‘Difficulty here,’ said the researcher’s report. ‘Frequency of once a month, but in fifty-three cuttings examined there are no variables at all. Even name of mother-to-be the same. May possibly involve fifty-three different foetuses, but no way of telling from cuttings. Can we use story with no variables?’

Goldwasser put it to one side. One had to wait for decisions as big as that to ambush one unexpectedly. He looked at his watch. He had the impression that he had been working continuously for an exceedingly long time. Perhaps he had earned a break; perhaps he could slip across to play with the loyal leader cards for five minutes.

Goldwasser sometimes took himself out of himself by pretending to be a computer, and going through one of the completed sets of cards observing the same logical rules and making the same random choices that a computer would to compose a story from them. The by-election set and the weather story set soon palled. So did ‘I Test New Car’ and ‘Red Devils Fly In to Trouble Spot.’ But the set for composing a loyal leader on a royal occasion seemed to Goldwasser to have something of that teasing perfection which draws one back again and again to certain pictures.

He opened the filing cabinet and picked out the first card in the set. Traditionally, it read. Now there was a random choice between cards reading coronations, engagements, funerals, weddings, comings of age, births, deaths, or the churching of women. The day before he had picked funerals, and been directed on to a card reading with simple perfection are occasions for mourning. To-day he closed his eyes, drew weddings, and was signposted on to are occasions for rejoicing.

The wedding of X and Y followed in logical sequence, and brought him a choice between is no exception and is a case in point. Either way there followed indeed. Indeed, whichever occasion one had started off with, whether coronations, deaths, or births, Goldwasser saw with intense mathematical pleasure, one now reached this same elegant bottleneck. He paused on indeed, then drew in quick succession it is a particularly happy occasion, rarely, and can there have been a more popular young couple.

From the next selection Goldwasser drew X has won himself/herself a special place in the nation’s affections, which forced him to go on to and the British people have clearly taken Y to their hearts already.

Goldwasser was surprised, and a little disturbed, to realise that the word ‘fitting’ had still not come up. But he drew it with the next card – it is especially fitting that.

This gave him the bride/bridegroom should be, and an open choice between of such a noble and illustrious line, a commoner in these democratic times, from a nation with which this country has long enjoyed a particularly close and cordial relationship, and from a nation with which this country’s relations have not in the past been always happy.

Feeling that he had done particularly well with ‘fitting’ last time, Goldwasser now deliberately selected it again. It is also fitting that, read the card, to be quickly followed by we should remember, and X and Y are not merely symbols – they are a lively young man and a very lovely young woman.