Predoria had few connections, according to lookup. No cohort—ve had never even had a trial cohort, despite vir age. Ve had collected a few votes of condemnation, for sloth and misplaced aggression, from the most generic rating agencies; but in general, ve had lived vir life at the periphery, beyond the notice of almost everyone. Ve had standing challenges out to over a hundred totally inappropriate Vails of various stations, none of whom, apparently, had ever bothered to reply. Ve’d served as a fight reactant at the mats vemself, for a few brief periods, but vir ratings there were too low. So ve had ended up here, specializing in smelling lotions: vir sense of smell, apparently, was well developed, and smell was the hardest sense to engineer.

No bookies bothered offering individual bets on Predoria; ve was aggregated in a couple of broad collective indexes of unattached socially peripheral Vails, and another of marginally rated industrial reactants.

The question wasn’t whether such people would collapse, but how many, and by when.

Audience was surging: eighty thousand, then ninety thousand people watching Fift gape at Predoria in the reactants’ hall.

“And . . . and you apologize?” Fift asked Predoria.

“No,” Predoria said, grinning wolfishly. “No, it was fun.” Vir fabricator pinged. Ve looked down, took out a small vial of lotion, and smeared it onto the back of vir hand.

“You must be so worried about vem,” Dobroc said.

Fift started. For a moment ze thought Dobroc meant Predoria—worried about the confrontation—but of course ze meant Shria. “I—I can’t watch vem. What’s happening? Have the Peaceables come?”

Dobroc frowned. “You’re not watching?”

Fift swallowed, feeling a chill. Dobroc would be disappointed in zir; ze’d want Fift to be the noble, heroic friend who’d faced down Umlish and Vvonda for Shria, not someone so cowardly ze couldn’t even watch. “I’m . . . I can’t . . . ve told me to . . . Dobroc, I’ve done everything wrong. It’s not like it is in your wonderful”—ze waved at the display lying on the couch—“uh, artwork; I mean, I shamed vem, or something. Vvonda told me not to interfere, and I was too stubborn—”

“During the riot? No, you listened to Vvonda!” Dobroc said. “You found Shria, you went to vem, and then you sat like Mundarn at the feast—joyful and fearful, letting go, giving vem only ‘room to fall and a heartfriend watching’—it was perfect, Fift!”

Fift had to blink at the strange insistent burn of tears behind zir eyes; that was just what ze’d wanted to do, and Dobroc had seen it. Fift felt a physical yearning to pull zir closer, to snuggle into zir embrace, to let zir beating heart slow down with Dobroc’s.