Ministry of Disturbance | Page 8

throats. And regency
might not be the limit of Prince Travann's ambitions."
"In your own words, quite plausible, Prince Ganzay. It rests, however,
on a very questionable foundation. The assumption that Prince Travann
is stupid enough to want the Throne."
He had to terminate the conversation himself and blank the screen.
Viktor Ganzay was still staring at him in shocked incredulity when his
image vanished. Viktor Ganzay could not imagine anybody not
wanting the Throne, not even 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 indiscriminate stunning or tear-gassing
or shooting; all sorts of people can have sons and daughters mixed up
in a student riot."
"Yes. I seem to recall student riots in which the sons of his late

Highness Prince Travann and his late Majesty Rodrik XXI were
involved." He deliberated the point for a moment, and added: "This
scarcely sounds like a frat-fight or a panty-raid, though. What seems to
have triggered it?"
"The story I got--a rather hysterical call for help from Khane
himself--is that they're protesting an action of his in dismissing a
faculty member. I have a couple of undercovers at the University, and
I'm trying to contact them. I sent more undercovers, who could pass for
students, ahead of the Gendarmes to get the student side of it and the
names of the ring-leaders." He glanced down at the indicator in front of
him, which had begun to glow. "If you'll pardon me, sir, Count
Tammsan's trying to get me. He may have particulars. I'll call Your
Majesty back when I learn anything more."
* * * * *
There hadn't been anything like that at the University within the
memory of the oldest old grad. Chancellor Khane, he knew, was a
stupid and arrogant old windbag with a swollen sense of his own
importance. He made a small bet with himself that the whole thing was
Khane's fault, but he wondered what lay behind it, and what would
come out of it. Great plagues from little microbes start. Great and
frightening changes----
The screen got itself into an uproar, and he flipped the switch. It was
Viktor Ganzay again. He looked as though his permanent toothache had
deserted him for the moment.
"Sorry to bother Your Majesty, but it's all fixed up," he reported. "First
Citizen Yaggo agreed to alternate