Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
He seemed perfectly serious.
It sounded rehearsed. Programmed, even. I tried to make allowances for the normally plonking cadences of Akraki speech. They were all so earnest, all so mechanical, grinding relentlessly on and on in their cheerless way. Not a scrap of poetry to them, not a bit of human flair. It was just their style. Still, I doubted more and more that I was talking to a creature of flesh and blood, especially as Periandros went on speaking.
Because what he began to talk about now was how greatly he and I needed to cooperate with each other: how precarious our positions were, how useful we could be to each other in securing our own thrones and in restoring the health of the Imperium. I had heard all that before from him, of course. He went on to speak of the grand ceremony of reconfirmation that he would stage for me as soon as I aided him in clearing the rebels out of the palace: the wand of recognition, the nobility coming in from all the worlds to attend, a great unforgettable spectacle. He ran through the whole thing precisely as though we had not discussed this very project at the time of our earlier audience just a few days before. Now I was convinced that I had to be dealing with a doppelganger. A spook. Whoever or whatever it was that had given me that audience from the throne, it was clear that this one had not been properly briefed on the content of that other conversation.
I could see the unmistakable doppelganger manifestations, now. The loss of definition, the coarseness of identity-density. It was utterly clear to me now, even on the screen.
I didn't attempt to interrupt. I let the spiel flow on and on, while trying to calculate my strategic options. There was no sense allying myself with a doppelganger. I had already compromised myself enough, I figured, simply by recognizing Periandros in the first place. But that could be dealt with. He had been the only emperor in town, after all, when I arrived at the Capitaclass="underline" what was I supposed to do, refuse to accept him? But now-with Periandros almost certainly dead, and his claim being carried forth by one or more short-lived and basically absurd replicas of him, and a rival lord already esconced in the palace, receiving the homage of the peers. Yes, I thought, I will have to stall this doppelganger somehow, and come to an understanding with NariaOn screen, Periandros was still talking, laying out the terms of the grand alliance that he and I were going to forge. I was only barely listening.
Then the door of my bedroom opened and Chorian came bursting in. I signalled him furiously and he dropped down, out of scan range. Wriggling along the floor, he made his way toward me and scrawled a note that he pushed within my range of vision: Ignore that creature. Periandros is definitely dead and that is nothing but a doppelganger. And Lord Sunteil is here and wants to speak with you at once.
SUNTEIL? IN MY OWN PALACE?
I must have looked extraordinarily startled, because even the pontificating doppelganger Akraki on the screen picked up my reaction and said, "Are you all right?"
"A touch of indigestion-the lateness of the hour-I need to think your proposals over-to return your call later-"
"You will be unable to locate me."
"Call me, then. At the noon hour. All right?"
I switched the screen off and turned toward Chorian. "This is true? Sunteil is here?"
"In disguise, yes. He came five minutes ago. Said he would speak only with you."
"Bring him in," I said. "Fast."
An old man entered. Someone had done quite a job of disguise on him. He looked about two hundred twenty-five years old, and a rickety, spavined, hideously ancient two hundred twenty-five at that-a withered, shriveled, bowed figure, palsied and tottering, with a few coarse strands of white hair clinging to the bare dome of his head.
It was the complete shipwreck, the total terrifying cataclysm of time: a man at the end of his tether, down there where remakes are no longer possible. And it was utterly convincing. But it had to be phony. I hadn't seen Sunteil in eight or ten years, but it wasn't possible for him to have aged that much so quickly. He had been in the first prime of manhood when I knew him-sixty years old, maybe seventy at most.
The one thing that hadn't altered was his eyes. I could see them glowing with dark mischief behind that wrinkled terrible mask: Sunteil's own authentic eyes. His gleaming, wicked, devilish, unmistakable eyes.
"Well, Yakoub," he quavered, in a high, piping phony-senile voice. "So I am your elder at last!" He tottered forward and fastened one claw-like hand about my wrist. "Sarishan, brother!" he said, and delivered himself of a wild rasping laugh. "Sarishan! These are strange times, eh, Yakoub?"
I didn't like his greeting me in Romany. Or his calling me brother. Sunteil was not my brother.
"You look lovely, Sunteil. You must have had a hard night." "Isn't it magnificent? An instant reverse remake, a brilliant upaging." He was speaking in his normal voice now, strong and deep. "They charge more for an up-aging than for the usual thing, do you know? Even though you'd think there wouldn't be much demand. But it was worth it. No one bothers an old man. Even in crazy times like these."
"I'll remember that," I said. "Perhaps everyone will stop bothering me, too, when I look as old as you do."
"You? You'll never look like this. Tell me, Yakoub: have you ever had a remake? They say this is still your real face and body, that you have some secret for never growing old. Is that true? Tell me. Tell me." "Rom never grow old, Sunteil. We live forever."
"You must teach me the secret, then."
"Too late," I said. "You chose the wrong ancestors. There's no help for you. Born a GaJe, die a Gaje."
"You are a hard man."
"I am gentle and kind. It's the universe that's hard, Sunteil." I was finding all this banter wearying. Giving him a sharp look, I said, "This visit surprises me. I had heard you were in hiding somewhere outside the city. Why have you risked coming to see me tonight? What is it you want, Sunteil?"
"To negotiate," he said.
"You're a fugitive. I'm a king. Negotiation is best done between equals."' 51, "If you're a king, I'm an emperor, Yakoub.
"I am a king, yes, and no question of it", I said crisply. "The only other claimant for my throne is dead and my people recognize me as their sovereign. But Naria is emperor just now, if anyone is."
"Is he? Naria sits in the palace, yes. The drunken soldiers in the streets proclaim him, yes. But sitting in a palace and ordering up riots in your name doesn't make you the emperor of the galaxy. Do the other worlds of the Imperium give a damn what the soldiers are doing in the streets of the Capital? All they know is that the throne is in dispute. And Naria holds power illegitimately."
"He holds it, though. While you skulk around in disguise in the small hours of the night, entering and leaving through side doors."
"For the moment," Sunteil said. "Only for the moment. Naria can be pushed as easily as Periandros was."
"Are you planning another assassination?"
"Oh?" Sunteil said, smiling a sly Sunteil smile out of that parched and ravaged face. "Was Periandros assassinated? I thought he was stung by a wasp."
"A metal wasp that someone sent flying through his window." "Is that so? How very interesting, Yakoub." He let his glance rove for a moment toward Chorian, who shrank back as if wishing he could make himself invisible. "But if that was the case, I suspect that Naria will be on guard against any attempt to do something similar to him."
"Then how do you intend to get rid of him?" "You'll help me," Sunteil said.
I let the astounding effrontery of that complacent statement go sliding by me. It wasn't easy.