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.”