n the man who had to sit on it.

* * * * *

He sat, for a while, looking at the darkened screen, a little worried.
Viktor Ganzay had a much better intelligence service than he had
believed. He wondered how much Ganzay had found out that he hadn't
mentioned. Then he went back to the reports. He had gotten down to the
Ministry of Fine Arts when the communications screen began calling
attention to itself again.

When he flipped the switch, a woman smiled out of it at him. Her blond
hair was rumpled, and she wore a dressing gown; her smile brightened as
his face appeared in her screen.

"Hi!" she greeted him.

"Hi, yourself. You just get up?"

She raised a hand to cover a yawn. "I'll bet you've been up reigning for
hours. Were Rod and Snooks in to see you yet?"

He nodded. "They just left. Rod's going on a picnic with Olva in the
mountains." How long had it been since he and Marris had been on a
picnic--a real picnic, with less than fifty guards and as many courtiers
along? "Do you have much reigning to do, this afternoon?"

She grimaced. "Flower Festivals. I have to make personal tri-di
appearances, live, with messages for the loving subjects. Three minutes
on, and a two-minute break between. I have forty for this afternoon."

"Ugh! Well, have a good time, sweetheart. All I have is lunch with the
Bench, and then this Plenary Session." He told her about Ganzay's fear
of outright controversy.

"Oh, fun! Maybe somebody'll pull somebody's whiskers, or something. I'm
in on that, too."

The call-indicator in front of him began glowing with the code-symbol of
the Minister of Security.

"We can always hope, can't we? Well, Yorn Travann's trying to get me,
now."

"Don't keep him waiting. Maybe I can see you before the Session." She
made a kissing motion with her lips at him, and blanked the screen.

He flipped the switch again, and Prince Travann was on the screen. The
Security Minister didn't waste time being sorry to bother him.

"Your Majesty, a report's just come in that there's a serious riot at
the University; between five and ten thousand students are attacking the
Administration Center, lobbing stench bombs into it, and threatening to
hang Chancellor Khane. They have already overwhelmed and disarmed the
campus police, and I've sent two companies of the Gendarme riot brigade,
under an officer I can trust to handle things firmly but intelligently.
We don't want any indiscrimin