Glory Road (29 page)

I asked Rufo what chance the machines gave us.

“What makes you say that?” he demanded.

“Well, I know a little of cybernetics.”

“You think you do. Still—There was a prediction. Thirteen percent success, seventeen percent no game—and seventy percent death for us all.”

I whistled. “
You
should whistle!” he said indignantly. “You didn’t know any more than a cavalry horse knows. You had nothing to be scared of.”

“I was scared.”

“You didn’t have time to be. It was planned so. Our one chance lay in reckless speed and utter surprise. But I
knew
. Son, when you told us to wait, there in the Tower, and disappeared and didn’t come back, why, I was so scared I caught up on my regretting.”

Once set up, the raid happened as I told it. Or pretty much so, although I may have seen what my mind could accept rather than exactly what happened. I mean “magic.” How many times have savages concluded “magic” when a “civilized” man came along with something the savage couldn’t understand? How often is some tag, such as “television,” accepted by cultural savages (who nevertheless twist dials) when “magic” would be the honest word?

Still, Star never insisted on that word. She accepted it when
I
insisted on it.

But I would be disappointed if
everything
I saw turned out to be something Western Electric will build once Bell Labs works the bugs out. There ought to be
some
magic, somewhere, just for flavor.

Oh, yes, putting me to sleep for the first transition was to keep from scaring a savage silly. Nor did the “black biers” cross over—that was posthypnotic suggestion, by an expert: my wife.

Did I say what happened to the baddies? Nothing. Their Gates were destroyed; they are isolated until they develop star travel. Good enough, by the sloppy standards of the Empire. Their Wisdoms never carry grudges.

EIGHTEEN

Center is a lovely planet, Earthlike but lacking Earth’s faults. It has been retailored over millennia to make it a Never-Never Land. Desert and snow and jungle were saved enough for pleasure; floods and other disasters were engineered out of existence.

It is uncrowded but has a large population for its size—that of Mars but with oceans. Surface gravity is almost that of Earth. (A higher constant, I understand.) About half the population is transient, as its great beauty and unique cultural assets—focus of twenty universes—make it a tourist’s paradise. Everything is done for the comfort of visitors with an all-out thoroughness like that of the Swiss but with technology not known on Earth.

Star and I had residences a dozen places around the planet (and endless others in other universes); they ranged from palaces to a tiny fishing lodge where Star did her own cooking. Mostly we lived in apartments in an artificial mountain that housed the Egg and its staff; adjacent were halls, conference rooms, secretariat, etc. If Star felt like working she wanted such things at hand. But a system ambassador or visiting emperor of a hundred systems had as much chance of being invited into our private home as a hobo at the back door of a Beverly Hills mansion has of being invited into the drawing room.

But if Star happened to like him, she might fetch him home for a midnight snack. She did that once—a funny little leprechaun with four arms and a habit of tap-dancing his gestures. But she did no official entertaining and felt no obligation to attend social affairs. She did not hold press conferences, make speeches, receive delegations of Girl Scouts, lay cornerstones, proclaim special “Days,” make ceremonial appearances, sign papers, deny rumors, nor any of the time-gnawing things that sovereigns and V.I.P.’s do on Earth.

She consulted individuals, often summoning them from other universes, and she had at her disposal all the news from everywhere, organized in a system that had been developed over centuries. It was through this system that she decided what problems to consider. One chronic complaint was that the Imperium ignored “vital questions”—and so it did. Her Wisdom passed judgment only on problems she selected; the bedrock of the system was that most problems solved themselves.

We often went to social events; we both enjoyed parties and, for Her Wisdom and Consort, there was endless choice. There was one negative protocol: Star neither accepted nor regretted invitations, showed up when she pleased and refused to be fussed over. This was a drastic change for capital society as her predecessor had imposed protocol more formal than that of the Vatican.

One hostess complained to me about how
dull
society had become under the new rules—maybe I could do something?

I did. I looked up Star and told her the remark whereupon we left and joined a drunken artists’ ball—a luau!

Center is such a hash of cultures, races, customs, and styles that it has few rules. The one invariant custom was: Don’t impose
your
customs on
me
. People wore what they did at home, or experimented with other styles; any social affair looked like a free-choice costume ball. A guest could show up at a swank party stark naked without causing talk—and some did, a small minority. I don’t mean nonhumans or hirsute humans; clothes are not for them. I mean humans who would look at home in New York in American clothes—and others who would attract notice even in l’Île du Levant because they have no hair at all, not even eyebrows. This is a source of pride to them; it shows their “superiority” to us hairy apes, they are as proud as a Georgia cracker is of his deficiency in melanin. So they go naked oftener than other human races. I found their appearance startling but one gets used to it.

Star wore clothes outside our home, so I did. Star would never miss a chance to dress up, an endearing weakness that made it possible to forget, at times, her Imperial status. She never dressed twice alike and was ever trying something new—and disappointed if I didn’t notice. Some of her choices would cause heart failure even on a Riviera beach. She believed that a woman’s costume was a failure unless it made men want to tear it off.

One of Star’s most effective outfits was the simplest. Rufo happened to be with us and she got a sudden notion to dress as we had on the Quest of the Egg—and biff, bang, costumes were available, or manufactured to order, as may be; Nevian clothes are most uncommon in Center.

Bows, arrows, and quivers were produced with the same speed and Merry Men were we. It made me feel good to buckle on the Lady Vivamus; she had been hanging untouched on a wall of my study ever since the great black Tower.

Star stood, feet planted wide, fists on hips, head thrown back, eyes bright, and cheeks flushed. “Oh, this is fun! I feel good, I feel
young!
Darling, promise me, promise me truly, that someday we will again go on an adventure! I get so damn sick of being sensible.”

She spoke English, as the language of Center is ill suited to such ideas. It’s a pidgin language with thousands of years of imports and changes and is uninflected, positional, and flat.

“Suits,” I agreed. “How about it, Rufo? Want to walk that Glory Road?”

“After they pave it.”

“Guff. You’ll come, I know you. Where and when, Star? Never mind ‘where’—just ‘when.’ Skip the party and start right now!”

Suddenly she was not merry. “Darling, you know I can’t. I’m less than a third of the way through my training.”

“I should have busted that Egg when I found it.”

“Don’t be cross, darling. Let’s go to the party and have fun.”

We did. Travel on Center is by apports, artificial “Gates” that require no “magic” (or perhaps still more); one sets destination like punching buttons in an elevator, so there is no traffic problem in cities—nor a thousand other unpleasant things; they don’t let the bones show in their cities. Tonight Star chose to get off short of destination, swagger through a park, and make an entrance. She knows how well tights suit her long legs and solid buttocks; she rolled her hips like a Hindu woman.

Folks, we were a sensation! Swords aren’t worn in Center, save possibly by visitors. Bows and arrows are hen’s teeth, too. We were as conspicuous as a knight in armor on Fifth Avenue.

Star was as happy as a kid playing trick-or-treat. So was I. I felt two axe handles across the shoulders and wanted to hunt dragons.

It was a ball not unlike one on Earth. (According to Rufo, all our races everywhere have the same basic entertainment: get together in mobs to dance, drink, and gossip. He claimed that the stag affair and the hen party are symptoms of a sick culture. I won’t argue.) We swaggered down a grand staircase, music stopped, people stared and gasped—and Star enjoyed being noticed. Musicians got raggedly back to work and guests went back to the negative politeness the Empress usually demanded. But we still got attention. I had thought that the story of the Quest of the Egg was a state secret as I had never heard it mentioned. But, even if known, I still would have expected the details to be known only to us three.

Not so. Everyone knew what those costumes meant, and more. I was at the buffet, sopping up brandy and a Dagwood of my own invention, when I was cornered by Schherazade’s sister, the pretty one. She was of one of the human-but-not-like-us races. She was dressed in rubies the size of your thumb and reasonably opaque cloth. She stood about five-five, barefooted, weighed maybe one twenty and her waist couldn’t have been over fifteen inches, which exaggerated two other measurements that did not need it. She was brunette, with the slantiest eyes I’ve ever seen. She looked like a beautiful cat and looked at me the way a cat looks at a bird.

“Self,” she announced.

“Speak.”

“Sverlani. World—” (Name and code—I had never heard of it.) “Student food designer, mathematicosybaritic.”

“Oscar Gordon. Earth. Soldier.” I omitted the I.D. for Earth; she knew who I was.

“Questions?”

“Ask.”

“Is sword?”

“Is.”

She looked at it and her pupils dilated, “Is-was sword destroy construct guard Egg?” (“Is this sword now present the direct successor in space-time sequential change, aside from theoretical anomalies involved in between-universe transitions, of the sword used to kill the Never-Born?” The double tense of the verb, present-past, stipulates and brushes aside the concept that identity is a meaningless abstraction—is this the sword you actually used, in the everyday meaning, and don’t kid me, soldier. I’m no child.)

“Was-is,” I agreed. (“I was there and I guarantee that I followed it all the way here, so it still is.”)

She gave a little gasp and her nipples stood up. Around each was painted, or perhaps tattooed, the multi-universal design we call “Wall of Troy”—and so strong was her reaction that Ilium’s ramparts crumbled again.

“Touch?” she said pleadingly.

“Touch.”

“Touch
twice
?” (“Please, may I handle it enough to get the feel of it? Pretty please, with sugar on it! I ask too much and it is your right to refuse, but I guarantee not to hurt it”—they get mileage out of words, but the flavor is in the manner.)

I didn’t want to, not the Lady Vivamus. But I’m a sucker for pretty girls. “Touch…twice,” I grudged. I drew it and handed it to her guard foremost, alert to grab it before she put somebody’s eye out or stabbed herself in the foot.

She accepted it gingerly, eyes and mouth big, grasping it by the guard instead of the grip. I had to show her. Her hand was far too small for it; her hands and feet, like her waist, were ultra slender.

She spotted the inscription. “Means?”

Dum vivimus, vivamus
doesn’t translate well, not because they can’t understand the idea but because it’s water to a fish. How else would one live? But I tried. “Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.”

She nodded thoughtfully, then poked the air, wrist bent and elbow out. I couldn’t stand it, so I took it from her, dropped slowly into a foil guard, lunged in high line, recovered—a move so graceful that big hairy men look good in it. It’s why ballerinas study fencing.

I saluted and gave it back to her, then adjusted her right elbow and wrist and left arm—this is why ballerinas get half rates, it’s fun for the swordmaster. She lunged, almost pinking a guest in his starboard ham.

I took it back, wiped the blade, sheathed it. We had gathered a solid gallery. I picked up my Dagwood from the buffet, but she wasn’t done with me. “Self jump sword?”

I choked. If she understood the meaning—or if I did—I was being propositioned the most gently I had ever been, in Center. Usually it’s blunt. But surely Star hadn’t spread the details of our wedding ceremony? Rufo? I hadn’t told him but Star might have.

When I didn’t answer, she made herself clear and did not keep her voice down. “Self unvirgin unmother unpregnant fertile.”

I explained as politely as the language permits, which isn’t very, that I was dated up. She dropped the subject, looked at the Dagwood. “Bite touch taste?”

That was another matter; I passed it over. She took a hearty bite, chewed thoughtfully, looked pleased. “Xenic. Primitive. Robust. Strong dissonance. Good art.” Then she drifted away, leaving me wondering.