of his coat. He flipped a switch and spoke into the box.

"Governor," a voice replied out of it, "there's a geek procession just
landed from a water-barge in front, and is coming up the roadway to
Company House. A platoon of Jaikark's Household Guards, with rifles;
the Spear of State; a royal litter; about thirty geek nobles, on foot;
a gift-litter; another platoon of riflemen, if you say the last
syllable quick enough."

"That'll be Gurgurk, coming to tell us how unhappy his Sodden and
Inebriated Geekship is about that fracas on Seventy-second Street,"
Harrington said. "The gift-litter will contain the customary
indemnity, at the current market quotation. Have Gurgurk and party
admitted, all but the rifle-platoons; give him an honor guard of our
Kragans, and keep his own gun-toters outside. Take them to the
Reception Hall, and hold them there till I signal from the Audience
Hall, and then herd them in."

He came back and made a move. Immediately, Blount took one of his
pieces, moved again, took another, and made the third move to which he
was entitled.

"I'll mate you in four moves," he predicted. "Want to play it out,
before we go down?"

"Sure; what's time to a geek? Gurgurk'd think we were worried about
something if we didn't keep him waiting.... Good Lord! You do have me
over a barrel, Eric!"

III.

Four-and-Twenty Geek Heads

Governor-General Sidney Harrington sat on the comfortably upholstered
bench on the dais of the Audience Hall, flanked by von Schlichten and
Eric Blount. He didn't look particularly regal, even on that high
seat--with his ruddy outdoorsman's face and his ragged gray mustache
and his old tweed coat spotted with pipe-ashes, he might have been any
of the dozen-odd country-gentleman neighbors of von Schlichten's
boyhood in the Argentine. But then, to a Terran, any of the kings of
Uller would have looked like a freak birth in a lizard-house at a zoo;
it was hard to guess what impression Harrington would make on an
Ulleran.

He took the false palate and tongue-clicker, officially designated as
an "enunciator, Ulleran" and, colloquially, as a geek-speaker, out of
his coat pocket and shoved it into his mouth. Von Schlichten and
Blount put in theirs, and Harrington pressed the floor-button with his
toe. After a brief interval, the wide doors at the other end of the
hall slid open, and the Konkrookan notables, attended by a dozen
Company native-officers and a guard of Kragan Rifles,