"That's the straight news. It was a mess out there."
"
Was
?"
"Will be. Is. Whatever. You know, it isn't so simple for me, remembering what's future and what's past. It's all past to me, you know, Yakoub? Your future is my past. A lot of things have happened that haven't happened yet."
"Try to keep your mind on it. If you can. Do I get out of here soon?"
A long pause.
"Do I?"
"I think so."
"You think! You think! You never thought in your life, Valerian. All right. What's happening to the Empire?"
"Breaking down," he said, brightening. He was making a real effort now. "The old emperor's still alive. Hanging on like he means to stay forever. But nobody can understand what he says any more. Sunteil's trying to run things and Periandros and Naria are trying hard to get in his way. Doing a damned good job of it."
"More."
"More what?"
"More news. Keep talking."
"A ghost isn't supposed to-"
"Fuck what a ghost is supposed to. When the great kris found you guilty, was I supposed to let you go free? But I did it."
"You know I'll always be grateful for-"
"Fine. Tell me more."
He thought a moment. "Well, there's Shandor. Shandor's panicky."
I felt my pulse rate picking up. We were getting to the core of things now. Maybe.
"He is?"
"Scared completely shitless. He's just realizing who he's up against and it terrifies him. You've been fighting one hell of a war, you know. Without lifting a finger, without getting a word out of here to anyone."
"So you understand that, finally."
"It's amazing what you've accomplished just by handing yourself over to Shandor. Your boy Chorian escaped, you know, and he told everyone Shandor had you locked up here."
"I was wondering about him."
"And that's when things started to fall apart for Shandor. It made a lot of Rom very angry, hearing what he had done to you. Especially the pilots: they've begun doing all sorts of wild things to protest, flying to the wrong planets, messing up everybody's schedule. Some worlds are practically cut off altogether. Clard Msat: you just can't get there. Iriarte, I think."
I felt like crying for joy, hearing that.
But was it true? Past and present were such a jumble for Valerian. He might be reporting rumors, or fantasies, or events out of some other era entirely. I closed my eyes. So frustrating to have to depend for news on a couple of hyperkinetic ghosts and a gilded viper. I wanted desperately to feel the pulse of the worlds with my own hand. I had been here alone so long, isolated from the ebb and flow of the galaxy. My plan, my strategy, a shrewd one but a painful one. Attack by surrendering. Nobody had understood. They all thought I was crazy. All of them except Bibi Savina and Thivt. But my lunatic gamble seemed to be paying off. Valerian wouldn't lie to me. He might be confused but he wouldn't lie. Out there, the thousands of worlds, the millions of Rom, the billions of Gaje, all the human turmoil and bustle: was the whole thing tumbling into chaos? Useful chaos, on which I would be able to build?
I said, "I like what I'm hearing. Keep going."
"You know about the krisatora?"
"I told you. I don't know anything."
"Damiano has called them together. For a ruling on Shandor's conduct. They're going to denounce him."
"You know that for sure?"
"I'm trying to talk in your time, not mine. That's why I say they're
going
to denounce him."
"Denounce him?"
"That's what I said."
"Yes. Right. So they held a kris right here on Galgala under Shandor's nose and he didn't do anything to stop it? Or try to take control of it?"
"God, no. Who said anything about Galgala? The kris is being held on Marajo. Was held. Will be? Was."
"On
Marajo
?"
"Damiano picked his own krisatora. He said he didn't trust the kris that was in session on Galgala, because it was Shandor's."
I groaned. "So it isn't legitimate, the kris?"
"As legitimate as anything is."
"No," I said. "It's a kangaroo kris. Damiano's own private kris. What does he want, a civil war? Shandor will simply refuse to accept its jurisdiction."
"The time they brought me up on trial, that was Damiano's private kris too. That time they collared me for grabbing the Kalimaka ship. You remember? Suppose I had tried to refuse to accept its jurisdiction? Suppose I had said, This isn't a fair trial, this is a kangaroo kris, Damiano's got it in for me. What good would that have done me, hey? Where would that have gotten me?"
"But that
was
a legitimate kris. That was the great kris of Galgala, for Christ's sake. Its decrees are binding on all of us. This other kris of Damiano, this Marajo kris-what if Shandor says it isn't a true kris, that he's not going to accept its edict?"
"Don't worry. It's all over and done with-"
"Not for me it isn't."
"Over and done with," said Valerian dreamily. He was drifting again, hovering sideways in mid-air. Growing transparent now, becoming a blur of bottle-green light up near the ceiling. "That was really bad," he said. "That time they brought me up on trial." I saw that I was starting to lose him. He was beginning to wander further back into the past. The focus was shifting for him. I should never have allowed him to change the subject. Once he started reminiscing about that trial of his, there might be no bringing him back. "That was the worst time ever, for me. I was really suffering. You remember how bad it was, Yakoub?"
He was fingering the golden flecks in the wall in an absentminded way, as if trying to pry some of them loose. He seemed very far away.
"Valerian?" I said.
"You remember? I was really suffering."
"Of course I remember. But you deserved it."
He had suffered, all right. Scared out of his wits. Facing absolute ruin, and he knew it. The only time I've ever seen him in such pathetic shape. All the swagger and bluster squeezed out of him. But why bring it all up again now? I had to know about Shandor, about the Imperium, about what was happening behind the golden walls of my cell, and here he was giving me the angst and grief of that long-ago trial of his. The biggest trouble with egocentric people like Valerian is that they can't keep their minds focused on your problems for very long, no matter how urgent they might be.
He was still at it. "The way you all were looking at me-like I was an enemy, a traitor-a Gajo-"
"But you were pardoned," I said. "Look, come down from there, will you? I can't talk to you when you float around like that."
"Realizing you were all serious, that you actually were going to put me on trial. And punish me. I couldn't believe it was happening to me, Yakoub."
"Will you come down?"
"And then everybody testifying against me-my friends, my cousins-"
"Hey, it's all ancient history now, Valerian."
"Is it? Is it?" His voice was very faint. I wondered whether he might be ghosting within a ghosting right now, jumping back to the time of his trial, living through it all again in the moments between moments. I wondered how often he actually did relive it. His big trauma. His ordeal.
Valerian had grabbed one ship too many, that time. The wrong ship. And we had to make him suffer for it. And then I had taken pity on him despite everything. Saving him at the last minute from the worst punishment a Rom could receive.
"Yakoub?" he murmured. "Yakoub, I was afraid, do you know I was actually afraid?"
"I know."
It was hopeless, now, trying to get him to talk about the current affairs of the Kingdom. Or anything else that might matter. I had lost him. I was sure of that.
"Is that when you decided to pardon me? When you saw the fear?"
"I thought you had suffered enough," I told him.
"I was really suffering," he said again, very far away. "I was really afraid. Thinking you were all going to cast me out. That I would never hear anyone speak Romany again. Or laugh the way a Rom laughs. You know what I mean, Yakoub? You understand what I'm saying?"
"Of course I understand, Valerian."
He fell silent. He became fainter and fainter. He was almost invisible now, a thin shadow high overhead. I was sure that he was leaving me. I could have killed him. Try killing a ghost. The son of a bitch. Coming here and doing this crazy dance of past and present and future and then bugging out on me without providing me with any real satisfaction. I knew that in another moment he'd be gone, and me no better off than when he had come.
No. Wrong. Suddenly he grew solid again. He swooped down toward me, his feet practically touching the golden floor. Bright green sparks radiated from him. He was crackling with all his old vitality and energy again. We stood face to face, nose to nose. Valerian pressing in hard on me.
The abrupt shift amazed me.
"And you, Yakoub?" he challenged. "Is it your turn now? We were talking about fear, weren't we? My fear, when I was on trial? But now you're the one who's afraid."
He had me off balance, baffled, confused. There was a buzzing in my mind. Valerian was rough around the edges but he could be perceptive just when you least expected it.
"Afraid? Of what?"
"I don't know. Shandor?"
I shook my head. "No. He's never scared me. He doesn't scare me now."
"Good. Just hold on. Keep your courage."
I felt my annoyance with him vanishing in a flash.
"Yes. That is what I must do, Valerian."
He said, "And yet there is still fear in you, isn't there?"
Just when I was beginning to love him again, he has to start bothering me some more about my being afraid.
"No," I said, even more annoyed than before. "It isn't so."
"I think you do fear something. I see it in your eyes."
"Listen, Valerian-"
"I want to help you. Tell me what you fear."
"You aren't helping me. You're pestering me."
"I was afraid once. You can be afraid too. It's all right to be afraid, Yakoub. You just have to remember which is the fear and which is Yakoub. The fear can be in you but it mustn't become you."
I turned my back on him and started to count to ten. Ek, dui, trin, chtar, pansh…
But he kept after me. He was determined to pursue me forever on this thing.
"What do you say to that, Yakoub?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. Nothing has ever made me afraid and I'm not afraid of anything now."
"That sounds good."
"It's the truth."
"Is it?"
"No," I said, after a moment, in a different voice. Something had snapped in me, all of a sudden. A strange feeling but a liberating one.
Why keep secrets from Valerian? Open up, let the truth out. "It's a lie," I said.
It was. Of course it was.
I had feared many things great and small, just like anyone else, although I had always been able to conquer my fear. That had been just so much noise, when I tried to tell Valerian that I had never been afraid.
And also I was beginning to bring myself to acknowledge-after the first moment of anger, after the first sting of pride-that Valerian was right, that he wasn't deceiving himself when he felt that he saw fear in me. For I did fear one thing above everything else, and I feared it terribly. Not death. Not Shandor. Not sitting here being a prisoner. Not even civil war among the Rom. It was something I feared so much I had never been able to speak of it to another person. Or even to confront it squarely myself. It was something I had kept locked for years in the deepest oubliette of my soul.
Valerian said, "Will you tell me what you're afraid of, Yakoub?"
I hesitated. This was very hard for me.
"I've never told this to anyone."
"Tell it to me. What is it that you fear?"
"Why should I tell you, Valerian?"
"So that perhaps I can help you stop fearing whatever it is that you fear."
"No one can do that."
"Perhaps I can. Tell me."
He hovered very close to me. The hum and crackle of his ghost-aura thundered in my ears.
Uncertainly I said, "I fear… I fear…"
"Go on, Yakoub."
I was soaked with sweat. There was a hand at my throat, choking back my voice.
Suddenly I felt the words escaping from me in a hoarse ragged blurt.
"What I fear, Valerian, is that Romany Star is a lie."
"What?"
"That the whole story is just a myth," I said. It amazed me to hear the dread words coming out. But somehow it calmed me to be saying these things. I was speaking more evenly and freely now. "That the red star we pray to doesn't have a damned thing to do with us. That we never came from any such place, that the swelling of the sun never happened, that if we ever do go there we'll find that it's just one more uninhabited planet."
Valerian was silent a while, thinking, frowning.
"That's the thing that you fear, is it?"
I nodded. I felt easier, having it out at last.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because I've aimed myself toward Romany Star for my entire life. Because all this lunatic scheming of mine has been devoted to one thing and only one thing, which is to bring us back to the Homeworld, to restore us to the place where we belong, the one place where we aren't intruders and outsiders and aliens. I've thrown myself headlong toward Romany Star, do you understand? I live only for the day when I set foot on that place, do you realize that, Valerian? And if it isn't there? And if some day I find out that it's all nonsense, that we really started from Earth just as the Gaje did, that all we really are is funny-looking Gaje who speak a funny old language, that Romany Star is nothing but somebody's poetic fantasy-"