"Sorry, sir, I didn't realise."
"Sure," he said. "Whatever."
"I guess I'm not thinking very clearly. It's been a long day."
The cop looked over to me and smiled. "I guess it has, at that. Don't worry, kid, we'll get you home all right."
#
They gave me a fresh jumpsuit, sat me on a bench, called the embassy, and forgot about me. A long, boring time later, a fat man with walrus moustaches and ruddy skin showed up.
"On your feet, lad," he said. "I'm Pondicherry, your father's successor. You've made quite a mess of things, haven't you?" He had a clipped, British accent, with a hint of something else. I remembered Mr Johnstone saying he'd been in India. He wore a standard unisex jumpsuit, with his ambassadorial sash overtop of it. He looked ridiculous.
"Sorry to have disturbed you, sir," I said.
"I'm sure you are," he said. "Come along, we'll see about fixing this mess."
He used the station's teleporter to bring me to his apartment. It was as ridiculous as his uniform, and in the same way. He'd taken the basic elegant simplicity of a standard 1975 unit and draped all kinds of silly trophies and models overtop of it: lions' heads and sabers and model ships and framed medals and savage masks and dolls.