Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
"I could have it ghosting-proofed. Would you like it so much then?" "A threat, is that? You want my blessing under duress?"
"I ask for your blessing. I don't demand it. Your being a prisoner here is an embarrassment to me."
"Yes. I know. That's why I'm here."
"So long as you continue to claim the throne you damage our entire nation."
"I could say the same, Shandor."
"There was a vacancy in the government. That is no longer the case. By your obstinacy you foment dissension, you cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Rom government, you undermine the stability of the entire-"
"Of course I do. You don't need to tell me that." "You are a malicious old man."
"No. You are." I laughed. "Go away, Shandor. Let me have a little peace."
"If I go away, you'll rot down here until the end of time!" "You would do that to your own father?"
"Are you my father?"
"And you would shame the memory of your mother too, I see. You really are a worthless shit, do you know that? I curse the little tickle of pleasure that brought you into the universe. I curse the joy I felt between Esmeralda's thighs." I said these things calmly, even sweetly. "I won't make you king, Shandor, no matter how much you bluster and rant. You don't frighten me by threatening to keep me in this pretty hotel of yours, either. And-incidentally-there isn't any way that you can make this place ghosting-proof. Don't you realize that? If I can breathe, I can ghost. Wherever I am. Whenever." I closed my eyes and ghosted right then and there, in front of him. Back to Xamur, something like a century ago. To see my loving young wife, to see my lovely firstborn babe. Shandor was smoldering when I returned, a fraction of an instant later. "Your mother was a splendid woman, Shandor. I just paid her a visit. To tell her how much I loved her. And to let her know what a wonderful person her eldest son turned out to be. Why don't you go visit her too? I know she'd love to see you."
"You're going to molder down here forever, old man!" said Shandor venomously.
SHANDOR WAS NEVER ONE FOR KEEPING HIS PROMISES Something like a week later his robots came for me and transferred me without warning to a much fancier cell on a higher level of the building. Still no windows, but also no rats, no giant protozoa, no slime mold. No snakes. I missed the snakes, a little. They had some elegance and they did me no harm. The new cell was warmer and drier and I had a bigger couch. The floor was a solid slab of gold. There have been periods in history when you would have been proud to be imprisoned in a cell where the floor was a slab of gold, I guess. Well, it was okay. But I never could forget that this was Galgala where gold isn't much more valuable than cardboard, and that I might have a golden floor in my prison cell but even so it was still a prison cell. I went about barefoot on it, mostly. It was soft and almost yielding under my toes, the way gold can be. I started scratching lines in it to keep track of the time. Ordinarily, as you know, I don't give a damn about keeping track of the time and I will blithely jumble up whole decades of chronology without seeing any big problem about that. But here in confinement I was starting to wonder about just how much time might be going by. Considerable, as it turned out.
So much for Shandor's pledge to let me rot in that dank oubliette forever, at any rate. I wasn't foolish enough to think that he had relented. The Shandors of this universe don't know what that word means. No, he had probably just changed his mind about the efficacy of letting me rot. Maybe he had decided that I was so old and mean that I had become permanently rot-resilient, like that rare yellow timber from Gran Chingada that can spend five hundred years submerged in a mungar-thangar swamp without being changed in any way. Or maybe he figured it would be bad politics for the Kingdom to find out that he was keeping his aged father stashed in a den of snakes and rats. I don't know. It could be that he had come up with some entirely new strategy that made it look advantageous to put me in a more comfortable cell. I didn't see what that strategy might be, but I didn't mind. Polarca came ghosting in and said, "Well? You like this one any better?"
"You never saw the last one," I said.
"Sure I did. I came three times. You were asleep every time. Like a baby, snoozing away. You didn't even mind that there was some kind of a rat sitting on your chest. "
"You could have said hello."
"You looked so peaceful," Polarca said.
"Oh, you bastard. What's happening out there?" "When?"
"Right now?"
"How would I know? I'm not coming from right now." "When are you coming from, then?"
"You know I can't tell you that."
I could have throttled him. "The Kingdom is in jeopardy, whole worlds are tottering, your oldest and dearest friend is sitting helpless in a dungeon, and you decide to be a stickler for the rules?"
"These are important rules, Yakoub. You know that. Do I really need to be telling you this stuff? Once you start abusing ghosting to slip information back in time, the whole universe falls apart."
"It's falling apart anyway. But you can help me." "No. I don't think I can."
"Then why bother coming here? Just to torment me?"
"I like to see your sparkling eyes. You look so sexy when you're annoyed."
"I'll give you sexy, you infuriating hyena!"
"Ah. Ah. Temper, Yakoub! Your blood pressure!"
"You will drive me crazy. Do I deserve this? A son like Shandor and a friend like you?"
"But I am your friend. You don't know how good I am to you. And I don't want you to think I'm not helpful." His ghost-mantle flickered through some fancy electromagnetic changes, the ghost-equivalent of a long-suffering sigh. "All right. Listen to me, Yakoub. Your appeal rends my heart. It's against all the rules but I'm going to let you know the future anyway." He drifted up close to my ear and cocked his head and dropped his voice to a confidential, insinuating level. "It's all going to be okay," he whispered.
"What is?"
"It. The fundamental curve of our racial destiny. The Kingdom, the Empire, Romany Star. There. Never say your old friend Polarca isn't helpful. You can thank me now."
"This is what you call being helpful?" "This is what you call being grateful?" "Grateful for what?"
"Look at you, scowling at me. I told you what you wanted to know, didn't I? Don't you find that comforting to know? Aren't you relieved? What an ungrateful son of a bitch you are."
I scowled even harder at him. "So what good is your big revelation? It isn't the vague ultimate that worries me. It's what happens now. Am I going to live? Am I going to die? Am I ever going to get out of this damned hole? Give me details, will you? I want to know what's on the docket right now, what will happen next, not what's going to happen in a thousand years."
"You want me to commit sins?" "A sin to help your king?"
"You should be ashamed. Manipulating me like this. And such disgusting laziness. All your life you've figured out things for yourself. Now you want me to hand you a blueprint?"
"All I want is a little hard data." "This is absolutely shocking." "You stubborn pig, Polarca." "Me stubborn? Me?"
"A hint," I begged. "A clue. Or else stop coming around to annoy me. I'd rather not see you at all than have you tease me like this." "Seriously?"
"Seriously." "All right," he said. "I take pity on you. I violate all the ethics of ghosting. I tell you things that you yourself wouldn't tell yourself where's your ghost, Yakoub, why isn't he here giving you little hints? I tip you off on the shape of things to come."
"Go on."
"The clue will be right on the plate in front of you." "Right on the plate?"
"Don't say I never give hints."
"What hint? What does that mean, right on the plate?"
He shook his head sadly. "You're supposed to be the smart one, I thought. You're supposed to be the keen far-seeing intelligence. So I give you the hint that you want and you don't even try to figure it out for yourselP You just sit there angling for another one? Oh, no. Yakoub, I gave you your hint. Don't ask me for any more."