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"Crime of the Century": Mehercle Gomchou, wearing his trademark black bowler, is shown lecturing , as he frequently does, on the intricacies of the Altlandic Crown Jewels investigation to a larger-than-usual audience. Many feel, however that the real crime may not be the heist itself but Gomchou's conduct of the investigation. |
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What with all the excite- ment over territorial expan- sion and the impending war between the UPRMI and a growing list of other countries, the anticipation of the Vex Games, and a thousand other diversions, Mehercle Gomchou wonders how a hard-working detective can get any attention at all paid to Altland's most important unsolved crime? For a while, the level of interna- tional interest in it seemed high, as police departments and security services throughout the Vex scrambled to solve the strange, taunting clues sent to Gomchou's office by the gleeful perpetrators. |
But once the third such clue arrived in a bottle discovered lying on a manhole grating in the street outside the Chancellery for the Forces, where Gomchou's office is located, progress in the investigation ground to a halt, and the Chief Investiga- tor himself found it advisable to go off for a rest cure to the well-known King Christian Home for the Hopelessly Bewildered. Now back at his desk, Gomchou loves to review the clues with anyone who will listen, hoping that someone will get a bright idea: the thieves are from abroad and may be presumed to have fled to their country of origin and taken the jewels with them; they write in a kind of broken Inglish that suggests that they | are translating their messages from an almost equally broken Jerman; this means they are from a place where a Jermanic language may be used but is not the native tongue. The prevailing interpretation of the next-to-last clue, moreover, places them somewhere in the New Continents. That is where the investigation stood until this week, when a new message from the clever thieves was found tacked to a tree not far from Gomchou's home, show- ing that these dangerous criminals know where the hapless investigator lives. The message read: "Also, we see you not too much because you so much to house remain. You are getting perhaps KLAUS- trophobic already." The Chief Investigator remains stumped. |
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Nothing Going On? This artist's rendering of the interior of the Grete Saal of the Jergenpalas (photographs are still not allowed) pictures it empty, as it most often is these days, since it seems there is absolutely nothing at all going on in the current session of the Great Council, Altland's tri-cameral legislative body. Normally the chamber where the House of Nobles meets, on 20 June the Grete Saal was the scene of the King's Speech from the Throne to all three houses. |
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No one familiar with the governmental system of the Kingdom of Altland expects very much of The Greal Council, whose three houses are convoked every couple years to go through the motions of being a parliament. Even against the background of these low expectations, the current sessions have produced particularly little that might justify their being held. The one important mea- sure which was on the agenda from the beginning, the new Royal Succession Law, drew yawns from all sides when it was finally outlined in the Speech from the Throne,in which it was outshone by His Majesty's announcement of his intention to, in effect, build a small empire. |
The law itself held few suprises. With no direct heirs, the King had only three choices: to designate an hier unilaterally (not in keeping with His Majesty's habitual style), to allow the nation to adopt a non-monarchical form of government (unthinkable), or fill the throne through some kind of election (nearly inevitable). The actual procedures outlined in the proposed law are so equitable, allowing for participation from all sectors of society as well as for the representation of all interests, that the few objections raised -- aside from those emanating from the fifteen percent of the population, centered in the provinces of Orlandia and Sperança, which would like a republic -- fell on deaf ears. |
With all the action being generated by the acquisiton of overseas territories and the attendant reshuffling of the Chancelleries, the three Houses of the Great Council, which, rather than admitting the press to their sessions, keep the public informed only through routine and very dull press releases at the end of each day, has suffered from severe neglect in the daily news. In spite of much ballyhoo before the sessions actually opened, there seems to be nothing whatever going on in any of the houses which would be worth reporting. Still, the leaders in all three Houses insist that there is some justifi- cation for their remaining in session at least until 20 July. We shall have to wait and see. |