Star of Gypsies

  "To Shandor?"

  "Who cares?"

  A wondrous feeling of freedom flooded my soul.

  "I care," I said.

  "Don't. Give it all up."

  I ran my hands over her shoulders. Her skin was fiery hot but nevertheless it was like stroking a statue. I felt nothing. In her little coquettish way she danced back, out of my grasp.

  "Come here."

  "Come to Fulero with me."

  "Some other time." I reached for her again.

  "No."

  "No?"

  "Not here. Not in this awful little place."

  "You said you missed me. Not very much, I'd say."

  "I'll show you how much when we get to Fulero."

  She gave me another round of the hips and the thighs and the wriggles and I smiled and shrugged.

  "I think I'll pass on Fulero," I said amiably. "You go. With Shandor."

  I thought she would explode. Her eyes were supernovas of rage. Something ugly came glinting through all that unbelievable perfection. She wasn't accustomed to seeing me withstand her. I never had before.

  Fifty years and I never had. It didn't matter that I was king. There aren't any kings in the bedroom. We're all slaves there, not to other people but to ourselves, helpless against the commands that come from within. Every man has a fatal woman. It may be the same for women as well; I suppose it is. But even fatal attractions can shrivel and fade. And die. This time for once I had stood up against her. Maybe I had even freed myself from her for good.

  6.

  SYLUISE WENT SLINKING AWAY, SMOLDERING WITH anger and souring female juices. Next thing I knew, Valerian was with me. Valerian's ghost, that is. As usual. Bounding around the cell like a berserk rhinoceros. A rhinoceros is an animal they used to have on Earth, weird as hell, very large, not good to eat. Horn on its nose. When a rhinoceros headed in your direction you got politely out of its way. The same with Valerian.

  "Look at this place," he roared. "Gold floors! Gold walls! This crazy planet. I never can get used to your Galgala, you know? All this fucking gold."

  "You want some? Help yourself."

  "What good is it? Who needs it? You ever been on Earth, Yakoub?"

  "You're asking me that?"

  He kept rampaging right on. "Of course you have. A thousand times, I bet. You know how they love gold there? The women with ten kilos of gold dangling around their necks? A roll of solid heavy coins in your pocket? It meant something, on Earth, gold. You felt like a giant when you had a little gold. Like a fucking king. Now look. The love of gold is gone from the universe. All that good greed, gone. A whole perfectly fine deadly sin shot to hell. You know what they've done to gold? They've turned it into shit, these Galgala people."

  "It's a lot prettier than shit," I pointed out.

  "But just as worthless. That's a crying shame, what they did to gold. I wish they never had found this planet. Gold was so good, Yakoub.

  And now it's crap. You know what did it in? Supply and demand, that's what! Supply and demand, supply and demand! The inexorable law of the cosmos." Valerian paused, sending out blue and yellow ghost-flickers and ghost-crackles like a demented electrical appliance. What an exhausting son of a bitch! He looked very pleased with his own profundity. "That sounds nice, don't you think? The inexorable law of the cosmos. I always did have a way with words, hey, Yakoub?" Then he was off again, bounding from wall to wall. "Nice cell. Shandor keeps you in style."

  "You should have seen the first place he put me in."

  "Well, this is comfortable, yes? And all this gold. Maybe it's worthless but by damn it is pretty. You need some jewels, though. A little color contrast, too much yellow here." He pulled a red leather pouch from under his cloak. Ghost-leather. "Give me a good jewel any day. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires. Not diamonds. Diamonds have good fire in them but I miss the color. I like my jewels to have color." Pouring the contents of the pouch into his huge hand as he spoke. A mountain of jewels. He thrust them in my face. "You could string them right across the room from wall to wall, hey? Light the place up a little."

  "Ghost-jewels, Valerian. What good are they? I can't even touch them. All they are is colored air to me, you know?"

  "Oh, shit, yes," he said morosely. "That's right."

  "I think I'd rather have real gold than ghost-jewels. But thanks all the same."

  "Damn," he said. He was crestfallen. "I completely forgot about that. They look pretty fucking real to me."

  "You're a ghost, Valerian."

  "Right. Right. Ah, too goddamned bad. You need some color in here. But look, I tell you, Yakoub: when you're king again I'll come to you real, okay? And bring you some real rubies, some real emeralds."

  "When I'm king again? When will that be?"

  He wasn't paying attention. "I have jewels galore, you know. Beaucoup jewels, that's what Julien would say, right? I took one hell of a cargo, last year. Out by Jerusalem Spill, somewhere between Caliban and Puerto Peligroso, big transport ship belonging to-well, who cares who it belonged to. Enough rubies on board to dam up a river with. A big river." Valerian laughed. "I could break the market, you know? Dump them all at once, make rubies as worthless as gold. Just like I did that time with the drugs, when they brought me up on charges before the kris. You remember? That time when you adjusted the verdict for me. Not that I see any sense in busting the ruby market. Not with the inventory I've got. But somebody's bound to do it sooner or later, some damned fool, you watch and see. It's inevitable. They've got a planet out that way somewhere that's as full of rubies as Galgala is of gold."

  That was news to me.

  "You sure of that?"

  "You should see what was on that ship I took. Ten enormous overpockets loaded with them. A ton of rubies here, a ton there, sticking out into all kinds of storage dimensions, dimensions nobody ever heard of before. You know what I had to do to get them to unlock those pockets for me? No, you don't want to know. I don't even want to think about it. I'm really a very gentle man. You know that, don't you, Yakoub? But sometimes-sometimes-"

  "Tell me about when I'll be king again."

  "You want me to tell you that?"

  "You just heard me say it."

  "But that's the future!"

  "So?"

  "It is the future, isn't it? For you, I mean? Yes. Yes, sure it is. You want me to tell you the future?"

  "Why not? You can tell me. Nobody will know but you and me."

  "I can tell you, yes. Why shouldn't I tell you?"

  "That's right."

  "I can tell you if I feel like it. Whatever you want, I can tell you."

  "Absolutely."

  "There's nothing stopping me from telling you."

  "Right," I said. "So tell me."

  But he wasn't telling me. Just talking about telling me. And flying around the room like a berserk parakeet. The manic son of a bitch! I wanted to clobber him. Clobber a ghost, sure.

  "It's the future," he said. "We aren't supposed to tell people their futures."

  "Since when did you ever do what you were supposed to do?"

  "Maybe it makes sense, the rule."

  "Oh, come on, Valerian."

  "But maybe it makes sense."

  "At least tell me what's happening out there right now, then. There's no rule about that."

  "You mean, in the Empire? The Kingdom?"

  "Yes. Since Shandor arrested me. What's been happening."

  "Plenty's been happening," he said. He floated across the room and came to rest in mid-air right in front of my nose, hanging sideways with his feet just grazing the golden wall. In a much quieter voice he said, "I never thought you were going to get away with this thing, this lunacy, handing yourself over to Shandor. I thought it was the most cockeyed thing you had ever done in your life. I owe you a big apology, I guess, Yakoub."

  "So I got away with it, did I? It worked out all right?"

  "Don't you know?"

  Maddening. Still playing question and answer games with me. br />
  He was worse than Polarca. Polarca didn't even offer to tell me anything when he came ghosting. Valerian has no scruples at all. Rules mean nothing to him. The only rule that has ever seriously mattered to him is the one that says, Whatever you do, don't get caught at it. Despite all the prohibitions Valerian would certainly be capable of revealing the future to me if he felt like it. And if he could manage to understand how important it was to me to know. But getting him to stay on the subject was more work than shoveling salizonga dung.

  Exasperated, I said, "How would I know? It's still the future to me. I'm still here, remember? Still a prisoner. And nobody's been telling me a thing."

  Valerian drifted down until he was standing practically upright and gave me a close look, and drifted back up at right angles to the floor again. "I forget," he said after a while. "That was dumb. Being a ghost all the time like this, I get mixed up. I lose track of what comes before which, you know. Of course if you're still here you probably don't know anything."

  "Come on, Valerian."

  "You want to know? All right. I'll tell you."

  "You keep on saying that."

  "I'm trying to tell you." He took a big breath, which lit him up in sixteen ghostly up-spectrum colors. The moment of revelation at last. He said, "Everything's going to be fine. It'll turn out just like you said it would."

  Great. Polarca had said that too. But he had refused to give me any details. Just vaguenesses, same as Valerian. They were both in a conspiracy to drive me crazy.

  I worked at keeping my temper, though. No sense yelling at ghosts: they just go away.

  "How so? What's this it that turns out right?"

  "I'm not supposed to tell you stuff like this. But you know me, Yakoub."

  "Come on."

  "Just between you and me, you have Shandor on the run."

  "Tell me."

  "You don't know anything?"

  "Not much. Syluise was here and she said things are pretty bad. Breakdown of interstellar commerce. Starships going to the wrong destinations. Things like that. But I don't trust Syluise to give me straight news. Tell me."

  "That's the straight news. It was a mess out there."

  "Was?"

  "Will be. Is. Whatever. You know, it isn't so simple for me, remembering what's future and what's past. It's all past to me, you know, Yakoub? Your future is my past. A lot of things have happened that haven't happened yet."

  "Try to keep your mind on it. If you can. Do I get out of here soon?"

  A long pause.

  "Do I?"

  "I think so."

  "You think! You think! You never thought in your life, Valerian. All right. What's happening to the Empire?"

  "Breaking down," he said, brightening. He was making a real effort now. "The old emperor's still alive. Hanging on like he means to stay forever. But nobody can understand what he says any more. Sunteil's trying to run things and Periandros and Naria are trying hard to get in his way. Doing a damned good job of it."

  "More."

  "More what?"

  "More news. Keep talking."

  "A ghost isn't supposed to-"

  "Fuck what a ghost is supposed to. When the great kris found you guilty, was I supposed to let you go free? But I did it."

  "You know I'll always be grateful for-"

  "Fine. Tell me more."

  He thought a moment. "Well, there's Shandor. Shandor's panicky."

  I felt my pulse rate picking up. We were getting to the core of things now. Maybe.

  "He is?"

  "Scared completely shitless. He's just realizing who he's up against and it terrifies him. You've been fighting one hell of a war, you know. Without lifting a finger, without getting a word out of here to anyone."

  "So you understand that, finally."

  "It's amazing what you've accomplished just by handing yourself over to Shandor. Your boy Chorian escaped, you know, and he told everyone Shandor had you locked up here."

  "I was wondering about him."

  "And that's when things started to fall apart for Shandor. It made a lot of Rom very angry, hearing what he had done to you. Especially the pilots: they've begun doing all sorts of wild things to protest, flying to the wrong planets, messing up everybody's schedule. Some worlds are practically cut off altogether. Clard Msat: you just can't get there. Iriarte, I think."

  I felt like crying for joy, hearing that.

  But was it true? Past and present were such a jumble for Valerian. He might be reporting rumors, or fantasies, or events out of some other era entirely. I closed my eyes. So frustrating to have to depend for news on a couple of hyperkinetic ghosts and a gilded viper. I wanted desperately to feel the pulse of the worlds with my own hand. I had been here alone so long, isolated from the ebb and flow of the galaxy. My plan, my strategy, a shrewd one but a painful one. Attack by surrendering. Nobody had understood. They all thought I was crazy. All of them except Bibi Savina and Thivt. But my lunatic gamble seemed to be paying off. Valerian wouldn't lie to me. He might be confused but he wouldn't lie. Out there, the thousands of worlds, the millions of Rom, the billions of Gaje, all the human turmoil and bustle: was the whole thing tumbling into chaos? Useful chaos, on which I would be able to build?

  I said, "I like what I'm hearing. Keep going."

  "You know about the krisatora?"

  "I told you. I don't know anything."

  "Damiano has called them together. For a ruling on Shandor's conduct. They're going to denounce him."

  "You know that for sure?"

  "I'm trying to talk in your time, not mine. That's why I say they're going to denounce him."

  "Denounce him?"

  "That's what I said."

  "Yes. Right. So they held a kris right here on Galgala under Shandor's nose and he didn't do anything to stop it? Or try to take control of it?"

  "God, no. Who said anything about Galgala? The kris is being held on Marajo. Was held. Will be? Was."

  "On Marajo?"

  "Damiano picked his own krisatora. He said he didn't trust the kris that was in session on Galgala, because it was Shandor's."

  I groaned. "So it isn't legitimate, the kris?"

  "As legitimate as anything is."

  "No," I said. "It's a kangaroo kris. Damiano's own private kris. What does he want, a civil war? Shandor will simply refuse to accept its jurisdiction."

  "The time they brought me up on trial, that was Damiano's private kris too. That time they collared me for grabbing the Kalimaka ship. You remember? Suppose I had tried to refuse to accept its jurisdiction? Suppose I had said, This isn't a fair trial, this is a kangaroo kris, Damiano's got it in for me. What good would that have done me, hey? Where would that have gotten me?"

  "But that was a legitimate kris. That was the great kris of Galgala, for Christ's sake. Its decrees are binding on all of us. This other kris of Damiano, this Marajo kris-what if Shandor says it isn't a true kris, that he's not going to accept its edict?"

  "Don't worry. It's all over and done with-"

  "Not for me it isn't."

  "Over and done with," said Valerian dreamily. He was drifting again, hovering sideways in mid-air. Growing transparent now, becoming a blur of bottle-green light up near the ceiling. "That was really bad," he said. "That time they brought me up on trial." I saw that I was starting to lose him. He was beginning to wander further back into the past. The focus was shifting for him. I should never have allowed him to change the subject. Once he started reminiscing about that trial of his, there might be no bringing him back. "That was the worst time ever, for me. I was really suffering. You remember how bad it was, Yakoub?"

  He was fingering the golden flecks in the wall in an absentminded way, as if trying to pry some of them loose. He seemed very far away.

  "Valerian?" I said.

  "You remember? I was really suffering."

  "Of course I remember. But you deserved it."

  He had suffered, all right. Scared out of his wits. Facing absolute ruin
, and he knew it. The only time I've ever seen him in such pathetic shape. All the swagger and bluster squeezed out of him. But why bring it all up again now? I had to know about Shandor, about the Imperium, about what was happening behind the golden walls of my cell, and here he was giving me the angst and grief of that long-ago trial of his. The biggest trouble with egocentric people like Valerian is that they can't keep their minds focused on your problems for very long, no matter how urgent they might be.

  He was still at it. "The way you all were looking at me-like I was an enemy, a traitor-a Gajo-"

  "But you were pardoned," I said. "Look, come down from there, will you? I can't talk to you when you float around like that."

  "Realizing you were all serious, that you actually were going to put me on trial. And punish me. I couldn't believe it was happening to me, Yakoub."

  "Will you come down?"

  "And then everybody testifying against me-my friends, my cousins-"

  "Hey, it's all ancient history now, Valerian."

  "Is it? Is it?" His voice was very faint. I wondered whether he might be ghosting within a ghosting right now, jumping back to the time of his trial, living through it all again in the moments between moments. I wondered how often he actually did relive it. His big trauma. His ordeal.

  Valerian had grabbed one ship too many, that time. The wrong ship. And we had to make him suffer for it. And then I had taken pity on him despite everything. Saving him at the last minute from the worst punishment a Rom could receive.

  "Yakoub?" he murmured. "Yakoub, I was afraid, do you know I was actually afraid?"

  "I know."

  It was hopeless, now, trying to get him to talk about the current affairs of the Kingdom. Or anything else that might matter. I had lost him. I was sure of that.

  "Is that when you decided to pardon me? When you saw the fear?"

  "I thought you had suffered enough," I told him.

  "I was really suffering," he said again, very far away. "I was really afraid. Thinking you were all going to cast me out. That I would never hear anyone speak Romany again. Or laugh the way a Rom laughs. You know what I mean, Yakoub? You understand what I'm saying?"