"Thanks," said Godwin and took the proffered smoke; then wished too late that he _ had spurned the offer in righteous wrath.
"You see," said Gram, puffing, "you Americans take a very cavalier attitude towards sex, like the Eskimos from whom we Greenlanders are partly descended. At least such is the impression given by your fiction and your cinema. In fact, since paternity is, among you, usually a matter of some doubt, I note that when you adopted the institution of monarchy you made it elective, so that the problem of legitimacy should not trouble you. We, however, look upon things differently. Our monarchy operates on strictly legitimatist principles, and we therefore cannot have our princesses running around and—ah—mating with all and sundry."
"I tell you I never—" began Godwin, but Gram continued.
"I was opposed to Karen's going to California alone for just that reason; but she is a usually sensible girl and persuaded her father to her way of thinking, so I weakly gave in. And now we must—how do you express it?—pay the devil."
"Even if you make me do this, I won't—I'll—I'll run away and get a divorce at the first chance. You can't keep me locked up the rest of my life."
"I do not believe that will be necessary. There is another possibility that will, I think, reconcile you to your—ah—fate."
"Yeah? It better be good."
"It is; it transpires that you are the beneficiary of the most amazing coincidence in history."
"Well?"
"You are the legitimate heir to the throne of Great Britain."
GODWIN stared at the other for a moment. "Huh? Ga wan, you're loopy!"
"It has been proved, I assure you."
"What's the matter with George XII?"
"He is merely the descendant of the usurping bastard Duke of Normandy, William Fitz-Robert, while you are the heir of Harold Godwinson—otherwise Harold II—the last Saxon king of England."
"You mean the guy who got bumped off at the Battle of—uh—Hastings?"
"The very one. Harold Godwinson's children by his mistress Edith Swan-neck being ineligible, you are the oldest legitimate descendant in the male line of his posthumous son by Aldyth, Harold Haroldson."
"Ulp. And you mean you're gonna talk the Limies into kicking out George and putting me in his place?"
"That is the idea."
Godwin tugged at his hair with his free hand. "I never heard of such a crazy idea in my life! I must be in a booby-hatch and you're one of the inmates!"
Gram relighted his cigar. "You shall see. Your accession to the British throne will not be so difficult as you suppose. For one thing the British, like most people, have made a fetish of legitimacy in recent decades. For another George XII is unpopular for his vices—a thoroughly maladjusted type."
"Wait! Last winter I played a supporting role in Bonnie Prince Charlie. I dunno much about the real history—you know how the script-writers always hash it up—but it was something about a guy who claimed to be the rightful King of England and invaded Scotland to prove it, but got chased out again. They had us running around in kilts and wigs and talking with Scotch accents. Well, why couldn't the descendants of this Charlie guy have something to say about your project?"
"Oh, you mean the Jacobites. The answer is 'no', for several reasons. The English Parliament decreed that James II, having become a Roman Catholic (this being a time of religious controversies) was ineligible to be king, and the succession was therefore vested in his daughter Mary and her husband Prince William of Orange, a grandson of King Charles I who lost his head. Then when William and Mary died sine prole—"
"What did they die of?"
"Without issue. The crown went to Mary's sister, Anne. In the meantime, Parliament had passed the Act of Settlement in 1701, which named as Anne's successor a granddaughter of James I, whose husband was Elector of Hanover; when Anne died in 1714, this woman's son became King George I. The Jacobites claim the line should have gone to James II's son James Stuart, and then to this man's oldest son Charles—the fellow in the cinema, and then to Charles's younger brother Henry of York. Then when Henry died leaving no more descendants of James II they should have gone back to the descendants of Charles I, through his daughter Henrietta, who married Duke Philip of Orleans—"
"Stop! You got me dizzy with all these Jameses and Charleses; what happened to the Jacobite claim, finally?"
"Oh, nobody has taken it seriously for centuries. It got into the royal house of Sardinia for a while and then into the royal house of Bavaria. Just now the pretender is a young man named Werner von Wittelsbach, a German living here in Greenland."
"Why does he live here?" asked Godwin.
"I arranged that our leading magnate, Thor Thomsen, should offer him a job here he could not afford to refuse, so we could keep an eye on him. And where should he live? The Germans do not want him because he is also the Bavarian pretender, and Bavaria is now under the Austrian crown; and the British will have not have him because Jacobitism is high treason by their act of 1707."
GODWIN said: "I remember from a book that one time there was a Danish king of England named Cahoots or something. What happened to his line?"
"The claim of Knud the Mighty comes down to the modern Danish royal house through his nephew, Knud II, since both his sons died sine prole. The Arrebo-Hauchs are related to this line, but only by a cadet branch. And as the present King of Denmark will have nothing to do with, such an enterprise, we must resort to the remaining line of pretenders: the descendants of Harold of Wessex—which means you, my friend."
"How do you know? They didn't have birth-certificates in the Middle Ages, so you can't trace a line over a thousand years. Who ja think you're kidding?"
"Ah, but we can! Have you ever heard of Viggo Bruun?"
"Nope."
"Naturally not, because we have kept his work quiet. Dr. Bruun is the world's greatest authority on terrestrial magnetism. He discovered the Bruun effect."
"What's that?"
"A permanent impress left in the magneto-gravitic matrix of our planet by every event that happens on its surface; something like the Akashic Record of the occultists. By means of an instrument he has developed, Dr. Bruun can photograph these impressions. The instrument is called a parachron, short for 'parachronoscope'."
"You mean if you took this here gadget you could see the Battle of Waterloo being fought over again?"
"More or less."
"My Goldwyn, what'll they think of next? But what's this got to do with me and your nutty king scheme?"
"Simple. We have made records of the entire lives of Harold Haroldson and his descendants; we have been working on it for several years, and now have a huge library of the lives of historical characters."
"It'd sure be a big library; a roll of film to give one man's whole life would fill a good-sized room."
"Not so bad as that. You can condense a lot, for example cutting the periods of childhood and sleep. For genealogical purposes, you only need the first twenty years or so—up to the time when the man begets his eldest child."
"Could I see some of these movies?"
"Certainly, as soon as the physicians say you may leave. Quarters have been prepared for you at the palace, and the faithful Kaalund will accompany you. Now you must excuse me, please. I take it the prospect of royalty no longer appalls you?"
"I'll think about it. But wait: you never said why you Greenlanders are going to all this trouble. What's in it for you?"
Gram smiled. "A matter of high politics. You know that, in theory, the King of England reigns but does not rule. However, he has some influence as ex officio chairman of the Commonwealth Conference, under the Act of Parliament of 2035—especially right now when the governments of the Dominions are evenly divided over the Assam problem. We wish to accomplish several things, such as taking Greenland out of the Scandinavian Union and into the Commonwealth; a British King faithful to our interest would be very useful. And now goodbye; I shall see you soon."