“Is that what you’re saying? KILL?” someone else shouted.

“What do you want from us?”

Fift embraced Shria. Ve folded vir arms around zir, shoving vir forehead into the crook of zir neck. Around them, the anonybodies shoved and roared. Fift was elbowed in the spine, kicked in the calf. Ze almost fell, but Shria pulled zir up.

Ze’d been struck. Zir spine, zir calf—it surely hadn’t been on purpose. But maybe that was worse. They didn’t even notice that they’d hit a Staid.

Shria started to cry. “Oh Kumru,” ve choked, “what’s happening?”

Fift looked up, fearful. Panaximandra held up a hand. “Is that word so terrible? ‘Kill’?” Ve shook vir head and angry tears filled vir eyes and spilled over silently. Ve licked at them as ve spoke. “Oh, how long lives make cowards! People of the world, lust for your now eight hundred expected years has tamed you—this plenitude has made you craven! Give me a million barbarians with eighty-year lifespans, armed with clubs, and I could take this world and set it on fire. I could burn this prison and plant a garden. Oh, my world! My world!”

Fift, at the breakfast table, stared at zir cold soup. Ze covered zir face with zir fists.

“We will be your million!” someone shouted.

“You’re a slackwit,” someone else shouted back.

Squell put vir elbows on the table and leaned in, vir forehead next to Fift’s. “Fift,” ve said gently, forcing confidence into vir voice. “You have to concentrate. Use your words. Fift, nothing is so bad that it can’t be addressed. But you have to explain what’s going on.”

“They’re jumping around and shouting and talking about . . . some kind of war, I guess? It’s like something out of . . .” Fift flushed. It was like the Anger of the Thirty Thousand Scorned Data-Hatchers in the narrative eighth subsection of Melihor’s fourth metacommentary, but of course ze couldn’t say that. “. . . out of history.”

“But we need the Midwives,” someone shouted. “You said yourself! Ungendered babies—”

“Oh, Midwives are precious!” Panaximandra said. “But these Midwives of ours have overreached themselves. They call themselves the parents of society . . . but that is a lie. They cannot guide us. They cannot make us strong. A Midwife is like a placenta: holy, vital, at first you cannot do without it. But to grow strong, you cannot depend on it too long. You must cut it away.”

“War?” Nupolo leaned forward. “What are you talking about, Fift? Is this another performance? More Clowns . . . ?”

“It’s not the Clowns,” Squell said, leaning back, vir voice tight.

Amid the deserted courtyards of Slow-as-Molasses, Fift hurried to keep up with Father Frill and Father Smistria.

“Quit shoving!” someone shouted in the crowd behind Fift; then ze was knocked into Shria. They fell, and Fift snatched at something that looked like a rope. Zir hand closed on rubbery flesh—it was an umbilical cord connecting two of the rent-a-bodies, belly to uterus. The bodies—both red—screamed and fell on top of Fift and Shria.