"Bumble," I said to the chief clerk—and fatal words they were—"let me have some paper, quick!"

"Young Monte," old Bumble said, "paper is expensive stuff and it's a shame to waste it." He looked down at a cart he was loading. "Here, have some scrap. The backs are blank." And he took a fistful from the moldering box and shoved it at me.

When I had finished sneezing, I looked at what I held. On every single page it was stamped Confidential: Justiciary Only. "Wait, Bumble," I said, "I don't want to get you into trouble. This is apparently a secret document."

Bumble looked at it. He shrugged. "All Royal cases are marked Confidential. A prisoner is entitled to certain privacy, at least until he is executed, and then the records are destroyed. What's the date on that document? Ah, nearly a hundred years ago. Well, you could hardly call that current business, could you? So don't trouble your busy little brain about it, Monte. This whole lot is going to the disintegrator: We need the space."

My eye had lighted on the last line of the last page. It said, "Be lenient. But please don't turn me out. Just execute me quickly! SOLTAN GRIS."

"Wait," I said. "They certainly didn't do what he requested or this document wouldn't still be here."

Bumble looked a little harassed. He peered at the big box he had taken it out of. The moldy label said Incomplete Jurisprudence, GRIS. "Well, I don't see how they could have. The rest of this is trial transcripts. But possibly they never finished trying him or those papers wouldn't be here either. Maybe a misfile. We find those now and then. But funny that it's still marked incomplete."

"How interesting!" I said. "You mean they started a trial and never finished it? Tell me more."

"Confound it, young Monte, we've got to get these drawers empty before lunch. Take the blasted box and let me get back to work."

It really had poundage. The confession itself was heavy and the rest of the papers backbreaking. However, I wrestled the moldy, dusty mess off the cart and staggered away, heading for my air-speedster in the courtyard.

Just then my great-uncle came out. "What have you got there, Monte? A hundred-pound ode? Looks like it's been rejected pretty often. Ha, ha!"

I parked the burden in a cloakroom and accompanied him to his dining hall where he regaled me with the news that he had been talking to the Chief Justiciary and they thought they could get me an appointment here as a junior clerk and wouldn't that be nice? And who knew but what, in another fifty years, I could become somebody respectable like him.

Repressing a shudder, I was then appalled to hear him say, "I was telling your mother, just last week, that if you kept insisting on this scribbler thing, and continued to refuse all the help the family is giving you, our only recourse—for your own good, mind—would be to marry you off."

"Did she have anybody in mind?" I quailed.

"Why, yes," he said, chopping off a piece of bread with a miniature headsman's axe. "The Corsa girl. She may be ugly, but don't forget, she will inherit half of the planet Modon one day."

"Modon?" I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

"Good, clean fresh air," he said. "Lots of interesting peasant revolts and different crops. The provinces are a fine, outdoor life for a vigorous young man. But I know you don't like that sort of thing, so I would strenuously advise you to accept this junior clerk appointment. It will at least keep you in town. I've always been fond of you, you know, and I don't want you to throw your life away."

The campaign was on!

I sat there, the dutiful nephew, diffidently stirring my food, well aware of my frail defenses and the perils of an overmanaged destiny. My cause seemed hopeless.

Driving back to the family town estates beyond Pausch Hills that afternoon, I was in a depressed mood. My plight was cruel and the lovely spring landscape below my air-speedster had no charms.

Time was running out. I had graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts over two years ago, and to date I had not had one tiniest line of anything published. I couldn't point proudly to even a pamphlet and say, "Look, I am a writer: please let me sternly forge my way against the tides of life on my own! I will blazon my name in fire across the skies of Voltar and be a credit beyond credits to everybody's credit one day, a veritable jewel in the family's crown, if you will just let me go my own way!" But alas, I knew that the patience of my numberless uncles, great-uncles, aunts, great-aunts, cousins and second cousins was becoming strained. My days were numbered and sooner or later they would pounce with ferocity and plunge me into some ignominious post of vast respectability. And there I would be, just a cog in the relentless grinding machine of pale gray society.

Mourning my lot, I landed my air-speedster on the target in the statue park, turned it over to my mechanic and had two footmen take the dilapidated records box to my study in the west tower. They keep me relegated to the suite there, distant from other things, because I play recordings late at night and pace.

But I didn't make it. My mother, a very commanding female, was coming down the grand staircase and spotted me seeking to duck behind a potted plant.

"Oh, there you are, Monte," she said. "I trust you had a helpful lunch. But whatever have you done to your clothes?"

I glanced down. That box had gotten me pretty moldy.

"Never mind," she said. "Just be sure that you look well for dinner. I've invited the Corsa girl and her brother." She went blithely on her way but she left me trembling. I could almost hear the mutter of the guns on the horizon as the enemy closed in for the kill.

In my study, my valet was rowing at the footmen for getting dust all over everything with that box. He is a yellow-man named Hound that served with my father on some campaign and he is very determined to bring up the son so he won't disgrace the family. His attention was distracted to me. "Look at your jacket!" he said. "You haven't been going around in public looking like that, have you? Here—good Heavens—get into a shower and I'll lay out some other clothes. Footmen, get that box out of here!"

"No, no!" I said. "It's valuable!"

"Valuable? It stinks just like the Royal prison!"

"That's just it!" I said desperately, blocking the footmen from carrying it out of the door. "Nearly a hundred years ago, somebody was pleading with them to execute him and they refused to! It's a miscarriage of justice. They didn't even complete his trial. It stinks!"

"Then you're going to take that junior-clerk position after all," said Hound, with some relief.

"No!" I cried. "I'm going to write an ode about it."

My valet raised his eyes to the ceiling and spread his ample hands. It was a typical gesture.

We compromised by having a couple of maids wipe the worst of the dust off and leave the container in the middle of the floor, but with a cloth under it to protect the carpet.

After I had my shower and changed my clothes I got rid of the intruders. Thinking to take my mind off my own troubles by studying those of others, I picked the thick confession off the top of the other papers, sat down in an easy chair and prepared to read. There might also be an ode in this. Some lines had already occurred to me:

Oh, stem prison walls,

At last my heart hath ... break?... broken? Bring down, bring down the headsman's axe To end... token? ... broken?... hopeless fate?...

Well, I'd get it smoother later. I better find out what I was writing about first.

I began to read the confession.

I read all afternoon. I found myself quite absorbed. The prose was military, terse, unembellished. But also it was archaic. They don't write that way these days: they just use sounds and pretty words without bothering to put any thought behind them. The intent is to build up towers of metered cloud which then avalanche down into a great thunder of nothingness. It was interesting to read something which spoke of events and scenes in a realistic way. Novel idea. Some of the early classics are like that. They tell a story that has a beginning and an end and everything: remarkable. I shall try to imitate it.