Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
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 helclass="underline" 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.