State Visit

The door opened and a couple of purple-clad figures emerged, and blinked in a startled fashion as the Queen went striding toward them with what Mortimer always thought was hereditary grace. A moment later, though, a smaller figure, all in white and gold, also emerged and waved to the cheering crowds. The Pope looked as startled as his escorts at the Queen's choice of clothes, but he was an old professional himself, and said nothing about it, as the Queen managed a polite nod of the head.

Mortimer had some time since allowed himself to be persuaded to have a small directional microphone fitted inside his suit -- it was too useful to refuse -- and he set it to pick up the conversation.

"Holiness," the Queen said, "I hope that you had a pleasant trip?"

"Yes, thank you, Majesty." His English was as good as the reports said, then.

"Good. And how was Rome when you left?"

"Ah, very fine, Majesty..."

"Mmm. It was lovely when I was there last month. Bit hot this time of year, though, I find."

"You were there? I was not informed..." The old chap looked startled.

Neither was I, thought Mortimer furiously. What's she on about?

"Oh, no -- I was there incognito, don't you know? One finds that one has to take the odd break, doesn't one, Holiness?"

Double Damn! thought Mortimer, and made a mental note to chew out the Intelligence departments. They'd have to be told to track all of the fake IDs that the Queen had, in moments of misguided indulgence, been granted over the years, a lot more carefully. And to make sure that she hadn't acquired any new ones somehow.

"Ah, yes..." said the Pope.

"Anyway, old thing, I think I have to introduce you to my Prime Minister and his people. They look like they're getting terribly bored over there."

No, thought Mortimer, boredom is NOT the problem.

But the Queen was back on something like good behaviour now, smiling sweetly as she led the Pope to speak to her ministers and their assistants. She kept the conversation going as everyone exchanged the required politeness, and then took up the thread again when that was done.

"Well," she said to the Pope, "I'm told that you've got all sorts of boring old visits to deal with for the rest of the day, but we're all going to be at one of those big dinners tonight. And after that..." she smiled charmingly as if she'd never said a word against this pope in all her life, "...you'll be my guest at the Palace. We've given you the North Wing to yourself -- I think that you'll be very comfortable there."

The Pope nodded politely as she led him to his car and waved him on his way with the same cheerful casualness as most of the crowd, then, knowing that the Prime Minister couldn't leave before her, she slipped back into her own vehicle

"Just into the private tunnels round the corner," she told it, "then change colour and come round to the back here."

"Yes, ma'am," said the vehicle computer, and started its motors. Meanwhile, the Queen was pulling a dark wig and a baggy coat out of the luggage section behind her. "Convenient, this," she said to the equerry robot as she began to wriggle out of the dress with practised skill in the confined space, and touched a control in her electronic earrings that told the miniature robots hidden in her hair to restyle it, "I've got those friends coming in from Paris and Berlin in twenty minutes, and I do want to be there to meet them..."

***

The dinner that evening wasn't the disaster that Leonard Mortimer had feared. The Queen turned up in another slightly inappropriate dress, of course, but it was nothing that anyone could complain about -- indeed, a quick check later on the real-time news Web sites suggested that it was the latest thing from some big-name British fashion house, which would make her popular with that industry, who always appreciated it when she gave them a boost. The food was excellent, if a little exotic at times; the Queen made a point of employing rather sophisticated chefs at the Palace. Her conversations with the Pope while she was sitting next to him looked dangerously flirtatious from where Mortimer was sitting, but nobody else seemed to notice, and he eventually told himself that he was being paranoid. Mostly, she just seemed slightly distracted.

Later, Mortimer would wonder what she'd had on her mind. But at the time, he just decided to be glad that he couldn't actually see anything to worry about, and to relax as the Palace servants and robots led everybody off to their various quarters.

***

It was two in the morning, and Rosanna was slumped in front of her screens, sipping coffee and scrolling through some routine filing, when the main display burst into life and she found herself staring at an angry-looking Leonard Mortimer.

"Miss Macintyre!" he snapped, "have you heard anything from the Palace since you've been on watch?"

"From the Queen, sir? No..."

"Not from the Queen, you idiot -- I don't expect her to call me about anything if she can help it. From the papal delegation!"

"Uh, well, there have been one or two calls from some of the aides. Something about something happening in the garden. But I checked with the palace..." (that was almost a lie; she hadn't really had to check, although she'd logged a call to cover her arse, just in case) "...and they say it's just HM and some friends -- and the soundproofing is fine in the wing with the visitors' quarters, so I didn't like to bother you..."

"Bother me? Miss Macintyre, were those formal representations from the delegation?"

"Well, sir, I suppose... I mean, they were junior members ... have they got through to you?" They can't have, she was thinking, I'm managing all his communication channels!

"No," snapped Mortimer, "but my wife has been on some royalty-fan Web sites, and she tells me that some people watching the Palace gates have seen a whole string of cars arriving, and their directional microphones are getting music. Some satellite pictures show lights and movement in the gardens, too. Those royalty fans know a party when they see one, and you can't tell me that it's the pope and his people. HM is up to something!"

"Oh. Well, I suppose, sir -- uh, should I put a call through?"

"No, Miss Macintyre, you should not. You should arrange for my car to be outside in five minutes."

"You're going over there in person, sir?"

"Yes, Miss... Actually, Miss Macintyre, we are going over there. If you've failed to catch this, you can damn well help me patch things over."

Damn, thought Rosanna. Well, perhaps, if she was on the spot, she could somehow mitigate things. She might even be able to keep her job. She was beginning to wonder why she'd let Annie talk her into anything, though.

Mortimer had broken his connection. She set to work with the Number Ten systems, summoning the car. In a spare moment, she tried putting a call through to the private number that that Queen had given her, but she wasn't surprised when she got a Currently Unavailable page in response. She left a cautious warning message. Then she grabbed a coat, took a lift to ground level, and slipped out of a side door. The official car was already sitting waiting, and when she climbed in, she found Leonard Mortimer sitting, waiting, and scowling.

At least he hasn't brought a gang of bodyguards, she reflected. She guessed that he wanted to keep any incident involving the Queen as quiet as possible -- and it wasn't like there was likely to be any physical danger at the Palace. Anyway, the car came with its own swarm of stealthy flying robot guards. Mortimer normally liked to have a crowd of people around him, presumably making him feel important, but he also knew when it might be better to avoid attention.

"Forgive me, sir," Rosanna said to her boss as the car slipped through the late-night London traffic, "but isn't this quite late at night for your wife to be monitoring royal-watcher sites? You said earlier that you were having an early night."

"Oh, I was," said the Prime Minister through gritted teeth, "but my wife has had DeSleep treatment. To allow her to keep track of all her interests."

"Ah," said Rosanna, as neutrally as possible. But she couldn't resist venturing a question. "But you haven't had DeSleep, have you, sir?"

"Of course not!" Mortimer snapped, and Rosanna nodded carefully and left the subject there. It had been a silly question, really. DeSleep didn't just reduce a person's need for sleep; it replaced the complicated memory management that happened in sleep with a simple, continuous, linear process. But that made the person a simple, linear personality. Someone on DeSleep could be very efficient, in a single-minded sort of way, but would always be terribly unimaginative and obsessive. Only hobbyists and workaholics who wanted to be more hobbyist or more workaholic liked the idea. Politicians didn't use it if they had any sense; they needed to be flexible and adaptable.

Also, everyone knew that DeSleep had the side-effect of rendering the user's libido entirely defunct. Sex requires at least a tiny bit of imagination and the ability to relax, after all; DeSleepers said that they had better things to do with their time, such as collecting beetles or doing repetitive jobs. A DeSleeper would always be regarded as far too dull for anyone to vote for them. Rosanna had vaguely known that the Prime Minister's wife was a rabid royalty fan, but the fact that she was a DeSleeper was news. The PM probably shouldn't have mentioned it.

It wasn't far from Downing Street to the Palace, and moments later, the car pulled up outside a side gate where Mortimer had told it to go -- one so little-used that it had no watchers. Mortimer and Rosanna stepped out, huddling down instinctively in case they were spotted by anyone anyway, and the Prime Minister muttered to himself as he fiddled with his antique wrist computer, evidently pulling up a key code.

A lock clicked, and the gate swung open. "We have a code, for emergencies," Mortimer muttered. "HM got quite unhappy about it, but we were able to insist. Fortunately."

They slipped into the palace grounds and closed and re-locked the gate behind them. They could already hear music and voices, and as they turned a corner, Rosanna realised that this was definitely one of Annie's parties. Though it wasn't the wildest she'd seen; nobody was having sex in public -- yet.

"Bother the woman," muttered Mortimer. "The Vatican delegation will really be complaining about this. We'd better find her."

"Should we split up?" Rosanna suggested. "Better chance of finding her quicker, and so on..."

"I suppose so. Hmmph. You know her well enough to talk to her, I gather?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, ping me if you find her. Hopefully, she'll be easy enough to spot. Though I don't know what she'll be wearing," Mortimer muttered. "Knowing her, she'll be changing clothes every five minutes. She always does at events. I don't know how she does it; she must carry a wardrobe along with her."

"Oh, she probably uses a programmable dress," Rosanna told her boss. "It can reconfigure itself on command. Different shapes for different jobs."

"Clever, I suppose," Mortimer said.

"It is a useful trick," Rosanna replied, and touched the broach attached to her suit. "Informal switch," she said to the voice control mike. The two parts of the suit merged smoothly into a single dress, while the sleeves and leg segments shortened slightly and became much more flared.

"I happened to be wearing this. I think it might help to blend in a bit," she said to the startled-looking Mortimer, "until we get all this sorted out," she added.

Mortimer shrugged, and set off towards the Palace buildings while Rosanna went to look in the far end of the garden. There were crowds down that way, which often meant that Annie would be somewhere around.

Unfortunately, this didn't turn out to be the case this time. It seemed like a good party, and Rosanna wished that she wasn't there on business -- she hadn't had much of a social life recently -- but even when she asked a few people quietly, nobody was able to say where the Queen might be. After some minutes, with a sigh, Rosanna turned back towards the Palace, pausing only to look in a summerhouse along the way.

In fact, the Queen had slipped away to look around the garden with a pair of her gardeners just a few minutes before Rosanna and Mortimer had arrived. The gardeners were a married couple, Evan and Colette, who had both been working for the Palace for several years. The Queen had long regarded them as likeable; then, four months ago, she'd stepped out for a breath of fresh air, and walked around a shrubbery to discover the couple taking a brief break from their work.

What she saw then had given her a whole extra degree of respect for both of them; Evan had been standing up, casually bearing his wife's full weight as she rode his prodigious erection to orgasm, even while she was rotating her hips to drive him into a frenzy of lust. When they had finished, adjusted their clothes, and noticed their audience, the Queen had applauded them and struck up a conversation. This had led to a series of invitations to informal Palace events for the couple, and this evening, the Queen had succeeded in fulfilling the hopes that earlier encounter had inspired.

Specifically, she was astride Evan as he lay on the ground, confirming that his cock could be every bit as large and rigid as it had appeared then, and that it felt just as good inside her as she'd imagined. Colette was kneeling over her husband's face, enjoying his mouth as she applied her own to the Queen's breasts, drawing her tongue carefully over the royal nipples as they grew large and hard. The Queen was whimpering in the back of her throat, a shudder building in her cunt as she struggled to control herself for long enough to give Evan the fun he so richly deserved, carefully squeezing and relaxing the well-exercised muscles that were clamped around his erection.

The Queen's wrist-computer had detected her current physiological state, and in accordance with instructions, it wasn't bothering her at the moment. It noticed when she came to orgasm -- sensing her pulse and some neural signals, although anyone could have told by her yelp of glee -- and then waited another thirty seconds before it bleeped.

"Just a mo... Ooh, ah, yes!" the Queen responded, feeling Evan's cock throb deep inside her as he too came. Then she took a deep breath, and murmured an order to the computer.

"You have a visitor, ma'am," it whispered into her miniature earpiece. "The Prime Minister arrived nine minutes ago..."

"Oh, damn," the Queen said. "Oh well, better go have a word with the old bore." She carefully lifted herself off Evan and away from Colette. The latter, no longer supported as she leaned forward, slumped down, bringing her face into the vicinity of her husband's now only semi-tumescent cock. She smiled, and after a moment, she began using her mouth and tongue to restore his erection.

The Queen smiled too, and touched the earring that held the voice control unit for her dress. "Victoria," she said, and the dress flowed back into place, making itself long in the skirt and high at the neck. That stretched it a little thin, but it was still just about respectable -- in a way, anyway. Then, as she felt Evan's semen flowing down her thigh, she added another command -- "Scavenge" -- and smiled as she felt a little of the dress's structure flow onto her thighs and clean up what it found there.

Rosanna was approaching the Palace when she finally saw the Queen -- but only from a distance, and not before the Queen had come into sight of the Prime Minister, who had just emerged from the building. The two were already closing in on each other, the Queen smiling quietly, Mortimer doing his best to suppress his scowl behind a bland façade.

Rosanna saw that the Queen was apparently wearing what Rosanna remembered as her favourite party dress from university days. It was indeed programmable, but it wasn't just fabric with a bunch of control systems like Rosanna's own; it actually consisted of a swarm of insect-like robots with glittering carapaces which clung to her skin and remained in formation while in constant motion; in other words, her dress was continually moving, showing and covering different parts of her from neck to ankle at different times. The standard programming ensured that the wearer's nipples, buttocks, and bush always remained concealed, but if this was the same dress, the Queen had modified that programming so that those parts were exposed for five or ten seconds in every ten minutes. It was a terrible distraction for onlookers. Rosanna wondered if Mortimer had been treated to its full effects yet.

She made her way towards the conversation, where the Queen was looking increasingly truculent and the Prime Minister was looking increasingly exasperated. She was just within earshot when the Queen put her hand to her ear; Rosanna realised that she was fingering an earring. "Tahiti," the Queen said. Her dress responded promptly to the code word, the entire structure migrating smoothly down to below her waist, where it formed a swirling, multiply-slashed skirt.

The Prime Minister reeled back, startled, and the Queen smiled sweetly, turned, and strolled away, followed by the gazes of everyone present.

Rosanna looked away before anyone else, and found the Prime Minister looking stunned. She put on her best formal face as she approached him.

"Bother the woman," he muttered. "No sense of responsibility."

"I'm afraid that she does as she pleases, very often," Rosanna said, steering him away, indoors, and into an unoccupied room within the Palace. "She's not going to stop the party, then?"

"No," Mortimer muttered, "well, she says she'll wind it up in an hour or two, but there are too many people here who she says she can't offend by just throwing them out here and now. God knows what'll happen if the opposition gets hold of any of this. They'll slaughter us with it." He sounded depressed.

"I don't think so, sir," said Rosanna, finding that she was feeling something like authentic sympathy.

"Oh, really? And why not, pray?"

"Well, sir -- when we split up and you told me to look for HM, I went round the gardens a bit. I looked in the summerhouse, and, well..."

"Yes?" the Prime Minister said with faint curiosity.

"The deputy leader of the Opposition Coalition was in there, sir."

"Really?" Mortimer raised a tired eyebrow. "Doing what?"

"Taking it up the arse, sir. From that Trad-Rap star the Queen gave an OBE last month."

"Good grief!" Mortimer sat down on a convenient couch. "Hmm. I suppose that might give us some hope."

"Yes, sir." And me turning this up might yet save my arse, even when he remembers that I didn't call him, Rosanna reflected. "I'm sure we can let the opposition know that we know, if necessary." She sat down at the far end of the very long couch.

The Prime Minister looked at her with a faint expression of renewed hope. "I know that this will sound old-fashioned," he said, "but what is the world coming to? You know, I only went into politics because I thought that doing things the way they've always been done might not be a bad thing."

"I'm sure that it isn't, sir," said Rosanna. "But perhaps HM is a bit of a traditionalist too, in her way."

"I very much doubt it," said Mortimer. "Did you see that dress?"

"Oh, I've seen it before," Rosanna admitted, "but isn't being dressing up a bit, in, well, the height of fashion really quite traditional for royalty? And some of her ancestors got up to -- well, all sorts of stuff. And she doesn't let it stop her doing her job, unlike some of them."