
and canal banks and buildings of the town under the noonday sun echoed with celebration, with ten kinds
of music all being played and sung at the same time. The buildings, streets, canals, as well as the people in
them and on them and the living plants that made archways above, were all mad with decorations.
At the center of the slow-moving ceremonial procession crept the broad, low, bubble-domed groundcar
in which the Empress of the Eight Worlds was riding. The parade extending ahead of her car and behind
it was not really very long, but it took its time, so that everyone in the town who wanted to see the
procession and the Empress at close range had a good chance to do so. And there were many, in this
town and across the planet, who did want to see. The crowds, here on Salutai composed exclusively of
Earth-descended humans, cried the name of their Empress in several languages, and some of the people
in the crowd waved petitions and raised banners and placards, promoting one cause or another, as her
clear-topped groundcar crept past.
Though the procession was not moving with much speed, neither was the town large. The sun of Salutai
was still very nearly directly overhead when the central groundcar and its escort of marchers and other
vehicles emerged from the confinement of the old town's narrow streets, and entered abruptly into a
countryside that was approximately half in well-managed cultivation, half still in what looked like virgin
wilderness.
As the short parade left the last of the hard-paved streets behind, the crowds surrounding it grew no
less, but rather greater. Here, amid a vast, parklike expanse that provided more room in which to
assemble, a larger throng was waiting. This crowd was made up partly of government workers and
dependents drafted into action and tubed out from the nearby capital city; still, most of the people had
come here freely, to cheer a monarch popular enough to draw spontaneous affection from many of her
people.
Here a substantial minority of the crowd had in mind other things besides the offer of uncritical affection.
Live news coverage of the procession was notably absent, but still there were occasional protests.
Whenever these protestors and placard-bearers grew too numerous or noisy, security people in uniform
and out appeared in sudden concentration, moving to break up the gatherings as gently and as quietly as
possible. There were no injuries. The people of Salutai knew a long tradition of courtesy, and they were
almost universally unused to the organization of violence, at least against their fellow humans and fellow
citizens.
Now, still surrounded by flowers, and by a slow wave of noise that was still predominantly happy, the
procession paused on the bank of a broad, open canal. Amid a suddenly increased presence of
uniformed security forces, the Empress, still tall and regal despite her advanced age, stood up out of her
low car, and amid much ceremonious escort walked down a few steps to a dock. There she stepped
aboard a heavily decorated pleasure-barge that waited to receive her, rising and falling gently amid the
floating drifts of flowers.
She had to delay briefly then, looking back toward shore, to give her attention to a delegation of
school-children who were about to present her with a special bouquet.
To a young man who was watching from the top of a small hill a hundred meters distant, amid the
scalloped outer fringes of the crowd, the whole scene, of applauding throngs, welcoming children, and
the endless visual bombardment of blossoms, made a very pretty picture indeed.
The young man's name was Chen Shizuoka, and with his curly dark hair surrounding an almost angelic
face he looked very earnest and nervous at the moment, more so than those around him. He said to his
companion: "Listen to them. They still love her."
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