"If you deploy enough resources to calm people upset about commissioners of treason who walk free large swaths of the city may begin to resemble police states monitored by alien occupiers."

"I am optimistic that we can bring about cultural shifts such that not executing teenagers for building their own radio dejammers doesn't incite riots, but if it would incite riots now then I can understand why you did it."

"That is hardly the typical case, but if that sort of case were ignored then a suspicious number of treasonous items would be in the hands of teenagers and people on the boundaries of inclination to treason would feel they could test the edges."

"Is there a shortage of options between ignoring crimes and murdering the perpetrators -"

"Your brother didn't like 'life in prison' either."

"For us that's the same thing. We realize it isn't, for you."

"It is not. I could push that through without much disruption."

"That sounds to me like it would improve the lives of your citizens, am I wrong?"

"The faction that prefers it considers it more punitive."

"Could you give defendants a choice?"

"Then the faction which preferred it wouldn't consider it more punitive and I would have a much harder time pushing it through."

"There are these powerful aliens insisting."

"These powerful aliens have evinced a desire to work under the existing auspices of governance, or should I not assume you and your brother are on the same page? Which limits how much insisting you should want to have to do if there are alternatives."

"If there are political factions with the power to block legal reforms which think executing children isn't punitive enough, then I am concerned a lot of insisting is going to be necessary."

She sighs. "It's not usually children! It's usually greens with genuine revolutionary sentiments or yellow foreign spies or grey military deserters! I have explained the problem with excepting children, but if that will do I can try that!"

"The other things are upsetting but less so. Letting people with revolutionary sentiments express them and try to garner support for them, and having a mechanism for a peaceful transition of power if the revolutionaries successfully get enough support, doesn't work because -"

"For some reason most of the people who think they can run my country better than the existing structure can are poorly informed and running on exceptionless impractical principle. Anyway, having a politics blog is not a crime, plotting to blow up a building or assassinate Allocator Savo for being an idiot is."

Sigh. "Can we get you the political leverage to give people their choice of execution or life imprisonment by offering things for it?"

"Assuming I have the leeway to take some credit and distract some contrarily inclined people, probably."

"Absolutely. What do you need?"

"I wouldn't start with the elevator thing. Weren't you going to end the war, end-of-war negotiations are an excellent distraction."

"Yavanna's here. We are briefing her before she meets the Tapai because there is otherwise some potential for them to hit it off badly. I expect they'll withdraw by the end of the week."

"Then at the end of the week I can get underway."

"Thank you. My next question - my brother was walking in Tapa a few days ago when a red girl lost his temper at him - she was upset because they were going to dismiss her from the military once they've withdrawn, and this would mean she couldn't pay her child credit, and this would mean they would murder her baby. The Tapai believe, of course, that their enforcement is absolutely necessary and we hilariously naive for imagining there's a kinder way. Can you recommend one?"

"The child credit system is idiotic anyway. We just limit families to two, nontransferable, and certain awards bump it to three. If they go over there's no shortage of people with fertility problems who can fold the kid into their allocation instead and if they keep doing it there's surgery."