On and on I plummeted, toppling through space. I don't know how long the journey took. It didn't matter at all. You have no real way of telling anyway. Once I made a relay jump that covered a mere fifty light-years and cost me a full year of elapsed realtime time. On another jump I crossed from Trinigalee Chase to Duud Shabeel, which is about as far as you can go and still remain in the known part of the galaxy, in less than an hour. There's never any way of knowing how it will turn out.
But this time the time passed very swiftly for me. Maybe my body was in suspended animation but my mind was throbbing and pulsing with eager plans. I had been in cold storage on Mulano too long; now I was impatient to get back into the Empire and set to work at the heavy tasks that faced me. Sometimes impatience can make a long journey seem a thousand times as long as it is, but this time it had the opposite effect for me. I was keyed up. I was charged. A hundred seventy-two years old, me? Up your buliasa! I felt like a boy again. Not a day over fifty, me.
Going back, taking charge. Setting straight all that had become snarled during my absence. Doing something about the state of the Empire, the state of the Kingdom, the antics of the high lords, the maneuvers of my terrible son Shandor-oh, yes, there was plenty waiting for me! I loved it. I swam in it all the way back. It was the shortest swiftest jolliest relay-sweep journey I had ever undertaken.
Ah there, you worlds of the Imperium! Remember me?
Hoy! Yakoub! Yakoub! Yakoub!
On my way back at last!
2.
IF THINGS HAD BEEN DIFFERENT I WOULD HAVE BEEN Loiza la Vakako's son-in-law and in the fullness of time I would probably have come to inherit the rich overflowing bounty that was Nabomba Zom. Certainly things were heading in that direction. And then someone else would have become King of the Gypsies, most likely, because why would I have let them talk me into leaving my real and glorious domain and my true and splendid palace to take up all the heartaches and struggles of the Kingdom?
But that was not how things worked out. Maybe in some other universe Yakoub grew rich and fat and old and sleepy and died happily in the arms of his beautiful Malilini years ago by the shores of the scarlet sea. And the crown of the Rom went to some dazzling brilliant leader whose cleverness was far superior to mine and who has already reclaimed Romany Star for his people and done many other wonderful things. But in the universe where I live everything has turned out in quite another way.
I regret all those splendors and happinesses that I might have had but lost, I suppose. And I suppose I should lament all the hardships that came my way after the downfall of Nabomba Zom. All the same, though, do I have any real complaint? I've eaten well and lived well and loved well. I have been given great tasks to do and unless I am greatly fooling myself I think I have done them well. Take one thing and another and it seems to me that the life I have lived hasn't been anything to lament about, bumps and bruises notwithstanding. We need a few bruises, and worse than bruises, to teach us the real meaning of happiness. And in any case this was the life I was meant to live: not the other. That one was only a dream.
Strangely I am unable to remember when Malilini and I first became lovers, I who remember so much and in such fine detail. But it was a gradual process and maybe there was no first time. Perhaps we always were lovers. Perhaps never.
We went riding together and swam together in the warm streams that fed the hot scarlet sea and sometimes we went ghosting together, now that I had learned the trick of it. We slipped away in our ghostly way to most of the other kingly worlds, Marajo and Galgala and Darma Banna, Iriarte and Xamur. I had never dreamed such richness could exist, as I saw on those noble planets. The universe seemed to me to be like a great hymn of joy, crying out in beauty from a thousand throats at once.
We went far in space when we ghosted but we never went any great distance in time. A year or two back, five, ten, that was all. I think she feared breaking away into the deeper realms of time. And in those days I never knew that it was possible, or I would have raged hungrily for it: to see old lost Earth, to visit the pyramids of Egypt and the temples of Babylon, to ghost on backward in time into Atlantis itself. Even to visit Romany Star! But none of that did I do, for lack of knowing that it could be done.
I was a man now and Malilini still was whatever Malilini was: beautiful, unchanging, ever young. I suppose we kissed, finally. I suppose we clasped hands and held them that way for an hour. I suppose we came laughing out of the crimson stream and shook our naked bodies dry under the powerful blue sun and turned to each other and embraced. And then I suppose a moment came when the embrace went on and on until there was no longer any boundary between her and me, and we fused into one, her long slender thighs clasped about me, her pale supple slender form and my thick-muscled shagginess joining at last. And then that fiery spurting moment of pleasure. But I have lost the memories of it. I suppose thinking of these things was too painful.
I knew her but I never knew her. She never said much. She was sparkling and airy but also she was elusive, remote, always an enigma. Why hadn't she ever loved before? Why did she love now? I never looked for answers. I know I would never have received them. I would have done as well turning to the stars in the heavens and asking why this one burned with a blue fire and this one with a red, this one yellow and this one white.
Even so, it was understood after a time that we were betrothed. I began calling Loiza la Vakako "father" and it seemed completely natural. Vietoris and my real family were as forgotten to me as yesterday's dream. When I rode out across Nabomba Zom in the air-car of Loiza la Vakako I knew that I was being groomed to take his place some day as the monarch of this resplendent world. By now I had met the husbands of his other daughters and I could tell that each of them had failed in some way to fulfill the hope that Loiza la Vakako had placed in him. That was a wound and a sadness to Loiza la Vakako, but he would never let it show. They were good men, they ruled their provinces carefully and well, but there was some last measure of depth and breadth missing from them, it seemed, and none of them would inherit the domain, only that part of it that was his own fief.
And I? What did I have that they lacked?
I didn't have the foggiest idea. But Loiza la Vakako saw it. Somehow he saw the kingliness in me when I myself felt not a trace of it. I had been a little slave boy and then I had been a snotty street-begging urchin and now by some flukish turn of fate I was living the life of a rich young prince, but rich young princes are generally not very profound characters and neither was I. What I wanted most to do was ride on the moors and swim in the scarlet ocean and plunge into the shimmering depths of the Hundred Eyes, and then to turn to Malilini and slide my trembling hands along the insides of her thighs; and somehow Loiza la Vakako saw in me a king. Well, there was a king hidden inside me, all right. But it took Loiza la Vakako to perceive him there.
To celebrate our betrothal he gave a grand Rom patshiv, a ceremonial feast. And that was the one mistake he made in all his serene and rich life of wisdom and foresight, and it brought his ruination and mine.
The patshiv was months in the planning. Word went out to all corners of Nabomba Zom that the cream of every harvest was to be set aside for it; and the agents of Loiza la Vakako on all the kingly planets and half the worlds of the Imperium were instructed to ship wondrous foods and wines to us. Loiza la Vakako's six married daughters and their six princely husbands were to be there, and even Loiza la Vakako's brother, the dark and somber-faced Pulika Boshengro, would come down from his realm on one of the neighboring worlds.
A great pavilion was built in the courtyard of the palace, and long tables, Rom-fashion, were set up under an arbor of arching glimmer vines that would cast a sweet tingling radiance over the feast. Now came the cooks, platoons of them, legions of them, to set to work at mincing meats and chopping garnishes, seasoning the game birds with sage and thyme and marjoram, flavoring the beasts on the spits with peppercorns and rosemary, preparing the huge platters of beans with cream and lentils, mashed peas in vinegar, cucumbers rich with yogurt and dill, the olives, the horseradishes, the meatballs spiced with nutmeg, all the dishes that have been beloved of the Rom for so many thousands of years. And the casks of wine! The flagons of brandy! The barrels of beer!
And when everything was ready and the whole clan had assembled Loiza la Vakako came forth from the palace in robes of such majesty and opulence that it was hard for me to remember the simplicity of his private rooms, the austerity and even asceticism of his inner life. I was in robes of the same magnificence, walking beside him. And Malilini, shimmering with her own beauty and gowned in something that seemed to be nothing more than spun air, against which her dark glowing loveliness burned all the more brilliantly.
Loiza la Vakako had intended this feast to be one such as Nabomba Zom had never seen before. That would go down in the legends of the Rom as unsurpassed in all our history and unsurpassable by the generations to come. Well, there is no denying that it was a feast such as Nabomba Zom had never seen before. But not in the way that Loiza la Vakako had in mind. And as for being unsurpassed and unsurpassable -no, that was not to be.
We took our seats at the high table: Loiza la Vakako in the center, his brother Pulika Boshengro at his left, Malilini to his right, me on Malilini's other side. All about us were lords and ladies of the realm, the six daughters, the six sons-in-law, the local archimandrite and three of his thaumaturges, the imperial consul and a bunch of his hierodules, assorted high vassals from the outlying plantations, and a host of others, including a cadre of nobles that Pulika Boshengro had brought with him from his own court, all garbed in swirling costumes of the most startling brightness.
Loiza la Vakako stretched forth his arms in benediction, inviting everyone to sit.
The servitors poured the first round of wine. They heaped the salads and smoked meats on our plates. We all waited. The guest from the most distant land must taste the first morsel.
That was Pulika Boshengro. He rose-a small, compact man like his brother, full of coiled energy and passion. His eyes gleamed with a chilly sort of intelligence.
Beside him on the table lay his lavuta, his violin, a good old Gypsy fiddle. This Pulika Boshengro was said to be a musician of high attainments, who would open our feast with one of the ancient tunes, a quick fiery melody to start the festivities the right way. A great silence fell. Pulika Boshengro ran his fingers lightly up and down the fingerboard of his fiddle and reached for his bow. All around the pavilion people were smiling and nodding and closing their eyes as if they could already hear the music.
Pulika Boshengro drew the bow across the strings. But what came forth was no sweet old Gypsy tune. It was three harsh fierce discordant scraping notes.
A signal. A cue for action.
The henchmen of Pulika Boshengro moved with astonishing speed. Before the third note had died away I was pulled roughly to my feet and I felt an arm tight across my throat and a knife in the small of my back. All along the head table the same thing was happening to Loiza la Vakako, to Malilini, to the six sons-in-law and their wives. Sharp gasps went up from the guests at the lower tables, but no one moved. In a single instant we were all hostages.
I turned my head to the left and stared across Malilini at Loiza la Vakako. His face was calm and his eyes were untroubled, as though he had seen this coming and wasn't at all surprised, or as though the strength of his soul was such that not even being seized at his own feasting-table could disturb his balance. He smiled at me.
Then one of Pulika Boshengro's men grunted in alarm. He pointed at Malilini.
If I live to be a thousand this moment will blaze furiously in my mind. I looked toward her; and I saw her face going strange. Her eyes were clouded, her nostrils were flaring, the corners of her mouth were pulled back in a grimace that was not a smile.
I knew the meaning of that expression. She was summoning her power so that she could go ghosting.
Pulika Boshengro knew what that face meant too. And saw at once what I was too dense to understand in that first wild moment: that what she intended to do was slip away a short distance into the past, a week perhaps or even less, and warn her father that his brother must not be admitted to the feast.
Now that coiled energy of his came into play, and that chilly intelligence. An imploder leaped into Pulika Boshengro's hand, a little steel-jacketed frog-nosed weapon. He fired once-a soft blurping sound-and Malilini seemed to rise and float away from him, up and back and across the feasting-table. She lay sprawled face upward amidst the wine-flasks and the platters of meat and she did not move.
For a moment Loiza la Vakako seemed to crumple. His face dissolved and his shoulders heaved as if he had been struck by an enormous mallet. Then his great strength reasserted itself and he stood straight again, unmoving and seemingly unmoved. But I saw that winter had entered his eyes. And then for a time I saw nothing at all, for my tears came flooding forth and with them came such an eruption of fiery anger that it blinded me. I let out a tremendous cry and tried to swing around, giving no thought to the blade that was pricking my back or the arm pressing with choking force against my throat. My hands were still free; I clawed for eyes, lips, nostrils, anything.
"Yakoub," said Loiza la Vakako quietly. "
No
."
Somehow that voice cut through my madness; or perhaps it was the powerful arm tightening on my windpipe.
I subsided all at once, and stood slumped, looking at my feet. It was over. We were prisoners and Pulika Boshengro had captured Nabomba Zom with three screeches of his fiddle. A whole world had fallen and there had been but a single casualty.