Then Pip leaned in to deliver the final blow. “Of course, it rather makes things worse for Shria, doesn’t it? It’s one thing for a Vail to be overpowered in a riot with a young Staid who can handle zirself, who retains zir composure, and who later does the correct thing and compels zir assaulters to apologize. Ze restores zir honor in zir way, ve restores virs in virs. That is something to laugh about later. Something that might bind friends together. But for a young healthy Vail to fail to protect vir Staid friend, who is overwhelmed and then unravels as a consequence? For who knows how long? And loses opportunities for professional advancement thereby? That is nothing to laugh about. It would be quite a rebuke to vem . . . if that’s what you want.”

Their audience climbed slowly, to over three thousand.

Fift scrapped all the unfinished drafts of notes to Shria.

Ze started up the stairs.

Pip followed zir, two steps behind. Fift did not look back. Over the feed, ze could see Pip’s impassive face and the wrinkling of the corners of zir eyes that, in one of zir Vail Fathers, would have been a grin of amused triumph.

They did not exchange a word for nearly an hour, until the final elevator taking them up to the habitation of the Vail they were going to see. It was a densely jungled elevator, vines and enormous flowers brushing their faces, tiny work-fauna rustling in the leaves. Active audience had vanished, but hot bookmarks had continued to climb, thirty thousand people ready to switch to active viewing the moment anything interesting happened. Shria and vir friends had vanished into a ludatorium with practice mats.

Pip chuckled. Then ze shook zir head and laughed, a silent jiggling laugh that traveled all over zir body in waves and made zir close zir eyes. {Oh, my dear child.} ze sent privately. {I fear your tastes are too much like my own. Take it from me, it is a hard road, being a Staid lover of Vails!}

Fift said nothing, tried not to betray a reaction. What did Pip suspect?

First zir stomach in the elevator, then zir stomachs where ze sat on the bed, knotted in cold fists of fear.

Chapter 13

13

The Vail they had come to Wallacomp to see was descending the slipthread, singlebodied: Hrotrun Videx Spilteritrine of name registry Slithery Brown Rhinoceros 6, 4-bodied Vail, 135 years old, Far Historical index-design technician, firstborn of six. Ve had weak votes of accord from a variety of loose and forgettable historical-index societies, and strong votes of censure from four large reputation-amalgamation engines, one alleging fraud, another cowardice. Ve was part of a childless residential cohort of fifteen. Bookies’ public odds on Hrotrun undergoing a disgraceful collapse within the next three months had climbed over the last two thousand heartbeats from two to one against, to two to one for.