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The Imperial Palace staff were scared blue. They had been locked in their rooms for months and now, dug out of the servant living quarters by Death Battalion officers, they were quite certain they were about to be executed. It was with great relief that they found, when they had been herded into the immense throne room, that they were only expected to set it up. The vast domed hall was a thousand feet in diameter and a hundred feet from golden floor to sky-blue ceiling. On the dais solidly sat the mammoth throne of Voltar, of shimmering violet stone inset with jewels. It was dusty and as cold as a tomb. It took two hundred staff half an hour to sweep it down and polish it up. They couldn't quite understand what was happening, for the place was also swarming with men in the aqua-green uniforms and badges of Homeview who kept using gutter words they didn't think Homeview men used. Two Royal palace valets and a seneschal balked when ordered to open up the chests of robes: this was supposed to be a ceremony supervised by the Lord of Wardrobe who was not there. They got knocked and kicked by these strange "Homeview men" and lost no time after that in complying. A man the others called "Costumes" made them indicate which were the coronation robes and then the Death Battalion people herded the palace crew back to their quarters and locked them all in once more. They felt relieved to be still alive. In the vast throne room, the director pointed at the electronics security expert and said, "You roustabouts help him set this place up. Don't forget the gadgets." He looked over to where the circus girls and whores were clustered and he yelled, "You (bleeps) help people get dressed. And get dressed yourselves. We got too many (bleeped) women, so all but three of you dress like men. And no (bleeping) around!" A logs man, working over to the side, yelled, "Hey, director, this paint won't dry in under three hours!" "(Bleep)!" yelled the director. "Just tell people to be careful." Lombar, sitting in the antechamber, was still a bit numb from shock. His yellow eyes were sort of glazed. "I still can't figure how they found out," he maundered. "Oh, reporters are pretty awful," said Madison. "Do you talk in your sleep?" "I don't think speed makes you talk in your sleep," said Lombar. "Maybe it was the heroin." "Well, that will do it every time," said Madison. "I sure wish you'd told me. We could have been spared a lot of this." "I guess I'm lucky you jumped in," said Lombar. "You sure are," said Madison. "Here, have another swig of this. It's a counterirritant." Lombar took another drink. Madison looked at his watch. He would get the begi
Two circus girls came in and began to strip off Lombar's clothes. "What's going on?" said Lombar, pretty drunk. "Just you be patient, sweetiebun," Flip said. "We'll have you out of these general's rags before you can spit. We're experts." They had Lombar naked. He stood there teetering. "Hey, that's a nice (bleep)," said Flip. "I think so, too," said the other girl. "Chief, have we got time?" "Shut up," said Madison. "Look, Lombar. Look at this." Madison was holding up a golden Royal robe: it was worked with jewels against shimmerfabric to make patterns of comets, suns and planets. They seemed to move when you twitched the cloth. For an instant Lombar recoiled. He had a Royal robe in his office at Spiteos that had been stolen from a tomb, and in private he had often do