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exasperatedly. “Get the Admiral out of bed and make him presentable—I have a cabinet meeting at noon, and I need to talk to him now.”

    “Yes, sir! I most humbly beg your pardon, and beg leave to be excused to do as Your Majesty commands.” The butler virtually bowed and scraped his way off the telephone.

    “What’s the implied ‘or else’?” Duke Michael, the Emperor’s brother, inquired drily. “You’d have him clapped in irons?”

    “Hardly.” The Emperor snorted, showing as much amusement as his dignity permitted. “He’s over eighty; I suppose he’s entitled to stay in bed once in a while. But if he’s so ill he can’t even rise for his Emperor in time of war, I’d have to force him to retire. And then there’d be an uproar in the Admiralty.
    You can’t imagine the waves it would make if we started forcing admirals to retire.” He sniffed. “We might even have to think about giving them all pensions! That’d go down as well as suggesting to Father that he abdicate.”

    Duke Michael coughed, delicately. “Perhaps somebody should have. After the second stroke—”

    “Yes, yes.”

    “I still think offering him the fleet is unreasonable.”

    “If you think that is unreasonable, I don’t suppose you’d care to discuss the likely response of their naval lordships if I didn’t give him first refusal?” The priority telephone rang again before his brother had a chance to answer the pointed question; a liveried servant offered the ivory-and-platinum handset to His Majesty. The Duke picked up a second earpiece, to listen in on the call.

    “Sire? My Lord Admiral Kurtz is ready to talk to you. He extends his deepest apologies, and—”

    “Enough. Just put him on, there’s a good fellow.” Ivan tapped his fingers irritably on the arm of his chair, a Gothic wooden monstrosity only one step removed from an instrument of torture. “Ah, Admiral. Just the man! Capital, how splendid to talk to you. And how are we today?”

    ‘Today-ay?“ A reedy, quavering voice echoed uncertainly over the copper wires. ”Ah-hum, yes, today. Indeed, yes. I’m very well, thank you, milady, I don’t suppose you’ve seen any chameleons?“

    “No, Admiral, there are no chameleons in the palace,” the Emperor stated with firm, but resigned, persistence. “You know who you are speaking to?”

    In the momentary silence he could almost hear the elderly admiral blinking in confusion. “Ah-hum. Your Majesty? Ah, Ivan, lad? Emperor already?
    How time flies!”

    “Yes, Uncle. I’m phoning you because—” A thought struck the Emperor.
    “Are you up and about?”

    “Yes, ahuhuhum. I’m, ah, in my bath chair. It’s my old legs, you know.
    They’re awfully fragile. Got to wrap them up in lots of blankets in case they shatter. They don’t blow legs the way they used to, when I was a lad. But I’m out of bed now.”

    “Oh, good. You see, um—” The Emperor’s brain went into a wheel-spin as he considered and reconsidered the options. He’d heard, of course, about the Admiral’s indisposition, but he hadn’t actually encountered it directly until now. A strong case could be made, he supposed, for dismissing the Admiral; the man was patently ill. Charging him with this duty would be unfair, and more importantly, not in the best interests of the state.

    But he was still the senior fighting admiral, war hero of the New Republic, defender of the empire, slaughterer of the infidels, conqueror of no less than three bucolic and rather backward colony worlds—and, not to put too much of a point on it, the Emperor’s uncle by way of his grandfather’s second mistress. Because of the long-standing tradition that admirals never retired, nobody had ever thought to make provisions for pensioning off old warhorses; they usually died long before it became an issue. To dismiss him was unthinkable, but to expect him to lead a naval expedition—Ivan struggled with his conscience, half hoping that the old