Can it be that there are alien beings hiding in the still uncharted wilderness of Thanda Banadareen, and that they sent Thivt to us in human guise as some sort of observer, or even an emissary? No one, so far as I know, has ever returned to the world where Thivt was found to take a second look. It doesn't seem to have been a particularly inviting or useful sort of world. The galaxy is very large and we are very few; the course of exploration has moved elsewhere, to places that are considered more promising. I wonder about that world sometimes. I wonder about Thivt.
Now that Thivt was on hand, the group I had summoned was complete. But then at the last minute Syluise came waltzing in, the second of the two uninvited guests.
Polarca broke in on me while I was in my bath to tell me that she had arrived. The moment he entered the room I knew that something unusual was up, because his blue-and-red eyes seemed to have shifted halfway up the spectrum with anger or surprise, and those weird furry ears of his were twitching like a beast's. It was the fight-or-flight syndrome taking him over. Polarca regards Syluise as nothing more or less than a snake-a snake of the most deadly kind, whose fangs are venomous but who might just opt to strangle you to death for the hell of it.
"Guess who's here," he began ominously.
"Shandor?" I said. "Sunteil?"
"Worse."
"Do we have to play guessing games, Polarca?"
"She's here. The great love of your life."
Polarca wishes fervently that I had never become mixed up with Syluise. Even making allowances for his sometimes overprotective attitude toward me, Polarca may have something there. But he also has a little problem with strong-willed women and that may account for some of his dislike of her.
"Seriously? Syluise?"
He was pacing up and down. "I try to tell myself that you're in your right mind," he said. "But to invite a troublesome and totally self-centered cunt like that to a high-level strategy session, Yakoub-"
"What makes you think I invited her?"
"What's she doing here, if you didn't?"
"You didn't try to find out?"
"Christ," he muttered. "You think she'll talk to me? She walks right through me as though I'm not there. She comes promenading in here from the spaceport like the Queen of Sheba, with a dozen robots in her train, installs herself in one of the master suites, unloads six overpockets' worth of gowns and robes and tiaras and God knows what else, starts giving orders to everybody in sight as though she's the new owner of the planet-"
"All right," I said. "Hand me that towel."
Polarca had exaggerated a little, but only a little. Syluise had indeed come with a retinue of robots, and she had set herself up in high style in a choice corner of the house. I went to pay a call on her and she received me as if this was her grand estate and I was the recently arrived guest.
One of her robots showed me in.
"I have plenty of robots available for my guests," I said. "It wasn't necessary for you to bring your own."
"I didn't want to be a burden."
"On the robots?"
"I like my own robots, Yakoub. They know how to look after me the way I like to be looked after."
"You really are a bitch, aren't you, Syluise?"
"Do you think so?" She made it seem as if I had complimented her. She looked as splendid as ever, the hair gleaming like the golden forests of Galgala, the blue eyes sparkling playfully, the tall slender body glowing within some sort of magical filmy wrap that emitted faint silvery music whenever she moved. "It's so good to see you again, Yakoub."
"You saw me not long ago on Mulano."
"I was ghosting then. Now I'm real. We haven't been this close to each other in the flesh for six or seven years, do you realize that?" The dazzling smile, a trillion electron volts. "Did you miss me?"
"Why are you here, Syluise?"
"Can't you be romantic even for a minute?"
"Later. First tell me why you came."
"I was worried about you. You sounded very confused, when I visited you on that icy planet of yours."
"Confused?"
"Telling me all that stuff about how you had abdicated so that your people would beg to have you come back. And that you had done it all for their good, so you could lead them on to Romany Star. Did you actually believe that it made sense, what you thought you were doing?"
"Yes."
"And now that Shandor is king, what are you going to do?"
"That's why I've called this meeting," I said. "But I don't remember asking you to attend it."
"I thought I could be of some help."
Sweet Syluise. "I'm sure you did," I said. "But you still aren't answering my question. How does it happen that you're here?"
"I heard you were back from that other place, that Mulano. The news is all over the Imperium. That you had landed on Xamur, that you had gone to your estate. So I decided to come to you and offer you whatever I could. I didn't know about the rest of it. That you were giving a big patshiv, that you had invited Polarca and Valerian and the phuri dai and all the others."
I found it strange, hearing her use those Romany words. Patshiv, phuri dai. Romany words sounded all wrong, coming out of those flawless imitation-Gaje lips of hers. I had a way of forgetting for years at a time that somewhere within the elegant Gaje package that Syluise had sculpted for herself there lurked a Rom soul. Somewhere.
"Just a coincidence?" I said. "That you came right in time for the meeting?"
She nodded. And held out her hands toward me.
Well, what was I to do? Interrogate her? Had Damiano tipped her off, or Biznaga, or even, God only knew why, Bibi Savina? Maybe so; or maybe it was only a coincidence. What the hell: she was here and I suppose I was glad to see her.
It had been a long time, a very long time, for Syluise and me. I had never been able to resist her anyway. Not since the beginning for her and me, more than fifty years back, before I was the king, that time when Cesaro o Nano had sent me to make a ceremonial visit to the Rom of Estrilidis, and she had come floating up out of the night, young and golden, a vision of Gaje perfection, cutting through all my defenses and beckoning me into shameful obsessions. Come here, she had said that night. I will make you a king. She said it in Romany with those Gaje lips of hers and I was lost. Rising above me, turning me from king to slave with a single glance. Her head thrown back, her lips parted, her breasts swaying wildly. I had been her slave ever since. An old man's foolishness? No. I wasn't old, fifty years ago. I'm not old now. Something like this would have happened to me at any age. Does everything I do have to make sense? Everyone is entitled to be struck once in his life by a fit of irresponsible passion. Or by a thunderbolt of instantaneous love, if that's what you prefer to call it. Call it whatever you like. Call it madness. Syluise was my madness.
"Come here," she said now.
Yes. Oh, how she sparkled, how she gleamed! Oh, yes, yes, yes!
7.
WE HAD THREE DAYS OF FEASTING AND REJOICING before we got down to anything serious. I didn't want to hurry it. I had been away by myself in the snow for much too long, and it was good just to have them all around me, these old dear friends, Valerian and Polarca and Thivt, Biznaga and Jacinto and Ammagante, Damiano and Syluise. Not ghosts this time-except for Valerian-but sweet warm flesh.
So we had a grand patshiv in the ancient traditional style, with all the food and drink anyone might want and then some, and dancing and singing and clapping of hands. Even the robots joined in, stamping their footpads in rhythm until they had caught the beat and finally leaping out into the middle of the floor to cavort and prance with the rest of us. Of course we loved that. At a patshiv everyone must be happy, everyone must feel like an honored guest, even the robots. God, was it a good time! The great chunks of roast beef, the suckling pigs, the barrels of foaming beer and rich red wine! Each night we sat around a blazing fire of fine aromatic wood, telling old tales of travel and high adventure, the roads we had taken and the joys and mishaps we had had. For a
moment out of time we were Rom of the old days, the wanderers, the caravan people, the tinkers and the fortune-tellers, the most serious people in the world and at the same time the most playful, enjoying ourselves in the way that we have always enjoyed ourselves. And in the darkness afterward, by the pale luminous glow of the nightbirds that flitter through the night of Xamur, there was Syluise, smooth and sleek to my touch. For the moment I was able to put aside all thought of what I still must accomplish; for the moment there was only Syluise, and the glowing birds in the darkness, and the silence of the night.
When I was ready to get down to real business I led them all away from the house on the long journey to the far edge of my property, where the Idradin crater throbs and pulses and stews with ferocious passionate energy.
The Idradin is the one blemish on Xamur's fair face. A ghastly pustule, an angry inflammation. There are those who lament the fact that a thing as hideous as the Idradin could exist on beautiful Xamur, but I think otherwise. Without the crater Xamur would seem an intolerably perfect world, unreal, outrageous, almost fraudulent. Xamur is in a way a little like Syluise, masked in a beauty that is too perfect for our flawed universe: it needs some single fault to make it seem genuine, and so does she. I am content that the Idradin is there, and content also that it is on my own land. It serves always as a reminder to me that the dream of perfection is a fool's fantasy, that there is always some loathsome canker in the sweetest bud.
The crater is a great round hole that goes straight down to the boiling magma that lies at the heart of Xamur. Around its jagged rim lie broad concentric rings of old worn black lava, dozens of them, hurled to the surface long ago by the fierce power of ancient eruptions. They form a sort of natural amphitheater, grim and bleak and lifeless. You can walk down to the lowest ring-if you dare-and see wild red shafts of flame spearing through smoky gray clouds, and hear monstrous forces belching and rumbling in the depths. Wisps of sulfuric miasma constantly come drifting up, staining the sky and all the surrounding countryside a bright vomitous yellow.
A hateful ugly place, yes.
But I had lived so close to it for so many years that I no longer could feel any hatred for it. I no longer saw the ugliness. Call it perverse if you like, but the sight of the Idradin had come to be something I found heartening and inspiring. I drew from it a sense of the raw strength of the forces it contained. Which are the forces of creation itself. We live on the surfaces of our planets. There are suns within them.
We gathered on the ninth circle of the crater, far enough away so that the stinking gases would not choke us, close enough to feel the warmth and the deep rumblings. Some-Biznaga, Jacinto, Damiano-seemed repelled and nauseated by the place. Chorian seemed almost frightened. Polarca was tense and taut, and kept glancing back over his shoulder. As though he expected an eruption any minute. Even Valerian looked a little worried, and he wasn't even actually there. But there was nothing but serenity on the faces of Bibi Savina and Thivt; Ammagante appeared indifferent; and Syluise, to my surprise, looked ecstatic. She stood with her arms flung wide and her head thrown back. She was glowing with a supreme radiance against the somber backdrop of the crater's dark fumes. I felt crazy with love for her, seeing her like that. Like a schoolboy. At my age. I knew it was insane. The crater has that effect on me sometimes. So does Syluise.
I said, scanning their faces one by one, "All right, the business at hand. My son Shandor seems to have set himself up on Galgala as the king. This is absolutely not legitimate and something had goddamned well better be done about it. Will one of you tell me how a miserable thing like this was ever allowed to happen in the first place?"
Silence from all quarters. And some squirming and wiggling.
"According to you, Damiano, he called the great kris together and compelled the krisatora to elect him. Is that actually what happened?"
Nods. Shrugs. From Bibi Savina a flat blank stare.
"Jesu Cretchuno Adam and Eve, can't any of you speak? Explain to me how the krisatora can be forced to take such an action. The krisatora when they are in session have power over any Rom, even the king. Not the other way around. Who were they, these krisatora? Nine puppy dogs? Nine robots? Did he threaten them? With what? How can an election under duress be considered valid even for a minute?"
Biznaga said, "There is no record of what took place at the kris, Yakoub. Except that Shandor called the krisatora together and when they emerged from the hall of judgment he was the king."
I looked toward Damiano. "You told me he forced them."
"That's what I assume."
"Who were these krisatora?" I asked.
"You know them all," Damiano said. "The same who were in office when you were king. Bidshika, Djordji, Stevo le Yankosko, Milosh-"
I cut him off in mid-list. "They should have known better. The son of a king has never been king before. And with the old king still alive, too. Oh, the bastard, the bloody bastard! He walked in there and told them what to do, and they did it, and nobody dared say a word against it. Even you. You all just smiled and nodded and let it happen."
"And you take no responsibility at all?" Valerian said.
"Me?"
"You, Yakoub. But for you none of this would have happened. You set the whole thing up, didn't you? Who told you to abdicate in the first place?"
"I had my reasons."
"I bet you did."
"You think my abdication was a whim? You think it was just some cockeyed impulse that took hold of me? Do you? Do you? Don't you think that I had a plan, that I was acting in accordance with my long-range strategy, when I walked out of Galgala?"
They were all looking at each other. Suddenly I realized what they must be thinking. The old man has taken leave of his senses, is what they were thinking. I saw now that they might have been thinking that for quite some time.
I glared at them.
"You bastards, have you been humoring me?"
"Humoring you how?" asked Polarca.
"You think I'm crazy, don't you?"
"Did I ever say a thing like that, Yakoub?"
"You didn't say it, no," I agreed. "But you've been thinking it. Haven't you, Polarca?"
"Absolutely not."
"Valerian?"
"Crazy? You?"
"Damiano? Biznaga? Come on, you pigs, put up your hands! Everyone who thinks Yakoub is somewhere around the far bend into senility, wave your goddamned hand in the air!"
No hands went up. Their faces didn't show a flicker of emotion. Did I have them cowed? Or were they determined to go on hiding what they thought of me, no matter what?
The crater roared and gargled. There was the sound of colossal masses of rock moving about somewhere deep within it. A plume of yellow smoke came burping up to the surface and spread a rank rotten stink everywhere, like the fart of a giant. No one reacted. No one moved. They were staring at me like a bunch of robots and there was no way I could read what was behind their eyes.
After a time I said in a quieter voice, under the tightest control I could manage, "I want to assure you that I'm still very much in my right mind. Just in case any of you happen to doubt that. My abdication may have been a tactical mistake, though I'm not yet convinced of that, but it wasn't the arbitrary and capricious action of a crazy old man."
And I launched into the full explanation: how I had come to feel that we were slipping away from our underlying nature, how we were being drawn more and more deeply into the Gaje Empire when in fact what we needed to do was to begin preparing ourselves for the return to Romany Star that had been our goal for so many thousands of years, and which was now perhaps just a couple of hundred years away. I told them how I had felt the need to do something dramatic in order to shake people up. That I had decided to go away for a few years and leave them leaderless, so they could ponder the error of their ways. And how I had planned to return and resume the throne, stronger than ever, once the full impact of my absence had been felt.
They listened to me soberly, almost
grimly. Ammagante seemed to be engaged in some abstruse set of interior calculations. Damiano was scowling, Chorian looked astounded, Biznaga almost in tears. The others seemed puzzled or bothered or dismayed, all but Syluise, who had heard all this before and merely seemed bored. And Bibi Savina, whose invincible serenity remained unbroken. It occurred to me that the old woman might not even be listening to me, might not even be here, might be off ghosting somewhere at the far end of time.
When I was finished Jacinto said, softly, coolly, "And did you imagine that we could run a caretaker government for you forever, Yakoub? That five years or maybe ten would go by with the throne vacant and there'd be no pressure to elect a new king?"
"I thought there would be attempts made to get me to come back, before that happened."
"There were," Damiano said. "Do you know how many men I had out searching for you, starting the year after your disappearance?"
"I left my patrin behind me all over the place."