Back at home, ze gripped the edge of the table to steady zirself. Squell saw, stopped vir pacing, took a deep breath, and put a hand on zir shoulder. “All right, Fift,” ve said. “I, I won’t blame you. It’s not your fault. Even if you didn’t—you should have listened to us, you should have, but I know you didn’t imagine—I’m just, so, so sorry for you. I’m sorry you have to . . . endure . . . such a thing . . .” Vir hand, on Fift’s shoulder, trembled.

Grobbard’s eyes were still closed. Nupolo went to the door. Ve looked back, once, frowned, and left the room.

Fift wanted to curl up on the floor, to sleep in at least one body. To close at least one of zir three windows on the world. Worse, ze wanted to loosen the connection between zir bodies—the old urge to shelter zirself in one place from what was happening to zir in another.

Ze should have paid more attention to zir exercises, kept doing polysomatic sports, finished becoming one thing, one whole, final, real person, instead of just learning to disguise the fact that ze was three ungainly pieces, a cracked vase. Tears sprung, astoundingly, to zir eyes: the wrong eyes, the eyes at the party. A crying sixteen-year-old Staid: disgusting, ridiculous. Wiping them on zir hands would be a clear giveaway. Ze faked a cough into the folds of zir robe.

Father Squell moved closer to zir, looking at zir earnestly. If ze could cry in that body . . . maybe Squell wouldn’t even be shocked. Maybe ve’d comfort zir, pull zir into vir embrace. Like when ze was little and zir Fathers were a sea of laughing, crying, fighting, glittering beauties, strong as great beasts, a reliably endless ocean of hugs.

Only an hour ago, when the lights had gone out and Foo had stopped, they had all clung together. Now, though, with Grobbard’s face passive and composed and frigid, and Squell’s insistent, prying gaze on zir, and Vvonda’s back to zir, leaning in to hear Foon Pelix Nathandine, and Fift’s arms and legs so tired, trying to flow . . . ze couldn’t do it, couldn’t act like a toadclownish baby. Certainly not in front of Father Grobbard. And not in front of Father Squell either—Father Squell who bragged about vir own body in the asteroids, who called Fift baby names and fretted aloud every time ze wandered beyond Foo.

Arrogant stupid Fathers, stupid with the idea-fixity of adulthood! They’d escaped, by luck and time, from the wild swamp of childhood. They’d each found some little safe ledge or stump to crouch on and keep dry. From there, they could criticize, judge, exhort . . . or even sympathize, but Fift could take no comfort in that. Each was convinced their stump was the perfect stump, the stump all children should seek, though there was no more room on it.