Star of Gypsies

7. The Sixteenth Emperor

We start out stupid. All we have at the beginning is the built-in wisdom of the body, which tells us which end to eat with and which end to shit with and not much more. But we are put here to do battle with entropy, and entropy equals stupidity. Therefore we are obliged to learn. Our job is to process information and gain control of it: that is to say, to grow wiser as we go along.

If I am just as stupid when I am twenty as I was when I was two, if I am just as stupid when I am a hundred as I was when I was fifty, then I am not doing my job. I am occupying space and time to no purpose, and I might just as well have been a lump of rock.

Of course, a time comes when even the wisest of men stops growing wise and starts getting stupid again. It may take two hundred years for that to happen to him, but it will happen. I am reconciled to the inevitability of that, I think. All that means is that entropy wins in the end, which we knew all along. No matter. The fact that we're fighting a losing battle does not excuse us from fighting it. The great human achievement is to postpone the moment of defeat as long as possible.

WHAT I DIDN'T KNOW WAS THAT THE IMPERIUM HAD undergone some major changes. The old emperor had finally died-without naming his successor-and the three high lords were making their moves. So there was chaos now among the Gaje as well as the Rom.

Tucked away in my cozy cell I didn't hear anything about any of this. My only visitors now were the silent robots that continued to bring me ever more elaborate meals. I didn't even get any ghosts. Instead of news from the outside, what I got was supremes de volaille, noisettes d'agneau, grenadins de boeuf. My waistline was spreading wildly. Meanwhile, beyond the walls of my prison, the whole precariously balanced structure that had held the human race together during the thousand years of expansion into the galaxy was falling apart in one great triumphant burst of greed and stupidity.

Imagine! Kings and emperors, here in the thirty-second century! As though we were living in the middle ages. Pomp and circumstance, fanfares and panoplies. Crowns and scepters. Wars of succession. It sounds childish, doesn't it? But what system, I ask you, would have worked better? Democracy? A parliament of worlds? Don't make me laugh. That stuff works well enough on a small scale, maybe. Within a single country, say. You'll notice that Earth in its time never managed to get representative democracy going on so much as one entire continent at any one time, let alone the whole planet. So how could it be achieved on a galactic scale? We buzz around pretty spectacularly in our faster-than-light starships, but communication between solar systems still has built-in lags. The parliament would always be six weeks behind the times in knowing what was going on. The galactic president wouldn't have a clue. And there are hundreds of inhabited worlds, right? Thousands. You'd need a parliament building half the size of a city to house all the delegates. Imagine the babble and yatter. What you need is a symbolic figure, a kind of animated flag to hold all the worlds together. We knew what we were doing when we revived monarchy. Of course this really isn't the middle ages, and the monarchy we set up isn't really much like the ancient ones. What the emperor is, basically, is a message that is sent simultaneously to all the worlds of the galaxy. His very existence says, We are human, we are members of one family. The emperor is like a poem, if you take my meaning. When he speaks, you may not understand the literal sense of what he might say, but you get the impact on some other level.

What's that you're saying? Why bother trying to hold the fabric of the worlds together at all? Why not simply let each planet live in blessed isolation, wrapped in its snug blanket of light-years? And do without the whole intricate and costly structure of the Imperium entirely?

Now that's a medieval concept if ever I heard one. And even in old medieval Earth it wasn't possible to make it work, though they certainly tried. There was no way for any nation to keep aloof from other nations for long. Weak ones that attempted it inevitably wound up being subjugated in one way or another. Strong ones might make isolationist policies stick for a time, but sooner or later they'd become inbred and decadent and start to slide into a dismal irreversible decline. Only when the Earth folk accepted some notion of their interdependence did they begin to attain something like civilization. As the ancient Gaje poet said, No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod is washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. Exactly. Europe was one of their most famous continents, a small one but very important. The same poet went on to say, Any man's death diminishes me. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Yes indeed. It is the same for nations. And it is the same for worlds.

Now we have gone sprawling and brawling out into the stars, filling the many worlds with ourselves and with the beasts of lost dead Earth that we brought with us for company, cows and horses and snakes and toads. We have spread like an unstoppable tide across a universe that probably regarded itself as perfectly satisfactory without us, and we have overwhelmed great sectors of it. And yet, and yet, for all our tremendous outward spill we are nothing but a thin dark thread lying across the Milky Way. If any of us were to try to stand alone, he would be lost. So we reach out-we who are just so many scattered beads bobbing on this great ocean of night, if you don't mind my changing metaphors on you, and if a king can't switch metaphors I'd like to know who can-and we try to maintain connection with one another. And that is why there is an Imperium; and that is why there is an emperor; and that is why when the emperor dies we all stand at the brink of chaos.

You may have noticed that in venting all this passion upon you I did not stop to draw distinctions between Gaje and Rom. Indeed. We have our differences, yes-how great those differences are, the Gaje don't begin to suspect!-but we have our great similarities too, and I never allow myself to forget that, either. They are human and we are human. This ocean in which we drift is very wide and we are very small; and all of us need whatever allies we can find. The Gajo is the enemy, yes: so we are taught from childhood. But the Gajo is also the only friend. It is a very perplexing business. Most important matters in life are like that. We Rom have kept ourselves apart, an island in the vast Gaje sea, for if we had not done that we would have been lost; and yet we have joined hands with them also, as much as is possible, for if we had not done that we would also have been lost. We are a Kingdom outside the Imperium, but we are of the Imperium as well. That is not easy to understand. It was not easy to achieve, either. But I tell you this, that the death of the Gaje emperor diminishes us all, even us Rom. No man is an island.

I HEARD RUMBLES AND DISTURBANCES WITHIN THE building. Maybe they were moving furniture, maybe they were tearing down walls: I had no way of telling. The noise continued for a day and a half and it began to sound like something more serious than sliding couches around. But for me, in my isolation, it was just one more day and a half of gluttony: fantastic sauces and creamy desserts and glittering wines. A culminating orgy of fantastic food, as it turned out. On the evening of the second day I got no dinner at all. The robots failed to show up, and the noise outside grew much louder. Now I was certain that something serious had to be going on.

My first inkling of the truth came when I heard footsteps in the hallway, the sound of running feet. Then shouts and alarums, a siren or two, the unmistakable hissing of imploder fire, the dull boom of heavier artillery. I put my ear to the door. There was fighting going on out there, yes, but who was fighting whom? I couldn't tell a thing. At first I thought that Polarca or Valerian had arrived with an army of Rom loyalists to overthrow Shandor and set me free. God save me from that. If I had wanted to push Shandor aside by force, I would have tried it long ago instead of going through this whole elaborate charade. Rom should not lift hands against Rom.

But if this was a Rom invasion, what was Julien de Gramont doing mixed up in it? Obviously it was Julien who had been preparing my meals these past weeks; no one else would have had the skill. Perhaps it was Julien who had opened the gates to let the invaders in. He and Polarca were well acquainted: old whorehouse buddies on many worlds, in fact. Had they concocted some sort of alliance? Why? They seemed like odd allies. Julien was sympathetic to all things Rom but essentially he was the creature of Lord Periandros. Polarca had no use for any of the lords of the Imperium.

I have never wished so profoundly that it could be possible to ghost forward in time as I did at that moment. Only five minutes, or maybe ten: just enough for me to find out what in the name of the Devil was going on in the house of power of the King of the Gypsies. But all I could do was stand with my ear to the door of my chamber and guess madly at ungodly alliances and conspiracies.

Then the door burst open and five armed troops in the pale green uniform of the Imperial Guard came rushing in.

They were native of Sidri Akrak. I saw that right away, in their blank emotionless Akraki eyes and their glum downturned Akraki mouths and the stiff-jointed tight-assed Akraki way that they moved. But in case those hints weren't enough, they were wearing splashy armbands emblazoned with the garis vertical stripes of the Akraki flag and a big scarlet monogrammed P. For Periandros, of course.

The officer in command-she had the epaulet of a phalangarius on her shoulder-strode up to me and said in that brusque flat way of theirs, "What is your name?"

"Yakoub." I smiled. "Rom baro. Rex Romaniorum." "Yakoub what?"

"King of the Romany people."

The five Akrakikan exchanged solemn glances. "You assert that you are the Rom king?"

"I do so assert, yea and verily."

"Is this so? Demonstrate your identity."

"I don't seem to have my papers with me. As a matter of fact, I happen to be a prisoner in this place. If you don't believe I am who I say I am, I suggest you call in any Rom you can find and ask him my name." r subordinates. "Find a Rom," The phalangarius gestured to one of he she said. "Bring him here. We will ask him this man's name."

I could still hear explosions in the distant reaches of the building. "While we're waiting," I said, "would you mind telling me who you are and what's happening around here?"

She gave me a sour look, as close to an expression as an Akraki is capable of mustering. She scarcely looked human to me. She didn't look, much like a woman, either, with that close-cropped hair of hers and her stiff Akraki movements. Only the barest hint of breasts beneath the uniform provided any clue to her sex. That she was human I would have to take on faith.

"I will interrogate you. You will not interrogate me." "Am I right, at least, that you're imperial guards?"

"We serve the Sixteenth Emperor," she was kind enough to reveal. "The Sixteenth?" I gasped. I wasn't prepared for that. "But when-how-who-'

"You knew him formerly as Lord Periandros."

I blinked and caught my breath. So it was all over, then? The struggle for the throne that we had dreaded for so long had taken place while I lay stashed away in here, and somehow little tight-assed Periandros had emerged as emperor?

What a jolt it was. The whole grand apocalyptic galacto-political drama had been played out so quickly. And behind my back. Me not even on the scene to cheer the heroes and boo the villains. Or maybe cheer the villains and boo the heroes. I had missed all the excitement. I felt left out.

But of course I was jumping to conclusions-and not the right ones. The struggle for the throne wasn't over at all. It was just beginning, though I had no way of knowing that then.

I brimmed with questions. How had Periandros managed to shove Sunteil out of the way? What had happened to Naria? Why were there imperial troops in the Rom house of power? Where was Shandor? Where was the Duc de Gramont? But I would have done about as well asking questions of my own elbow as I did trying to get information from this blank-eyed Akraki. She stood there looking at me in complete indifference, as though I were some dusty moth-eaten relic that had been stored in this room for the last five hundred years, some old overcoat, some pile of discarded rags. Meanwhile her companions were searching through my few pitiful possessions in a sluggish but methodical way, hunting for God knows what cache of hidden weapons, or perhaps the manuscript of some scandalous memoir. It seemed like forever before the one who had gone in search of a Rom to identify me returned.

When he did return, though, he was accompanied not by a Rom but by the Duc de Gramont.

"Mon ami!" Julie cried. "Sacre bleu! Ah, j'en suis fort content! Comment ca va?",

With enormous passion and verve. With the kiss on both cheeks, with the joyous clapping of hands against my shoulders, with the whole great Gallic embrace. And then turning to the five Akrakikan, gesticulating vehemently at them with both his hands as if they were so much vermin.

"Out of here, you! Out! Vite! Vite! Salauds! Crapauds! Bon Dieu de merde, out, out, out!"

The phalangarius stared at him in disbelief. "Our orders are to guard this man until-"

"Your orders are to get out. Vite! Vite! You miserable ernmerdeuse, je l'emmerde on your orders! Out! Fast!"

I thought he would throw her out bodily. But that turned out not to be necessary. He simply drove her from the room with thunderous fusillades of obscene outrage in a wild mixture of Imperial and French and even a little Romany. "Va te faire chier!" he cried. "Fuck off, hideous lesbian bitch! Kurav tu ando mul!"

The Akraki fled, taking her astounded subordinates with her. I collapsed on my couch. I thought I would have my death of laughter, right then and there. It was a long time before I could speak.

"You know what that means?" I said. "Kurav tu ando mul?" "Of course I know what it means," said Julien with immense hauteur. 'I defile your mouth,' is what it means. The pity of it is that she does not know what it means." He shut the door of my cell, taking care not to lock us in, and crossed the room to sit beside me. "Ah, mon vieux, so much has happened, so very much! You know I have been on Galgala these many weeks now? Secretly employed in this very building?"

"The meals they were bringing me had your signature all over them." "I hoped you would realize that. I would have sent you a note, but I thought the risks were too great. If Shandor somehow had discovered my true identity-ah, it was dangerous enough simply preparing such meals for you. But to the robots it was all the same, rat stew or jambon au Bourgogne en croute, so I could play my little game. Ah, Yakoub, Yakoub!"

"Is Periandros the emperor now?" "You know that, then?"

"The phalangarius told me so. But that's all I know. I need to have all the rest of the news. What's been going on here? I've been hearing sounds of fighting for hours."

"It was the decision of Lord Periandros to rescue you from this captivity," said Julien. "This in the final days of the life of the Fifteenth. As the emperor lay dying, the Lord Periandros saw the turmoil that would surely ensue if an imperial succession took place at a time when the Rom kingship was in the hands of a person so volatile, so unpredictable, as your son Shandor. You will recall, mon ami, that I hinted at this when I visited you on that world of ice. But you were adamant in your wish to retire from the fray. Nothing I could say would move you to return to the Imperium at that time, although I see that you did later change your mind, for reasons that I do not know."

"Damiano came to me right after you and told me that Shandor had made himself king. It wasn't ever my intention to clear a path to the throne for Shandor, of all people. So I came back." I could hear a fresh round of gunfire, seemingly not far away. Julien seemed untroubled by it. "Where is Shandor now?" I asked.

"He has fled with his bodyguard to another part of the Aureus Highlands. We took him utterly by surprise when we struck. Very gradually did we move our troops into position surrounding the royal compound and he was not in any way prepared."

"Akrakikan troops only?"

"Yes," said Julien quietly. "We could take no chances." "No thought was given to having Rom in the rescue party?" "This was an imperial mission, cher ami. And I know that you have an aversion to the spilling of Rom blood by Rom hands. The invading troops were entirely Akrakikan, of Lord Periandros' personal force. "And Rom blood was spilled, then?"

Julien studied me a moment. "Evidently there are Rom who are loyal to your son, Yakoub. God knows why that should be, but it was the case. In any event one usually does not invade a royal palace without encountering staunch defense. Please understand that we held the casualties to a minimum."

A minimum, yes. But that meant some. Bleak news. I sighed.

"Those who guarded your son were informed that the new emperor did not recognize him as king. They were offered a chance to lay down their weapons peacefully. Many of them did."

"Some did not."

"Some did not," Julien said.

"Well, so be it," I said after a time. "They were serving the wrong man. Who does Periandros recognize as king? Me?"

"He will. You will be taken to the Capital and there will be a ceremony of reconsecration. I think it will be necessary for you to have the decree of the great kris also, will it not? But that can be managed. I have spoken with Damiano and with Polarca. You will be king again, Yakoub. I ask only this, that this time you do not amuse yourself with another abdication. "

"The abdication was a carefully considered gesture," I said. "It's not one I'll need to make a second time." I was still for a moment, considering the things Julien had told me. Something seemed off key, but in the rush and flow of our conversation I had not noticed it at first. Now it returned to trouble me. "Wait a moment," I said. "You told me that the rescue mission was an imperial enterprise, Julien. But you also said that Periandros had decided on it while the old emperor was still alive. And that he had sent his own soldiers to carry out the job. The whole thing sounds more like a private project of Periandros' than any sort of governmental action. Which was it? He wasn't emperor yet when you came here, was he?"

"No," said Julien.

"Why rescue me, then? So that in my gratitude I'd support his claim to the throne?"

"Oh, Yakoub, Yakoub-"

"That's it, isn't it? But what if I didn't want to be rescued? Did Polarca happen to tell you that I put myself into Shandor's hands voluntarily? That I had political objectives of my own to gain by letting him imprison me? And I told you when you came to Mulano that I wasn't going to take any public position favoring Periandros' claim to the throne. "

"The Lord Periandros is emperor now, Yakoub."

"So the Fifteenth did manage to name a successor after all?" Julien shook his head. "No."

"Then how did Periandros become emperor? What happened to Sunteil? To Naria?"

Julien looked uncomfortable. He was too much the diplomat to let himself be seen squirming, but he must have been squirming desperately within.

"At the time of the Fifteenth's death," Julien said in a strangely remote way, "the Lord Sunteil had gone to the Haj Qaldun system to investigate certain disturbances on Fenix and, I think, Shaitan. As for the Lord Naria, he also was occupied at that time by matters of pressing importance on his own native world, which as you know is Vietoris."

I felt very somber now. My dear old friend Julien, who had sold himself long ago to Periandros, was here to try to buy me too. Quid pro quo, Periandros sets me free and I give my allegiance to him and he recognizes me as undisputed king. One quid, two quos, and none of them any good.

"It was a coup d'etat, then?" I asked. "The other two were away, and Periandros simply grabbed the throne?"

"The peers of the Imperium have confirmed his election."

"The same way the great kris of Galgala confirmed the election of Shandor as king?"

"Yakoub, mon cher, mon ami, I beg you-"

"Go on," I said, as he fell silent. "You beg me what?"

"We spoke of these matters on-what is that world's name, the icy one?-on Mulano. When there is a vacuum in the body politic, disruptive forces are set loose. Your own absence from the Rom throne and the apparent usurpation of Shandor, followed by your sudden return from retirement and your imprisonment here, had already loosed one set of disruptions in the Imperium. The death of the Fifteenth threatened to make matters catastrophically worse. In the judgment of the Lord Periandros the stability of the Imperium would have been in jeopardy had he not acted swiftly and decisively."

"And Sunteil? Naria? They've both acquiesced in Periandros' swift and decisive act?"

For a moment, only for a moment, Julien's eyes were no longer meeting mine. That momentary flicker of weakness was the most damning revelation of all.

"Not precisely," he said. "Not precisely?"

"In fact, not at all." "Neither of them?" "Neither one."

"They both claim the throne?"

Julien nodded. I thought he would burst into tears.

"So we have not only a Sixteenth, but a Seventeenth and an Eighteenth as well? All at the same time?"

"No, mon ami. There is only a Sixteenth."

"But we don't know which one of the three he is?" "The emperor is the former Lord Periandros, Yakoub."

"So you say. Because you've been on retainer from Periandros since the year six. But is his claim any better than Naria's or Sunteil's?" "He is in possession of the Capital."

"Nine tenths of the law, eh? Well, Shandor was in possession of our capital until you threw him out. What if Sunteil invades the Capital the same way?"

Julien was squirming now. A little muscle was flickering in his elegant Gallic cheek.

"Or both of them?" I suggested. "Striking a deal. Flipping a coin, heads I'm emperor, tails it's you, let's both throw Periandros out. What then?"

"These are terrible times, Yakoub." "Indeed they are."

"The emperor wishes to help you because he knows that you can help him, yes. We are entering a season of chaos and flame. You and the emperor, standing together, could prevent the worst of it from happening. 11

"So we could, perhaps. But it would be the same if I allied myself with Sunteil or Naria."

"They did not rescue you, Yakoub. And they are not at the Capital now. Believe me, Yakoub: the Lord Periandros is emperor. However it was accomplished, it is the reality. Sunteil and Naria are insurgents. They mean to lead insurrections against the reigning emperor. If you throw in your lot with one or the other of them, Yakoub, you are not preventing chaos, you are in fact increasing it."

"And if I prefer Sunteil? Or Naria?"

"Why should you? You dislike them both. I know that."

"I have nothing good to say about Naria, true. Sunteil is a different matter."

"You can find something good to say about that Fenixi?"

"He's tricky and dangerous, yes. But he has charm. Periandros is absolutely devoid of charm, Julien. You must know that yourself." "Charm is not the primary quality we seek in an emperor."

"But as king I'll have to deal with the emperor all the time. Do I want to deal with someone stiff and dull and humorless and heavyhanded when I could be crossing swords with the playful Sunteil?" "You are being frivolous, Yakoub."

"I am a frivolous man."

"You are the least frivolous man in this galaxy!" he cried, with an angry force and a vigor I hadn't heard from him in a long while. "And this is foolishness. Periandros has made himself emperor. All right: he is emperor, like it or not. The other two are rebels. The emperor has given you your freedom and offers to support you in the schism within the Rom. You can accept or reject as you please. But if you choose to reach your hand toward one of the rebels you will destroy what little stability the Imperium has managed to attain in these difficult days. And you may find that the emperor, in his effort to rebuild that stability, will choose to reach his hand toward someone else."

"You mean Shandor? Is that a threat, Julien?"

"It is the statement of a realistic man, nothing more." "It sounds like a threat."

"I am your friend, Yakoub. You know that. How long has it been for us, since the old days on Iriarte? When you were a discoverer of planets for your wife's kumpania and I was the company dispatcher? I was there when you married Esmeralda, was I not? When they gave you the bread and the salt, who stood beside you? And when Shandor was born, who was it you asked to be the godfather? And me not even a Rom; but you wanted me, and I would have done it if her father had allowed it. Have you forgotten all that?"

"I have forgotten nothing," I told him. "Nevertheless, you have a strange loyalty to Periandros."

"Not so strange. There's mutual respect there. You underestimate that man because you find the Akraki style not to your liking."

"He recognizes you as King of France, is that it?"

Color flared in Julien's cheeks and he seemed close to bursting into tears of rage.

"What does that have to do with anything?"'

"France, I think sometimes, is more important to you than any place in the universe that still exists."

He calmed himself. It took some effort. "You will never understand what France is to me. It is like your Romany Star, Yakoub: the great lost place, the only true mother. Why is that so hard for you to comprehend?"

So he knew of Romany Star? That startled me. I had never heard that name on Gaje lips before. Obviously Julien had been paying closer attention to the private words of his Rom friends than any of us suspected. It troubled me, his knowing. But I didn't feel like dealing with that question now.

In annoyance I said, "Romany Star still exists. Someday we'll return there. But your France-"

"Ah, so that is the distinction, Yakoub? Your fantasy is real and mine is not, you mean?"

"Fantas y "I beg you, mon ami, let us not cloud the discussion with these side issues-" "You think Romany Star is a myth? A fable?"

He made a sweeping gesture with his hands. "N'importe, mon cher. That does not matter. Let us put this debate aside, for the moment. For the moment, Yakoub. You say that my loyalty to Periandros is strange, that it is somehow linked to his recognizing my claim to my own ancient throne. In fact he cares nothing at all about my claim. He cares only for the Imperium. I am loyal to him, to use your word, because I think he is the proper one to rule. As I also think that you, you are the proper one to rule, eh, Yakoub? Bien. Enough of this talk, mon cher. Come out of this prison room of yours, now. The palace is yours, this house of power. We restore it to you. Shandor is gone. Take your seat upon your throne, and I will prepare one more meal for you, in celebration. And then I wish you to think of all we have said. And then I hope you will come with me to the Capital, and present yourself before our new emperor. D'accord? Eh? Eh, mon ami? Think on these things. Only think, Yakoub."

THIS TIME HE OUTDID HIMSELF WITH THE BANQUET I could not begin to list all the delicacies and the worlds from which they came, or the rare wines, or the sensations that they aroused in me. Wherever Julien goes, he fills the surrounding dimensions with enough stored delights to dazzle a dozen gourmets, and this night he decanted them all for me. If I could have been persuaded by food alone, Periandros would have had my allegiance without a qualm.

But first I had to think, yes. And there was so much to think about. The death of the old Fifteenth, for one. Any man's death diminishes me, et cetera. But this one hit me especially hard. My colleague. My contemporary, more or less. A huge chunk of the past carved away. I had worked long and well with the Fifteenth. A comforting familiar presence, my counterpart, my opposite royal self And now gone.

In effect he'd been dead for years, of course, ever since he had begun his long slow decline into indifference and incoherence. Sunteil had been the real emperor for the last few of those years, I knew. (A lot of good that had done Sunteil, when the actual moment of succession was at hand. Obviously that wily man had made some fatal slip in his planning.) But being dead in effect is one thing and being literally dead is altogether another. Now that the loss was final I felt it suddenly and sharply.

A man of Ensalada Verde, he was. That gives you a measure of his quality right there: that he came from a nowhere world like that and still was able to climb right to the summit of the Imperium. All the other emperors have been men of the great metropolitan Gaje planets - Olympus, Copperfield, Malebolge, Ragnarok, teeming places with plenty of political clout-except for the Sixth and Ninth, who weren't men at all. But even those two, the two empresses regnant, came from major worlds. And then there was the Fifteenth, from his little unspoiled backwater planet that had maybe a billion people at most. He had actually been born a shepherd. But didn't stay a shepherd for long. Not him.

Flashes of the distant past ghost me. Myself arriving at the Capital, the hub of the galaxy, that world that has no real name and needs none. I am the newly elected king. He has been emperor six, seven, ten years. Enough time to get used to the grandeur and the silliness of it all. There are the crystalline steps, stretching up and up and up to the throneplatform. There sits the Fifteenth with his high lords beside him.

Fanfare of trumpets. The sound is sky-splitting: I expect suitcases and melons and odd pieces of furniture to come tumbling out of nearby storage dimensions. Up the steps, slowly, solemnly. Resisting the urge to take them two at a time. I have to be serious now. I am a man of mature years. (Ancient, in fact, by the standards of the olden days.) I am a king. An emperor waits for me to confirm me in my office with the touch of his wand. Another blast of trumpets. Drums, too, and maybe fifes.

"Yakoub Nirano Rom, Rom baro, Rex Romaniorum!" comes the cry from a million loudspeakers floating in a glittering cloud around the throne.

Up, up, up. The emperor sits waiting. He looks very calm. Wand of office resting lightly in his hand, like a fly-switch. About him, the three high lords preen and pose, looking terribly important. (These were the old high lords, left over from the reign of the Fourteenth, all of them now long dead. How they must have hated it when a shepherd from Ensalada Verde was jumped up over their heads onto the throne!)

Now the emperor rises to greet me. Not a tall man, not physically impressive in any way. He doesn't need to be. His mind is extraordinary: phenomenal breadth, phenomenal depth. Astonishing grasp of detail and pattern both. Some people are good at detail, some are good at pattern; only a few are masters of both. I have reason to think I am one. You know that. The Fifteenth was another. Nothing escaped his attention. When he spoke with you of starship routes he knew not only the reasons why the great routes were laid out as they were but also the name of every port of call along the way. And probably could quote population figures, too. A remarkable man.

Handing his wand of office to the lord on his left, now. Taking from the lord on his right the cup of sweet wine that by tradition the emperor always offers the king when the king comes visiting. Formally allowing me my sip. Then the touch of the wand to my shoulders, nice medieval moment.

"Yakoub Nirano Rom," he says. "Rom baro. Rex Romaniorum." I have been king under Rom law since the moment the nine members of the great kris made the sign of kingship at me. But now the GaJe have accepted me also. Only a formality; but in these matters we live by formalities.

And the emperor, having formally confirmed me as king, looks at me and smiles and winks.

A wonderful moment. A wonderful gesture, that wink. Telling me a thousand things in one quick twitch of his eye. We understand this throne business, you and I, is what that wink has said. Yes. We know what a joke it is. Yes. We also know how terribly serious it is. Yes. Yes. You are big and dark, I am small and fair. You are Rom and I am Gaje. And yet we are brothers, you and I. Brothers of the crown. Yes. We are closer to one another than I am to these peacock lords beside me. And than you are to anyone of your grand kumpania. Yes. Yes. Yes. From then on we were locked together, the Fifteenth and I, in the joint endeavor that is the governance of the worlds. It would be our shared task to keep the sky from falling: a great burden and a great joy. All that was contained in that one wink, and much more.

And so it was, for the Fifteenth and me, during the great years of our reigns. Many was the time I called upon him at the Capital and took the sweet wine from his hands, and we talked all the night through of the movements of the stars in their courses and the myriad worlds, and we made great decisions and reshaped great destinies. And at the times when custom demanded he came to me at Galgala-and even once when I was in residence at Xamur-and I threw wondrous patshivs for him, feasts of such glory that they came close to rivaling that ill-starred banquet given by Loiza la Vakako long ago on Nabomba Zom. But there were no Pulika Boshengros to spoil our feasts. In the fifty years of our collaboration we worked together serenely and effectively, the Fifteenth and I. Until he began to slip into weariness and senility, and I to put my preoccupation with Romany Star before all else. (For which I make no apologies!) It was many years since I had seen him, now. Since my departure for Mulano I had scarcely so much as thought of him. And now he was gone, and I realized that insofar as it is possible for a Rom to love a Gaje I had loved the Fifteenth Emperor. I set that down here, now, for all to know.

And one thing more. In the twentieth year of my reign I discovered a surprising thing when I was going through some documents of the reign of my predecessor Cesaro o Nano. Which was that it was the Fifteenth himself who had put into his mind the notion of naming me to follow him as king. How very strange that was, that the GaJe emperor should make such a suggestion, and how very much stranger that the Rom king should follow it. The Fifteenth had often told me how he had held me in high regard long before I became king; and now I had proof of it.

I have concealed this ever since I found it out. But why hide it any longer? Is there shame in it? The Fifteenth was right that I would be a good king. Cesaro o Nano was right to have followed his advice. What of it, that the advice came from a Gaje? From the highest Gajo of them all? Was Cesaro o Nano the less for listening to him? Was I the less for having been recommended by an emperor? During the thousands of years since our two peoples first were thrust together by fate we have feared and mistrusted the Gaje, for good reasons, and they have feared and mistrusted us, for reasons that seem to me not so good. But perhaps some of that fear and mistrust was needless, on both sides. And now it no longer seems important for me to conceal the Fifteenth's role in making me king. In truth, considering the great changes that many recent events have wrought, I think it is a good thing to let the story be told.

How odd, you may say, that the Fifteenth was so concerned about the Rom succession, and failed to provide for his own! But he chose me as king long ago when he was still in the vigor of his middle years. His own decline must have come upon him more suddenly than anyone knew, and the effect on him must have been far more calamitous than we suspected. For I knew the Fifteenth well, and I don't think he would willingly have left the imperial succession open as he did. His wits must have gone from him before he could make provision for the succession, for surely he wouldn't have wanted to depart as he did, leaving Sunteil and Naria and Periandros to battle for the throne.

Or perhaps-knowing him as well as I did-I shouldn't say that. Perhaps-considering the events that have followed his death-the Fifteenth knew exactly what he was doing, when he neglected to provide the usual decree of succession. He was a remarkable man. He saw things with extraordinary clarity. Perhaps he was looking beyond his death and the chaos that would follow it, into the deeper future, when all would be quite different. I would like to ask him what he really had in mind. Of course he is gone now. But perhaps one day I will have the chance to ask him all the same.

I THOUGHT A GREAT DEAL ABOUT SHANDOR, TOO, AS I wandered like my own ghost through the halls of the royal house of power.

There were signs of struggle everywhere. Someone had made an attempt to clean up, but I saw gouges in the thick leather wallcoverings, burn-scars on the floors, even what may have been bloodstains. And yet Shandor had managed to escape. He had even, so it seemed, taken some ceremonial objects with him, ancient emblems and regalia. I saw the empty places. The invading force must have deliberately allowed him to get away, I thought. As a kindness to me. Because he was, after all, my son. Surrounded and taken by surprise as he had been, Shandor would never have been able to fight his way out. Especially when he was encumbered by the ceremonial objects. They must have winked and looked the other way, for my sake.

Oh, was I wrong about that!

I have to admit that I felt strangely tender toward Shandor, even loving, now that he was gone and I was free again. I know it sounds peculiar. Considering Shandor's unloving and unlovable nature. But after all he was my son. And his attempt to seize the kingship had failed: he was a fugitive, he was on the run. I had nothing more to fear from him, did I? So I could allow my buried love for him to surface. And my pity. If you can't make sense of this, don't try. You'll understand some day.

I found myself thinking I could reclaim Shandor somehow. Sit down with him in the traditional way, pour coffee for him, pour wine, discuss the differences that had arisen between us. Work them out, get rid of them, embrace him in a hot Romany hug of love and kinship. As though he were simply a boy of twenty who had gone a little astray, and not a reckless and evil old man who had chosen the path of wickedness all his long life. Yes, I would reclaim him! Win him back to be my true son! Take him into my government, even. So I thought. My fantasy, my folly. I was entitled. I am not required to be ruled by common sense one hundred six percent of the time. He was my son, after all. After all.

And then, Periandros. What to do about Periandros?

Deny him? Tell Julien I could not possibly accept him as emperor, and send word to Sunteil, or maybe even Naria, that I was giving my support to him?

Why? Simply because I disliked him? Did I like Naria better? Sunteil, perhaps, I did like; but did I trust him? What were the ambitions of these quarrelsome Gaje princelings to me? Why thrust myself into their civil war? I was king again; and if I had Periandros to thank for that, so be it. I owed him nothing but thanks. Now I must restore my command of the kingdom; and then there would be time to see how the struggle among the high lords resolved itself. Meanwhile Periandros held the Capital. Therefore Periandros was emperor. If Sunteil or Naria disagreed, let him change things: that wasn't my affair. As king I needed an emperor with whom to deal. For the moment, Periandros was emperor. For the moment, then, I would take him to be the legitimate holder of the Gaje throne.

I sent for Julien.

"While I was Shandor's prisoner," I said, "he told me that he had been to the Capital and that he had received the wand of recognition. From the emperor, by the emperor's own hand. Do you know anything about that? Could he have been telling the truth?"

"Do you think he was, mon vieux?"

"He said Sunteil and Naria and Periandros were right there, but the emperor himself held the wand."

"The old emperor was lost in dreams all the time of Shandor's reign," said Julien.

"So I thought."

"It was Naria who held the wand." "Naria?"

"There was a great dispute among the lords. Throughout it the Lord Periandros spoke out for you, Yakoub. He regarded Shandor always as an interloper with no rightful claim. Sunteil wavered, now supporting Shandor, then you, then saying it was none of the Imperium's business who the Rom chose to be their king. Naria argued for immediate recognition of Shandor. He has always mistrusted you, do you know that? Because you were born on the same world as he, and you a slave and he a noble. He thinks you hate him for that, that in some way you blame him for your slavery."

"I am not fond of Naria," I said indifferently. "Perhaps his theory has some basis to it."

"He told the others that Shandor would be the Rom king no matter what the Imperium said; and that therefore it was good politics to give him confirmation. The Lord Periandros and eventually Sunteil would not have it. Then one day when it was Naria's turn to hold the orb of regency he simply summoned Shandor to the Capital and laid the wand upon him. Fait accompli, you see."

"And did the other two accept what Naria had done?"

Julien waved his hand at the dark scar of an imploder burn on the wall. "There you can see how impressed the Lord Periandros was with Naria's recognition of Shandor. As for Sunteil, he has kept his own counsel on the matter. As Sunteil usually does. Now that Shandor is overthrown he probably will claim he favored you all along."

"Yes," I said. "That sounds like Sunteil."

"And now, mon ami? What will you do, now that Shandor is overthrown?"

"Go to the Capital," I said. "Speak with Periandros." "With the Sixteenth, as we must call him now."

I gave Julien a long, steady, cool look. This time he returned it, just as steady, just as cool. My ancient friend, my GaJe cousin. Who had been a part of my life longer than anyone now living, other than Polarca. Whom I had known for a hundred years. What was he trying to do now? Was it not enough that I had agreed to meet Periandros, to deal with him as though he were truly the emperor? Did Julien have to force him all the way down my throat?

Then I thought: It costs me nothing to allow Periandros his title, for as long as he is able to hold it. And it seems important to Julien to give him that little honor. Very well.

"Yes," I said. "To speak with the Sixteenth."

AS WE WERE MAKING READY TO SET OUT FROM A UREUS Highlands to the Galgala starport I heard the distant sound of explosions and saw white smoke on the eastern horizon. Julien told me that fighting persisted in the back country, that Shandor had holed himself up in an obscure pocket of the Chrysoberyl Hills and was standing off attack by the imperial forces.

Once long ago on Mulano-it seemed a million years-Julien had warned me that my continued abdication might lead to wars between worlds. "War is an outmoded notion," I had told him with splendid assurance. "It's an obsolete concept." And now there was a war going on right here under my nose on Galgala itself, our Rom capital. With the troops of the emperor laying siege to a son of the Rom king practically within sight of the royal house of power.

So war was not at all an obsolete concept. Nor had Periandros' soldiers gallantly allowed Shandor to escape, as I had so naively imagined. By cunning or stealth or treachery or sheer force he had won his way free of the house of power, yes, and they were pursuing him, they were besieging him. My son.

For a day, a day and a half, I thought about nothing but that: that warfare was taking place on Galgala, that Akrakikan soldiers were seeking to capture my son. Or to kill him.

I had to do something.

He would have overthrown me; but still he was my son. The firstborn. Once my pride, my joy, my miniature image of myself. A difficult boy, perhaps an unloving one, and a stranger to me for most of his life; and lately my enemy. Yet still my son. Blood was calling to blood. I had other sons, many of them in fact, and in one way and another, over the great span of time, they had all been lost to me, through distance, through their own needs to be apart, through ambitions that had taken them to the edges of the universe, through quarrels, through death. We are a family people, we Rom, we Gypsies, and how sad and painful it. was that the Rom baro, the biggest Gypsy of them all, should have come down into the winter of his years with no wife at hand, no sons. Here was Shandor my son practically within my reach. I would go to him. Perhaps there would be forgiveness at last. At least there would be no more killing.

Just when everything was in readiness and we were about to depart for the starport I sent suddenly for Julien and said, "First we must make a little detour, old friend."

"What do you mean?"

"To the Chrysoberyl Hills," I said. "To put an end to this fighting." "No," he said. "We must go to the Capital."

"First this." "No."

"No?" "Listen to me this once, Yakoub. Forget Shandor."

"How can I?' I said. And I told him all that had been passing through my soul.

Julien listened without saying a word. And stared at me with infinite tenderness and sorrow.

"That was what I had feared," he said at last, when I had run dry of speech. "That you would find love in your heart for him, that you would want to make your peace with him. I had hoped to hurry you off Galgala before you learned the truth, mon ami. But now you give me no choice but to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

He paused only a moment. "Shandor is dead." "Dead?" I said stupidly. "When? How?"

"Yesterday, or the day before yesterday. They used dream-light; they slipped into his camp under cover of illusion. Shandor was seized and brought before the imperial general." Julien stared toward the floor. "They will say that he was killed while attempting to resist, Yakoub. I am greatly sorry for your grief, mon vieux, mon cher."

"Dead?" The word refused to register.

"A strategic decision. I had nothing to do with it. You understand, do you not, I had nothing to do with it? He was thought to be too dangerous. An immense destabilizing force."

"He was a fool. He was incapable of destabilizing anything." "That is not how it seemed to the emperor, Yakoub."

"So Periandros himself gave the order to kill him?"

"Not so," said Julien. I think he was sincere. "It was not the Sixteenth himself, but the general of the Sixteenth, seeking to win the emperor's favor. Seeking too hard, I think. Believe me. I beg you, believe me, Yakoub."

"What is this?" I asked. "The thirteenth century? Not even then did they kill captured princes. Are we sliding back into barbarism, is that it, Julien?" I turned away from him, appalled by the power of my own feelings, stunned by the weight of the grief I felt. Shandor! Shandor! How I had despised him, that sorry son of mine! How he had shamed me! How often I had longed for his death, a hundred times over the years! And how I mourned him now! I was as shaken as I had been that terrible day on Mulano when Damiano had brought me the news that Shandor, against all custom and decency, had proclaimed himself king. Then, if I could have killed him with a snap of the fingers, I would have snapped my fingers; but now he was dead at some stranger's hands and a monstrous void had opened within me where he had been.

I swung around and caught Julien roughly by the shoulder, so hard that he tried to shrink back from my touch, and could not.

"Was there anyone who thought that it would please me to have Shandor lose his life? Was it Periandros' favor they were trying to win with this murder, or mine?"

"Well? Was it?"

Julien shook his head desperately. His eyes were wild; his hair tumbled into his face; all his careful elegance was gone. "No," he said hoarsely, after a time. "Je Ven prie, Yakoub! I beg you, believe me! I had nothing to do with this. Nothing! Nothing!" And I saw that he was speaking the truth. Letting him go, I turned from him and went to the balcony, and stood by myself looking toward the Chrysoberyl Hills.

All was quiet there now. No puffs of smoke, no sounds of warfare. It was over, then. I wondered how many other Rom had died with Shandor. Asking that of Julien, I thought, would be asking too much.

"Send word to the Sixteenth," I said, after a time, "that I will be delayed a little while in my journey to the Capital. We must hold the funeral first. And that will take some days."

"But the emperor-"

"Bugger the emperor! My son is dead, Julien. A king of the Rom is dead! There is the shroud to make. The white caravan to construct. You know the rites as well as I do. The music, the pilgrimage, the burial. The wine, the food. Where is the body of my son?"

"The Akrakikan-"

"Get it from them. And send me the officers of the court. We will do this in the proper way. And then, only then, will you and I make our journey to the Capital and present ourselves before the Sixteenth. Go. Go." I gestured furiously, impatiently. "Get out of here, Julien! Leave me alone!"

THE WORLD THAT IS KNOWN ONLY AS THE CAPITAL, THE world that is the hub of the galaxy, is to me a pallid and dreary place. Why the Gaje decided long ago to make it their New Earth, the seat of the government, I will never know, or care; you will have to ask of the Gaje if you would understand that choice. In a universe that holds a Galgala, a Nabomba Zom, a Xamur, why plant the center of your empire on a planet like that?

But of course Galgala and Xamur and Nabomba Zom were never theirs to choose. Those worlds are ours by right of discovery.

The Capital is not a terrible place. It is a smallish world, one of six that orbit a pale yellow-green sun, and it has a mild climate, rivers and streams, flowers and trees, air that you can breathe without adaptors, a general feel of comfort and placidity. But its oceans are shallow and its mountains are low and blunt and its birds are gray and brown. A drab world, a safe little world, a decent middle-of-the-road world. Perhaps that is why the Gaje like it so much. But they have not even managed to give it a real name.

Naturally they have built themselves an absurd fantastical imperial city out of marble and flame, a great gaudy enterprise, shining towers and broad boulevards and blazing lights, the usual crystal and emerald and alabaster everywhere. But what else would you expect from the Gaje: showiness, theatricality, preposterous overmagnificence. But in that case they should have built their capital on some planet other than the Capital. Just as the Idradin crater seems incongruous in its ugliness against the matchless beauties of Xamur, so too does the imperial city look wildly out of place on the Capital. It is like a colossal coruscating diamond that has been set in a diadem of cardboard.

Be that as it may. The Capital is the great Gaje place, and I am a mere shabby Gypsy, who knows nothing of true splendor. Maybe some day I will come to understand the Capital better than I do now. But that is not important to me, understanding the Capital.

For all its grandeur the imperial center had an uneasy, makeshift look about it when I arrived. It was like a city just recovering from a war-or preparing for one. The green and red sky-banners that paid homage to the Fifteenth had all been turned off. Only a handful of new ones in the colors of the Sixteenth had been put up thus far, and so the sky looked strangely empty. In the outer ring of the city, where scores of dazzling light-spikes normally glowed in honor of visiting lords from other worlds, everything was dark. I had never seen it like that before.

That darkness puzzled me. Weren't there any other visiting lords here? If there were, didn't they object to the absence of their spikes? Perhaps all the imperial vassals were keeping clear of the Capital until they were absolutely certain that Periandros was the emperor they were vassal to. Well, even so, I was an imperial vassal, and I was here. Where was my light-spike? I missed it. Maybe I was the only one here. Maybe Periandros had told all the others to stay away. Could it be that the Sixteenth, still uncertain of his throne, felt it might seem unduly provocative to be claiming homage from the planetary lords just now? I know that I wouldn't have felt that way. I would be making every show of power and rightful authority that I could, if I were in Periandros' shoes. But-thanks be to Holy God and the Divine Mother and Saint Sara-la-Kali-Periandros was in Periandros' shoes and I was in my own.

"Why is there no spike up for me?" I asked Julien, not long after I was installed in the opulent guest palace at the Plaza of the Three Nebulas that the Imperium maintains for the use of the Rom king when he is visiting the Capital.

"There is a problem with the spikes," said Julien diplomatically. "I imagine there is," I said.

"They consume a great deal of energy. These are difficult and expensive times, mon ami."

"Ah. I forgot. The thrifty Periandros."

"He has ordered a cutback on superfluous expenditures of energy. Temporarily, I'm afraid, there will be no light-spikes. It is only idle show, is it not, mon vieux? These Roman candles blazing away?"

"The emperor has his own sky-banners up, I see."

"Only a very few," Julien said, looking uncomfortable. "He must assert his imperial presence, after all. But you will note that where the Fifteenth had hundreds of banners in the sky, the Sixteenth has scarcely any. A symbolic minimum."

"I have a presence to assert also," I said. "I would like my light-spike, Julien."

"Cher ami-je t'implore-"

"Yes," I said, "my good old light-spike, bright purple, five hundred meters high, telling all the Capital that the Rom baro is in residence awaiting audience with the emperor-"

Julien was miserable and made no attempt to hide it. But he took my meaning. Not that I give a tortoise turd about light-spikes or banners or flags or medals or any such trivialities, ordinarily. But this was a time of testing for everyone. Periandros owed me the courtesy of a spike. Subtly or not so subtly-what did I care?-Julien would have to convey my wishes to his master.

Then Periandros would be compelled to weigh his need for pinching obols and minims against the desire of the venerable Rom king for a little pomp and pageantry. And I would find out just where I really stood in the esteem of the new emperor and how much leverage I might have over him in the difficult times ahead. The sky remained dark the next night. But the night after that, I saw the traditional royal Rom light-spike spear the heavens as soon as the sun went down.

In his hospitality, at least, the new emperor was unstinting-or perhaps Julien had simply arranged things as he felt they ought to be arranged. That was more likely. Periandros would have had a stroke if he had known what Julien was spending to keep me amused while I was awaiting the advisers I had summoned for my meetings with the emperor.

The immense and splendiferous Rom palace was in immaculate order and I had platoons of servants-robots, androids, human slaves, doppelgangers of slaves-a staff so huge it was ridiculous. The finest foods and wines were available at any hour of the day and night. Musicians, dancers, minstrels, likewise. And other services. It was embarrassing. Who needed these crowds, this hoopla? Especially in light of the sort of hospitality my own son had been providing for me. Not that I wanted the crawling things and meals of mush back, mind you; but this went too far in the opposite direction. I think you know that it is not the Rom way, all this luxury. It is the Gaje idea of the Rom way, perhaps: or perhaps the Gaje are so guilty about the way they have treated us over the millennia that they feel they must make amends in this overblown fashion when the Rom baro comes to town.

Day by day my people arrived at the Capital, bearing news of the horrendous chaos that had spread through the worlds during the time of my imprisonment, and-may all the gods and demons be praised!- the wonderful restoration of order that had been effected since the collapse of Shandor's insurgency. The Gaje lords might be squabbling but at least we Rom had the spacelanes open again and the ships running on time.

Polarca came first, then Biznaga, then Jacinto and Ammagante, and the phuri dai. Followed soon after by Damiano and Thivt. But not Valerian. I hadn't sent for him, and not for his ghost either. It would have been unwise, and in very poor taste besides, to invite a proscribed enemy of the Imperium like Valerian to come to the Capital. Testing Periandros was one thing, thumbing my nose in his face something else entirely.

I had to do without Chorian, also. I had grown very fond of the young Fenixi-let me not be too coy here; I had come to love him as I would a son-and it was my plan to move him into positions of ever greater responsibility in the government. We were all antiques; I needed someone born in this century to help keep me in touch with realities. But although Chorian was among those I called to my side at the Capital, he didn't show up. I asked Julien about him.

"He will not be coming," Julien said.

"What's the problem? I thought the starships were running on schedule again, now that Shandor is-"

"The starships are running on schedule, yes, mon ami."

Instantly alarmed, I said, "Where's Chorian, then? Has something happened to him?"

"He is safe and sound among the Haj Qaldun worlds, so far as I am aware," Julien told me. "He has not received your invitation, that is all."

"He what?"

"Yakoub," said Julien reproachfully. "What is this foolishness? How can I summon him here? He is Sunteil's man ' your Chorian."

I felt anger flaring up. "He is Rom, Julien! One of my most loyal and devoted-"

"Perhaps so. He is also Sunteil's man. What you ask is impossible, mon vieux. Light-spikes I can get for you, yes. And other things: you have only to ask. But one who is actually in the employ of a rebel against the emperor? Yakoub, Yakoub, Yakoub!" He shook his head. "Be reasonable, mon ami!"

I was annoyed, but I saw his point. King or no king, I was going to have to yield oh this. It had indeed been foolish of me to think I could have Chorian here at this time. I regretted that greatly. I wanted him here. It would be good for him to become familiar with the Capital, and useful and instructive for him to observe the daily ebb and flow of my negotiations with Periandros. But of course he couldn't be here now. Whatever he might be to me, he was Sunteil's man also. I shouldn't have needed Julien to point that out. Chorian would have to stay away from the Capital.

For now. But he would be on hand to play his part in the cataclysmic events that lay just ahead.

THE CRYSTALLINE STEPS ONCE AGAIN. THE THRONE-PLATFORM, far above me. How many times over the many decades of my life had I stood on the great slab of onyx at the base of that lofty seat of power, staring upward at the ruler of all the Gaje worlds?

I had never seen the Thirteenth, not in the flesh. I was too far from the center of power then. The emperor of my childhood, he was, and well on into my early manhood too, living on forever and forever. I had seen his image on the screens of a dozen worlds, though: the little weary waxen-faced man, perched high atop his onyx platform. Who could have imagined he would have lived so long? The Fourteenth was a different story, young and vigorous, coming to the throne with the avowed purpose of clearing away the cobwebs that had gathered during his predecessor's interminable reign. I made my first visits to court during his time. A slight-bodied dark-skinned man, almost Rom in color, with keen golden eyes and an easy smile, and the strength of a true emperor behind that smile. He came from Copperfield, as five of the emperors before him had done. It would be a lie to say that I had known him well, but I had seen him, I had even spoken to him two or three times. And then suddenly he was dead. There were rumors that he had been done away with, for having instituted too many reforms too quickly. And so came the Fifteenth, the shepherd of Ensalada Verde, in later years my friend and working partner, wise and good. Well, he too was gone now but I was still here, waiting by the crystal steps for the one who called himself the Sixteenth, this mingy miserly Periandros, the fourth emperor of my life. If indeed this was an emperor I stood before now, and not merely a vain pretender.

I listened for the trumpets. Yes, there they were. But not the old deafening glory. More of a pathetic blatting whoosh. Another of Periandros' petty economies? Or was it merely the flavor of the times, that made everything seemed a pale and meek shadow of its former self?

And the voice from the million loudspeakers. "Yakoub Nirano Rom, Rom baro, Rex Romaniorum!" They had the name and the titles right, yes. But there was no conviction there, no force. I remember once when I had been ghosting back to the old imperial Roman days on Earth and this Gaje empire enjoys some pretension of a link to that one, at least in certain of its borrowed ways and terminology-and it was the final days, just before the barbarians came hammering at the gates. Ordinarily one does not know that one lives in the final days of a great empire; one is aware only that things are not as good as they were reputed once to be. Knowledge of finality comes only after the fact, when the historians have come mincing in to provide some perspective. But those Romans in the final days knew that it was not just a bad time but the end of time, and you could see it in their eyes, in the gray look of their faces, in the slant of their shoulders. Everything about them cried out that the apocalypse was just around the corner. It was a little like that now. Decline and fall was in the air of the Capital. The old order was ending and God alone knew what was coming next; and even the trumpets and loudspeakers were faint and mildewed over with doubts.

"The Sixteenth Emperor of the Grand Imperium summons the Rex Romaniorurn before the throne," called out the major domo. And up those stairs I went. Again. Slowly. Not so much bounce in my stride as before. The gloom and depression here was contagious. I resolved to get myself away from this place as fast as I could, once I had completed my business with Periandros.

Within his fine robes he looked drawn, shrunken, haggard. The Periandros I remembered was a plump man, soft-skinned, with the look of a pleasure-lover about him, ripe or even overripe. Completely misleading, because he was no more pleasure-loving than your basic lump of stone. Probably some rocks of the igneous persuasion were even his superior in that department. Within that soft pampered body was a mean pinched hard soul, like a crab lurking within a tender melon. God knows why they are all like that on Sidri Akrak: an entire planet of miserable ghastly dour people suffering from constipation of the heart. Now the ripeness was gone from Periandros and only the sour withered Akraki core of him was left. Beside him, in the seats where the emperor's high lords sit, were three more Akrakikan. I had to admire the totality of the takeover, and the total foolishness of it. Usually the emperor has sense enough to give the high lordships to citizens of assorted major planets, by way of building a little political support for himself. But not this one, who was in more need of support from other worlds than any emperor who had ever ruled. Oh, no, not this one: he had surrounded himself entirely with his own kind. Three of his own brothers, for all I knew. If they had brothers on Sidri Akrak. It seemed more appropriate for people like him to be born from tubes, like androids. It was a disheartening sight, seeing those four glum passionless faces staring back at me from the summit of the throne-platform.

"This is a joyous day, Yakoub Rom," Periandros said in a voice lacking the merest molecule of joy. Flat monotone, an inhuman drone. "You are welcome before us."

Us, no less. He had reinvented the royal we!

He had the wine ready for me. I took the cup. That stuff too had lost its savor: thin and acrid, a bad year. I felt like telling him that the wine of welcome is supposed to be sweet.

Instead I made the formal gesture that the Rom baro makes when he stands before the emperor. Maybe Periandros thought it was in his honor but all I was doing was reinforcing my own. Affirming my state of kingship, rather than affirming his emperorship. He didn't have to know that.

He did manage a quick pale flickering smile. Real emotion, Periandros style. The Periandros equivalent of a great roaring hug, I suppose. "There has been much confusion, has there not?" he said. "How I detest confusion!" (Forgetting his we already?) "But the time of chaos is ending. The crown imperial has descended to us." (No, just not consistent in its use.) "-and we will do our utmost to restore order in the Imperium." A self-satisfied smirk. "Already we have done much. For example we have aided our Romany brothers in their time of difficulty."

Butting in, killing my son. Yes, wonderful aid.

I said, "You really think the confusion is over, Periandros?" Hisses and gasps of shock among the high lords. A fierce look of black loathing from Periandros. I realized my mistake too late. Calling him by name, and not even Lord Periandros at that. But no one could call him anything but "Your Majesty" now, not even me. The former Lord Periandros had vanished within the royal greatness, what Julien would call the gloire, of the Sixteenth Emperor.

I hadn't meant any insult. It had just slipped out. I remembered, after all, the day Periandros first had taken his seat among the high lords. Not all that long ago. The apologetic look in the eyes of the Fifteenth, as if to say, He's a peculiar little creature, I know, but I find him usefuL

Hard for me to take the peculiar little creature seriously. Sitting in my old friend's throne. But he was the Emperor now. At least I had decided to regard him as the Emperor. For expediency's sake. I covered my gaffe with a quick apology. Old habits die hard, et cetera, et cetera. Periandros looked mollified.

"We are not yet fully accustomed to our high position ourself," he confided.

I admired the grammatical elegance of that confession. I might have said ourselves, which would have been silly. But then I haven't given as much thought to the niceties of the royal we as Periandros undoubtedly had.

Piously I said, "It must be a great burden, Majesty."

"We have prepared for it all our life. There is a long tradition of imperial service, you know, on my world of Sidri Akrak." (Still not getting it straight, his we.) "The Seventh Emperor, and again the Eleventh-and now once more our world has been honored by the summons of the Imperium-" He leaned in close, staring hard as if trying to read my mind. God help me if he could: he'd see the contempt for his small soul bristling all over my cerebral contours and five minutes later I might find myself wishing I was back safe and snug in Shandor's oubliette. He moistened his lips. "This abdication business of yours, how am I supposed to interpret that?"

"A purely internal Rom matter, Majesty. A political ploy, perhaps not too wisely conceived."

"Ah." "It's been withdrawn. Nullified. So far as I and my people are concerned, there's been no break in my reign."'

"And the claims of your son Shandor?"

"An aberration, Your Majesty. A desperate insurgency that has now been brought under control. And with the death of Shandor the whole issue becomes moot. There are no other claimants for the Rom throne." Periandros looked genuinely bewildered.

"Shandor is dead?"

"Killed during the invasion of Galgala by imperial troops," I said, perhaps too sharply.

He consulted with his high lords. There was much rapid muttering in the opaque Akraki dialect of Imperial. From what little I could follow I saw that Julien had been telling me the truth when he said that Shandor's death was none of Periandros' doing, that it had been a free-lance contribution by an overzealous general. Which at least would make it a little easier for me to do business with Periandros. When he turned back to me there was a look almost of compassion in his eyes. Or discomfort of the bowel, but I took it as compassion. Give him credit. Human emotion ran against his natural grain but he was trying. He expressed condolences, and I thanked him. Told him that Shandor had been a great trial to me but nevertheless he was blood of my blood, et cetera, et cetera. The Sixteenth nodded solemnly. Probably he was immensely fascinated by our quaint old Rom custom of giving a damn about the members of our own families.

After a time, to his obvious relief and in fact mine also, we got off the subject of Shandor and back to the subject of power, where we were both more comfortable.

In his ponderously purse-mouthed way he allowed as how we were both in highly precarious situations. I thought my situation was considerably less precarious than his, but I allowed as how I agreed with his assessment. I was wise enough to know that it didn't take a monster like Shandor to topple a king. Someone as loyal and dedicated as Damiano could do it, if he began to think I was getting too old and unpredictable to entrust with the job. Maybe even with Polarca's connivance. There was plenty of precedent in human history for kings being removed by their own most trusted kinsmen and associates for the general good and welfare. Yes, the more I thought about it, the more risky my whole position looked.

"We need each other, yes, you and I," I told Periandros.

Politics, the old Gaje philosopher said-Shakespeare, Socrates, one of those-does indeed make strange bedfellows. I never imagined I would find myself angling for the embrace of Periandros. But, then, I had never imagined to find Periandros sitting on the imperial throne, either.

Very quickly we came to an understanding. There would be a showy public ceremony, the complete works, a grand pyrotechnikon and all, by way of reconfirming me as King of the Rom. The laying on of the wand of recognition, the whole business. The entire nobility would be invited, both GaJe and Rom, from all the worlds. The biggest spectacle in centuries, in fact.

"With light-spikes for everyone?" I said.

"Of course, with light-spikes," Periandros said, irritated. "How can we do without light-spikes, if we are to have the nobility gathered here?"

"I was just wondering," I said.

But no, he was planning to pull out all the stops, and devil take the cost. I could see how serious he was about this, considering what he would have to spend. Though it did cross my mind that he might well ask us to contribute too. That would be all right. The reconsecration ceremony would be of enormous symbolic benefit to both of us. For me it would wipe out the little ambiguity that had been brought into being when Lord Naria, acting as regent, had laid the wand on Shandor's shoulders. For Periandros it would serve similarly to expunge what Naria had done, thereby retroactively expunging Naria's one brave display of imperial authority. All the worlds would know that Yakoub Nirano was now and forevermore Rom baro, Rex Romaniorum; and implicit in Periandros' recognizing me as king was my recognizing him as emperor.

There was one other little part of the package. But even Periandros the shameless was too abashed to ask for it outright. What he wanted was for me to spy for him: to have my Rom star-captains keep me provided with reports on the movements of the Lords Naria and Sunteil, and for me to turn those reports over to him. The way he managed to phrase it, though, Sunteil and Naria weren't explicitly mentioned, and it was possible for me to interpret what he was saying as simply a request for detailed statistical analyses of the flow of commerce between the worlds. That was how I chose to interpret it, anyway.

"Certainly," I said. "I see no problem with that at all." "Then we understand one another?"

"Perfectly," I said.

He rose and poured the wine of farewell for me. I came forward to accept it, and took a close look at him as I did. I had been noticing something odd about him, the last few minutes, and I wanted to check it out at close range.

It had seemed to me that he was flickering about the edges, so to speak. Losing definition, a little. I wasn't sure of it; but as well as I was able to tell from the distance where I was required to sit, the Sixteenth was having some trouble keeping the boundaries of his corpus firm. That is of course a characteristic of doppelgangers: they are always plausible duplicates of the human beings from whom they are generated, but they are in a steady state of degeneration from the moment they are struck off the mold, and the keen eye can spot it sometimes, very subtle though the effect will be in the early stages.

Had I been talking to a doppelganger of the emperor all this time? Sitting there sipping his wine and staring into his eyes and playing little political fencing-matches with him, and the whole while I had been dealing with a mere simulacrum, while the authentic Sixteenth-scared out of his wits by the fear of assassination, even an unthinkable assassination at the hands of the Rom king himself-was hiding somewhere out of sight, monitoring the whole thing by cortex wire, maybe even running a relay that told the doppelganger what to say? Jesu Cretchuno Moischel and Abraham! What an absurdity! What an insult!

If it was true. I peered close, but I couldn't tell. Maybe I had imagined the whole thing. Maybe the flicker had been in my eyes and not in the emperor's edges. At any rate I didn't have any way of poking and prodding to find out; I had to take my little sip of wine and get myself down from the platform.

"Well?" Polarca asked. "How did it go?"

"About as I expected. The pompous little shit: he really thinks he's emperor. The funny thing is, so do I think he is. But there was one damned strange thing."

"What was that?"

I told him that I thought I might have been having an audience with a doppelganger-emperor the whole time. Polarca clapped his hands and laughed.

"If that isn't just like Periandros!" he cried. "Did he think you had a bomb in your mustache? He really wants to live forever, doesn't he?" "I think he wants to live long enough to get Sunteil and Naria to agree that he's really the emperor," I said.

"I don't think anybody's going to live that long," Polarca said. He shook his head. "A doppelganger! Can you beat that!"

"I'm not totally sure, you understand."

"But it's just like him. It absolutely is. What do you think, will he send a doppelganger to this big grand reconsecration ceremony of yours too? If anyone's going to try to assassinate him, that would be a fine place to do it. "

"And take out everybody within ten meters of him too," I said. Polarca scowled. "Maybe you'd better send a doppelganger to the ceremony too, eh, Yakoub?"

BUT THE GREAT RECONSECRATION CEREMONY NEVER DID take place. And Periandros learned that no matter how many doppelgangers he tried to hide behind, a really determined and creative assassin would somehow be able to find him. It happened just three days after my audience with him: a homing wasp, in his bath, a diabolical little artificial insect that flew straight for its goal and killed him so fast that he died with the soap still in his hand. You can use doppelgangers for lots of things, but not to take your baths for you.

A few hours later, before I had heard anything about the tragic event in the imperial bath-chamber, the starship Jewel of the Imperium landed at the Capital bearing a most distinguished passenger: no less than Lord Sunteil, who was returning with remarkably fine timing after having spent the past few months in exile, or, if you prefer, in hiding. (Yes, that same Supernova-class Jewel of the Imperium that had taken me from Xamur to Galgala when I went to have things out with Shandor. The pilot of which was Petsha le Stevo of Zimbalou and whose captain, by a remarkable coincidence, was the dapper Therione, a native of Sunteil's very own world of Fenix.)

The first thing that Lord Sunteil did upon his arrival at the Capital was to proclaim himself emperor, news having reached him with surprising swiftness that Periandros was no longer among the living. In measured words Sunteil expressed his grief over the passing of the late Lord Periandros, whom he did not refer to as the Sixteenth Emperor. He himself, he declared, was the Sixteenth Emperor. And he had held that title, he said, ever since the instant of the Fifteenth's death, although he had been unfortunately detained all this while on urgent imperial business in the Haj Qaldun system and had been unable until now to give his personal attention to the problems of the central government.

The second thing that Lord Sunteil did upon his arrival at the Capital was to run desperately for cover.

He had just finished proclaiming his imperial authority when a detachment of imperial troops arrived to arrest him. Sunteil managed to clear out of the starport barely ahead of them and vanished back into hiding somewhere south of the city. Somehow, though he had been able to ascertain with such surprising swiftness that Lord Periandros had perished that day in a lamentable accident in the privacy of his palace, Sunteil had failed to discover one other significant datum, which was that his rival Lord Naria had been secretly on hand at the Capital for quite some time and that Naria-or the Sixteenth Emperor, as Naria preferred us all to call him-had quietly succeeded in winning the support of a substantial portion of the imperial military forces. While Sunteil was still making self-congratulatory speeches at the starport, Naria had taken possession of the imperial palace and was accepting the homage of the peers of the Imperium, who were nothing if not obliging, though I imagine they were becoming a trifle confused.

A little later on that remarkable day, which I'm certain will provide stimulating challenges to historians for centuries to come, the late Lord Periandros made an unexpected reappearance on the imperial communications channel. The reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated, he informed us. He was even now as heretofore the Sixteenth Emperor and he called upon all loyal citizens to denounce the lies of the criminal Lord Sunteil and the vile intrusion upon the imperial palace of the criminal Lord Naria.

In short, the fat was in the fire, the shit had hit the fan, and there were altogether too many cooks in the kitchen, which was sure to spoil the broth. Periandros' simple little coup d'etat had given way to a three-cornered civil war.

Fragmentary reports on all this began to reach my palace at the Capital about midday. The first thing we heard was Sunteil's starport speech, telling us that Periandros was dead and he was in charge. Polarca, Damiano, Jacinto and I sat transfixed in front of the screen, trying to comprehend what was going on. Abruptly Sunteil's speech was interrupted and the camera cut to the imperial palace, to the great council-chamber of the emperor. We were treated to a close-up shot of the defunct Lord Periandros lying in state. He was wrapped from throat to toes in glittering brocaded robes, but the camera lingered a long while on his face, and it was unmistakably the face of Periandros. He appeared to be quite authentically dead.

Troublesome sounds of warfare now could be heard in the streets outside: sirens and whistles, booms and crashes.

"I don't like any of this," Polarca said. He kept blurring. I knew that he was ghosting compulsively, as he always did when he became tense. Hopping around wildly through the epochs and the light-years, but absent no more than a hundredth of a second at a time from the present. "We ought to get ourselves out of here, Yakoub," he said between hops. "These crazy Gaje are going to wipe each other out and we're right in the middle of it all."

"Wait," I said. "Sunteil's clever enough to get things under control fast. He's probably trying to round up all of Periandros' Akrakikan loyalists, and then-"

"Look," Damiano said in a strangled-sounding voice, pointing to the screen.

And there was the flamboyant face of Lord Naria, suddenly, purple skin and scarlet hair and cold, cold, cold blue eyes, telling us that he was the true Sixteenth, accept no substitutes, and all was well.

"Yakoub-" said Polarca, ghosting like a madman.

A robot came rolling into the room. "A man at the gate, claiming sanctuary," it announced. "Shall we admit him?"

Damiano laughed harshly. "Probably Sunteil, looking for a place to hide."

"He gives his name as Chorian of Fenix," said the robot blandly. "Chorian?" I hit the control and brought up the gate scanner image. Yes, indeed, it was Chorian out there, looking flushed and sweaty and frightened. He seemed to be alone. He was trying to press himself as close to the impervious skin of the gate as he could. I sent the robots out to bring him in.

"Check him for concealed weapons," Polarca called. "Don't you think that's going too far?" said Damiano.

"This is a crazy day. Anybody might do anything. What if he's here to assassinate Yakoub?"

Damiano turned to me in appeal. "For God's sake, Yakoub, if the boy had meant to kill you, wouldn't he have done it on Mulano?" "Check him all the same," I said. "It can't do any harm. Polarca's right: this is a crazy day."

But the craziness was only beginning, then.

Chorian-duly frisked and otherwise processed-was admitted to my presence a few minutes later. He was a pitiful sight: wild-eyed, trembling, exhausted. I summoned one of my medics, who calmed him down.

"Thank God you're safe," he said, practically in tears. "You can't imagine what's going on out there."

"What are you doing at the Capital?" I asked.

"I came in with Sunteil on the Jewel of the Imperium. There was an attack-at the starport-imperial troops, a whole horde of them-a madhouse, people being killed all over the place-don't know how I was able to escape-"

"Slow down, boy. Was Sunteil killed?"

"I don't think so." Chorian took a deep breath. "He was with his bodyguard and I think they fought their way out the side exit. I went through the baggage loop and crawled into a storage pocket and out the far side. Ran all the way here. They're fighting everywhere-I don't know who, troops loyal to Periandros, troops loyal to Sunteil-"

"Don't forget Naria," Damiano said. "Naria?" Chorian said, mystified.

"He doesn't know," I said. "Naria's at the palace. He's the one who sent the troops to arrest Sunteil. We just heard him proclaiming himself emperor, Right after they showed the body of Periandros on the screen."

"They showed Periandros, did they?"

"In his funeral clothes, yes. Looking very peaceful. He's lucky to be out of this mess."

Polarca turned to Chorian. "Was it Sunteil who arranged Periandros' death?"

"Of course. An artifical wasp in his bath-chamber. And then Sunteil would land and claim the throne. I tried to send word to Yakoub of what was going to happen, but there was no way to get through-the imperials were monitoring everything-"

"Monitoring the communications channels of the Rom king?" Polarca cried, outraged. "The little shit-ass! The sneak! Doesn't the man have the slightest shred of decency in him?"

"The man is dead," said Jacinto.

"Don't be so sure of that," Biznaga said. He was pointing at the screen again.

"Lolmischo Melalo Bitoso Poreskoro," muttered Damiano in horror and amazement, making the signs of protection against demons. A moment later I was doing the same. For there was Periandros staring straight out of the screen, glum and dour as ever, telling us that he was most certainly alive and very much in charge of the government, and calling on all good imperial citizens to deal mercilessly with the traitors. "How can this be?" Chorian asked. "The wasp-"

"Killed one of his doppelgangers, maybe?" I suggested. "Impossible. It was a homing wasp, programmed to be life-seeking. There was a metabolism tropism built into it: it wouldn't ever have attacked a doppelganger. I don't understand how Periandros could still be alive, if he-"

Polarca laughed. "He isn't. This is the doppelganger."

"Making a speech?" Damiano said. "A doppelganger, making a speech, claiming to be emperor?"

"Why not? Yakoub thinks it was a doppelganger of Periandros that held the audience with him. But even so he wasn't sure. Periandros may have been using some new improved kind of doppelgangers, yes? And at least one has survived the assassination, and is trying to hang on to the throne-"

"Why would a doppelganger want to be emperor?" Biznaga asked. "It can only live a couple of years."

"It may not know that," Polarca said. "It may not even know that it's a doppelganger. It's just doing what Periandros would have done." "Jesu Cretchuno Sunto Mario," I muttered. "Three emperors at once! And one of them not even alive. "

From the shining streets of the imperial center came the sounds of warfare, louder and louder, closer and closer.

THINGS GREW QUIETER TOWARD EVENING. THE GOVERNMENT news channel kept its focus almost exclusively on Naria, who appeared every hour or two to urge people to be calm. Now and again the broadcasts were interrupted by the faction of Periandros, asserting that he was still alive and in command. Whenever the Periandros image was on screen I peered close, trying to determine whether or not it was a doppelganger, but there was no way of telling, not on screen. If the assassination had been carried out the way Chorian claimed it had, though, then most likely Periandros was really dead and what we were seeing was his doppelganger, all right. Either way, Naria seemed definitely to be on top at the moment. He was at the imperial palace. Periandros, or Periandros' doppelganger, wasn't saying anything about his own location. From Sunteil nothing at all had been heard since his original speech at the starport.

We kept ourselves snugly defended at the Rom palace and awaited further developments.

In the middle of the night came word that Julien de Gramont was on the screen and wished urgently to speak with me. At that hour I didn't wish urgently to speak with him, but these were unusual times. I rolled over and switched on my screen.

Julien looked woeful. His eyes were puffy, his beard was askew, his collar was drooping. He offered me none of his usual little jaunty French pleasantries, only a perfunctory sign of respect for my royal rank.

"The Sixteenth Emperor," he said, "requests a conference with the Rom baro at the Rom baro's earliest convenience."

"Which Sixteenth?" I replied, pointedly and undiplomatically. "The former Lord Periandros, of course," said Julien in a tired, deflated way.

How very much like Julien to continue to regard his patron and hero as the one and only Sixteenth, at a time when two other lords were claiming the selfsame title and when Periandros himself was in fact dead. Julien had always been obstinate about lost causes, I reminded myself. Why shouldn't he go on calling Periandros the Sixteenth? What else could you expect from someone who in the privacy of his own soul still dreamed of strolling the mirrored halls of Versailles as true successor to the grandeur of Louis XIV?

"The report is that Lord Periandros was assassinated earlier today, Julien."

"I have spoken with him within the past hour, Yakoub." "With him or with a doppelganger of him?"

"You are making this very difficult for me, mon vieux." "I can't negotiate with a doppelganger, Julien."

"He appeared to be real and alive, to me."

"And the body that Naria displayed in the council-chamber of the palace?"

Julien shrugged. "A dummy, perhaps? A projection? Some sort of image? How would I know? Nom d'un nom, Yakoub, I tell you I have spoken with Lord Periandros within the past hour! He lives and he rules."

"But Naria holds the palace?"

"So it seems. Yet the Lord Periandros is emperor. There has been a great disturbance, but the Lord Periandros is emperor. I beg you, mon ami, do not put me through any more of this. This has been a terrible day for us all. Will you speak with him?"

I nodded and Julien put Periandros on the line. Or what purported to be Periandros.

A funny thing. Adversity seemed almost to agree with him. He looked a good deal less gaunt, less haggard, than the Periandros I had seen in the throne-chamber a few days before. Almost the ripe sleek Periandros of old, matter of fact. That had me suspicious at once, of course. Then too he seemed a lot calmer than I would have expected from a man who had been pushed out of his own imperial palace in a coup that very morning. I put my nose close to the screen, scanning for the telltale flickering which would tell me that I was dealing with a doppelganger. And quietly I keyed in Polarca's extension and Damiano's: I wanted them scanning too.

"We have regretted your silence this day," said Periandros right away. Plunging in without the little niceties. At least he hadn't forgotten his royal we. "We had hoped a statement would have been forthcoming from you concerning the anarchy that has erupted in the Capital."

He sounded good. He sounded convincing. That ponderous solemn Akraki style of his. Could this be the real Periandros after all? The one who had been skulking in the background while I went up the crystalline steps to pay my obeisance to a doppelganger?

I said, "I've had very little reliable news of what's been going on. Seemed to me the best thing was to wait and see what was real and what wasn't. In any case it's inappropriate, wouldn't you say, for the Rom baro to comment on imperial matters of state?"

Not a difficult question. But it drew a momentary pause, a sort of mental shifting of gears. Doppelgangers sometimes do that. They aren't really wonderful at the give and take of conversation. But neither are Akraki.

I still didn't know what to think.

Then Periandros replied, "It might have been possible for you to have acted as a force for stability. It is still not too late for that. "

Was that a flicker, just then? A loss of definition around the edges? A little difficulty keeping the underlying bony structure intact?

And why did he look so damned sleek?

I asked him what he seriously thought I could accomplish. Would a statement from me persuade Naria to relinquish the palace, or get Sunteil to go back to Fenix?

"It would contribute toward the restoration of order," Periandros said. "That you continue to recognize us as the rightful emperor. That you call upon your own subjects everywhere to deny cooperation to the rebels. That you urge the rebellious lords to surrender for the good of all humanity."

He seemed perfectly serious.

It sounded rehearsed. Programmed, even. I tried to make allowances for the normally plonking cadences of Akraki speech. They were all so earnest, all so mechanical, grinding relentlessly on and on in their cheerless way. Not a scrap of poetry to them, not a bit of human flair. It was just their style. Still, I doubted more and more that I was talking to a creature of flesh and blood, especially as Periandros went on speaking.

Because what he began to talk about now was how greatly he and I needed to cooperate with each other: how precarious our positions were, how useful we could be to each other in securing our own thrones and in restoring the health of the Imperium. I had heard all that before from him, of course. He went on to speak of the grand ceremony of reconfirmation that he would stage for me as soon as I aided him in clearing the rebels out of the palace: the wand of recognition, the nobility coming in from all the worlds to attend, a great unforgettable spectacle. He ran through the whole thing precisely as though we had not discussed this very project at the time of our earlier audience just a few days before. Now I was convinced that I had to be dealing with a doppelganger. A spook. Whoever or whatever it was that had given me that audience from the throne, it was clear that this one had not been properly briefed on the content of that other conversation.

I could see the unmistakable doppelganger manifestations, now. The loss of definition, the coarseness of identity-density. It was utterly clear to me now, even on the screen.

I didn't attempt to interrupt. I let the spiel flow on and on, while trying to calculate my strategic options. There was no sense allying myself with a doppelganger. I had already compromised myself enough, I figured, simply by recognizing Periandros in the first place. But that could be dealt with. He had been the only emperor in town, after all, when I arrived at the Capital: what was I supposed to do, refuse to accept him? But now-with Periandros almost certainly dead, and his claim being carried forth by one or more short-lived and basically absurd replicas of him, and a rival lord already esconced in the palace, receiving the homage of the peers. Yes, I thought, I will have to stall this doppelganger somehow, and come to an understanding with NariaOn screen, Periandros was still talking, laying out the terms of the grand alliance that he and I were going to forge. I was only barely listening.

Then the door of my bedroom opened and Chorian came bursting in. I signalled him furiously and he dropped down, out of scan range. Wriggling along the floor, he made his way toward me and scrawled a note that he pushed within my range of vision: Ignore that creature. Periandros is definitely dead and that is nothing but a doppelganger. And Lord Sunteil is here and wants to speak with you at once.

SUNTEIL? IN MY OWN PALACE?

I must have looked extraordinarily startled, because even the pontificating doppelganger Akraki on the screen picked up my reaction and said, "Are you all right?"

"A touch of indigestion-the lateness of the hour-I need to think your proposals over-to return your call later-"

"You will be unable to locate me."

"Call me, then. At the noon hour. All right?"

I switched the screen off and turned toward Chorian. "This is true? Sunteil is here?"

"In disguise, yes. He came five minutes ago. Said he would speak only with you."

"Bring him in," I said. "Fast."

An old man entered. Someone had done quite a job of disguise on him. He looked about two hundred twenty-five years old, and a rickety, spavined, hideously ancient two hundred twenty-five at that-a withered, shriveled, bowed figure, palsied and tottering, with a few coarse strands of white hair clinging to the bare dome of his head.

It was the complete shipwreck, the total terrifying cataclysm of time: a man at the end of his tether, down there where remakes are no longer possible. And it was utterly convincing. But it had to be phony. I hadn't seen Sunteil in eight or ten years, but it wasn't possible for him to have aged that much so quickly. He had been in the first prime of manhood when I knew him-sixty years old, maybe seventy at most.

The one thing that hadn't altered was his eyes. I could see them glowing with dark mischief behind that wrinkled terrible mask: Sunteil's own authentic eyes. His gleaming, wicked, devilish, unmistakable eyes.

"Well, Yakoub," he quavered, in a high, piping phony-senile voice. "So I am your elder at last!" He tottered forward and fastened one claw-like hand about my wrist. "Sarishan, brother!" he said, and delivered himself of a wild rasping laugh. "Sarishan! These are strange times, eh, Yakoub?"

I didn't like his greeting me in Romany. Or his calling me brother. Sunteil was not my brother.

"You look lovely, Sunteil. You must have had a hard night." "Isn't it magnificent? An instant reverse remake, a brilliant upaging." He was speaking in his normal voice now, strong and deep. "They charge more for an up-aging than for the usual thing, do you know? Even though you'd think there wouldn't be much demand. But it was worth it. No one bothers an old man. Even in crazy times like these."

"I'll remember that," I said. "Perhaps everyone will stop bothering me, too, when I look as old as you do."

"You? You'll never look like this. Tell me, Yakoub: have you ever had a remake? They say this is still your real face and body, that you have some secret for never growing old. Is that true? Tell me. Tell me." "Rom never grow old, Sunteil. We live forever."

"You must teach me the secret, then."

"Too late," I said. "You chose the wrong ancestors. There's no help for you. Born a GaJe, die a Gaje."

"You are a hard man."

"I am gentle and kind. It's the universe that's hard, Sunteil." I was finding all this banter wearying. Giving him a sharp look, I said, "This visit surprises me. I had heard you were in hiding somewhere outside the city. Why have you risked coming to see me tonight? What is it you want, Sunteil?"

"To negotiate," he said.

"You're a fugitive. I'm a king. Negotiation is best done between equals."' 51, "If you're a king, I'm an emperor, Yakoub.

"I am a king, yes, and no question of it", I said crisply. "The only other claimant for my throne is dead and my people recognize me as their sovereign. But Naria is emperor just now, if anyone is."

"Is he? Naria sits in the palace, yes. The drunken soldiers in the streets proclaim him, yes. But sitting in a palace and ordering up riots in your name doesn't make you the emperor of the galaxy. Do the other worlds of the Imperium give a damn what the soldiers are doing in the streets of the Capital? All they know is that the throne is in dispute. And Naria holds power illegitimately."

"He holds it, though. While you skulk around in disguise in the small hours of the night, entering and leaving through side doors."

"For the moment," Sunteil said. "Only for the moment. Naria can be pushed as easily as Periandros was."

"Are you planning another assassination?"

"Oh?" Sunteil said, smiling a sly Sunteil smile out of that parched and ravaged face. "Was Periandros assassinated? I thought he was stung by a wasp."

"A metal wasp that someone sent flying through his window." "Is that so? How very interesting, Yakoub." He let his glance rove for a moment toward Chorian, who shrank back as if wishing he could make himself invisible. "But if that was the case, I suspect that Naria will be on guard against any attempt to do something similar to him."

"Then how do you intend to get rid of him?" "You'll help me," Sunteil said.

I let the astounding effrontery of that complacent statement go sliding by me. It wasn't easy.

"Help you?" I said, trying to sound innocently perplexed. "How can I possibly help you, Sunteil?"

"You say you are the king. I suspect that you are. The Rom everywhere obey you. No starship in the galaxy will go forth if the Rom baro gives the word. Flights everywhere will halt. Stop everything dead and Naria will fall."

"Perhaps."' "No perhaps about it. Do I need to tell you that the Rom hold the Imperium by the throat? Without interstellar commerce there is no Imperium. Without the Rom there is no interstellar commerce. You send out the word, Yakoub: There is to be no star travel until the legitimate emperor has taken the throne. In six weeks commerce will choke. You have the power."

His eyes were blazing. I had never seen Sunteil like this before. He was saying the unsayable, openly acknowledging the reality that everyone pretended did not exist. One didn't have to be as astute as Sunteil to see the stranglehold in which the Rom held the Imperium. But it was a power we had never chosen to invoke. We didn't dare. We could shut down the galaxy, yes. But we are very few and they are many. In time the Gaje could learn how to pilot their starships for themselves. If the Rom walked off the job there would be an ugly and chaotic period of transition in the Imperium, and then everything would be for the Gaje as it had been before. And then they would kill us all.

I was silent for a time.

Then I answered, "Possibly what you say is true, Sunteil. Possibly with my help you could force the Imperium to accept you as emperor. And possibly not. What if Naria survives the breakdown of commerce and keeps his throne? What will happen to me, then? What will happen to my people?"

"Naria will fall within weeks. Within days." "And if he doesn't?"

"You know that these are idle questions, Yakoub."

"I'm not so sure. Tell me this, Sunteil: What do I have to gain by meddling in your civil war? If I back the wrong side, I destroy myself and-perhaps the whole Rom kingdom. If I do nothing, you and Naria fight it out and the winner will have to recognize me as king anyway."

Out of Sunteil's grotesque skull of a face came the brilliant flashing Sunteil smile again.

"If I win without your help, Yakoub, what makes you think I'll necessarily recognize you as king?"

I heard Chorian smother a gasp of shock. I had wanted him beside me here to learn the craft of statesmanship; but this was a post-graduate course.

Carefully I said, "Surely you imply no threat, Lord Sunteil." "Do you infer one?"

"I am the legitimate king of the Rom, chosen by the great kris and ratified by the Fifteenth Emperor. The Sixteenth, whoever he may be, has no way of undoing that ratification."

"It was my understanding that you abdicated, Yakoub, and that your son Shandor was chosen in your place by the great kris. And that no less a personage than Lord Naria, acting as deputy for the Fifteenth, laid the wand of recognition upon your son Shandor. All I would need to do is ratify Naria's action once I became emperor."

"Shandor is dead," I reminded him.

"Then the Rom throne would be vacant. I would nominate a successor."

"A blatant attempt to interfere in Rom sovereignty?"

"Don't try to be naive, Yakoub. It's never very convincing when you do. When Periandros pulled you out of Shandor's prison and set you up as king again, what was that if not interfering with Rom sovereignty? I concede that you Rom have a certain power over us, but we're not without power of our own. You know that the Rom king serves at the sufferance of the emperor."

"And apparently the emperor serves at the sufferance of the king, also."

"Exactly," Sunteil said. His smile returned, bizarrely benign this time. "Therefore why are we speaking of threats? I have no desire whatever to interfere in Rom sovereignty, to meddle with your right to the throne, or anything else of the sort. I simply want to be emperor. And I want you to help me."

"I told you. There are risks for me in it. And I see no reward, except to be allowed to keep what is already mine by absolute right."

"Oh, there would be a reward, Yakoub." "I suggest you name it."

"Romany Star," Sunteil said. "What do you say? Give me your support and you can have Romany Star."

I HAD TO LOOK AWAY, SO THAT SUNTEIL WOULD NOT SEE how stunned I was. Romany Star? How did he know that name? How was it that a lord of the Imperium was speaking of Romany Star?

I felt a moment of terrible vertigo. My face grew hot and my knees went weak and sudden bewildering terror stabbed my heart. For one flailing instant I thought I was going to fall. It was a bad moment, a dropping-through-the-hidden-trapdoor sort of moment. Then I managed to get the upper hand over my glands and transformed my fear into rage, which was no more useful but less debilitating. In God's name, who had told Sunteil about Romany Star? Who had revealed our most precious secret to this slippery Gajo? I would throttle the traitor with my own hands. Who could he be? I glared across the room. Chorian! Chorian! Of course. Sunteil's own little personal Rom, his Gypsy aide-de-camp -currying favor with the Gajo lord by letting him in on the deepest mysteries of our peopleI gave Chorian a look that I wished could blast his soul. He turned scarlet. And into his eyes came a piteous expression of-what? Anguish? Bewilderment? A yearning for the forgiveness that he knew could never come?

When I was a little more calm I turned back to Sunteil and said in a tight voice, "What do you know of Romany Star?"

"That isn't important. What is important is that I guarantee it will be yours, Yakoub, when I take the throne."

"You've already said that. But what do you think you're talking about? What do you mean when you say 'Romany Star'?"

Sunteil seemed very uneasy.

"A red star, it is. With a single planet circling it, that is also known as Romany Star."

"Go on."

"A place that for some reason is holy to the Rom people."

"For some reason, Sunteil? What reason?" "I don't know."

"You don't?"

"How would I? It's some private Rom thing. All I know is that you want this Romany Star terribly, but you don't dare go there and claim it, either because it currently belongs to someone else or because you think we'll want it for ourselves if we find out that you're after it. I don't know and I don't care. I don't even know where it is. What I'm telling you, Yakoub, is that Romany Star will be yours if you help me become emperor. Isn't that enough for you? My solemn promise."

A Gajo's promise, I thought bitterly. A Fenixi's promise.

"You have no idea where it is or what it is, but you'll let me have it?"

With some exasperation he replied, "I'd take your word for it. You say, 'This place is Romany Star, Sunteil,' and I'll say, 'All right, it's yours.' Wherever it may be. No matter who claims it at the moment. All I know is that it means a great deal to you, the possession of this Romany Star. All right. It means a great deal to me, becoming emperor. You can give me that. And then I'll give you Romany Star. What do you say, Yakoub?"

I studied him. It began to seem to me as though he genuinely did not know anything more of Romany Star than what he had told me. Making allowances for the fact that he was Sunteil, that he was a man of Fenix, that he was famed for his deviousness and his deceitfulness. Nevertheless he had sounded uncharacteristically muddled and irritated as he responded to my questions about Romany Star. My instincts told me that this once, at least, he was being sincere when he said that that was really all he knew. Which was too much for any Gajo to know; but it was not in fact very much.

"I need time to think about this," I said. "How much do you need?"

"I have advisors to consult. Options to weigh." "Are you in touch with Naria?"

"I don't see why I need to tell you that. But in fact I haven't heard a word from Naria since all this began. Only Periandros. Who is still begging me to ally myself with him."

"Periandros is dead."

"Someone looking like Periandros and sounding like Periandros called me only a little while ago. A doppelganger, perhaps."

"A doppelganger, most certainly," Sunteil said. "Periandros is dead. I can give you the firmest assurance of that."

"I thought you could," I said.

"You'll be hearing from Naria sooner or later. Probably sooner. But I don't think he can offer you anything that can top my offer. How long will it be until I hear from you?"

"Not long," I said. "Only give me time to think. It has been an honor to speak with you, Lord Sunteil."

"The honor is mine, Yakoub."

Sunteil beckoned toward Chorian, as if expecting the boy to escort him out. I shook my head and indicated with the movement of a single finger that I wanted Chorian to stay; and Sunteil, nodding, went doddering from the room.

The moment he was gone I looked toward Chorian in terrible wrath. He was pale beneath his midnight-black skin.

"How is it that your master knows of Romany Star?" I asked him in a very quiet voice.

"He is not my master, Yakoub."

"You are in his pay. He knows of Romany Star. Not much, so it seems, but he knows. How is it that he knows, boy?"

"I beg you, Yakoub, believe me-" He faltered. "Believe me, Yakoub-"

"Say what you mean."

"If he knows anything-and it isn't much, what he knows, it is very little, of that I'm certain-if he knows anything, Yakoub, he did not learn it from me."

"No?" "I swear it." He had shifted to speaking Romany now. "You swear, do you?"

"By Martiya the angel of death, by o pouro Del the god of our fathers, by Damo and Yehwah, by all the spirits and demons-" "Stop it, Chorian."

"I will swear by other things. By anything you name."

Coldly I said, "You've learned your ancient Gypsy folklore well, haven't you? Studied the Swatura like a good boy? And sold it all to Sunteil? All those quaint little scraps of myth and tradition, eh, boy? Did you get a good price from him, at least?"

Tears glistened in his eyes. "Yakoub! I have sworn!"

"Someone who will sell Romany Star to the Gaje would swear on the muli of his dead mother, and what would it mean?"

"I was not the one, Yakoub. When Sunteil began speaking to you of Romany Star I wanted to hide, to die, because I knew it was wrong for him to know anything of Romany Star, and I knew you would think right away that I must be the one who had told him. But I was not the one. What can I say to make you believe that?"

He came to my side and stood towering over me. He was trembling. His tears were flowing. Was he that good, to be able to feign tears? He was Fenixi, yes, and Fenixi can fool almost anyone; and he was Rom besides; but I didn't think he could counterfeit emotions like these. There is acting and there is true feeling, and if I am unable to tell the difference between the one and the other at my age then it has been pointless for me to bother to live so long.

In a voice that was scarcely loud enough for me to hear he murmured, "Yakoub, on Mulano you told me the story of Romany Star, and much else besides. And afterward, as I was waiting for the relaysweep to come for me, I told you that I had discovered at last, while spending those few days with you, what it was like to have a real father. Do you remember that? The story of Romany Star was your gift to me. You were your gift to me. Do you think I would sell those gifts to Sunteil? Do you? Do you?"

And I had to say, though only to myself, No, Chorian, I do not think that you would.

To him I said, "I would prefer to think you are innocent, if I could." "I am innocent, Yakoub." His tears were gone and he was no longer trembling. Perhaps the conviction of his own innocence was strengthening him now. "Believe me. I can say no more."

"I think you tell the truth," I said. "For that I thank you, Yakoub."

"But how, then, did your master learn of Romany Star?"

"I tell you again, he is not my master. And I have no idea how he learned of it. But if you wish I will try to find that out."

"Yes," I said. "That would be-"

Just then the screen lit up and there was Julien, calling back to ask if I would speak with Periandros now, even though it was still early in the morning and I had promised to hold my next conversation with him at noon. Periandros did not want to wait until noon.

I took a long look at Julien.

I had the answer to the mystery of Sunteil's familiarity with Romany Star.

Julien! Of course! He knew of Romany Star. I remembered now what he had said on Galgala, when I had spoken of France as an unreal place, and he had said to me that France was to him what Romany Star was to us, the great lost place, the only true mother. That had amazed me. We do not speak of Romany Star with the Gaje. But Julien had learned of it, God only knew how. Perhaps it was not too difficult for him, in a long lifetime spent mainly around Rom. A few bottles of his fine red wines, a long evening of rich French foods, some Rom star-captain of his acquaintance lulled into an expansive mood, and it would all have come rolling out, the Tale of the Swelling Sun, the loss of our home and the dispersal into the Great Dark, and everything else. Yes. Yes. And Julien had filed it all away, our legend, our scripture; and he had saved it for the right moment and he had sold it to the right man.

Not to Periandros, whose cerces he had been taking all these years. But to Sunteil. Periandros was dead, and Julien knew it, no matter how many doppelgangers of the late lord were stored in the hiding-chambers. Periandros the doppelganger might yet prevail in this three-cornered struggle, but it was unlikely, and Julien was wisely placing his bets on Sunteil now. Cutting a little side deal for himself while there still was a chance. I had to admire him for that. But he should not have sold Romany Star to Sunteil, even so.

I had long ago fallen into the easy temptation of thinking of Julien as Rom, or almost Rom; but he was not Rom. Not at all. And this proved it.

"The emperor wishes to know," said Julien, "if the Rom baro has had sufficient time to consider their earlier conversation."

I wanted to reach into the screen and strangle him. My old friend, my rescuer. What I strangled instead was the impulse to do any such thing. If Julien had betrayed us, so be it. A Gajo is a Gajo, even Julien. You had to expect that from them. And in any case the damage was done. I had other problems to deal with. I didn't want to talk to Julien at all. Or his doppelganger master.

I told him that it had been a frantic night for me, that I hadn't had any chance to reach decisions about Periandros' offer. Hoping Julien would take that and go away before I had a chance to get really furious with him. He didn't.

"A thousand pardons, mon ami, but the emperor asks me to stress the fact that time is of the essence."

"I understand that, Julien."

"And if you are willing to negotiate on the points already discussed, then there is no time like the present for-"

"Oui, mon vieux?"

"What's the point of this dumb game? We both know that Periandros is dead and that you're dealing on behalf of a doppelganger. So why are you bothering to bother me with all this shit now? What good is pretending that a doppelganger can actually function as emperor? Especially in view of the fact that you're getting ready to jump ship anyway and go over to Sunteil's side."

"To Sunteil's side? But I do not understand, Yakoub! What you are saying is incomprehensible to me!"

"Perhaps you might understand it better if I could say it in French. But I can't. Merde is the only word of French I know. What you're trying to tell me is so much merde, Julien. That's a French word, isn't it? If you don't understand it, maybe I should try speaking to you in Romany."

"You are so angry. My old friend, what have I done?"

I didn't want to start in on the whole subject. But he was irritating me at a time when I didn't need irritation.

"You don't know?" I asked. A pause, minute but revealing.

"Whatever I may have done," he said after a moment, "it was for the sake of the Rom as well as for the sake of the Imperium, Yakoub. N'est-ce pas? It is the truth."

"Whatever you may have done," I told him, keeping tight control over my rage, God knows why, "was probably for the sake of Julien de Gramont, n'est-ce pas? With some slight thought, maybe, for the incidental damage it might cause, but that was purely secondary, I suspect." I amazed myself with my own ability to hold my fury in check. A trick one sometimes learns, with time. And sometimes forgets. "Just tell me this: whose pay are you in today? Periandros or Sunteil?" Silence. Consternation.

"Both?" I suggested. "Yes. Yes, that would be more like you, wouldn't it? And right now you're calling to do Periandros' work, or what passes for Periandros these days. An hour from now you may be scheming with Sunteil. And-"

"Please, mon ami. I implore you, no more. Truly, I have done you no harm. I feel great love for you, Yakoub. Do you comprehend that? It is the truth. La verite veritable, Yakoub." He held his hands outstretched toward me. "I call you now on behalf of Periandros, yes. He wishes to speak with you. It is what I am asked to tell you."

"Then I ask you to tell him that I can't be bothered with doppelgangers at a time like this. Tell him he can go off somewhere and fart in his hand, for all I care. Tell him-" A stricken look appeared on Julien's face. "No. No. All right, tell him what I told you a minute ago. That I've simply been too busy to decide anything. Just stall him. Sidetrack him. In your slick diplomatic way."

"Until-T' "Until never," I said. "This struggle is a two-sided triangle now, Julien, and there can't be any transaction between Periandros and me that would mean anything any more, whatever he may think. Doppelgangers fade. Maybe they don't know that about themselves, but I know it. I don't have time for him. The poor unreal bastard. All right? Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"He may be dead, Yakoub, but he is not yet without power." "He will be. He'll be nothing at all, very soon. I have to save my energies for dealing with the emperors who aren't dead. I'm working for the long run, Julien. Periandros is already decaying. Whether he knows it or not."

"But while he lives-"

"He doesn't live. He's a zombie. He's a walking mulo. And I ask you to keep him out of my hair. For the sake of the great love you claim to bear for me."

"Your voice is so harsh, Yakoub. There is such enmity in it." "Perhaps you know why that is."

"D'accord," said Julien gloomily. "I will tell Periandros you need more time for your decision."

"About eighty million years," I said. And I broke the contact. The next moment Polarca came striding into the room, looking distraught, waving a sheaf of reports.

"They're fighting in the Gunduloni district," he announced. "A bunch of Periandros loyalists against a detachment of Naria's militia. And troops wearing Sunteil's insignia have seized a whole block of streets just south of the imperial district, and they're going from house to house, forcing people to swear allegiance to him. And over on the other side of town there's a battle going on and nobody's been able to tell who's on what side."

"Is there anything else?" I asked.

"One thing more," said Polarca. "Naria has summoned you to the palace. He wants a parley right away."

IT WAS INEVITABLE, OF COURSE. THE DROPPING OF THE third shoe. Periandros and Sunteil had been heard from, and finally the last of the high lords was putting in his bid for my support. Or so I assumed. I was requested-and Naria's adjutant had sounded pretty damned urgent about it, according to Damiano, who had taken the call -to come at once and to bring with me not only Polarca but the phuri dai. Shrewd Naria, angling for Bibi Savina's backing as well: maybe my seat on the Rom throne might be a little wobbly, but Rom everywhere revered the phuri dai, without exception.

We held a conference on the advisibility of my accepting Naria's invitation and I got a mixed response. Jacinto and Ammagante, cautious as ever, wondered if it might be some sort of trap, a ploy designed to give Naria control over the entire Rom high command in one swoop. Damiano and Thivt agreed that that was a possibility but they thought the notion was far-fetched. Polarca, plainly itching to get out of this palace in which we had hidden ourselves for what was starting to seem like weeks, didn't care: he was willing to take the risk, such as it was, rather than remaining holed up here any longer.

I looked toward Bibi Savina. "What does the phuri dai say, then?" She looked at me and through me, into realms far, far away. "Does the Rom baro refuse the summons of the emperor?" she asked. "But is Naria the emperor?" Jacinto said.

"He holds the palace," said Bibi Savina. "One of the other two is dead and the third one is in hiding. If Naria is not emperor, no one is. Go to him, Yakoub. You must. And I will go to him with you."

I nodded. The phuri dai and I generally have seen things the same way over the years. To Damiano I said, "Tell him we'll be there in an hour or less."

"He's promised to send an imperial car for you."

"No," I said. "The last thing I want is to go driving around the Capital today in a car that bears the imperial crest. We'll take one of our own cars. Three cars, in fact. Nobody's going to try to get in the way of the Rom baro if they see a whole cavalcade of Rom vehicles."

Bold words. But in fact we were fired on five times during the thirty-minute ride to the imperial palace. There were no hits: our screens were good. Still, it wasn't a good sign. All this artillery action was twentieth-century stuff, and it felt out of place, a thousand years out of place and then some. I hadn't thought that a little thing like a struggle over the imperial succession could have sent the Gaje heading back down the evolutionary trail so fast. War is an obsolete concept, I had been telling Julien de Gramont only the other day-so to speak -during the tranquility of my retirement on icy Mulano. And in the short time since then I had found myself in the midst of a small war on Galgala and now in what had the look of a very large one here at the Capital. First our seat of government and then theirs.

At any rate, we got through the city in the same number of pieces with which we had set out. We never knew which side was doing the firing. Most likely all three factions were taking turns, and nobody having any idea of who it was that they were firing at, any more than we could tell who was shooting. An anonymous war: more twentieth-century stuff. If there has to be fighting, give me the medieval days, when at least you knew your enemy's name.

The city was a tremendous mess. I wouldn't have thought they could smash so much of it up so quickly. At least half a dozen of the loftiest towers had been sheared right off in mid-loftiness. Mounds of rubble strewn high as houses in the wide boulevards. A pall of black smoke staining the sky. Here and there an arm or a leg sticking out of the ruins: death, actual death, irreparable and irreversible. Whole lives cut in half as those towers had been, men and women robbed of a hundred years apiece or even more. And for what? Some petty dispute over whether the Gaje crown should go to a man of Fenix or a man of Vietoris, or perhaps to the animated image of a dead man from Sidri Akrak?

In that scene of devastation there were, nevertheless, incongruous signs of imperial splendor. Sky-banners, symbolic of the presence of the emperor at the Capital, were blazing away in the east, the south, and the north. But it was a display of banners such as never had been seen here before, for they glowed in three different sets of colors, one for Periandros, one for Naria, one for Sunteil. Wherever those warring lights met and clashed overhead, there was such turmoil in the sky that it befuddled and baffled the eye.

And farther to the north, in the city's outer ring-what were those plumes of brilliant purple light there? Why, they were the light-spikes of the Rom baro, of all things, returned at last to their proper place! Naria's doing? Sunteil's? Well, it was all useless flattery now. Did they think my allegiance could be bought with a show of light?

The palace was guarded by level upon level of fantastic defenses. A ring of deflector screens, first, casting a purple glow over the whole place. Within that, a row of gleaming tanks, all eyes and cannons. Then a phalanx of robots. An android militia. A vast host of human soldiers too-or, more likely, doppelganger-soldiers, hastily stamped out to meet the emergency. Scanners. Sky-eyes. Floating clouds of lethal antipersonnel pellets held in check by webs of magnetic force. And more, much more. State-of-the-art stuff, all of it, a wondrous and preposterous array of technological wizardry. Naria's incredible defensive deployment told me as much about Naria as it did about the current state of military preparedness in the Imperium.

It took more than an hour for us to be escorted through all the checkpoints. But at last we entered into the presence of the man who for the moment held the title of Sixteenth Emperor.

No throne-platform now, no crystalline steps. An immense cube of what looked like glass, but probably wasn't, had been set up in the enormous high-vaulted council-chamber of the palace. A warning line of blue fire rose from the stone floor on all four sides. High above, scanner beams searched constantly through the air. And deep within the cube, enthroned like a pharaoh of old in absolute inaccessibility, sat the self-proclaimed Emperor Naria, motionless as a statue, taut and slender as a whip, solemn as a god. Darkness surrounded him but he himself was illuminated by a confluence of spotlights that imparted a fierce blaze to his shoulder-length scarlet hair, his dark purple skin, his implacable yellow eyes. He wore a richly brocaded garment of some stiff green fabric that rose up behind his head like a cobra's hood, and the crown imperial floated above him in holographic projection.

All very impressive. All very ludicrous.

I saw Polarca struggling with a smirk. The phuri dai was smiling seraphically; but then she often does that, in all sorts of contexts. "We are grateful for your coming here, Rom baro," Naria declared in slow, measured, absurdly pretentious tones. His voice emerged from behind the glassy walls of that cube out of a thousand speakers at once, and went rebounding dizzyingly around the vast room.

Such ridiculous theatricality! Who did he think he was talking to? And the royal we again. For century upon century the Empire had managed to survive and even thrive without any such idiotic affectations. But suddenly these uneasy lordlings were reviving it as they made their little snotnosed forays toward the throne. I felt sorry for them. That they should need to inflate themselves that way.

Still, I gave Naria the formal gesture of submission that a Rom baro traditionally makes to the emperor. Even though he had not offered me the traditional wine. It cost me nothing and might win me a point or two with him. And it rarely pays to be discourteous to megalomaniacs when you're standing in their living room.

Then I said, gesturing at the glass cube and everything that surrounded it, "How sad that all this should be necessary, Majesty." "A temporary measure, Yakoub. It is our expectation that peace will be restored within a matter of days, or even hours. And that there will never again be such a breach of it, once we have completed the task of imposing our authority upon the Imperium."

"Let us all hope so, Majesty," said I most piously. "This war is an agony for us all."

The solemn bastard! Saw himself as savior. Well, meet hypocrisy with hypocrisy, if you have to.

He gave me his grave-and-thoughtful-ruler look. "There is much damage in the city, is there not?"

"Too much, I'm afraid."

"The Capital is sacred. That they should dare to harm it-! Well, we will make them pay for it, every minim, every obol." He studied me in frosty silence for a time. I returned his glare, unfazed. He wasn't a likable man, this scarlet-and-purple Naria. Reptilian. Dangerous. This was the man, after all, who had taken it upon himself to ratify Shandor's unlawful appropriation of my kingship, even while the old emperor still lived. What was it about our unhappy era that had loosed these Shandors and Narias in it?

Then he said, his tone changing entirely, shifting from stiff imperial pomp and bluster to sly and almost intimate insinuation, "Do you know where Sunteil is hiding?"

That was a really unexpected shot. I'm afraid I let myself show my surprise.

"Sunteil?" I said idiotically.

"The former high lord, yes. Who is now in rebellion, as you certainly must know, against the legally constituted government of the Imperium. He's here at the Capital. I wondered whether you happen to know where."

"Not a clue, Your Majesty."

"Not even an unfounded rumor or two?"

"I've heard that he's somewhere south of the city. More than that I couldn't say."

He looked at me like a bomb that was deciding whether it wanted to go off.

"Or rather, more than that you don't choose to say."

"If the emperor thinks I'm concealing things from him-" "You've had no dealings whatever with Sunteil, then?"

The interrogation was starting to slide into new and perilous territory. Carefully I said, "I have no idea where Sunteil may be." Which was true. But it wasn't the answer to the question that Naria was asking.

He let my little evasion pass without comment. Reverting now to his loftier imperial voice, he said, "When Sunteil comes to you again, Yakoub, you will seize him and deliver him to us. Is that understood?" Amazing. Rolling right over me like an avalanche. "This is war, and we can allow no niceties. You will have a second chance to capture him, and this time you will take it." When he comes to you again? How much did Naria know? I heard Polarca gasp in astonishment, and Bibi Savina lost her smile. Seize and deliver him? I had expected to hear Naria beg me for an alliance, not give me orders.

I stared. For a moment I was at a loss for words. Actually speechless. Me!

Naria went on serenely, "The hand of Sunteil has been raised against his emperor, which is to say that it has been raised against every citizen of the Imperium. He is the enemy of us all. He is as much the enemy of you Rom as he is the enemy of-of-what is it that you call us?" "Gaje, Majesty."

"Gaie. Yes."

I said, "And why does Your Majesty think that I will be visited again by Lord Sunteil?"

"Because you will arrange it." That simple. I will arrange it.

The response of Yakoub is the dropping of the jaw, the gaping of the mouth. Only metaphorically, of course. Calm on the surface, I am.

Taking all this very casually. Mustn't let him see how astounded I am. What a marvel you are, Naria.

"Ah. Because I will arrange it."

Saying it very lightly. Merely repeating what should have been obvious to any moron. You will lure my rival into your clutches, Yakoub, and then you will nail him for me. Of course, Your Majesty. Of course.

He said, "There will be a meeting, at some carefully devised neutral point. By your invitation. Another part of the planet, or perhaps some other world entirely. At which you and he will discuss the prospect of an alliance between the Rom Kingdom and an Empire led by Sunteil. You will charm him, as you do so well. You will lull him off his guard. And then you will capture him and turn him over to us.

I felt almost like applauding. Bravo, Naria!

He was speaking to me, to the King of the Rom, as though I were nothing more than some minor phalangarius of his staff. That took daring. Audacity. Stupidity.

"And Periandros?" Polarca said suddenly, a wicked gleam coming into his eye. "Are we to catch him for you too, Your Majesty?" Within his cube of glass Naria remained as motionless as before, but his eyes turned toward Polarca and there was no look of amusement in them. It seemed to me that a chill wind had begun to blow through the council-chamber.

"Periandros?" said Naria. "There is no Periandros. Not many days ago the body of Periandros lay in state in this very room."

"But his doppelganger-"

Naria waved him to silence. "There are three doppelgangers of Periandros. They cause trouble, for the moment, but they are nothing. Time will steal their life from them and turn them to the clay from which they were made. Sunteil is the enemy. You must deal with Sunteil." He skewered Polarca with a baleful glance. Polarca had the good sense not to make any more little lighthearted sallies. After a time Naria looked toward Bibi Savina, who seemed lost in dreams, or perhaps off ghosting. "You, there, old woman! You stand there saying nothing, and your mind is far away. What are you doing? Peering into the future?"

The phuri dai laughed a wondrously girlish laugh. "Into the past, Your Majesty. I was thinking of a time when I was very young, and was in a swimming race with the boys, from one shore of the river to the other. "

"But you can see the future, can't you?" Bibi Savina smiled pleasantly.

"Of course you can. Tomorrow is as clear to you as yesterday, eh, old woman? Old witch. And the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. Do you deny it? How can you? Everyone knows the powers of the Rom fortune-tellers."

"I am only an old woman, Your Majesty."

"An old woman to whom the future is an open book. Is that not so?" "Sometimes I see a little way, perhaps. When the light is shining for me.,

"And is the light shining now?" Naria asked.

Again Bibi Savina smiled. A sweet smile, a childlike smile.

"Tell us this, at least," said Naria. "Will there be peace in the Empire?"

"Oh, there can be no doubt of that," said the phuri dai easily. "When war ends, peace returns."

"And the new emperor? Will his reign be a happy one?"

"The new emperor will reign in prosperity and grandeur beyond all measure, and the worlds will rejoice."

"Ah, you old Gypsy witch!" Naria said, almost affectionately. "You say things that are so full of cheer. But we are not deceived. The game's an old one, isn't it? Tell your listeners what they want to hear, and take their money and send them away happy. Your kind's been playing that game for thousands of years. Eh? Eli?"

"You are wrong, Your Majesty. The things I have told you are not necessarily the things you would want to hear."

"That there will be peace? That our reign will be a glorious one? What better prophecies could you have given me?"

The phuri dai smiled and made no reply, and once more her gaze wandered off into the distant galaxies. Naria, still staring at her, seemed for the moment to follow her there. There came the sound of more explosions outside the palace, some long and muffled like distant thunder and some, not at all far off, sharp and quick and percussive. Naria showed no sign of noticing them. After a time he turned his attention back to me.

"Well, Yakoub? Now we understand each other totally, is that not so?"

Periandros had asked me the same thing, I recalled, the day I had ascended the crystalline steps for my audience with him atop the throne-platform. Without hesitation I gave Naria the same answer I had given his predecessor.

"Perfectly, Your Majesty," I said. Though I doubted that very much. But at least I understood him, better than ever before.

"Then there is no need of further talk. You may go. When you have Sunteil, return to us."

This, said to a king! Incredible. Utterly incredible.

"And then we will have much to discuss," he went on. "The new order of things, eh? The emperor and the Rom baro. It is our intention to make many changes, as the Imperium enters the time of prosperity and grandeur that the old phuri dai has foretold. And we will need your cooperation, eh, Yakoub? Emperor and Rom baro, working together for the good of mankind."

"As always, Your Majesty," said I obligingly.

"Good. Your first task is to bring us Sunteil. Nothing else matters until that is done. Go, then. Go now."

Grandly-yes, imperiously-he waved us from the room.

"Can you imagine it?" Polarca exclaimed. We were making our way warily through the shattered city. Sirens sounding, blurts of gunfire breaking out randomly here and there. "He tells you what to do, and then he tells you that you can go. A little wave of his imperial fingei. Dismissing a king the way you would a stablehand."

There were implosion craters everywhere. Now and then a screening bomb went off, blanketing a whole zone of the city with dark clouds of communications-muffling murk. Or an explosion far overhead would send down showers of brilliant golden metallic threads, as though this were not a war but some sort of grand merry pyrotechnikon.

I said, "King, stablehand-it makes little difference to me, Polarca." "Less than a stablehand! You wouldn't even talk to a stablehand that way!"

"No, I wouldn't," I said. "But I am not Naria."

The threads were clusters of picosensors: espionage devices, gobbling up data in mid-air as they floated. Sunteil's little spies? Naria's? Who could tell? Perhaps the doppelganger generals of the doppelganger emperor Periandros were the ones who had ordered them to be dropped.

And still the sky-banners of the three emperors rippled like auroras above us. And on the horizon, too, the brilliant purple light-spike that was the mark of the Rom baro, telling all the world that that great personage was in residence at the Capital in this very hour. Which I was beginning profoundly to wish was not the case.

Polarca was still furious. He couldn't let go of it. "You aren't angry at being treated like that, Yakoub?"

"Angry? What good is being angry? Will it make him more courteous? Naria does as Naria must."

"The bastard. The pig."

"If I allow myself to become angry," I said, "I lose sight of what a formidable adversary he is."

"You think he is?" "Can you doubt it?"

"Just an arrogant boy, puffed up with his own importance. How old is he? Fifty? Sixty? Not even. Sitting there in that glass box on display like the wonder of the galaxies. Calling himself 'we,' and handing out orders to kings. Going out of his way to let us know what a big deal he is. Playing games with you, leading you around by your nose. I'm surprised you put up with it like that, Yakoub."

"He is emperor," I said.

"That pimp? That fop? You call that an emperor?"

"He has the palace and the army," I reminded him. "And is very quickly going about the business of consolidating his power. Periandros is dead and Sunteil, who everyone thought would reach out and take the throne like a ripe fruit the moment the Fifteenth departed his body, runs and hides. And Naria knows how many doppelgangers there are of Periandros; he knows that Sunteil came visiting us in secret this morning. I think we need to deal with him as though he is truly the emperor, Polarca."

"What do you mean to do, then? Will you recognize him? What about Sunteil?"

"What about Sunteil?" I asked.

"He, at least, pretends to treat us as equals. Naria treats us like dogs." "You prefer the pretense?"

"We live by pretense," said Polarca. "And what we pretend is that the Gaje respect us, when we know that they merely fear us, because they need us, because they depend on us. But the pretense of respect feels better than the reality of contempt. I like Sunteil's style better than I do Naria's."

"So do I," I said. "We may have no choice, though." "Will you give Sunteil to Naria as he asks?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, Polarca. It's not a notion that pleases me a great deal."

Our cavalcade of cars came to a halt. We were at the palace of the Rom king, in the Plaza of the Three Nebulas. Suddenly I had a profound wish to be alone. For an instant I almost wished I was back on white glittering Mulano, squatting by the Gombo glacier and trawling for turquoise spice-fish with a vibration net. Far from all this, far from everyone, the wagging tongues, the clamorous ambitions, the murderous schemes, the noise, the blood, the idiocy.

Chorian came running out to greet me. He was agitated: an implosion bomb had gone off next door to the palace half an hour ago. He pointed to the palace walls: great ugly cracks ran from floor to ceiling. These lunatics would not be satisfied, I thought, until they had destroyed their entire absurd Capital. Well, so be it. So be it. The cities of mankind are temporary things. Let it all come down, I thought. Let the Gaje ruin all the worlds. And then we will lift ourselves from their midst and return to Romany Star to live in peace. As soon as we receive the call. As soon as we receive the call.

Chorian tried to tell me that I should leave the Capital at once, while starships were still running; that I should take myself back to Galgala and await the resolution of the imperial civil war in relative safety.

"There is no safety anywhere," I told him. "I will stay here." They all surrounded me, bubbling with conflicting advice. I sent them all away and went to my private suite, to my only refuge in this hubbub. I needed to rest, to think, to weigh alternatives.

But even there I could not be alone.

Hardly had I settled down but the familiar figure of Valerian's ghost came drifting through the walls. He was wearing magnificent robes of red fur trimmed with ermine, and he was buzzing and crackling with enough electrical intensity to light up half a planet. In the true Valerian manner he hovered erratically in mid-air, skittering this way and that.

I felt no joy in seeing him. "You? Here?" was the best I could manage by way of greeting.

"I had to come. Even if you didn't want me. You need to get out of here right away, Yakoub. This planet isn't safe."

"You're telling me that?"

"For God's sake, a war is about to break out here, Yakoub. Do you want to be killed? The crazy Gaje bastards are going to bomb each oth or into oblivion."

"You're out of phase, Valerian. The war has already begun. Look, can't you see the cracks in the wall, here? An implosion bomb across the street, half an hour ago."

"It'll get much worse. I'm trying to warn you." "All right. What's going to happen?"

"Everyone's going to die, Yakoub. Get out while you can. Get everyone out with you. Listen, I'm only two weeks ahead of you in the time-line. That's all it is, two weeks, and in those two weeks all hell breaks loose at the Capital. I'm not even sure what happens. I came right away, as soon as I heard what was going on here. You've got to go. Now. "

"You aren't the first to tell me that today."

"Well, I may be the last, if you don't get moving.,,

Wearily I said, "You get moving, Valerian. Go ghost Megalo Kastro, all right? Iriarte. Atlantis. I need to be by myself for a while. I need to think things through."

"Yakoub-" "Go. Go. In the name of God, Valerian, let me be."

He gave me a long reproachful look, shaking his head sadly. And then he was gone. Leaving behind his buzz, leaving behind his crackle. Not in the room, just in my brain. I began to realize that I was starting to come close to the overload level.

A hot bath, I thought-a nap-a little flask or two of brandy-some quiet time to myselfSo much to decide. Leave the Capital as Chorian and Valerian urged, and let the Gaje lords do as they wished with each other? Or stay, and continue to try to shape the pattern of events? Snare Sunteil, and give him to Naria? Or send out word to the Rom star-pilots everywhere that ships must not go forth so long as Naria holds the throne, as Sunteil had urged? Ah, Mulano, Mulano! Peace! Quiet! Solitudel

There was a colossal blast just outside the palace. The entire building trembled and I thought it would collapse; but somehow it held firm. "Yakoub? Oh, you Yakoub!"'

What now? I closed my eyes, and suddenly I felt the presence of all the Gypsy kings once again burgeoning within me, the whole horde of them, pushing and shoving for my attention. Red-bearded Ilika, and little Chavula, and Cesaro o Nano, and all the rest of them, kings of lost Rom realms and kings of dominions still unborn, some whispering to me and some shouting. They were telling me tales of past and future, filling me with visions of glories gone and glories yet to come, but they were all speaking at once, and it was impossible for me to understand a thing. Their eyes were wild, their foreheads glistened with sweat. I begged them to give me peace. But no: they grew more impassioned, they circled round and round me, plucking at my sleeves like beggars, telling me this and that and this and that incomprehensible thing until I was ready to bellow and roar with mad anguish.

"Yakoub?" said a familiar voice, through all the hubbub. "Yakoub, listen to me!"

My voice. My own ghost, striding into the room.

I stared into my own face. It seemed strangely transformed, oddly different from the face I had looked upon all my life. Something about the eyes, the cheeks, even the mustache. An older Yakoub, an ancient Yakoub, Yakoub with all his years finally showing: still strong, still vigorous, not at all a walking cadaver such as Sunteil had made of himself, but nevertheless clearly a Yakoub who had come to me across a great distance in time. Which told me one thing that gave me comfort in that hour of madness, which was that my skein was still a long way from being fully spun.

He reached out toward me, that other Yakoub, and his ghostly hand rested on my wrist as if to hold me in place. His face was close to mine; his eyes searched me deeply.

"Has Valerian been here yet? To tell you to clear out of here?" I nodded. "Five minutes ago. Ten, maybe."

"Good. Good. I was afraid I might be too early. Listen to me, Yakoub. Valerian doesn't understand a thing. He comes from just a couple of weeks down the line, did he tell you that? Too soon to know the full story. He"s wrong to want you to leave the Capital. You have to stay. Do you hear me, Yakoub? Stay right here, no matter what happens. It is absolutely essential that you remain at the Capital. Do you understand me?"

My head was throbbing. I felt six thousand years old. A hot bath, a flask of brandy-sleep -sleep -

"Do you hear me, Yakoub?"

"Yes. Yes. Stay-at-the-Capital-"

"That's right. Say it again. Stay at the Capital, no matter what happens."

"Stay at the Capital. No matter what happens."' "Right. Good."

He disappeared. A tremendous explosion rocked the building. An other. Another. I ran to the window. The sky was aflame. And against the soaring tongues of fire the sky-banners of the three rival emperors rippled and blazed.

I felt myself caught in a whirlwind. Again and again came the terrifying sound of the war outside. The world was breaking apart, and so was I. I tried to hold myself together but it was impossible. I was whirling out of control. Some force beyond all resistance was pulling me free from myself. Sending me hurling like a handful of scattered atoms into the turbulent tempests of space and time. Whirling-whirling It was like the first time I had ever ghosted. I felt my soul splitting in half.