The sky over Romany Star is exactly as it is said to be in the legends. Red sun, eleven moons, stars shining by day. The tale-tellers were faithful to that much, at least, in the thousands and thousands of years of the telling of the tale.
But nothing else is as I expect it to be. Shining marble palaces, says the Swatura. Splendid towers, vast concourses, broad highways, gleaming temples of many columns. No. That is Atlantis, not Romany Star. We built differently in our second home, and forgot that we did. Here is beauty also, but of another sort, less formal, less monumental. Nothing seems permanent. They use no stone here. They have woven this city of some delicate reed; everything is pliant, everything is yielding. Towers, yes, and bridges and boulevards, but they ripple in the gentle breezes, and change form at a touch. There will be nothing left of this place when the time of the swelling of the sun arrives. A dry wind, a gust of heat, a puff of flame: and then nothing but ashes within hours. No charred monuments for future archaeologists to puzzle over; no stumps of fallen obelisks; no foundations, no walls, no mosaics. Nothing. Ashes. Instantly. It is all very beautiful now; it all will perish in a very beautiful way, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, leaving no doleful relicts behind.
Hundreds of people stream past me into a building larger than the others just across the way from me. I join the flow and enter with them, unnoticed, unhindered. A green light shines inside, but its source eludes me. I pass through corridors strewn with woven mats into rooms that yield to other rooms, and at last I come to one room of great size, plainly a meeting-hall, where the citizens of Romany Star have assembled by the thousands.
At the far end of the room a sort of hammock which is also a sort of a throne has been strung high above the floor. It is occupied by a man who by his look could well have been my brother. There is kingliness about him: I see it at once, and I would have seen it even if I had simply met him in the street and not come upon him enthroned in a great hall. His hair is braided in the ancient way and he wears the beaded clothing. But his face is mine, his eyes are mine. He is my brother. No, we are closer than that. He is me.
He is speaking to his people. Not a word that he says can I understand; and yet I feel reassurance emanating from him, I feel his strength, his calmness. He speaks gravely and they listen to him gravely. It is a long speech, and everyone remains perfectly still to the end of it. Then, in silence, one by one, they go to him and they touch their hands to his. The ceremony continues for hours, an endless procession of the people to their monarch. I find it tremendously moving and I am unable to leave; the line edges forward and I edge with it, until I see that I am near the front, that in another moment I will be at its head. There is no way that I can turn away. I am visible to them all. It would be a dire insult to spurn this man's blessing now, whatever it may mean. So I go forward and I stretch out my hands and he touches his hands to them. Even though I am here as a ghost, he touches my hands, just as he has touched those of his own people.
For all the others, the touch was only a moment. But me he holds, me he detains. I feel the tremendous vitality of him flowing into me. I see the great sadness and wisdom of his spirit shining in his eyes. Yes, he is a true king. There are only a few kings born in any epoch, and they know from birth who they are. I am one, even if I have not always lived up to my kingliness. This man is another. We are of one soul, he and I. I love him for his strength; I love him for his sadness; I love him for his wisdom. I love him as one loves a king. I love him as one loves a father. I love him as one loves one's own self.
He holds me a long while. It seems like hours.
He says nothing, but I feel that we are conversing at length. Much is passing from him to me, and from me to him. Behind me no one moves; we could be alone in the hall. In the spark that travels from his hands to mine and from mine to his are all the Rom who ever lived; we bridge the race from end to end, this king and I. Within him is a sense of all our destiny to come, and within me is a sense of all that has befallen us; and we pass these things back and forth between each other. Time past, time future, pointing to one end. Which is always present.
He offers me courage. Mere death is not the end of anything, he says. It is only an interruption. Men die, women die, planets die: but certain things continue. What matters is to continue; and there are many ways of continuing. We have sent our sixteen ships out into the Great Dark. That is our way of continuing.
And in return I give him hope. You have achieved what you meant to achieve, I say. You have allowed us to continue; and we have done the job. Look, I am here to show you that we still exist at the far end of time. We are all part of the grand kumpania, all we Rom, your people and mine. One blood, one people. One grand kumpania. We have continued you. We have wandered very far, as was the gods' decree for us, but we have not lost our sense of who we are. And-look-I am here to pledge to you that soon we wanderers will be coming home, to this place that has always been ours.
I am you, I tell him. And you are me.
I am you, he tells me. And you are me.
He releases me. When I walk away, I carry within me the fullness of this great Rom civilization of Romany Star: its grandeur, its tragedy, its wisdom, its poetry. Its grandeur is its tragedy; its wisdom is its poetry. These are people who are waiting to die. I know now when I have arrived. The omens have come, the lottery has been held, the sixteen ships have been built and have gone off into the Great Dark. These are the ones who were left behind. They will die. Everyone dies, and for each it is the end of the world; but for these millions here the death of one will be the death of all. They have made their peace with death. They have made their peace with the end of the world.
And in their end is their beginning. For I am the emissary from worlds to come, testifying to their continuation down through the passageways of time. I have come to tell them that the circle will be made whole, that the exile will soon be ending, that I am the one who will bring our people home.
I find myself outside this great building of woven reeds again, this palace of the last king of Romany Star.
I stare at the red sun that nearly fills the sky, until my eyes begin to throb and ache.
Ah there, you red sun, you are Romany Star, and I am staring right at you! I tremble. O Tchalai, the Star of Wonder. O Netchaphoro, the Luminous Crown, the Carrier of Light, the Halo of God. There you are hanging in the heavens before me! Star of wonder, star of night. And star of day as well. Star of Gypsies, toward whom we have yearned throughout all our days. There you are.
I tremble and the red star trembles with me.
It seems to me that its color has deepened and that eddies and whirlpools are moving on the face of it. This is the last day. The air grows warm. Yes, yes, the red star is warmer now. Swelling. Churning. O Tchalai! O Netchaphoro! This is the moment, yes, the time of the swelling of the sun, the moment of Romany Star! The Rom have come forth from their houses by the thousands, by the millions, and they stand beside me in the streets, joining their arms together, watching. Waiting. Someone begins to sing. Someone else picks up the song. And then another, and another. The language in which they sing is unknown to me, though it must be some grandfather of the Romany that I speak. Nor do I know the words of the song, nor the melody. They are all singing now, and now I join them. I throw my head back, I open my mouth, and my heart gives me the song; and I sing, loud and clear. I can hear my own voice above all the others for a moment, and then it blends with them in a perfect harmony as the red sun grows larger and larger and yet larger in the sky.
12.
THEN A WRENCHING, A TWISTING, A PAINFUL SENSE of being torn loose…
Of movement across time, across space…
The smell of burning was in my nostrils when I opened my eyes. As though I was breathing ash; as though the air itself was singed. I felt lost. Where was the red glow of Romany Star? Gone. Gone. The sound of the singing on that last day still echoed in my ears; but where were the singers? Where was I? Why had I not been allowed to remain with them for their last moment?
Perhaps I had, and I had died with them, and I had gone to hell. Had I? Was this hell that I was in now? I had traveled so far, to so many places; why not hell too?
I was lying down, perhaps in a bed; there were people around me; their faces were indistinct, indistinguishable. Their voices were vague murmurs. My eyes were betraying me. My hearing. Everything was a blur. Romany Star was gone. That was the one certain reality. Romany Star was gone. And that smell of burning-that hideous taste of ashes that came to me with every breath I drew…
"Yakoub?"
A gentle voice, far away. I knew that voice. Polarca, my little Lowara horse-trader.
"Yakoub, are you awake?"
Not hell, then. Unless Polarca was in hell with me.
I managed a scowl and a laugh. "Of course I'm awake, idiot! Can't you see that my eyes are open?"
He was bending close over me, nose to my nose. Seeing him helped me bring into focus the others, those blurred shapes behind him. Damiano my cousin. Thivt. Chorian. And others, farther back, not so easy for me to make out. Bibi Savina? Yes. Was that Syluise? Yes! Biznaga, Jacinto, Ammagante. Was
everyone
here? Yes, so it seemed. Even Julien. The treacherous one, even him, at my bedside. All right, I would forgive him. He was my friend; let him be here. And who was that? Valerian? Not Valerian's ghost, but the actual Valerian? How could that be? No one ever saw the actual Valerian any more. Was I dreaming that he was here?
I have been to the morning of time. I have seen Romany Star. And now I have come back
.
"What is this?" I growled. "Why are you all hovering around me? What's going on?"
"You've been asleep for weeks," said Damiano.
"Weeks?" I sat up, or tried to, and found myself infuriatingly weak. My arms and elbows refused to obey me. Like strands of spaghetti, they were. Damn them! I pushed myself up anyway. "What world is this?"
"The Capital," Polarca said.
I shook my head, letting things sink in. "Asleep for weeks, and this is the Capital. Ah. Ah. How could it be weeks? I was off ghosting-just for a minute or two, ghosting never takes very long-"
I looked around. Medical equipment everywhere.
"Have I been sick?"
"A long sleep," Polarca said. "Like a coma. We knew you were in there. We could see your eyes moving. Sometimes you shouted things in strange languages. Once you sang, but nobody could make out the words."
"I was ghosting. A great many places."
Syluise came forward and took my hand. She looked as beautiful as ever, but older, more somber, the flash and glitter gone from her beauty. "Yakoub, Yakoub! We were so worried! Where did you go?"
I shrugged. "Atlantis. Mentiroso. Xamur. All sorts of places. That doesn't matter."
I have seen Romany Star
. "Why does it smell like this in here? Am I imagining it? Everything smells burned."
"Everything is burned," Chorian said.
"Everything?"
"There's been a great deal of damage," said Polarca. "The lunatic Gaje have smashed their Capital to shards in their lunatic war. But it's done with now. Everything's quiet. You should see what it looks like out there, Yakoub."
"Let me see."
"In a little while. When you're strong enough to get up."
"I'm strong enough to get up now."
"Yakoub-"
"Now," I said.
They were exchanging troubled glances. Trying to figure out some way to prevent me. Not strong enough, was I? To hell with them. I swung my legs out of the bed and put some weight on them. The first pressure against the floor was agony; I thought my feet were on fire, that my ankles were exploding. I didn't let it show. I kept pushing forward, forward, levering myself up. Tottered a little, shifted my weight. Now it was the knees that were screaming. The hips, the pelvis. I hadn't been standing for weeks. Lying here in a coma, dreaming I was in Atlantis, dreaming I was on Romany Star.
No. Not dreaming. Ghosting. Truly and literally there.
I have seen Romany Star
.
I walked to the window and switched it to view capacity.
"My God," I said in awe. "My God!"
There was a vast rubble-field outside, stretching as far as I could see: broken statuary, sundered pavements, toppled buildings, charred walls. It was an unreal sight, a stage-set of devastation. Here and there a building rose intact out of the ghastliness. Incongruously, unaccountably. It seemed wrong that anything should still be in one piece on this world. The undamaged buildings were out of place in this architecture of destruction. I had not seen anything so frightful in my life.
I turned away from the sight of it, numbed, shaken.
"What have they done here?" I asked.
"It was the war of everybody against everybody," said Polarca. "Three different armies at first, Periandros, Sunteil, Naria. And then a second doppelganger of Periandros broke away from the first and made war on him. And after that it was Naria's forces dividing against themselves; and then there was a new army that didn't seem to belong to anyone. After that, no one could make sense out of anything. The fighting was everywhere and everything was destroyed. We survived because they didn't dare aim at the palace of the Rom baro, and we had your banners out, and your light-spike. But even so we took a few bad hits. One whole wing of the building was gutted. We thought we were going to die. But there was no way to leave the Capital. The starport is closed. No ships are moving anywhere."
"Gaje," I muttered. "What can you expect?"
"Somehow you slept through it all. We thought you were never going to wake."