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gray-green twig. The leaf-bedecked twig twitched as if sniffing around for light, then angled itself out away from the Hugginses’ house tree. Three, five, seven more shoots appeared from the ground near the twig. Soon a little thicket was growing upward, the sticks getting fatter as they rose.
    PhiPhi stood off to one side, her face blank, listening down into her uvvy, communing with Zhak and Gov. Though she didn’t talk out loud, her lips were moving and she twitched her hands a little. Meanwhile her lifter beetle was hungrily edging toward Mom’s garden. Frek herded it away. Presently Zhak appeared in the window of Frek’s room, holding up Frek’s wooden top. The watchbird was hovering next to him, its little wings a blur.
    â€œThis thing,” said Zhak, waving the top. “What is it?”
    â€œIt’s a stupid toy that doesn’t work,” called Frek. “You wrap a string around it to try and spin it.”
    â€œIt’s too little, Zhak,” exclaimed PhiPhi. “Don’t be dim. The Anvil is two hundred kilograms and the size of a man’s head. It’s not there. Maybe coming later.”
    â€œI dunno,” said Zhak. “There’s so much kac in this kid’s room….”
    â€œDon’t you turn everything topsy-turvy,” came Mom’s voice from behind Zhak. “It took Frek all morning to get his room picked up. You have no idea how hard it is for him.”
    â€œListen Gov on your uvvy, Zhak!” exclaimed PhiPhi. “Nothing’s manifesting yet, and so we wait. Come out now. Don’t ill-will our clients. Lora Huggins indeed of gog good standing.” The watchbird swooped out of the window and lighted on Frek’s shoulder. He could feel the faint touch of its little claws through the cloth of his shirt.
    â€œHe going to keep an eye on you,” said PhiPhi. “Cute, yes?”
    Frek could see the gray, bright-eyed little bird out of the corner of his eye. It seemed a bit mangy and, no, not cute at all. Its beak was the color of blood. The watchbird’s eyes glared at him, glassy and inscrutable.
    Meanwhile the bases of the new house tree’s branches had merged into a bulging, gnarled trunk that was painfully pushing itself out of the ground. Frek kept on watering it. The new house tree rose up faster and faster. It had a big hole in one side and a smaller hole near it, just the right shapes for a door and a window. The thing grew to the size of a hollow tree-stump two meters across and three meters tall, then stopped. A crop of green-leaved branches sprouted from its lumpy top. The branches were tough and wiry, veined with antenna metal extracted from the soil. The inner walls of the new house tree were flickering and alive. An image of Gov appeared, visible through the door like an oracle in a cave. Gov was presenting himself in the toon form of a stylized First Nations eagle, all red and black and pie-eyed.
    â€œAttention, counselors PhiPhi and Zhak,” said Gov’s toon. “Counselors are to withdraw to the temporary shelter and stand by for further notification. The watchbird will surveillance the Huggins family for events regarding the Anvil. Your inaction is correct in the meanwhile time.” Gov always talked in broken jargon. You saw him on the wall skins every now and then, issuing exhortations and orders. Carb said Gov wasn’t a person at all, and that he’d accidentally evolved from the code for a certain parasitic worm that genomicists had been using as a standard lab specimen years ago. A pinworm from a Quileute village called La Push in the Pacific Northwest.
    â€œTell them to tie up their lifter beetle,” Mom told Gov. “I don’t want him to eat my whole yard and garden.”
    â€œLet it be so,” said Gov, gesturing with a red and black wing. PhiPhi and Zhak settled into their newly grown house tree hut, with the beetle tethered right outside.
    Frek went