Star of Gypsies (50 page)

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 ensconced 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 Naria-

On 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:

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 up-aging." 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."

"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.