"You didn't say it, no," I agreed. "But you've been thinking it. Haven't you, Polarca?"
"Absolutely not."
"Valerian?"
"Crazy? You?"
"Damiano? Biznaga? Come on, you pigs, put up your hands! Everyone who thinks Yakoub is somewhere around the far bend into senility, wave your goddamned hand in the air!"
No hands went up. Their faces didn't show a flicker of emotion. Did I have them cowed? Or were they determined to go on hiding what they thought of me, no matter what?
The crater roared and gargled. There was the sound of colossal masses of rock moving about somewhere deep within it. A plume of yellow smoke came burping up to the surface and spread a rank rotten stink everywhere, like the fart of a giant. No one reacted. No one moved. They were staring at me like a bunch of robots and there was no way I could read what was behind their eyes.
After a time I said in a quieter voice, under the tightest control I could manage, "I want to assure you that I'm still very much in my right mind. Just in case any of you happen to doubt that. My abdication may have been a tactical mistake, though I'm not yet convinced of that, but it wasn't the arbitrary and capricious action of a crazy old man."
And I launched into the full explanation: how I had come to feel that we were slipping away from our underlying nature, how we were being drawn more and more deeply into the Gaje Empire when in fact what we needed to do was to begin preparing ourselves for the return to Romany Star that had been our goal for so many thousands of years, and which was now perhaps just a couple of hundred years away. I told them how I had felt the need to do something dramatic in order to shake people up. That I had decided to go away for a few years and leave them leaderless, so they could ponder the error of their ways. And how I had planned to return and resume the throne, stronger than ever, once the full impact of my absence had been felt.
They listened to me soberly, almost grimly. Ammagante seemed to be engaged in some abstruse set of interior calculations. Damiano was scowling, Chorian looked astounded, Biznaga almost in tears. The others seemed puzzled or bothered or dismayed, all but Syluise, who had heard all this before and merely seemed bored. And Bibi Savina, whose invincible serenity remained unbroken. It occurred to me that the old woman might not even be listening to me, might not even be here, might be off ghosting somewhere at the far end of time.
When I was finished Jacinto said, softly, coolly, "And did you imagine that we could run a caretaker government for you forever, Yakoub? That five years or maybe ten would go by with the throne vacant and there'd be no pressure to elect a new king?"
"I thought there would be attempts made to get me to come back, before that happened."
"There were," Damiano said. "Do you know how many men I had out searching for you, starting the year after your disappearance?"
"I left my patrin behind me all over the place."
"So you did. We picked your signs up eventually. It still took three years for Chorian to find you. But we were at it constantly all those years."
"As were various lords of the Imperium," I said. "Julien de Gramont was sent after me by Periandros. And of course Chorian was working not only for you but for Sunteil. Well, I expected to be found a little sooner than I was. And I never dreamed that Shandor, of all people, would make a grab for the throne."
"But he did," said Damiano.
"And it serves you right," Valerian said. He is never gentle with me. "You created a vacuum and that son of a bitch moved right into it. Does it get us any closer to Romany Star to have Shandor as our king?"
"Shandor is not the king," said Bibi Savina suddenly, in a voice that seemed to come from another solar system.
Everyone turned toward the phuri dai.
"The election was not an election. The abdication was not an abdication. Yakoub is still the king."
"Of course he is!" Chorian shouted, and instantly looked shamefaced at having dared to speak.
"And the other king on the throne on Galgala?" Biznaga said. "What is he, a figment?"
"Some figment!" Valerian boomed. "He saw his moment and he reached out and grabbed. And now we're stuck with him. Unless you want to set off a civil war, Rom against Rom. While the Gaje sit back and laugh at us."
"That must not happen," Thivt said.
"Are we supposed to accept Shandor as king, then?" Damiano asked.
They all began to talk at once. Then Polarca's dry sharp voice came cutting through the babble:
"Bibi Savina is right," he said. "We can simply ignore Shandor. Yakoub's abdication didn't mean a thing. There was never any such custom as abdication among us in the first place. A king is king until he dies, or until the krisatora depose him. I haven't heard anything about an act of deposition. And even if there was, we can claim that it was done under duress, and is therefore invalid. Yakoub is our king."
Biznaga shook his head violently. "But Shandor holds the seat of government. Shandor is recognized by the Imperium as the head of the Rom people. What legal means do we have of displacing him now?"
They started to babble again. This time I held up my hand for silence.
"I have a plan," I said. "I brought this whole mess down upon us all by myself when I chose to leave the throne. And now I intend to clean it up. All by myself."
"How?" Valerian demanded.
"By going to Galgala. Alone, without any sort of escort. In person, not a doppelganger. And walking all by myself into the king's house of power and telling my son Shandor that he has to get his ass out of the place inside of five minutes, or else."
"That's your plan?" Valerian asked, looking amazed.
"That is my plan, yes."
"Go to Galgala?" Jacinto said. "Go before Shandor alone and give him an ultimatum?"
"Yes," I said. "Absolutely."
I saw them looking at each other again. Gaping, staring. General disbelief. Their faces saying that they knew now beyond any doubt that I had lost my mind.
"And what happens then?" Valerian wanted to know. "He smiles politely and says, Of course, daddy, right away, daddy, and clears out? Is that what you expect, Yakoub?"
"It won't be that simple."
"I think it'll be
very
simple," Valerian said. "You'll make your speech, and when he recovers from his amazement he'll take you and toss you in a dungeon nine miles deep. Or do something even worse."
"To his own father?" Ammagante asked.
"This is Shandor we're talking about. He's an animal, he's a wild beast. You remember what he did that time on Djebel Abdullah, when the stardrive failed and the food ran out? This is a civilized man? This is a son to be trusted? Authorizing the use of the bodies of his own passengers for food, for God's sake?"
"Valerian-"
"No," he said angrily. "You want me to pretend it never happened? This Shandor is our king! This is the man whose sense of tradition, whose mercy, whose benevolence, you plan to appeal to! How do you think those passengers got to be dead in the first place? And what do you think he'll do to you, Yakoub, if you put yourself within reach of him?"
"He will not harm me," I said.
"Madness. Absolute madness."
"He may try to imprison me, yes. I don't believe he would dare to harm me. Not even Shandor would do that. But if he does imprison me he'll forfeit whatever support he may have among our people. I can wait out a little time in a dungeon. At my age you learn to play the waiting game."
"But this is crazy, Yakoub!" Valerian said. "Why not send a doppelganger, at least?"
"You think that would fool him? The first thing he'd do is test me to see if I'm real."
"And when he finds out that you are-"
"I mean to risk it."
"And if he does kill you? Can we do without you?"
"He won't. But if he does, I become a martyr. A symbol. The instrument of his overthrow."
"And who will be king, then?"
"Do you think I'm the only man who can be King of the Rom?" I shouted. "Jesu Cretchuno, am I immortal? Some day you'll need another king. If that day is sooner instead of later, what of it? Shandor has to be cast down. No matter what the cost. I made it possible for him to seize the throne-by the Devil, I made it possible for him to be alive-and I will be the one to pull him down from the place he has grabbed. I will do it by going to Galgala. Alone."
"This is very rash," Jacinto murmured.
"If it will avoid a war between Rom and Rom-" Thivt said.
"No. I'm with Valerian," said Polarca. "We can't afford to lose you, Yakoub. There's got to be some less risky way of pushing Shandor aside. Proclaim the abdication null and void, ditto the election of Shandor, set up a legitimate government here on Xamur, remind Rom everywhere of their loyalty to Yakoub-"
"No," I said. "I don't intend to recognize Shandor's usurpation even to the extent of establishing a rival government. Our capital is on Galgala. I will go to Galgala."
"God help us all," muttered Valerian.
Then they all began yelling again at once, and in no time the meeting was reduced to absolute hysteria. I tried to quiet them down and couldn't do it. When a king can't get the attention of his own advisers there's real trouble in the commonwealth. I watched them rant and scream for a while and I did a little ranting and screaming myself and none of it was any use. So I just walked away from them. I went around to the far side of the crater and climbed up a couple of circles and sat with my back to them, listening to the screeching and bellowing of my best and my brightest.
After a long while I heard the sounds of someone climbing up behind me. I didn't look around. I was pretty sure who it was, because even with my back turned I sensed the strangeness of him.
Thivt.
I waited, saying nothing. Feeling his alien spirit getting closer and closer to me.
We have never satisfactorily settled, you know, the question of whether there are other intelligent races in the galaxy. Certainly there must have been some, once-the ancient fortress on Megalo Kastro is just one of a number of indications of that. But there aren't any living alien cultures to be found. The only intelligent species we know about are ourselves and the Gaje, the two basically identical human races that evolved on different worlds thousands of light-years apart. As our ever-widening expansion carries us outward into the galaxy we have come across any number of interesting and complex creatures, but none that have the traits we think of as intelligence. You might want to count such things as the living sea of Megalo Kastro as an intelligent life-form, but that isn't intelligence as we understand it.
(The presence of two separate but identical human races is a different but related puzzle. A lot of heavy thinkers among the Rom say that it's statistically unlikely and probably biologically impossible for any species to have evolved independently in virtually the same form on two different worlds. They suspect that Rom and Gaje must have had a common ancestor on some other world entirely, far away. That we are all the descendants of colonists who were left behind in prehistoric times. As for the differences that do exist between the two races-the Rom ability to ghost, say, and the related ability to propel starships into leap mode-those are explained away as mutations that crept into our branch of humankind during our thousands of years of separate existence on Romany Star. These are Rom speculations, remember. There aren't any Gaje speculations on these topics. The Gaje, of course, don't have any inkling of our alien ancestry. If they did, they probably would have lynched us all long ago, back on Earth in the years of persecution. It was tough enough for them to handle our wandering ways and our disdain for their laws. Knowing that we were spooks from some other planet would certainly have set off some kind of giant pogrom, a holy crusade against the evil witch-things from the stars. Maybe it still could.)
Thivt, at any rate-Thivt, I am convinced, is something else. Neither Rom nor Gaje, I think. But I doubt that I will ever know the truth; for Thivt is my friend and my cousin, and courtesy forbids me to ask him to tell me whether or not he is human.
He stood behind me, giving off waves of strangeness. He let his hand rest lightly on my arm. I felt warmth coming from him, tenderness, sympathy. That is the most alien thing about him: the way he can touch your mind, the way he can make a sort of communion.
"Yakoub," he said.
"Listen to them, Thivt. Screeching like chickens in the barnyard."
"They will be quiet soon."
"They're all against my plan, aren't they?"
"Is that important to you?"
"If they think I've gone crazy it is. I'll need their support if things don't go well for me on Galgala, and I doubt that things will. How can I ask them to come in there and risk their lives for me, if they think I've deliberately put my neck in danger against all their advice?"
"They will do whatever you ask of them, Yakoub."
"I don't know about that." I was wavering. In the face of such concerted opposition I was starting to think I should abandon my idea. Maybe it
was
crazy. Maybe it was imposing an unnecessary risk not only on me but on everyone. "They aren't fools," I said. "If they think I shouldn't go, then perhaps-"
Thivt's fingers continued to press lightly against my arm. I felt love flowing from him to me, concern, support.
"Follow your own judgment, Yakoub. It never leads you astray. If you think that what must be done is for you to go to Shandor, then you must go to Shandor. You are the king. You will prevail."
I turned toward him.
"You think so, Thivt?"
His dark solemn eyes were close to mine. At this moment he seemed more mysterious than ever to me. I wondered what lay behind that bland serene brow, what sort of brain, what alien corrugations and furrows. He was sending comfort to me. He was sending strength. Whatever he might be, offshoot of whatever unknown species that had taken on human form, he was my friend. He was my cousin.