Peripheral Visions: Things Are Sociobiological All Over!

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Things Are Sociobiological All Over!

Elmer held up a hand for quiet while the service bot placed a beverage on his pod's small table. He didn't seriously expect that the bot would be spying on him – though he couldn't rule it out – but he exercised caution all the same.

Once the bot had withdrawn, continuing its programmed service to the others in the business class section of the transport, Elmer said, "Let's resume. What were you saying?" He didn't usually lose the thread, no matter how complex the legal considerations or perplexing the case might be, but the brief interruption had completely driven the conversation he'd been having form his mind.

The frowning man on the screen repeated himself: "I said, what kind of name is Elmer? It sounds... antiquated."

Elmer smiled. No wonder I forgot what he was saying he reflected. I hope he's not always this vacuous or the case will be annoying, no matter how judicially juicy it turns out to be. To the man he said, "Actually, my legal name is Almairdh, but early in my career a client kept calling me Elmer. The others at the firm picked up on it and it stuck. I've grown to like it. You're right, it has an old-time ring... and I can use that as a way or reassuring people that I represent long-cherished values, no matter which jurisdiction or legal tradition I might find myself working in."

"Where was this rather dull client?" the man asked sourly. Elmer's story about his name often warmed people up; not this time.

"Louisiana," he said.

"Where's that? Some backwater?"

"It's on Earth, actually."

The frowning man's expression didn't change, but somehow he seemed to emanate even more contempt. "A planet of superstitious idiots," he muttered, "living in mud huts and shitting in their own streams."

"It's not such a bad place, actually," Elmer told him. "Well... not in recent decades, anyway."

The frowning man waved. "Let's get to business," he said. "I represent a very prominent family. In fact, I represent our planet's primal family – the bloodline that supplies our leaders, our jurists, our generals and academics."

Of course he did. Elmer didn't work for just anyone.

"The questions of tradition and values are central to the case we need to discuss," the man continued. "But it's less a matter of upholding those values than challenging them... or, if we're clever, finding a way to uphold the substance of those values in a deeper way than the surface-level enforcement of the law suggests."

"Okay," Elmer said. He'd heard this sort of double talk before and he already had a sense that this would be a sticky, tricky situation... but one through which he could probably thread the needle. "May I have specifics?"

"Not yet." The man said. "I have examined your entire career, all 324 cases... all except two successfully prosecuted. Many of the cases you've taken on are pedestrian at best, and were easily discharged; I can only imagine you were engaged because of your fame and because rich people don't like to lose."

Elmer smiled blandly, listening but unwilling to give anything away. The man would get the point soon enough.

Indeed, he did – in the very next moment. "The details of your latest case, which I understand you also won, have not as yet been released. What can you tell about it?"

"What do you know?"

"Virtually nothing. Only that it involved the prince regent of Thera."

"That's all?"

"That, and the rumors that it was some sort of paternity suit."

Elmer didn't laugh, though he felt like it.

"I wish to be complete in my research before I engage your services," the man aid. "I need to know what the case was about and how you won it."

"One moment, please," Elmer told him, glancing away.

"Oh, are you getting more coffee?" the man asked snidely.

"No, I am..." Elmer called up another screen and surveyed it. Returning his attention to the frowning man he said, "I was checking our travel progress. We've passed into interstellar space, which means I am no longer bound by Theran laws around secrecy. I am, however, still bound by client confidentiality, so there's only so much I can tell you. In short, the crown prince was accused of being gay."

"What's that?" the frowning man asked, never having heard the word. "Mentally incompetent? Physically past his prime... or as yet too immature for the duties of his office?"

"Nothing like any of that," Elmer said. "It's a word meaning homosexual."

The frowning man's frown only deepened.

"Oh, my goodness," Elmer said, remembering something about the Exens, the human species to which the frowning man belonged. "You don't have sexual dimorphism, so this wouldn't make sense to you. Let me try to explain again."

"This has something to do with the reproductive habits of the Therans?" the frowning mad asked. "And the perceived morality of sexual congress between different blenders?"

Blenders? Elmer thought.

"Those who blend their protein essences," the frowning man said, seeing his confusion.

"You mean genders," Elmer said. "Yes, you have the right idea. The man being accused is someone who is naturally attracted to others of the same gender. That means he's not predisposed to contribute his... his protein essence to that of someone of the opposite gender..." Elmer paused. He was usually better at explaining things, but this conversation had taken a radical turn from the usual consultation. "Is this making sense to you?"

"The exact details don't matter," the frowning man said. "I've gathered what I need to know. Our case is similar, at least in some ways. I am encouraged by your success."

"Can you say more about the case?" Elmer asked.

"The scion of our primal family is being accused of religious crimes as well as sexual crimes," the frowning man said.

"Can you be more specific?" Elmer asked. He had never worked in Exen courts before, and while he had a general idea of their legal framework – it was derived from Old Earth, as were most human and humanoid races' legal traditions – the fact that the case had to do with sexual matters in an asexual society gave him some pause. He was far from an expert in dealing with asexual humanoids.

"I will leave it to your research to tease out the subtleties and nuances," the frowning man said in a delicately dry tone of voice that struck Elmer as mischievous, "but the basis of the complaints against him is that he is... allegedly... behaving in a perverse, selfish, and socially destructive manner."

If someone from a more mainstream branch of humanity had said that, Elmer would have guessed that the case had to do with polyamory, bigamy, or some other offense involving multiple sexual partners. This being the Exens, though, his brilliant legal mind could come to only one conclusion: "He's refusing to mate with someone new."

The frowning man nodded, and his frown blossomed into a smile. "And your flawless instincts show you are the right lawyer for this job – despite belonging to a dimorphous race," he said.

Elmer took that as the compliment he hoped it was supposed to be.

***

The scion was an Exen of about thirty galactic standard years – closer to forty, as years were reckoned locally. The point was, he was young.

"He?" Elmer asked the scion.

"I beg your pardon?"

"When referencing you in the third person by pronoun rather than name, do I have it right that your people use 'he'?"

"That's right," the scion said.

"And otherwise I'm supposed to call you by your title?"

The scion waved that idea away with the same impatient lack of social grace the frowning man had displayed. The Exens weren't big on names – either having them or sharing them – so it was a surprise when he said, "Fuck that. Call me Sam."

"Sam?" Elmer was usually unflappable, but this case kept throwing curveballs at him.

"Yes. Why not? That's my name," the scion said, looking at Elmer as though he'd just let fly with a chthonic curse.

"Yeah, I..." Elmer laughed. "I'm sorry," he said, trying to salvage the moment by leaning into a sort of confidential casualness. "It's just I hardly ever meet someone whose name is as outmoded as mine."

"I know what you mean," Sam told him. "Everyone who shares their name with me... those who even have names on this provincial planet... are all called 'Sifra' or 'Miouz' or 'Khiriakhen.' No one seems to have a good old Earth name. From what people have told me... people dubious of 'Sam'... old Earth names are bad luck."

Elmer nodded. "I've heard that, as well, but in my case it became something of a good luck token among my colleagues."

"I've heard of your success rate," Sam said. "I hope it's not simply luck. You will need some skill to win this case, but it seems you have that skill."

"Thank you for your confidence." Elmer looked down at his flexi, which was set to resemble a yellow pad with light blue lines. He fingered his stylus, not intending to use it for anything other than show. "I'd like to get some more insight into your reasons for refusing to take a new mate."

"There is no motive aside from the fact that Visjel and I love each other and don't want to move on to others. He delights me every day. Our year together has been extraordinary. I have never been happier."

"But your laws will make you unhappy unless you take another mate. Especially since your year together didn't produce any offspring. If it had, you'd be allowed another three or four years."

"Yes," Sam said. "The age of three, when a child reaches the proper age to accept new parents And the fact that we have no child only makes the social and legal pressure that much more acute."

"Couldn't you simply have sex with another mate while keeping your current living arrangement?"

"No. That's not allowed."

"But it seems to happen rather a lot."

Sam shifted in his chair. "Yes," he sighed. "It's rather like old Earth... or many of the societies that have derived from it. Marital relations are expected to be a matter of formal recognition; extramarital relations are supposedly not allowed, but they are common. When I was a university student on Bihar, I saw how the father of the household where I was staying had a mistress and was quite open about it, even though the law forbade it. When I asked him about it, he poured me a drink of scoff and told me, in a 'man to man' conversation, that if he did not openly maintain at least one mistress, his career prospects would be severely diminished. He would not be seen as properly masculine."

"Scotch," Elmer said.

"What's that?"

"He poured you scotch. Not scoff."

"Ah – I see. Thank you," Sam said.

"I've had Bihar scotch," Elmer said. "It would be a shame to call it by the wrong name."

"Yes? My experience was different. At first, I thought he had taken offense at my question and was trying to poison me. But I thank you for your considerate correction. It is important to call things, and people, by their correct names."

Elmer nodded. "I agree," he said.

"And in this case," Sam said, "the sacred connection... the tirhaj that we share can only be called a marriage, a marriage of our souls. I understand the social and religious and even legal concern with matters around procreation, but doesn't a person's soul take precedence over the socially prescribed uses of a person's flesh? Do I not have a say in who shares my days?"

"Is that the legal argument you want me to develop?" Elmer asked.

"I don't care what argument you make, as long as you win it – and Visjel and I can stay together."

***

"This filthy outsider is clearly the enemy of the people, and not just our people – all decent people. He seeks one thing only: The destroy the family and annihilate civilization!"

The prosecutor's long finger, pointing right at Elmer, never wavered. Elmer suppressed a sigh. Never let them see they are getting to you, he told himself. It was a mantra that had stood him in good stead for decades.

The prosecutor wasn't really getting to him as much as boring the hell out of him.

"Tribunate, if I may respond?" Elmer asked respectfully.

The Tribunate gestured laconically. He seemed as bored by the prosecutor's shrill declamations as Elmer was.

"Thank you, jher," Elmer said, making it a point to use the correct honorific. He stood. Sam, seated next to him, did not; he remained seated, but he also remained watchful. The Exens had taken the idea of adversarial litigation to something of an extreme, and it wasn't unusual for fistfight or fracases to erupt in the courts here.

"The prosecutor wishes you believe that I represent a sinister alien influence – that I come from sectors of the galaxy that do not share your values, nor your love of family and heritage. Indeed, I have heard myself accused in this very courtroom of trying to 'import' and 'impose' heterosexuality on the Exen race. This is absurd; how can there be such a thing as 'heterosexuality,' an Earth word meaning 'sexual relations' or 'sexual attraction between individuals of differing genders,' when there is no such thing as differing gender among the Exens... or gender at all?

"No; I don't wish to force the people of Exen to adopt some sort of 'unnatural' sexual practice, and I would never tell you that your sacred traditions are not your own to cherish and defend," Elmer said. "But I do wonder how you can fully appreciate those traditions without also appreciating other traditions? They say there is no place like home... I can assure you, as someone whose career requires extensive travel, the thought of home only grows sweeter when you are away, and each return is an experience that makes my own native world more precious."

"Your point?" the tribunate asked, his voice as laconic as his gesture had been.

"Simply this: I, like you, possess a deep love of home. What's more, I understand that each individual's home is as precious and meaningful to him as my own home is to me. If home is defined by social structure and order and tradition, then those things of course must be respected. But I ask you: Must tradition, must home itself, be monolithic? Or can it be inclusive, expansive, creative – as are the very individuals who hold their home so precious?"

"Your comments are duly registered," the tribunate said, sounding unimpressed.

The prosecutor lost no time leaping back into the fray. "This agent of chaos brags of his nomadic existence," he screamed, his finger pointing again. "This deep state provocateur wishes nothing more than to spread the division and hatred of Old Earth through the civilized galaxy! And why?"

The prosecutor let the silence drag out, his finger still pointing, his eyes wild with rage, his entire body trembling.

After a long moment the tribunate asked, "Do you have an answer for your own rhetorical question, prosecutor?"

"No, I do not," the prosecutor declared. "Because it is not a rhetorical question. It is a request... no, a demand!... for his malicious motives finally to be brought to light!"

"What malice?" Elmer asked calmly. "And indeed, other than a thirst for justice and for the personal rights of my client, what motives? What motives could I have for the fantastical campaign of chaos the prosecutor envisions?"

"The very question this court requires and deserves to see answered!" shrieked the prosecutor, his voice so shrill Elmer winced despite his deeply entrenched habit of pleasant inscrutability. "For what he has not revealed to this court are the details of his latest attack on stable, prospering societies. This terrorist, this saboteur of stability, has through his own actions contradicted the soothing words he has spoken here. In fact, the case he prosecuted just before coming to our planet was predicated on nothing less than sparking revolution – deadly, destructive revolution – on Thera!"

"Jher tribunate, the prosecutor's fantasies are no longer amusing," Elmer spoke up, his voice ringing and firm. "Now he ventures from absurdity to calumny!"

"Do I?" the prosecutor asked, smiling, his voice no longer shrill but an oily purr. He held up a data flexi. "I have here the entire record of that court case, obtained directly from the Theran government. Jher tribunate, you can see for yourself the underhanded machinations and deceptive rhetoric this so-called lawyer... in reality a mercenary deployed by vicious forces of annihilation... expertly made use of in his last case, when he defended a sexual degenerate. Quite a feat, actually," the prosecutor added, his smile growing sharper and more unctuous, "considering that the case consisted of sexual aberration stacked atop the primitive, frankly animalistic, disgrace of gender dimorphism."

There was a general gasp of shock in the court room. Sam, sitting next to Elmer, began to hyperventilate. Elmer rolled his eyes. These people had known of his previous work on Thera; they certainly knew that Therans, like almost every other race descended from Old Earth, were sexually dimorphous.

If anyone is an aberration, Elmer thought to himself, it's these people, with their absence of gender.

Not that he, or any good lawyer, would say such a thing out loud – certainly not to a court room full of genderless humanoids.

But the Exens, Elmer had quickly come to understand, were excitable and they adored drama. It was no surprise, then, when the tribunate's lazy demeanor changed and he rose to his feet, agitated.

The prosecutor had one last volley to unleash. "This soulless cultural assassin makes his living, and had grown rich, by traveling from world to world, defiling sacred traditions everywhere he goes! I appeal to you, tribunale, in the name of our own humble citizens, not to be deceived, but to bring an end to the creeping intellectual and ideological tyranny he represents."

"Bailiff, collect that flexi," the tribunate ordered, his voice now purposeful. "This court is adjourned for four days, while I review the contents of the new evidence introduced here today. And if I find that this evidence substantiates the implication of cultural and moral terrorism," the tribunate added, nodding at Elmer, "then I will not hesitate to rule in a summary fashion... or to invoke the maximum penalty."

Which, Elmer knew, was death – death in any number of hideous ways.

The tribunate swept out of the court room in a whirl of back and blue robes, while the prosecutor beamed a positively evil look of satisfaction toward Elmer and Sam.

"We're fucked," Sam moaned softly, his arms crossed tight across his chest. Rocking back and forth in his chair, Sam began sobbing. "Why didn't you tell us about this?" he asked.

"Because there's nothing to tell," Elmer said. To himself he added: And because nothing is as hard as proving a negative. It was all easy, however, to invent astonishing accusations and then to have them accepted as fact, especially when strong cultural prejudices were at work.

Elmer had thought through endless possible iterations for how this case might unfold, but he had never imagined anything like this. Placing a hand on the scion's back, Elmer offered reassuring words in his most confident tone of voice. Inwardly, however, he knew that Sam might be right: They really might be fucked.

***

"It's been a while since I head the word 'ideology'," Elmer mused, back at the scion's massive residence.

Sam was slumped in a chair, a white woolen sweater drawn over his long-sleeved shirt. His minders, taken aback at how stricken Sam seemed, had allowed Visjel to join them in the closed chambers where they discussed the case and planned strategy.

Visjel, too, was bundled up in extra garments. Elmer found the room to be too hot as it was, but perhaps the young lovers' state of shock left them needing warm clothing. Then too, he thought, looking at how Visjel sat with his arm around Sam's shoulders, there was the sheer animal comfort of shared body heat.

Looking his client over, taking note of his bloodshot eyes and defeated posture, Elmer sought to strike a balance between acknowledging the touch position they were in with the confidence he still felt in his own experience and skills.

Sam was too sunk into himself to ask, but Visjel was full of questions.

"How are you going to push back against the prosecutor's claims?" the young man asked.

Funny, Elmer thought, how even here, in a society without gender, "he" and "man" were the terms to which they defaulted; perhaps there was a connection between this linguistic archaism and the retrogressive nature of their laws and customs.

Visjel was the opposite of Sam as far as looks went. Where Sam was pale, with pale green eyes and hair so barely tinged with a straw-gold hue that it was almost white, Visjel was dark. His skin was the color of a summer suntan on the beaches of Canora, his eyes were as dark as those of any Disuraan gigolo, and his glossy hair was as black as the interstellar space between distant stars.

Elmer could appreciate, in some degree at least, Sam's unwillingness to be parted from his partner.

"The prosecutor isn't really relying on law – neither in letter nor spirit – to make his case," Elmer said. "He's going for an emotional response."

"I'd say he got one," Visjel said.

"He did. And he's an expert at it, too, I'm sure – not just in the abstract, but in the specific way of appealing to the Exen mentality, or rather, the core essence of Exen sentiment. Which, I may say so, makes his disparaging comments about Old Earth pretty hypocritical. Old Earth was the mess it was, and is remembered now with such horror, because of the way its rulers used emotional persuasion to bypass reason, deflect scientific evidence, and compel people to act against their own well-being and that of their children."

"Yes, well, children is the essence of the argument he's making," Visjel told him. "We don't have any. In addition to violating tradition, Sam is endangering the prime family's lineage by refusing to take a new mate."

"I thought you were on my side," Sam spoke up, in a listless voice.

Visjel kissed him tenderly on the forehead. "I am. But that's what they're saying, despite the fact that you have forty-two siblings to fulfill the family's perpetuation, and that's the argument we have to defuse."

"Defuse, or make irrelevant," Elmer told them. "Exen biosciences can address the lineage issue through any number of ways. Half-cloning. Genetic splicing. Even options like IVF."

"What's that?" Visjel asked.

"Too different, from a technology standpoint, to explain easily, so never mind," Elmer told him.

"Our people don't believe anyone can have a soul who was not conceived through intimate physical contact," Visjel pointed out. "They abhor the idea of cloning and synthetic genetics."

"Still, this is my point, and this is going to be the basis of our response: We, too, have an emotional story to tell, and it's one of love," Elmer said. "A love for freedom, which is the general level of appeal, but more personally, your love for each other, and a person's inalienable right to express and tend to that love."

"I'm feeling pretty alienated right now," Sam said.

"That's not helping, tirhari," Visjel said, using the personal address form of the Exen word for "spouse."

"Why do you even have a word like that," Elmer asked, "when your people are expected to switch partners every mating season?"

Visjel chuckled. "It's not like we have sex into our eighties," he said. "At some point, a person surpasses peak fertility. Then they are no longer required to share their bodies with new partners. They can settle into a tirhai... a marriage, as you call it... which is seen as a permanent merging of souls, as compared to mating, which is seen as a mere exchange of..."

"Of 'protein essence'," Elmer sighed. "Yes, I see. But you don't acknowledge that there could be such a spiritual connection between people at a younger age?"

Sam sighed. "It's another of the ways in which our laws ignore practical reality... and practical reality ignores the law. There are such pairings, of course, and they do persist across multiple mating seasons, but they aren't legally recognized. And jealous or opportunistic mating partners can create problems: Press charges alleging moral crime, or demand money and other concessions in order to refrain from pressing such charges."

"But any margin for such 'non-traditional' conduct enjoyed by ordinary people is a luxury that a scion of the primal family of Exen is never going to enjoy," Visjel pointed out. "Sam – like his siblings, like his parents before him, and like any children he might be forced to have with someone else – represents our core identity as a people."

"I'm supposedly the embodiment of our 'higher purpose' in the universe," Sam explained. "That is, we're a beacon of evolutionary inevitability and moral aspiration that all the lesser species in the galaxy... all the sexually dimorphous breeds of humanity, with their insane gender-based divisions and polarizations... should rightly look to with hope for their own racial futures."

"In other words, the same arrogance and egotism that has propelled the human species... all of them... from before the great divergence, even before the diaspora," Visjel said.

Elmer nodded. He had learned much of this beforehand in his research and his many discussions of the case with Sam and Sam's advisors. "Such grand notions," he murmured. "We only need to tap into them properly."

"What do you mean?" Visjel asked.

Elmer smiled at him. "It's like my old law school mentor always said: They come for justice, but they stay for the show."

For the first time, Sam stirred to life. "What do you have in mind?" he asked. "What's your strategy?"

"The same strategy I always use. The same strategy that always wins... well, almost always. When it comes to these cases, it's a matter of sociobiology," Elmer said. "Every culture has its sacred traditions, but the thing to understand is how those traditions are all based in evolutionary conservatism."

"What's that?" Visjel asked.

"Essentially, it's an impulse to maximize both social and individual survival," Elmer said, "and to prioritize when it's not possible to ensure both. And the guiding principle there is simple: There are some communal needs that supersede even the mindless group need for evolutionary conservatism..."

***

"Over and over," Elmer told the court, "we have heard the prosecutor exclaim that I am here as some sort of devious tentacle reaching out from Old Earth to stir up unrest and social chaos. Now, as with any conspiracy theory, the implicit demand is for the accused to provide proof that the accusation is false. This strategy – and it is a strategy – rests on the logical truth that a negative cannot be proved. In other words, the prosecution could invent an even wilder story and ask you to believe in it. Perhaps I have been sent by the four-headed Domenagogues of Andromeda to fracture societies across the galaxy and then set the resulting factions against each other. Does anyone here believe in such comic book fantasies? Of course not."

"Nor do I make that specific claim," the prosecutor thundered, "even though your attempt to create a smokescreen to conceal your not-dissimilar agenda will easily be pierced by the wise and all-seeing eyes of our jurisprudence!"

"Uh huh," Emler said, with an exaggerated tone of both boredom and skepticism. "But here's the thing: We're not even talking about conspiracies. We're talking about the right of an Exen individual to his own life, his own feelings, and his own most intimate choices. And we are not talking about any generic Exen; we are talking about a scion of the primal family. In this respect, Sam is the generic Exen... he is every Exen. If this court follows the rational, reasonable, and inevitable course of justice, it will... and it must... honor the rights of every Exen in honoring the rights of the scion Sam."

"An individual who asserts a claim of personal importance that would overshadow the importance of society and, indeed, civilization!" cried the prosecutor. "Jher tribunate, I stand here with no egotistical individual name. My family eschew such vain ornaments. We do not see ourselves as more essential to Exen than the great body of the Exen people as a whole. I serve our world as a prosecutor, and as a guardian of the rule of law. This scion – this so-called 'Sam' – sets himself above the people and, indeed, above the law."

"Or," Elmer broke in, "Sam is simply willing to say what many are thinking, feeling, and knowing within themselves: That he is a loyal and devoted Exen, but he is also himself, and a person's own inner being can belong to no one else, and to no state. Sam has responsibilities to Exen. He does not deny that."

Beside him, Sam shook his head. "I do not deny it!" he spoke up.

"The defendant will not speak!" the tribunate said harshly.

"We beg your pardon for the breach of decorum," Elmer said smoothly, "but it does illuminate the point at hand. Why can an Exen not speak for himself? Why must his feelings – even the deepest drives that motivate him – be suppressed, discarded, and held in contempt? Isn't a person's own maintenance of his own inner being essential to his existence? And is Exen's own well-being not dependent on the well-being of its people? If more people are happier and more successful, then doesn't Exen as a whole benefit? If the very scion of the primal family is allowed to flourish, does that not allow Exen as a whole to flourish?"

"Flourish? Like a plant? If you're going to make agricultural comparisons," the prosecutor scoffed "then let me ask how the flowers flourish when one individual is handed an axe and given leave to smash the greenhouse."

"A clumsy metaphor, both muddy and mixed," Elmer said, and he was rewarded with chuckles that sounded from across the court room.

"Silence and respect!" the tribunate commanded.

Elmer did not pause to apologize for this new breach of decorum. Instead, he forged ahead.

"Let's consider this from a different perspective, shall we?" he said, looking around the room. "All humanoid races diverged from a common root – that of Old Earth, with its primitive people and incomplete, underdeveloped ethics. The evolution of so many societies and subspecies have been rich and vibrant – and swift: We left the cradle of Earth's solar system only six thousand years ago. In that breathtakingly short span of time, humanity has branched and splintered and ... pardon the repeated botanical reference... flourished. Where once was a single species venturing into the darkness, now fourteen thousand species and subspecies light the cosmic night, reaching tendrils of life and will throughout the galaxy.

"Evolution is an urgent, creative force," Elmer added, "and it does not pause for moral panics or delicate fretfulness over traditions. Old traditions must fall away from new breeds of humanity to rise – and is that not your most sacred teaching? Should the traditions of those many dimorphous human species not bow to the will of the Ultimate, the cosmic maker, who has pointed to the apex of Its plan with the emergence of the Exens, who unite what was once a fatal division within the human organism, rising above animalistic and primitive gender to achieve the biological purity of hermaphrodism?"

"Be careful what you say next," the prosecutor warned. "Now you speak of our most sacred and cherished belief."

"And it is my own most sacred authority to speak on behalf of the court," the tribunate declared. "I will not tolerate these repeated departures from proper judicial form!"

"I apologize," the prosecutor said.

"I intend no blasphemy," Elmer said. "I simply wish to restate what everyone here knows. First-wave humanity would have destroyed itself if not for the overriding need of that creative force within us to spread through the stars and express itself in a panoply of ways.

"But they and we share something: We are ruled by primal drives," Elmer continued. "That rule might saturate society, but it cannot lead to justice when it's allowed to shape and dominate the law. No," he added, as an excited murmur of outrage grew in the courtroom, "the law must concern itself with not only fact and reason, but practicality... and also with the transcendent truth that whatever the Exen people are intended to become next, that purpose cannot be fulfilled if it is frustrated by an unyielding reluctance, a complacence, a fear, or even an entrenched and systematic disregard for the great cosmic plan. The prosecutor dangles fictions of existential threat in front of you, but he himself advances cultural and moral decay by advocating mindless repetition. How does any stagnant society survive if it does not, as the cosmos itself does, expand... expand its understanding, its possibilities, its very heart?

"Let us consider Old Earth for another moment. Yes, Old Earth, the specter of which the prosecutor loves to use to intimidate this court," Elmer said, his voice sweeping into a new register. "The law of Old Earth did not provide for essential human needs. Starving people stealing bread to survive were still criminals under the law. Battered women... I beg pardon, individuals who killed abusive tirheii were still tried for murder.' Elmer nodded, knowing that everyone in the room had taken note of his use of the Exen word for 'spouses.'

"When the gap between law and justice was decried, the so-called traditionalists who clung to law over justice would simply say, 'Things are tough all over'," Elmer continued. "Well, in this case, the laws of societies that allow themselves to be dominated and shaped by inflexible, inhuman imperatives rather than a commitment to justice – to the necessities of human life as they are – became the perpetrators of misdeeds. Such legal systems committed atrocities in the name of the law, among them the thefts of personal agency and the murder of freedom itself.

"But I tell you, this is not a justification," Elmer declared, as if crying the words out to the Ultimate. "It does not suffice. Things may be tough all over, but that doesn't make reactionary impulses correct. There must be a higher and universal, unifying force toward which we can aspire!"

The prosecutor clapped his hands in a slow, mocking way. "Bravo," he said, smiling coldly. "And for your next act? Shall we toss aside all restraint, and hurl ourselves heading into anarchy?"

"Does the Exen heart cry out for anarchy?" Elmer demanded in a harsh voice. "Or is it learning to thirst for, and demand freedom – the freedom to embrace the next chapter of its own existence?"

"This is a court of law, not of philosophy," the tribunate interjected.

Sam, speaking up quickly, took his cue. "The law does say the defendant may advocate for himself, and I request permission to do so," he said.

"Having made the request in the proper way, you may do so," the tribunate said.

Sam stood. Elmer seated himself and gave him an encouraging nod.

Sam looked around the room and then fixed his attention on the tribunate. "I know I am seen as challenging tradition. But I am a scion of Exen's primal family. I am an aspect of Exen's soul. As such, it is not my obligation to hew blindly to what has been it is my obligation, but rather to find the way forward, to prompt the evolution of our people.

"Yes," Sam added, "I wish to forsake additional partners as subsequent mating seasons arrive. I wish to remain with the one person who not only gives me reason to live but sustains my life."

"Procreation is life!" the prosecutor cried in a choked voice. "The Ultimate re-created humanity in a more perfect hermaphroditic expression. The Ultimate delivered us away from the John and Mabel of the lesser-developed sexually dimorphous breeds, and gave us jeva and jeva, nameless, genderless Exens who keep our population healthy and our genetic diversity deep!"

"If one gender is a radical and just advancement for all life," Sam challenged the prosecutor, staring him down with a look that Elmer could think of as regal, "then how is it not fitting to find our way to another radical and necessary path: That of one love. One partner. One life mate. One!"

There were murmurs anew around the courtroom, but now they were not of outrage. They seemed, Elmer thought, sympathetic.

"Yes, I speak for all of Exen, but I must also speak from my own heart," Sam continued. "Yes, I have a name, and I use that name; my tirha also has a name. He is Visjel. And I love him."

Louder murmurs, and now soft cries of agreement and support.

"The court will mind proper procedure even as we call tradition into question," the tribunate said.

Elmer felt his heart jump with hope. Had the tribunate just made a joke?

"Yes," Sam resumed. "Visjel. I love him, and only him. That love is the sustaining force of my being and my will. I stand here in your midst to ask you to reconsider things you might never have questioned... or to question further if these very thoughts have passed through your own minds. I ask you to embrace possibility – the possibility that the Ultimate has a plan and a place for each of us, and this is mine.

"But even if you reject this plea, then I must say this. Rather than forsake Visjel, I... the scion of the prime family... will embrace death as joyfully as I have embraced Visjel during my life. If to be together we must perish so that you can cling to laws to which the Ultimate may no longer wish you to limit yourselves, then perish we will, and perish in righteousness."

Righteousness? An antiquated word, but a good one. Elmer nodded in approval. Sam was exceeding his expectations.

But now Sam did something even more unexpected. "My love!" he called out to the room and its spectators. "Visjel! Will you be mine even unto eternity?"

Visjel leapt up. "Sam!" he cried out, his voice brimming with emotion. "I will! My destiny, be it life or death, is entangled with yours, for we are one spirit within each other!"

Elmer hadn't expected that. He was even more astonished when the court room abruptly burst into rapturous applause. Even the tribunate seemed overcome, raising a hand but not commanding silence.

***

"It's exactly as you said," Sam told Elmer back at the great residence of the prime family. "Like when a bird sings out a warning about a predator, giving away its own position and possibly sacrificing its own life to save the flock, communities will serve more general – and sometimes loftier – needs."

"Like the Exen urge for drama," Elmer nodded, smiling, still light-headed with the swiftness and exuberance of his latest legal victory. "Which, to be honest, I did not appreciate as well as you did."

"Well, of course," Sam tells him. "I'm Exen. It comes naturally to me."

"We gave them a good show," Visjel laughed, his arm around his tirha. "And they rewarded us accordingly."

***

Elmer had already accepted his next case and booked passage to Afraim II-b, a moon orbiting a gas giant more than four hundred light years from Exen. The journey was going to take a month, and Elmer was looking forward to finding some free time in the midst of his hours of preparation for the case, which involved the younger sister of a man's infertile wife resisting his demand that she forsake her own wife and become his concubine. His demand was legal – on Afraim II-b, anyway – but with same-gender marriage now legal on the moon, her contention was that her sacred vow to her wife took precedence over his "requisition" of her to the cause of his siring children.

Despite listing himself as engaged at his Stellnet page, and therefore not available for the time being, Elmer was only a few days out from Exen when he received an urgent call from Pribia Alexa III. "You must come at once!" the white-haired woman on the other end of the connection declared. She was clearly a clan matriarch, and clearly used to getting what she demanded.

"I'm afraid that's not possible – probably not for several months, perhaps even a year or more," Elmer told her, unbothered by her air of entitlement.

"You don't understand," she told him. "My nephew is embroiled in a case that will shake the galaxy to its black hole center. He's contracted to three different families to provide sperm and to another three to provide genetic material for half-cloning purposes. He's one of our world's rare 'alpha perfects,' someone with no genetic anomalies, and people like him are well-paid for their services. But the wording of one of his contracts implies an exclusive relationship – and the party that entered into that contract with him is seeking to void the other contracts, and even to annul the embryos that two of the mothers carry even now!"

"Annul?" Elmer didn't like the sound of that.

"Yes, and clearly that is a violation of our sacred Life Laws!" the woman exclaimed. "Whatever your other job might be, you must delay it! This is a matter of deep instinctual imperative versus authoritarian dictates made from a place of both ego and ignorance..."

"I know it seems incredibly urgent and unique to you," Elmer told her, keying in contact information for a colleague he knew was well-equipped to handle the case. "But I've had a dozen other cases to choose from, ranging from here to the Sagittarius Arm. Most of them are as pedestrian as what you're describing, but the one I've already committed to is truly something novel."

"Pedestrian?" the woman cried. "I don't understand! What could possibly take precedence over my nephew's case?"

"I can't get into specifics," Elmer replied, hitting the SEND option on the text, "but I have given you the name of Rada Molengrav, whom I can unreservedly recommend for your case. I happen to know she is free at the moment, and she's not far from the Pribia Alexa system. Given the nature of your nephew's case, speed is essential, yes?"

"But you must come yourself! This situation can only be handled by the very best!"

"Rada is the very best, and in any case, I must decline your offer."

"You cannot be speaking truthfully!" the matriarchal woman declared. "Do you not understand the importance of our family, and of a man like my nephew? They cannot be allowed to bogart him!"

Bogart? Elmer thought, amused at the strange word even as he intuited its meaning.

"It is simply too unjust!" The woman continued. "How can such a thing be?"

"What can I tell you, ma'am?" Elmer said, trying to sound sympathetic. "Things are sociobiological all over!"

Next week we turn an eye to a gentle night before a savage storm: With the world about to enter its final throes of mindless chaos, a loving couple ponder sending out a message that might... or might not... make a difference on "The Last Day of Summer."