This was when the choice of a Brillist judge bit the prosecutor in the ass. The Brillist declared that a set-set is a set-set, and anyone calling anything else a set-set in the courtroom would be held in contempt. Suddenly Brillists weren’t anti-set-set enough. Cousins turned on Brillists; Cookie’s Nurturists were split. Danaë surfaced in the media, golden Danaë in mourning black, with diamond tears sparkling on golden lashes, talking of the persecution of her family, her poor husband held unjustly without bail, her brother shockingly abused, and now her children targeted, those not-quite-set-sets, called monsters in the street because of the unfinished training which they themselves wished so desperately had been completed. They would have been so happy! And it was all cruel Cookie’s doing, the scheming Minister of Education whose ‘thugs’ had been secretly hunting set-set training bash’es for decades! Danaë’s tears turned support for the Black Law into rage at everything, and peacekeepers came home with black eyes.

“Release the book now.” Many agreed, Ancelet, Kosala, MASON, the Interlocutor Himself. “Give the public this greatest of distractions.”

“As you command, good masters.”

Apollo: “Mycroft, did you rewrite that scene, as I asked? Did you tell them honestly what I tried to do?”

I: “I… mostly, but I… What if they turn on you?”

Apollo: “We’re ready for what comes. Look out that window, Mycroft. You can see a dozen streets from here, dozens of coats, and none alone. Never one Utopian, always moving in groups, two, four, squads, not vulnerable individuals. You haven’t seen a Utopian on the streets alone, not in weeks. Not in thirteen years.”

I: “I didn’t mean turn on Utopia, Apollo. What if they turn on you?”

Apollo: “Don’t worry about me, Mycroft. No one can hurt me anymore.”

Apollo was right. Mercy of mercies, it turned out that I had feared too much. My book was glue. Groups that had wanted to be allies but were splitting over smaller differences like land or set-sets found in my history facts or outrages to reunite them, and that refocused everything onto the two true sides: Sniper and Jehovah. Somehow Bridger saved us all again. Whenever anyone suggested that it might be true, what I said of Apollo or the Mardi bash’, someone cited my ravings about Bridger’s miracles, proof positive again that I was mad. Each Hive even managed to read my history as proof that Jehovah was still theirs: still the Mitsubishi’s trusted Tenth Director, still the loyal Porphyrogene, still a Brillist at heart, still as noble as His royal line, still sensitive and kind and Cousinly, still brave and bold and human; all Hives saw in Him what they wanted, never a God, or a madman who thought himself a God. Oh, some believed the truth about Him—What He Is—a few thousand perhaps among the billions, but those who believe a madman are easy to call mad.