Glory Road

  But I didn’t give a damn what he said. I realized dully that it had all been a dream, just another of those dreams I had had too often lately, wanting to get out of this aching jungle. Even She hadn’t been real. My—what was her name?—even her name I had made up. Star. My Lucky Star—Oh, Star, my darling, you aren’t!

  He went on: “I see you took off your chevrons. Well, that saves time but that’s the only thing good about it. Out of uniform. No shave. And your clothes are filthy! Gordon, you are a disgrace to the Army of the United States. You know that, don’t you? And you can’t sing your way out of this one. No I.D. on you, no pass, using a name not your own. Well, Evelyn Cyril my fine lad, we’ll use your right name now. Officially.”

  He swung around in his swivel chair—he hadn’t had his fat ass out of it since they sent him to Asia, no patrols for him. “Just one thing I’m curious about. Where did you get that? And whatever possessed you to try to steal it?” He nodded at a file case behind his desk.

  I recognized what was sitting on it, even though it had been painted with gold gilt the last time I recalled seeing it whereas now it was covered with the special black gluey mud they grow in Southeast Asia. I started toward it. “That’s mine!”

  “No, no!” he said sharply. “Burny, burny, boy.” He moved the football farther back. “Stealing it doesn’t make it yours. I’ve taken charge of it as evidence. For your information, you phony hero, the docs think he’s going to die.”

  “Who?”

  “Why should you care who? Two bits to a Bangkok tickul you didn’t know his name when you clobbered him. You can’t go around clobbering natives just because you’re feeling brisk—they’ve got rights, maybe you hadn’t heard. You’re supposed to clobber them only when and where you are told to.”

  Suddenly he smiled. It didn’t improve him. With his long, sharp nose and his little bloodshot eyes I suddenly realized how much he looked like a rat.

  But he went on smiling and said, “Evelyn my boy, maybe you took off those chevrons too soon.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yes. There may be a way out of this mess. Sit down.” He repeated sharply, “‘Sit down,’ I said. If I had my way we’d simply Section-Eight you and forget you—anything to get rid of you. But the Company Commander has other ideas—a really brilliant idea that could close your whole file. There’s a raid planned for tonight. So”—he leaned over, got a bottle of Four Roses and two cups out of his desk, poured two drinks—“have a drink.”

  Everybody knew about that bottle—everybody but the Company Commander, maybe. But the top sergeant had never been known to offer anyone a drink—save one time when he had followed it by telling his victim that he was being recommended for a general court-martial.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Come on, take it. Hair of the dog. You’re going to need it. Then go take a shower and get yourself looking decent even if you aren’t, before you see the Company Commander.”

  I stood up. I wanted that drink, I needed it. I would have settled for the worst rotgut—and Four Roses is pretty smooth—but I would have settled for the firewater old—what was his name?—had used to burst my eardrums.

  But I didn’t want to drink with him. I should not drink anything at all here. Nor eat any—

  I spat in his face.

  He looked utterly shocked and started to melt. I drew my sword and had at him.

  It got dark but I kept on laying about me, sometimes connecting, sometimes not.

  SIXTEEN

  Someone was shaking my shoulder. “Wake up!”

  “Le’me ’lone!”

  “You’ve got to wake up. Boss, please wake up.”

  “Yes, my Hero—please!”

  I opened my eyes, smiled at her, then tried to look around. Kee-ripes, what a shambles! In the middle of it, close to me, was a black glass pillar, thick and about five feet high. On top was the Egg. “Is that it?”

  “Yep!” agreed Rufo. “That’s it!” He looked battered but gay.

  “Yes, my Hero champion,” Star confirmed, “that is the true Egg of the Phoenix. I have tested.”

  “Uh—” I looked around. “Then where’s old Soul-Eater?”

  “You killed it. Before we got here. You still had sword in hand and the Egg tucked tightly under your left arm. We had much trouble getting them loose so that I could work on you.”

  I looked down my front, saw what she meant, and looked away. Red just isn’t my color. To take my mind off surgery I said to Rufo, “What took you so long?”

  Star answered, “I thought we would never find you!”

  “How did you find me?”

  Rufo said, “Boss, we couldn’t exactly lose you. We simply followed your trail of blood—even when it dead-ended into blank walls. She is stubborn.”

  “Uh…see any dead men?”

  “Three or four. Strangers, no business of ours. Constructs, most likely. We didn’t dally.” He added, “And we won’t dally getting out, either, once you’re patched up enough to walk. Time is short.”

  I flexed my right knee, cautiously. It still hurt where I had been pinked on the kneecap, but what Star had done was taking the soreness out. “My legs are all right. I’ll be able to walk as soon as Star is through. But”—I frowned—“I don’t relish going through that rat tunnel again. Rats give me the willies.”

  “What rats, Boss? In which tunnel?”

  So I told him.

  Star made no comment. Just went on plastering me and sticking on dressings. Rufo said, “Boss, you did get down on your knees and crawl—in a passage just like all the others. I couldn’t see any sense to it but you had proved that you knew what you were doing, so we didn’t argue, we did it. When you told us to wait while you scouted, we did that, too—until we had waited a long time and She decided that we had better try to find you.”

  I let it drop.

  We left almost at once, going out the “front” way and had no trouble, no illusions, no traps, nothing but the fact that the “true path” was long and tedious. Rufo and I stayed alert, same formation, with Star in the middle carrying the Egg.

  Neither Star nor Rufo knew whether we were still likely to be attacked, nor could we have held off anything stronger than a Cub Scout pack. Only Rufo could bend a bow and I could no longer wield a sword. However, the single necessity was to give Star time to destroy the Egg rather than let it be captured. “But that’s nothing to worry about,” Rufo assured me. “About like being at ground-zero with an A-weapon. You’ll never notice it.”

  Once we were outside it was a longish hike to the Grotto Hills and the other Gate. We lunched as we hiked—I was terribly hungry—and shared Rufo’s brandy and Stars water without too much water. I felt pretty good by the time we reached the cave of this Gate; I didn’t even mind sky that wasn’t sky but some sort of roof, nor the odd shifts in gravitation.

  A diagram or “pentacle” was already in this cave. Star had only to freshen it, then we waited a bit—that had been the rush, to get there before that “Gate” could be opened; it wouldn’t be available for weeks or perhaps months thereafter—much too long for any human to live in Karth-Hokesh.

  We were in position a few minutes early. I was dressed like the Warlord of Mars—just me and sword belt and sword. We all lightened ship to the limit as Star was tired and pulling live things through would be strain enough. Star wanted to save my pet longbow but I vetoed it. She did insist that I keep the Lady Vivamus and I didn’t argue very hard; I didn’t want ever to be separated from my sword again. She touched it and told me that it was not dead metal, but now part of me.

  Rufo wore only his unpretty pink skin, plus dressings; his attitude was that a sword was a sword and he had better ones at home. Star was, for professional reasons, wearing no more.

  “How long?” asked Rufo, as we joined hands.

  “Count down is minus two minutes,” she answered. The clock in Star’s head is as accurate as my bump of direction. She never used a watch.

  “Y
ou’ve told him?” said Rufo.

  “No.”

  Rufo said, “Haven’t you any shame? Don’t you think you’ve conned him long enough?” He spoke with surprising roughness and I was about to tell him that he must not speak to her that way. But Star cut him off.

  “QUIET!”

  She began to chant. Then—“Now!”

  Suddenly it was a different cave. “Where are we?” I asked. I felt heavier.

  “On Nevia’s planet,” Rufo answered. “Other side of the Eternal Peaks—and I’ve got a good mind to get off and see Jocko.”

  “Do it,” Star said angrily. “You talk too much.”

  “Only if my pal Oscar comes along. Want to, old comrade? I can get us there, take about a week. No dragons. They’ll be glad to see you—especially Muri.”

  “You leave Muri out of this!” Star was actually shrill.

  “Can’t take it, huh?” he said sourly. “Younger woman and all that.”

  “You know that’s not it!”

  “Oh, how very much it is!” he retorted. “And how long do you think you can get away with it? It’s not fair, it never was fair. It—”

  “Silence! Count down right now!” We joined hands again and whambo! we were in another place. This was still another cave with one side partly open to the outdoors; the air was very thin and bitterly cold and snow had sifted in. The diagram was let into rock in raw gold. “Where is this?” I wanted to know.

  “On your planet,” Star answered. “A place called Tibet.”

  “And you could change trains here,” Rufo added, “if She weren’t so stubborn. Or you could walk out—although it’s a long, tough walk; I did it once.”

  I wasn’t tempted. The last I had heard, Tibet was in the hands of unfriendly peace-lovers. “Will we be here long?” I asked. “This place needs central heating.” I wanted to hear anything but more argument. Star was my beloved and I couldn’t stand by and hear anyone be rude to her—but Rufo was my blood brother by much lost blood; I owed my life to him several times over.

  “Not long,” answered Star. She looked drawn and tired.

  “But time enough to get this straightened out,” added Rufo, “so that you can make up your own mind and not be carried around like a cat in a sack. She should have told you long since. She—”

  “Positions!” snapped Star. “Count down coming up. Rufo, if you don’t shut up, I’ll leave you here and let you walk out again—in deep snow barefooted to your chin.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Threats make me as stubborn as you are. Which is surprising. Oscar, She is—”

  “SILENCE!”

  “—Empress of the Twenty Universes—”

  SEVENTEEN

  We were in a large octagonal room, with lavishly beautiful silvery walls.

  “—and my grandmother,” Rufo finished.

  “Not ‘Empress,’” Star protested. “That’s a silly word for it.”

  “Near enough.”

  “And as for the other, that’s my misfortune, not my fault.” Star jumped to her feet, no longer looking tired, and put one arm around my waist as I got up, while she held the Egg of the Phoenix with the other. “Oh, darling I’m so happy! We made it! Welcome home, my Hero!”

  “Where?” I was sluggy—too many time zones, too many ideas, too fast.

  “Home. My home. Your home now—if you’ll have it. Our home.”

  “Uh, I see…my Empress.”

  She stomped her foot. “Don’t call me that!”

  “The proper form of address,” said Rufo, “is ‘Your Wisdom.’ Isn’t it, Your Wisdom?”

  “Oh, Rufo, shut up. Go fetch clothes for us.”

  He shook his head. “War’s over and I just got paid off. Fetch ’em yourself. Granny.”

  “Rufo, you’re impossible.”

  “Sore at me, Granny?”

  “I will be if you don’t stop calling me ‘Granny.’” Suddenly she handed the Egg to me, put her arms around Rufo and kissed him. “No, Granny’s not sore at you,” she said softly. “You always were a naughty child and I’ll never quite forget the time you put oysters in my bed. But I guess you came by it honestly—from your grandmother.” She kissed him again and mussed his fringe of white hair. “Granny loves you. Granny always will. Next to Oscar, I think you are about perfect—aside from being an unbearable, untruthful, spoiled, disobedient, disrespectful brat.”

  “That’s better,” he said. “Come to think of it, I feel the same way about you. What do you want to wear?”

  “Mmm…get out a lot of things. It’s been so long since I had a decent wardrobe.” She turned back to me. “What would you like to wear, my Hero?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Whatever you think is appropriate—Your Wisdom.”

  “Oh, darling, please don’t call me that. Not ever.” She seemed suddenly about to cry.

  “All right. What shall I call you?”

  “Star is the name you gave me. If you must call me something else, you could call me your ‘princess.’ I’m not a princess—and I’m not an ‘empress’ either; that’s a poor translation. But I like being ‘your princess’—the way you say it. Or it can be ‘lively wench’ or any of lots of things you’ve been calling me.” She looked up at me very soberly. “Just like before. Forever.”

  “I’ll try…my princess.”

  “My Hero.”

  “But there seems to be a lot I don’t know.”

  She shifted from English to Nevian. “Milord husband, I wished to tell all. I sighed to tell you. And milord will be told everything. But I held mortal fear that milord, if told too soon, would refuse to come with me. Not to the Black Tower, but to here. Our home.”

  “Perhaps you chanced wisely,” I answered in the same language. “But I am here, milady wife—my princess. So tell me. I wish it.”

  She shifted back to English. “I’ll talk, I’ll talk. But it will take time. Darling, will you hold your horses just a bit longer? Having been patient with me—so very patient, my love!—for so long?”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll string along. But, look, I don’t know the streets in this neighborhood, I’ll need some hints. Remember the mistake I made with old Jocko just from not knowing local customs.”

  “Yes, dear, I will. But don’t worry, customs are simple here. Primitive societies are always more complex than civilized ones—and this one isn’t primitive.” Rufo dumped then a great heap of clothing at her feet. She turned away, a hand still on my arm, put a finger to her mouth with a very intent, almost worried look. “Now let me see. What shall I wear?”

  “Complex” is a relative matter; I’ll sketch only the outlines.

  Center is the capital planet of the Twenty Universes. But Star was not “Empress” and it is not an empire.

  I’ll go on calling her “Star” as hundreds of names were hers and I’ll call it an “empire” because no other word is close, and I’ll refer to “emperors” and “empresses”—and to the Empress, my wife.

  Nobody knows how many universes there are. Theory places no limit: any and all possibilities in unlimited number of combinations of “natural” laws, each sheaf appropriate to its own universe. But this is just theory and Occam’s Razor is much too dull. All that is known in Twenty Universes is that twenty have been discovered, that each has its own laws, and that most of them have planets, or sometimes “places,” where human beings live. I won’t try to say what lives elsewhere.

  The Twenty Universes include many real empires. Our Galaxy in our universe has its stellar empires—yet so huge is our Galaxy that our human race may never meet another, save through the Gates that link the universes. Some planets have no known Gates. Earth has many and that is its single importance; otherwise it rates as a backward slum.

  Seven thousand years ago a notion was born for coping with political problems too big to handle. It was modest at first: How could a planet be run without ruining it? This planet’s people included expert cyberneticists but otherwise were hardl
y farther along than we are; they were still burning the barn to get the rats and catching their thumbs in machinery. These experimenters picked an outstanding ruler and tried to help him.

  Nobody knew why this bloke was so successful but he was and that was enough; they weren’t hipped on theory. They gave him cybernetic help, taping for him all crises in their history, all known details, what was done, and the outcomes of each, all organized so that he could consult it almost as you consult your memory.

  It worked. In time he was supervising the whole planet—Center it was, with another name then. He didn’t rule it, he just untangled hard cases.

  They taped also everything this first “Emperor” did, good and bad, for guidance of his successor.

  The Egg of the Phoenix is a cybernetic record of the experiences of two hundred and three “emperors” and “empresses,” most of whom “ruled” all the known universes. Like a foldbox, it is bigger inside than out. In use, it is more the size of the Great Pyramid.

  Phoenix legends abound throughout the Universes: the creature that dies but is immortal, rising ever young from its own ashes. The Egg is such a wonder, for it is far more than a taped library now; it is a print, right down to their unique personalities, of all experience of all that line from His Wisdom IX through Her Wisdom CCIV, Mrs. Oscar Gordon.

  The office is not hereditary. Star’s ancestors include His Wisdom I and most of the other wisdoms—but millions of others have as much “royal” blood. Her grandson Rufo was not picked although he shares all her ancestors. Or perhaps he turned it down. I never asked, it would have reminded him of a time one of his uncles did something obscene and improbable. Nor is it a question one asks.

  Once tapped, a candidate’s education includes everything from how to cook tripe to highest mathematics—including all forms of personal combat for it was realized millennia ago that, no matter how well he was guarded, the victim would wear better if he himself could fight like an angry buzz saw. I stumbled on this through asking my beloved an awkward question.