Fift felt a sudden thrill of fear, zir heart contracting, or the world contracting around zir heart, squeezing like a fistful of jelly around zir. Ze willed zir face still as a stone. To be what you are. Mother Pip couldn’t know about what had happened. But could ze have guessed at Fift’s unstaidish feelings?

“This is your job in the world, Fift. Not to make noise and color and conflict, not to demand and smash, not to place your fears and angers and urges before those of others.” Pip smiled, unexpectedly, a tiny, rakish grin. “Well . . . there will be ways to indulge your own wishes. If you are patient, that time will come! But not by demanding them and shouting them out. No, Fift. Your job is to think, to plan, and to order. Your job is to be the still center, the basis, the core.” Ze frowned. “Some Staids, of course, believe that ‘being the still center’ means you can never act decisively, or with speed. But you can, you know . . . you can act like lightning, at the proper time. You know me, Fift. You know I am not afraid of being accused of acting rashly.”

Pip released Fift’s shoulder, took zir own lower lip between zir thumb and forefingers, and inspected Fift carefully.

{Dear Shria,} Fift composed. {I don’t understand what I did wrong. Can’t . . .}

But ve’d already said it wasn’t zir fault. Or said ve wasn’t saying it was.

Fift started over. {Dear Shria, I really do want to see you . . .}

But again, ze was acting like a child. Like with Vvonda at the party: acting needy and emotional. Even if ze could, ze didn’t want to vanquish Shria with cold dispassionate logic; ze didn’t want to be Mother Pip or Father Grobbard with vem. But ze didn’t want to disgust vem, either. Ze was happy to be vanquished, to be vir Older Sibling, if ze could only be siblings with vem.

Pip released zir lip. “You could collapse, of course.” The tone of scorn with which ze usually spoke of Staids unraveling was (carefully?) absent. “Possibly that would be a way out of your predicament. We would have to respect your ontological state, I suppose, and you could have a nice stay in some grove on the surface or in the Doubled Womb, and we’d have to find some other solution to the problem of the riot. All things considered, I think that would be preferable to simply going back to the house and hiding there in cowardice for a few years.”

Fift swallowed. Ze wanted to avoid Pip’s eyes, but ze didn’t seem to be able to. They were a cold, opaque blue today, in the velvety leaf-green folds of Pip’s face. They seemed to read Fift as if zir neural data were still unhidden.