Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
THIS TIME HE OUTDID HIMSELF WITH THE BANQUET I could not begin to list all the delicacies and the worlds from which they came, or the rare wines, or the sensations that they aroused in me. Wherever Julien goes, he fills the surrounding dimensions with enough stored delights to dazzle a dozen gourmets, and this night he decanted them all for me. If I could have been persuaded by food alone, Periandros would have had my allegiance without a qualm.
But first I had to think, yes. And there was so much to think about. The death of the old Fifteenth, for one. Any man's death diminishes me, et cetera. But this one hit me especially hard. My colleague. My contemporary, more or less. A huge chunk of the past carved away. I had worked long and well with the Fifteenth. A comforting familiar presence, my counterpart, my opposite royal self And now gone.
In effect he'd been dead for years, of course, ever since he had begun his long slow decline into indifference and incoherence. Sunteil had been the real emperor for the last few of those years, I knew. (A lot of good that had done Sunteil, when the actual moment of succession was at hand. Obviously that wily man had made some fatal slip in his planning.) But being dead in effect is one thing and being literally dead is altogether another. Now that the loss was final I felt it suddenly and sharply.
A man of Ensalada Verde, he was. That gives you a measure of his quality right there: that he came from a nowhere world like that and still was able to climb right to the summit of the Imperium. All the other emperors have been men of the great metropolitan Gaje planets - Olympus, Copperfield, Malebolge, Ragnarok, teeming places with plenty of political clout-except for the Sixth and Ninth, who weren't men at all. But even those two, the two empresses regnant, came from major worlds. And then there was the Fifteenth, from his little unspoiled backwater planet that had maybe a billion people at most. He had actually been born a shepherd. But didn't stay a shepherd for long. Not him.
Flashes of the distant past ghost me. Myself arriving at the Capital, the hub of the galaxy, that world that has no real name and needs none. I am the newly elected king. He has been emperor six, seven, ten years. Enough time to get used to the grandeur and the silliness of it all. There are the crystalline steps, stretching up and up and up to the throneplatform. There sits the Fifteenth with his high lords beside him.
Fanfare of trumpets. The sound is sky-splitting: I expect suitcases and melons and odd pieces of furniture to come tumbling out of nearby storage dimensions. Up the steps, slowly, solemnly. Resisting the urge to take them two at a time. I have to be serious now. I am a man of mature years. (Ancient, in fact, by the standards of the olden days.) I am a king. An emperor waits for me to confirm me in my office with the touch of his wand. Another blast of trumpets. Drums, too, and maybe fifes.
"Yakoub Nirano Rom, Rom baro, Rex Romaniorum!" comes the cry from a million loudspeakers floating in a glittering cloud around the throne.
Up, up, up. The emperor sits waiting. He looks very calm. Wand of office resting lightly in his hand, like a fly-switch. About him, the three high lords preen and pose, looking terribly important. (These were the old high lords, left over from the reign of the Fourteenth, all of them now long dead. How they must have hated it when a shepherd from Ensalada Verde was jumped up over their heads onto the throne!)
Now the emperor rises to greet me. Not a tall man, not physically impressive in any way. He doesn't need to be. His mind is extraordinary: phenomenal breadth, phenomenal depth. Astonishing grasp of detail and pattern both. Some people are good at detail, some are good at pattern; only a few are masters of both. I have reason to think I am one. You know that. The Fifteenth was another. Nothing escaped his attention. When he spoke with you of starship routes he knew not only the reasons why the great routes were laid out as they were but also the name of every port of call along the way. And probably could quote population figures, too. A remarkable man.
Handing his wand of office to the lord on his left, now. Taking from the lord on his right the cup of sweet wine that by tradition the emperor always offers the king when the king comes visiting. Formally allowing me my sip. Then the touch of the wand to my shoulders, nice medieval moment.
"Yakoub Nirano Rom," he says. "Rom baro. Rex Romaniorum." I have been king under Rom law since the moment the nine members of the great kris made the sign of kingship at me. But now the GaJe have accepted me also. Only a formality; but in these matters we live by formalities.
And the emperor, having formally confirmed me as king, looks at me and smiles and winks.
A wonderful moment. A wonderful gesture, that wink. Telling me a thousand things in one quick twitch of his eye. We understand this throne business, you and I, is what that wink has said. Yes. We know what a joke it is. Yes. We also know how terribly serious it is. Yes. Yes. You are big and dark, I am small and fair. You are Rom and I am Gaje. And yet we are brothers, you and I. Brothers of the crown. Yes. We are closer to one another than I am to these peacock lords beside me. And than you are to anyone of your grand kumpania. Yes. Yes. Yes. From then on we were locked together, the Fifteenth and I, in the joint endeavor that is the governance of the worlds. It would be our shared task to keep the sky from falling: a great burden and a great joy. All that was contained in that one wink, and much more.
And so it was, for the Fifteenth and me, during the great years of our reigns. Many was the time I called upon him at the Capital and took the sweet wine from his hands, and we talked all the night through of the movements of the stars in their courses and the myriad worlds, and we made great decisions and reshaped great destinies. And at the times when custom demanded he came to me at Galgala-and even once when I was in residence at Xamur-and I threw wondrous patshivs for him, feasts of such glory that they came close to rivaling that ill-starred banquet given by Loiza la Vakako long ago on Nabomba Zom. But there were no Pulika Boshengros to spoil our feasts. In the fifty years of our collaboration we worked together serenely and effectively, the Fifteenth and I. Until he began to slip into weariness and senility, and I to put my preoccupation with Romany Star before all else. (For which I make no apologies!) It was many years since I had seen him, now. Since my departure for Mulano I had scarcely so much as thought of him. And now he was gone, and I realized that insofar as it is possible for a Rom to love a Gaje I had loved the Fifteenth Emperor. I set that down here, now, for all to know.
And one thing more. In the twentieth year of my reign I discovered a surprising thing when I was going through some documents of the reign of my predecessor Cesaro o Nano. Which was that it was the Fifteenth himself who had put into his mind the notion of naming me to follow him as king. How very strange that was, that the GaJe emperor should make such a suggestion, and how very much stranger that the Rom king should follow it. The Fifteenth had often told me how he had held me in high regard long before I became king; and now I had proof of it.