The Cousins’ draft did not disband the CFB. Instead it garlanded it with compromise. In their proposal, the Transitional Congress created by Jehovah’s interim constitution would become a permanent Parliament, letting the Cousins join Europe and the Humanists in aping the geographic nations’ old faith in the tyranny of voters. Kosala and Jehovah had managed to preserve the Cousins’ infinite suggestion box, but it would henceforth be processed by topical committees specializing in different issues: education, sanitation, entertainment, whose recommendations would be passed on to the Parliament as well as to the Board. This left the whole Hive much more a generic government, and much less like itself. One could smell political parties forming too, as Lorelei Cook strided beside Bryar Kosala across the Senate floor, receiving approving applause from the sixteen out of the thirty-nine Cousin Senators who wore the brightly colored mismatched socks which symbolize the unstructured childhood Cook’s “Nurturists” paint as the antithesis of the set-set process. Cook’s proud, predatory stride made she and Kosala seem dangerously like co-Chairs. Heloïse was Kosala’s antidote, Heloïse who trotted behind the Chair, angelic in a wrap of baby blue, and such the darling of the media that, these days, she almost fills the gap left by Sniper and fallen Ganymede. Kosala used her perfectly. Nurturist ringleader Lorelei Cook had traded much to get Kosala to agree to let it be Cookie, not Kosala, who set the reform draft in Speaker Jin Im-Jin’s hands, but few noticed the gesture, since what eye or camera would linger on Kosala’s rival when we had a real princess to feast upon?