The next "intermission" in the drama of Ceyx and Halcyone went the better part of the afternoon. Performers and athletes came out, and the crowd which had been weeping with sadness or joy quickly fell into laughter and cheers. The events themselves took a softer tone, and the laughter that rose from the crowd seemed truly good-natured. For Gale, it was a time to brood over the drama. After a while, as if sensing his doubts, Napoleon said, "Ceyx and Halcyon weren't like people think."

"Really," Gale said.

"Yeah," Vixen said. "For one thing, he was forty-eight."

"His ship was an aircraft carrier," Napoleon said.

"Actually, he did have a sailing ship," Vixen said.

"But he was real, and he did the things they're talking about," Gale said. "What about the Divine Wind? The Deluge? The Invincible Army?"

"The Deluge could have happened," Vixen said. "In the Salt Desert, there's whole seas that can come and go in a season, once or twice every hundred years, and the Invaders came at one of the high points. We know they lost people, because we still find bodies and bikes and things. They could have been caught in flash floods, or mistaken salt marshes for solid ground, or even rode straight into ephemeral lakes thinking they were heat mirages. What really stopped the Invaders was that their armor and stuff couldn't handle the brine. That's why we find remains, the damage from the water stopped their biotech from self-consuming the way it was supposed to. By the time they found good ways through, Ceyx' marines were waiting for them, and the Invincible Army was on the way. Oh, yeah, if Ceyx really told his men not to follow him, they sure didn't listen."

"Much the same thing happened with the Divine Wind," Napoleon said. "By the time the storm arrived, the greater part of the Armada had already withdrawn from its path. The ships that remained, mainly large capital subs and landing craft at harbor, probably withstood the storm with minimal losses and damage. But when the navy, airforce and the Invincible Army rapidly deployed after the storm, they were caught battened down and without their defensive screens of aircraft and surface ships. By all indications, they did not even try to fight back. Many believe that they had in fact been preparing to abort their operation and withdraw even before the storm, which they often did when there was a setback to their plans."

"The Invincible Army," Gale said. "They're the big puzzle. Everything else you could put down to Fortune or Fate. But where did the Army come from- and where did they go?"

Napoleon smiled and waved a hand about. "Look at these people around you," he said. "They already know everything we told you, and far more. You know why they are smiling? Because they do not worry about facts. They know that `real' history is messy and complicated, and one can never really sort out all the loose ends. They also know that history has never really been about facts. The essence of history is simply to tell a good story, and in the end it tells at least as much about the storyteller and his audience as it ever will about the past. Watch the story, Mr. Hawthorne, and learn about them."

Peeta and Thresh came out for a demonstration of the infamously savage tiger pankration, in which clawed brass knuckles were worn in place of cesti, except they also wore almost comical protective suits that resembled the mythic Tire Man. They flailed at each other energetically, bursting a red gel pack with every fifth stroke, until they were red from head to toe, and gave each other a brotherly embrace. At the Maidens' balcony, Katniss/ Proserpine waved to them and showed her sign of favor. While she stood there, a chime sounded, and she looked up to see a silver parachute descending.

"What's that?" Gale asked Vixen.

It was Napoleon who answered, "It's a force-guided delivery drone," he said. "The House Capitolites use them to send each other favors. They are keyed to home in on biometric indicators specific to the intended recipient."

"And it always finds the right person?" Gale said.

"If programmed correctly, yes," Napoleon said. "Even if it fails, it cannot be opened by anyone but the recipient, who is identified by fingerprint and DNA from the Capitol database."

"It sounds like something that the wrong people could do a lot of damage with," Gale said.

"Yes," Napoleon answered. "That is why the Capitol government alone is allowed to use it."

"She's opening it," Vixen said. Katniss looked inside the vessel and started to back out of sight. She halted, clearly listening to advice or instructions from her companions. She stepped back to the balcony, and held up her gift. It looked like a locket, but instead of a portrait inside, there was a video screen. A camera zoomed in, and the images were broadcast on the Forum's own screen: Katniss' sister Prim, hugging a cat and waving hello with the cat's paw, her mother. She snapped the locket shut and read the note:

"To Lady Proserpine, from Archon Aeolis Besanicus, Baron of Tiberius... who extends his invitation to dine with him during the performance of the Oresteia of Diogenes this night at the Victory Forum Amphiteatre."

"That skirt-chasing bastard," Napoleon muttered. He glanced at Gale. "Is there a problem?"

"He's in love with her," Vixen said matter-of-factly. There was a long silence.

Mercifully the drama returned. It was revealed that, while the widow Halcyon grew old and Panem either rejoiced at the Invaders' retreat or feared their return, the greatest minds of all its lands raced to unlock the secrets of the greatest prize of the war: the very ship which Lord Ceyx had disabled, and his fleet had wrested from a fleet of Invaders sent to save or scuttle it. The foremost among them were former Presidents Titus, to whom Halcyon's father Solon had abdicated, and Solon himself, who lived on to unparalleled age because he would not accept leave to die. Together, they sought the secret of the place from which the Invaders came, and devise a means to end their threat. At last, they appeared before the Grand Assembly, the nominal body of the Senators, Councilmen, Peacekeepers and all citizens eligible to hold office, to present to Ceyx' son President Octavian a plan to end the Invaders' menace forever.

The screens showed authentic images from the Invaders' own logs of the place from which they came. Beneath the ocean, a temendous abyss yawned deep enough to swallow ten Mount Eberdines. On the edges of the abyss were gigantic transparent domes many miles wide, one filled with fields, another with wild forests and wilderness, and and yet another with the towering spires of a city ten times the size of the Capitol. A diagram showed a thousand miles of abyss, lined by hundreds of domes. It was proposed that, if Panem detonated a number of the Bombs of Helios at a certain point on the Invaders' Abyss, it would trigger great earthquakes that would shatter their domes. Titus argued that the plan should be carried out as quickly as possible. Solon, though the plan's chief architect, begged the Assembly and Octavian in tears, not to use it. He further pled that, as none of the people of Panem had suffered more from the Invaders than the Islanders, it was only just that the Invaders shood be judged by to their own Law of Life.

The center of the pool was a platform where the Great Debate was played out. Lord Dr. Aurelius once again played the part of the famed philosopher-scientist Solon, Beetee appeared as Octavian, and Titus was played by none other than President Snow. Solon began by outlining the barest outline of a self-evidently complex body of philosophy. All life was sacred, and Man most sacred of all, because it was to the mind of Man that the Power of Law revealed itself. It was the first principle of the Law of Life to do no harm to any life except to serve the good of other life, and to do no harm to Mankind except for the greatest good of all Mankind. It was within the Law to take arms against Man for the defense of Mankind, to take the liberty of Man for harm to Mankind, and in extremity to strike down a man of Ill Will, even without warning.

Titus and Solon then set to sparring rhetorically. Titus declared that the Invaders were surely men of Ill Will, for they had struck without warning when Panem offered no harm. Solon countered that Panem might very well have done harm to the Invaders. He spoke especially of the way Panem thoughtlessly dumped all manner of waste into the very waters where the Invaders lived, which he compared grotesquely to a never-ending fleet of the Invaders' helicraft dropping noxious excrement on the streets of the Capitol. Solon argued that, considering their numbers and strength, the Invaders seemed to have little interest in Panem one way of the other. All their onslaughts together had been what it would be to Panem would beating a worthless Wilderness for a troublesome tribe of savages, and there had not been even a hint of the Invaders in almost fifty years. Titus answered that the Invaders had proven themselves slow and patient, and who could say how long they had plotted and even warred in secret against Panem, alluding to lost expeditions and colonies and to various disasters and plagues. For such a people as the Invaders, it would be but a small thing to wait a thousand years.

Solon fell to arguing points of principle rather than facts, and in the format of the drama this was portrayed as weakness. He said that two things were beyond the Law and Justice: to punish the innocent for another's crime, to repay a wrong with greater wrong, and to slay in anger. All the people of Panem together could not be a hundredth part of the people of the Invaders' cities, and next to the Invaders' works, Panem was like a tribe of hairy savages. Even if it were the choice between the destruction of the Invaders' cities or theirs, he would not raise his hand to perform the deed. It could not serve the greater good, but only darken the souls of every generation that might come, so much that it might be better if they never lived. Did not even the Virtues of the Warriors say, that it was better to die with noble soul than live a thousand years by shame?

Titus pounced almost viciously. Who was Solon to appeal to the Virtues of the Warrior? Had not he been the one to declare, when he and Titus announced the Great Evacuation to the last Grand Assembly, that fighting the Invaders according to the Virtues did nothing but leave the greatest dead and the weak at the mercy of the merciless? Never had they been more in agreement! Nor did it do any good to fret about the burden upon generations unborn when the lives of any who would father them hung in the balance. As for the Law of Life, was not the Law's first principle to attend first to oneself and one's own? Therefore, the Law could not compel the people of Panem to seek any good before that of Panem itself. Besides, why should the principles of the Law of Life be extended to those who seemed to hold each others' lives in even less esteem than their foes'?

The last remark clearly overstepped the terms of the debate, and Solon rallied. He challenged the very motives of Titus' heart, saying that what he desired most was not Panem's safety or even justice for its dead, but vengeance for the wounding of the nation's pride. Finally, he warned again of the burden of such a crime on the nation: "There is no Law by which mere millions can take the lives of billions. That way is the bloodlust of beasts, and once we go down that path, who is to say we shall ever turn back?"

Titus answered only briefly. He was secure in his heart and mind. He felt no shame in calling for what he had no doubt was best. He declared it his wish that every word of their debate be preserved and told anew as long as Panem endured, and let every generation to come decide whether he or Solon had been in the right. Last he said, with an oddly knowing look, "If we are as savages, what has become of the savages?"

While the players enacted the great debate, Katniss moved across a footbridge to the platform, and all eyes turned to her as to a ghost. Her hair was white, and for the first time, the widowed bride wore white. "At last, the President appealed to the widow Halcyon, his own mother. With her last breath, she said..."

Katniss spoke the two short, immortal words: "Delenda est!"

Afterward, Gale and Vixen used the restroom, and he gave his bride his trike. He pointedly ignored Napoleon, who stood behind him in line. It was only then that he noticed how many people looked at him, and then Napoleon... and promptly moved on like water around a glass wall. "It did change them," Napoleon said. "It wasn't all at once, and it really wasn't any one thing, but there's no question, the Debate was the turning point. People spent more, for one thing; Octavian introduced the sixteenth-part ace to keep up with them. Another thing was that they stopped voting. When President Tiberion disbanded the Great Assembly, nobody cared. They say people would call him Tiburon to his face, and he laughed."

"Tiburon," Gale said. "He was the one who established District Thirteen, wasn't he?"

"Why yes, he was," Napoleon said. "Though, there is evidence that it was Lady Belladonna's idea."

Gale finally looked at the little man. "She sent you," he said. "Didn't she?"

Napoleon smiled. "What makes you think that I work for her?"