He took the false palate and tongue-clicker, officially designated as
an "enunciator, Ulleran" and, colloquially, as a geek-speaker, out of
his coat pocket and shoved it into his mouth. Von Schlichten and
Blount put in theirs, and Harrington pressed the floor-button with his
toe. After a brief interval, the wide doors at the other end of the
hall slid open, and the Konkrookan notables, attended by a dozen
Company native-officers and a guard of Kragan Rifles, entered. The
honor-guard advanced in two columns; between them marched an unclad
and heavily armed native carrying an ornate spear with a three-foot
blade upright in front of him with all four hands. It was the
Konkrookan Spear of State; it represented the proxy-presence of King
Jaikark. Behind it stalked Gurgurk, the Konkrookan equivalent of Prime
Minister or Grand Vizier; he wore a gold helmet and a thing like a
string-vest made of gold wire, and carried a long sword with a
two-hand grip, a pair of Terran automatics built for a hand with six
four-knuckled fingers, and a pair of matched daggers. He was
considerably past the Ulleran prime of life--seventy or eighty, to
judge from the worn appearance of his opal teeth, the color of his
skin, and the predominantly reddish tint of his quartz-speckles.
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