Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
"Yes," I said. "To speak with the Sixteenth."
AS WE WERE MAKING READY TO SET OUT FROM A UREUS Highlands to the Galgala starport I heard the distant sound of explosions and saw white smoke on the eastern horizon. Julien told me that fighting persisted in the back country, that Shandor had holed himself up in an obscure pocket of the Chrysoberyl Hills and was standing off attack by the imperial forces.
Once long ago on Mulano-it seemed a million years-Julien had warned me that my continued abdication might lead to wars between worlds. "War is an outmoded notion," I had told him with splendid assurance. "It's an obsolete concept." And now there was a war going on right here under my nose on Galgala itself, our Rom capital. With the troops of the emperor laying siege to a son of the Rom king practically within sight of the royal house of power.
So war was not at all an obsolete concept. Nor had Periandros' soldiers gallantly allowed Shandor to escape, as I had so naively imagined. By cunning or stealth or treachery or sheer force he had won his way free of the house of power, yes, and they were pursuing him, they were besieging him. My son.
For a day, a day and a half, I thought about nothing but that: that warfare was taking place on Galgala, that Akrakikan soldiers were seeking to capture my son. Or to kill him.
I had to do something.
He would have overthrown me; but still he was my son. The firstborn. Once my pride, my joy, my miniature image of myself. A difficult boy, perhaps an unloving one, and a stranger to me for most of his life; and lately my enemy. Yet still my son. Blood was calling to blood. I had other sons, many of them in fact, and in one way and another, over the great span of time, they had all been lost to me, through distance, through their own needs to be apart, through ambitions that had taken them to the edges of the universe, through quarrels, through death. We are a family people, we Rom, we Gypsies, and how sad and painful it. was that the Rom baro, the biggest Gypsy of them all, should have come down into the winter of his years with no wife at hand, no sons. Here was Shandor my son practically within my reach. I would go to him. Perhaps there would be forgiveness at last. At least there would be no more killing.
Just when everything was in readiness and we were about to depart for the starport I sent suddenly for Julien and said, "First we must make a little detour, old friend."
"What do you mean?"
"To the Chrysoberyl Hills," I said. "To put an end to this fighting." "No," he said. "We must go to the Capital."
"First this." "No."
"No?" "Listen to me this once, Yakoub. Forget Shandor."
"How can I?' I said. And I told him all that had been passing through my soul.
Julien listened without saying a word. And stared at me with infinite tenderness and sorrow.
"That was what I had feared," he said at last, when I had run dry of speech. "That you would find love in your heart for him, that you would want to make your peace with him. I had hoped to hurry you off Galgala before you learned the truth, mon ami. But now you give me no choice but to tell you."
"Tell me what?"
He paused only a moment. "Shandor is dead." "Dead?" I said stupidly. "When? How?"
"Yesterday, or the day before yesterday. They used dream-light; they slipped into his camp under cover of illusion. Shandor was seized and brought before the imperial general." Julien stared toward the floor. "They will say that he was killed while attempting to resist, Yakoub. I am greatly sorry for your grief, mon vieux, mon cher."
"Dead?" The word refused to register.
"A strategic decision. I had nothing to do with it. You understand, do you not, I had nothing to do with it? He was thought to be too dangerous. An immense destabilizing force."
"He was a fool. He was incapable of destabilizing anything." "That is not how it seemed to the emperor, Yakoub."
"So Periandros himself gave the order to kill him?"
"Not so," said Julien. I think he was sincere. "It was not the Sixteenth himself, but the general of the Sixteenth, seeking to win the emperor's favor. Seeking too hard, I think. Believe me. I beg you, believe me, Yakoub."
"What is this?" I asked. "The thirteenth century? Not even then did they kill captured princes. Are we sliding back into barbarism, is that it, Julien?" I turned away from him, appalled by the power of my own feelings, stunned by the weight of the grief I felt. Shandor! Shandor! How I had despised him, that sorry son of mine! How he had shamed me! How often I had longed for his death, a hundred times over the years! And how I mourned him now! I was as shaken as I had been that terrible day on Mulano when Damiano had brought me the news that Shandor, against all custom and decency, had proclaimed himself king. Then, if I could have killed him with a snap of the fingers, I would have snapped my fingers; but now he was dead at some stranger's hands and a monstrous void had opened within me where he had been.
I swung around and caught Julien roughly by the shoulder, so hard that he tried to shrink back from my touch, and could not.
"Was there anyone who thought that it would please me to have Shandor lose his life? Was it Periandros' favor they were trying to win with this murder, or mine?"
"Well? Was it?"
Julien shook his head desperately. His eyes were wild; his hair tumbled into his face; all his careful elegance was gone. "No," he said hoarsely, after a time. "Je Ven prie, Yakoub! I beg you, believe me! I had nothing to do with this. Nothing! Nothing!" And I saw that he was speaking the truth. Letting him go, I turned from him and went to the balcony, and stood by myself looking toward the Chrysoberyl Hills.
All was quiet there now. No puffs of smoke, no sounds of warfare. It was over, then. I wondered how many other Rom had died with Shandor. Asking that of Julien, I thought, would be asking too much.
"Send word to the Sixteenth," I said, after a time, "that I will be delayed a little while in my journey to the Capital. We must hold the funeral first. And that will take some days."
"But the emperor-"
"Bugger the emperor! My son is dead, Julien. A king of the Rom is dead! There is the shroud to make. The white caravan to construct. You know the rites as well as I do. The music, the pilgrimage, the burial. The wine, the food. Where is the body of my son?"
"The Akrakikan-"
"Get it from them. And send me the officers of the court. We will do this in the proper way. And then, only then, will you and I make our journey to the Capital and present ourselves before the Sixteenth. Go. Go." I gestured furiously, impatiently. "Get out of here, Julien! Leave me alone!"
THE WORLD THAT IS KNOWN ONLY AS THE CAPITAL, THE world that is the hub of the galaxy, is to me a pallid and dreary place. Why the Gaje decided long ago to make it their New Earth, the seat of the government, I will never know, or care; you will have to ask of the Gaje if you would understand that choice. In a universe that holds a Galgala, a Nabomba Zom, a Xamur, why plant the center of your empire on a planet like that?
But of course Galgala and Xamur and Nabomba Zom were never theirs to choose. Those worlds are ours by right of discovery.
The Capital is not a terrible place. It is a smallish world, one of six that orbit a pale yellow-green sun, and it has a mild climate, rivers and streams, flowers and trees, air that you can breathe without adaptors, a general feel of comfort and placidity. But its oceans are shallow and its mountains are low and blunt and its birds are gray and brown. A drab world, a safe little world, a decent middle-of-the-road world. Perhaps that is why the Gaje like it so much. But they have not even managed to give it a real name.
Naturally they have built themselves an absurd fantastical imperial city out of marble and flame, a great gaudy enterprise, shining towers and broad boulevards and blazing lights, the usual crystal and emerald and alabaster everywhere. But what else would you expect from the Gaje: showiness, theatricality, preposterous overmagnificence. But in that case they should have built their capital on some planet other than the Capital. Just as the Idradin crater seems incongruous in its ugliness against the matchless beauties of Xamur, so too does the imperial city look wildly out of place on the Capital. It is like a colossal coruscating diamond that has been set in a diadem of cardboard.