That’s what the world’s lookup showed. It refused to list Windswept Sheltering as zir address, and was apparently too prudish to regard Dobroc and Cemerid and Fift as even a provisional triad. Even Cemerid, at eighty, had not yet properly reached zir Courting Century; and Dobroc and Fift were scandalously young.

Gingerly, ze let zir agents sift through zir queue; ze didn’t even want to think about how many messages they must be examining. Ze wasn’t in the mood for politics or gossip or news, or the tentative friendship solicitations of colleagues and comrades of years past. The unavoidable message—the one the yellow light had dragged zir out here for—was from Father Grobbard.

{Affectionate greetings to my estimable eldest child Fift Brulio Spin-Nupolo-Iraxis. It is with pleasurable anticipation of your reading these lines, as well as an acute and poignant sense of your absence, that I now write you.

{Although you have not (to my knowledge) made this explicit, your current mode of habitation suggests a wish to keep our communications within moderate bounds. I admit that this is difficult for me, Fift, but I comply. Nonetheless, I do not doubt that you wish to continue to be informed of matters of importance regarding our family.

{When you last visited us, five months ago, little Lumlu was still one-bodied. I am sure that the issue of vir somatic integration has burrowed into your concern, even if your mode of habitation makes it difficult for you to follow vir progress. I am gratified to be able to report success. Ve awakened last week and is adapting to three-bodied life with what appears to be great natural facility. Vir state is still somewhat fragile, but the pedagogical experts say that ve is in a condition where visits by family would not subject vem to any distress. In addition, ve has been asking for you.

{I have no doubt that Lumlu Mageria Spin-Nupolo-Iraxis of name registry Blue Fenugreek 12 will be grateful for your presence and that you see it as a pleasurable duty to attend vem. I have therefore taken the liberty of instructing this message to alert me upon your perusal of it, and have instructed it also to then arrange for immediate transportation, via robot bat, under the auspices of Spin-Nupolo-Iraxis cohort.

{With great regard, and with serene satisfaction at the prospect of your visit, I remain, your affectionate Father, Grobbard Erevulios Spin-Nupolo-Iraxis of name registry Amenable Perambulation 2.}

Fift exhaled. Grobbard hadn’t even grudgingly saluted—or mentioned—Dobroc or Cemerid, and all that “mode of habitation” stuff . . . wow. And to have simply ordered Fift a robot bat immediately upon receipt of the message! As if you had to snatch Fift when you could and shepherd zir around attentively, or ze would escape through the nearest exhaust shaft.