Thuy sat on the cave floor, gathering her wits. It made her sick to be so far from Jayjay in his time of need. Was he really going to be okay? She was half tempted to jump right back to the Lobrane. Of course, then she’d have to run the gauntlet of the subbies again. Come on, Thuy, now that you’re in the Hibrane, find Ond and invent a defense against the nants. That’s what you came for.

The stone beneath her felt crumbly; she could poke her finger right into it. Might she tunnel to the surface? Although her orphids had disappeared when she arrived, the universal Hibrane telepathy had given her the ability to see through walls. The telepathic images were richer and more true-to-life than the orphidnet images had been.

Thuy found a thin spot in the cave wall right above a dog-sized boulder on the ground. A mere six inches of foamy rock separated her from a chimneylike vent leading directly to the surface. She pulled the sleeves of her red plaid coat down over her hands and began scraping at the wall; the friable stone gave way like styrofoam or cheese. As well as being less dense, the matter moved more slowly here. The chunks of rock were drifting to the floor in slow motion.

“Huh, huh! Dig, dig!” said Thuy, recalling the phrase from a comic strip Kittie had admired. If she’d been at home with the orphidnet beezies, she could have instantly located an archived copy of Mole. But the universal telepathy of the Hibrane was nothing like so well organized.

Thuy dug on, muttering and chuckling, happy to be doing something. The rocks chanted their transformations; the air exulted in its motion-eddies; Thuy’s fingers gloated over their strength. In a minute she’d reached the chimney vent. Light spilled down from twenty meters above. She clambered up the shaft like an invading underworld gnome, her gold piezoplastic Yu Shu shoes finding purchase on the cracks and crevices of the shaft’s overgrown walls.

Thuy emerged into a summer day. Hot, around noon. She doffed her plaid coat. A moai statue loomed overhead, five or six times as big as the ones in the Lobrane. The grasses and field flowers were level with her waist. Surveying the giganticized island landscape, Thuy deduced that in the Hibrane she was effectively one foot tall.

There were other differences. The nearby moai statue had wider eyes than the ones she’d seen before; the figure’s lips were parted to show square basalt teeth. The star-shaped flowers in the grass were pink instead of yellow, the grass blades were more sharply curved. And the Hibrane Pacific waves were breaking in slow slow motion, with the surf’s sound dialed down to a deep bass boom.