Malone looked her full in the face for the first time. He realized that her expression was rather puzzled and worried. She looked even more confused than she had the last time he'd seen her.

He took a deep breath, wished for a cigar and plunged blindly ahead into the toils of court etiquette.

"Your Majesty," he said, "I know full well that you are aware of the thoughts that I have had concerning the case we have been working on.

I beg Your Majesty's pardon for having doubted Your Majesty's Royal Word. Since my first doubts, of which I am sore ashamed, I have been informed by Our Majesty's Royal Psychiatrist that my doubts were ill-founded, and I wish to convey my deepest apologies. Now, having been fully convinced of the truth of Your Majesty's statements, I have a theory I would discuss with you, the particulars of which you can doubtless see in my mind."

He paused. Her Majesty was staring at him, her face pale.

"Sir Kenneth," she said in a strained voice, "we appreciate your att.i.tude. However--" She paused for a moment, and then continued.

"However, Sir Kenneth, it is our painful duty to inform you--"

She stopped again. And when she managed to speak, she had dropped all pretense of Court Etiquette.

"Sir Kenneth, I've been so worried! I was afraid you were dead!"

Malone blinked. "Dead?" he asked.

"For the past twenty-four hours," Her Majesty said in a frightened voice, "I've been unable to contact your mind. And right now, as you stand there, I can't read anything!

"It's as though you weren't thinking at all!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

PART 3

IX

Malone stared at Her Majesty for what seemed like a long time. "Not thinking at all?" he said at last, weakly. "But I _am_ thinking. At least, I _think_ I am." He suddenly felt as if he had gone Rene Descartes one better. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.

Her Majesty regarded Malone for an interminable, silent second. Then she turned to Lady Barbara. "My dear," she said, "I would like to speak to Sir Kenneth alone. We will go to my chambers."

Malone, feeling as though his brain had suddenly turned to quince jelly, followed the two women out of a small door at the rear of the Throne Room, and into Her Majesty's private apartments. Lady Barbara left them alone with some reluctance, but she'd evidently been getting used to following her patient's orders. Which, Malone thought with admiration, must take a lot of effort for a nurse.

The door closed and he was alone with the Queen. Malone opened his mouth to speak, but Her Majesty raised a monitory hand. "Please, Sir Kenneth," she said. "Just a moment. Don't say anything for a little bit."

Malone shut his mouth. When the minute was up, Her Majesty began to nod her head, very slowly. Her voice, when she spoke, was low and calm.

"It's as though you were almost invisible," she said. "I can see you with my eyes, of course, but mentally you are almost completely indetectable. Knowing you as well as I do, and being this close to you, it is just possible for me to detect very faint traces of activity."

"Now, wait a minute," Malone said. "I am thinking. I know I am. Maybe it's not me. Your telepathy might be fading out temporarily, or something like that. It's possible, isn't it?" He was reasonably sure it wasn't, but it was a last try at making sense. Her Majesty shook her head.

"I can still receive Sir Thomas, for instance, quite clearly," she said. She seemed a little miffed, but the irritation was overpowered by her worry. "I think, Sir Kenneth, that you just don't know your own power, that's all. I don't know how, but you've managed somehow to smother telepathic communication almost completely."

"But not quite?" Malone said. Apparently, he was thinking, but very weakly. Like a small child, he told himself dismally. Like a small Elizabethan child.

Her Majesty's face took on a look of faraway concentration. "It's like looking at a very dim light," she said, "a light just at the threshold of perception. You might say that you've got to look at such a light sideways. If you look directly at it, you can't see it. And, of course, you can't see it at all if you're a long way off." She blinked. "It's not exactly like that, you understand," she finished.

"But in some ways--"

"I get the idea," Malone said. "Or I think I do. But what's causing it? Sunspots? Little green men?"

"Not so little," Her Majesty said with some return of her old humor, "and not green, either. As a matter of fact, _you_ are, Sir Kenneth."

Malone opened his mouth, shut it again and finally managed to say: "Me?" in a batlike squeal of surprise.

"I don't know how, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty went on, "but you are.

It's ... rather frightening to me, as a matter of fact; I've never seen such a thing before. I've never even considered it before."

"You?" Malone said. "How about me?" It was like suddenly discovering that you'd been lifting two-hundred-pound barbells and not knowing it.

"How could I be doing anything like that without knowing anything about it?"

Her Majesty shook her head. "I haven't the faintest idea," she said.

But Malone, very suddenly, did. He remembered deciding to keep a close check on his mental processes to make sure those bursts of energy didn't do anything to him. Subconsciously, he knew, he was still keeping that watch.

And maybe the watch itself caused the complete blanking of his telepathic faculties. It was worth a test, at least, he decided. And it was an easy test to make.

"Listen," he said. He told himself that he would now allow communication between himself and Her Majesty--and only between those two. Maybe it wasn't possible to let down the barrier in a selective way, but he gave it all he had. A long second pa.s.sed.

"My goodness!" Her Majesty said in pleased surprise. "There you are again!"

"You can read me?" Malone asked.

"Why ... yes," Her Majesty said. "And I can see just what you're thinking. I'm afraid, Sir Kenneth, that I don't know whether it's selective or not. But ... oh. Just a minute. You go right on thinking, now, just the way you are." Her Majesty's eyes unfocused slightly and a long time pa.s.sed, while Malone tried to keep on thinking. But it was difficult, he told himself, to think about things without having any things to think about. He felt his mind begin to spin gently with the rhythm of the last sentence, and he considered slowly the possibility of thinking about things when there weren't any things thinking about you. That seemed to make as much sense as anything else, and he was turning it over and over in his mind when a voice broke in.

"I was contacting Willie," Her Majesty said.

"Ah," Malone said. "Willie. Of course. Very fine for contacting."

Her Majesty frowned. "You remember Willie, don't you?" she said.

"Willie Logan--who used to be a spy for the Russians, just because he didn't know any better, poor boy?"

"Oh," Malone said. "Logan." He remembered the catatonic youngster who had used his telepathic powers against the United States until Her Majesty, the FBI, and Kenneth J. Malone had managed to put matters right. That had been the first time he'd met Her Majesty; it seemed like fifty years before.

"Well," Her Majesty said, "Willie and I had a little argument just now. And I think you'll be interested in it."

"I'm fascinated," Malone said.

"Was he thinking about things or were things thinking about him?"

"Really, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, "you do think about the silliest notions when you don't watch yourself."

Malone blushed slightly. "Anyhow," he said after a pause, "what was the argument about?"

"Willie says you aren't here," Her Majesty said. "He can't detect you at all. Even when I let him take a peek at you through my own mind--making myself into sort of a relay station, so to speak--Willie wouldn't believe it. He said I was hallucinating."

"Hallucinating me?" Malone said. "I think I'm flattered. Not many people would bother."