Fift did. But the idea was nonsensical: dragging this gentle staidkid, this Long Conversation prodigy and secret clip-op artist, this Thavé-watcher with dramatic dreams, out with zir into the barren periphery, where ruin awaited. “Yeah, your parents would love that.”

Dobroc stood. “But Fift—” There was more, but it was swallowed by the roar, because Fift was now moving through the deafening churn of the muscle-engines and their acrid sweat-stink, through the scuttling trashrats and amber light of the murky, feed-opaque tunnels.

Away from the gentle couch, the spice-sap smell, the soft leathery labyrinth of Dobroc’s hands.

{Shria, talk to me.} ze sent again.

Maybe ze should have embraced Dobroc, at least. It might be the last, the only time.

Ze hadn’t even said goodbye. Ze could send, but it would be in zir logs; in Dobroc’s logs, too. Zir parents would see it. Eighty parents! And ze was the latterborn, their prodigy, their project; they might have two or three of them reading zir logs full-time.

The roar of the muscle-engines and the breeze from the wall-lungs flapped Fift’s robes as ze ran, feet splashing in the tepid puddles of condensation.

No answer from Shria.

In the skywhale, a seven-hundred-year-old middleborn Vail, dressed in feathers as if coming from a party, began to sob. Pip glanced over at vem, irritated, and closed zir eyes. It felt like the air around the passengers was clotting: Vails burying their faces in one another’s necks or twitching like trapped animals; Staids stiffening, staring fixedly from the portholes.

Vvonda’s and Bluey’s heads were up out of the goop. Vvonda looked haggard, distant, like a cracked eggshell. Bluey was sobbing. Still no Shria.

Striated planes of gray hanging in midair, limned by the greenish light of mold-graffiti (“Spin Like Foo Babies,” “No One Was Here,” “Imagine Resistance” . . . ).

Fift got out of bed and walked into the hall. It was empty; zir Fathers were downstairs in the breakfast room. Ze avoided watching them over the house feed; who knew what they were saying? Ze didn’t want to hear. But ze felt very alone.

Beyond the surging, humming tubes of liquid that lined the walls of the tunnel, its mouth beckoned, amber with the light of first evening.

Standing in the apartment hallway, there was a temptation to push zir other bodies away, damp the connections, the way ze used to when ze was little—to be safe in at least one place, here in the silence. Or to melt into the feed, ignore all zir bodies, and dissolve zirself into the world kaleidoscope.