Well observed, Master Hobbes; this law is not for the government, it is for those with none. In the centuries that you have slept, there came into existence beings who choose not to join one of those mortal gods, as you called them, that have gone by the names of tribe, and Hive, and state, and kingdom. Instead, these people choose to fend for themselves, motes as they are among Leviathans. The Blacklaws are bound by the Eight Universal Laws alone, an option which the great Carlyle insisted must remain open, or else our liberty-to-choose would be tainted with hypocrisy. Blacklaws are, naturally, much mistrusted by the vast and well-resourced majority, so, like ambassadors from some isolated tribe only provisionally recognized as civilized, they have learned to live always on their best behavior. The fish that rides the great whale’s belly must not bite the giant whose least effort can crush him and his thousand kin. For the ninety-five years that the original Seven Black Laws stood alone, this Eighth, unwritten, was etched into the heart of every Blacklaw: We do not anger the Leviathans. Blacklaws themselves punished infractions of their private Eighth Law with anarchy’s gruesome severity. When 2339’s frenzied Set-Set Riots led to the first ever motion to pass a new Black Law, which might have given the noble title of Eighth Law to the Set-Set Law, the Blacklaw Tribunes were swift to move that their unwritten law be set in ink, securing its eternal place of honor as the true Eighth Law of our Universal Free Alliance.

“This is a strange new world you bring me to, Mycroft,” Hobbes answers. “But why do they invoke my word, ‘Leviathan’? Why do they not say Hives, since Hives they mean?”

Ah, modest Master Hobbes, you—

No need, Mycroft—this one even I can answer. Have you forgotten, Friend Thomas, that the ancient Blacklaw Capital, of which Blacklaw Tribune Natekari held the post of Rumormonger, bore your name? Hobbestown was no anomaly. This little race of Blacklaws considered themselves your children, these strange courageous minds who read about the war of all on all that you so feared, chose to live in it.

Straight to the mark, good reader, you are right. These are Hobbes’s children. But you say ‘were’; have they not lasted to your era, then? Our rare, brave Blacklaws? I would ask you of their path, their fate, but I know you cannot answer, noble reader; yours is a better world than I may know.

“ ‘Supplements to the Universal Laws.’ ” Caesar’s eye gleamed almost smugly as he paused. “By the way, if when I finish the three supplements, one of my fellow Senators were to appear with a draft agenda which puts the day’s urgent motions in some reasonable order, and includes provisions for postponing some of the more problematic ones for a few days so all sides can prepare for the debate, I might be inclined to stop rather than reading out the entire lists of Gray and White Laws.”