Fift was still trying to grasp the notion that there might be other worlds, with other people on them, to go to. Not just abstractions in Far History, or ancient sources of incomprehensible Far Technology and obscure allusions in the Long Conversation’s oldest passages, but worlds that existed now. Were there? Was that what Thavé was implying: people . . . if you could even call them people? . . . living somewhere else . . . somewhere Fift couldn’t see, totally unconnected to this world and its inhabitants, its conversations, its ideas? People who couldn’t affect zir no matter what they did; and nothing ze did could affect them. People so separate, so cut off, that there was no way to reach them at all. It was an eerie thought. Part of zir wanted to ask about those other worlds, but the queasy sense of disorientation got stronger as ze contemplated it. Ze hoped Shria wouldn’t go there.

“And you could do that? Survive that kind of trip?” Shria asked Thavé.

“Not in this body. But yes.”

“And are you planning to? Not right now, but . . . later?”

“No, no I’m not. Not if I can avoid it. I don’t intend to lose another world. I want to stay here. I want . . . this.” Ze swung zir arm up, describing the visible arc of habitation structures above them: the beams, vaults, spiral staircases, fountains, arches, byways, slipthreads, whirligigs, crenelated arcs, polypenetrations, hyperbolic stepsurfaces, stickywalls, goopfields, bounceroos, waysweep-vistas, abandonages, wigglewharfs, playglobes, interdecks, jumptubes, sluices, flywheels, and bauble cascades strewn throughout the volume of Fullbelly; connected, supported, and nourished by the invisible web of tiny strands filling the interspace and lit by the great network of glowtubes beneath them, which separated the upper habitation region of Fullbelly from the production regions below.

It was second afternoon here, so the glowtubes’ light was shading now from vaguely pinkish-purple to vaguely violet-indigo, in a spectral diffusion they could see stretching across Fullbelly above. Foo and the below and beyond were just in the middle of that range, bathed in a pure violet light.

“What about—” Shria began.

Then the lights went out.

Chapter 6

6

The whole of Fullbelly was plunged into darkness.

There were screams, then shouts of surprise. Then a beat of silence. Then cacophony: a clatter of forks and spoons and food platters and syringes falling to the floor; bodies slamming into tables and each other; laughter, cursing, angry argument.

It was the glowtubes that had gone suddenly dark. Thousands of tiny light sources still moved through the space between the habitations, illuminating edges in yellow or green or blue, casting strange dim shadows over half-seen surfaces. It looked like a night sky on the surface, if the stars had been parti-colored, wandering, and strewn among strange blocky clouds.