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The royal procession paced smoothly through the west wing of the Brunswick Palace, traversing wood-paneled and richly plastered corridors illuminated by the cold, clear brilliance of the electrical illuminants the technocrat-emperor favored. Courtiers and servants scattered before his progress as Farnsworth marched, stony-faced, ahead of the king, aware of the royal eyes drilling speculatively into the back of his high-collared coat. He turned into the North Hall, then through the Hall of Monsters (walled with display cabinets by the king's grandfather, who had taken his antediluvian cryptozoological studies as seriously as the present incumbent took his watchmaker's bench), and then into the New Hall. From there he turned left and paused in a small vestibule before the polished oak doors of the Gold Office.
"Open all and rise for his majesty!" called one of the guards. An answering a
"His Majesty the King bids you good afternoon, and graces you with his presence to enquire of the ru
John Frederick stepped inside, then glanced over his shoulder. "Shut it. Everyone who isn't cleared, get out," he said. Two men, one tall and cadaverous in his black suit, the other wizened and stooped with age, waited beside his desk as he strode toward it and threw himself down in the wide-armed chair behind it with a grunt of irritation. The stooped man watched impassively, but the tall fellow looked slightly apprehensive, like an errant pupil called into the principal's office. "Sir Roderick, Lord Douglass. We assume you would not have lightly called us away from our one private hour of the day without good reason. So if you would be good enough to be seated, perhaps you could explain to us what that reason was? You, fetch chairs for my guests."
Servants cleared for the highest discussions brought chairs for the two ministers. Lord Douglass sat first, creakily lowering himself into his seat. "Roderick, I believe this is your story," he said in a thin voice that betrayed no weakness of mind, merely the frailty of extreme old age.
"Yes, your lordship. Majesty. I have the grave duty to report to you that our intelligence confirms that two days ago the Farmers General detonated a corpuscular dissociation petard on their military test range in Northumbria."
"Shit." John Frederick closed his eyes and rubbed them with the back of one regal wrist. "And which of our agents have reported this? Roderick, they were at least six months away from that last week, what-what?"
Sir Roderick cleared his throat. "I am afraid our intelligence estimates were incorrect, your majesty." He took a deep breath. "Our initial information comes from a communicant in Lancaster who has heard eyewitness reports of the flash from villagers in the Lake District, southwest of the test range. Subsequently a weather ballonet over Iceland detected a radiant plume of corpuscular fragments indicative of a petard of the gun type, using enriched light-kernel cronosium. We've had detailed reports of the progress of the Farmers' Je
The king sighed. "We ca
Farnsworth focused on the prime minister. Douglass might be old and withered, but there was still a sharp mind behind the wispy white hair and liver-spotted wattles. Moreover, to the extent Farnsworth could claim to know the prime minister at all, he struck the equerry as looking shifty-and Sir Roderick was visibly sweating. This is going to be very bad indeed, Farnsworth realized. They're using the French corpuscular test to soften him up. What on God's earth could be worse than Louis XXII with corpuscular weapons?
"Sire." It was Douglass. Farnsworth focused on him. "This, ah, led me to question the diligence with which the Ministry for Special Affairs has been discharging its duties abroad. And indeed, Sir Roderick has instigated certain investigations without prompting, investigations which are revealing a very frightening deficit in our understanding of continental machinations against the security of your domain."
"We… see." The king sounded perplexed and mildly irritated. "Would you get to the point, please? If the situation is as bad as you say, it would be expedient to draw no attention to our knowledge of it, and to reassure those who know something of it but not the substance-therefore one should depart to dress for the opening as one's progression dictates on time and without sign of turmoil, at least until after the next scheduled ISC meeting. So what exactly are you talking about?"
"Sir Roderick," Douglass prompted.
Sir Roderick looked like a man about to be hanged. "Sire, it pains me to lay this before you, but in the wake of the disturbances in Boston three weeks ago I instigated certain investigations. To draw a long story short, it appears that certain of our paid agents at large have been in actual fact accepting the coin of a second paymaster, whose livres and francs have added color to their reportage-to say nothing of delaying vital intelligence. We are now trying to ascertain the extent of the damage, but it appears that there has been for some time a French spy ring operating in our very halls, and this ring has suborned at least one network of our agents overseas. My men are now trying to isolate the spies, and discover how far the rot has spread.
"I believe that in addition to perverting the course of incoming intelligence-which they were unable to do with the petard, it would seem, because weather ballonets with scintillation tubes accept no bribes-these enemy agents have been arranging for numerous shipments of gold to arrive in this country. Certainly more gold than usual has been seized on the black market in the past six months, and it appears that certain troublemakers and rabble-rousers have been living high on the hog."
"The usual?" John Frederick asked coldly.
"Levelers and Ranters," Douglass said quietly. He looked sad. "They never learn, although this treason is, I think, unprecedented in recent years. If true."
The king stood up. "We do not tolerate slander and libel and anarchism, much less as a front for that bastard pretender's machinations!" His cheeks shone; for a moment Farnsworth half-expected him to burst into a denunciation, but after a while the monarch regained control. "Bring forward the next ISC meeting, as soon as possible," he ordered. "Sir Roderick. We expect a daily briefing on the fruits of your investigation. We realize you have had barely nine months to get to grips with your office, but we must insist on holding you responsible for the progress of the ministry. Should you succeed in leeching it back to health you will find us a forgiving ruler, and we appreciate your candor in bringing the disease to our notice-but if this pot boils over, it will not be the Crown who is scalded." He glanced round. "Farnsworth, attend to our wardrobe. Lord Douglass, thank you for bringing the situation to our attention. We shall now proceed to appear our regal best for the state opening tonight. If you should care to seek audience with us after the recession of parliament, we would value your advice."