Star of Gypsies

  The verdict on Valerian was guilty and the sentence was absolute expulsion from the Romany people. Cut off, cast out, excommunicated. Unlawful now for any Rom to speak a word to him, even his mother, even his brother, on pain of the same penalty. Whatever he touched would be deemed unclean and must be destroyed, whatever its value. In other words the complete cataclysm; the fullest punishment of our Law in all its ancient and apocalyptic severity. In due course the decree of the kris came to me for review, and, as I suspect everyone involved except perhaps Damiano was really hoping I would do, I found it far too severe, and voided it. Instead I ordered Valerian to make a huge restitution payment and a ceremonial act of penance, instructed him to keep his hands off Rom vessels for the rest of his natural or unnatural days, and sent him off, shaken and sobered and officially rehabilitated and eternally grateful to me, to continue his piratical ways in the space-lanes. Damiano gave me a hard time about my leniency. "That slippery bastard needed a good lesson," he said. And said it again and again in case I hadn't heard the first time.

  "He's had one."

  "Not good enough. He's going to go right on thinking it's safe to do whatever he damned pleases. He'll just try harder not to get caught again, that's all."

  "Isn't that what everyone does?"

  "You shock me, cousin."

  "Do I? Do I really, cousin?"

  Damiano had to yield, of course. I was king, as I reminded him two or three times, and he went away grumbling. Later on he and Valerian made peace with each other and Damiano even invested in some of Valerian's ventures, which is so perfectly in character for Damiano that I could have hugged him for it. Of course Damiano was right that Valerian would go on believing he could do whatever he felt like, so long as he took care not to get caught. And so he has.

  I've held the ashes of Romany Star in my hands, Yakoub.

  Did I dare believe him? Did I dare not to?

  8.

  THEN SHANDOR CAME STORMING IN, HIS FIRST VISIT to me in a very long time, and distracted me. He was so lit up I would almost have thought it was Shandor's ghost coming in, all sparks and crackles and hums. But both his feet were on the floor and the sparks were metaphorical, not electrical.

  He was enraged and practically incoherent. He paced up and down, back and forth, sputtering and twitching. Despite his recent remake he looked like an old man, this firstborn son of mine. I took real malicious pleasure in seeing how gray his skin was, how sharp his nose was getting, how rounded his shoulders. This babe that I had bounced on my knee only a hundred years ago, give or take ten or twenty.

  He was burning up. He was consuming himself. He was the candle that was all flame from tip to tip.

  That is a thing the Lowara Rom like to say: "A candle is all flame from tip to tip." In other words a candle is supposed to burn, and the thing to do is to let it burn, to let the tallow be translated into the flame that is the candle's true destiny. It is an argument against thrift. Polarca lives that way: he sets nothing by for the future, but burns and blazes all the time. He is lavish and generous to the point of craziness; but he does burn brightly.

  Among us Kalderash the same saying has a different shade of meaning. Which is that when you merrily let your candle burn from end to end it gives you much warmth and light, but eventually it is consumed and then you are left in darkness. Therefore burn what you need, but nothing more. Especially when the candle that you burn is yourself. Shandor, it seemed, was wasting himself in the fervor of his rage.

  It was quite a performance. I watched in amazement. I doubt that I could have done better. Finally he got himself enough under control to speak words that made sense, but even so they came out in a thick-tongued frantic way. "One last chance, God damn you!" he thundered. "I can be merciful if that's what I have to be. I'll give you goddamned mercy, you cagy old bastard. But you have to cooperate. You have to cooperate! Or I'll finish you."

  "Finish me how?"

  "Finish you! Don't ask me. Just don't ask!"

  "You don't look good, Shandor. Are you sleeping well these days?"

  "I'm going to hold a coronation."

  "Are you, now?"

  "Stop talking to me in that patronizing tone of voice!"

  "I'm trying to hold up my end of the conversation, that's all. I was inquiring about your health. There are things you could take. Water from nine places, you know that one? You'll need a drabarni to throw charcoal embers in it first. Maybe Bibi Savina would do it for you. And then there's bear's grease-you could send to Marajo for some, I think Damiano keeps bears there-eye of crayfish, powdered cantharis beetle-"

  "I'll cut your tongue out if you don't shut up."

  "The merciful Shandor, yes."

  "There will be a coronation," he said, forcing the words out as though they were teeth bursting through his lips. "A nine-world ceremony, first here on Galgala, then Xamur, Iriarte, Nabomba Zom, Clard Msat-"

  "You may have trouble with part of that. I understand that for some reason the starships aren't landing on Iriarte or Clard Msat these days."

  "-and after the rite has been sanctified on all nine of the kingly planets, you and I will go to the Capital and present ourselves before the emperor to receive confirmation."

  "Confirmation of what?"

  "My title to the throne. The legality of my succession."

  "You still want to be king, Shandor? Give it up. It's a dreadful job."

  "On each of the nine kingly planets you will stand beside me as the phuri dai puts the seal of office over me-"

  "I will?"

  "The passing of the mantle. The transfer of authority. You will do it freely and joyfully."

  "I would freely and joyfully spend ten years in the tunnels of Alta Hannalanna first."

  "It wouldn't be a big problem for me to send you there."

  "You'd do it, too."

  "I could. Maybe you'd prefer Gran Chingada? Megalo Kastro, in the mines? Trinigalee Chase?"

  "That's the best you can do? Trinigalee Chase?"

  "I can send you anywhere. How about Mentiroso again? I can really make you suffer, Yakoub."

  "And make yourself even more beloved throughout the Rom worlds than you are already."

  "Damn you, Yakoub-"

  "Threaten me some more, my son. This is the best exercise I've had in months."

  "There's war out there, do you know that? Rom turning against Rom. Whole kumpanias splitting in two over the issue of the kingship. And you are responsible."

  "I am?"

  "By trying to reclaim the throne. By trying to displace a king legitimately chosen and anointed."

  "Pot calls kettle black."

  He was looking more apoplectic by the moment. I had a quick satisfying fantasy of goading him into a stroke right here in my cell. But no, Shandor would never be so obliging. He went ranting on about this coronation he was going to stage, in which I would stand by beaming benignly while he put my crown on his head. Pig's eye, I would. Preposterous notion. But give me full credit: I didn't for a moment get angry. Here stood my own firstborn son going straight for the Freudian jugular and I listened to him amiably, interjecting a bit of easy banter whenever he paused for breath. I even told him about Freud. He hadn't heard of him, obviously. Ancient Gaje philosopher, said I. I reached into my anthropological storehouse and pulled out Uranus and Cronos, Cronos and Zeus, David and Absalom, and one or two other famous father-and-son goodies. I threw in Lear and his daughters, too, though that story wasn't entirely appropriate to the situation. Close enough, though. "Is that what you want?" I asked. "To reduce me to a mere archetype? How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!"

  "What are you talking about?" said Shandor. "You crazy old bastard!"

  I smiled sweetly. In the end the stalemate still stood; I remained his prisoner, he remained in questionable possession of a shaky throne. He got red in the face and went back to muttering threats. Mentiroso, he said again. Alta Hannalanna. He waved Trinigalee Chase before my nose again too. He
might have gotten me to give in, if he really had tried to ship me off to Trinigalee Chase. A good thing I had never told anyone how much I loathed that place, or why, a policy that I intend to continue to honor until the end of my days.

  In the face of Shandor's threats I kept calm and cool. He was furious. I grew wary of pushing him any harder. There comes a point with any enemy where you can get him angry enough to act against his own self-interest, and then you're really in trouble. If Shandor did away with me in a fit of rage, it would really foul up his position among the Rom; but even so, I'd be dead. As I had pointed out on Xamur to Valerian, I could be useful even as a martyr. Still and all, that wasn't my first choice. It wasn't even high on my list.

  He went away, eventually, muttering and cursing. Something was going to happen now, of that I was certain. Sticking me in that damp rat-infested oubliette hadn't accomplished anything for him and nothing better had come of letting me sit here in this gilded cage. I had done a lot of waiting in my life and Shandor was beginning to see that I was capable of doing a great deal more. He had expected me simply to come around after a time and put my blessing on his kingship, but it hadn't happened, and now, I suspected, he was reaching the limits of his patience. He might very well start in on me now with some more active form of persuasion. Torture? Brainburning? Little softening-up trips to some of the uglier worlds of the galaxy?

  Be prepared for the worst, I told myself. Something is going to happen.

  Something happened, all right. The very next day when the robots brought me my dinner I found a grilled fish on my plate, swimming in a delicate creamy sauce. After months of mush and gruel, a grilled fish in a fancy sauce? This is Shandor's idea of torture? With it came elegant little potato puffs, thin brown crusts enclosing globes of air, and some kind of long bluish beans in a pungent and subtle gravy. A beaker of wine on the side, nicely chilled, and a crisp little loaf of bread.

  There had to be a catch. Maybe this stuff is poisoned, and he figures I'll fall upon it with such greed that I won't even notice the faint trace of cyanide that it's laced with, right? For perhaps five minutes I sat there staring miserably at that beautiful food, afraid to touch it. Then I realized that I was very hungry and that I could die of starvation just as easily as I could from cyanide poisoning. If I passed up this lovely meal I might be passing up the cyanide, if there was any cyanide, but I'd also be passing up this lovely meal, and either way I'd be dead before too long. So I took a gingerly nibble. Ecstasy! If Shandor had had my meal poisoned, it was at least a delicious poison. I waited and nothing sinister happened. Another nibble. Another. What the hell, I thought, this food is too good to be lethal. And I went at it with gusto.

  I had lived on Shandor's prison garbage so long that my stomach nearly rebelled at cuisine of such extraordinary caliber. It was all I could do to keep the first few mouthfuls down. But I gave it a good fight, and I won. The bread and the wine helped. And after a while it became a lot easier. When I went to sleep that night-still wondering vaguely whether I'd been poisoned-I spent my last few moments of wakefulness brooding over the significance of Shandor's strange gesture. It made no sense. I hate things that make no sense. If he wasn't trying to poison me in some crazy roundabout way, did he seriously think he could bribe me into cooperating by feeding me fancy dinners?

  Of course not. I decided that it must have been somebody else's dinner, delivered to me by mistake. A malfunction of the serving robots. Off I went to sleep.

  And woke, unpoisoned, to find that the robots had brought me breakfast. Two crisp crescent-shaped rolls of surpassingly fine texture, a flask of coffee that was close to ambrosia, and a little plate of mild white cheese and assorted local fruits glittering with tiny flecks of gold. I was baffled.

  To my shame it was another day and a half before I stopped eating long enough to figure things out. Help is on the way. Polarca had told me, early in my imprisonment. When it gets here, you'll know it. The clue will be right on the plate in front of you.

  What kind of food was it that these demented robots had suddenly begun to bring me? Why, it was French food. And who did I know whose great passion it was to cook in the classic French manner? Why, Julien de Gramont, pretender to the throne of France and special adjunct to his lordship Periandros of the imperial court. Yes. Of course.

  Somehow Julien had infiltrated this place and he was preparing superb meals for me that were actually intended as messages. What all these cassoulets and ragouts and terrines and sautes were meant to tell me, these mousses and aspics and souffles, was that I had friends on the premises. And help would shortly be on the way.

  SEVEN

  The Sixteenth Emperor

  We start out stupid. All we have at the beginning is the built-in wisdom of the body, which tells us which end to eat with and which end to shit with and not much more. But we are put here to do battle with entropy, and entropy equals stupidity. Therefore we are obliged to learn. Our job is to process information and gain control of it: that is to say, to grow wiser as we go along.

  If I am just as stupid when I am twenty as I was when I was two, if I am just as stupid when I am a hundred as I was when I was fifty, then I am not doing my job. I am occupying space and time to no purpose, and I might just as well have been a lump of rock.

  Of course, a time comes when even the wisest of men stops growing wise and starts getting stupid again. It may take two hundred years for that to happen to him, but it will happen. I am reconciled to the inevitability of that, I think. All that means is that entropy wins in the end, which we knew all along. No matter. The fact that we're fighting a losing battle does not excuse us from fighting it. The great human achievement is to postpone the moment of defeat as long as possible.

  1.

  WHAT I DIDN'T KNOW WAS THAT THE IMPERIUM HAD undergone some major changes. The old emperor had finally died-without naming his successor-and the three high lords were making their moves. So there was chaos now among the Gaje as well as the Rom.

  Tucked away in my cozy cell I didn't hear anything about any of this. My only visitors now were the silent robots that continued to bring me ever more elaborate meals. I didn't even get any ghosts. Instead of news from the outside, what I got was supremes de volaille, noisettes d'agneau, grenadins de boeuf. My waistline was spreading wildly. Meanwhile, beyond the walls of my prison, the whole precariously balanced structure that had held the human race together during the thousand years of expansion into the galaxy was falling apart in one great triumphant burst of greed and stupidity.

  Imagine! Kings and emperors, here in the thirty-second century! As though we were living in the middle ages. Pomp and circumstance, fanfares and panoplies. Crowns and scepters. Wars of succession. It sounds childish, doesn't it? But what system, I ask you, would have worked better? Democracy? A parliament of worlds? Don't make me laugh. That stuff works well enough on a small scale, maybe. Within a single country, say. You'll notice that Earth in its time never managed to get representative democracy going on so much as one entire continent at any one time, let alone the whole planet. So how could it be achieved on a galactic scale? We buzz around pretty spectacularly in our faster-than-light starships, but communication between solar systems still has built-in lags. The parliament would always be six weeks behind the times in knowing what was going on. The galactic president wouldn't have a clue. And there are hundreds of inhabited worlds, right? Thousands. You'd need a parliament building half the size of a city to house all the delegates. Imagine the babble and yatter. What you need is a symbolic figure, a kind of animated flag to hold all the worlds together. We knew what we were doing when we revived monarchy. Of course this really isn't the middle ages, and the monarchy we set up isn't really much like the ancient ones. What the emperor is, basically, is a message that is sent simultaneously to all the worlds of the galaxy. His very existence says, We are human, we are members of one family. The emperor is like a poem, if you take my meaning. When he speaks, you may not understand the literal sense of wh
at he might say, but you get the impact on some other level.

  What's that you're saying? Why bother trying to hold the fabric of the worlds together at all? Why not simply let each planet live in blessed isolation, wrapped in its snug blanket of light-years? And do without the whole intricate and costly structure of the Imperium entirely?

  Now that's a medieval concept if ever I heard one. And even in old medieval Earth it wasn't possible to make it work, though they certainly tried. There was no way for any nation to keep aloof from other nations for long. Weak ones that attempted it inevitably wound up being subjugated in one way or another. Strong ones might make isolationist policies stick for a time, but sooner or later they'd become inbred and decadent and start to slide into a dismal irreversible decline. Only when the Earth folk accepted some notion of their interdependence did they begin to attain something like civilization. As the ancient Gaje poet said, No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod is washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. Exactly. Europe was one of their most famous continents, a small one but very important. The same poet went on to say, Any man's death diminishes me. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Yes indeed. It is the same for nations. And it is the same for worlds.

  Now we have gone sprawling and brawling out into the stars, filling the many worlds with ourselves and with the beasts of lost dead Earth that we brought with us for company, cows and horses and snakes and toads. We have spread like an unstoppable tide across a universe that probably regarded itself as perfectly satisfactory without us, and we have overwhelmed great sectors of it. And yet, and yet, for all our tremendous outward spill we are nothing but a thin dark thread lying across the Milky Way. If any of us were to try to stand alone, he would be lost. So we reach out-we who are just so many scattered beads bobbing on this great ocean of night, if you don't mind my changing metaphors on you, and if a king can't switch metaphors I'd like to know who can-and we try to maintain connection with one another. And that is why there is an Imperium; and that is why there is an emperor; and that is why when the emperor dies we all stand at the brink of chaos.