“Surely. The major said something about trying to find other worlds. Does that mean? . . .”
Huw nodded. “Yes. And tomorrow we’re going to try to open up another one.” He pulled the cork free with a pop. “We live in interesting times!”
On their first day in the enemy capital, the reconnaissance team checked into their hotel and commenced operations. Disguised as a family of Dutch tourists, Sir Gunnar ven Hjorth-Hjalmar, accompanied by his married younger cousin Beatrice and her infant son (the elder was back at the family estate, in the care of his nurse), purchased day passes on the double-decker tourist busses that rumbled incessantly through the boulevards and avenues of the city. Sitting on the top deck with a camcorder glued to his right eye, his “wife” gaping in bucolic awe at the colonnaded classical buildings and low office blocks to either side, Gunnar found it amusing to contemplate the police and security checkpoints that swarmed defensively around the federal buildings. They call this security? he asked himself ironically. Hmm. Target-rich environment, maybe.
“What’s that?” asked Beatrice, pointing at the Washington Monument. She spoke hochsprache, the better to aid the disguise; a strawberry blonde with a two-year-old on her hip wasn’t anybody’s idea of an Al Qaida terrorist. She hadn’t spent much time over in the Anglischprache world, beyond the minimum required for the corvée, and her emulation of an awestruck tourist was entirely genuine—because Niejwein, the largest city with which she was familiar, was less than a tenth the size of downtown Washington, D.C.
“It is a memorial to their founding king-emperor, the duke who led their armies during their rebellion against the rightful king over the water.” Gunnar sniffed. “He refused to take the throne, but their aristocrats honor him to this day.”
“How very stupid of him,” Beatrice agreed. “Was he mad?”
“I don’t know.” Gunnar zoomed in on the monument, then panned slowly sideways to take in the neoclassical palaces of bureaucracy to either side of the wide plaza and the shallow pool. Eight and nine stories high, none of them exceeded the height of the spire. Interesting, he noted. “Mark a waypoint, please.”
Beatrice fumbled obediently in her handbag, then produced a tissue and wiped little Anders’s nose. Anders bubbled sleepily as his mother wadded up the tissue with mild distaste and stuffed it back in her bag, along with the GPS machine. “He will need cleaning soon,” she told Gunnar.
“It cannot be helped. A single man, making notes and filming, would attract attention.”
“Of course, cousin. But we will need to stop the carriage to do so.”
Gunnar panned back across the Mall, slowly scanning a frontage of museum buildings. “There are public toilets in all the museums and public buildings here, well-kept and as luxurious as any palace back home.”
“Good.” She glanced behind her. “These buildings. The people own them?”
“Only indirectly. Just as they rebelled against their king and replaced him with none, so they tried to abolish their aristocracy. It grew back, of course, but not in the same image—so there is a ruling class here, but its members are not named count this or lord that.”
“How very confusing! How is one to recognize a superior? . . .”
“You don’t.” Gunnar ignored her evident discomfort. “It’s very confusing at first. But eventually you learn to spot the signs. Their wealth, for one thing. And the way the laws that leash the ordinary people slip past them. They don’t carry arms; other people carry arms for them, it’s a sign of how rich and powerful this empire has become.” Too many words, he thought. The words wouldn’t stop coming; relief at being here, at not worrying about being murdered by the bitch-queen back home, had loosened his tongue.
Beatrice shifted Anders across her lap. “It’s huge,” she said, her voice wavering slightly.
“Of course. This city, Washington, D.C., has nearly two-thirds the population of the entire Gruinmarkt. And it rules over everything from the outer kingdom in our west through the badlands and the mountains to the Sudtmarkt and the Nordmarkt—well, part of the Nordtmarkt belongs to these Americans’ northern neighbor, but that kingdom is also vast, by our lights. But it is still a kingdom and it is still run by a king-emperor of sorts, albeit one of their elite who is formally proclaimed by his peers to rule for four or eight years. And we know how to talk to power.”
“Huh. My tutor told me their king-emperor is elected, that the people choose him. Is this not so?”
“It looks like that, yes, but it’s not so simple. The little people are presented with two contenders, but the ruling elite would never tolerate the candidacy of an outsider. Sometimes a contender tries to look like an outsider, but it’s purely a rabble-rousing pretense. This current king-emperor doesn’t even go that far; his father was king-emperor before last.”
“Huh. Again, how stupid! Sir Gunnar, I think we should move now, before Anders disgraces himself. If it pleases you?”
Gunnar lowered the camcorder and switched it to standby. The tour guide was still droning on in a nasal voice, mangled by the loudspeakers behind the windshield at the front of the open upper deck of the bus. “Yes, let us do so.” The bus swayed as it moved forward then turned in towards the curb. “Follow me.”
The sky was clear and blue, the sun beating down on the sidewalk as Beatrice stepped off the bus with Anders, waiting while Gunnar—determinedly staying in character—collected the push-chair. As he unfolded it, Anders sent up a sleepy moan: Beatrice bounced him, shushing. “Please let us get him indoors.”
“In a moment.” Gunnar glanced round. The bus had stopped close by a huge concrete and stone facade—back home, it would have been the stronghold of a noble family, but here it was most likely a museum of some sort. “Ah yes. We’ll try there.” Holocaust Memorial Museum? Gunnar had a vague recollection that it might be connected with some historic massacre in these Anglischprache folks’ history, but that didn’t matter to him; it was a museum, so obviously it would have toilets and baby changing facilities. “Record a waypoint. And another one in the baby-changing room, if the machine functions adequately indoors.”
The museum had security guards and one of those annoying contraptions that let them peer into visitors’ possessions next to a metal detecting arch. Gunnar was sufficiently familiar with such precautions to have left his weapons back at the hotel, but they still irritated him, reminding him that he was not free to comport himself as an arms-man in this place. If the business of governance was to maintain a monopoly on lethal force, as his baron had once asserted, then the Anglischprache clearly understood this message. Still, discreet signs pointed to the toilets beyond the obstruction, and the little one’s needs must be attended to.
Gunnar cooled his heels in the atrium for a few minutes while his sister-in-law dealt with the child. It was a peculiar museum, he decided, very strange—more like a mausoleum. This holocaust was clearly a most unsavory affair, but why dwell on it? It was confusing: It didn’t even seem to have happened to the Anglischprache themselves, but to some other people. So why bother commemorating it with a museum? But it’s in the right place, he reminded himself. And it’ll be easier to get onto the roof than any of the government offices. If it’s high enough . . .
Beatrice finally emerged from the rest room, carrying a quieter Anders. Gunnar smiled, trying to look relieved. “I think I would like to go upstairs here,” he told her quietly. “Let’s go find the elevator and ride it to the top. Did you get a waypoint?”