"What would the number mean to you? I doubt you even know our population."

"I don't, I just want to propose an experiment and if it turns out you don't keep statistics then I can't."

"We have records."

"Great. So, for a year, let us have them. If you think it's necessary for deterrence purposes we can decline to specify what precisely we are doing with them. I do not expect this to result in a rise in capital crimes, and I expect the technology and resources we can offer you to reduce peoples' willingness to commit them, so I predict that the next year sees your capital crime rates fall. If it doesn't, all right, we were wrong, your people can't be kept in line without public executions. I can put money on it if you'd like."

"It varies a lot year to year."

"I'd have proposed a decade but I thought that might seem rude. I'll pay you even if it's not distinguishable from statistical noise."

"Really," says Governor Riado.

"Uh, sometimes a year goes by without any executions," says Savo.

"I am delighted to hear it. You declined to offer statistics earlier: do you want to offer them now so we can discuss details more meaningfully?"

"They're public record, if you want them I don't care," says Riado.

"I can, um, go send you the Tower of Rainbows records," murmurs Savo.

"Thank you."

Savo nips off and does that.

And how many people does the place kill in a typical year -

Sometimes they dig up a subversive organization and slaughter fifty of 'em. Some years none. A median year is more like five.

"This really is too noisy to draw conclusions in less than a decade," he says, frowning. "But the median's five, we could use that for the bet."

"Uh," says Savo.

"Don't work yourself into a tizzy, Allocator, I'm not going to let him run off with a year's worth of treasonous bastards just to see if he coughs up money after I beef up the anti-sedition division."

"I know you can cheat," he says to Savo, "I just think ending material scarcity cheats harder."

"You think that purple kid was doing it because he didn't have enough points on his ration card?"

"I know that in my world the punishment for treason is a slap on the wrist and yet no one does it and the most apparent difference between our societies is that in mine no one wants for anything unless it's intrinsically limited, like 'tickets to opening night of a show'."

"I think your society is a different species," points out Governor Riado.

"Orcs and Dwarves don't have executions either."

"We do; I think every culture in the history of the planet does."

"But none of them have been free of want, have they?"

"No. The purple kid wasn't starving - if anything his problem was he had too many toys, built a fucking dejammer out of music player parts and scrap -"

"Yes, it sounds like he was an extraordinarily brilliant and gifted young man. I don't know, maybe your species is just far more violent than any other in the galaxy and impossible to manage without descending to violence ourselves. But I want to at least give a try to the possibility that you have, ah, bad habits, and desperation, and various other maladies that are of circumstances and not of character."

"I don't trust you to give the criminals back even if a bet turns out that way," says the governor.