First there were just missing bits—Shria had wanted to see where vir eldersibling Tusha was, and couldn’t find vem, the kind of thing you could blame on some overeager piece of anti-surveil, gone awry and taking out all the feed pickups in a whole block. But the blankness grew, until more and more of the world had been swallowed. With zir own eyes, Fift could see the byway where ze walked with Shria through the milling crowds. With zir own eyes, ze could see the breakfast room where zir parents were arguing. The rest was a fabric ripped to shreds.

It was worse than the lights going out. Fift had seen the darkness of full night before, when camping on the surface. It was eerie seeing it under Fullbelly’s roof, but also stunning—as if a black velvet cloth, adorned with resplendent jewels, had been thrown over the jumble of habitations. But there was nothing entertaining about this.

Lookup was broken, too. Ze’d ask about some passing stranger, and nothing would come . . . then hundreds of heartbeats later, when the body had long since passed, the answer would flickeringly, haltingly emerge. It was like the lost hour at Stiffwaddle Somatic Fashions, turned inside out: instead of Fift being hidden from the world, the world was hidden from zir. The crowds thronging the elevators, the people trudging home along the byways or arguing in courtyards—they were unidentified bodies, nameless, unknowable.

They tried to get their agents to plot them a reasonable route home, but the agents were muddled, recalcitrant: they kept changing their minds. Finally, Fift and Shria set off on a byway heading away from Foo . . . but at least it took them toward a long unbroken stretch of upward staircase that seemed clear. Fift held Shria’s hand.

“And how does that have anything to do with the Cirque?” Father Frill broke in, cutting Father Smistria short. Ve slapped the side of the doorway—ve hadn’t even made it to the table yet—with vir open hand. “How can you compare—”

“It has everything to do with it!” Father Smistria said, leaning back in vir seating harness, which squeaked. “The Cirques are a remnant of the Vail-supremacist, militarist leagues of—”

“Oh, come on,” Father Nupolo said.

“Please, Smi, this is embarrassing! Crankish conspiracy propaganda!” Frill said. “I would think that you—”

“It’s history, is what it is!” Smistria roared.

“Oh, you and your history!”

“I just hope,” Father Squell said, rubbing vir thumbs together nervously, “that if it is the Cirque, that, you know, that they’ll be all right, because it would be such a shame if we didn’t . . . have them. I mean, everyone loves the Cirque. But if they did take down the feed, of course . . . I imagine there will be . . . consequences . . .”

“Why would the Cirque take down the feed?” Frill cried. “Don’t you think they want their performance discussed?”

“‘Performance,’” Smistria sneered. “Ha! Who else would take it down . . . ?”