Tickets . . . Wait. Ze checked the flickering feed for Ticket Holders, and yes: the Cirque was so popular that even with the feed collapsing like this, lists of Ticket Holder locations were mirrored everywhere. There was zir own location, and there was (what was vir name registry? Digger something . . . Digger Chameleon . . . ? There . . . ) Shria! So ve would be two bodylengths or so to zir (which way was polewards?) . . . left . . . Sort of. Ze pulled zir feet under zir.

“Grobby, ze’s not saying anything,” Father Squell said. “Grobby . . . I don’t know where ze is.” Ve turned to Grobbard, and collapsed against zir, pressing vir forehead against Grobbard’s chest.

“Hmm. Yes,” Father Grobbard said, stroking Squell’s scalp. “Well, let’s give zir another moment to respond.” Ze kissed Squell’s head beside vir silver spikes, then took a sip of zir soup. “‘Unraveling: A Revolution’ indeed. Perhaps we’re like a carefully stitched fabric that Thavé has been fussing over for twenty thousand years. And perhaps ze just couldn’t resist pulling at a loose thread.”

“Oh, Kumru!” Squell sat up shock-straight, vir eyes unfocused. Ve’d found the view of the byway. “Fift, are you in that?!”

Chapter 8

8

The party at Darnadi’s house was packed. Lookup was working: the local caches here had been spared the chaos infecting the rest of the world. In the house of Darnadi Imsmuth Shelirian-Jerum of name registry Imperturbable Admonition 26, you could look up the people you saw; you could listen in on conversations in another room by feed pickup, smooth as milk. If you made sure not to look beyond Darnadi’s apartments, you could indulge in the fantasy that things were as they had been yesterday.

Fift stood in a corner saying no to a hundred different drinks (they flew up to importune zir, bobbling on pockets of air), and savoring the illusion.

Father Frill and Father Smistria were working the crowd. Fift had stopped listening in, but just by occasionally glancing over, ze could tell that it wasn’t going well. Frill was trying to ingratiate vemself with the glittering deep-reactants and aestheticians who were chatterdancing beneath the grasping green fronds of hanging plants and the deep purple bric-a-brac privacy-cones hanging above the dance floor. Ve must have once again failed to follow the complicated language-pattern of the chatterdance (it was in the sixth phase, so number of syllables per word, meter, body-rhythm, topic, theme, and tone were all in play). Ve stood by the side, chewing vir lip and waiting for the next round, to the obvious relief of the other dancers.