“Let’s discuss the following situation. There’s some kind of disturbance taking place in a city. The police are trying to restore order. They haven’t got enough men. The crowd is setting fire to cars, looting shops, beating up peaceful passersby. And then two men approach you, an ordinary sergeant on patrol duty. One says he can pacify the crowd, the people will feel ashamed and all go home. The other says he can frighten the crowd, make the people feel pain, and they will go running home. Whose help would you accept?”

“The first to approach me!” Pastukhov replied without a moment’s thought.

“But if they both approach you at once?” Alisher persisted. “And you can only accept help from one of them?”

Pastukhov pondered for literally a second. Then he said confidently: “The one who will frighten them and cause them pain. Would you like to know why?”

Well, would you believe it! There was a pretty decent speaker hiding away inside my police acquaintance! Or had Olga somehow, before his appearance, stimulated his ability to communicate with the audience?

“Why?” Alisher asked sympathetically.

“Because feeling ashamed is for kids who’ve scrawled four-letter words on a fence!” Pastukhov declared confidently. “And even then . . . these days, not even a kid feels ashamed of that. People who feel ashamed and go on their way . . . they’ll just get up to no good all over again! But if they feel pain and fear—that gets through to their brains, and their livers, that gets stored in their subconscious minds. Especially since . . . well, you know who we’re talking about here?”

“Who?” asked Alisher, fascinated.

“Individuals involved in committing group criminal offenses!” said Pastukhov, energetically waving one hand through the air. “Mass disturbances, breaches of the rules of conduct of gatherings and demonstrations, an unsanctioned public assembly, the destruction of private property, delinquency, thuggery, robbery, hooliganism, bodily harm . . . Basically, the whole works! And can you find them all afterwards, arrest them and put them on trial for what they’ve done? No way! Probably ten fall guys will be picked and given a good beating as an example, and the rest will get away with a bit of a fright. So it would be good to punish them in the process of suppressing the illegal activity. So, one—let it be painful! And, two—let it be frightening!”

He glanced triumphantly round the hall.

The audience was silent. Thinking. But this was far from being the censorious silence of Light Others appalled by human cruelty. Everyone was simply silent as they thought over his words. And it seemed as if they were willing to agree with them.

And by and large I agreed with Pastukhov too.

I didn’t like it! But I agreed with him.