Mother Pip paused by the doorway of the room where Fift’s Staid Fathers were debating. Ze gave Fift a guarded smile, raising an eyebrow, inspecting Fift as if confirming by eye what ze had seen over the house feed. It was exactly the expression ze had when ze supervised the unfolding of a satisfyingly nonlinear sequence of banking-historical transactions. Ze nodded and walked on.

Fift could not breathe. The three Staid Fathers politely averted their eyes; the two Vail Mothers cheering Lumlu didn’t notice. Chalia came into the room, picking vir way around the playpit.

“What?” Fift asked Shria. “Why?”

“Why do you fucking think, you nutrient-flow-blocking, squandering, void-spurned, sisterless excuse for a spoon-passer! Because I miss you! Because missing you is like an itch contracted by rolling around naked in a field of some toxic surface plant. Because if you’re so stubborn as to hole yourself up in this . . . this place, and not come out for months, and you’re in such a Kumru-abhorred hurry to play cohort that you’ll only—”

“Shria,” Fift said. “Shria, stop.” The pressure in zir chest, like some great beast was standing on it. “You can’t do it like this. You can’t do it for the wrong reasons. If you don’t believe in the Shelterings and you don’t believe in us making a cohort now—”

“Stop being so arrogant!” Shria said. “Stop being such a dogmatic . . .” Ve threw vemself from the couch-floor to vir feet and stood staring. “What do you know about what I believe?”

Fift swallowed. “Well—”

“Of course the Iraxis parents,” Mulis said, vir eyes still on Lumlu, who had chased a spider under an overhanging ledge and was cautiously closing in with all three of vir bodies, “all miss you far more than they will admit. You should know that, Fift. It would be different if you were simply off somewhere in the world. Not even at home, you know, but just somewhere one could see you . . . and not, well, swallowed up into . . .”

Again, Egathelie reached across Fift to lay vir hand on Mulis’s shoulder. “But you’re here now,” ve said brightly, “and so this evening, we should all just enjoy ourselves!”

Shria drew a ragged breath. “I was never opposed to the Shelterings. I just don’t think they’re the only answer! If the whole energy of the liberation movement is channeled into playing cohort and putting up fancy wallpaper, that’s a disaster. But if they’re part of something, a new diversity, a new relationship to the feed . . .” Ve waved an arm. “Fift, you confuse what I believe with what I can bring myself to do. What I said before, years ago—well, I just couldn’t imagine myself in here, cut off from the world, stationary and . . . waiting . . . !”

“So what changed?” Fift said.