These things I arranged in the ice-bubble in the ways that I liked to arrange them. Then I stepped outside and saluted the writhing green arms rising from the snow just before me, and called out my name three times, and cried the words of power, and waved my manhood in the frosty air and made water in front of my door, slicing a hot yellow track through the snow in the home-sealing patterns. And laughed and danced one more quick dance, arms and legs flying, hootchka pootchka hoya zim! Yakoub! Yakoub! Yakoub!
It was almost like being in my house of power again, my shining palace on Galgala where I lived when I was King of the Rom and shaper of the destinies of worlds. I lit the lamps and grasped the scepter and stood upon the carpet and once again they came to me, the chieftains of the Rom, one by one, saying, "I am Frinkelo," "I am Fero," "I am Yakali," "I am Miya," bringing me their disputes and their sorrows and their dreams. Wherever I am, that place is my house of power, my palace. That is one of the great Rom secrets, the reason why we can be wanderers. It is not that we have no roots, but that all places are one to us and we put down the same roots wherever we may be, for every place where we may wander is the same place: it is the place known as Not-Romany-Star. And therefore any place can be home for us, since no place is home.
So in the silence and the solitude of this new place beside the strange forest I lived and was happy in the company of myself. The ghost of Polarca came to me, and Valerian, and several of the others, misty figures drifting through time to show me that they still loved me. Shrewd old Bibi Savina came once or twice, that wise and cunning woman who has given me so much good advice over the long years, not only while I was king but even before: for she was the one who had gone ghosting back to my childhood to tell me that I would and must be king. "This is the right place," she said now, and winked. ".Stay here until it stops being right." It was good to see a woman again, even an old one like Bibi Savina. She was bent and withered, was Bibi Savina, and looked at least twice my age, though I was almost old enough to be her father. She had never been the sort to go in for remakes. Hard to imagine, Bibi Savina with a remake, prancing around like a giddy girl. Would I have desired her, if she had had herself made young and beautiful? Of course I have never felt any such feeling toward Bibi Savina: how could it have been otherwise? Aside from everything else there would have been a fantastic scandal, considering her high role in the government, if I had ever laid a finger on her. Not that I wasn't glad to see Bibi Savina, and more than glad, but I would have liked to be visited while I was on Mulano by someone for whom I felt a little more passion, too. When you're living in an igloo in the middle of an ice-field a couple of pretty breasts and a few sleek thighs provide a wondrous amount of warmth and light. (You think that's disgusting, a man my age talking like that? Just you wait. Except you won't be as lucky as I am; you won't still have the juices flowing when you get to my age, if you do, the way they flow in me.)
Of course it isn't possible actually to make love to a ghost, but as I say, there's a certain delight in having a beautiful woman around, even if she's intangible. I would have enjoyed a visit from the elegant and supple and perpetually beautiful Syluise, for instance, that extraordinary woman who has haunted me for many too many years; but Syluise paid me no visits. It would have astounded me if she had. That would have been too loving a thing for her to do. Still, I had my hopes, such as they were. She rarely left my mind. I found myself remembering her in a thousand ways. How she used to plunge into a tub filled with that luminescent blue protozoan from-where? Iriarte? Estrilidis?-and rise from it like Venus, glowing, dazzling. And I would lick it off her, all over. The taste of it still with me. Ah! The bitch. How I loved her. I still do. I always will. Every man is fated to have a Syluise in his life, I think. Even a king.
The ghosts came; the ghosts went. And sometimes when I was alone I closed my eyes and I was on Galgala at my court with clouds of gold all around me, or I was drifting in the pleasure-sea of Xamur, or I was at the Capital and advancing to the sound of a hundred trumpets up the broad crystalline steps of the throne-platform of the Fifteenth Emperor, who rose to welcome me and offer me a cup of sweet wine with his own hands. Me, Yakoub, born a slave and three times sold, and there was the emperor, and Sunteil beside him, and the Lords Naria and Periandros not far away, bidding me welcome! Sweet dreams, true dreams, happy dreams of a life without regret. And I told myself that I could go on this way for a hundred years more, a thousand, living in the bright glow of my memories and completely content.
THEN SYLUISE TURNED UP AFTER ALL. OR HER GHOST, rather. I can't say she came just when I had given up hope, because I had never had any real hope of seeing her, just wistful softheaded fantasies that I knew were foredoomed. And then there she was, Syluise the golden, Syluise the glorious, hovering in the air right in front of me. "You haven't missed me at all, have you?" she said.
Dear Syluise. Always opening with a jab.
"I've thought of no one else the whole time," I told her. Sounding romantic and sarcastic both at once. Which was it? How would I know? Billowing waves of electromagnetic splendor surrounded her like an aurora, shooting off a halo of emerald, scarlet, violet, gold. She looked gorgeous within it. I have never seen her looking anything but gorgeous, no matter the season, the time of day, the geophysical or emotional weather. That's her specialty: beauty so intense that it's unreal. She is like her own statue.
"It's been a long time, hasn't it, Syluise?" "I've been traveling."
"Polarca tells me he saw you in Atlantis."
"Did he? What keen eyes he has. I looked for you there, but you weren't around."
"I'm not ghosting these days," I said.
"No. You're burrowing down in the snow and holding your breath until your face turns blue. Isn't that what you're doing, Yakoub?"
I could hardly bear to look at her, she was so beautiful. An alien beauty, not Rom at all, cascades of shining golden hair, intense blue eyes, long slender legs. She is Rom, that I know, but long ago she had herself changed into this Gaje form. Which never alters: I have known her eighty years and she has not aged by a day. She is her own statue, yes.
But there is more to her than her glittering beauty. She poses as a woman for men, a grand courtesan; and God knows she plays the role magnificently. But it's all a game to her, these tempestuous passions. Something else burns inside her, unknowable, untouchable, some deeper ambition than making men kneel to her beauty. The beauty is synthetic, after all. She might have been squat and coarse and bestial, dull-eyed and thick-waisted and mud-faced, before she had herself remade as a goddess. For all I knew she might even have been a man, before the remake.
"I've given up the kingship," I said.
"Yes. I know. You've abdicated. But why spend your retirement in a place like this?"
"Because there were things I needed to think about. This is a good place for thinking."
"Is it?"
"My mind works well in cold weather. And stark scenery like this helps me get down to essentials."
Essentials. I wanted to reach for her and pull her down against me. Those breasts, those lips. Those were essentials. Her perfume filling the air. Mulano ghosts were clustered around her, dazzled by the energy coming from her. My throat was dry and there was an ache in my balls. Maybe it would have been better if she had never come here. You can't make love to a ghost but you can certainly lust after one.