“Move it, Thuy,” said Jil, bossily tapping her on the shoulder. “Dry clothes and hot tea.” Even though Jil was frowning, her voice was creepily calm. “Jayjay has to help Craigor. After all, it’s thanks to you that those attack shoons are coming here.”

“I’d better get ready,” agreed Jayjay.

So Thuy let Jil lead her into the long cabin, cozy and lit by solar-charged bud-lamps. Jil put some water on the stove while Thuy took a seat at a round piezoplastic table growing from the deck. Visible in the orphidnet were ad icons for Stank deodorant and BigBox furniture, which meant this was a top-level episode of the Founders show. Thuy was hoping for a cozy chat with Jil, but the other woman seemed preoccupied.

“Why don’t I file my report with Bim Brown right now?” suggested Thuy finally.

“Uh, good idea. Here’s Bim’s link. While you do that, I’ll check on the kids.” The living quarters were arranged in three blocks: first the common area with a bathroom, then the kids’ two small bedrooms facing each other across a hall, and beyond that the parents’ large bedroom. Thuy wondered where she and Jayjay were supposed to sleep.

The instant Thuy clicked the link Jil had given her, she had Bim Brown on a private message line, the chief sitting amid a din of background noise in a cop-station office with file cabinets, chairs, award plaques, a gun rack, and old-school display screens showing arrays of faces and annotated maps. Chief Brown looked very plausible, but Thuy felt suspicious. Why had the link worked so fast? Temporarily leaving the worries for her scenario-spinning beezies to analyze, she pressed on.

“I know where Jeff Luty is,” Thuy told Chief Brown. “I saw him in the ExaExa labs.”

“That’s a big break for us,” he answered, his deep voice reassuring. “Don’t go away. I’ll open up a notarized encryption channel so you can record your account. Here it is.”

A sort of funnel appeared, and Thuy recounted her sighting of Luty. To speed things up, she pasted in some material directly from “Losing My Head,” which happened to include an image of Luty with his lank ponytail. There was no reason that legal evidence couldn’t take the form of a poetic rant.

“Excelente,” said Brown when she was done. “We’ll try and bag Luty tomorrow morning. With any luck, he uses deadly force to resist arrest, my officers reply in kind, and Too Dibbs doesn’t get the chance to pardon him. Case frikkin’ closed.”

“You’re telling me this?” said Thuy, surprised.

“What it is. Luty tried to kill every single person on Earth with those nants. I’d call that genocide. And I’m hearing he’s pumped to do it again.”

“Can I come and watch the raid?”