With an effort, Alec made himself ask, “What’s in those warehouses?”

“Machinery, spare parts... one of them has several hundred crates of wine and grain alcohol, from what Will tells me.”

“They won’t burn that,” Alec said.

Jameson turned his bird-of-prey visage toward the glowing flames. “Might be a good idea to let them have their fun tonight.”

“And let them destroy everything they can get their hands on?” Alec shook his head. “Get fifty men and four laser trucks. Find Will and ask him to join us, with as many reliable men as he can muster.”

An instant of skepticism flashed across Jameson’s face.

Alec said, “If we let them dissolve into rabble they’ll be killing each other before sunrise.”

“There is that,” Jameson admitted.

Within half an hour they met at the motor pool, an ancient garage where voices boomed hollowly off the metal walls and silent trucks. Alec laid out a battle plan for the men who assembled there.

“They’re rampaging through the warehouses, burning whatever they can’t drink or carry. We’ll converge on the warehouse area from three different directions,” he traced lines with his finger on the street map spread across the oil-smeared table before him, “and get them under control.”

Jameson looked doubtful. “If they decide to fight us...”

“They won’t if we work things properly,” Alec said.

Will Russo agreed with a nod. “Especially if we pack them in pretty tight here, where the streets converge. They won’t be in a fighting mood.”

His hand sliding to the pistol strapped to his hip, Alec added, “And if we grab the ringleaders and make examples out of them, the rest will calm down fast enough.”

Three columns of heavily armed troops converged on the burning warehouses and the drunken, rampaging men. In the guttering light of the fires that crackled through the warehouse windows and roofs, the looters slowly realized that they were being hemmed in, herded toward the open area where the streets came together. And waiting for them there, in front of the only warehouse that had not yet been torched, were a quartet of laser trucks, their firing mirrors pointed at street level.

Alec stood on the back of one of the trucks with an electrically-powered megaphone in his hand.

“Listen to me,” he commanded, his voice magnified to the dimensions of godhood. “Listen to me, because the men who don’t will be dead before the Sun rises.”

They stood in a befuddled, drunken, sullen mass draped with blankets and sacks of flour and wine bottles and new boots and less identifiable plunder. The fires groaned at their backs. A wall collapsed, showering sparks into the night sky.

“Who started this?” Alec demanded. “I want the ringleaders, and I want them now.”

The men muttered and shifted on their suddenly-tired feet. They stared at the ground or glanced at each other. Alec saw that many of them had left their rifles and automatic weapons behind, once they started looting. But there were still plenty of pistols and carbines among them.

“If you think that your discipline has ended just because you won a battle today, then think again,” Alec boomed at them. “Now, who started this looting? Bring them up front, where I can deal with them the way they deserve.” He pulled the pistol from its holster.

No one moved, except for the nervous shuffling of little boys caught being naughty.

“All right,” Alec said, his voice as cold as sharpened steel, “then we’ll do it the way the Roman legions did it. Jameson—pick out ten men at random. Now.”

With a dozen fully armed troops beside him, Jameson began grabbing men by their arms and shoving them toward the truck where Alec stood. He did not go deeply into the sullen crowd; he picked the men from the front few rows.

Suddenly there was a movement from deep in the crowd. A single figure was worming its way toward the front.

“Alec, Alec... me. Me. Me!”

The looters backed away from him, and Alec recognized Ferret making his way up to the front, to join the men that were going to be executed.

“Me, Alec!” Ferret said, his pinched face smiling innocently in the glow of the smoldering fires. “Pick me!”

The pistol suddenly felt unbearably heavy in Alec’s hand. The weight of the world had somehow been absorbed by the square-snouted shining black gun.

He looked down at the faces of the men standing at his feet. The looters whom Jameson had shoved to the front looked up at him, sullen, afraid, drunk. Ferret was smiling, a child’s hopeful, expectant smile. The crowd had melted back, away from the men who were doomed.

Alec let his arm drop to his side. The gun was too heavy to hold up. Jameson stood frozen at the edge of the crowd, his strong hand locked onto the shoulder of one of the looters.

“I was bad, Alec,” Ferret said. “I’m sorry.”

It was the longest sentence Alec had ever heard out of him.

He raised the bullhorn to his lips once more and said slowly, “You’ve been saved. All of you—you’ve been saved by this one man.”

An audible sigh went through the crowd.

Holstering the gun, Alec said, “You’ve had all the fun you’re going to. From here on, there will be no more looting. You are part of an army—a victorious army. You have a right to be proud of your victory. But you are going to follow orders and maintain discipline. Anyone who can’t follow orders, from this moment on, will be shot. You’ve been reprieved tonight, but from now on there will be no second chances for any of you.”

They muttered sullenly, but did no more than that.

Alec realized that they needed more than the threat of discipline. The stick by itself was useless, unless there was a carrot attached to it.

“You are going to become the richest men on Earth,” he said, and waited for a moment for their response. They stirred, they murmured. “Not from looting. That’s over and done with. You’re going to become rich from your fair share of the riches that this land can provide.

“You’ve spent your lives as raiders, as rat packs, and your lives have been short and painful. But now you are going to live safer, more comfortable lives. You will never have to worry about a meal or a bed again. You will live longer and better than you ever dreamed would be possible. And we—all of us, together—will rule this entire land.”

There were more than a thousand men standing there. The crowd surged, edged closer toward Alec.

“Your days of looting and stealing are finished,” he told them, “because you will no longer have to loot and steal. You’ll get everything you’ve ever wanted, and more of it than you ever saw in your lives.”

“What about women?” a voice from the rear shouted.

“When you’re a raider, a looter, the women run away and hide,” Alec answered into the bullhorn. “When you’re a member of the army that rules the Earth, the women will chase after you!”

They laughed. Alec could feel the tension, the sullenness, easing out of them.

“All right, then,” Alec said firmly. “From this moment on you are members of the army that will rule the world. You will follow orders. And when tomorrow dawns, this world will see something it hasn’t seen since the sky burned: a new force that will conquer everything that stands in its way!”

They cheered. They actually cheered. Alec watched them, wondering, Will I always be able to control them? It was like riding atop a wild animal. Grimly, he realized, It will always be a battle to stay in control.

He spent the rest of the night touring the base, riding atop the battle-dented truck and checking every street and building in the area. Quiet prevailed. The men were exhausted from the battle, drunk with the wine they had found and the exhilaration of being alive when so many others had died. Now the wine and the exhaustion and the emotional fatigue had caught up with them. A taste of discipline was the only excuse most of them needed to fold up into the oblivion of sleep.