"Some women will die," Trini pointed out. "Most of them don't know how to handle a knife."
"Some women died yesterday because they didn't have one," Cirocco replied.
She was still looking dubious. Cirocco turned to Stuart.
"As for your Vigilantes... we are going to be needing human police after this initial period. I intend to give preference to the Vigilantes."
"Armed with sticks?" he asked.
"Don't underestimate the billy club."
"So my people will be going up to guys and searching them, right? What happens when the guy pulls a knife?"
"It depends on how good your man is. He may very well die."
She let them think it over again. It was a great temptation to come right out and say it: you don't have any choice. But they knew that. It would be better if they found a way to like it, or at least part of it.
"So there will be laws, and courts?" Stuart asked.
"Not just yet. I've already sketched out laws about slavery and killing. For now, they'll be enforced at the scene of the crime with Titanides acting as judges. Pretty soon we'll elaborate the laws and go through the formality of arrest and some sort of trial."
"I'd feel better with some laws and courts right now," Trini said.
Cirocco just looked at her. She did not mention that there was an even more brutal alternative which she had considered for some time-and had not totally ruled out even yet. She called it the Conal Solution. The Titanides could make judgment calls that Cirocco trusted utterly. If they said this or that human ought to be killed, she knew they were right. There was no denying it would make things quicker and easier.
She didn't even know if it was wrong. Cirocco believed in good and evil, but right and wrong were something else entirely. Trini craved the sanction of law because that's what she had grown up with. Cirocco had, too, and believed it was ultimately necessary if humans were to live together. But she didn't worship it. She had no doubt that a Titanide's innate knack of smelling out evil in humans was better than the judgment of, for instance, a jury of twelve humans.
But it didn't feel right. So she had elected the more arduous course.
"We'll have laws and courts eventually," Cirocco said. "We'll probably have lawyers, too, in time. But that's all up to you."
Trini and Stuart looked at each other.
"You mean the two of us?" Stuart asked. "Or all the citizens?"
"That'll be up to you, too. If you can get along with me for a while, you'll be in an excellent position to take over government when I leave."
"Leave?" Trini said. "When would that be?"
"As soon as I can. I'm not doing this because I want to. I'm doing it because I'm the only one who can do it, and... for reasons that don't concern you now. I've never had any urge to govern. I expect it's going to be a huge headache."
Stuart was looking more and more thoughtful. Cirocco thought her original assessment of the man was correct. He had the hunger for power. She wondered how high he had gotten in government before the war. She had no doubt he had been in government, though she had not asked him.
Trini had the same impulse, though in a different form. Cirocco had known Trini for twenty years. It was only in the last seven that Trini's hidden perversion had surfaced. All things considered, she had done rather well with it. She had been a founding mother and guiding force behind the Free Females. She was basically a good person. Cirocco didn't need a Titanide to tell her that.
So was Stuart. Cirocco didn't really like either of them. She felt that the urge to lead large groups of people was basically not very nice, but knew such people had to exist. She could deal with them when she had to.
"What sort of government did you envision?" Stuart asked, cautiously. "You abolished private property. Are you a communist?"
"I am, temporarily, an absolute dictator. I'm doing the things I believe need to be done, in an order I have worked out very carefully. I abolished private property because Bellinzona is a found object. The most powerful people live in the biggest buildings. The poorest don't even have clothes. That came about because there was no law here when they arrived. The solution I came up with was, first, to abolish slavery, and, second, to wipe out all the outsized gains the more ruthless citizens made simply because they were sons of bitches. Here's one of the headaches I mentioned. As of now, I own the city of Bellinzona. But I don't want or need it. I intend to return the buildings, rooms, and boats to the people ... and I want to do it fairly. A lot of these people have worked hard. They built boats, for instance. I just stole them all. One of the things I hope you two will help me do is set up some sort of mechanism for sorting out claims to personal property and real estate and dwellings. So, yes, I'm sort of communist right now. But I expect that will change."
"Why not let the State keep everything?" Trini asked.
"Again, that will be up to you. I'd advise against it. I think you'll be more popular and sleep easier if you try to be fairer than that. But that may just be my own prejudice. I'll admit to a bias toward private property and democracy. It's the way I grew up. But I know there are other theories."
She again watched Stuart and Trini study each other. These two were going to be interesting, she decided.
"For now," she went on, "I need answers. Can you work with me, knowing my decisions are absolute?"
"If they're absolute, why do you need us?"
"For advice in making them. For criticism when you think I made a bad one. But don't think you'll have a vote."
"Do we really have a choice?" Trini asked.
"Yes. I'm not going to kill you. If you refuse, I'll send you home and get another Free Female, and keep doing that until I find one who'll work with me in getting the Free Females back into society. Somebody will, you know."
"Yes, I do know. It might as well be me."
Stuart looked up.
"Me? Sure. I'll start right now by telling you it's a bad mistake to have Titanides killing humans. It's going to foster race prejudice."
"That's a chance I'm willing to take. The Titanides can defend themselves. If anybody's in danger here, it's the human race, not the Titanides. If things can't be worked out peacefully in the end, they will simply kill every one of you, man, woman, and child."
Stuart looked startled, then thoughtful. Cirocco was not surprised. Even seven years of Bellinzona had not eroded the man's anthropocentric conviction that humans would eventually triumph over all other species, just as they had done on Earth. He had just now entertained the notion it might not be so. He didn't like it.
There were going to be plenty of things he didn't like.
THIRTEEN
Rocky didn't like police duty. He wasn't alone in this; none of the Titanides cared for it. But the Captain had promised them most solemnly that this was the way to get the Child back, so he patrolled diligently.
It had been an interesting time.
On the first day he had participated in a raid on a Boss's headquarters that had left three hundred dead, including one Titanide who had taken an arrow through the head. Rocky himself had received an arrow wound, not serious but painful, in the left hindquarter. He was still favoring that leg.
That had not been the worst raid. One Boss had held out for almost a hundred revs. The Titanides besieged the building and built fires all around it to make the interior as unpleasant as possible. At the end, the Boss's troops had thrown the man's head out the front door and surrendered. Three Titanides had died in that action.
Altogether, Rocky knew of a dozen Titanide deaths. The human deaths were in the thousands, but most of them had come in the first forty revs, with another brief spurt when the disarmament policy went into effect. Now all the gangs were dispersed. Humans eyed Rocky with suspicion and fear, but no one had taken any action against him in quite a while.