Star of Gypsies by Robert Silverberg Read Free Book Online

but I would never voice suspicion about the rest. He does more ghosting than anyone I know; he is a very restless man.
    "You aren't going to go," Polarca said finally.
    "Are you asking me or telling me?"
    "Both, Yakoub."
    "I'm not going to go," I said. "That's right."
    "Even though Damiano says that a new king will be elected if you don't."
    "You overheard that, did you?"
    Polarca smiled. When a ghost smiles, it's more like a tiny flash of lightning. "I was standing right next to you. You didn't see me?"
    "If they need a new king, let them have a new king," I said. "I'm going to stay here."
    "Absolutely, Yakoub. Beyond any doubt that's the wisest thing."
    The trouble with Polarca's ghost is that he doesn't speak with punctuation, so that half the time I can't tell a question from a statement, and he doesn't speak with inflection, so I can't tell sarcasm from sincerity. That isn't a characteristic of all ghosts; it's just Polarca's. Polarca is a smartass and so is his ghost.
    "You think it's wise, do you?" I said.
    "Of course it is. Just like it was wise for Achilles to go sulk in his tent."
    I still couldn't tell if I was being needled or supported. There aren't many people who can keep me off balance the way Polarca does.
    "Don't give me Achilles," I said. "He isn't relevant and you goddamned well know it." Then I said, "I actually saw him once. He was nothing at all."
    "Achilles? You saw him?"
    "A hoodlum. Little mean eyes and thick lips like chunks of meat. A natural-born sulker. Big and strong but there wasn't an ounce of nobility in him."
    "Maybe you saw somebody else," Polarca suggested.
    "They said Achilles."
    "Ghosting that far back, how can you be sure? There's mist all over everything."
    "I saw his shield," I said. "It was the right shield, a real masterpiece of art. But he was nothing but a hoodlum. What I'm doing, it isn't the same thing that Achilles was doing in his tent." I was silent a moment, wondering if I might be fooling myself about that. After a time I said, "Sunteil is mixed into this also. Did you know that?"
    "The boy is in the service of Sunteil, yes."
    "No," I said. "He's in the pay of Sunteil. There's a difference. Didn't you hear him say that? You've been skulking around here all week."
    "I went away for a time. I was in Babylon when he said that. I was listening to Hammurabi proclaim the code of laws."
    "I bet you were. Sunteil sent him because he thinks my abdication is phony and that I'm probably up to something suspicious by hiding out here on Mulano."
    "Aren't you?"
    "And so he sent the boy around to spy on me. That's what the boy says, anyway."
    Polarca's mantle crackled and hummed and leaped up-spectrum a few notches. "Send a Rom to spy on the Rom king? Sunteil's not that silly, Yakoub."
    "I know that. Then what is Sunteil doing?"
    "He misses you, Yakoub. This is his way of asking you to come back."
    "Sunteil misses me?"
    "The balance of the Empire is askew. The Gaje emperor needs a Rom king as a counterpoise to keep things steady, and right now there isn't any king."
    "Do you know this or are you just saying it, Polarca?"
    "What's your guess?"
    "Don't play guessing games with me, you bastard. That's my trick. You've got me at an unfair advantage already because you're a ghost. How far in the future do you come from, anyway?"
    "You think I'm going to tell you that?"
    "You pig, Polarca!"
    "Do you tell, when you go ghosting around?"
    "That's different. I'm the king. I'm not required to tell anybody anything. And if I request information from one of my subjects-"
    "One of your subjects? I'm not anybody's subject. I'm a ghost, Yakoub."
    "You're the ghost of a subject, then."
    "Regardless," he said. "What you're trying to get from me is privileged information."
    "And I make a privileged request. I'm the king."
    "Bullshit, Yakoub. You abdicated five years ago."
    "Polarca-" I sputtered. I was getting exasperated.
    "Besides, no ethical ghost ever reveals the point in time from which he's ghosting