“I mean, I would have gone,” Fift told the group on the stairs. “I would have gone to the Pole. But they wanted me to say it was all Shria’s fault. And I couldn’t do that.” Fift felt a tightness in zir chest, as if something invisible was constricting zir lungs.

“Of course not,” Morinti said fiercely, as if ze understood. Fift felt the invisible grip loosen.

“It’s terrible!” Emim said. Ze tugged nervously at zir robes. “It’s so unfair!”

“These doors aren’t going to hold long,” Ellix said. “None of you currently have enough clout to delay the dissolution process. In an hour, these rooms will be shoulder to shoulder with the worst kind of intrusive thrill-seekers and claim-grabbers. Given how things are going, there may be physical battles until the new squatgrant gets sorted out.”

“Physical—!” Arevio said.

“It’s happening all over. We’re just spread too thin right now. We need to get you all dispersed, as far from here as possible, in as secure and private spaces as possible, in . . . well, it looks like we have between twenty-four and thirty-three minutes.”

“I just need to tell Shria what’s going on,” Fift said, on the stairs, “and find out if ve’s okay.”

Morinti and Bojum exchanged a glance. “Well,” Bojum said, “I mean, you just did tell vem. Ve is, you know, watching.”

Fift swallowed. Of course ve was—along with four hundred million others . . .

“Spin-Nupolo cohort,” Ellix said, “is going to take in three of you. We would of course take more—we’re family, after all”—Ellix’s chin bobbed slightly upward, a tiny gesture of defiance—“but three’s our best guess of what we can absorb without busting our own squatright apart like a ripe bean. So you each need to be asking trustworthy local contacts—ideally second- or third-level contacts, or even fourth; nobody too closely correlated with Iraxis—to take you in for the next thirty-some hours.”

“Oh,” Emim said, gathering zir robes into a bunch at zir chest, zir eyes wide as bounceballs. “Oh, I just got a message! A message! From . . . from . . .”—ze gasped for breath—“from Shria!”

“What does it say?” Morinti said. “What does it say?”

Emim grabbed Fift’s shoulder. “‘Head for the docks!’” ze said. “Come on!”

They ran.

“If you can ride out the next two or three days,” Ellix said, “and nobody is caught and mobbed in public and there’s no other incidents, we think the buzz will have peaked and—”

Emim held on to Fift and Bojum and Morinti each took a side to guard. Together, they clattered down the stairs.

{Running around can only lead to increased audience and further disgrace.} Fift’s social nuance agent sent.

{Oh, so now you’re available?} Fift sent back.