Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
They knew right away who I was, of course. Not only by the face, the eyes, the mustachios. Before setting out from Mulano I had taken the trouble to don my seal of office, which I hadn't worn in maybe ten or fifteen years. Now great pulsing heroic splashes of light were cannoning off my brow in that flamboyant gaudy way which is at once so overwhelming and so absurd. It was like a broadcast going out on every wavelength of the spectrum at once, hammering in the news: KINGKING-KING-KING. I might just as well have come out of the relay-sweep wearing a crown of gold and emeralds and rubies half a meter high.
Two or three of the Immigration people were Rom. They were down on their knees in a flash, making the signs of respect and muttering my name. The Gaje ones did no such thing, naturally. But they were plainly taken aback, and they stood there gaping, goggling, twitching, and yawping.
I knew what they were thinking, too. They were thinking, This sly old bastard has turned up without warning, without bothering to trouble himself about using diplomatic channels at all. We can't send him away without touching off a terrific uprising among his followers, but we can't admit him without dragging Xamur into whatever enormous Rom power-struggle the old bastard's return is probably going to touch off, and no matter which way we go we are very likely to lose our jobs over this. Or thoughts to that effect.
I switched off my seal of office. It was blinding everybody in the holding tank. To the Rom who were groveling at my feet I said in Romany, "Get up, you idiots. I'm only your king, not God Almighty." To the others, those miserable terrified Gaje civil servants, I said in a more kindly way, "I'm not here on a visit of state or on any sort of political mission. I've come here purely as a private citizen who owns property on this world."
"But you are King Yakoub?" one of them stammered. "Certainly I am."
"I don't think we have a protocol on former kings," said one of the others nervously, and brought up something on a screen that was just out of my direct line of sight. "Officials to notify, appropriate municipal response, parades, light-spikes, sky-banners, display of regalia, pyrotechnic celebrations-no, there's nothing here that covers any such-" "I'm not a former king," I said quietly.
The Gaje officials looked at me in bewilderment and the Rom officials looked at me in horror.
One of the Rom said, "Sir, the covenant of abdication-"
"Don't worry yourself about it, child. Whatever stories about me that you may have heard coming out of Galgala were highly inaccurate." One of the Gaje -he seemed to be the highest ranking of the bunch made a frantic gesture and something else came sliding up on the screen. This time I moved around and got a squint at it. It was the table of reception protocol for a royal visit.
"You are still king, then?"
"When did I say that?"
They looked more baffled than ever.
But I wasn't ready to take up the issue of whether I was or was not still king just now. Especially not in a holding tank in front of a bunch of Immigration Department flunkeys. Let them puzzle over it, I thought. He denies being a former king-but he doesn't directly assert that he's the present king-but on the other hand-and furthermorenevertheless- con trariwise- Yes, let them stew.
"The question of the kingship is neither here nor there," I said airily. "I just told you: this is a private visit for me. I'm here to inspect my estates at Kamaviben and nothing more. I don't want there to be any fuss made over me." And gave them my most regal glare. "Is that understood?"
BUT I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER OF COURSE THERE was fuss, and plenty of it.
Bureaucrats! Accursed paper-shuffling functionaries! Pettifogging little tenth-echelon panjandrums! I'd sooner have the honest refreshing company of a herd of salizonga snails any day.
In general I am not the sort of person whom anyone is likely to call naive. Not at my age. But I would have to agree that I was being naive, and then some, to have entertained the fantasy that they might have just let me walk out of that holding tank without any sort of complication. There was no way that the King of the Gypsies whether incumbent or retired was going to enter Xamur or any other kingly world in secrecy and privacy, no matter how much blustering and storming he did. That I understood. But I did imagine that they would admit me with a minimum of pomp and circumstance, if that was what I seemed to want.
I was wrong.
Kings and even ex-kings may have vast power over this and that, but when it comes to matters of protocol the bureaucrats always get the last word. In this case I had the Rom immigration people to blame as much as the Gaje, or more so. The Rom saw their king-or their ex-king, whichever I was-coming to town unexpectedly and they felt it absolutely incumbent upon themselves to cry hallelujah over me so that I would be properly covered with the appropriate glory.
Therefore they passed the news of my arrival up to the highest levels of the Xamur imperial administration and inevitably from that point on there was no halting the avalanche-like force of the bureaucracy as it swung eagerly into full action. You can't expect governmental functionaries to carry out any sort of useful activities, naturally-the whole concept is practically a contradiction in terms-but give them something meaningless like an official welcome to organize and it's their finest hour. It was all that I could do to head off a full-scale parade along the shining ramparts of Ashen Devlesa. But I did have to go through an interminable reception at the capital, a grand pyrotechnikon that lit up the skies over four continents, a noisy and crashingly boring concert by the Xamur Symphony, and a banquet so ridiculously inept in its overelaboration that it would have sent Julien de Gramont off weeping to light a candle to the memory of Escoffier.
All of this was a nuisance but in one way it also served a worthwhile purpose for me. It served notice on Galgala and to the Empire at large that I had reappeared. But since I had declined to claim the full royal treatment, had turned down the usual parade and the awarding of the usual decorations, my appearance in Ashen Devlesa created more than a little ambiguity surrounding the matter of my intentions in coming back from retirement. Which was fine. Keep them all guessing: that's always a useful strategy. I didn't say a thing. I smiled a lot and waved a lot and looked sublimely radiant while the speeches were going on around me, and when it was all done with I thanked them politely and went on out to Kamaviben, to my grand estate far off in the countryside by the shores of the Sea of Pleasure.
(Actually Kamaviben isn't all that grand a grand estate, as grand estates go. The grounds are of decent size and the location is sublime, but the house itself, while of some architectural interest, wouldn't raise the pulse rate of a small-town magistrate. At no point in my life have I ever been a particularly wealthy man, you know. And perhaps there is just enough of the old wandering Rom spirit in me to make it superfluous for me to live in a really overwhelming place. I am just as content in an ice-bubble or a roamhome or a simple log shanty as I have ever been in the various palaces that I have occupied in my time. Yet I think Kamaviben is marvelously grand in its way, and I would never want to live in any dwelling more splendid. Or even in any other dwelling at all, unless it be on Romany Star.)
In the years of my absence they had maintained it for me in perfect shape, as though I might show up there unannounced on any given afternoon. The stables were swept, the lawns of quivergrass were impeccable, the double rows of blackleaf pseudo-palms down the main drive had been pruned only a week before. A staff of ten took care of Kamaviben for me, the most loyal and devoted robots on any world of the galaxy. They were sweet machines, my Kamaviben robots: they even spoke Romany. (With a Xamur accent, that faint little lisp.) Of course a Rom craftsman had made them for me, the Kalderash wizard Matti Costorari. I have known Rom that were less Rom than those robots.