ror. First
Citizen Yaggo, and King Ranulf and Lord Koreff, also seemed uneasy. They
were avoiding the proximity of Paul as though he had the green death.

The viewscreen came on, and in it the city, as seen from an aircar at
two thousand feet, spread out with the Palace visible in the distance,
the golden pile of the Octagon Tower jutting up from it. The car
carrying the pickup was behind the procession, which was moving toward
the Palace along one of the broad skyways, with Gendarmes and Security
Guards leading, following and flanking. There were a few Imperial and
planetary and school flags, but none of the quantity-made banners and
placards which always betray a planned demonstration.

Prince Ganzay had been gone for some time, now. When he returned, he
drew Paul aside.

"Your Majesty," he whispered softly, "I tried to summon Army troops, but
it'll be hours before any can get here. And the Militia can't be
mobilized in anything less than a day. There are only five thousand Army
Regulars on Odin, now, anyhow."

And half of them officers and noncoms of skeleton regiments. Like the
Navy, the Army had been scattered all over the Empire--on Behemoth and
Amida and Xipetotec and Astarte and Jotunnheim--in response to calls for
support from Security.

"Let's have a look at this rioting, Prince Travann," one of the less
decrepit Counselors, a retired general, said. "I want to see how your
people are handling it."

The officers who had come with Prince Travann consulted briefly, and
then got another pickup on the screen. This must have been a regular
public pickup, on the front of a tall building. It was a couple of miles
farther away; the Palace was visible only as a tiny glint from the
Octagon Tower, on the skyline. Half a dozen Security aircars were
darting about, two of them chasing a battered civilian vehicle and
firing at it. On rooftops and terraces and skyways, little clumps of
Security Guards were skirmishing, dodging from cover to cover, and
sometimes individuals or groups in civilian clothes fired back at them.
There was a surprising absence of casualties.

"Your Majesty!" the old general hissed in a scandalized whisper. "That's
nothing but a big fake! Look, they're all firing blanks! The rifles
hardly kick at all, and there's too much smoke for propellant-powder."

"I noticed that." This riot must have been carefully prepared, long in
advance. Yet the student riot seemed to have been entirely spontaneous.