In a bespoke fabricorium in Ozinth, a mammoth custombodied Vail (ve would have dwarfed Predoria) was running amok, naked and bloody, smashing glass crucibles with vir horns; in Tilgun, the finals of the Scuttlebank Invitational were being held; in the Manysmall, Perm and Trink were staging footage for Shria’s favorite show, Goopfield Pratfalls, Perm balanced on a rickety assemblage of packing cases above a bubbling sinkhole while Trink peppered vem with rubago fruits; Thavé was on a talk show, explaining something; crowds were clashing with Peaceables in Izist as some kind of Cirque-show devolved into a riot; the archives of Middleborn at Three Hundred Why Mother Why?! held millions of heartbeats of footage Fift hadn’t seen yet . . .

Under the best magnification the field pickups in Tentative Scoop could manage, the orange stoppergoo was a mass of slick globules locked against one another, expanding and contracting to funnel air to those trapped inside, as if the whole mass was breathing. Shria was under there, invisible, hidden.

Fift started down the stairs to the breakfast room and found Smistria, at the bottom, glowering up at zir.

“What, exactly,” Smistria spluttered, “do you think you’re doing?”

“What do you mean?” Fift asked.

The breeze from the tunnel, the exhalation of the muscle-engines, fluttered zir robes as ze stepped out onto the platform.

The two Peaceables ze’d passed before, holding tubes of stoppergoo, turned to look at zir.

“What do I mean? What do I mean? I mean that your Father Squell just spent a thousand heartbeats gently and thoroughly explaining to you why—when the entire world is spinning itself to pieces, and our cohort is at risk because of your inappropriate behavior—you need to stay home and stop sending to Shria Flowblocking Fnax of name registry Are You Void-Spurned Kidding Me . . . and you ignored vem on both counts!”

On the platform, the light was purpling as first evening came to an end. Audience flooded in: ten thousand, fifteen thousand.

“It’s getting late,” the Peaceable on Fift’s left said. Ze had the velvety smooth skin of the very old and eyes that glinted like mica flecks in granite. Ze spoke each word as if it was an entire sentence. “You should go home.”

Fift moved past the Peaceable, eyes down, stepping onto the stairs. How was ze going to get to Stiffwaddle Somatic Fashions? Would a public skywhale let zir on? Ze ascended the stairs towards home, and towards the local docks of Slow-as-Molasses.

“Ve’s in trouble,” Fift said to Smistria. “I never said I wouldn’t send to vem. Ve needs me.”