—And here you are,Prince Ram said.
—And here I am.
We talked half the afternoon, through what would normally have been his exercise period. He overflowed with questions about the world I came from.
I described telephones for him, and television, and supersonic transports, and space satellites. I told him that we had mining camps on the Moon and three little scientific outposts on Mars, and were talking about sending a crew out for a close look at the moons of Jupiter. I made a stab at explaining what our system of government is like, and what it’s like to live in a world that has several great nations instead of only one, and how we managed to survive the ferocious conflicts that almost finished us all off in the horrendous twentieth century.
He wasn’t skeptical in the slightest. I guess he had no trouble believing that wizards capable of sending a man’s mind back twenty thousand years could also make machines that could fly from Thibarak to Naz Glesim in a couple of hours, or send pictures halfway around the world in a moment.
The only thing he absolutely couldn’t swallow was the notion of democratic elections. He wanted to know the name of our king, and how long he and his family had ruled.
—It doesn’t work that way any more,I said.In our land we choose a new ruler every four years. If he or she rules wisely, they are often given four years more. And then we choose someone else.
That made no sense to him, no matter how many different-ways I explained it.
The people choose the king? A stranger is allowed to replace an established ruler?
He was baffled. His body grew tense, his head began to throb. Only when I told him that there were other countries where the rulers held power for a great many years, sometimes for their whole lives, did he ease back a little.
But even the concept of dictatorship seemed bizarre and troublesome to him. To grab power and proclaim yourself the boss, and then to rule until the people grow tired of you and overthrow you, whereupon somebody else stands up and says he’s boss—no, no, Prince Ram couldn’t swallow that. It seemed like insanity to him. Our scientific wonders, our television and time travel and voyages to Mars, those he could accept without a quiver of doubt. But not our politics.
Wrapping it up, the next day.
Where it stands now is that Ram and I have become pals. The best of friends. He completely accepts my presence within him, is not at all spooked by it, thinks it’s just terrific. A wizard from the far future living behind his forehead who can tell him all sorts of marvelous things. Doesn’t intend to let anyone know about it, naturally. His little secret, to cherish and enjoy.
I realize that this violates all our training, for me to have let him in on the truth of the situation. It goes against everything that we’re taught in the way of procedural tactics. My neck’s going to be on the block for sure when I return to Home Era. So all this has big implications not just for my future, but for yours and mine together. Don’t think I haven’t been troubled by that. But I couldn’t help doing what I’ve done. It was the only honorable choice. Either admit the truth, or risk destroying Prince Ram’s sanity. Well, I made my choice, and now I have to stick with it, even though it certainly means the ruination of my career.
He knows that you’re occupying the mind of Provincial Governor Sippurilayl. He knows that we communicate by means of these letters, and he will continue to oblige me by serving as my scribe. Whether you want to reveal yourself to Sippurilayl is entirely up to you. Personally I don’t think you should. You have nothing to gain from it and everything to lose once you’re back in Home Era. After all, you still have a career in time research to think about, regardless of the mess I’ve made of mine.
Will you go on writing to me, knowing what you know now?
I hope you will. I’ll be devastated if you don’t, Lora.
Please don’t worry that by corresponding with me you’ll be making yourself some kind of accomplice in my breach of the rules. I’m going to let it be known loud and clear, when we’ve returned to Home Era, that I chose to make my presence known to Ram entirely on my own, without consulting you and certainly without any suggestion from you that I do it.
As you know, I never intended to blow my cover this way. It was just something that happened. To do it was wrong, and I’m prepared to take the consequences, whatever they may be, when the time comes. I have to say, though, that I don’t really see what harm it does, this far in the past, to let one clever prince know that we of the twenty-first century are capable of roving through time. His knowing that can’t possibly change any aspect of history, can it?
Or can it?
Well, so be it, What I’ve done can’t be undone. Ram kept himself up half the night talking with me, asking a million and one questions, the way you would with a new college roommate. All about my family, the place where I was born, my training as a “wizard,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, until he was goofy with fatigue and I had to ease him to sleep without his knowing it, for his own sake.
Roommates is what we are, all right.
How strange this all is, Lora! How totally strange.
—Roy
9.
Day 22, Western Wind, Great River.
News. Big news. A flabbergasting, mind-blowing discovery, in fact. A completely unexpected discovery that makes everything that was impossible to explain about the Athilantan empire fall suddenly into place.
Now that I no longer need to conceal my presence from Ram, I can move about freely in his mind. That doesn’t seem to bother him. He doesn’t see it as an invasion of his privacy; he doesn’t seem to understand the concept of privacy at all. Or care about it, if he does.
One thing I wanted to know about was the rite of Romany Star.
Remember that mysterious ceremony that Ram and his father performed one night last month? The Prince and the King staring at the sky, chanting solemn prayers to one particular star, shredding and burning their garments, destroying the coronets that they wore? Obviously an important rite. But what was its significance?
I slipped down into the depths of Ram’s consciousness to see what I could learn about it. And got a lot more than I was expecting.
As I hardly need to tell you, you can’t do research in a human mind, whether it’s your own or someone else’s, the way you would in a public library. Minds have no indexes and you can’t run a computer scan to find the particular data you want. Everything is arranged systematically inside the mind, I suppose, but the genius has not yet been born who is capable of figuring out what that system is. So the best you can do is poke around randomly and try to make the connections you need.
I touched here and there within Ram’s mind, looking for the memories of the night of the Romany Star rite. I came up with all sorts of other things—the time in the Labyrinth, and a stroll along a spectacular beach, all white sands and sparkling water, and a wild horseback ride down some forest glade, and so on and so on—and then there it was, Ram and the King on the palace roof chanting their prayer.
That entry in Ram’s memory file had a special feel to it, a distinct resonance, a tone all its own. It was like one of those haunting melodies that you couldn’t possibly sing yourself, but which you’d recognize whenever you heard it. I can’t describe it to you, but I know what it was like. And, now that I had experienced it, I had a reference point. I went darting off down this mental avenue and that one, hoping to pick that special tone up again somewhere else, another point of association with Romany Star.