25 Short Stories and Novellas Part 53

He was raging, though. "Yellow people! Black people! Brown people! Why

not green people, too? Why not purple people? Their faces! Their eyes!

And the clothes they wear! Who let them in? What are they all doing here?"

"Uncle," she said, reaching down surrept.i.tiously to give his adrenaline

damper a little downtwist. your country, its greatness, its downfall. To

 

speak with the general, to hear from his lips the reminiscences of

his days of battle, the actual descriptions of the warfare-it would be

ecstasy for me. Ecstasy. Do you understand my words?"

"His Imperial Highness Norton the Fourteenth!" cried a man with an

enormous voice. Carlotta looked around. A ground-effect palanquin

bedecked with gaudy banners was floating solemnly up the street toward

the plaza.

"You've got to go now," Carlotta said. "Look, the Emperor's arriving."

"But later, perhaps?"

"Well-"

"It is for the sacred purpose of scholars.h.i.+p only. Half an hour to speak

with this great man-"

"All welcome His Imperial Highness!" the immense voice called. "Later,"

the Brazilian said urgently. "Please!" He slipped under the rope and

was gone.

Carlotta shrugged. If the Brazilian only knew that nothing Uncle James

said made sense, he wouldn't be so eager. She turned to stare at the

Emperor, atop his palanquin. She had never seen him live before. The

Emperor was a surprisingly small man, very frail, about fifty, with pale

skin and tiny hands, which he held extended to the crowd in a kind

of imperial blessing. The palanquin, drifting a little ways above the

pavement, came forward to the reviewing stand and halted like an

obedient elephant. Members of the imperial guard helped him out, and up

the stairs of the platform to the position of honor.

Someone began a long droning speech of welcome. The mayor of San

Francisco, Carlotta supposed. It went on and on, this grand occasion, this

triumphant day of the commemoration of the hundred-year peace, on and

on and on, yawn and yawn and yawn. The foreigners' cameras and