‘True. Or true enough.’ Music started playing from overhead speakers. Not loud, but intrusive. Frejah glared at the barkeep, but he turned away and the level of the music did not change. ‘We’ll drive some more as soon as we’ve finished these coffees,’ she said.

Mine was still hot. Frejah was taking small, frequent sips.

‘Last night at the conference, I felt I was floundering with this concept of a crime-free state,’ I said. ‘The Historical Society wanted it as the subject. All I could do was theorize about it. Once I started I felt I had been set up. The people in the audience knew more about it than I did.’

‘I was there,’ Frejah said. ‘You didn’t do a bad job. People on this island take it for granted, but they would never intellectualize about it. I think a lot of people were in the audience because they had read your books. Most of them enjoyed your lecture – you received more applause than many speakers do.’

‘Some people rushed away the moment I had finished.’

‘Some people had to get home.’

‘Is intellectualizing what it sounded like? I was just pushing at a theory. Not even my own theory.’

‘Pushing at a theory is what they wanted you to do.’

‘I realized soon after I started speaking that I really had no idea what I was talking about. Crime is everywhere, whether you admit it or not. If somebody takes something away from me, or hurts me, or defrauds me, or kills me – that’s a crime. It’s a crime if the attacks are on someone I love, or someone I just know, or even if I don’t know the victim. It’s still a crime. It’s a crime here as it is anywhere else in the world.’

‘What if the law is different?’

‘All laws in any civilized society are essentially the same,’ I said. ‘Only details are different. Different societies prioritize the matters that concern them most. Laws are a consensus – what ordinary people will put up with, and what they won’t. If someone deviates from the consensus, they commit a crime and become a criminal.’

‘I don’t disagree with that.’

‘So why do you say there’s no crime?’

‘Because on Dearth we have a civil code, not a criminal one. What you call a crime we call a civil transgression.’

‘Same thing, different name. Is that all it is?’

‘Perhaps . . . but most transgressions are not classified as crime, and the culprit does not acquire a criminal record. The outcome is usually compensation to be paid, or time spent working for the community without pay. A record is kept, but it is time-limited, and eventually scrubbed. The lower courts deal with almost all traffic offences, minor offences of violence, most thefts, most of the transgressions involving drug or alcohol abuse, many burglaries. These courts are set at serf level, but of course not all transgressors are serfs.