As they left the room, Gervase picked the Florea Semper Fidelis Gun off the desk. It was too valuable a piece of property to leave lying around. The Palace was full of sticky-fingered civil servants. They passed through room after room containing bank after bank of computing machines, each more complicated in appearance than the last. Hordes of officials in the garb of hereditary scientist or technician bowed low as the new Ruler passed. The machines, of course, operated and repaired themselves automatically; nonetheless, they needed a good many attendants as befitted their exalted status. Gervase and his guide finally came to the room where the Prognosticator itself was enshrined. The apartment was twenty stories high and a hundred meters wide, but it was none too large for all the flashing lights and spinning dials and buzzing relays and levers and cables which jammed it. The hundreds of first-rank scientists who waited upon the Machine stopped their tasks of dusting and polishing to greet the new Usurper with deferent acclaim. "Leave me," he ordered, gesturing with the gun toward the door. "I would be alone with the Prognosticator." "Certainly, Your Honorship. Certainly. Your wishes are our commands." They backed out. "You, too," Gervase told the secretary who had guided him. "Y-yes, Your Honorship." The man skittered off. When they had all gone, Gervase approached a small, unobtrusive door marked _Danger--No Admittance_. Dust lay thick on the sill, for it was seldom opened. Gervase took a tiny, intricate piece of metal from his pocket and fitted it into the lock. Something inside clicked. The door swung open. Beyond, a narrow flight of steps spiraled downward. Gervase descended them unhesitatingly until he came to another small door. This one was simply marked _Private_. He knocked on it. "Aah, go butter your earlobes!" a cracked voice called from within. "Can't you read, you dumb cluck?" "It's me, Gervase!" He pounded on the door with the butt of his gun. "Open up!" * * * * * The door swung open creakily. Through the gloom inside, there could be dimly seen antique furnishings in a poor state of preservation and a still more imperfect state of cleanliness. An outmodedly streamlined twentieth-century typewriting machine was set on a costly metal stand with one caster missing. The flaps of the table were open--one held a chipped teapot, the other a dusty crystal ball and a dog-eared pack of Gypsy cards. Behind all this was a rare old psychoanalyst's couch, ripped open here and there and showing the original stuffing. Reclining on the couch was an incredibly old woman wearing a quaint costume of a bygone era--long scarlet silk skirt, yellow blouse, great golden hoops swinging in her ears. She was sipping something out of a teacup, but it didn't smell like tea, at least not like tea alone. The ancient reek of gin pervaded and overpowered the general mustiness.