"I see. Thank you for your time, Ms. Chua."

"President Melo -"

"I think you were due to talk to Maria Matilde!" the president says brightly. "She should be available about now!"

Chua hisses and leaves.

"That was informative. Thank you. - I can present documentation of the prosecutorial decision to offer a plea bargain in the case of the arsonist, if that'll be politically useful."

"I'd sure appreciate that and so will my press coordinator."

"Of course. I - ah - is there a procedure for the GCP to replace their director, should she be taking the organization in a direction incompatible with its mission -"

"The subscribers - that's me and the various Earth and Luna leaders and Federated Station - can appoint another candidate with a two-thirds majority vote."

"I'm reassured to hear that there's a process, though of course I hope it never comes up. I'll go request the arson-related documentation unchiplocked. It was as ever a pleasure to see you."

"If only Ms. Chua were so easily pleased!"

"I might suggest back at home that they appoint someone else to my role, she seems to dislike me particularly."

"Ah, I'd miss your visits if you were replaced altogether but having someone else to interface with the GCP might be prudent."

"It'll take them ten days to get here but then the GCP can have a friendlier face to have their arguments with."

And he goes home and requests that people provide him with the relevant documentation and he forwards it to the president of Mars.

President Melo appreciates it!

Ms. Chua issues a press release with the least charitable possible spin on the whereabouts of the five daeva. "I regard the Elves as utterly untrustworthy," is the pull quote. Some of his meetings with non-Melo Presidents are less pleasant.

That's okay. He has the fuller version of the story, and where he has an opening he impresses upon them that he thinks humans should have jurisdiction over human behavior but that getting the whole multiverse to agree to never offer daeva asylum might be hard unless the GCP is willing to give daeva an appeals process - "so I think it's very much in our mutual interest to make that happen."

"They have one," says the President of the African Union. "It takes - five years? Halisi, look that up - but they can appeal."

"Yes ma'am, five years," says Halisi.

"With consent of the victim or if relevant their family, and why would they want to let the daeva appeal? I'm having a hard time persuading everyone that that constitutes due process, especially after the numerous recent miscarriages of justice - "

"What miscarriages, acquitting the torture fairy?" asks the president.

"Trust me, there is at this very moment a fork of me yelling at the policymakers responsible for that miscarriage of justice also. But, uh, perhaps you got a more complete explanation than I did about why the GCP insisted vocally for months that ex-summoners becoming daeva was a lie, and then suddenly went silent about it, I was just told that it was a forensics mishap. And they've been unable to find new forensics demons. And there were a bunch of irregularities in the Celendra trial, pointing to the daeva not in practice having access to the right to have disputed claims verified forensically even back when the GCP, uh, had forensics demons..."

"They've been borrowing ours, ma'am," Halisi confirms when the president looks at her.

"And the Celendra trial?"

"She got off, ma'am."

"Then what's the problem?"

"She got off at appeal after being wrongfully convicted in the first place; she missed watching her daughter grow up in the meantime. A key witness was not permitted to testify in another recent trial because the judge had been mistakenly told she was an imposter; they didn't bother giving him a retrial because it was a relatively short sentence, but I for one would resent even six weeks wrongfully convicted. I have wholeheartedly thrown my support and my political capital behind the GCP and the call to let humans prosecute human crimes. When these incidents come up they get nonstop coverage back home and they are very bad for the credibility of that cause. Same with the crusade to catch that fourteen-year-old. I know the GCP has to do its job with independence from politics, but appeals and reliably correct forensics are not extraordinary asks."

"I don't see why it ought to require any credibility to let humans prosecute human crimes. We aren't demanding to prosecute Elf crimes," says the president of the African Union.

" - I mean, that is how this all started, actually."

She looks at Halisi.

"The GCP handed over a demon who holed an Elf planet, ma'am."

"Well. Handed over. So what are you complaining about?"

"The GCP arrested and declined to hand over that demon. I went there to plead with them to reconsider. They agreed on the condition that we hunt down five fugitives for them. If they had agreed without conditions we would never have bothered the five daeva in question and none of this would have come up at all."

"But they did agree and now you won't give over their fugitives, sounds like Chua thinks you're sheltering them."

"Ma'am, it is impossible to force a daeva to answer a summons. We removed them from the general population so they can never take summons again, never hurt anyone again, but short of I suppose torturing them until they decide to take the circle, there's nothing we can do. We did then offer to hand them over with powerful magic to suppress theirs so the GCP could handle them safely but the GCP didn't feel equipped to do that, and declined. I have showed Chua and her representatives the binding they are under, I agreed with her to a procedure for verifying those bindings. One of them was acquitted and I wish he hadn't been but sometimes the courts acquit people, I could hardly have promised her they'd all be convicted."