A muscle leaped in Shandor's cheek. But still he held himself still. He was doing very well, was Shandor.
"A criminal, father?"
"The Djebel Abdullah business."
"The first trial was a farce. There was perjury from top to bottom. Afterward I was able to show that I did everything possible to save my passengers and at the second trial I was given a full exoneration."
"None of your passengers testified at either trial."
"That isn't true."
"None of the ones that got eaten for dinner, boy."
"Don't call me
boy
! I am your king!"
"Not mine, Shandor."
"The second verdict-"
"Was every bit as legitimate as the session of the great kris that elected you King of the Rom."
"I
am
king, father. Whether you like it or not. The krisatora have chosen me and the grand kumpania of Rom on all the worlds have accepted me. And I have been to the Capital and the emperor himself has given me the wand of recognition."
"Has he, now?"
"With his own hands. Sunteil and Naria and Periandros right alongside him. And here I live in the king's house of power and my decrees are obeyed throughout the worlds. Face reality, old man. Your abdication really is binding. And you really can't revoke it now."
"You said you came here to offer me a deal," I reminded him.
"Yes."
"Go ahead. What's the quid and what's the pro quo?"
"I want you to give me your blessing. I want you to make a public avowal of me as King of the Rom and to withdraw all claims of your own to the throne. Also, they tell me you took the scepter with you when you left here. That scepter belongs to me."
"Ah. That's what you want, is it? My blessing and my scepter."
"In return," he said, "I'll let you out of here. I'll allow you to go back to Xamur, to your estate, to Kamaviben, and live out your days in wealth and luxury."
"My freedom is my own property, given to me by God, which no man can take away. You'll give me something that isn't even yours, if I agree to support your claim to something else that isn't yours? What kind of deal is that?"
"It's a deal that will get you out of this dungeon, father."
"I like this dungeon."
"I could have it ghosting-proofed. Would you like it so much then?"
"A threat, is that? You want my blessing under duress?"
"I
ask
for your blessing. I don't demand it. Your being a prisoner here is an embarrassment to me."
"Yes. I know. That's why I'm here."
"So long as you continue to claim the throne you damage our entire nation."
"I could say the same, Shandor."
"There was a vacancy in the government. That is no longer the case. By your obstinacy you foment dissension, you cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Rom government, you undermine the stability of the entire-"
"Of course I do. You don't need to tell me that."
"You are a malicious old man."
"No.
You
are." I laughed. "Go away, Shandor. Let me have a little peace."
"If I go away, you'll rot down here until the end of time!"
"You would do that to your own father?"
"
Are
you my father?"
"And you would shame the memory of your mother too, I see. You really are a worthless shit, do you know that? I curse the little tickle of pleasure that brought you into the universe. I curse the joy I felt between Esmeralda's thighs." I said these things calmly, even sweetly. "I won't make you king, Shandor, no matter how much you bluster and rant. You don't frighten me by threatening to keep me in this pretty hotel of yours, either. And-incidentally-there isn't any way that you can make this place ghosting-proof. Don't you realize that? If I can breathe, I can ghost. Wherever I am. Whenever." I closed my eyes and ghosted right then and there, in front of him. Back to Xamur, something like a century ago. To see my loving young wife, to see my lovely firstborn babe. Shandor was smoldering when I returned, a fraction of an instant later. "Your mother was a splendid woman, Shandor. I just paid her a visit. To tell her how much I loved her. And to let her know what a wonderful person her eldest son turned out to be. Why don't you go visit her too? I know she'd love to see you."
"You're going to molder down here forever, old man!" said Shandor venomously.
2.
SHANDOR WAS NEVER ONE FOR KEEPING HIS PROMISES. Something like a week later his robots came for me and transferred me without warning to a much fancier cell on a higher level of the building. Still no windows, but also no rats, no giant protozoa, no slime mold. No snakes. I missed the snakes, a little. They had some elegance and they did me no harm. The new cell was warmer and drier and I had a bigger couch. The floor was a solid slab of gold. There have been periods in history when you would have been proud to be imprisoned in a cell where the floor was a slab of gold, I guess. Well, it was okay. But I never could forget that this was Galgala where gold isn't much more valuable than cardboard, and that I might have a golden floor in my prison cell but even so it was still a prison cell. I went about barefoot on it, mostly. It was soft and almost yielding under my toes, the way gold can be. I started scratching lines in it to keep track of the time. Ordinarily, as you know, I don't give a damn about keeping track of the time and I will blithely jumble up whole decades of chronology without seeing any big problem about that. But here in confinement I was starting to wonder about just how much time might be going by. Considerable, as it turned out.
So much for Shandor's pledge to let me rot in that dank oubliette forever, at any rate. I wasn't foolish enough to think that he had relented. The Shandors of this universe don't know what that word means. No, he had probably just changed his mind about the efficacy of letting me rot. Maybe he had decided that I was so old and mean that I had become permanently rot-resilient, like that rare yellow timber from Gran Chingada that can spend five hundred years submerged in a mungar-thangar swamp without being changed in any way. Or maybe he figured it would be bad politics for the Kingdom to find out that he was keeping his aged father stashed in a den of snakes and rats. I don't know. It could be that he had come up with some entirely new strategy that made it look advantageous to put me in a more comfortable cell. I didn't see what that strategy might be, but I didn't mind.
Polarca came ghosting in and said, "Well? You like this one any better?"
"You never saw the last one," I said.
"Sure I did. I came three times. You were asleep every time. Like a baby, snoozing away. You didn't even mind that there was some kind of a rat sitting on your chest."
"You could have said hello."
"You looked so peaceful," Polarca said.
"Oh, you bastard. What's happening out there?"
"When?"
"Right now?"
"How would I know? I'm not coming from right now."
"When are you coming from, then?"
"You know I can't tell you that."
I could have throttled him. "The Kingdom is in jeopardy, whole worlds are tottering, your oldest and dearest friend is sitting helpless in a dungeon, and you decide to be a stickler for the rules?"
"These are important rules, Yakoub. You know that. Do I really need to be telling you this stuff? Once you start abusing ghosting to slip information back in time, the whole universe falls apart."
"It's falling apart anyway. But you can help me."
"No. I don't think I can."
"Then why bother coming here? Just to torment me?"
"I like to see your sparkling eyes. You look so sexy when you're annoyed."
"I'll give you sexy, you infuriating hyena!"
"Ah. Ah. Temper, Yakoub! Your blood pressure!"
"You
will
drive me crazy. Do I deserve this? A son like Shandor and a friend like you?"
"But I
am
your friend. You don't know how good I am to you. And I don't want you to think I'm not helpful." His ghost-mantle flickered through some fancy electromagnetic changes, the ghost-equivalent of a long-suffering sigh. "All right. Listen to me, Yakoub. Your appeal rends my heart. It's against all the rules but I'm going to let you know the future anyway." He drifted up close to my ear and cocked his head and dropped his voice to a confidential, insinuating level. "It's all going to be okay," he whispered.
"What is?"
"
It
. The fundamental curve of our racial destiny. The Kingdom, the Empire, Romany Star. There. Never say your old friend Polarca isn't helpful. You can thank me now."
"This is what you call being helpful?"
"This is what you call being grateful?"
"Grateful for what?"
"Look at you, scowling at me. I told you what you wanted to know, didn't I? Don't you find that comforting to know? Aren't you relieved? What an ungrateful son of a bitch you are."
I scowled even harder at him. "So what good is your big revelation? It isn't the vague ultimate that worries me. It's what happens now. Am I going to live? Am I going to die? Am I ever going to get out of this damned hole? Give me details, will you? I want to know what's on the docket right now, what will happen next, not what's going to happen in a thousand years."
"You want me to commit sins?"
"A sin to help your king?"
"You should be ashamed. Manipulating me like this. And such disgusting laziness. All your life you've figured out things for yourself. Now you want me to hand you a blueprint?"
"All I want is a little hard data."
"This is absolutely shocking."
"You stubborn pig, Polarca."
"
Me
stubborn? Me?"
"A hint," I begged. "A clue. Or else stop coming around to annoy me. I'd rather not see you at all than have you tease me like this."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"All right," he said. "I take pity on you. I violate all the ethics of ghosting. I tell you things that you yourself wouldn't tell yourself-where's
your
ghost, Yakoub, why isn't he here giving you little hints? I tip you off on the shape of things to come."
"Go on."
"The clue will be right on the plate in front of you."
"Right on the plate?"
"Don't say I never give hints."
"What hint? What does that mean, right on the plate?"
He shook his head sadly. "You're supposed to be the smart one, I thought. You're supposed to be the keen far-seeing intelligence. So I give you the hint that you want and you don't even try to figure it out for yourself? You just sit there angling for another one? Oh, no. Yakoub, I gave you your hint. Don't ask me for any more."
"Oh, you bastard, Polarca."
"There you are. Right on your plate."
"
Damn
you, Polarca."
He vanished. When they brought me my first meal in the new cell I stared at my plate for ten minutes, trying to figure it out. The usual warm mush, the usual bowl of tepid tea. The only thing different was a little sprig of some Galgalan salad greens on the side. I studied those salad greens as though they held the secret of the meaning of life. Maybe they did, but it didn't reveal itself to me. After a while I ate them. That still didn't tell me anything. As I have said before, there are times when Polarca makes me feel as dim-witted as a Gajo. And he enjoys it. God has given me a monster for a son and a sadist for a friend.
Well, God is infinitely wise and infinitely loving. Who am I to question His gifts?
3.
GOD GAVE ME POLARCA WHEN I WAS IN REAL NEED. And also gave me to Polarca, whose need may have been even greater. I think he may have saved my life and I know that I saved his. This was on Mentiroso, long ago. Because we were on Mentiroso together I will take almost any amount of shit from him. Besides, I know that he means well. He genuinely thinks he's amusing me when he plays his little games with me. Most of the time he's right.
Mentiroso is one of those terrible places that God must have created so that we would better be capable of appreciating the wondrous beauty of the rest of His universe. In that respect it is something like the Idradin crater on Xamur. The crater provides just the touch of imperfection that is required to reveal Xamur as the masterpiece that it is. But the Idradin is a single geological feature and you can spend your whole life on lovely Xamur without ever having to stare down its noisome maw. Mentiroso, though, is an entire world.
That there should be an entire world as dreadful as Mentiroso might make you begin to wonder about the fundamental psychological makeup of the Creator, if you are someone of simple soul, or one who is given to impiety. In order to create a place like Mentiroso, you might argue, a deity needs to have some of the essential quality of Mentiroso within himself. And the simpleminded will say, If God has something like Mentiroso within His soul, then what difference is there between God and the Devil? And the impious will say, Only a really loathsome sick bastard of a Creator could create a Mentiroso.
The truth is that both of them are right, in their way. But they only see the shadow of the truth. The simpleton fails to consider that there
is
no difference between God and the Devil, because the Devil is an aspect of God, just as the Idradin is an aspect of Xamur. The impious one fails to consider that what looks sick to us may not look that way to God. God is infinite. He contains everything, even what we consider to be evil, or ugly, or sick. He doesn't necessarily agree with our opinion. He doesn't have to. That's the benefit of being God. We, on the other hand, are required by the system to try to see things His way, because if we don't we will perish. Trying to see things His way is philosophy. Actually getting to see things His way is becoming wise. No human being since the beginning of time has in fact succeeded in becoming wise, but some have come a little closer to it than others.