Ministry of Disturbance

abolished, and its functionsand personnel added to the Ministry of Security under His HighnessPrince Travann."

  So that was it! Marris, beside him, said, "Well!" He had long agodiscovered that she could pack more meaning into that monosyllable thanthe average counselor could into a half-hour's speech. Prince Ganzay wasthunderstruck, and from the Bench of Counselors six or eight voices werebabbling loudly at once. Four Ministers were on their feet clamoring forrecognition; Count Duklass of Economics was yelling the loudest, so hegot it.

  * * * * *

  "Your Imperial Majesty; it would have been most unseemly in me to havespoken in favor of the proposal of Count Guilfred, being an interestedparty, but I feel no such hesitation in concurring with the proposal ofBaron Garatt, the Minister of Fine Arts. Indeed, I consider it a mostexcellent proposal----"

  "And I consider it the most diabolically dangerous proposal to be madein this Hall in the last six centuries!" old Admiral Gaklar shouted."This is a proposal to concentrate all the armed force of the Empire inthe hands of one man. Who can say what unscrupulous use might be made ofsuch power?"

  "Are you intimating, Prince-Counselor, that Prince Travann iscontemplating some tyrannical or subversive use of such power?" CountTammsan, of all people, demanded.

  There was a concerted gasp at that; about half the Plenary Session wereabsolutely sure that he was. Admiral Geklar backed quickly away from thequestion.

  "Prince Travann will not be the last Minister of Security," he said.

  "What I was about to say, Your Majesty, is that as matters stand,Security has a virtual monopoly on armed power on this planet. Whenthese disorders in the city--which Prince Travann's men are now bringingunder control--broke out, there was, I am informed, an order sent out tobring Regular Army and Planetary Militia into Asgard. It will be hoursbefore any of the former can arrive, and at least a day before thelatter can even be mobilized. By the time any of them get here, therewill be nothing for them to do. Is that not correct, Prince Ganzay?"

  The Prime Minister looked at him angrily, stung by the realization thatsomebody else had a personal intelligence service as good as his own,then swallowed his anger and assented.

  "Furthermore," Count Duklass continued, "the Ministry of Defense,itself, is an anachronism, which no doubt accounts for the condition inwhich we now find it. The Empire has no external enemies whatever; allour defense problems are problems of internal security. Let us thereforeturn the facilities over to the Ministry responsible for the tasks."

  The debate went on and on; he paid less and less attention to it, and itbecame increasingly obvious that opposition to the proposition wasdwindling. Cries of, "Vote! Vote!" began to be heard from itssupporters. Prince Ganzay rose from his desk and came to the throne.

  "Your Imperial Majesty," he said softly. "I am opposed to thisproposition, but I am convinced that enough favor it to pass it, evenover Your Majesty's veto. Before the vote is called, does Your Majestywish my resignation?"

  He rose and stepped down beside the Prime Minister, putting an arm overPrince Ganzay's shoulder.

  "Far from it, old friend," he said, in a distinctly audible voice. "Iwill have too much need for you. But, as for the proposal, I don'toppose it. I think it an excellent one; it has my approval." He loweredhis voice. "As soon as it's passed, place General Dorflay's name innomination."

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

  "Well, if you can't lick them, join them," Marris said as he sat downbeside her. "And if they start chasing you, just yell, 'There he goes;follow me!'"

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

  * * * * *

  In the room at the top of the Octagon Tower, he laid aside his belt anddress dagger and unfastened his tunic, than sat down in his deep chairand called a serving robot. It was the one which had brought him hisbreakfast, 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 andsipping and looking out the wide window to the west, where the orangesun was firing the clouds behind the mountains, and he realized that hewas abominably tired. Well, no wonder; more Empire history had been madetoday than in the years since he had come to the Throne.

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

  "I thought you'd be a little late," he said. "Everybody trying to climbonto the bandwagon?"

  Yorn Travann came forward, unbuckling his belt and laying it withPaul's; he sank into the chair opposite, and the robot poured him adrink.

  "Well, do you blame them? What would it have looked like to you, intheir place?"

  "A _coup d'etat_. For that matter, wasn't that what it was? Why didn'tyou tell me you were springing it?"

  "I didn't spring it; it was sprung on me. I didn't know a thing about ittill Max Duklass buttonholed me down by the landing stage. I'd intendedfighting this proposal to partition Science and Technology, but thisriot blew up and scared Duklass and Tammsan and Guilfred and the rest ofthem. They weren't too sure of their majority--that's why they had theelection postponed a couple of times--but they were sure that the riotwould turn some of the undecided Counselors against them. So theyoffered to back me to take over Defense in exchange for my supportingtheir 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 mainfunction of Technology has been to suppress anything that might threatenthis state of economic _rigor mortis_ that Duklass calls stability, andthe function of Science has been to let muttonheads like Khane andDandrik dominate the teaching of science. Well, Defense has its ownscientific and technical sections, and when we come to carving the bird,Duklass and Tammsan are going to see a lot of slices going onto myplate."

  "And when it's all cut up, it will be discovered that there is noprovision for original research. So it will please My Majesty toinstitute an Imperial Office of Scientific Research, independent of anyMinistry, and guess who'll be named to head it."

  "Faress. And, by the way, we're all set on Khane, too. First CitizenYaggo is as delighted to have him as we are to get rid of him. Why don'twe get Vann Evaratt back, and give him the job?"

  "Good. If he takes charge there at the opening of the next academicyear, in ten years we'll have a thousand young men, maybe ten times thatmany, who won't be afraid of new things and new ideas. But the mainthing is that now you have Defense, and now the plan can really startfiring all jets."

  "Yes." Yorn Travann got out his cigarettes and lit one. Paul glanced atthe robot, hoping that its feelings hadn't been hurt. "All these nativeuprisings I've been blowing up out of inter-tribal knife fights, and allthese civil wars my people have been manufacturing; there'll be more ofthem, and I'll start yelling my head off for an adequate Space Navy, andafter we get it, these local troubles will all stop, and then what'll webe expected to do? Scrap the ships?"

  They both knew what would be done with some of them. It would have to bedone stealthily, while nobody was looking, but some of those ships wouldgo far beyond the boundaries of the Empire, and new things would happen.New worlds, new problems. Great and frightening changes.

  "Paul, we agreed upon this long ago, when we were still boys at theUniversity. The Empire stopped growing, and when things stop growing,they start dying, the death of petrifaction. And when petrifaction iscomplete, the cracking and the crumbling starts, and there's no way ofstopping it. But if we can get people out onto new planets, the Empirewon't die; it'll start growing again."

  "You didn't start t
hat thing at the University, this morning, yourself,did you?"

  "Not the student riot, no. But the hooligan attack, yes. That was someof my own men. The real hooligans began looting after Handrosan hadgotten the students out of the district. We collared all of them,including their boss, Nutchy the Knife, right away, and as soon as wedid that, Big Moogie and Zikko the Nose tried to move in. We're cleaningthem up now. By tomorrow morning there won't be one of these nonworkers'voting blocks left in Asgard, and by the end of the week they'll becleaned up all over Odin. I have discovered a plot, and they're allinvolved in it."

  "Wait a