in color | Glowfic Constellation

His hair is green.

His mother was green, and in lots of places he would follow her, but Anitam is not one of those places; castes are patrilineal. He is a blue with hair inconveniently reminiscent of his dead mother, that's all. He will grow up and be a politician or a diplomat or an ambassador, like his father, like his father's second wife. His mother did embroidery, stunningly beautiful tapestries and fabric concepts and artwork that hangs in the state buildings and museums. But he's not green, and he can't follow her.

He runs away from home, of course. He would probably have done that anyway; looking back on it it feels a bit overdetermined. The hair would have been enough. Entis, his father's second wife, would have been enough. His siblings - two of them, blue in hair and ambitions and manner and talents - would have been enough. His hair is green. He runs away from home and shows up at a university in Anitam's third-largest city and sits in on classes, front row, asking questions and taking notes and turning in effortlessly brilliant problem sets.

In the third week he tells a professor, biting his lip, that he's not technically enrolled - family couldn't come up with tuition this year, and said maybe next, but he didn't want to wait - and the professor ruffles his hair (green!) and says that it's a delight to grade his work, he can keep sitting in and if he does well he'll talk with the administration at semester's end.

He excels in all five classes he sat in on. They find a scholarship. He vaguely mentions his mother's family.

He graduates with honors and co-authorship of four papers and offers from eight higher degree programs. He accepts one and publishes machine learning papers at a pace that has his advisors gently asking if he's going to burn out and he's green green green and he lives off microwave dinners and praise and envy and he marries the co-author of one of his papers about fluid dynamics and eventually someone pieces together his parentage and asks -

"Are you," he says, "suggesting that someone wrote my papers for me?"

" - I - what - no - I was at your thesis defense, no one else could possibly have -"

"Right. So then are you suggesting that the person who achieved those things wasn't even green?"

"There's no need to be confrontational. I was just - it's matrilineal lots of other places."

"Yes, it is."

And he's green green green.

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"If you want to be a judge I'm sure there are spots."

"I want to go push through mandatory minimum sentences and automatic civil judgments in assault cases, but I thought I'd see if there was reason to leave more room for discretion."

"It wasn't the baby's fault that a red decided to make everyone in earshot think about that."

"Yes, I think your instincts are good there. I'm also thinking about delaying executions of pregnant women, Shasali in yellow criminal suggested it after it came up there recently. Medical bills paid by the guilty and criminals away from society and babies breastfed, I'm sure there's a way to achieve it all."

"If you want me to haul her back and hit her with bills she can't pay because she touched your niece's fiancé you can admit that, you'd be the only person around here the least bit ashamed of the habit."

"I would like her to pay her victim's medical bills. Thank you."

Lilia glares at him and taps on her computer.

He goes back to work, asks someone to draft a law on automatic civil judgments in - "assault cases isn't broadly-enough defined - if you land someone in the hospital through any kind of criminally culpable action -"

"Yes, sir."

"And stays of execution for pregnant women, the victim or surviving family can request the stay be overridden, so can the convict. Kid goes to next of kin if they can afford them after the sentence."

"Are these the same law -"

"We can split them later if people want to nitpick."

He checks if Lilia did anything when she tapped on her computer.

She has assigned a fine schedule to the purple. It'll take two seasons but she is now ordered to pay the bills.

He makes a note for his secretary to check on that every few months.

When the law is ready he explains it to his colleagues - "niece's fiancé got beaten nearly to death in the street, the assailant wasn't liable for the medical bills until I went down to court and fussed - people can sue but they don't always know how and then the same case ties up two courts. You're guilty, you're liable. Much simpler. And then the other one's not strictly necessary but I heard about such a case from a judge and we've just had the babies and I thought I'd draw it up so we could discuss it."

His colleagues want to know if mental hospitals or "just checking" hospital visits count. Also, what if the pregnant prisoner cannot pay for her jail stay.

No, those shouldn't count. "I suppose if they haven't the money they die, they're not worse off than under the present system. Maybe someone who feels really strongly about late-term abortion will set up a charitable fund."

"Or a prospective adopter could put it up."

"Oh, yes, we should have the adoption notice boards aware so they can arrange that for someone who wants it."

That idea is very popular. Always need a way to get prospective adopters more babies.

As a courtesy they send it over to the courts before a vote in case judges have input.

"If this had been on the books she might have just found her innocent," Shasali says.

"Then I'd have less hesitation about demanding the decision be reviewed."

"That doesn't solve the problem for people who aren't related to blues. Or prevent the case from tying up two judges."

"I can have someone keep an eye out for cases like that and demand they all get reviewed, if necessary. If cases only tie up two judges when deliberately misjudged that's a lower caseload on the whole."

"That's demanding a lot of your watchdog, but I don't have any further objections at that point."

Does anyone else?

Nothing serious. The one judge clearly feels persecuted but doesn't have the teeth to get anywhere with a complaint.

They publish the new law with a couple red-unrelated examples of how automatic liability would help sympathetic crime victims recoup their medical costs and an estimate of how many more babies will be up for adoption every spring (1600!).