Moom Parandime Ihu, textilist: If the esteemed articulator expects us to sympathize with the sort of perverted scum who would spill blood on a white shift . . . !

Burum Apatox: The specific provocation is beside the point. The point is that a line has been crossed. We are all—all of us with more than one body, anyway—tied to the polysomatic network. For it to be weaponized, however extreme the circumstances . . .

Tusha Ivetris Fnax, child: Don’t you understand that my sibling was defending the Peaceable? And these matter-sucking peacebreakers . . .

Burum Apatox: Of the many comments on this skein, I have accentuated—with some ironic satisfaction—this one, left by the eldersibling of one Shria Qualia Fnax of name registry Digger Chameleon 2. For the edification of children and the uninformed, allow me to clarify: the difference between brutalizing a Peaceable while physically rioting in full view of the world, and just . . . physically rioting in full view of the world, while a Peaceable gets brutalized nearby, is . . . well, I won’t say it’s nonexistent, but . . .

Moom Parandime: the unbridled gall, to show up among respectable interlocutors and defend vir sibling’s brigandry! As if the maintenance of harmony requires such obscene displays . . .

Pedux Mirandum Garabo, familial topology reactant: I don’t know why this Fnax cohort was allowed to raise these two in the first place after their earlier failures and arrogances, which are visible to anyone who bothers to ask their agents. This kind of softness and leniency and drift—this sort of abdication of duty by our Midwives—is precisely why we have ended up in this chaotic . . .

Tusha: Don’t you understand, they were trying to issue a challenge. They did everything right! They did everything they were supposed . . .

Chapter 17

17

{Shria . . .}

No response.

{Shria!}

Standing at the edge of the couch, Fift could hear a whisper of white noise seeping, probing, through the noise-canceling field.

Dobroc watched Fift, the whorls of zir intricate skin deepening, tensing, around zir eyes.

“Ve’s not answering,” Fift said. “What in Kumru’s name did they do to vem?”

“Give vem a little time,” Dobroc said. “It’s going to be—”

“No,” Fift said. “No, ve’s not all right. I have to go to vem. I have to go there!”

Pip stared out the porthole of a skywhale, expressionless beside Fift. Pip was deep in the feed, enmeshed with zir automated agents, searching for explanations, precedents, adjudication strategies.

{Are you . . . finding anything?} Fift asked.

{The noose is tightening around us.} Pip sent, not turning from the porthole. Ze sat like a chalk statue, like a box that has sheltered something in transport, after the thing has been delivered.

Fift almost wished Pip would blame zir for what happened with Predoria; that would have been safe ground.

{Are we . . . going to find the third assailant?} Fift asked.