His Majesty's Starship Read Online Free PDF

to meet him.
    “Did the king have any reason for calling you Plantagenet?” he said, on a whim, as the amboid guided him through the palace.
    “His Majesty calls us all after Britain’s royal dynasties, Commander Gilmore.”
    “I can’t wait to meet Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,” Gilmore muttered. One more example of the Pretender to the throne of Great Britain’s eccentricities.
    “That AI is simply called Saxe-Coburg,” Plantagenet said helpfully. Gilmore stopped making conversation.
    It was the first time Gilmore had stopped in ‘F’ wheel, and with his first chance to look around he began to revise his opinion of the king. It was as one felt a palace should be: quiet, calm, ornate. Somehow he didn’t doubt that the carpets and paintings and tapestries were genuine ... and that was just it. Mad kings hid in pianos and let their realms go to pot. King Richard had put a lot of love and care into this. He was obsessive about his kingdom but maybe – just maybe – not necessarily mad.
    “This way, Commander,” said a voice at his elbow and he suddenly remembered where he was. He followed Plantagenet.
    “Please wait in here, Commander,” Plantagenet said. Gilmore was led into a room lined with books. “His Majesty will be with you shortly,” Plantagenet said, and left.
    As was no doubt expected of him, Gilmore began to inspect the books. Few surprises there. Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples. The complete works of Shakespeare, every play individually bound. How much had shipping all this out from Earth cost?
    “Impressed?”
    Gilmore didn’t jump: naturally the king would have a sense of theatre and he would have to show up just now. So he turned round slowly.
    Richard Windsor was a thickset man in his early sixties. He wore a suit which looked quite casual but which Gilmore suspected was well out of his price range. He seemed quite friendly and his eyes were very shrewd.
    This man, Gilmore finally decided, is not in the least bit mad.
    “I would come a long way to see a library like this, sir,” he said. His reply was meant to be to the point, abrupt, showing the king he wasn’t here to take nonsense. Then he ruined it by adding a ‘sir’ at the end.
    The king nodded, absorbing the information without acknowledging it. “Can I offer you tea?” he said.
    A slim man with a moustache was waiting for them in the v-room where tea was served.
    “Have you met my son?” the king asked. “James, Commander Michael Gilmore.”
    “How do you do,” said James, Prince of Wales. He and Gilmore shook hands. Gilmore knew the man by sight, of course, as he knew his two younger sisters and their mother. One princess was an actor, the other worked for a space company – not the RSF – and the Queen spent most of her time on Earth. None of them played a part in UK-1 affairs.
    “Please, sit down,” the king said. “What do you think, Commander?”
    Gilmore sat and looked with interest at the virtual display all around them. It was as though they sat at a point in the central axis of UK-1, and the great ship’s walls and ceilings were transparent. They could look down at anything in the ship, anywhere. It was the closest thing the king could find to standing on a mountain and looking out over his kingdom. There were even people moving about in the corridors and plazas.
    “If you were to zoom in on this room,” the king said, “you would find three simulacra there, watching a similar scene. Of course, at that level the resolution begins to get fuzzy. Other than that it’s just made up. The people cycle through the same set of activities every three minutes.”
    “Nice toy,” Gilmore said. It was impressive, even if it was just a show. There was no flicker, no disjuncture between cycles. Beginning and end merged seamlessly into each other. It did annoy him slightly that the king felt he had to call attention to everything. If you’re king, he thought, you shouldn’t have anything to prove.
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