“Ninety-nine in favor, ninety-three against, with eight abstentions. The motion will go on the next session’s agenda.”

Eight abstentions. This time my pacemaker’s alarm did not fade so soon. Murmur’s speculation filled the Senate seats as the Utopian island sat in conspicuous silence. I shuddered, and through the cameras I saw fresh strain in MASON’s brow as he tried to read the faces beneath those vizors. Clean hands, Utopia? The Europeans, Cousins, even Gordian’s Brillists glared as the eight of you sat there with your clean hands, reminding all with this haughty abstention—or so the others felt—that you and you alone are neither tainted nor injured by O.S. This wounded majority will not forgive that.

“Next, the request from the Universal Free Court for a Senatorial Order instructing the Court whether to accept or reject Human Ockham Prospero Saneer’s petition for a trial with the plea of terra ignota. Human Carpenter has volunteered to speak in favor.”

“Thank you Mem—”

“Murderer!” Shouts rose at once.

“You expect us to sit here listening to you defend your crimes!”

“How many names did you put on the Wish List, Carpenter?”

“Order!”

“You shouldn’t even be here! You should all be on trial with Saneer!”

“I don’t think we should admit into this chamber any Senators elected by a Hive which has picked nothing but mass murderers for two hundred years!”

“Order!”

“Everyone elected by the Humanists should be arrested!”

“Drag them out!”

“The Europeans, too!”

“I wasn’t elected.”

Wonder washed the hate and fear from all eyes as the Strangest Senator rose to her feet. Aesop Quarriman wears her Senatorial stripe dyed into an athletic jacket, where Romanova’s gold and blues thread carefully between the bright Olympic rings. If the Mitsubishi can assign their Senate seats by service exam, the Empire by Imperial fiat, Utopia by multiplex occlusion, then the Humanists are free to fill their twenty-two seats as they like: twenty-one by popular election, with the last reserved for a heroes’ hero, the Olympic Champion, chosen anew at every Summer Games. The achievements of a heroes’ hero cannot be briefly listed. One could count Quarriman’s personal golds and silvers, her world records, or the stunning total of five hundred and eight medals which the Humanist Gray Team claimed over the three Olympics for which she served as Team Training Leader. For those who value heroes more for heart than brawn, one could add that, at the Panama City Games of 2450, Quarriman—though she was front-runner and less than a mile from the finish line with its promise of another Olympic gold—was first to abandon the marathon when a sudden sinkhole swallowed up a group of spectators, and Quarriman’s too-good example would not let any of her fellow runners leave the site for the four hours it took to dig every last person free. But none of these is her true pride. That lies in Antarctica, her birthplace and her team’s birthplace, the Humanist Gray Team, created when the Esperanza City Winter Games of 2280 made Antarctica the sixth continent to host the Olympics, adding a sixth ring to the Olympic flag and a sixth team to the competition-hungry Humanists. The addition was much needed. While some Humanists compete for nation-strat teams, so many prefer the Hive to any strat that, even when the Humanists divided into five separate colored teams—Black, Red, Gold, Green, Blue—each of the five still outnumbered every other Hive or strat team two to one. The addition of the Gray Team made the balance saner. But Quarriman is no complacent Antarctican. In ages past merely surviving on the frozen wastes was achievement enough to mark a hero, but nowadays electric heat and flying cars make mere survival easy. But Quarriman wants to see her icy homeland truly inhabited, loved, played in, not just cowered from as children cower from Nature in a pillow fort. This coming August, peace and Providence permitting, the Olympic bid which Quarriman herself spearheaded will see its culmination as Esperanza City becomes the first Antarctic city to host the Summer Games. When she runs her next marathon across the ice of Earth’s harshest wild, Aesop Quarriman will at last merit her Champion’s title in her own eyes.