“Why must our finest minds be grouped in our most unstable family?” murmured the Bishop.

“They aren't the most unstable family, Bishop Peregrino,” said Valentine. “They're merely the family whose inner quakings cause the most perturbation at the surface. Other families suffer much worse turmoil, but you never notice because they don't matter so much to the colony.”

The Bishop nodded sagely, but Valentine suspected that he was annoyed at being corrected on so trivial a point. Only it wasn't trivial, she knew. If the Bishop and the Mayor started thinking that the Ribeira family was more unstable than in fact it was, they might lose trust in Ela or Miro or Novinha, all of whom were absolutely essential if Lusitania were to survive the coming crises. For that matter, even the most immature ones, Quara and Grego, might be needed. They had already lost Quim, probably the best of them all. It would be foolish to throw the others away as well; yet if the colony's leaders were to start misjudging the Ribeiras as a group, they would soon misjudge them as individuals, too.

“Last night,” Mayor Kovano continued, “the family dispersed, and as far as we know, few of them are speaking to any of the others. I tried to find Novinha, and only recently learned that she has taken refuge with the Children of the Mind of Christ and won't see or speak to anyone. Ela tells me that her mother has put a seal on all the files in the xenobiology laboratory, so that work there has come to an absolute standstill this morning. Quara is with Ela, believe it or not. The boy Miro is outside the perimeter somewhere. Olhado is at home and his wife says he has turned his eyes off, which is his way of withdrawing from life.”

“So far,” said Peregrino, “it sounds like they're all taking Father Estevao's death very badly. I must visit with them and help them.”

“All of these are perfectly acceptable grief responses,” said Kovano, “and I wouldn't have called this meeting if this were all. As you say, Your Grace, you would deal with this as their spiritual leader, without any need for me.”

“Grego,” said Valentine, realizing who had not been accounted for in Kovano's list.

“Exactly,” said Kovano. “His response was to go into a bar– several bars, before the night was over– and tell every half-drunk paranoid bigot in Milagre– of which we have our fair share– that the piggies have murdered Father Quim in cold blood.”

“Que Deus nos abencoe,” murmured Bishop Peregrino.

“One of the bars had a disturbance,” said Kovano. “Windows shattered, chairs broken, two men hospitalized.”

“A brawl?” asked the Bishop.

“Not really. Just anger vented in general.”

“So they got it out of their system.”

“I hope so,” said Kovano. “But it seemed only to stop when the sun came up. And when the constable arrived.”

“Constable?” asked Valentine. “Just one?”

“He heads a volunteer police force,” said Kovano. “Like the volunteer fire brigade. Two-hour patrols. We woke some up. It took twenty of them to quiet things down. We only have about fifty on the whole force, usually with only four on duty at any one time. They usually spend the night walking around telling each other jokes. And some of the off-duty police were among the ones trashing the bar.”

“So you're saying they're not terribly reliable in an emergency.”

“They behaved splendidly last night,” said Kovano. “The ones who were on duty, I mean.”

“Still, there's not a hope of them controlling a real riot,” said Valentine.

“They handled things last night,” said Bishop Peregrino. “Tonight the first shock will have worn off.”

“On the contrary,” said Valentine. “Tonight the word will have spread. Everybody will know about Quim's death and the anger will be all the hotter.”

“Perhaps,” said Mayor Kovano. “But what worries me is the next day, when Andrew brings the body home. Father Estevao wasn't all that popular a figure– he never went drinking with the boys– but he was a kind of spiritual symbol. As a martyr, he'll have a lot more people wanting to avenge him than he ever had disciples wanting to follow him during his life.”

“So you're saying we should have a small and simple funeral,” said Peregrino.

“I don't know,” said Kovano. “Maybe what the people need is a big funeral, where they can vent their grief and get it all out and over with.”

“The funeral is nothing,” said Valentine. “Your problem is tonight.”

“Why tonight?” said Kovano. “The first shock of the news of Father Estevao's death will be over. The body won't be back till tomorrow. What's tonight?”

“Tonight you have to close all the bars. Don't allow any alcohol to flow. Arrest Grego and confine him until after the funeral. Declare a curfew at sundown and put every policeman on duty. Patrol the city all night in groups of four, with nightsticks and sidearms.”

“Our police don't have sidearms.”

“Give them sidearms anyway. They don't have to load them, they just have to have them. A nightstick is an invitation to argue with authority, because you can always run away. A pistol is an incentive to behave politely.”

“This sounds very extreme,” said Bishop Peregrino. “A curfew! What about night shifts?”

“Cancel all but vital services.”

“Forgive me, Valentine,” said Mayor Kovano, “but if we overreact so badly, won't that just blow things out of proportion? Maybe even cause the kind of panic we want to avoid?”

“You've never seen a riot, have you?”

“Only what happened last night,” said the Mayor.

“Milagre is a very small town,” said Bishop Peregrino. “Only about fifteen thousand people. We're hardly large enough to have a real riot– that's for big cities, on heavily populated worlds.”

“It's not a function of population size,” said Valentine, “it's a function of population density and public fear. Your fifteen thousand people are crammed together in a space hardly large enough to be the downtown of a city. They have a fence around them– by choice– because outside that fence there are creatures who are unbearably strange and who think they own the whole world, even though everybody can see vast prairies that should be open for humans to use except the piggies refuse to let them. The city has been scarred by plague, and now they're cut off from every other world and there's a fleet coming sometime in the near future to invade and oppress and punish them. And in their minds, all of this, all of it, is the piggies' fault. Last night they first learned that the piggies have killed again, even after they took a solemn vow not to harm a human being. No doubt Grego gave them a very colorful account of the piggies' treachery– the boy has a way with words, especially nasty ones– and the few men who were in the bars reacted with violence. I assure you, things will only be worse tonight, unless you head them off.”

“If we take that kind of oppressive action, they'll think we're panicking,” said Bishop Peregrino.

“They'll think you're firmly in control. The levelheaded people will be grateful to you. You'll restore public trust.”

“I don't know,” said Mayor Kovano. “No mayor has ever done anything like that before.”

“No other mayor ever had the need.”

“People will say that I used the slightest excuse to take dictatorial powers.”

“Maybe they will,” said Valentine.

“They'll never believe that there would have been a riot.”

“So perhaps you'll get defeated at the next election,” said Valentine. “What of that?”

Peregrino laughed aloud. “She thinks like a cleric,” he said.

“I'm willing to lose an election in order to do the right thing,” said Kovano, a little resentfully.

“You're just not sure it's the right thing,” said Valentine.

“Well, you can't know that there'll be a riot tonight,” said Kovano.

“Yes I can,” said Valentine. “I promise that unless you take firm control right now, and stifle any possibility of crowds forming tonight, you will lose a lot more than the next election.”