The Speaker waited. “Thank you, Human Quarriman. So you are speaking in favor of the Senate accepting the terra ignota?”

“Oh, uh, yes.”

“And is that all you have to say?”

Quarriman scratched at the red-brown cloud of hair around her ears, not organized enough to be called curls. “Is that enough?”

“Yes, thank you.” Speaker Jin smiled. “Minister Cook has volunteered to speak in opposition, if there are no objections. Minister Cook.”

Achilles fingered the invisible hem of his Utopian coat and whistled, low under his breath, asking in silence what we all did: What favors did you trade, Queen of Nurturists, to get the others to agree to let you be the opposition voice?

Lorelei Cook rose, and I must admit that the cheery colors of her bright wrap in my lenses made my back relax a little after so much black and gray. “Thank you, Member Speaker, honored colleagues. While I appreciate Human Quarriman’s honest comments”—she smiled warmly—“by asking us to grant Ockham Saneer a terra ignota, the Humanists are asking the Senate to publicly declare that we believe the systematic murder of more than two thousand people might have been legal. The terra ignota plea is primarily intended to settle property disputes and social policy conflicts. Using it for a case of repeated and willful homicide is absolutely absurd. There is no doubt or blurriness about the law here. Gray Law and all Seven Hives’ law-codes, including Humanist law, clearly forbid homicide, except in a few cases like self-defense, and even that is recognized only by some Hives. Whatever the supposed social benefits of O.S. may be, calling it self-defense is like saying it’s self-defense for one job candidate to poison a rival to get the position. This motion is tantamount to a request that we let the guilty Hive governments keep on murdering people, since, if the trial found it legal, it would give them carte blanche to murder whoever they like in future in the name of a supposed greater good. Anyone who defends O.S. is asking the rest of us to walk around with bull’s-eyes on our chests while they strut around safe because they’ve cut a deal to be put on the do-not-target list. This is hypocrisy of the worst kind and… what… what?”

Murmur, rising like locust song, made Cookie trail off. A change had come over all the faces in the Senate House, and it took the cameras some moments to track the Senators’ stares to their object: Olympic Champion Aesop Quarriman, who had ripped a paper form in half, drawn a bull’s-eye on its blank back, and pinned it to her jacket just over her heart. She said nothing, but smiled proudly as she dared Minister Cook to meet her eyes.

Cook fortified her composure with a long breath. “Human Quarriman, this disruption is—”