Jayjay thought for a minute, consulting his simulation beezies, and then he laid the machete on the deck behind him and hunkered beside the pelican. “Talk to me,” he said.

“Ready for a private message stream?” said the pelican.

“Let Thuy and Craigor hear, too,” said Jayjay.

“And us,” said Momotaro.

“Not you kids,” said Jil. “You need to get back in bed. It’s too cold out here.” She shuddered. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Aw, Mom.”

“Come on.” Jil and the kids disappeared into the cabin.

“Here we go,” said the pelican to Thuy, Jayjay, and Craigor, the three of them squatting around him. Overhead the clouds were breaking up and the moon was shining through, big and bright, just past full.

The data flowed in, a mental movie in three scenes. As soon as Thuy realized what she was seeing, she began forwarding it to Chief Bim Brown.

The first scene shows Sonic on the day he was abducted, October 21, two weeks before the election. Sonic is closed in by the quantum-mirrored walls of the ExaExa labs, sitting at a long white table drinking a big mug of coffee, still in his red T-shirt with his pleated leather coat on the table beside him.

One wall is covered with the teleport grill, the opposite wall holds a door, and the side walls are mounted with four view screens simulating natural phenomena: cracking mud, wind-tossed branches, a beach fire, and a waterfall.

Set into a niche like an altar beneath the bonfire screen is a smooth-cornered white plastic box bearing the ExaExa beetle logo and a single red button on its side. The box has intricate latches on its lid.

Jeff Luty is talking to Sonic. He’s still gangly, but he’s put on some weight, living alone in his lab. His wavy, unwashed hair is drawn into a ponytail. He wears a bracelet of colored oval stones around his wrist. The stones are incised to look like beetles. His skin is unhealthy, almost gray. He has plastic ants on his chin and cheeks, but his ropy chapped lips show. He licks his upper lip, then compulsively applies some waxy lip balm from a tube.

“What’s with the ants, Jeff?” says Sonic.

“A visual pun,” says Luty, his plain face forming a faint smile. “I’m in personal crunch mode to find a nant design that orphids and code-hackers can’t trash. I’m farming a few thousand evolutionary algorithms. The formic minibots on my face are ant-shaped shoons loaded with sample nant nanocodes. They’re a fake beard, too.”

“Like you’d go outside wearing plastic ants?” says Sonic.

“Well, no, not while I’m indicted for capital charges,” says Luty. “With my picture in all the post offices. That’s fame, huh? I’m counting on Dick Too Dibbs to pardon me. He’d better. My ads are flipping the election.”

“So what do you want with me?”