“Where is Arabella?” asked George. “Where am I?”
“Give you three guesses,” said the man.
“On a ship?”
“Right.”
“The Emperor-King’s ship?”
“No. The King-Emperor’s. You have the honour to be the first prisoner in the great Fattero-Fattish war.”
“War? What is that?”
“War? You don’t know what war is? Have you never read a newspaper?”
“I have only read Tittiker. It tells about a War Office, but I never knew what it was for.”
“My name’s Siebenhaar, engineer and philosophical student, and I fancy you are the man I have been looking for all my life. You should be capable of a pure idea....”