Star of Gypsies (18 page)

In short order I was the star of the guild. The big producer: the number-one beggar. I knew that because Lanista and the other senior brothers of the lodge treated me with great warmth and respect and also because of the obvious envy and even coldness of my fellow beggars. Well, I could handle that part of it. When my cabin-mate Sphinx tried to cut in on my bordello territory I took him aside and beat him bloody. I was eight and he was eleven; but I had my career to look out for.

Now for the first time ghosts were beginning to visit me with some regularity, too. That was the most exciting thing of all, even more than the games I was beginning to play with the whores in the cribs, even more than the occasional sight of some snarling giant reptile looming outside the force-field that protected the town.

I knew a little about ghosting. There had been that old witch-ghost in my earliest boyhood, though I had never spoken of her to anyone. But when I was a little older I heard something concerning ghosts from my father, who had strived with such skill to prepare me for everything that was coming in adult life, and I came to suspect that a ghost was probably what that old woman had been. But though she must have visited me five or six times when I was very young, I had not seen her since I had left Vietoris, or anyone like her. And so it was a little startling, years later, when the ghosts began to come to me on Megalo Kastro.

"It's something that only the Rom can do," is what my father had told me. "And not every Rom; for it takes training, it takes will. And you must have the power in you in the first place. To leave the body, to split yourself off and go wandering across time and space-"

When the first ghost came I thought he was my father. He hovered by my side: big, powerful body, blazing eyes, black mustache, somehow transparent and solid both at the same time. There was an aura around him. His laugh was wondrous: like the rolling thunder that descends from the mist-plateaus of Darma Barma, where great lightnings crackle every moment of the day. Anxur was with me, and Focale, but the ghost didn't let them see him. Nor did they hear that splendid laughter.

He looked liked my father but something was wrong, something about his face was a little off. Of course. The ghost wasn't my father: he was me. But he didn't tell me that. All he did was grin and touch my shoulder and say, "Ah there, you Yakoub. How big you're getting! How well you're doing! Keep it up, boy. Everything's moving in the right direction!"

That ghost came three or four times a year, and that was about all he ever said to me. There were two other ghosts I sometimes saw, a youngish man and a very beautiful woman, who never said anything to me, simply stared and stared as if I was some kind of curiosity or freak. I had no idea who they were and it was a long time before I found out. But I came to welcome their very infrequent visits. It was a warm, secure feeling, knowing they were near. I thought of my ghosts as guardian angels of a sort. And so I guess they were.

It was all right, those first few years on Megalo Kastro. I was growing fast and getting shrewd. I was putting money aside for my freedom. I had vague thoughts of buying my writ by the time I was ten and going swaggering back to Vietoris as a freedman to work at my father's side in the staryard.

But then everything started to change, very quickly and very much for the worse.

First there were shifts in the top levels of the guild lodge. Apparently this was a custom of the guild, to keep anyone from building a private power base. The preceptor-general was transferred to some other world and a new man came in from one of the Haj Qaldun planets, and then the procularius was replaced, and soon afterward we got a new abbot-principal. The last to go of the original guild officers was Lanista, the lodgemaster, the only Rom in the hierarchy of our lodge and my particular ally; and once he was gone I felt suddenly very alone. Especially since the new hierarchs proceeded to impose a set of startlingly cruel new regulations upon us.

I never learned whether they instituted their "reforms" because orders had come down from the high command of the guild to tighten the expenses of the lodges or simply because they were persons of cold and astringent spirit. Perhaps it was some of each. But we were informed, a week after Lanista's departure, that from then on our share of our daily take would be cut to one fifth of its former amount, and that the calculations would be adjusted retroactively for the past eighteen months. Also daily begging hours were to be extended and we would be expected to contribute ten obols a day toward our meals, which until then had been provided by the lodge without cost. There was a sudden sharp drop in the quantity and quality of lodge food, too-not that it had ever been anything extraordinarily fine.

None of this made much sense to me then nor does it now. Starving your workers is not a good way to increase production. Making it virtually impossible to buy our freedom not only went against the stated guild policy of trying to clear us out by the time we were twelve, but completely removed our incentive to fill our begging bowls. (But of course it was the conversations we were taping, not the coins we were wheedling, that the guild was really interested in. Even so, our earnings were far from trifling.) The best explanation I can give is that they were trying to turn us into malcontents so that they would have a pretext for selling us off while still under indenture rather than letting us work our way free. A petty policy and a self-defeating one, but human history is full of such things.

Did we protest all this, you ask? To whom? And for what purpose? We were slaves.

I still felt such joy at going forth among my voluptuous ladies-and now I was nearly ten; I was daily being initiated into new mysteries- that the changes at the lodge made little difference to me at first. But I was growing swiftly and I felt hungry all the time under the new rations, which made me furious. And at the monthly accounting I discovered that I was now hopelessly far away from my writ of freedom, my return to Vietoris, my family, my father. So when my fellow beggars began to agitate and conspire among themselves, I found myself very willing to throw in my lot with them.

Focale was the leader. He was the tall flat-faced boy who had asked me my price on that first day of our journey to Megalo Kastro. I had disliked him then. But we had become friends, more or less, afterward. He was taller now and even less lovely of face, with strange tiny features and little washed-out eyes.

"We should escape," he said, one day when we were in the baths. Because we were not wearing our amulets, his words would not be recorded for our masters. "They can't hold us. We'll make our way to the starport and smuggle ourselves on one of the outbound ships."

It was complete foolishness, of course. But you must remember we were still only children.

All the same we gave it a try, not once but four times. We slipped out of the lodge and went on foot through town and to the port, hoping to stow away. We were caught every time. The proctors suddenly looming up before us and behind us, the hands clamping down on the backs of our necks, the kicks and slaps, the days of bread and water: it happened that way every time. We never had a chance of getting away. There were televector transmitters in our holy amulets that constantly broadcast our locations, but we didn't know that. One time they actually let us get within sight of the port. We stared at the great ships standing nose to the sky and tried to imagine what worlds they might be bound for. "Galgala!" cried Focale. "Where everything is golden." And Anxur whispered, "No, Marajo! There's a desert there that has sand bright as diamonds." Sphinx spoke of the lush glistening forests of Estrilidis, where the cats had two tails. And then the proctors rose up and seized us and beat us until we whimpered for mercy.

That was our third attempt. We never saw Focale again after that. We assumed he had been sold off the planet, for he was the worst troublemaker in the lodge.

Even without him we were determined to escape. I more than the others; I became the ringleader in his place, though I was one of the youngest. My slavery, which had rested comfortably enough on me during the first few years, now was an intolerable burden. I was furious all the time. I bubbled with wrath and impatience. Why should I spend my boyhood on this miserable sweaty world, nibbling on dry crusts and begging in grimy whorehouses for small coins? I lived day and night only for the moment of attaining freedom. As I made my way through the town I studied the maze of alleyways and covered passages, plotting a course that I imagined would allow me to give the proctors the slip.

My friends the whores would help me. I meant to scramble from crib to crib, hiding behind their skirts and under their beds, zigzagging across the town until I reached the place where I could run for freedom. Then I'd have to take my chances with the winged and beaked horrors of the jungle outside, but I had a plan. I would go west, away from the port, and seek refuge for the night in the great fortress overlooking the sea. They would never expect that; they would think I was terrified of going near that place. Everyone was. But I was Rom; why should I fear a pile of old stones? I would hide there and let them believe I had been eaten by some monster of the wilderness, and after a time I would slip away, bypassing the town entirely. When I reached the spaceport I would cry sanctuary to the first Rom I spied and that would be an end to my slavery. Or so I thought.

They caught me before I got halfway across town and this time they beat me without pity. I thought all my bones would break, and perhaps they would have, except that I was young and limber. Then they took me before the procularius. That bleak and frosty man glowered at me and asked the lodgemaster, "How many times does this make for him?"

"His fourth attempt, sir."

"Where did we get such trash? Do with him as you did with the other. The ugly one."

So they would ship me wherever they had shipped Focale. I didn't care. It couldn't be any worse than staying at the lodge.

A guild proctor with a beefy red face and thick hulking shoulders ordered me into a land-car and we drove north and then west for half an hour or so. It was a sweltering day and the sun had a heavy gray-green veil over its face. After a time I saw the dark looming bulk of the ancient fortress outlined against the sky ahead.

Despite all my bravado I caught my breath sharply and shrank back into my seat. Why were we going
there
?

But we weren't. The proctor turned off on a side road that led straight to the sea. We halted at a turnoff and he ordered me out. The road here ran along the seaward side of a steep cliff made of some soapy-looking soft green stone, badly chipped and cracked. The sea lay twenty or thirty meters below; it was a straight drop down from the shoulder of the road. I looked over the edge. I had never had a close look at the sea of Megalo Kastro before. It was nothing at all like water; it was pink and stiff-looking, like some kind of disgusting custard, and steam was rising from it. The surface of it was rough and gritty. There was nothing like surf or waves. It lay almost inert, pressing up against the shore, making small, sinister rippling motions.

The proctor seized my amulet and pulled it away from my neck.

"You won't be needing this any more, little Rom."

I saw what was about to happen and tried to break free. He was too quick for me. He seized me by the waist and lifted me high overhead in one swift motion and hurled me far out into that loathsome sea.

I WAS DEAD. I HAD NO DOUBT OF THAT. IF I DIDN'T BREAK my neck as I hit the surface of the sea I would be devoured in an instant by it. As I soared and plummeted I was sick with fear, knowing that this was my end. For years I had heard tales of this strange sea, how it was one giant living organism thousands of kilometers deep and broad. How it fed on the creatures of the land that tumbled into it, how sometimes it even would extend a sticky tendril of itself onto the shore to snare something passing by.

I was a long time falling. It seemed to take an hour. It went on so long that my fear left me and I grew impatient to know what would come next. I felt the warmth of the sea rising toward me and its strange odor, sweet and not unpleasant, struck my nostrils. Hot wind-currents played over the surface. I thought of my father and my sister Tereina and of the plump little whore Salathastra. Then I hit.

Despite the height from which I had fallen my landing was soft and easy. The sea seemed to reach up to catch me and it drew me down into itself. Quietly I lay just beneath the surface, unmoving, not even bothering to breathe, cushioned by the density of the strange warm fluid.

Was this what being dead is like? How restful!

I floated. I drifted. The sea took me and carried me. I felt my clothing dissolve. Perhaps my skin and flesh were gone too and I was nothing but bones glistening in the steaming pink mud. I kept my eyes closed. I felt fingers of the sea caressing me everywhere, my thighs, my belly, my loins, unseen slithering serpents sliding over my body. There was a kind of ecstasy in that. The sea made soft sucking noises. It burbled and squeaked and hissed. I stretched out my arms and I could touch the fingertips of one hand to the shore and the other to the shore of the distant unknown western continent ten thousand kilometers away. My toes dangled down to the roots of the planet, where hidden volcanoes poured forth fiery lava.

It is digesting me, I thought.

It is making me part of itself.

I didn't care. I was dead. I loved the sea and I loved being eaten by it. Being absorbed by it. Becoming part of it.

Then a deep voice said, "Swim, Yakoub."

"Swim where?"

"To the shore. This stuff can't hold you."

"It's eating me."

"It will if you let it. But why let it?"

"Who are you?"

"Open your eyes, Yakoub."

I didn't. I went on drifting. Warm, safe, sleepy.