"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 from. Not even to his king."
"Even when the welfare of the Rom nation is at stake?" "What makes you think it is?"
"You're trying to drive me crazy," I said.
He laughed. "I'm trying to keep you on your toes, Yakoub. Look, just be patient and everything will make sense to you, all right? Trust me. I see wonderful things ahead for you. Here-let me show you. The truth lies plainly visible in your palm, if only you have eyes to see. For a small fee, no more than a couple of little coins, the wise old Gypsy will pull back the mysterious veils of the future, he will reveal to you-"
"Get the hell out of here," I told him.
And he did, in the twinkling of an eye. I sat there blinking at the place where he had been. A dozen or so native Mulano ghosts, attracted by the little zone of negative energy that Polarca had left behind, came roaming in to feed. They hung in the cold air in front of me like a cloud of shining gnats. And then Polarca came back, sending the Mulano ghosts frantically scrambling out of his interpolation zone.
"Where'd you go?" I asked. "None of your business."
"Is that the way you talk to your king?" "You abdicated," he reminded me again. "I think you're enjoying this."
"I went to Atlantis," he said. "For six weeks. They had just dedicated the Temple of the Dolphins and there were golden flower-petals strewn half a meter deep all along the Concourse of the Sky. I thought I saw your lady Syluise there, riding in the chariot of one of the great princes. I would have given her your regards, but you know how misty everything gets when you go ghosting that far back."
"You saw Syluise in Atlantis? Are you serious?"' "I am if you want me to be."
I love Polarca, but I hate dealing with his ghost. You expect your fellow Rom to tickle and poke you a little once in a while, especially if he's known you a hundred years or so and thus is an expert on the right places to tickle and poke. And he expects you to tickle and poke back at him. But Polarca, when he's ghosting, holds all the cards. A ghost knows not only past and present, but a good chunk of the future too. I've told Polarca many times that he takes unfair advantage. A lot-, he cares. He boxes me in on six different sides at once. He makes me feel like a simpleton, sometimes, and I'm not accustomed to that. He makes me feel like a GaJo trying to deal with a Rom. And yet I know he loves me. Even when he plagues me like this, he says he does it out of love.
AGAIN POLARCA DISAPPEARED. I WAS LEFT WITH A RESIDUE of uneasiness and irritation. He had seen Syluise, he said. In Atlantis, no less. It was a long time since I had even thought about Syluise. I wished Polarca hadn't taken the trouble to bring her to my mind now.
I could just see her, riding around in chariots back there in Atlantis. Driving the ancient lords of that great city berserk, and probably the ladies too. What would they have made of her there, with her golden hair and all? They would never have seen anyone with golden hair before, those swarthy dark-haired Atlanteans: she would have glittered among them like a goddess. Like a Venus, a bright shimmering Venus.
Atlantis was a Rom city, you know. Whatever other fables you may have heard, the real truth is that we founded it, we created its wondrous grandeur, we were the ones who suffered when it sank beneath the sea. It was our first settlement on Earth, long ago, when we came there after the destruction of Romany Star. Later on the Greeks tried to claim it as their own, but you know what Greeks are like: a shady bunch, half ignorance and half lies. Atlantis was ours. Not for five thousand years after it was destroyed did the Gaje of Earth build anything that even remotely approached it in architectural splendor. It was Earth's first city. And I don't just mean magnificent buildings and marble colonnades. We had sewers and flush toilets while the rest of the population of Earth was still dressing in animal hides and hunting with throwingsticks.
A great city, yes. Too good to last. Anyway it was never our fate to be a settled people. Maybe it was presumptuous of us to build anything as wonderful as Atlantis. It had to be taken away from us. The volcano roared, the Earth heaved, the sea ate Atlantis, and we went forth in ships, poor battered survivors, to follow our luck on the highways of the world. (That's where the notorious Gypsy aversion to travel by sea came from, you know: the horrendous sufferings we experienced during the escape from Atlantis.) But it was wondrous while it lasted, and those of us who know the secret of ghosting go back there often to stare in awe. Getting there takes some work: Atlantis, we found out long ago, lies just about at the limit of our ghosting range. And it's hard for us to see things in much detail there, because as you've heard the farther back you ghost, the more deeply everything gets shrouded in mist. But we go all the same.