Hereditary President Sidney Harris watched the long cortege wind out of sight along the Promenade of the People, then turned his back upon it. The conference rooms two-hundredth floor height had transformed the black-draped vehicles into mere beetles crawling harmlessly along an urban canyon, but their implications showed only too clearly in the grim faces that looked back at him.

He crossed to his chair and sat, propping his elbows on the long table and leaning his chin into his palms while he rubbed his eyes. Then he straightened.

"All right. I've got to be at the cemetery in an hour, so let's keep this short." He turned his eyes to Constance Palmer-Levy, Secretary of Security for the People's Republic of Haven. "Anything more on how they got to Walter, Connie?"

"Not specifically, no." Palmer-Levy shrugged. "Walter's bodyguards stopped the gunman a bit too permanently. We can't question a dead man, but we've identified him as one Everett Kanamashi... and what little we have on him suggests he was a fringe member of the CRU."

"Wonderful." Elaine Dumarest, the secretary of war, looked ready to chew splinters out of the table edge. She and Walter Frankel had been adversaries for years—inevitably, given the budgetary-conflicts between their ministries—but Dumarest was an organized individual. She preferred a neat and tidy universe in which to make and execute her own policies, and people like the Citizens' Rights Union were high on her list of untidy individuals.