"Thank you," Lee said, and turned her eyes questioningly to her superior.
Sheila did her bleak smile and said, "Run along, dear, and do meet as many of those present as you can. You'll be working with all of them later."
Jerry took Lee by the arm and led her to one of the bars which had been set up in the ballroom, immediately across from the buffet tables. For the moment, it was unoccupied.
He dropped the curt air he had assumed with Sheila Duff-Roberts and said, "What will it be—champagne? One of the candidates has his own vineyard near Rheims. He provides us with the best vintages."
"That will be fine, Mr. Auburn."
"Jerry," he told her. "I'll stick to cognac."
There was a long row of ice buckets, each with a bottle of sparkling wine. He selected one which had already been opened, took up a clean glass and poured for her, then took up a half-empty bottle of impressive-looking brandy and renewed his own glass with a generous charge. She had been right. Save for two ice cubes, he was drinking his spirits straight. Lee winced at the idea of putting ice in good cognac.
She said, "Cheers," and sipped at her wine. It was certainly as good as any she had ever tasted.
A small, thin, slightly hawk-nosed, dignified elderly man came up and poured himself a glut of sherry. He nodded at Jerry and looked questioningly at Lee.
Jerry said, "Mendel, this is Lee Garrett, Sheila's new secretary. She's a bit bewildered, undoubtedly because she didn't know the Central Committee was composed of such far-out folk. Lee, this is Mendel Amschel, a Committee member and once my father's closest friend."
"I'm charmed, my dear," the newcomer said, taking her hand. "I don't know why, but one never expects surpassing beauty in a girl who must also be surpassingly intelligent and competent."
"Why, you old goat," Jerry protested. "I saw her first."
Lee was fully aware of the identity of Mendel Amschel, reputedly the head of the richest bank in Common Europe, although his name seldom appeared in the news.
"You flatter me, Jerry," the older man said, smiling gently at the girl. "However, if I were twenty years younger…"
"You'd still be sixty," Jerry said. "You dreamer."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," Lee protested. "Isn't the Code Duello still legal in Italy? If you must fight over me…"
"Right," Jerry said. "The bois at dawn. I'll get Peter Windsor to second for me. I see him over there, talking to the Archbishop. Competent man in a fight, I understand, but don't turn your back on him. You might get a knife in it, even though you thought he was on your side."
The banker raised his eyebrows at the younger man. "I suspect when it comes to a vote to replace our Grace Cabot-Hudson, you are not likely to opt for the Graf."
Jerry said testily, "I doubt if the original founders of the World Club ever expected professional killers to be represented in the Central Committee."
"I discussed it with Harrington," the other said. "He pointed out that most of the former mercenary activities of Lothar von Brandenburg are now becoming phased out, but that there will always be a need for espionage and, ah, strong men even in a World State."
Jerry dismissed that opinion. "It's true mercenaries are on the wane. Wizard. But the Graf is expanding into other lines. Personal assassination hasn't been so prevalent since the days of the Borgias. He's simply computerized it."
The Viennese banker scowled at him questioningly. "Isn't that largely a matter of gossip and rumor? Every homicide in the world is being laid at the door of the mysterious Graf."
"Yes." Jerry looked thoughtful. "And that reminds me. I wanted to see Peter Windsor and ask about the death of Harold Dunninger. He's the one I would have voted for to take over Grace's seat on the Committee, rather than either the Prophet or the Graf."
"So would I have, my boy," Amschel said. "But the Nihilists, who seem daily to become more bold, got through his defenses."
"I wonder," Jerry said. "At any rate, I want to talk with Windsor. You two get to know each other; see you later."
When the younger man had gone, Amschel sighed and said, "Our Jerry Auburn is considerably different than I remember his father." He smiled slightly. "Perhaps it is the generation gap, after all. I was Fredric Auburn's contemporary. Jerry seems a bit precipitous. I wince at his confrontation with the Graf's representative." He turned his eyes from the retreating Jerry and brought them back to Lee. "I imagine everyone is asking you what you think of the World Club."
"Well, yes," she told him carefully. "My first reaction is that the Central Committee's plans seem to be somewhat premature, though I support them. Is the world ready for a universal government?"
"Ready or not," he said with a touch of resignation in his voice, "it is the only answer. Today, the world is on the precipice of disaster. What is the old Britishism? The chickens have come home to roost. The slowly developing problems of the past three centuries have now reached a head."
Lee demurred. "Oh, come now, the world is comparatively dormant at present. There are no real immediate crises. We haven't known a major war within the lives of anyone now living."
He shook a thin finger at her. "My dear, it is astonishing how quickly matters can develop when conditions are ripe. Consider the spring of 1914 when everything seemed stable. The Kaiser was securely on his throne, Franz Joseph of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on his, the Sultan ruled the powerful Ottoman Empire, and the Czar of all the Russias had recently celebrated the 300th anniversary of Romanoff rule. Five years later, there was no major monarchy in Europe save England, and capitalism itself had collapsed in Russia, the largest nation of the world. No, my dear, comparatively overnight, world institutions can radically alter, given the right, or perhaps I should say the wrong, conditions."
She took a full lower lip between perfect white teeth. Then, "And you think such conditions exist today?"
"Yes." He looked about. "Come, my dear, let us find a place to sit down. My friend Fong Hui tells me you are an interesting young woman. Frankly, I was sorry to see Pamela McGivern leave, but if it was necessary at least we seem to have found a competent replacement. Would you like me to fill your glass?"
"No," she said. "No, I have plenty." She followed him to a fifteenth-century couch set against one of the large chamber's walls. When they were seated she said, "And what do you foresee in the nature of this new World State? What kind of government will it be? I get the impression that there is considerable difference on this among Central Committee members."
He conceded the validity of that. "Yes, there is. Some of us wish to continue the type of democracy that now prevails in the United States of the Americas."
She sipped again at her wine, frowning slightly. "You advocate a two-party democracy with both of the parties controlled by a power elite?"
He smiled his little dry smile again. "Yes. I am a product of my class and my age. My class owns the so-called Western world. 1 believe that they should govern it. Benevolently, of course, and maintaining all the liberties that man has achieved. Perhaps half of the Central Committee and even more of the candidate members concur."
"And the ordinary citizens, including the proles: they are still to have the vote?"
"Yes, of course, my dear. Why not? It keeps them happy to think that they have the ultimate say. Every four years we put up two candidates and let them take their pick. What could be more democratic than that? You must realize that even at the height of the Empire, the Roman proletariat had the vote. They usually sold it to the highest bidder, of course, but they had it. The proles, my dear, we shall always have with us. They are the masses who labor at the undesirable jobs when labor is needed, or fight as common soldiers in times of war. They are the nonentities. The world has passed them by. A typical example is the peons of Latin America, now assimilated into the United States of the Americas. Uneducated, untrained, they were pushed from a burro society into one of electronic computers. They won't adjust, nor will their children. Like the Roman proletariat, they must simply be fed and otherwise taken care of by the state, as cheaply and efficiently as possible, and forgotten about."