"Y-yes, Your Honorship."
"Lead me to it immediately."
"Su-certainly, Your Honorship."
As they left the room, Gervase picked the Florea Semper Fidelis Gun off the desk. It was too valuable a piece of property to leave lying around. The Palace was full of sticky-fingered civil servants.
They passed through room after room containing bank after bank of computing machines, each more complicated in appearance than the last. Hordes of officials in the garb of hereditary scientist or technician bowed low as the new Ruler passed. The machines, of course, operated and repaired themselves automatically; nonetheless, they needed a good many attendants as befitted their exalted status.
Gervase and his guide finally came to the room where the Prognosticator itself was enshrined. The apartment was twenty stories high and a hundred meters wide, but it was none too large for all the flashing lights and spinning dials and buzzing relays and levers and cables which jammed it. The hundreds of first-rank scientists who waited upon the Machine stopped their tasks of dusting and polishing to greet the new Usurper with deferent acclaim.
"Leave me," he ordered, gesturing with the gun toward the door. "I would be alone with the Prognosticator."
"Certainly, Your Honorship. Certainly. Your wishes are our commands."
They backed out.
"You, too," Gervase told the secretary who had guided him.