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.
2.
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 garish 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."
The phalangarius gestured to one of her subordinates. "Find a Rom," 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 Due 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 Due 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 emmerdeuse, 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."