Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
"That wand is nothing of mine."
"It will be yours the moment it touches your hand," he says.
I had thought that after seeing Romany Star I would be beyond all awe; but now I am awed to my roots. What are these crazy GaJe doing, all bedecked in these nightmare costumes and crawling about down by my feet? What strange rite is this, that no Rom has ever seen or even heard about before, this procession of phantasms, this presentation of the wand?
Are they making me emperor? Me? "You have all gone mad," I say. "Majesty-" says crocodile-head. "Majesty-" from antler-head.
"We beg you, Majesty-" It is frog-head, groveling.
"Up, all of you!" I stare in amazement. "On your feet! Take off those hideous masks!"
"Majesty-" "Off with them! Unmask! Unmask at once!" I snatch up their Gaje wand of office and wave it around. "No nightmares in here! Get rid of those masks!"
They turn to one another, making bewildered little gestures with their claws and paws and flippers. Consternation. Uncertainty. Then lion-head lifts his mask, and the face of a man of Vietoris, unknown to me, looks out. Frog-head reveals a Copperfield face, ruddy, windburned. Antler-head has the fair skin and golden hair of a man of Ragnarok. Nine worlds of the Imperium have yielded these nine peers. Without their masks they look absurd in their costumes, caught in mid-mummery, childish, foolish, embarrassed.
"What is this?" I ask, brandishing the wand. "Why have you come here in these outfits? What are you trying to do?"
"The tradition," one whispers. "It is only a little pageantry, Majesty. To lend a heightening touch to the old secret rite-"
"What rite?"
"The naming of the emperor, Majesty." Yes, I was right. Madness.
"Have you all lost your minds? I am Rom! What are you doing, coming to a Rom like this?"
"The throne is empty. The three high lords are dead. The ships remain in the starports. The worlds are helpless," says the Ragnarok man.
"The time has come for the uniting of the peoples," says Copperfield.
"You are the one. There is no one else. This was the will of the Fifteenth, sealed in the moment of his death, revealed to us now in the time of the destruction of the Capital. He chose you. This terrible war has been the consequence of ignoring that choice. Spare us further grief. Surely you will not refuse the will of the Fifteenth?"
The will of the Fifteenth"Majesty!" they cry again. I look across the room. Polarca is laughing or crying, I am not sure which. Damiano is down on his knees, shivering and praying. Chorian looks as though he has been struck from behind by a falling star. Only Julien de Gramont is totally calm: he looks transfigured, ecstatic, as though France itself is being reborn before his eyes.
"Majesty! Majesty!"
I look at the wand in my hand. The will of the Fifteenth? Jesu Cretchuno Sunto Mario! Emperor Yakoub? The same man, king and emperor? What do they think I am, GaJe as well as Rom?
By damn, why not?
The first Rom emperor. And the last. Take the throne, proclaim the harmony of the peoples, rebuild the web that links the worlds. Send forth the starships again. And then, then, the rebirth of Romany Star under my auspices. The return, the resettlement. For this must be the call that we have all awaited: when the GaJe turn to a Rom and say, Bring us together. So will we come together at last. And then we will go home.
"Will you accept?" the GaJe lordlings ask, astounded themselves by what is happening. "Do you yield to the will of the Fifteenth? The throne of the Imperium is waiting for you, Majesty. Say the word, and we will proclaim it: the Sixteenth has been chosen at last!"
"No," I say, and there is a terrible stunned silence. "No?" they mutter. "No?"
A smile. "No, not the Sixteenth. That's an unlucky number, I think. Let them have been the Sixteenth, all three of them. The Sixteenth and the Seventeenth and the Eighteenth. We accept your homage, and we proclaim ourselves to rule from this moment forward as the Nineteenth of our line, and so be it."
"Long live the Nineteenth Emperor!" cry the peers of the Imperium.
"Long live the Nineteenth!" From Chorian, resonantly, joyously. "Long live the Nineteenth!" From Julien, from Polarca, from Valerian. And then from all of them.
"We are greatly pleased," I say, benevolently waving the wand of office from one side of the room to another.
The royal we. How wonderfully silly that sounds. I love it.
BY THE TIME I HAD BEEN ROBED AND ANOINTED AND driven across the smouldering rubble-fields of the Capital to the imperial palace, which still stood intact despite all the carnage that had taken place in and around it, night was falling. On the horizon the sky-banner of a new emperor was aglow in every direction.
Once more I climbed the crystalline steps, huffing, I must confess, and puffing, all the way. No emperor waited at the top to hand me my cup of sweet wine. No loudspeakers boomed out my name as I ascended.
The peers of the Imperium clustered below me as the Nineteenth Emperor held the first procedural session of his reign.
I appointed Polarca and Julien de Gramont as my first two high lords. Polarca, of course. And Julien because a majority of the high lords would have to be Gaje, and he was my Gajo. The other one I would choose from that gaggle of masked monstrosities, as soon as I had had time to learn something about them.
When I was done with that, I issued some decrees having to do with the reconstruction of the Capital-we would do it in a somewhat less gaudy and grandiose way, but there was no need to say anything explicit about that just yet-and the reorganization of the imperial guard in the wake of the civil war. Then, in my capacity as Rom baro, I told Polarca to send word to the Rom star-pilots in every corner of the galaxy that the starships must start going forth again at once. How else would the joyful peoples of the Imperium be able to send their delegates to the Capital to celebrate the coronation of the glorious Nineteenth?
"All right," I said finally. "Enough of this. Help me down these goddamned stairs, you two."
Polarca blinked. "Did I hear you ask for help?"
"Crystalline steps are very goddamned slippery, Polarca. Do you want the Nineteenth to fall and break his ass right in front of the worshipful peers? Here. Take my arm. And you, Julien, you walk in front of me. If the Nineteenth does slip, at least his fall will be broken by the King of France. "
Of course I wasn't all that worried about slipping. But I thought it would reassure them, knowing that I was at least beginning to take a few sensible precautions in deference to my age. You have to humor people, sometimes, or they'll drive you crazy with oversolicitousness.
"Who'd have imagined it?" Polarca murmured, for something like the ten thousandth time that day. "The Nineteenth Emperor descends the throne-platform, and who is he? Who is he? Do you believe you are emperor, Yakoub? Would you have thought such a thing was possible, that the Gaje would come to the Rom baro, that they would lie down in front of him in their masks and robes, that they would hold out the wand to him, that they would say-"
"I knew it all along," I told him grandly. "I saw it in the lines of my palm."
"And me a high lord of the Imperium!" Polarca cried.
"And you knew that all along, too, didn't you? Didn't you, you Polarca?"
Chorian was waiting below. He had that boy with him, the one who had been in my bedroom when I awakened. I wondered who he was. Some young brother of Chorian's, perhaps? No, there wasn't any resemblance. This boy had nothing like Chorian's long legs and slim, rangy build. He was short, deep-chested, fair-skinned; he didn't quite look Rom at all.
"Majesty?" Chorian called. "To you I am Yakoub," I said. "But-but-"
"Yakoub." He nodded. "I have someone here I'd like you to meet." I looked at the boy. "A friend of yours? A relative?" "His name is also Yakoub."