Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
EVEN DURING THAT ENDLESS TIME WHEN ALL THAT I WAS doing was sitting there in my cell, idly rubbing my bare feet against the golden floor, I had a sense of doing great battle.
I could feel myself waging war. A conscious, merciless war against the shameless seed of my loins that had tried to usurp my place. By my mere existence here as his prisoner I was destroying him. I knew that beyond any doubt. Now and again I would send my soul out roving, upward through this building in which I was kept, and I would touch the tormented soul of Shandor, writhing and sizzling somewhere above me. He didn't know what to do with me and it was killing him. He couldn't set me free. He didn't dare murder me. And he couldn't keep me locked away here indefinitely, not without having the wrath of the worlds come down on his head.
I sent my soul out farther, deep into the night. The darkness was on fire. I saw the stars of mankind. I saw the many worlds we had seized for our own. And there-there-in the forehead of the sky I saw Romany Star there, high overhead, pulsing and blazing. How it pulled me! I felt titanic forces focusing on me and playing through me. Drawing me upward.
All these stars-all these worlds!
And yet for us there is only one world. One road.
SYLUISE CAME VISITING NOT HER GHOST SYLUISE HERSELF, the first real flesh-and-blood human being that I had seen since the beginning of my imprisonment. Unless you want to count Shandor as a human being. I suppose you have to.
There was no ghost-aura around her, but all the same she didn't seem real to me. Syluise seldom does. But even less so than usual, this time. I thought that this must be some doppelganger of her paying a call on me. Or something worse, some trick of Shandor's, a cunning projection of some kind, a clever new process.
Real or unreal, though, the power of her beauty went to work on me right away. As always. The old attraction. Her fragrance, her eyes, her skin, her lips, her everything. Making me weak in the knees, dry in the throat. That Gaje flawlessness of hers, that golden shimmer.
(It was never easy for me to understand the appeal Syluise had for me. Of course she's very beautiful, but in a Gaje way, and I have never cared much for GaJe women. That's Shandor's specialty. I like mine dark and juicy, in the true Rom fashion. Oh, yes, there was Mona Elena, long ago, my one fling in that direction, that queen of odalisques, that superb professional. But she was in the nature of an experiment. How could I properly appreciate the virtues of Rom women if I hadn't ever dallied with one of the other kind? And Mona Elena looked a little Rom. More than a little. Certainly much more than Syluise. Dark, voluptuous, with shining eyes, and even the necklace of ancient gold coins on her breast-a necklace which, by the way, I still have, because of the rapidity with which Mona Elena left my quarters on our last night together. That time when the bodyguard of the emperor came looking for her, the lusty Fourteenth.)
I stared at Syluise and remembered all the times she had gone to work on me in the past. I remembered what it felt like: the lump in my throat, the throbbing between my legs, the sweating, the yearning. One wink from her now and it would all start again.
But then I noticed something strange, which was that I was still more or less in control of myself. This time I didn't think she'd be able to turn me into a quivering puppy with one sizzling glance. No. It wasn't fully taking, her almost hypnotic command of me. Within the core of my excitement I could detect a treacherous little node of something very much like indifference to her. Which confirmed my notion that she wasn't real, that all I was looking at was some kind of electronic phantasm.
"Well?" I said. Coolly. Brusquely. Staring at her as if she was a fish in an aquarium, something peculiar and unexpected hanging suspended in a tank before my eyes, bobbing slowly up and down, to and fro. "What are you and what do you want?"
She began to frown. It was like the dimming of a sun. She must have sensed that something was wrong.
"You don't sound glad to see me," she said accusingly. "Am I seeing you?"
"What kind of question is that? Are you seeing me! Don't you know? And asking me what I am. What I am? What is that supposed to mean?"
"Well, who are you, then." "Yakoub! I'm Syluise." "You are?"
"Don't you recognize me any more? Are you all right, Yakoub? What has he done to you?"
"You're actually Syluise? You came all the way here?"
"To Galgala, yes. Is that such a big deal, getting from Xamur to Galgala?"
"And he let you in?"
"Of course he let me in. What are you trying to say?"
"I don't believe it's really you. That you're really standing right in front of me in this cell right this minute."
She was all in gold. Her Galgala costume, a shining golden robe, very sheer, maddening hints of pinkness glowing through. A band of gold through her golden hair. Her eyelids were painted with gold. So were her lips. She looked magnificent. Like the funeral statue of some slender Egyptian queen.
"What do you think I am, then?" she asked. Her voice was unusually gentle. There is always an edge on Syluise's voice, a soft edge but an edge all the same, the kind of edge there would be on a dagger made of the purest gold. "You think I'm a ghost? A doppelganger? Here. Here, touch me." She took my hand and put it on her bare arm. You can't touch ghosts. Your hand goes right through them. Mine didn't now. How fine her skin was. There are silks and satins that are rougher. Smooth and fine, yes, but I thought it would burn my fingers. Ah, here it comes now. She's starting to work on me and I am lost. Can I fight her off? Damn her, I didn't want her manipulating me again! But she was giving it the all-out try. She brought my hand up to her bosom. Her breasts were swaying like bells beneath her robe. When I touched her nipples they hardened. I began to tremble like a schoolboy. I thought of how it had been between Syluise and me on Xamur not long before in those nights of laughter and joy. But even so, something still seemed different. I would be lying if I said that the feel of her flesh had not excited me, but somehow I was able to withstand that excitement. For the time being, at least. "Is that what doppelgangers feel like?" she asked.
"The best ones do."
"I never felt any that were this good." She ran her hands lovingly along her own forearms and laughed. Golden laughter. How she loved herself. "Oh, Yakoub, how much longer are you going to let yourself stay in this place?"
"You'll have to ask Shandor."
"I did. He says you can go any time you want." "He told you that?"
"You just have to agree to stop being an obstacle to him."
"The only way I could stop being an obstacle to him would be to take a one-way ride into the nearest sun."
"No, Yakoub." She was standing very close to me. Too close. "You don't understand. You think of Shandor as some kind of beast. How can you feel that way about your own son? Don't you have any love for him?"