Thurm held up a hand. Ve closed vir eyes, shaking vir head, and then opened them. Vir smile was mirthful and long-suffering. “Okay,” ve said. “Stop. Stop. Now.” Ve turned to Pip. “Allow me to summarize.” No one said anything, but one of Pip’s eyebrows inched a bit higher on zir stern, plump face. “We have a kid, whom we all love. Our kid had an adventure . . . no, two adventures. Ze met an alien, ze got some audience, and then ze wandered into a riot and got scared by some atavistic, adrenaline-overdosed holiday-warriors in rent-a-bodies. Yes?”

“Ze was struck,” Squell said. “Not just ‘scared.’ Those sist . . . those Kumru-spurned body-renters struck a defenseless sixteen-year-old staidchild far from home, who . . .”

“Ze was struck?” Arevio cried, stiffening.

“Oh, you missed that part?” Frill said, both bodies lounging now.

“If you will all observe the display I have placed in the shared view,” Grobbard said, “which has been reconstructed from a variety of sources, including Far-Theoretical extrapolation modeling of the observable portions of private intersomatic data traffic at variously distributed relevant nodes—modeling for which I am, incidentally, indebted to our dear Thurm—you will note that there were forty-six instances of bodily contact not initiated by Fift, of which four were of sufficient intensity to merit the appellation ‘struck.’ One of these, Fift was able to neutralize by judicious use of Martial Staidity, for which, if I may add a brief digression, I think we should commend zir, as ze really only had the one year of instruction, and that was some time ago—”

“Yes, well done, Fift,” Squell said, to a chorus of nods and snaps of applause, which faltered as zir embarrassment became flagrantly, humiliatingly visible in the neural display.

“The other three incidents,” Grobbard said, still the same body talking, the other three sitting impassively (one of them seemed to actually be asleep), “occur at 5.342, 18.504, and 36.881 in the sequence which I have marked. This punch, certainly intentional, after Fift has grabbed the umbilical cord; this elbow to the face, intentional with 79% probability; and this kick to the head, intentional with 84% probability. The intersomatic traffic modeling has allowed us to make reasonable predictions, even in the absence of lookup, as to the identities of the anonymized individuals responsible. Probabilities of those identifications, respectively . . .”

“You know who these gnats are?” Smistria cried. “Grobbard, my darling, you’re a genius.”

“So that’s it then!” Frill said, both bodies leaning forward again. Ve pounded the table, bells ringing, vir eyes alight. “We call them out. I’ll call them out, or . . .”

“What!?” Nupolo slapped the table with both hands, drawing vemself up to vir full height. “Give these fringe-clinging mud-spawn the honor of meeting them on the mats? That’s your idea of . . . ? Kumru! And our reputation?!”

“Absurd,” Smistria said.