Adrift in a terrible void. What had Thavé said in the pavilion where they drank mangareme fluffies before the lights had first gone out? Star-ships. Like a star-ship setting off to dig new burrows, burrows into other stones, circling other stars . . . launching, leaving, setting off, never to return.

The scrap of Fift, the remnant—not Fift, never Fift, Fift was gone, asunder—this broken piece launched itself up onto its two feet, and ran. Screaming, shaking, it ran around the flailing bodies, towards the bat at the upper spars.

There was nothing else. No other place, no past or future, no self, no Fift. Only stumbling, running, falling, rising, staggering. Like a little scrap of world far from every light, far from every gravitic haven, in the cold between the stars; on beetly wings soft-kissed, in swift unflight, for flight requires a gravity well . . .

Fifty billion viewers.

At the end of the voyage, if you were incredibly lucky, you might have a world again. A world pretty much like what you already had in the first place.

The thing that had once been part of Fift crawled into the robot bat. The door squeezed shut behind it and it collapsed. There was a pull in the gut as the bat took flight. Then the bat was in the air over countless habitations and neighborhoods, and the polysomatic network took hold again.

Memories, sensations, slammed together, roughly reweaving Fift. It was more painful this time, more disjointed.

Ze saw Squell cradling zir head in vir lap—not smiling, not frowning, just peaceful and clear-eyed—and then passed out.

Chapter 21

21

“Trickster’s mane, my dear staidchild,” Pom Politigus said, through the door of the robot bat. Zir muscular purple body frowned; zir curvaceous ruddy body looked delicately amused. “You’ve brought us quite a bit of trouble.”

Fift’s head swam. Ze lurched to the door; then zir legs gave way, and ze plunged out of the bat.

Shria caught zir.

Ve lifted zir, scooped zir legs up in one arm, cradled zir shoulders with the other. Fift’s head flopped against Shria’s four soft breasts. Vir hair, like a veil of fire, enclosed zir face. Ve smelled like honey, like woodsmoke in a surface forest, like solace.

“Thank fucking Kumru,” ve said, tucking Fift’s head under vir chin and swinging around toward the entrance. There was a tightness in Shria’s voice, as of tears held back; vir face was wet with them. “I didn’t think you’d make it, Fift. When you fell the second time . . .”

“Come along,” Pom Politigus said. Zir muscular purple body frowned more deeply; zir curvaceous ruddy body stretched its arms into the air. Ze was doubly naked, pushing the limits of fashion with rather startling genitals, multicolored swallowtails that swooped down almost to the ground. “Let’s get zir into privacy, at least.”

Squell was gone.