forever to make them. Dodge was somehow involved.”

“Can we track them?”

“That’s all we can do.”

“Who’s paying for them?”