Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
"I don't know what you're talking about. Nothing has ever made me afraid and I'm not afraid of anything now."
"That sounds good." "It's the truth."
"Is it?"
"No," I said, after a moment, in a different voice. Something had snapped in me, all of a sudden. A strange feeling but a liberating one. Why keep secrets from Valerian? Open up, let the truth out. "It's a lie," I said.
It was. Of course it was.
I had feared many things great and small, just like anyone else, although I had always been able to conquer my fear. That had been just so much noise, when I tried to tell Valerian that I had never been afraid.
And also I was beginning to bring myself to acknowledge-after the first moment of anger, after the first sting of pride-that Valerian was right, that he wasn't deceiving himself when he felt that he saw fear in me. For I did fear one thing above everything else, and I feared it terribly. Not death. Not Shandor. Not sitting here being a prisoner. Not even civil war among the Rom. It was something I feared so much I had never been able to speak of it to another person. Or even to confront it squarely myself. It was something I had kept locked for years in the deepest oubliette of my soul.
Valerian said, "Will you tell me what you're afraid of, Yakoub?" I hesitated. This was very hard for me.
"I've never told this to anyone."
"Tell it to me. What is it that you fear?" "Why should I tell you, Valerian?"
"So that perhaps I can help you stop fearing whatever it is that you fear."
"No one can do that." "Perhaps I can. Tell me."
He hovered very close to me. The hum and crackle of his ghost-aura thundered in my ears.
Uncertainly I said, "I fear-I fear-" "Go on, Yakoub."
I was soaked with sweat. There was a hand at my throat, choking back my voice.
Suddenly I felt the words escaping from me in a hoarse ragged blurt. "What I fear, Valerian, is that Romany Star is a lie."
"What?" "That the whole story is just a myth," I said. It amazed me to hear the dread words coming out. But somehow it calmed me to be saying these things. I was speaking more evenly and freely now. "That the red star we pray to doesn't have a damned thing to do with us. That we never came from any such place, that the swelling of the sun never happened, that if we ever do go there we'll find that it's just one more uninhabited planet."
Valerian was silent a while, thinking, frowning. "That's the thing that you fear, is it?"
I nodded. I felt easier, having it out at last. "Why?" he asked.
"Because I've aimed myself toward Romany Star for my entire life. Because all this lunatic scheming of mine has been devoted to one thing and only one thing, which is to bring us back to the Homeworld, to restore us to the place where we belong, the one place where we aren't intruders and outsiders and aliens. I've thrown myself headlong toward Romany Star, do you understand? I live only for the day when I set foot on that place, do you realize that, Valerian? And if it isn't there? And if some day I find out that it's all nonsense, that we really started from Earth just as the Gaje did, that all we really are is funny-looking Gaje who speak a funny old language, that Romany Star is nothing but somebody's poetic fantasy-"
"No. That isn't how it is," Valerian said. He sounded confident. I paused, sweating, astounded. "No?"
"The whole story is true, everything that's in the Swatura. Believe me. The life we had there, the great cities, the omens, the swelling of the sun. The sixteen ships that went off into the Great Dark and brought us to Earth."
It was a different Valerian who was speaking now, no swaggerer, no blusterer. Quiet, serious, intense. I scarcely recognized the man. "How can you possibly know that?"
"Because I've been there," he said. "I've seen the burned hills. I've seen the melted valleys. I've held the ashes of Romany Star in my hands, Yakoub."
I stared at him, not believing a word. He was only trying to tell me what he knew I desperately needed to hear.
"You couldn't have done that."
"Why not? It's a place, isn't it? I have a starship, don't I? What could stop me from going to take a look?"
"But it's forbidden!" I yelled. "It's absolute sacrilege for anyone to set foot on Romany Star until after the third swelling, until we get the call, until-"
"Yakoub," he said. "Don't be naive. It doesn't sound right, coming from you."
He said it gently, almost tenderly. He was smiling. There was something a little shamefaced about that smile, and also something a little patronizing.
I realized that I was trembling uncontrollably.
"You're serious? You actually and literally went there?"
Softly Valerian said, "When did I ever give a shit about the rules, Yakoub?"
HE WAS GONE BEFORE I REALIZED WHAT WAS HAPPENING. I thought he had just faded from visibility for a moment, but no, he was really gone. Leaving me alone with my astonishment.
Typhoons were roaring through my soul. Hurricanes, tidal waves, earthquakes. I was hanging on to my sanity by my fingertips.
I had told him the one thing I had struggled to keep from everyone, even myself, since the day the poisonous filthy idea first had crawled into my mind. The unthinkable thing, the truly unthinkable thing: today I had not only thought it but I had spoken it. But that wasn't all.
What he had told me-his own little secret, that he had given me by way of exchange I was stunned. A voyage to Romany Star? Landfall on the holy of holies, the forbidden planet, violating the sacred Motherworld? Before we had received the call to return? Amazing. Incredible. Only Valerian could have done something like that. How I despised him for it! And how I envied him! Such casual blasphemy, such lighthearted trespassing against the holiest of Rom beliefs? Against the Law itself. "It's a place, isn't it? I have a starship, don't I?" And then casually to tell me about it? The king? I could have him up before the kris for that. Even now, here in my prison, one word from me and he would be cut off forever from his own kind. They would crucify him. They would slaughter him.
Of course I wouldn't call down the kris on him. He knew that or he would never have said a word. No matter what his indiscretions, I had always protected him, somehow. He was like a part of me, shameless and wanton and uncontrollable but part of me all the same. You don't go mutilating your own arm simply because it reaches out and pinches the empress' ass while your attention is directed elsewhere.
But still Romany Star? Romany Star!
"I've seen the burned hills," he had said. "I've seen the melted valleys. I've held the ashes of Romany Star in my hands, Yakoub." I was sick with envy and longing, with anger and joy. I was furious with him for not having asked me to go along, whenever it was that he made that blasphemous expedition. I would have refused to go, of course-in fact I would have threatened him with life imprisonment if he had tried to go through with the voyage, and by God and all His demons I would have made good my threat, too. But I wished he had asked me. I wished I had been there. To see with my own eyes that it was all real, to sift those ashes through my own fingers. I could taste it like bile in my throat, my yearning to have gone with him. No wonder I protect Valerian. I am as wanton as he is. Worse. I pretend that I will uphold the laws. And the Law. He does as he pleases and makes no pretenses. Which is the more moral man, the pirate or the hypocrite? Romany Star.
I thought my breast would burst with the amazement and excitement within it. I thought my head would spin loose from my shoulders. I wanted to weep. To dance. To sing.
I've seen the burned hills. I've seen the melted valleys.
A soaring craziness enveloped me and I went spontaneously ghosting off, flinging myself into the darkness like a skittering meteor tumbling freely through the cosmos. I went here and there and there and here, back and forth and forth and back, Xamur, Megalo Kastro, Nabomba Zom, Vietoris, even the Capital. Nothing would come into clear focus. Nothing would hold still. I was floating free, unmoored from time and space, blowing in a gale that had come rushing up wildly out of my own soul.