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The Prime Minister looked at him sadly for a moment, then nodded, returning to his desk, where he rapped for order and called for the vote.

“Well, if you can’t lick them, join them,” Marris said as he sat down beside her. “And if they start chasing you, just yell, ‘There he goes; follow me!'”

The proposal carried, almost unanimously. Prince Ganzay then presented the name of Captain-General Dorflay for elevation to the Bench of Counselors, and the emperor decreed it. As soon as the Session was adjourned and he could do so, he slipped out the little door behind the throne, into an elevator.

* * * * *

In the room at the top of the Octagon Tower, he laid aside his belt and dress dagger and unfastened his tunic, than sat down in his deep chair and called a serving robot. It was the one which had brought him his breakfast, and he greeted it as a friend; it lit a cigarette for him, and poured a drink of brandy. For a long time he sat, smoking and sipping and looking out the wide window to the west, where the orange sun was firing the clouds behind the mountains, and he realized that he was abominably tired. Well, no wonder; more Empire history had been made today than in the years since he had come to the Throne.

Then something behind him clicked. He turned his head, to see Yorn Travann emerge from the concealed elevator. He grinned and lifted his drink in greeting.

“I thought you’d be a little late,” he said. “Everybody trying to climb onto the bandwagon?”

Yorn Travann came forward, unbuckling his belt and laying it with Paul’s; he sank into the chair opposite, and the robot poured him a drink.

“Well, do you blame them? What would it have looked like to you, in their place?”

“A coup d’etat. For that matter, wasn’t that what it was? Why didn’t you tell me you were springing it?”

“I didn’t spring it; it was sprung on me. I didn’t know a thing about it till Max Duklass buttonholed me down by the landing stage. I’d intended fighting this proposal to partition Science and Technology, but this riot blew up and scared Duklass and Tammsan and Guilfred and the rest of them. They weren’t too sure of their majority–that’s why they had the election postponed a couple of times–but they were sure that the riot would turn some of the undecided Counselors against them. So they offered to back me to take over Defense in exchange for my supporting their proposal. It looked too good to pass up.”

“Even at the price of wrecking Science and Technology?”

“It was wrecked, or left to rust into uselessness, long ago. The main function of Technology has been to suppress anything that might threaten this state of economic rigor mortis that Duklass calls stability, and the function of Science has been to let muttonheads like Khane and Dandrik dominate the teaching of science. Well, Defense has its own scientific and technical sections, and when we come to carving the bird, Duklass and Tammsan are going to see a lot of slices going onto my plate.”

“And when it’s all cut up, it will be discovered that there is no provision for original research. So it will please My Majesty to institute an Imperial Office of Scientific Research, independent of any Ministry, and guess who’ll be named to head it.”

“Faress. And, by the way, we’re all set on Khane, too. First Citizen Yaggo is as delighted to have him as we are to get rid of him. Why don’t we get Vann Evaratt back, and give him the job?”

“Good. If he takes charge there at the opening of the next academic year, in ten years we’ll have a thousand young men, maybe ten times that many, who won’t be afraid of new things and new ideas. But the main thing is that now you have Defense, and now the plan can really start firing all jets.”