"QUIET!" She began to chant. Then—"Now!"
Suddenly it was a different cave. "Where are we?" I asked. I felt heavier.
"On Nevia's planet," Rufo answered. "Other side of the Eternal Peaks—and I've got a good mind to get off and see Jocko."
"Do it," Star said angrily. "You talk too much."
"Only if my pal Oscar comes along. Want to, old comrade? I can get us there, take about a week. No dragons. They'll be glad to see you—especially Muri."
"You leave Muri out of this!" Star was actually shrill.
"Can't take it, huh?" he said sourly. "Younger woman and all that."
"You know that's not it!"
"Oh, how very much it is!" he retorted. "And how long do you think you can get away with it? It's not fair, it never was fair. It—"
"Silence! Count down right now!" We joined hands again and whambo! we were in another place. This was still another cave with one side partly open to the outdoors; the air was very thin and bitterly cold and snow had sifted in. The diagram was let into rock in raw gold. "Where is this?" I wanted to know.
"On your planet," Star answered. "A place called Tibet."
"And you could change trains here," Rufo added, "if She weren't so stubborn. Or you could walk out—although it's a long, tough walk; I did it once."
I wasn't tempted. The last I had heard, Tibet was in the hands of unfriendly peace-lovers. "Will we be here long?" I asked. "This place needs central heating." I wanted to hear anything but more argument. Star was my beloved and I couldn't stand by and hear anyone be rude to her—but Rufo was my blood brother by much lost blood; I owed my life to him several times over.
"Not long," answered Star. She looked drawn and tired.
"But time enough to get this straightened out," added Rufo, "so that you can make up your own mind and not be carried around like a cat in a sack. She should have told you long since. She—"
"Positions!" snapped Star. "Count down coming up. Rufo, if you don't shut up, I'll leave you here and let you walk out again—in deep snow barefooted to your chin."
"Go ahead," he said. "Threats make me as stubborn as you are. Which is surprising. Oscar, She is—"
"SILENCE!"
"—Empress of the Twenty Universes—"
Chapter 17
We were in a large octagonal room, with lavishly beautiful silvery walls.
"—and my grandmother," Rufo finished.
"Not ‘Empress,' " Star protested. "That's a silly word for it."
"Near enough."
"And as for the other, that's my misfortune, not my fault." Star jumped to her feet, no longer looking tired, and put one arm around my waist as I got up, while she held the Egg of the Phoenix with the other. "Oh, darling I'm so happy! We made it! Welcome home, my Hero!"
"Where?" I was sluggy—too many time zones, too many ideas, too fast.
"Home. My home. Your home now—if you'll have it. Our home."
"Uh, I see...my Empress." She stomped her foot. "Don't call me that!"
"The proper form of address," said Rufo, "is ‘Your Wisdom.' Isn't it, Your Wisdom?"
"Oh, Rufo, shut up. Go fetch clothes for us."
He shook his head. "War's over and I just got paid off. Fetch ‘em yourself. Granny."
"Rufo, you're impossible."
"Sore at me, Granny?"
"I will be if you don't stop calling me ‘Granny.' " Suddenly she handed the Egg to me, put her arms around Rufo and kissed him. "No, Granny's not sore at you," she said softly. "You always were a naughty child and I'll never quite forget the time you put oysters in my bed. But I guess you came by it honestly—from your grandmother." She kissed him again and mussed his fringe of white hair. "Granny loves you. Granny always will. Next to Oscar, I think you are about perfect—aside from being an unbearable, untruthful, spoiled, disobedient, disrespectful brat."
"That's better," he said. "Come to think of it, I feel the same way about you. What do you want to wear?"
"Mmm...get out a lot of things. It's been so long since I had a decent wardrobe." She turned back to me. "What would you like to wear, my Hero?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything. Whatever you think is appropriate—Your Wisdom."
"Oh, darling, please don't call me that. Not ever." She seemed suddenly about to cry.
"All right. What shall I call you?"
"Star is the name you gave me. If you must call me something else, you could call me your ‘princess.' I'm not a princess—and I'm not an ‘empress' either; that's a poor translation. But I like being ‘your princess'—the way you say it. Or it can be ‘lively wench' or any of lots of things you've been calling me." She looked up at me very soberly. "Just like before. Forever."
"I'll try...my princess."
"My Hero."
"But there seems to be a lot I don't know."
She shifted from English to Nevian. "Milord husband, I wished to tell all. I sighed to tell you. And milord will be told everything. But I held mortal fear that milord, if told too soon, would refuse to come with me. Not to the Black Tower, but to here. Our home."
"Perhaps you chanced wisely," I answered in the same language. "But I am here, milady wife—my princess. So tell me. I wish it."
She shifted back to English. "I'll talk, I'll talk. But it will take time. Darling, will you hold your horses just a bit longer? Having been patient with me—so very patient, my love! -- for so long?"
"Okay," I agreed. "I'll string along. But, look, I don't know the streets in this neighborhood, I'll need some hints. Remember the mistake I made with old Jocko just from not knowing local customs."
"Yes, dear, I will. But don't worry, customs are simple here. Primitive societies are always more complex than civilized ones—and this one isn't primitive." Rufo dumped then a great heap of clothing at her feet. She turned away, a hand still on my arm, put a finger to her mouth with a very intent, almost worried look. "Now let me see. What shall I wear?"
"Complex" is a relative matter; I'll sketch only the outlines.
Center is the capital planet of the Twenty Universes. But Star was not "Empress" and it is not an empire.
I'll go on calling her "Star" as hundreds of names were hers and I'll call it an "empire" because no other word is close, and I'll refer to "emperors" and "empresses"—and to the Empress, my wife.
Nobody knows how many universes there are. Theory places no limit: any and all possibilities in unlimited number of combinations of "natural" laws, each sheaf appropriate to its own universe. But this is just theory and Occam's Razor is much too dull. All that is known in Twenty Universes is that twenty have been discovered, that each has its own laws, and that most of them have planets, or sometimes "places," where human beings live. I won't try to say what lives elsewhere.
The Twenty Universes include many real empires. Our Galaxy in our universe has its stellar empires—yet so huge is our Galaxy that our human race may never meet another, save through the Gates that link the universes. Some planets have no known Gates. Earth has many and that is its single importance; otherwise it rates as a backward slum.
Seven thousand years ago a notion was born for coping with political problems too big to handle. It was modest at first: How could a planet be run without ruining it? This planet's people included expert cyberneticists but otherwise were hardly farther along than we are; they were still burning the barn to get the rats and catching their thumbs in machinery. These experimenters picked an outstanding ruler and tried to help him.
Nobody knew why this bloke was so successful but he was and that was enough; they weren't hipped on theory. They gave him cybernetic help, taping for him all crises in their history, all known details, what was done, and the outcomes of each, all organized so that he could consult it almost as you consult your memory.