Panaximandra. “As if life was a beast you could master—”

“One day,” Thavé said, zir voice heavy, “there’s a flaw I haven’t foreseen . . .”

“They have supplanted you in your own minds, making you grateful for your slavery!” Panaximandra roared, tears streaming down vir face. “You owe them nothing! Give me a million barbarians with eighty-year lifespans—”

Thavé stared out across the pavilion. “Something virulent . . .”

A silver-armored hand, clutching a scrap of velvet. “Armed with clubs—”

“. . . that spreads through the culture and takes it down . . .”

“—and I could take this world and set it on fire!”

The riot, the roar, and Fift curled up on the ground—

—Vvonda’s voice, over the image: “You shouldn’t be there, staidkid. You shouldn’t have followed vem in.”

—forehead against the byway, arms covering zir head, Shria gone.

“You’re disgusting!” Umlish snarled.

Vvonda’s icy eyes in vir flushed purple face. “You should get the airless all-sucking void out.”

Elbow cracking into Fift’s temple, zir body crumpling down—

“It’s no place for you.”

But ze had been there. In the middle of that. Ze hadn’t run.

—flowing down, chest to zir knees, knees back up, back onto zir feet—

“Don’t spit all your poison today, Umlish,” Shria said. “You might run out, and then what are you going to do tomorrow?”

“Vvonda,” Fift said, stepping out from beneath a purple crenelated privacy cone. There was a tiny, dark bruise on the side of zir head where the elbow had struck zir. Vvonda, towering and elegant, already about to push vir way through the partygoers, turned back, flinging up an exasperated hand.

In the roiling, struggling sea of rioters, one of the Vails holding one of Shria’s arms yanked back an anonymized blue leg to kick vem. Fift’s leg flowed out, lightly, gently placing zir foot against the foot of the Vail. The Vail paused. Shria roared.

“Your job,” Pip said, “is to think, to plan, and to order. Your job is to be the still center, the basis, the core.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Fift asked, and Vvonda’s eyes hardened dangerously.

Fift had been there. The world had unraveled around zir, and ze had endured.

“This plenitude,” Panaximandra said, “has made you craven! What have you taken as yours? Be unsatisfied, be thirsty!”

“This revolution, this unraveling,” Fift said. “You like it. It’s made for you.”

The Cirque’s voice, thundering among the habitations: “Have you wondered if this is the world for you?”

“Midwives and feedgardeners and adjudicators may hold things together,” Pom Politigus said, as Vvonda frowned, considering, reining in vir first, incredulous, angry reaction. “But to whom do we look to stir things up?”

“You need to start loosening the stranglehold of consensus,” Thavé said.