Perhaps I had, and I had died with them, and I had gone to hell. Had I? Was this hell that I was in now? I had traveled so far, to so many places; why not hell too?
I was lying down, perhaps in a bed; there were people around me; their faces were indistinct, indistinguishable. Their voices were vague murmurs. My eyes were betraying me. My hearing. Everything was a blur. Romany Star was gone. That was the one certain reality. Romany Star was gone. And that smell of burning-that hideous taste of ashes that came to me with every breath I drew"Yakoub?" A gentle voice, far away. I knew that voice. Polarca, my little Lowara horse-trader.
"Yakoub, are you awake?"
Not hell, then. Unless Polarca was in hell with me.
I managed a scowl and a laugh. "Of course I'm awake, idiot! Can't you see that my eyes are open?"
He was bending close Over me, nose to my nose. Seeing him helped me bring into focus the others, those blurred shapes behind him. Damiano my cousin. Thivt. Chorian. And others, farther back, not so easy for me to make out. Bibi Savina? Yes. Was that Syluise? Yes! Biznaga, Jacinto, Ammagante. Was everyone here? Yes, so it seemed.
Even Julien. The treacherous one, even him, at my bedside. All right, I would forgive him. He was my friend; let him be here. And who was that? Valerian? Not Valerian's ghost, but the actual Valerian? How could that be? No one ever saw the actual Valerian any more. Was I dreaming that he was here?
I have been to the morning of time. I have seen Romany Star. And now I have come back.
"What is this?" I growled. "Why are you all hovering around me? What's going on?"
"You've been asleep for weeks," said Damiano.
"Weeks?" I sat up, or tried to, and found myself infuriatingly weak. My arms and elbows refused to obey me. Like strands of spaghetti, they were. Damn them! I pushed myself up anyway. "What world is this?" "The Capital," Polarca said.
I shook my head, letting things sink in. "Asleep for weeks, and this is the Capital. Ah. Ah. How could it be weeks? I was off ghostingjust for a minute or two, ghosting never takes very long-"
I looked around. Medical equipment everywhere. "Have I been sick?"
"A long sleep," Polarca said. "Like a coma. We knew you were in there. We could see your eyes moving. Sometimes you shouted things in strange languages. Once you sang, but nobody could make out the words."
"I was ghosting. A great many places.
Syluise came forward and took my hand. She looked as beautiful as ever, but older, more somber, the flash and glitter gone from her beauty. "Yakoub, Yakoub! We were so worried! Where did you go?"
I shrugged. "Atlantis. Mentiroso. Xamur. All sorts of places. That doesn't matter." I have seen Romany Star. "Why does it smell like this in here? Am I imagining it? Everything smells burned."
"Everything is burned," Chorian said. "Everything?"
"There's been a great deal of damage,"' said Polarca. "The lunatic GaJe have smashed their Capital to shards in their lunatic war. But It's done with now. Everything's quiet. You should see what it looks like out there, Yakoub."
"Let me see."
"In a little while. When you're strong enough to get up." "I'm strong enough to get up now."
"Yakoub-"
"Now," I said.
They were exchanging troubled glances. Trying to figure out some way to prevent me. Not strong enough, was I? To hell with them. I swung my legs out of the bed and put some weight on them. The first pressure against the floor was agony; I thought my feet were on fire, that my ankles were exploding. I didn't let it show. I kept pushing forward, forward, levering myself up. Tottered a little, shifted my weight. Now it was the knees that were screaming. The hips, the pelvis. I hadn't been standing for weeks. Lying here in a coma, dreaming I was in Atlantis, dreaming I was on Romany Star.
No. Not dreaming. Ghosting. Truly and literally there. I have seen Romany Star.
I walked to the window and switched it to view capacity. "My God," I said in awe. "My God!"
There was a vast rubble-field outside, stretching as far as I could see: broken statuary, sundered pavements, toppled buildings, charred walls. It was an unreal sight, a stage-set of devastation. Here and there a building rose intact out of the ghastliness. Incongruously, unaccountably. It seemed wrong that anything should still be in one piece on this world. The undamaged buildings were out of place in this architecture of destruction. I had not seen anything so frightful in my life.
I turned away from the sight of it, numbed, shaken. "What have they done here?" I asked.
"It was the war of everybody against everybody," said Polarca. "Three different armies at first, Periandros, Sunteil, Naria. And then a second doppelganger of Periandros broke away from the first and made war on him. And after that it was Naria's forces dividing against themselves; and then there was a new army that didn't seem to belong to anyone. After that, no one could make sense out of anything. The fighting was everywhere and everything was destroyed. We survived because they didn't dare aim at the palace of the Rom baro, and we had your banners out, and your light-spike. But even so we took a few bad hits. One whole wing of the building was gutted. We thought we were going to die. But there was no way to leave the Capital. The starport is closed. No ships are moving anywhere."
"Gaje," I muttered. "What can you expect?"
"Somehow you slept through it all. We thought you were never going to wake."
"The fighting is over now?"
"All over," Polarca said. "There's no one left to fight."
"And who ended up as emperor, when all the fighting was over?" There was silence in the room. They looked stunned and dazed, all of them. Polarca, Damiano, Chorian, Valerian and the rest, silent, dazed.
"Well?" I said. "Is that such a difficult question? Who's emperor now? Tell me. Naria, is it, still?"
"No one," said Damiano. "No one?" "There is no emperor.
It made no sense. No emperor? No emperor?
I said, "How can that be, no emperor? There were three!" Damiano said, "Periandros' doppelgangers were destroyed by Periandros' own troops. There was a confrontation, at the headquarters of Periandros, two of the doppelgangers face to face. Everyone could see now that there was no Periatidros, that there were only doppelgangers. So they destroyed them both, and then they hunted down the third one and finished it too."
I nodded slowly. "And Naria? What happened to him? Behind that ring of defenses. His deflector screens, his tanks, his robots. His glass cube."
"Dead," Polarca said. "A plasma bomb, a direct hit on the imperial palace. Thirty seconds of thousand-degree heat. The palace was hardly damaged but everyone inside died instantly. Naria was cooked in his own glass cube."'
"That leaves Sunteil."
"He went to take possession of the palace after Naria's death," Chorian said. "Naria had booby-trapped the throne-platform. Three lasers sliced Sunteil into pieces the moment he took the imperial seat. A hidden scanner, coded for Sunteil and only Sunteil, that would respond to no one else's somatic specifications." He looked away. "I was there when it happened," he said quietly.
"Dead?" I said, not believing it. "The high lords? All three dead? No emperor at all?"
"No emperor at all," Polarca said.
- What will they do? There has to be an emperor!" "Go back to bed, Yakoub."
"No emperor-"
"That's not our problem. Go back to bed. Lie down. Rest," Polarca said.
I glared. "Who do you think you're ordering around?"
Syluise took my hand. "Please, Yakoub. You've been seriously ill. It's just a little while since you regained consciousness. You mustn't put a strain on yourself now. Please. Just rest a little more."