"I can't agree to that, Poul. I don't have the authority to make agreements like that. I can tell you that my father can make a decision, but it would be better to petition him yourself-"

(Urgently) "It has to be done tonight!"

"I'm sure it does. And I can arrange for my father to see you within the hour-but the request must come directly from your lips to his ears." (Pause.) "You understand that he will expect some reward for this inconvenience."

"Of course." (Pause.) "We expect to pay for any assistance, and I am authorized to negotiate with you-or your father. Only understand that it is a matter of some urgency, and while we are prepared to be generous, we would take a very poor view of any attempt to exploit the situation to our detriment."

"Oh, that's understood. Give me an hour to prepare things and you will be welcome at my father's house. Do you need directions?"

[END TRANSCRIPT]

Erasmus Burgeson arrived in Fort Petrograd four days late, footsore and weary and out-of-pocket-but a free man, thanks to those extraordinary friends of Miriam Beckstein who had arrived just in time to stop the secret police from collaring the two of them.

After the shoot-out at the one-cow railroad station in the middle of nowhere, he'd taken up Miriam's invitation to help himself to the political officer's no-longer-needed steamer, and topped off both its tanks before cracking open the throttle and bumping across dirt tracks and paved military roads in the general direction of the southwest and the Bay Area. But the car had run out of steam ten miles before he reached Miwoc City, and he'd had second (and third) thoughts about the wisdom of paying a mechanic to come out and get her rolling again, in light of the car's bloodstained provenance. (Not to mention the bullet hole in the left, passenger side, door.)

So he'd walked into Miwoc, dusty and sore-footed, and taken a room in a working men's hostel, and spent the night lying awake listening to the fights and the begging and the runners clubbing indigents outside the thin wall of his dive-and set off for Fort Petrograd the next morning, whistling and doubtlessly mangling a ditty he'd picked up from Miriam, about a hotel in California.

It was a hundred miles to the big city, where the guns of Fort Petrograd loomed out across the headland of the bay, aiming south towards San Mateo. It shouldn't have taken three days, but Erasmus decided to avoid the railways-one close shave with the law was more than enough-and not risk buying an automobile: A solitary man driving alone was as good as a green flag to a certain kind of highwayman, and it would swallow all his remaining funds besides. The buses and streetcars that connected the grids of these western townships were more than adequate, if one made allowances for delayed connections… and the increasing number of checkpoints where nervous thief takers and magistrate's men stood guard with shotguns while the transport polis examined internal passports and work permits. These, at least, Erasmus was equipped to deceive, thanks to the package Edward had given him in New London.

Until, on the third day, the bus he was riding from Abadon reached Patwin (which Miriam would have pointed to on a map and called "Vallejo"), and ran into a general strike, and barricades, and grim-faced men beneath a blue flag slashed diagonally with a cross of St. Andrew beneath the glaring face of a wild turkey. "Ye can gae nae farthur," said the leader of the band blocking the high street, "wi'out an aye calling ye strikebreaker." He stood in front of the bus with arms crossed in front of him and the stolid self-confidence born of having two brothers-in-arms standing behind him with hunting rifles and an elderly and unreliable-looking carronade-probably looted from the town hall's front steps-to back them up.

"I'm no' arguing wi't'artillery," said the driver, turning to address his passengers. "End of t' road!"

An hour later, by means of various secret handshakes and circumlocutions, Erasmus was talking to the leader of the strike force, a lean, rat-faced man called Dunstable. "I was on my way to Fort Petrograd on Party business when I was forced off the train and only just escaped with my life. I need to get there immediately. Party business."

"Let me see what I can do," said Dunstable, then vanished into the back of the Town Aldermen's office, doubtless to cable for directions. The two hard-faced men with pistols sat with Erasmus in silence; he made himself comfortable until Dunstable returned. "Aye, well, your story checks out." Dunstable nodded at the two men. "Joe, go and get the mayor's runabout. Frank, you stay with Mister Burgeson here. You and Joe will drive Mister Burgeson straight to Fort Petrograd, to the Crimea Barracks-you know how to find it? Good. Our people hold it. When you get there, do as Mister Burgeson says."

Erasmus stood. "I'll send them back as soon as possible," he promised. "Good luck here."

"Luck?" Dunstable snorted. "Luck's got now't to do with it: People are starving and the frogs are trying to retake New France!"

"They're what?" Erasmus stared at him.

"Oh, the king's got it nailed down quiet like, but we know the score. Furrin troops in Red Club, a dauphin looking to set foot in New Orleans next week." Dunstable tapped the side of his nose. "Got to look fer our selves in times of unrest, `aven't we?"

It took eight hours to drive the fifty miles from Patwin, overlooking the inner shore of the great bay, to Fort Petrograd and the downtown strip of barracks and museums and great houses that defined the core of western society, here on the edge of the Pacific. The roads were good, but the two ferries they required ran only infrequently at present, and they had to stop every five to ten miles to convince another roadblock, revolutionary caucus, civil defense brigade, emergency committee, republican guard, and ladies' union that they were not, in fact, agents of the secret political police, the French dauphin (who had simultaneously invaded New France, or Louisiana as the French called it, and Alaska, and the Brazilian Directorate, not to mention New London), or even the Black Fist Freedom Guard (which last was worryingly close to the truth). Luckily the situation was so confused, the news so hazy, that Erasmus discovered that sounding vague and asking lots of questions quickly convinced most of them that he was what he said he was-an innocent business traveler trapped on the road with his driver and bodyguard. A couple of the local militias made halfhearted attempts to shake him down, but his invincible self-righteousness, combined with a pious appeal to the forces of order and justice once the emergency resolved itself, scared them off. The British were, it seemed, still half-convinced that it was all a bad dream, and the breakdown of government-it seemed the exchequer had run out of money two days ago, and the king had told parliament to resign, and parliament had refused, and the unpaid dragoons had refused to clear the benches-was not quite real.

It was, in short, exactly the sort of confused pre-revolutionary situation that Erasmus had spent most of his life not praying, but hoping for. And he was in very nearly exactly the wrong place, if not for having the good luck to run into Dunstable and his fellow travelers.

The broad boulevards and steel-framed stone buildings of metropolitan Fort Petrograd were awash with excited strikers from the munitions factories and-not entirely to Erasmus's surprise-sailors from the vast naval base sprawling across the southwestern rim of the bay (which Miriam would have pointed to on a map and called "San Mateo"). Erasmus made a snap decision. "Forget the Crimea Barracks, take me to City Hall," he told Joe.

City Hall, a neoclassical lump of concrete reinforced with steel-and, curiously, featuring no windows less than eighteen feet above ground level, and clear lines of fire in all directions-was the logical place to go. And so, when they were stopped two blocks from the place by a barricade manned by marines who had torn their insignia of rank from their uniforms, Erasmus climbed out of the car. "I'm here to see Adam," he said openly. "Take me to him."