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 ringleaders.” 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 in precedence with King Ranulf, and Lord Koreff has withdrawn all his objections. As far as I can see, at present, there should be no trouble.”
“Fine. I suppose you heard about the excitement at the University?”
“Oh, yes, Your Majesty. Disgraceful affair!”
“Simply shocking. What seems to have started it, have you heard?” he asked. “All I know is that the students were protesting the dismissal of a faculty member. He must have been exceptionally popular, or else he got a more than ordinary raw deal from Khane.”
“Well, as to that, sir, I can’t say. All I learned was that it was the result of some faculty squabble in one of the science departments; the grounds for the dismissal were insubordination and contempt for authority.”
“I always thought that when authority began inspiring contempt, it had stopped being authority. Did you say science? This isn’t going to help Duklass and Tammsan any.”
“I’m afraid not, Your Majesty.” Ganzay didn’t look particularly regretful. “The News Cartel’s gotten hold of it and are using it; it’ll be all over the Empire.”
He said that as though it meant something. Well, maybe it did; a lot of Ministers and almost all the Counselors spent most of their time worrying about what people on planets like Chermosh and Zarathustra and Deirdre and Quetzalcoatl might think, in ignorance of the fact that interest in Empire politics varied inversely as the square of the distance to Odin and the level of corruption and inefficiency of the local government.
“I notice you’ll be at the Bench luncheon. Do you think you could invite our guests, too? We could have an informal presentation before it starts. Can do? Good. I’ll be seeing you there.”
When the screen was blanked, he returned to the reports, ran them off hastily to make sure that nothing had been red-starred, and called a robot to clear the projector. After a while, Prince Travann called again.
“Sorry to bother Your Majesty, but I have most of the facts on the riot, now. What happened was that Chancellor Khane sacked a professor, physics department, under circumstances which aroused resentment among the science students. Some of them walked out of class and went to the stadium to hold a protest meeting, and the thing snowballed until half the students were in it. Khane lost his head and ordered the campus police to clear the stadium; the students rushed them and swamped them. I hope, for their sakes, that none of my men ever let anything like that happen. The man I sent, a Colonel Handrosan, managed to talk the students into going back to the stadium and continuing the meeting under Gendarme protection.”
“Sounds like a good man.”
“Very good, Your Majesty. Especially in handling disturbances. I have complete confidence in him. He’s also investigating the background of the affair. I’ll give Your Majesty what he’s learned, to date. It seems that the head of the physics department, a Professor Nelse Dandrik, had been conducting an experiment, assisted by a Professor Klenn Faress, to establish more accurately the velocity of subnucleonic particles, beta micropositos, I believe. Dandrik’s story, as relayed to Handrosan by Khane, is that he reached a limit and the apparatus began giving erratic results.”
Prince Travann stopped to light a cigarette. “At this point, Professor Dandrik ordered the experiment stopped, and Professor
