"It is hard to tell, without full awareness of the larger Patterns," Valmis said, "but, looking at, as it were, the micro-Patterns, I should hazard a guess that she had undertaken an early step in a mating ritual, to which your response indicated a lack of any interest whatever."
"Do you really think so?" Dark said. "Ha!" He strode from the lounge, and the three of us resumed our desultory conversation. I had obtained a measure of something called brandy and was investigating its properties when he returned, some twenty minutes later.
"You were right," he told Valmis.
"How were you able to arrive at that conclusion?" Ari asked.
"Well, I went on down to her cabin, which she'd let me know the number of some time back, and banged on the door, and when she opened it and wanted to know what I wanted, I asked her, was that nonsense about going for a walk something to do with a mating ritual? and she laughed and said she guessed it was, so I said, Right, then! and so we did. Closing the door, first, of course; she told me she preferred it that way."
Valmis seemed pleased that his assessment of the situation had proved accurate; Ari looked at Dark with interest, and I with alarm.
"What was it like?" Ari said.
Dark shrugged. "Much the same. When you have this sort of standard humanoid structure, there aren't many surprises that way. I had an idea that would be the case, from what Wells told me. Wells seems to know a lot about that end of things, though it gets him in trouble from time to time."
"And he's not the only one!" I cried. Intimate knowledge of native females was, for a variety of reasons, discouraged firmly by Explorer rules; and, to this end, our biosurgical implants had, on recent voyages, been extended in scope so as to remove this problem from the area of free choice. "D'you mean to say the implants don't function?"
Dark's face bore a contented smile as he looked at me. "Not," he said, "if you work hard at it."
As the Pavonia edged up to its berth, I was cheered to recognize the diminutive figure of Wells waving at us from the pier. He had brought along a large chauffeured motorcar into which the six of us, with our possessions, fitted comfortably; after the formalities of debarkation had been seen to, we sped away. I was surprised to see that shop signs and other visible examples of writing were largely indecipherable, and said so.
"Well, they're in French, you see," Wells explained.
"Why is that? I understood you had the same language in England as they have in America."
It was then that I learned we were in France and not England, even though we were to call on the King of the English. The King, it appeared, made a habit of leaving his country for substantial periods of time, especially during the uncertain weather of late winter and early spring, which he spent in France, but also in summer and autumn. His subjects, far from resenting this, were gratified, as most of them would themselves have preferred to be elsewhere much of the time, and so took a prideful vicarious pleasure in their monarch's travels.
"It was quite a to-do, getting this all arranged," Wells said. "Roosevelt's cables—he shot them off to the King, the Prime Minister, and the President of the Board of Trade—set everyone by the ears, and they all had to come to me to get a line on what they should do. Dear me, didn't it go hard with Asquith to have to get advice from a 'horrid little Fabian sensualist'!" Wells spoke the phrase with relish, as if he gloried in each descriptive term, as I suppose he did. "But he had to, all the same, to get my assurance that you were the real article and some tips on how to get on with you. Asquith's all for seeing what can be got out of you for the benefit of the Em-pah, but young Churchill, at Trade—Roosevelt got him in on it 'cause he thinks Winnie's the same sort of chap he is at bottom, though right now they don't agree politically, Churchill being for the moment more to my way of thinking, or says he is—is all for letting whatever joy you've got flow unconfined, for the benefit of all mankind. Anyhow, it's worked out that you're to see the King at Biarritz, which is where we're on our way to. He's a dear old chap, really—knows what he likes in food, wine, cigars, horses and women, which makes him beloved of all good Englishmen. About women, by the bye, if you should meet a Mrs. Keppel whilst you're there, you've got to strike a sort of medium between being quite cordial and not seeing her; she's an awfully good chum of the King's, if you take my meaning, but nobody's supposed to take any notice of it."
"Speaking of women," Dark said, "there was a funny thing happened on the way to France, about this widow. . . ." He and Wells were for some time occupied with a discussion which appeared to absorb them, while the rest of us watched parts of France whirl by the car.
When they had done, Oxford spoke up. "Wells," said he, "there's something you ought to know. Our friends here don't come as emissaries from any star-girdling Empire, no, indeed." When he had completed his explanation, Wells looked at us oddly. "As far as I'm concerned," he said, "I haven't heard that. When it comes to getting in to see the King with one story, and then telling him the facts have got to be altered a bit, I'd sooner leave that up to you. If there's a flaming row about it, I stand ready to pick up your remains, but not to get into the middle of it."
The journey took the remainder of that day and part of the next, the hours of darkness being spent at an inn in a small town which afforded little of interest. I took a turn around it in the evening and found a place marked with what I was told was the French word for "coffee," a mild stimulant I had enjoyed in the mornings in America, but the range of coffees here was considerably larger than I had before encountered. There was one sweet kind, called "absinthe," which went down quite smoothly, and another, called "cognac," which was harsher in immediate effect but appeared to produce quite a bit of internal heat, which was useful in driving off the chill the air carried.
This air must have possessed soporific qualities, as it was only with the greatest difficulty that I was aroused early the next morning for the resumption of our journey.
We drew up before a large hotel in Biarritz shortly after ten in the morning and were quickly ushered to a large suite of rooms on the first floor. The hotel was called by the French word for "palace," which I suppose is why the King had chosen it. Oxford remained behind in the lobby, as it was felt that his status as a fugitive U.S. Army officer might later present embarrassments for the King.
A large man, somewhere between Roosevelt and Taft in bulk, and sporting a moustache as impressive as Roosevelt's, plus a beard, was sitting at the head of a large table on which were spread various kinds of meats, condiments, breads, beverages, sweets and utensils.
Wells, at this point the head of our party, bowed low and said, "Good morning, Your Majesty."
"You're Wells," the King stated, pointing a fork at him. "Socialist, aren't you? Trouble over women, too, hey? I've heard about that. No harm in it as long as you don't behave meanly, no harm. And these are the gentlemen from outer space, are they? So." He regarded us with his slightly bulging eyes. "You don't look any stranger than a lot of people in my Empire," he said, "or, for that matter, in my court. But if Mr. Roosevelt, whom God preserve, vouches for you, I must accept it that you are what you say." He spoke in a very different way from Wells, and I made a note that the aristocratic, or royal, classes in England used a mode of speech that emphasized the impact of the "r's" and turned the "w's" very nearly to "v's."
"It would have been interesting to see what my mother would have made of you," the King said, studying us. "I expect she would have been gracious, and full of advice, but not at all amused. My father, now, he would have been the man for you—interested in everything, he was, machinery and progress and so on. He'd have been fascinated by the idea of talking with people from another world. Though he might have had some trouble reconciling your existence with his firm belief in the Bible."
"Mr. Bryan had something of the same difficulty about us during the American elections," Ari said, absently taking from a dish a piece of something that might have been fish, and chewing on it.
King Edward looked at him co
ldly and said, "If I had not already been persuaded by Mr. Roosevelt and my Prime Minister—and, for reasons I do not see, but shall make it my business to find out, the President of the Board of Trade—that you are what you purport to be, I should now be convinced of it. To compare William Jennings Bryan with Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prince Consort to the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, and Defender of the Faith, that is believable only in a person not of this Earth! My dear man, you'll want to take the bones out of that trout, or you'll choke on them—here, let me show you how."
At the King's invitation, we joined him at his breakfast, of which there seemed plenty to go around.
"Now," he said at the conclusion of the meal, "we have some business to get to, eh? Strange circumstances, I must say, strange circumstances. Roosevelt sent some devilishly long cables, but they really didn't make everything too clear. I gather that you left the United States rather hastily?"
"Our talks with Mr. Edison were not proceeding satisfactorily," Ari said, which was certainly true enough. "He wished to bring them to a conclusion as soon as possible, but we felt that we should be better able to go on with them once we had a greater store of information about your planet. He was most pressing, unfortunately, so in order to avoid unpleasantness we . . ."
"Stood not upon the order of your going, eh?" the King said. "Well, I don't want to do anything to upset our relations with the United States, God knows, but I don't see how Mr. Edison can make any sort of issue out of this—I mean, the whole thing about ambassadors is that they've got to be able to move about freely, or diplomacy's nowhere at all, eh?"
Both Wells and Ari looked uneasy at this. I reflected that this situation would take some delicate handling. The King still took us for ambassadors, which Wells now knew we were not. We would have to convey our true aims to the King, while keeping them secret from Wells and Oxford, at least at this stage. I hoped Ari considered this problem as falling within the scope of a Metahistorian, as I did not see that any of the rest of us was qualified to handle it.
"Very well," the King went on. "Which of you do I talk to?"
"Myself, Your Majesty," Ari replied. "I am the spokesman for our, ah, embassy. And if I may, I should like to have my colleague Raf with us. He is the Recorder for our mission and should be present to set straight any confusion that may arise."
"A good idea," the King agreed. "I wish there had been someone else than my nephew William to take note of my talks with him in Berlin two months back. We spoke of our navies, and he convinced himself that I had made some most remarkable statements on that subject! Now, as for the rest of you, why don't you take a drive about the countryside this morning? You'd enjoy that; I always do. You might drop in on the pelota matches at Anglet, and there's some good racing at La Barre. They're excellent cars, Mercedes, most reliable."
"Would they be the big reddish ones I saw outside?" Dark asked.
"My machines are claret-colored, yes," the King said.
"Ah, I'd like a spin in one of those," Dark said. "Tell me, what's the gear ratio for the highest speed? I think American cars—"
"You might ask my chauffeur that," the King said. "I find the things fascinating, but haven't the least idea how they work."
Having put the others in the care of one of his attendants, the King led Ari and me to his study. "Ah, good," Ari said, looking about the large room. "Maps and things—that round one there, the model of the planet, with everything on it; that's useful, I expect. I was hoping you'd have plenty of maps. Lots of people don't, I gather."
The King eased himself into a large chair behind his desk and looked at Ari severely. "Lots of people aren't kings, either," he said. "How do you expect I could reign over an Empire that's spread over the whole world if—well, never mind. Gentlemen, as you are representatives of another Empire, one which, I gather, is substantially larger than my own, I think you might begin by telling me something of your intentions and interests here, toward the British Empire first, and then the rest of the world."
I admired Ari's aplomb as he outlined the actual facts of our situation as opposed to the fiction by which we had gained admittance to the King's presence. King Edward listened gravely, his face showing neither anger nor astonishment. At the conclusion of Ari's statement, he lit a cigar carefully and drew deeply upon it, occasioning a momentary fit of coughing, then looked at us.
"Some of my predecessors would have had you hanged in chains or racked for presenting yourselves falsely as ambassadors," he remarked. "And I must say I am not pleased by your imposture. However, one must be flexible in dealing with persons from another world, I suppose. And I shall say that it's a relief to me that you're not what you said you were. We have quite enough to go on with, with the Empires we now have, and coping with another one from off the Earth entirely would probably drive all the foreign offices clean mad. Those that are not already," he added.
"Very well, then," he went on, "what you're really after is some aid in refitting your airship, or whatever it is. We ought to be able to do something about that. Our British shipyards are the envy of the world, and I make no doubt that they ought to be able to do something. I dare say the government would be willing to underwrite the cost, as it would be an excellent advertisement for our industry. I'll have it brought to the attention of the Board of Trade—Churchill would probably be all afire for it."
"With all respect, Your Majesty," Ari said, "there's no chance that any shipyard could help Wanderer just now. The planet just doesn't have the technology for it. There's got to be a lot of progress, what you might call a great leap forward, before anything can be done."
I was awaiting with considerable interest the unveiling of the arcane Metahistorical techniques by which Ari proposed to manipulate the King to our advantage. To my surprise, he launched baldly into his thesis on the inevitability of an imminent major war, the destruction it would work at the same time as it promoted science, and the desirability of getting it launched quickly so as to minimize the worst effects while preserving the favorable (from our point of view) ones. I had to admit he made his point convincingly, bolstering it by darting from map to map, outlining hypothetical movements of armies and fleets, demonstrating the role that the nature of continental land masses would play, citing statistics of industrial and agricultural production, but it seemed to me that it was not the most tactful method of persuasion.
The King apparently shared my feeling. Though obviously shaken at the ghastly picture Ari had painted of what lay in store for his civilization, he squinted at him and asked slowly, "And what did Edison make of all this when you told him?"
"Ah, we didn't do that, of course, Your Majesty," Ari said. "You see, the Americans elect their leaders. They just did that with Edison, you know."
"I am aware of the American electoral process," the King said grimly.
"That's good; then you'll see that their main job, really, is getting elected, not running the country, so naturally they never get to be really professional at it. I couldn't be candid with Edison, you see, as he couldn't possibly be prepared to understand and act on what I would have told him."
"An interesting viewpoint," the King said, looking at the cloud of smoke emanating from his cigar. "And . . . ?"
"Well, you people, emperors and all, you're brought up from birth to rule, and you know that you'll be on the job for life, unless something upsetting happens, as with bombs in Russia or beheadings, like your Charles. Though come to think of it, those people left off being Czars and whatnot only when they were dead, didn't they, so it comes out to the same thing. Anyhow, it stands to reason that a hereditary monarch is in the nature of things better equipped to look at matters of state logically—to comprehend, if I may put it that way, the principles of Metahistory that underlie the growth and decay of cultures."
The King drew on his cigar, then, removing it, pursed his mouth oddly and emitted a quantity of smoke, which assumed the shape of a ring and hung in the air for some time. "It is
n't every time I can do that," he observed, then turned to face Ari directly. "My good man, if we monarchs are as clear-sighted as you seem to think, why ever are you visiting us with this appalling idea of a world war? Don't you think we'll do everything we can to stop it? And that would, of course, make us perfectly useless from your standpoint, I gather."
Ari chuckled and answered, "Dear me, no. I do hope you all will see the logic in what I say, and make your dispositions so as to have your war over and done with without wrecking your civilization completely, as that would involve us in a more extensive delay than I care to think about, but there's no chance of averting it. Look," he said, pointing toward the window. "D'you see those hill things out there, with the white on top?"
The King looked in the indicated direction and said, "Yes. They're the Pyrenees, in fact, if it matters."
"Well, now, imagine you've got some big stones on top of one of them, quite a few, scattered about. And they're all on one of the steep bits, if you follow me. Now, if one of those stones comes loose and starts rolling, it's going to bang into another one and jar it loose, so you've got two of them going. They'll hit some of the others, and pretty soon you've got a bunch of stones rolling down the mountain, going faster and faster. And whatever's in the way, a person or an animal, or as it might be a village, now, that's going to get smashed. And even if you catch sight of the rocks when they're about halfway down, and you know they're going to smash the village, you can't do a thing about it. And my Metahistorical examination of your situation on this planet shows that the rocks, so to speak, are rather more than halfway down, and gaining speed."
And Having Writ . . . Page 13