Star of Gypsies

6. A Candle Is All Flame From Tip To Tip

Sit on the bank of a river and wait. Sooner or later the corpse of your enemy will come floating by.

YOU UNDERSTAND THAT DUNGEON LIFE WASN'T ALL SIMPLY a lot of merry ghosting around. You can ghost only so much, and then you start getting sick of it. Up and out, far and away, enough and too much: the ectoplasmic life has its joys but eventually they can pall on you.

Of course, life in a dungeon palls too, and faster. But it's less strenuous. Ghosting takes a lot out of you at any age. (I think it took more out of me when I was twenty than it does a hundred fifty-odd years later.) So the trick is to hold a balance between the boredom of not ghosting at all and the exhaustion of doing too much of it. That's the trick in every aspect of life. You commit this excess and then you commit that excess and everything averages out in the middle, if you're lucky. If you survive long enough you can say that you've led a nice moderate life. The theory of countervailing excesses. In the long run all forces come into balance and all extremes cancel out. This is known as the process of regression to the mean. It makes for a very happy life, in the long run. Of course, in the short run you can go out of your fucking mind.

Nothing as drastic as that happened to me in Shandor's oubliette. I ghosted here, I ghosted there, and in the intervals between ghosting I counted the flagstones in the floor, I counted the stones making up the walls, I calculated the quantity of gold that must be scattered atom by atom through the floors and the walls, I played with my snakes, I told stories to my slime mold, I tried to catch my protozoa by their whirling tails, and when the rats came out to dance I made speeches to them in several languages and dialects.

All in all it was much like taking a very long relay-sweep journey, but somewhat more interesting, because on a relay-sweep journey you don't get snakes and slime molds and protozoa and rats to divert you from the colossal boredom of the journey. Or anything else. On the other hand, you are on a journey, and you will eventually get somewhere. One thing that was beginning to occur to me as the hours turned into days and the days tied themselves into skeins of indeterminable length was that I might not get anywhere at all down here. This was an oubliette, after all. And what is the traditional use of an oubliette? Why, to file away and forget an inconvenient prisoner. Forever, if necessary.

My intuition had said that it would be a useful move, politically speaking, to allow Shandor to incarcerate me. Ordinary people wouldn't think so. They would say that it's lunacy to hand yourself over to a monstrous wicked villain like Shandor. Well, of course it is. Any simpleton can see that. But I'm not a simpleton and I'm not ordinary people, and I perceive life as a chess game. The good player learns to look five or six moves ahead. Which is what I had done. And thereby had landed myself in this dismal oubliette, precisely as I expected. Now I was starting to think that I might just have outsmarted myself.

Fortunately, I'm not given to long spells of brooding and despair. Instead I gave myself long spells of counting flagstones and making speeches to rats. And ghosting hither and yon on any number of worlds in all accessible eras. It passed the time.

And one day Shandor paid me a visit.

There was the usual clanking and creaking outside that told me that one of the robot jailers was bringing me the evening tray of mush and weak tea. Then I heard some unusual clanking and creaking and the front section of the wall began to slide back. Shandor stood there, glowering in at me. He was wearing a preposterous red robe and a yellow scarf, and he had the seal of office mounted on his breast, going full blast all up and down the spectrum.

"You're too early for dinner," I said. "But sit down anyway and make yourself at home. Would you like some champagne?"

He didn't smile. He looked tense and mean, even more so than he generally did. Pulling himself up tall in what he must have hoped was a kingly way, he stalked around the cell like a conqueror.

The seal of office was blindingly bright in the dimness of the cell. "Do you mind turning that thing off?" I asked. "You're scaring the snakes. You aren't entitled to be wearing it anyway, you know."

"Don't start in with me, Yakoub."

"Who started with whom? I was sitting down here minding my own business when you barged in. Scattering all that goddamned noisy light around. I have a right to peace and quiet in my own cell."

Sourly he said, "You're really a madman." "I don't think so."

"Why are you making this much trouble for me?"

"Me? Trouble?"

"And for the entire Rom nation."

I sat up, all attention. "What's this? Strange words out of Shandor's mouth! You express concern for the welfare of the Rom nation, my son? You?"

"You are determined to make me angry, aren't you?" I AM IT'

"This time you're not going to succeed. I've come to offer you a deal, father. "

"Father. When did I last hear that word from you?"

"I will not let you goad me." He sat down on the stone bench facing me, close enough so I could grab him and slap him around again if I felt like it. Slapping him had driven him berserk, that other time. He seemed to be daring me. For a long while he stared at me as though trying to read my mind. Finally he said, "You abandoned the Kingdom. Everyone agrees on that. You announced your abdication and you disappeared, leaving us all in the lurch. For five years there was no king. The whole Rom nation cried out for a new king. Even the Empire called for one. You should have heard Sunteil bitching and moaning. The emperor's a zombie, he said, and the Rom don't have a king either. The whole governmental structure is going to disappear down the power vacuum. What's wrong with you people, Sunteil said. Why don't you elect a new king? So finally we did."

"The election was invalid," I said mildly.

His eyes flashed fire, but he kept himself under tight control. ("Why?"

"Because the krisatora never ratified my abdication. A Rom king can't abdicate. There's no tradition of abdication."

"I tell you they did ratify. I was there when they did it." "The day they elected you?"

"Yes," he said.

"You're the son of a king. A king's son can't be king."

"Just because it's never happened before doesn't mean it can't ever be done. "

"A convicted criminal has never been elected king either."

A muscle leaped in Shandor's cheek. But still he held himself still. He was doing very well, was Shandor.

"A criminal, father?"

"The Diebel Abdullah business."

"The first trial was a farce. There was perjury from top to bottom.

Afterward I was able to show that I did everything possible to save my passengers and at the second trial I was given a full exoneration." "None of your passengers testified at either trial."

"That isn't true."

"None of the ones that got eaten for dinner, boy." "Don't call me boy! I am your king!"

"Not mine, Shandor." "The second verdict-"

"Was every bit as legitimate as the session of the great kris that elected you King of the Rom."

"I am king, father. Whether you like it or not. The krisatora have chosen me and the grand kumpania of Rom on all the worlds have accepted me. And I have been to the Capital and the emperor himself has given me the wand of recognition."

"Has he, now?"

"With his own hands. Sunteil and Naria and Periandros right alongside him. And here I live in the king's house of power and my decrees are obeyed throughout the worlds. Face reality, old man. Your abdication really is binding. And you really can't revoke it now."

"You said you came here to offer me a deal," I reminded him. "Yes."

"Go ahead. What's the quid and what's the pro quo?"

"I want you to give me your blessing. I want you to make a public avowal of me as King of the Rom and to withdraw all claims of your own to the throne. Also, they tell me you took the scepter with you when you left here. That scepter belongs to me."

"Ah. That's what you want, is it? My blessing and my scepter." "In return," he said, "I'll let you out of here. I'll allow you to go back to Xamur, to your estate, to Kamaviben, and live out your days in wealth and luxury."

"My freedom is my own property, given to me by God, which no man can take away. You'll give me something that isn't even yours, if I agree to support your claim to something else that isn't yours? What kind of deal is that?"

"It's a deal that will get you out of this dungeon, father." "I like this dungeon."

"I could have it ghosting-proofed. Would you like it so much then?" "A threat, is that? You want my blessing under duress?"

"I ask for your blessing. I don't demand it. Your being a prisoner here is an embarrassment to me."

"Yes. I know. That's why I'm here."

"So long as you continue to claim the throne you damage our entire nation."

"I could say the same, Shandor."

"There was a vacancy in the government. That is no longer the case. By your obstinacy you foment dissension, you cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Rom government, you undermine the stability of the entire-"

"Of course I do. You don't need to tell me that." "You are a malicious old man."

"No. You are." I laughed. "Go away, Shandor. Let me have a little peace."

"If I go away, you'll rot down here until the end of time!" "You would do that to your own father?"

"Are you my father?"

"And you would shame the memory of your mother too, I see. You really are a worthless shit, do you know that? I curse the little tickle of pleasure that brought you into the universe. I curse the joy I felt between Esmeralda's thighs." I said these things calmly, even sweetly. "I won't make you king, Shandor, no matter how much you bluster and rant. You don't frighten me by threatening to keep me in this pretty hotel of yours, either. And-incidentally-there isn't any way that you can make this place ghosting-proof. Don't you realize that? If I can breathe, I can ghost. Wherever I am. Whenever." I closed my eyes and ghosted right then and there, in front of him. Back to Xamur, something like a century ago. To see my loving young wife, to see my lovely firstborn babe. Shandor was smoldering when I returned, a fraction of an instant later. "Your mother was a splendid woman, Shandor. I just paid her a visit. To tell her how much I loved her. And to let her know what a wonderful person her eldest son turned out to be. Why don't you go visit her too? I know she'd love to see you."

"You're going to molder down here forever, old man!" said Shandor venomously.

SHANDOR WAS NEVER ONE FOR KEEPING HIS PROMISES Something like a week later his robots came for me and transferred me without warning to a much fancier cell on a higher level of the building. Still no windows, but also no rats, no giant protozoa, no slime mold. No snakes. I missed the snakes, a little. They had some elegance and they did me no harm. The new cell was warmer and drier and I had a bigger couch. The floor was a solid slab of gold. There have been periods in history when you would have been proud to be imprisoned in a cell where the floor was a slab of gold, I guess. Well, it was okay. But I never could forget that this was Galgala where gold isn't much more valuable than cardboard, and that I might have a golden floor in my prison cell but even so it was still a prison cell. I went about barefoot on it, mostly. It was soft and almost yielding under my toes, the way gold can be. I started scratching lines in it to keep track of the time. Ordinarily, as you know, I don't give a damn about keeping track of the time and I will blithely jumble up whole decades of chronology without seeing any big problem about that. But here in confinement I was starting to wonder about just how much time might be going by. Considerable, as it turned out.

So much for Shandor's pledge to let me rot in that dank oubliette forever, at any rate. I wasn't foolish enough to think that he had relented. The Shandors of this universe don't know what that word means. No, he had probably just changed his mind about the efficacy of letting me rot. Maybe he had decided that I was so old and mean that I had become permanently rot-resilient, like that rare yellow timber from Gran Chingada that can spend five hundred years submerged in a mungar-thangar swamp without being changed in any way. Or maybe he figured it would be bad politics for the Kingdom to find out that he was keeping his aged father stashed in a den of snakes and rats. I don't know. It could be that he had come up with some entirely new strategy that made it look advantageous to put me in a more comfortable cell. I didn't see what that strategy might be, but I didn't mind. Polarca came ghosting in and said, "Well? You like this one any better?"

"You never saw the last one," I said.

"Sure I did. I came three times. You were asleep every time. Like a baby, snoozing away. You didn't even mind that there was some kind of a rat sitting on your chest. "

"You could have said hello."

"You looked so peaceful," Polarca said.

"Oh, you bastard. What's happening out there?" "When?"

"Right now?"

"How would I know? I'm not coming from right now." "When are you coming from, then?"

"You know I can't tell you that."

I could have throttled him. "The Kingdom is in jeopardy, whole worlds are tottering, your oldest and dearest friend is sitting helpless in a dungeon, and you decide to be a stickler for the rules?"

"These are important rules, Yakoub. You know that. Do I really need to be telling you this stuff? Once you start abusing ghosting to slip information back in time, the whole universe falls apart."

"It's falling apart anyway. But you can help me." "No. I don't think I can."

"Then why bother coming here? Just to torment me?"

"I like to see your sparkling eyes. You look so sexy when you're annoyed."

"I'll give you sexy, you infuriating hyena!"

"Ah. Ah. Temper, Yakoub! Your blood pressure!"

"You will drive me crazy. Do I deserve this? A son like Shandor and a friend like you?"

"But I am your friend. You don't know how good I am to you. And I don't want you to think I'm not helpful." His ghost-mantle flickered through some fancy electromagnetic changes, the ghost-equivalent of a long-suffering sigh. "All right. Listen to me, Yakoub. Your appeal rends my heart. It's against all the rules but I'm going to let you know the future anyway." He drifted up close to my ear and cocked his head and dropped his voice to a confidential, insinuating level. "It's all going to be okay," he whispered.

"What is?"

"It. The fundamental curve of our racial destiny. The Kingdom, the Empire, Romany Star. There. Never say your old friend Polarca isn't helpful. You can thank me now."

"This is what you call being helpful?" "This is what you call being grateful?" "Grateful for what?"

"Look at you, scowling at me. I told you what you wanted to know, didn't I? Don't you find that comforting to know? Aren't you relieved? What an ungrateful son of a bitch you are."

I scowled even harder at him. "So what good is your big revelation? It isn't the vague ultimate that worries me. It's what happens now. Am I going to live? Am I going to die? Am I ever going to get out of this damned hole? Give me details, will you? I want to know what's on the docket right now, what will happen next, not what's going to happen in a thousand years."

"You want me to commit sins?" "A sin to help your king?"

"You should be ashamed. Manipulating me like this. And such disgusting laziness. All your life you've figured out things for yourself. Now you want me to hand you a blueprint?"

"All I want is a little hard data." "This is absolutely shocking." "You stubborn pig, Polarca." "Me stubborn? Me?"

"A hint," I begged. "A clue. Or else stop coming around to annoy me. I'd rather not see you at all than have you tease me like this." "Seriously?"

"Seriously." "All right," he said. "I take pity on you. I violate all the ethics of ghosting. I tell you things that you yourself wouldn't tell yourself where's your ghost, Yakoub, why isn't he here giving you little hints? I tip you off on the shape of things to come."

"Go on."

"The clue will be right on the plate in front of you." "Right on the plate?"

"Don't say I never give hints."

"What hint? What does that mean, right on the plate?"

He shook his head sadly. "You're supposed to be the smart one, I thought. You're supposed to be the keen far-seeing intelligence. So I give you the hint that you want and you don't even try to figure it out for yourselP You just sit there angling for another one? Oh, no. Yakoub, I gave you your hint. Don't ask me for any more."

"Oh, you bastard, Polarca."

"There you are. Right on your plate." "Damn you, Polarca."

He vanished. When they brought me my first meal in the new cell I stared at my plate for ten minutes, trying to figure it out. The usual warm mush, the usual bowl of tepid tea. The only thing different was a little sprig of some Galgalan salad greens on the side. I studied those salad greens as though they held the secret of the meaning of life. Maybe they did, but it didn't reveal itself to me. After a while I ate them. That still didn't tell me anything. As I have said before, there are times when Polarca makes me feel as dim-witted as a Gajo. And he enjoys it. God has given me a monster for a son and a sadist for a friend.

Well, God is infinitely wise and infinitely loving. Who am I to question His gifts?

GOD GAVE ME POLARCA WHEN I WAS IN REAL NEED. AND also gave me to Polarca, whose need may have been even greater. I think he may have saved my life and I know that I saved his. This was on Mentiroso, long ago. Because we were on Mentiroso together I will take almost any amount of shit from him. Besides, I know that he means well. He genuinely thinks he's amusing me when he plays his little games with me. Most of the time he's right.

Mentiroso is one of those terrible places that God must have created so that we would better be capable of appreciating the wondrous beauty of the rest of His universe. In that respect it is something like the Idradin crater on Xamur. The crater provides just the touch of imperfection that is required to reveal Xamur as the masterpiece that it is.

But the Idradin is a single geological feature and you can spend your whole life on lovely Xamur without ever having to stare down its noisome maw. Mentiroso, though, is an entire world.

That there should be an entire world as dreadful as Mentiroso might make you begin to wonder about the fundamental psychological makeup of the Creator, if you are someone of simple soul, or one who is given to impiety. In order to create a place like Mentiroso, you might argue, a deity needs to have some of the essential quality of Mentiroso within himself. And the simpleminded will say, If God has something like Mentiroso within His soul, then what difference is there between God and the Devil? And the impious will say, Only a really loathsome sick bastard of a Creator could create a Mentiroso.

The truth is that both of them are right, in their way. But they only see the shadow of the truth. The simpleton fails to consider that there is no difference between God and the Devil, because the Devil is an aspect of God, just as the Idradin is an aspect of Xamur. The impious one fails to consider that what looks sick to us may not look that way to God. God is infinite. He contains everything, even what we consider to be evil, or ugly, or sick. He doesn't necessarily agree with our opinion. He doesn't have to. That's the benefit of being God. We, on the other hand, are required by the system to try to see things His way, because if we don't we will perish. Trying to see things His way is philosophy. Actually getting to see things His way is becoming wise. No human being since the beginning of time has in fact succeeded in becoming wise, but some have come a little closer to it than others.

You would never suspect, looking at photos of Mentiroso in some travel magazine, that it is one of the most horrible places in the universe. (Perhaps the most horrible, though I think it may be exceeded in that quality by Trinigalee Chase. Since I don't ever want to think about Trinigalee Chase again in any detail, I'm not capable of making the comparison. If you want my advice, stay away from them both. Neither one is any holiday paradise.)

I went to Mentiroso as a slave, but this time, in contrast to my previous two tours of slavery, I had only myself to blame. I wasn't sold there; I sold myself. This was back when I was a free-lance space explorer, a few years before I went to work for Esmeralda's family's kumpania. Just as my grandfather had before me, I had gotten myself overextended financially and went bankrupt. And as my father had done, I saw voluntary slavery as the way out. I was ten thousand cerces in the hole-can you believe that?-and they were about to take my Xamur land away from me to satisfy the debt. Then I found out that there was this deal, a five-year indenture on a place called Mentiroso, that would exactly cover the amount of my losses. I jumped for it.

Maybe I should have done more research first. Mentiroso had been discovered only a little while before and there wasn't much data available on it. Widely traveled though I was, I had never heard of it, and I didn't bother to find out more than whether you could breathe the air and what kind of climate the place has. I didn't stop to wonder why anybody would be willing to pay me that much for a five-year indenture. Served me right.

I had to pick up the relay-sweep for Mentiroso on Clard Msat. When I handed in my ticket to the technician who was setting up the outbound coordinates at the sweep depot he looked at it a long time and said finally, "Mentiroso? You're kidding, aren't you?"

"Not that I know of."

"You really want to go there?" "That's where my job is."

"You must actually be serious. You poor dumb bastard." He shook his head sadly. "He wants to go to Mentiroso. He has a job on Mentiroso. You poor dumb bastard!"

Nobody had ever called me that in my life before. I don't think anyone has since, either. I started to ask him what was so awful about Mentiroso. Too late. He set up the coordinates faster than a ghost can fart and the sweep came and got me instantly. The last thing I saw was the look of pity in his eyes. The next thing I saw, almost at once, was Mentiroso.

The other horror worlds I have visited-Alta Hannalanna, say, or Megalo Kastro-tell you right away what a nasty piece of work they are. You hate them at a single glance. From the air, though, Mentiroso seems acceptable enough. A standard human-type world: blue oceans, green vegetation, brown soil. A bit on the scruffy side, maybe, nothing much in the way of forests or mountain ranges, mostly a great rolling savannah from coast to coast. No apparent signs of higher life. (There's not much there, in fact, beyond some insects and lizards and a few simple unspecialized mammals. There's a good reason for that, too.) Small ice-caps at the poles, temperate climate elsewhere, breathable air maybe a touch too high on nitrogen, but that isn't serious. The weather is on the dry side. It all seems okay.

Then you land, and you plunge into hell.

You start feeling uneasy with your first breath. With your second the uneasiness begins edging into fear. One breath more and the fear turns into blind terror, and from then on it never lets up. You don't know what it is you're afraid of, and you never find out. It comes bubbling up through your entire body, your skin, your toes, your fingertips. Everything you have ever dreaded is boiling in you all at once. Your worst fantasies. The horned creature standing at your bedside in the dark. The little shining insects that march over your flesh when you're ill. The churning of the earth beneath your feet, and the mouth that opens before you. The silken fabric on the coffin lid that presses into your face as you lie there buried alive. The gust of wind that carries invisible needles. The one red eye watching you from the sky. The whispering behind you. The sudden jaws fastening between your legs.

It is a tangible presence, that fear that comes over you on Mentiroso. You feel it wrap around you like an icy sheet. You see it glimmering in the air like a wall of cold light. Your flesh crawls. Your balls try to climb up into your belly. Your teeth itch and tingle as though they're about to fall out all at once.

There is no escaping it wherever you turn. It pervades the whole planet. No one knows why. The place is haunted. There is a god dwelling there. Not God, but a god, and not a friendly one. Perhaps he is Pan, the old Greek goat whose specialty was causing panic. You see it still in his name, panic. Panic is what you feel on Mentiroso, hour after hour, a constant unending foreboding. Nothing bad ever actually happens to you. None of your dreads materialize. Yet there is never any surcease. You don't adapt to it; you don't grow numbed. You can't talk yourself out of it by telling yourself that it's a quirk of nature, that it's just something in the air. You simply go on and on, trembling with dread, every minute that you are there. Some minutes are worse than others but none of them is ever good. No wonder that there are no higher life-forms on Mentiroso. Wonderfully versatile though Mother Nature is, even she hasn't managed to evolve a complex organism with a nervous system capable of withstanding a whole lifetime of fear and trembling. The bugs and lizards evidently don't mind.

The worst of it is that the dread that Mentiroso inspires can be bottled and sold at a good price. There's a thriving market for it. I don't know which is worse: that there should be such a place as Mentiroso at all, or that human beings should have found a way to profit from the misery that that doleful planet spawns. I detest both ideas. You may wonder why such things should be. Do I know? Go ask God.

The man who found a way to turn the waking nightmare of Mentiroso into hard cash was named Nikos Hasgard. I grieve to tell you that there was Rom blood in him: he was a poshrat, a halfbreed, his father a GaJo from Sidri Akrak and his mother true Rom of Estrilidis. It was the Rom side of him that made him clever enough to see how to exploit a place like Mentiroso and the GaJe side that gave him the heartlessness to do it.

Hasgard was a small fleshless mean-faced man with eyes like whips and a mouth so tightly clamped that it was just a line beneath his nose. You disliked him on sight. Not only was he willing to turn a profit on Mentiroso, he didn't seem to be bothered by living there for months at a stretch: that was how mean and tough he was. (Or maybe he was so twisted that he liked the things that Mentiroso does to your soul.)

The Hasgard process involves tapping into the neural discharges of human brains that have been exposed for prolonged periods to the anxieties that Mentiroso arouses. You sit there and quiver and cringe and the machine records your whole output of tension and apprehension and trepidation and unrest. It gets pumped into a psychoactive storage battery from which it can be played back at any time.

There are three levels of playback intensity. Level One gives you, so they tell me, a sort of interestingly creepy chill, the kind of thing that reading scary stories late at night will do. It's sheer entertainment, of a type that has always struck me as pretty dumb, but I suppose it's not my business how people choose to amuse themselves. Certainly Level One is harmless.

Level Two is not only harmless but is actually beneficial. What the customer receives at this degree of intensity is a jolt of energizing motivation that hits him the way a spur in the side hits a mule. A shot of Hasgard Two will carry you buoyantly through the most difficult and challenging job on a glorious wave of confidence and strength. It's strictly fight-or-flight stuff, the old primordial adrenalin lift, and there's no drug that compares with it. Sales of Hasgard Two activators must run to a billion cerces a year, maybe more. They say that use of it isn't addictive but I'm told it's very hard to do without the stuff once you begin using it regularly. I've tried it once or twice myself.

As for Hasgard Three, the official position of the Hasgard Corporation is that there's no such thing. That it's just somebody's paranoid fantasy, which has been whispered about so often that it has somehow taken on a kind of reality even though it doesn't exist. It does exist. After I became king I saw the reports on it. What Hasgard Three does is drive people out of their minds. A single dose of third-level Hasgard is the equivalent of five or ten years on Mentiroso rolled up and jammed into your mind in one stupefying cataclysmic rush. Strong people go crazy and weaker ones simply die. Despite vociferous denials by the Hasgard people and stringent efforts by the imperial customs authorities, this stuff somehow does get manufactured and is shipped all over the galaxy for use by criminals intent on torture, extortion, or murder. I include certain governmental agencies in the criminal category.

All three levels of Hasgard activators are produced on Mentiroso in the same way. You take your seat in what they call the synapse pit and the various electrodes and other recording devices are affixed to you. For the next six hours, as wave after wave of that peculiar and overwhelming terror that Mentiroso engenders in the human mind goes sweeping through you, your sensations are drained off and fed into storage units. That's all there is. The work is more difficult than it may sound-it's the psychic equivalent of giving blood, and you do it six hours a day-but you're highly paid for it, as slave labor goes; the living quarters are comfortable and the food isn't bad; during your off hours all manner of recreational opportunities are available to you. The trouble is that you feel so crappy all the time that you have very little interest in recreation. You just want to slog your way through your five-year indenture, collect your accrued salary, and get the hell out. If you leave before the five years are up you don't get paid at all: that's what being a slave means. Nevertheless a lot of Hasgard employees leave before the five years are up. As I recall the figures, one out of five goes insane in a way that makes him no longer useful in the synapse pit. One out of five breaks down and dies under the unending mental stress of life on Mentiroso or the strain of working in the pit, or both. And one out of ten commits suicide.

That means you have about a fifty-fifty chance of coming through your five years intact. These facts are not widely known, but they aren't exactly kept secret. In a more humane society, I suppose, the production of Hasgard activators by these methods would be prohibited. But you have to bear in mind that Level One activators are tremendously popular everywhere and that Level Two activators are widely regarded by most planetary governments nowadays as essential productivity enhancing devices. And Level Three-well, there seems to be a steady demand for Level Three also.

When I took my place in the synapse pit that first day there was a little Rom sitting in the stirrups next to me, a small twitchy man some years younger than I with bright, quick eyes.

"Sarishan, cousin," I greeted him.

"You will love it here," he said. "You will bless the day you came to this delightful world. I am Polarca."

"Yakoub," I said. And I would have told him my family and tribe and planet of birth, but at that moment I trembled with sudden uncontrollable fear and I bent over with my head between my knees, working hard to keep from vomiting in my panic. It was as if some great sleeping beast had turned on its side within the depths of the planet and by its mere mindless movements had sent ripples of terror rumbling through my soul, sensations of malaise far more powerful than anything I had felt up to now. I was bitterly ashamed, to be seen in such a state of fear by another Rom, a man, a man younger than myself.

He touched his hand lightly to my shoulder.

"It happens to everyone," he said. "Just wait, ride it out. It only gets that bad a few times a day."

"What is it?" I asked when I could speak again. "What makes me feel like that? I've been here a day and a half and I haven't felt right for a single minute."

"No," Polarca said. "And you won't feel right again until you leave. Five-year indenture?"

"Yes."' "Same as me, then. Settle in and get used to it if you can. But nobody ever does. "

He winced. He doubled over. The terror had him, now.

"Ah," he said, finally. "This world is cursed. This world is fucked. You didn't have any idea, did you?"

"None." "I did. But I had no choice." He laughed. "Not that anyone ever has any choice. But at least I knew what I was getting into." He showed me how to attach myself to the recording equipment. My hands were shaking so much that he had to force them down on the arm-rests and press hard as he strapped me in. "There. You have to fulfill your quota, you know. You should hook yourself up the moment you come in. There's no use wasting time."

"What causes it, the way I feel here?"

He shrugged. "No one understands it. Some say it's an ionization effect.

Some say it's something in the atmosphere. Some even that there are invisible and unmeasurable alien intelligences floating around everywhere here that simply like to give us psychic hotfoots. But all that sounds like vapor and bullshit to me. I think this place is simply the Devil's playground. He comes here for holidays and has a glorious time. It stands to reason that what the Devil loves would make ordinary people feel utterly shitty. And-" He paused. "Oh. Oh, God. Oh, Jesu Cretchuno! Melalo Ana Lilyi!" He doubled over again. I heard him sobbing and retching. After a time he sat up, white-faced, forehead shiny with sweat. His eyes had a haunted look. He managed a grin all the same.

"How much longer do you have to go here?" I asked. "I've been here three weeks," he said. "Out of five years."

We were the only Rom in the synapse pit and we liked each other at once; and soon we were inseparable day and night. I suppose it was an attraction of opposites. I was big and even-tempered, he was little and volatile. I was Kalderash, he was Lowara. I tended to be hardworking and almost plodding in some ways, Polarca believed in cutting corners wherever he could. But we both knew how to laugh when what we really felt like doing was crying. His laugh was marvelous. If they could bottle Polarca's laugh it would outsell Hasgard Level Two anywhere. I loved him for his laugh alone. And for being Rom in this dreadful place where there were no others of our kind. Not just any sort of Rom, either. We were both of the true blood, which is not only a matter of genetics. You need to know a loyalty to something other than your own skin to be true Rom. Take Shandor. Shandor is a Rom by genetic heritage but I refuse to accept him as being of the true blood even though he is my son. Polarca, now-ah, Polarca is a Rom of the Rom!

It took me some time to realize that he was dying down there in the synapse pit of Mentiroso.

He tried to hide that from me. When the waves of terror rolled through him and made him quiver and sob he snapped back as fast as he could, grinning and winking and telling jokes. I didn't know what a price he was paying for those grins and winks. Mentiroso was wearing him down very fast. Just how fast was something he wanted to keep secret. True, he seemed weary and worn most of the time and seemed to be making an effort to hold his shoulders square, but we were none of us exactly sparkling under Mentiroso's constant psychoactive bombardment. All the same, though I had no way of knowing how bouncy and vigorous Polarca might have been before coming to this place, I could see that the man I had met in the synapse pit must be a badly frayed and weakened shadow of his true self. Over the weeks that followed he grew even weaker. He shook, he fell down in seizures, he had difficulties focusing his eyes or remembering the beginnings of his sentences by the time he came to the end. Plainly he wasn't going to be able to last much longer. I had already seen a couple of men die of exhaustion right in the pit.

Once I knew what was happening I began asking around, trying to find some way of helping him. He was too proud to tell me anything useful himself but there were others to ask. I didn't want to lose him. Without Polarca beside me jabbing away with his irreverence and his sarcasms I would go out of my mind in this place. But I learned what I had to do.

One day I got to the synapse pit a short while ahead of him and did a little improvised rewiring of his equipment. It wasn't hard. I jacked his electrodes into my headset and mine into his; and then I disabled the connector that ran from my transducer coil to the storage cell. And a couple of other minor things. The net effect of these rearrangements was that he would be cut out of the pumping circuit altogether and my output of neural energy would go to fulfill his six-hour daily quota. He would still have to cope with the round-the-clock torment of life on Mentiroso but at least he wouldn't be subjected to the strenuous demands of the Hasgard equipment as well.

Of course, that meant that my own quota would go unfulfilled. Sooner or later that would show up on the company records. So I began slipping back into the synapse pit during my free time to make up the shortfall. An extra three hours in the morning, maybe three more late at night. I could manage it. The chief problem was making excuses to Polarca for my disappearances in the off hours. Some days I was a little too tired to handle the full double shift, but I tried to make up the time somewhere else along the way. A few of the other workers figured out what I was doing and contributed some hours here and there to my account to help out. Even so I was gradually falling behind. But that was all right. Polarca was visibly gaining in strength.

"What the fuck are you up to?" he asked me finally, months later. "Up to?"

"In the pit. Why don't I feel so tired any more? Why are you starting to look five thousand years old? Are you pulling my shifts, Yakoub?" "What does that mean?" I said, all innocence.

"It means that someone is doing my work for me, and it has to be you. Don't pretend you aren't the one."

"I-well, that is-" I faltered. "Damn it, Polarca, I couldn't just sit there and let you burn out! I had to do something."

"Who asked you to? Who gave you the right to commit such a miserable lousy sin against my manhood?"

"Listen to him. A sin against his manhood." "You think I'm a weakling?"

"I'm the weakling, Polarca." He looked astounded. "What?"

"I need you too much to let you die. You're the only thing that keeps me sane in this filthy place. And you were going to die sure as anything if I didn't do something to help you."

"But you had no right-" "No right? No right?"

"You didn't even ask my fucking permission. You just went ahead and took charge of my life." He was shouting. A vein was standing out on the side of his head. "You think I'm a child? You think I need some sort of a protector? You think I can't take care of myself? Where did you come off doing that to me?' And a lot more of the same, getting louder and louder as his righteous indignation turned into spitting anger.

I can shout pretty well myself. Louder than he can. And I was even angrier than he was, now. I shouted him down. "Damn you, Polarca, don't give me any more shit about your manhood, okay? Just sit there with both your hands on your goddamned manhood and let this fucking machinery suck all the life out of you. And when you've died a manly death I'll start going crazy because there'll be no one else here I can talk to. But that's all right. You'll have died a manly death, and that's what's important. I'm sorry I got in the way of your manly death. Okay? Okay, Polarca? I'm sorry. Here. Go be a man. Be a hero." I showed him what I had done with his equipment. Then I put it back the right way and plugged myself in and turned my back on him. I was so pissed off that I hardly even felt the usual Mentiroso horrors, though they were rippling along through my mind at the standard pace all the time.

After maybe half an hour Polarca tapped me on the shoulder. "Yakoub?"

"Don't bother me. I'm working."

"I just wanted to thank you," he said in a very small voice.

I had never heard Polarca sounding humble before. I never have since, for that matter.

There was no question of my continuing to pull his shifts for him after that, of course. If I had done it much longer it would have killed me, anyway. But I had seen him through a tough time, however much of an insult to his manhood it may have been. And he was Rom enough to admit that once in a while you have to forget about your precious balls and your indignation and your manly pride and simply accept help, if you really need the help. Polarca is tough and resilient but a stint on Mentiroso could destroy anybody. It had been destroying him and he knew it. I got him through. Two or three times later on, during the years when we were on Mentiroso together, I had to get him through again. He was furious with me each time, and I don't think he's ever really forgiven me; but he let me do it. When his indenture was up mine still had almost three months to go, because of the various shortfalls I had accumulated, and he volunteered to stay the extra time and contribute three hours a day to my account to get me off Mentiroso sooner. And I let him. I had to, to survive. It has been like that between us ever since.

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?"

"What does love have to do with this? He's my blood, my flesh. But he's still a beast. A dangerous one." Her scent was beginning to drive me crazy. She wasn't wearing perfume, that I knew. That scent was Syluise herself. I knew now why she was here and I hoped I could continue to resist. "Did Shandor send you in here to work on me?" I asked.

"I came on my own, Yakoub. To help you get yourself free." "By giving Shandor what he wants. My formal blessing."

"Is that so much?"

"Getting out that way isn't freedom. It's slavery, Syluise. I've already been a slave four times in my life, you know? I was born into it and then I was sold into it twice and the last time I sold myself into it. I'm not going to be a slave again. Particularly not to my own son.

"He's the king, Yakoub." "Bullshit. I'm the king-"

"You keep saying that. But here you sit in custody." "What's happening outside? Do people know where I am?" "They're starting to find out, yes."

"And?" "There's a lot of trouble."

"Good," I said. "That's what I want."

"How can you want that? People are suffering. Your own people. Commerce is breaking down. The starships aren't going to the right places. If they're flying at all. Nobody is sure who is king, and there isn't really any emperor either. The whole system may be falling apart." "That's fine with me."

"I can't believe I heard you say that." "Why are you mixed up in this, Syluise?"

Letting my question pass, she moved closer to me. Prelude to something-or-other. Gave me the full treatment, heaving breasts, flaring nostrils, sultry glares from under half-closed eyelids. She was wriggling. Thighs rubbing together. Hot breath on my cheeks. Her insatiable lips an inch from mine. The works. Her irresistible weapons, her heavy artillery. It was almost comical. Had she ever seemed comical to me before? Had I really found her so irresistible before? Something definitely must be changing in me. Maybe her working on Shandor's behalf had shattered the spell. She had betrayed me. I had never been able to defend myself against her until now but that went beyond the limits, her blatant maneuvering on Shandor's behalf. Silently I offered the Rom prayer for the dead. We were finished, this golden viper and I. Truly.

"Do you know how much I've missed you, Yakoub?" "Tell me."

"Let Shandor be king. You've had a hundred years of it." "Not quite that much."

"Whatever it is, you've had enough. More than enough. Let him have his turn. Do you want to be king forever? What for?"

"Not forever. Just long enough to finish the work I still need to do." "Let Shandor finish it. You and I, we'll go away somewhere. Someplace beautiful. Fulero. Estrilidis. Tranganuthuka. Wouldn't you like to spend a year or two on Fulero with me?"

"How much is he paying you?" "Yakoub!"

"I have a better idea. Instead of us going off to Fulero, you live here with me. Right here in this cell, the two of us. You won't love the food but otherwise it isn't so bad. We'll wait Shandor out. Sooner or later he'll crack, or someone will overthrow him, and we'll come forth. In triumph. I'll put the worlds to rights again. We'll spend half our time on Galgala and the other half on Xamur. You could call yourself the queen, if you liked."

"What?" "I know, we don't have queens. But we can make an exception just once. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"You aren't serious. You'd make me a queen?" "Why not?"

I was just playing with her. As she had been playing with me. "No," she said. "There'd be a tremendous uproar. You can't foist a queen off on the Rom after all this time. And I don't want to be queen. Or you to be king any more. What do you need it for? So much nasty work. Such stupid ugly nonsense. Come away with me and let's just enjoy ourselves and leave all of that to someone else."

"To Shandor?" "Who cares?"

A wondrous feeling of freedom flooded my soul. "I care," I said.

"Don't. Give it all up."

I ran my hands over her shoulders. Her skin was fiery hot but nevertheless it was like stroking a statue. I felt nothing. In her little coquettish way she danced back, out of my grasp.

"Come here."

"Come to Fulero with me."

"Some other time." I reached for her again. "No.)

"No?" "Not here. Not in this awful little place."

"You said you missed me. Not very much, I'd say." "I'll show you how much when we get to Fulero."

She gave me another round of the hips and the thighs and the wriggles and I smiled and shrugged.

"I think I'll pass on Fulero," I said amiably. "You go. With Shandor."

I thought she would explode. Her eyes were supernovas of rage. Something ugly came glinting through all that unbelievable perfection. She wasn't accustomed to seeing me withstand her. I never had before. Fifty years and I never had. It didn't matter that I was king. There aren't any kings in the bedroom. We're all slaves there, not to other people but to ourselves, helpless against the commands that come from within. Every man has a fatal woman. It may be the same for women as well; I suppose it is. But even fatal attractions can shrivel and fade. And die. This time for once I had stood up against her. Maybe I had even freed myself from her for good.

SYLUISE WENT SLINKING AWAY, SMOLDERING WITH anger and souring female juices. Next thing I knew, Valerian was with me. Valerian's ghost, that is. As usual. Bounding around the cell like a berserk rhinoceros. A rhinoceros is an animal they used to have on Earth, weird as hell, very large, not good to eat. Horn on its nose. When a rhinoceros headed in your direction you got politely out of its way. The same with Valerian.

"Look at this place," he roared. "Gold floors! Gold walls! This crazy planet. I never can get used to your Galgala, you know? All this fucking gold."

"What good is it? Who needs it? You ever been on Earth, Yakoub?" "You're asking me that?"

He kept rampaging right on. "Of course you have. A thousand times, I bet. You know how they love gold there? The women with ten kilos of gold dangling around their necks? A roll of solid heavy coins in your pocket? It meant something, on Earth, gold. You felt like a giant when you had a little gold. Like a fucking king. Now look. The love of gold is gone from the universe. All that good greed, gone. A whole perfectly fine deadly sin shot to hell. You know what they've done to gold? They've turned it into shit, these Galgala people."

"It's a lot prettier than shit," I pointed out.

"But just as worthless. That's a crying shame, what they did to gold. I wish they never had found this planet. Gold was so good, Yakoub. And now it's crap. You know what did it in? Supply and demand, that's what! Supply and demand, supply and demand! The inexorable law of the cosmos." Valerian paused, sending out blue and yellow ghost-flickers and ghost-crackles like a demented electrical appliance. What an exhausting son of a bitch! He looked very pleased with his own profundity. "That sounds nice, don't you think? The inexorable law of the cosmos. I always did have a way with words, hey, Yakoub?" Then he was off again, bounding from wall to wall. "Nice cell. Shandor keeps you in style."

"You should have seen the first place he put me in."

"Well, this is comfortable, yes? And all this gold. Maybe it's worthless but by damn it is pretty. You need some jewels, though. A little color contrast, too much yellow here." He pulled a red leather pouch from under his cloak. Ghost-leather. "Give me a good jewel any day. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires. Not diamonds. Diamonds have good fire in them but I miss the color. I like my jewels to have color." Pouring the contents of the pouch into his huge hand as he spoke. A mountain of jewels. He thrust them in my face. "You could string them right across the room from wall to wall, hey? Light the place up a little."

"Ghost-jewels, Valerian. What good are they? I can't even touch them. All they are is colored air to me, you know?"

"Oh, shit, yes," he said morosely. "That's right."

"I think I'd rather have real gold than ghost-jewels. But thanks all the same. "

"Damn," he said. He was crestfallen. "I completely forgot about that. They look pretty fucking real to me."

"You're a ghost, Valerian."

"Right. Right. Ah, too goddamned bad. You need some color in here. But look, I tell you, Yakoub: when you're king again I'll come to you real, okay? And bring you some real rubies, some real emeralds." "When I'm king again? When will that be?"

He wasn't paying attention. "I have jewels galore, you know. Beaucoup jewels, that's what Julien would say, right? I took one hell of a cargo, last year. Out by Jerusalem Spill, somewhere between Caliban and Puerto Peligroso, big transport ship belonging to-well, who cares who it belonged to. Enough rubies on board to dam up a river with. A big river." Valerian laughed. "I could break the market, you know? Dump them all at once, make rubies as worthless as gold. Just like I did that time with the drugs, when they brought me up on charges before the kris. You remember? That time when you adjusted the verdict for me. Not that I see any sense in busting the ruby market. Not with the inventory I've got. But somebody's bound to do it sooner or later, some damned fool, you watch and see. It's inevitable. They've got a planet out that way somewhere that's as full of rubies as Galgala is of gold. "

That was news to me. "You sure of that?"

"You should see what was on that ship I took. Ten enormous overpockets loaded with them. A ton of rubies here, a ton there, sticking out into all kinds of storage dimensions, dimensions nobody ever heard of before. You know what I had to do to get them to unlock those pockets for me? No, you don't want to know. I don't even want to think about it. I'm really a very gentle man. You know that, don't you, Yakoub? But sometimes-sometimes-"

"Tell me about when I'll be king again." "You want me to tell you that?"

"You just heard me say it." "But that's the future!" I'So?"

"It is the future, isn't it? For you, I mean? Yes. Yes, sure it is. You want me to tell you the future?"

"Why not? You can tell me. Nobody will know but you and me." "I can tell you, yes. Why shouldn't I tell you?"

"That's right."

"I can tell you if I feel like it. Whatever you want, I can tell you." "Absolutely."

"There's nothing stopping me from telling you." "Right," I said. "So tell me."

But he wasn't telling me. Just talking about telling me. And flying around the room like a berserk parakeet. The manic son of a bitch! I wanted to clobber him. Clobber a ghost, sure.

"It's the future," he said. "We aren't supposed to tell people their futures. "

"Since when did you ever do what you were supposed to do?" "Maybe it makes sense, the rule."

"Oh, come on, Valerian." "But maybe it makes sense."

"At least tell me what's happening out there right now, then. There's no rule about that."

"You mean, in the Empire? The Kingdom?"

"Yes. Since Shandor arrested me. What's been happening." "Plenty's been happening," he said. He floated across the room and came to rest in mid-air right in front of my nose, hanging sideways with his feet just grazing the golden wall. In a much quieter voice he said, "I never thought you were going to get away with this thing, this lunacy, handing yourself over to Shandor. I thought it was the most cockeyed thing you had ever done in your life. I owe you a big apology, I guess, Yakoub."

"So I got away with it, did I? It worked out all right?" "Don't you know?"

Maddening. Still playing question and answer games with me.

He was worse than Polarca. Polarca didn't even offer to tell me anything when he came ghosting. Valerian has no scruples at all. Rules mean nothing to him. The only rule that has ever seriously mattered to him is the one that says, Whatever you do, don't get caught at it. Despite all the prohibitions Valerian would certainly be capable of revealing the future to me if he felt like it. And if he could manage to understand how important it was to me to know. But getting him to stay on the subject was more work than shoveling salizonga dung.

Exasperated, I said, "How would I know? It's still the future to me. I'm still here, remember? Still a prisoner. And nobody's been telling me a thing."

Valerian drifted down until he was standing practically upright and gave me a close look, and drifted back up at right angles to the floor again. "I forget," he said after a while. "That was dumb. Being a ghost all the time like this, I get mixed up. I lose track of what comes before which, you know. Of course if you're still here you probably don't know anything."

"Come on, Valerian."

"You want to know? All right. I'll tell you." "You keep on saying that."

"I'm trying to tell you." He took a big breath, which lit him up in sixteen ghostly up-spectrum colors. The moment of revelation at last. He said, "Everything's going to be fine. It'll turn out just like you said it would. "

Great. Polarca had said that too. But he had refused to give me any details. Just vaguenesses, same as Valerian. They were both in a conspiracy to drive me crazy.

I worked at keeping my temper, though. No sense yelling at ghosts: they just go away.

"How so? What's this it that turns out right?"

"I'm not supposed to tell you stuff like this. But you know me, Yakoub."

"Come on."

"Just between you and me, you have Shandor on the run." "Tell me. "

"You don't know anything?"

"Not much. Syluise was here and she said things are pretty bad. Breakdown of interstellar commerce. Starships going to the wrong destinations. Things like that. But I don't trust Syluise to give me straight news. Tell me."

"That's the straight news. It was a mess out there."

"Was?"

"Will be. Is. Whatever. You know, it isn't so simple for me, remembering what's future and what's past. It's all past to me, you know, Yakoub? Your future is my past. A lot of things have happened that haven't happened yet."

"Try to keep your mind on it. If you can. Do I get out of here soon?" A long pause.

"Do I?'

"I think so."

"You think! You think! You never thought in your life, Valerian. All right. What's happening to the Empire?"

"Breaking down," he said, brightening. He was making a real effort now. "The old emperor's still alive. Hanging on like he means to stay forever. But nobody can understand what he says any more. Sunteil's trying to run things and Periandros and Naria are trying hard to get in his way. Doing a damned good job of it."

"More.,, "More what?"

"More news. Keep talking." "A ghost isn't supposed to-"

"Fuck what a ghost is supposed to. When the great kris found you guilty, was I supposed to let you go free? But I did it."

"You know I'll always be grateful for-" "Fine. Tell me more."

He thought a moment. "Well, there's Shandor. Shandor's panicky." I felt my pulse rate picking up. We were getting to the core of things now. Maybe.

"He is?"

"Scared completely shitless. He's just realizing who he's up against and it terrifies him. You've been fighting one hell of a war, you know. Without lifting a finger, without getting a word out of here to anyone." "So you understand that, finally."

"It's amazing what you've accomplished just by handing yourself over to Shandor. Your boy Chorian escaped, you know, and he told everyone Shandor had you locked up here."

"I was wondering about him."

"And that's when things started to fall apart for Shandor. It made a lot of Rom very angry, hearing what he had done to you. Especially the pilots: they've begun doing all sorts of wild things to protest, flying to the wrong planets, messing up everybody's schedule. Some worlds are practically cut off altogether. Clard Msat: you just can't get there. Iriarte, I think."

I felt like crying for joy, hearing that.

But was it true? Past and present were such a jumble for Valerian. He might be reporting rumors, or fantasies, or events out of some other era entirely. I closed my eyes. So frustrating to have to depend for news on a couple of hyperkinetic ghosts and a gilded viper. I wanted desperately to feel the pulse of the worlds with my own hand. I had been here alone so long, isolated from the ebb and flow of the galaxy. My plan, my strategy, a shrewd one but a painful one. Attack by surrendering. Nobody had understood. They all thought I was crazy. All of them except Bibi Savina and Thivt. But my lunatic gamble seemed to be paying off. Valerian wouldn't lie to me. He might be confused but he wouldn't lie. Out there, the thousands of worlds, the millions of Rom, the billions of Gaje, all the human turmoil and bustle: was the whole thing tumbling into chaos? Useful chaos, on which I would be able to build?

I said, "I like what I'm hearing. Keep going." "You know about the krisatora?"

"I told you. I don't know anything."

"Damiano has called them together. For a ruling on Shandor's conduct. They're going to denounce him."'

"You know that for sure?"

"I'm trying to talk in your time, not mine. That's why I say they're going to denounce him."

"Denounce him?" "That's what I said."

"Yes. Right. So they held a kris right here on Galgala under Shandor's nose and he didn't do anything to stop it? Or try to take control of it?"

"God, no. Who said anything about Galgala? The kris is being held on Marajo. Was held. Will be? Was."

"On Marajo?"

"Damiano picked his own krisatora. He said he didn't trust the kris that was in session on Galgala, because it was Shandor's."

I groaned. "So it isn't legitimate, the kris?" "As legitimate as anything is."

"No," I said. "It's a kangaroo kris. Damiano's own private kris. What does he want, a civil war? Shandor will simply refuse to accept its jurisdiction."

"The time they brought me up on trial, that was Damiano"s private kris too. That time they collared me for grabbing the Kalimaka ship. You remember? Suppose I had tried to refuse to accept its jurisdiction? Suppose I had said, This isn't a fair trial, this is a kangaroo kris, Damiano's got it in for me. What good would that have done me, hey? Where would that have gotten me?"

"But that was a legitimate kris. That was the great kris of Galgala, for Christ's sake. Its decrees are binding on all of us. This other kris of Damiano, this Marajo kris-what if Shandor says it isn't a true kris, that he's not going to accept its edict?"

"Don't worry. It's all over and done with-" "Not for me it isn't."

"Over and done with," said Valerian dreamily. He was drifting again, hovering sideways in mid-air. Growing transparent now, becoming a blur of bottle-green light up near the ceiling. "That was really bad," he said. "That time they brought me up on trial." I saw that I was starting to lose him. He was beginning to wander further back into the past. The focus was shifting for him. I should never have allowed him to change the subject. Once he started reminiscing about that trial of his, there might be no bringing him back. "That was the worst time ever, for me. I was really suffering. You remember how bad it was, Yakoub?"

He was fingering the golden flecks in the wall in an absentminded way, as if trying to pry some of them loose. He seemed very far away. "Valerian?" I said.

"You remember? I was really suffering."

"Of course I remember. But you deserved it."

He had suffered, all right. Scared out of his wits. Facing absolute ruin, and he knew it. The only time I've ever seen him in such pathetic shape. All the swagger and bluster squeezed out of him. But why bring it all up again now? I had to know about Shandor, about the Imperium, about what was happening behind the golden walls of my cell, and here he was giving me the angst and grief of that long-ago trial of his. The biggest trouble with egocentric people like Valerian is that they can't keep their minds focused on your problems for very long, no matter how urgent they might be.

He was still at it. "The way you all were looking at me-like I was an enemy, a traitor-a Gajo-"

"But you were pardoned," I said. "Look, come down from there, will you? I can't talk to you when you float around like that. " "Realizing you were all serious, that you actually were going to put me on trial. And punish me. I couldn't believe it was happening to me, Yakoub."

"Will you come down?"

"And then everybody testifying against me-my friends, my cousins-"

"Hey, it's all ancient history now, Valerian."

"Is it? Is it?" His voice was very faint. I wondered whether he might be ghosting within a ghosting right now, jumping back to the time of his trial, living through it all again in the moments between moments. I wondered how often he actually did relive it. His big trauma. His ordeal.

Valerian had grabbed one ship too many, that time. The wrong ship. And we had to make him suffer for it. And then I had taken pity on him despite everything. Saving him at the last minute from the worst punishment a Rom could receive.

"Yakoub?" he murmured. "Yakoub, I was afraid, do you know I was actually afraid?"

"I know."

It was hopeless, now, trying to get him to talk about the current affairs of the Kingdom. Or anything else that might matter. I had lost him. I was sure of that.

"Is that when you decided to pardon me? When you saw the fear?" "I thought you had suffered enough," I told him.

"I was really suffering," he said again, very far away. "I was really afraid. Thinking you were all going to cast me out. That I would never hear anyone speak Romany again. Or laugh the way a Rom laughs. You know what I mean, Yakoub? You understand what I'm saying?"

"Of course I understand, Valerian."

He fell silent. He became fainter and fainter. He was almost invisible now, a thin shadow high overhead. I was sure that he was leaving me. I could have killed him. Try killing a ghost. The son of a bitch. Coming here and doing this crazy dance of past and present and future and then bugging out on me without providing me with any real satisfaction. I knew that in another moment he'd be gone, and me no better off than when he had come.

No. Wrong. Suddenly he grew solid again. He swooped down toward me, his feet practically touching the golden floor. Bright green sparks radiated from him. He was crackling with all his old vitality and energy again. We stood face to face, nose to nose. Valerian pressing in hard on me.

The abrupt shift amazed me.

"And you, Yakoub?" he challenged. "Is it your turn now? We were talking about fear, weren't we? My fear, when I was on trial? But now you're the one who's afraid."

He had me off balance, baffled, confused. There was a buzzing in my mind. Valerian was rough around the edges but he could be perceptive just when you least expected it.

"Afraid? Of what?"

"I don't know. Shandor?"

I shook my head. "No. He's never scared me. He doesn't scare me now."

"Good. Just hold on. Keep your courage."

I felt my annoyance with him vanishing in a flash. "Yes. That is what I must do, Valerian."

He said, "And yet there is still fear in you, isn't there?"

Just when I was beginning to love him again, he has to start bothering me some more about my being afraid.

"No," I said, even more annoyed than before. "It isn't so." "I think you do fear something. I see it in your eyes." "Listen, Valerian-"

"I want to help you. Tell me what you fear." "You aren't helping me. You're pestering me."

"I was afraid once. You can be afraid too. It's all right to be afraid, Yakoub. You just have to remember which is the fear and which is Yakoub. The fear can be in you but it mustn't become you."

I turned my back on him and started to count to ten. Ek, dui, trin, chtar, panshBut he kept after me. He was determined to pursue me forever on this thing.

"What do you say to that, Yakoub?"

"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.

One scene recurred again and again. At first it was only fragmentary but then I was able to make it hold, and I entered it to see what it was, where and when I was. Faces drifted past me. Damiano. Valerian. The phuri dai. A row of solemn-faced krisatora sitting in the judgment hall. So I was still on Galgala. But when? They were all much younger, Valerian, Damiano, all of them. Look, there I was myself, sitting in the king's chair, listening to the deliberations. I looked younger too. Not younger in the face, but younger in the eyes.

"I have never knowingly done harm to any Rom in my life," Valerian was saying.

He looked pale, sweaty-faced, frightened. His mustache was drooping. "I ask the court to take it into consideration that my spirit has always been true to the Way. May God rip my tongue from my throat if I have spoken falsehood."

He was squirming like something skewered on a barbed hook. Valerian at his trial, yes. That time long ago, brought up on charges before the great kris.

Everything wavered and for an instant I went wandering away, sliding like a stone on ice into some other epoch in some other quadrant of the galaxy. I think the place where I went may have been Earth, though it could just as easily have been Barma Darma or Duud Shabeel. I pulled myself back. I wanted to watch Valerian's trial.

We had had him but good that time, not for piracy but for unethical mercantile practices. It was all coming back to me as I hovered there, invisible. What he had done was intercept a cargo tanker loaded with belisoogra oil, the stuff used to make the blood-flushing drug essential to the remake process. In a moment of sudden magnanimity Valerian had decided to wipe out the belisoogra cartel by making the whole cargo available in one shot to some drug-brokers on Marajo, instead of dribbling it out over a number of years the way the cartel does. Break the market, he figured, make cheap remakes possible for all the poor folk who can't afford the treatment.

That's Valerian's Robin Hood facet. Comes over him like a fit, sometimes.

I saw Damiano rise, eyes bright with anger and outrage. "This man who says he is our brother, who says that he serves the interests of the Great People-he stands indicted for his greed, but I say we must punish him for his stupidity!" There was laughter. I joined in it myself not my ghost-self that was watching but the other Yakoub who was slouched there in the royal chair. Poor Valerian. "A greedy Rom we can accept," Damiano went on. "Greed is not unusual nor is it entirely to be deplored. But a stupid Rom, my friends-ah, a stupid Rom endangers us all. Should we not chastise such a creature with whips and with scorpions, to teach him a little sense? I ask you!"

Poor Valerian.

He had made one big mistake. Valerian in all his grand magnanimity had unfortunately overlooked the fact that the belisoogra cartel happens to be a Rom operation from top to bottom-one of our greatest mercantile triumphs, in fact. We own the market and that gives us a death-grip on the whole remake industry, though the Gaje don't fully comprehend how important we really are to their continued good health and youthful vigor. In some subliminal way I think they know that we have them by the balls, but we don't go out of our way to call it to their attention. Apparently it had escaped Valerian's attention too.

By shattering the price structure of the belisoogra market that way he had skunked a few thousand of his cousins, bankrupting a surprising number of them who had rashly gone too far out on that particular limb, not expecting one of their own people to cut it off behind them. He had also cost us a lot of good political leverage vis-a-vis the Gaje. It would be years before all the cheap belisoogra he had dumped could be absorbed by demand. I have always been fond of Valerian but this time he had been really dumb, and, as Damiano so eloquently had told the kris, dumbness in a Rom has to be punished. The universe will punish dumbness in anyone, sooner or later, of course. But our position in the universe has always been pretty precarious and we can't afford the luxury of waiting for natural corrective processes to do our work for us.

"I call upon the victims of this man's foolish greed to stand forth and tell the kris of the injuries they have suffered through his unthinking action-"

We had gone through the whole formal traditional procedure. Bayura were brought in against him, the bills of complaint. Then we waited for Valerian to turn up on Galgala-he came for a feast in his honor, all unawares-and he was duly taken into custody and brought up on trial, actually for the first time in his life. The Gaje had never been able to hang anything on him in all his years as a pirate. But we did. Damiano himself was the krisatori o baro, the chief judge, and Damiano was out for blood. He could easily have been an injured member of the belisoogra cartel himself, he was so fierce and angry. Not that anyone seriously accused him of that. We are a civilized people, after all. Still, Damiano has a real dislike of losing money and he probably wouldn't have seen any particular conflict of interest in sitting as judge over the man who had done it to him.

I drifted through the judgement hall, keeping myself invisible. Once I saw myself look up at the place where I hovered, and I wondered if I was seeing me. I couldn't remember.

What I did remember was that the trial had started badly for Valerian and gone downhill all the way. He swore mighty oaths that his intent had been purely humanitarian, which in this instance may actually have been true.

But he had a cost a lot of Rom a lot of money, all the same. He offered to pay it back. Well, that sounded good. But Damiano kept hammering away. What about the weakening of our position among the Gaje by the breaking of our belisoogra monopoly? How did the defendant plan to reimburse for that? The krisatora nodded and murmured. Everyone loved Valerian but he had plenty of enemies too, and many of them were the same ones who loved him. In the course of piracies past he had done more than a little injury to various Rom merchants, all in the same casual and almost accidental way. The krisatora very clearly were out to get him. He knew it and so did everyone else.

Now came the solakh, the final interrogations and the sentencing. Valerian was somber and subdued. He knew what was coming. And what was coming was terrible. We were going to cast him from our midst. To proclaim him marhime, unclean. To call down the wrath of all Rom past and present, alive and dead, upon anyone who had any further dealings with him. Which would not only have deprived him of the comforts of his family, of the whole grand kumpania of the Rom, but would also have stripped him of his crew and his livelihood, and left him exposed to the vengeance of the Gaje, who had been trying to get their hands on him for a very long time indeed. And then for Valerian there would never be any voyages to Romany Star.

Like a wraith I floated over the heads of the krisatora as they moved toward their verdict. I paused above Yakoub the king. The king looked bored. The king was bored. Trials like this had always wearied me; it was a part of the job I would gladly have handed off to someone else. The endless medieval taking of oaths and crying out of curses upon would-be perjurers, the interminable trotting forth of evidence, the vast outpourings of woe and sweat and anguish and complaining-I saw the virtue and importance of it all. And I hated it. But nevertheless I did my duty. I have a great sense of duty. But that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it.

I made myself visible for only a moment, and only to my earlier self. "Be merciful," I whispered. And winked. And went skittering off again in a ghost-ricochet to God knows where at the far end of time and the far end of the galaxy. When I knew where I was again I was back in my cell, sitting quietly on my couch hearing Valerian's voice in my mind for the eighty thousandth time, saying, I've seen the burned hills. I've seen the melted valleys.

The verdict on Valerian was guilty and the sentence was absolute expulsion from the Romany people. Cut off, cast out, excommunicated. Unlawful now for any Rom to speak a word to him, even his mother, even his brother, on pain of the same penalty. Whatever he touched would be deemed unclean and must be destroyed, whatever its value. In other words the complete cataclysm; the fullest punishment of our Law in all its ancient and apocalyptic severity. In due course the decree of the kris came to me for review, and, as I suspect everyone involved except perhaps Damiano was really hoping I would do, I found it far too severe, and voided it. Instead I ordered Valerian to make a huge restitution payment and a ceremonial act of penance, instructed him to keep his hands off Rom vessels for the rest of his natural or unnatural days, and sent him off, shaken and sobered and officially rehabilitated and eternally grateful to me, to continue his piratical ways in the spacelanes. Damiano gave me a hard time about my leniency. "That slippery bastard needed a good lesson," he said. And said it again and again in case I hadn't heard the first time.

"He's had one."

"Not good enough. He's going to go right on thinking it's safe to do whatever he damned pleases. He'll just try harder not to get caught again, that's all."

"Isn't that what everyone does?" "You shock me, cousin."

"Do I? Do I really, cousin?"

Damiano had to yield, of course. I was king, as I reminded him two or three times, and he went away grumbling. Later on he and Valerian made peace with each other and Damiano even invested in some of Valerian's ventures, which is so perfectly in character for Damiano that I could have hugged him for it. Of course Damiano was right that Valerian would go on believing he could do whatever he felt like, so long as he took care not to get caught. And so he has.

I've held the ashes of Romany Star in my hands, Yakoub. Did I dare believe him? Did I dare not to?

THEN SHANDOR CAME STORMING IN, HIS FIRST VISIT TO me in a very long time, and distracted me. He was so lit up I would almost have thought it was Shandor's ghost coming in, all sparks and crackles and hums. But both his feet were on the floor and the sparks were metaphorical, not electrical.

He was enraged and practically incoherent. He paced up and down, back and forth, sputtering and twitching. Despite his recent remake he looked like an old man, this firstborn son of mine. I took real malicious pleasure in seeing how gray his skin was, how sharp his nose was getting, how rounded his shoulders. This babe that I had bounced on my knee only a hundred years ago, give or take ten or twenty.

He was burning up. He was consuming himself. He was the candle that was all flame from tip to tip.

That is a thing the Lowara Rom like to say: "A candle is all flame from tip to tip." In other words a candle is supposed to burn, and the thing to do is to let it burn, to let the tallow be translated into the flame that is the candle's true destiny. It is an argument against thrift. Polarca lives that way: he sets nothing by for the future, but burns and blazes all the time. He is lavish and generous to the point of craziness; but he does burn brightly.

Among us Kalderash the same saying has a different shade of meaning. Which is that when you merrily let your candle burn from end to end it gives you much warmth and light, but eventually it is consumed and then you are left in darkness. Therefore burn what you need, but nothing more. Especially when the candle that you burn is yourself. Shandor, it seemed, was wasting himself in the fervor of his rage.

It was quite a performance. I watched in amazement. I doubt that I could have done better. Finally he got himself enough under control to speak words that made sense, but even so they came out in a thicktongued frantic way. "One last chance, God damn you!" he thundered.

"I can be merciful if that's what I have to be. I'll give you goddamned mercy, you cagy old bastard. But you have to cooperate. You have to cooperate! Or I'll finish you."

"Finish me how?"

"Finish you! Don't ask me. Just don't ask!"

"You don't look good, Shandor. Are you sleeping well these days?" "I'm going to hold a coronation."

"Are you, now?"

"Stop talking to me in that patronizing tone of voice!"

"I'm trying to hold up my end of the conversation, that's all. I was inquiring about your health. There are things you could take. Water from nine places, you know that one? You'll need a drabarni to throw charcoal embers in it first. Maybe Bibi Savina would do it for you. And then there's bear's grease-you could send to Marajo for some, I think Damiano keeps bears there-eye of crayfish, powdered cantharis beetle-"

"I'll cut your tongue out if you don't shut up." "The merciful Shandor, yes."

"There will be a coronation," he said, forcing the words out as though they were teeth bursting through his lips. "A nine-world ceremony, first here on Galgala, then Xamur, Iriarte, Nabomba Zom, Clard Msat-"

"You may have trouble with part of that. I understand that for some reason the starships aren't landing on Iriarte or Clard Msat these days." (6

- and after the rite has been sanctified on all nine of the kingly planets, you and I will go to the Capital and present ourselves before the emperor to receive confirmation."

"Confirmation of what?"

"My title to the throne. The legality of my succession."

"You still want to be king, Shandor? Give it up. It's a dreadful job." "On each of the nine kingly planets you will stand beside me as the phuri dai puts the seal of office over me-"

"I will?"

"The passing of the mantle. The transfer of authority. You will do it freely and joyfully."

"I would freely and joyfully spend ten years in the tunnels of Alta Hannalanna first. "

"It wouldn't be a big problem for me to send you there." "You'd do it, too."

"I could. Maybe you'd prefer Gran Chingada? Megalo Kastro, in the mines? Trinigalee Chase?"

"That's the best you can do? Trinigalee Chase?"

"I can send you anywhere. How about Mentiroso again? I can really make you suffer, Yakoub."

"And make yourself even more beloved throughout the Rom worlds than you are already."

"Damn you, Yakoub-"

"Threaten me some more, my son. This is the best exercise I've had in months."

"There's war out there, do you know that? Rom turning against Rom. Whole kumpanias splitting in two over the issue of the kingship. And you are responsible."

"I am?"

"By trying to reclaim the throne. By trying to displace a king legitimately chosen and anointed."

"Pot calls kettle black."

He was looking more apoplectic by the moment. I had a quick satisfying fantasy of goading him into a stroke right here in my cell. But no, Shandor would never be so obliging. He went ranting on about this coronation he was going to stage, in which I would stand by beaming benignly while he put my crown on his head. Pig's eye, I would. Preposterous notion. But give me full credit: I didn't for a moment get angry. Here stood my own firstborn son going straight for the Freudian jugular and I listened to him amiably, interjecting a bit of easy banter whenever he paused for breath. I even told him about Freud. He hadn't heard of him, obviously. Ancient Gaje philosopher, said I. I reached into my anthropological storehouse and pulled out Uranus and Cronos, Cronos and Zeus, David and Absalom, and one or two other famous father-and-son goodies. I threw in Lear and his daughters, too, though that story wasn't entirely appropriate to the situation. Close enough, though. "Is that what you want?" I asked. "To reduce me to a mere archetype? How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!"

"What are you talking about?" said Shandor. "You crazy old bastard!"

I smiled sweetly. In the end the stalemate still stood; I remained his prisoner, he remained in questionable possession of a shaky throne. He got red in the face and went back to muttering threats. Mentiroso, he said again. Alta Hannalanna. He waved Trinigalee Chase before my nose again too. He might have gotten me to give in, if he really had tried to ship me off to Trinigalee Chase. A good thing I had never told anyone how much I loathed that place, or why, a policy that I intend to continue to honor until the end of my days.

In the face of Shandor's threats I kept calm and cool. He was furious. I grew wary of pushing him any harder. There comes a point with any enemy where you can get him angry enough to act against his own self-interest, and then you're really in trouble. If Shandor did away with me in a fit of rage, it would really foul up his position among the Rom; but even so, I'd be dead. As I had pointed out on Xamur to Valerian, I could be useful even as a martyr. Still and all, that wasn't my first choice. It wasn't even high on my list.

He went away, eventually, muttering and cursing. Something was going to happen now, of that I was certain. Sticking me in that damp rat-infested oubliette hadn't accomplished anything for him and nothing better had come of letting me sit here in this gilded cage. I had done a lot of waiting in my life and Shandor was beginning to see that I was capable of doing a great deal more. He had expected me simply to come around after a time and put my blessing on his kingship, but it hadn't happened, and now, I suspected, he was reaching the limits of his patience. He might very well start in on me now with some more active form of persuasion. Torture? Brainburning? Little softening-up trips to some of the uglier worlds of the galaxy?

Be prepared for the worst, I told myself. Something is going to happen.

Something happened, all right. The very next day when the robots brought me my dinner I found a grilled fish on my plate, swimming in a delicate creamy sauce. After months of mush and gruel, a grilled fish in a fancy sauce? This is Shandor's idea of torture? With it came elegant little potato puffs, thin brown crusts enclosing globes of air, and some kind of long bluish beans in a pungent and subtle gravy. A beaker of wine on the side, nicely chilled, and a crisp little loaf of bread.

There had to be a catch. Maybe this stuff is poisoned, and he figures I'll fall upon it with such greed that I won't even notice the faint trace of cyanide that it's laced with, right? For perhaps five minutes I sat there staring miserably at that beautiful food, afraid to touch it. Then I realized that I was very hungry and that I could die of starvation just as easily as I could from cyanide poisoning. If I passed up this lovely meal I might be passing up the cyanide, if there was any cyanide, but

I'd also be passing up this lovely meal, and either way I'd be dead before too long. So I took a gingerly nibble. Ecstasy! If Shandor had had my meal poisoned, it was at least a delicious poison. I waited and nothing sinister happened. Another nibble. Another. What the hell, I thought, this food is too good to be lethal. And I went at it with gusto.

I had lived on Shandor's prison garbage so long that my stomach nearly rebelled at cuisine of such extraordinary caliber. It was all I could do to keep the first few mouthfuls down. But I gave it a good fight, and I won. The bread and the wine helped. And after a while it became a lot easier. When I went to sleep that night-still wondering vaguely whether I'd been poisoned-I spent my last few moments of wakefulness brooding over the significance of Shandor's strange gesture. It made no sense. I hate things that make no sense. If he wasn't trying to poison me in some crazy roundabout way, did he seriously think he could bribe me into cooperating by feeding me fancy dinners?

Of course not. I decided that it must have been somebody else's dinner, delivered to me by mistake. A malfunction of the serving robots. Off I went to sleep.

And woke, unpoisoned, to find that the robots had brought me breakfast. Two crisp crescent-shaped rolls of surpassingly fine texture, a flask of coffee that was close to ambrosia, and a little plate of mild white cheese and assorted local fruits glittering with tiny flecks of gold. I was baffled.

To my shame it was another day and a half before I stopped eating long enough to figure things out. Help is on the way. Polarca had told me, early in my imprisonment. When it gets here, you 71 know it. The clue will be right on the plate in front of you.

What kind of food was it that these demented robots had suddenly begun to bring me? Why, it was French food. And who did I know whose great passion it was to cook in the classic French manner? Why, Julien de Gramont, pretender to the throne of France and special adjunct to his lordship Periandros of the imperial court. Yes. Of course.

Somehow Julien had infiltrated this place and he was preparing superb meals for me that were actually intended as messages. What all these cassoulets and ragouts and terrines and sautes were meant to tell me, these mousses and aspics and souffles, was that I had friends on the premises. And help would shortly be on the way.