“Voids spurn Stogma,” Shria said. The bruises on vir triceps shaded from yellow to black beneath lavender skin. There was the rough ridge of a just-sealed laceration by vir elbow. That kind of damage wouldn’t propagate polysomatically, so this body must have been in the first riot, the one with Panaximandra.

Fift’s hand—as if it were a rogue body, still severed from the rest of Fift—reached out towards the scar at Shria’s elbow, hovering a fingerbreadth from it.

“Ve sold us out to save vir family,” Shria said. “I mean, I get it. My parents—” Ve squeezed vir eyes shut, squeezed vir jaw tight, an involuntary shudder passing through vir body. “I can’t let it happen again. I can’t let them lose another child. I can’t let them lose each other.” Vir eyes flew open. “Oh, fuck. I’m sorry.”

Fift shrugged. Minth’s heart was a stone. A stone in flight, crossing the void, alone; a stone in which we dig our burrows. “Yeah, I . . . kind of broke everything.”

Shria grabbed Fift’s hands. “No. No. You stood your ground. It’s not the answer to just cave in, to let them win. This fight isn’t over. Stogma . . . voids take Stogma’s weakness!”

Shria was holding zir hands, vir face close. Vir eyes, white and black and gemlike orange—it was as if Fift had never seen anyone’s eyes before. The sleek glitter of the lab, Fift’s own ungainly bodies, chaos at the docks of Foo, riots in Wallacomp, habitations hanging by strands in the vault of Fullbelly, the cold scouring void beyond the planet—they all retreated to the distant periphery of Fift’s attention.

For a moment, the air was charged between them. Then Fift forced zirself to look away, and Shria looked away too, giving zir room.

“Thanks,” Fift said. “I don’t know if that’s why I did it, though.”

“Yeah, okay,” Shria said, quietly.

“I mean, yes, I wanted to say ‘fuck you’ to the Midwives,” Fift said. “I wanted to stand up for . . . something. But I don’t know what ‘This fight isn’t over’ means. What fight? I don’t know what your boss was talking about, or those people on the docks who were quoting us.” Ze looked back at Shria. “I didn’t do this to join a revolution. Or start one.”

“Oops,” Shria said, grinning.

Fift laughed, because ve had a point, and because it was absurd to start revolutions by accident, and because it felt good to be here with Shria: to admit the truth, to tell each other secrets again. Ze held Shria’s hands, and rested zir forehead on vir chest.

After a moment, Shria cleared vir throat. “So, uh, in that case . . . did you do it for me?”

Fift flushed, and looked up, and met vir eyes. “What if I did?”

Shria’s eyes widened.