The Complete Series

by Samuel R. Delany

Udrog took a breath. ‘No, I don’t want to do anything if somebody I don’t know can see me.’ He stretched out, facing away from the man.

  Gorgik put his hand on Udrog’s shoulder.

  Udrog shrugged it away once more. ‘No. Don’t fool around now. All right?’

  Again Gorgik was silent.

  ‘And you’d better take that off your neck, too. You don’t want anybody to see you wearing that. They might think all sorts of things.’

  ‘They might.’ The man put his hand on Udrog’s hip and slid his fingers forward.

  Udrog said: ‘You know about the plague—in the big cities? In Kolhari? The one they say men mostly give to men? Though I knew a woman who had it—’

  ‘Yes.’ Gorgik’s hand stopped.

  The barbarian grunted. ‘Well, I’ve been in the cities. That’s probably why we shouldn’t do anything. You’ve been there, too. I might give it to you. You might give it to me. At least that’s the rumor.’

  ‘The rumor is,’ Gorgik said, behind him, ‘that the things you and I would most likely do tonight are the ones least likely to pass it on.’

  The barbarian grunted again. ‘I’ve heard that, too.’ Then he said (for, as we have written, there were some things Udrog was clear about): ‘Sometimes, though, I don’t think about that. And just go on and do what I want anyway.’

  ‘Sometimes—’ Gorgik made a sound the boy recognized as a yawn; and his hand fell away—‘I do too.’

  Udrog lay still on the rug. He had not listened to all the story. Much of what he’d heard he only half understood. What he was left with, as the firelight dimmed, were only contradictions. The man, who was so very much alive, had claimed to be someone Udrog knew was dead—and claimed to be off to his own funeral! (Was he perhaps some demon, ghost, or god …?) He’d said he was a famous minister, then talked of being a slave. He had his own fur rug to sleep on and carried a collar for play, but spoke of being outside sex and what seemed to be the death of desire. And when gods, ghosts, or demons went hooting around them, he’d just laughed. But the greatest contradiction about him was that he was so calm, so sure of himself, so relaxed in the strange and terrible hall. Udrog was tired, and his time for unraveling these riddles, as well as for sex, was over—though now the man’s arm fell on his shoulder to slide around the boy’s chest. Perhaps since the flame was low, it wouldn’t matter if anyone peered. Udrog moved back, because the hall was cooler, and the man was big and warm—hard, too, across Udrog’s upper buttock. Well, even if no one was up there now, the boy had passed beyond desire into the vestibule of sleep. And with this sort, Udrog knew, if he did nothing to respond, the man would not do much.

  Behind the boy, the slow breaths sounded rougher, irregular, as if something might at a moment catch in the big man’s throat.

  But Udrog breathed quickly and easily; and slept.

  8

  AND ANOTHER TALE.

  We’ll write now of a noblewoman near death.

  When news of Lord Krodar’s passing reached the castle of the retired Handmaid and Vizerine Myrgot, there was some consternation among the servants. Should the old lady, up in her chambers, be told now? or later? or not at all?

  The question was finally put to the Vizerine’s aging eunuch, Jahor, who’d recently been ailing himself. In his tapestried rooms, full of lamps and caged birds, with overstuffed cushions strewn among carved wooden caryatids and delicate chimes dangling above intricate candelabras so that the resultant breezes tinkled them incessantly, the ceilings draped with intricately woven stuffs, the air scented by braziers burning spices and aromatic woods, some glowing on carved tables, others smoking on high-hung shelves, and mirrors, mirrors, many mirrors, some small as a thumbnail in scrolled wire frames, some large as a big man’s belly, hung on the walls, jagged at the edges and polished to a gloss, in his half dozen shawls Jahor looked up with paint-winged eyes from his delicate labor over gold wire, tiny shells, and precious stones. ‘Lord Krodar … dead? Up at Ellamon, you say? And you want my opinion whether to tell the Vizerine?’ Under the gorgeous cloths he shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  So the news was carried up the steps and through the corridors to the small rooms of bare stone. Here and there a wooden chest sat against a rock wall. In one chamber—not the largest—a desk had a few writing implements on it, dusted but not used. There wasn’t even a proper rug; a rush mat lay near the bed. The Vizerine was napping when they came in. It took them awhile to bring her fully awake. But they had learned to be patient, and once she fully understood she sat on the bed’s edge in her loose shift and breathed quietly awhile. ‘The irony,’ she said at last. ‘That the Eagle should die among the corrals of the Dragon …!’ She shook her head. Well, there’s nothing to do but get ready. Do we have a full day before the procession passes south along the Royal Way? Fix a closed carriage for me. Hang it about with black and purple—whatever funeral ornaments we have. Order nothing special. I will make do. We’ll join the cortege to accompany my departed colleague to Kolhari and then to his funeral in the Garth.’

  The servants glanced at each other. Did the Vizerine feel that was necessary? She wasn’t well. Certainly her relatives and younger colleagues would understand and take no offense if, in this case, she—

  But Myrgot sat straight at the bed’s edge. ‘I have never pampered myself. I will not start now. There will be people at this funeral I shall probably never have another chance to see in my life. Besides, I wouldn’t miss it for the world!’

  Well, perhaps … said the servants. Would she require her eunuch to accompany her?

  ‘Jahor? No, I won’t need Jahor. Besides, the poor thing has been sick unto death. I shall take only a driver and a maid. Perhaps the new girl …? Yes, I think she should come with me. She has a pleasant way. A good companion for a funeral.’

  The ‘new girl’ was a woman of forty, called Larla. She’d been at the castle almost five years now. The last she’d worked for nobility had been half a dozen years before that, when for six months she’d been employed at the home of Lord Vanar, during his final illness. The other servants found her rather strange, somewhat shrill, and often a bit temperamental. But she was good-hearted. And since she was the last servant Myrgot had personally interviewed before hiring, her mistress made excuses for her.

  The servants left, distraught over the Vizerine’s decision, both to go and to leave Jahor behind. For the eunuch’s endless self-ministrations tended to be of the preventative sort, and the actual ailments he vigorously complained of were, if one listened closely, only to justify this or that medicinal, dietary, or exercise regimen—whose long-term effects were what he was after. But the Vizerine, who would never admit to any failure of health, had taken half a dozen falls in the last year. Several times for two or three days she would not, or could not, eat. Both her coming awake and going to sleep had become longer (and more and more confused) processes. While her mind was generally clear, sometimes she suffered from … well, it was hard to say if it were a surge of melancholy or a lapse of memory: it had characteristics of both. Then the whole castle went into confusion, since ordinarily the old woman insisted on organizing everything from her small, spare rooms; and now nothing could be done. (From these occasions the alternative of consulting Jahor had grown up. About the running of castles, the eunuch knew a great deal.) One time or another all the servants had seen her, usually early in the morning, in an old robe, hobbling along some hallway, halting between steps, now holding the wall, now both hands pressed to one hip, while she took one coarse breath and another.

  Before sunup the next day, the Vizerine was bundled into her wagon, with traveling rugs and funeral gifts and hampers of provisions. Larla pushed in another brocaded sack and climbed in after it. The driver shouted to the horses.

  Holding their torches high, the servants watched the wagon go. (Jahor had not come out to see her off. But though the old lady had commented on it, she hadn’t seemed surprised.) Still, as the servants lowered their brands to reenter the cas
tle, they wondered if the Vizerine were not confused about certain things, for now and again she had turned to address some comment or other to someone who simply … wasn’t there.

  Well, it would be up to the new girl now.

  The timing of the departure had been propitious. The wagon joined the funeral procession half an hour after a glorious sunrise. The Vizerine jostled along while the hangings swung together and apart—but at another rhythm than the drummers outside, with their loud, slow thunder.

  The drumming, the Vizerine thought, was the difficult part of funerals. She sat straight in the corner seat, which, despite the cushion, hurt her hip—she had given up trying to find a comfortable position for her leg under the dark red wool. Had she told the new girl to ride in one of the other carriages? She really wanted to be alone. But no, Larla was right there—directly across from her, dozing. Of course if she weren’t there, Myrgot pondered, I’d probably miss her, for all her heavy arms and over-blunt opinions—not that the girl was much to talk to. If she were here in the carriage, she’d probably be asleep in the corner, her clothes in disarray, her head against the window jamb and her mouth faintly open as the hangings swayed, her lips ajar with the jarring of the wagon.

  The Vizerine blinked.

  Who was that sitting across from her in the shadow?

  It was Larla … wasn’t it? Or did someone else sit in the corner? Really, it was difficult to tell. And if there was someone else, who? Perhaps if she closed her eyes for a time …? (That was, she knew, often a better way to see.) In her red funeral robe, the Vizerine sat straight, and was very tired. But she wouldn’t sleep. No, this was not a time for sleep …

  She said to the big man sitting across from her:

  I knew you would be here, my little slave, my great minister, my liberator. Really, Gorgik, you are the only reason I came myself. So, Krodar is dead. Though in different ways, it’s a relief to us both. Tell me, are you now the most powerful man in Nevèrÿon? Or is that just an illusion, a momentary shape I’ve glimpsed this morning out on some foggy meadow? Of course for so long I was one of those whose illusions, however cruel or benevolent, were the very constitution of power. What you have done, my Gorgik, by ending slavery, is to reduce the distance between the highest and the lowest by an entire social class. Thus we, who were the highest, are, thanks to you, nowhere near as high as we were. Sometimes, you know, I feel I created you. Have you really freed all the slaves? Lord Aldamir and I could not have approved more had you been a favored son who’d taken up our task and program and played it out with perfect dispatch. Consider. Once two of the strictest prohibitions on slaves were those on drinking and reading. Neither was ever allowed in the south. The first time the latter was relaxed in the north was on that shameful night in the Month of the Rat when my little cousin, whose reign is rich and resplendent, came to power. “There’s no time for trials! We’re killing all the Dragon’s supporters! Everyone knows who they are! We’re taking everyone in their families your age and below as slaves for the new regime!” I stood beside her as she heard Lord Krodar declare it, there in the bloody throne room. The terrified little thing, for whom it had been corpses up to the eyebrows three days now since we’d left the Garth, looked around for her hulking blond bodyguard who’d come slashing and hacking with us all the way from the south, to slip behind his hip or grab his wrist. But, not finding him, she cried out: “All of them, you hear! All of the children! You mustn’t harm any, not for any reason!”

  ‘Her first order from the Halls of Court.

  ‘I’ve always thought my little brown cousin was much younger at fifteen than most. Given her cloistered upbringing, it was understandable. Not that it protected her from much. The bodyguard she’d been looking for, we’d discovered just that morning, was a spy for the Dragon, and, with only minutes to spare, to stop a plot that would have lost both her life and mine, she’d had to run in to him, laughing delightedly, throw her arms around him—and, with the knife hidden in the folds of her skirt, slit his throat! She’d done it. Six hours later, though, her gown was still a mess. I say she was young, but in many ways we were all very old. We’d been through scenes as bloody four times in the last three years.

  ‘The nameless gods alone know which Imperial captain, slipping on strewn entrails and sliding on bloody tiles, carried her command outside. And on the waterfront, because of it, you, Gorgik, who had spent enough time in the warehouses where your father worked to pick up the rudiments of that old, crude, commercial script, were not tested, drugged, and slaughtered an hour after your parents, as you would have been in the south. You were never led into a room among a dozen others, where various legends had been scrawled over the walls, among them, “Freedom only to those who linger, silent, in this room when the others have gone on to their labors.” Nor were all told to leave through the door, and the ones who stayed congratulated with a celebratory drink (heavily drugged), then killed.

  ‘You were simply made a slave.

  ‘So now in Nevèrÿon, a very few slaves existed who knew how to read and write. (The first night I knew you, you yourself explained to me that is how you became a foreman.) The beginning of the end of slavery. It’s an explanation I know you would enjoy. How many like it have I heard you offer over the years for this or that social phenomenon? Yet, how many times have I heard you tell your own story—in so many different versions, I might add. Your literacy—certainly one of the first things I noticed about you when I decided to buy you from the mines—is not usually what you mention, unless asked. And more than once, my friend, my creation, my mirror, I have thought your suppression of that fact from the general narrative you tell and retell of your life is the sign of its indubitable core import.

  ‘Telling you this tale, while you sit here, smiling at an old lady whom you once thought not so old as all that, I expect at any moment you will take it up, but with emphases reversed, points and periods displaced, the whole re-read, re-written, clarified, you will say, but all to your own ends. How interesting, you will comment, that, from the beginning, the empress’s power was wholly supplementary, correctionary, cautionary, strategic, exhortatory. Hasn’t it remained so ever since? What intrigues me, from my own time at court (you will go on), is that this is the model for all political power any individual—empress, minister, Vizerine, councilor, courtier, radical rebel or petitioning merchant—holds. The most difficult lesson I had to learn at Court was that (you will explain) the sort of power the Child Empress wielded that night, as you have described it, was the only power there is. The illusory model of force, which distracts, dissuades, and finally destroys us all at play in the game of power and time, is modeled equally well, in your tale, by Lord Krodar, who is able to command, with a set of sentences, let these be killed or those cast down, let those be raised up or these seated beside me: the whole preposterous notion that power is limited only to that which mediates between language and action. That is why he—or his image as a blood-soaked tyrant—is our enemy to be analyzed, dismantled, dismissed in a move that, for us, must finally be one of vigilant self-correction and protection. That is why she—or her image as a bloody, frightened child—is our friend. It is simply a matter of which one is closer to the real.

  ‘And somehow, like any man talking to a woman, you will have taken it away from me again. And gone on smiling. How am I to tell you, now that you’ve deprived me of my point, that it was not an order Krodar gave that night. He had merely run in to report a fact—which is to say your model for political power is righter than you know. His power, compared to that of the greater engine, was as supplementary as the little empress’s. His brilliance—his own power, if you will—was only in his knowledge, practice, and exploitation of those supplementary strategies. For, as you also know, I have never been able to use Krodar—or his image—as you have.

  ‘But I suppose that is why I do not enjoy stories of court any more.

  ‘We have had so many times, over the years, you and I, for you to tell me your life. Wha
t has intrigued me, Gorgik, is that every time you’ve sat down to tell it, it has always come out differently. Do you recall, at our second meeting, how quick you were to confess so many things you’d told me in our first were lies—or, as you put it, “tales appropriated from other slaves”? Years later, when more and more of Nevèrÿon seemed to choose you to speak for her, I wondered if the reason wasn’t that you had appropriated still more and more tales into your narrative, so that more and more people recognized themselves in it—even as some of us recognized in that the strategy of a man who has no tale at all.

  ‘The temptation with such a man is, of course, for the rest of us to turn and tell your tale ourselves—or what we suspect that tale to be. Certainly I have my own version.

  ‘Do you remember when last you came to see me? Oh, how pleased and frightened I was when I heard of your elevation to minister. It seemed only fitting that I, who first brought you into the High Court of Eagles, should invite you, once your installation was done, to my home for some rest and relaxation before your arduous duties began. I sent my messenger to Kolhari. By that time our histories were intricately intertwined, even as our lives had separated. Retired now, I was largely out of the game that you had just taken on for your own. I hoped you would visit me as an old friend to whom you once used to write the most marvelous letters. (Ah, in those early years, the wonders you used to write of, at first hiring a scribe for the modern and up-to-date Ulvayn system that set down words—then, from time to time, as time went on, writing in your own hand, using the older commercial glyphs your father taught you, where signs for things and feelings and whole complexes of ideas, which might be spoken by the reader in many different ways, were marked directly down. Toward the end, as you used a scribe less and less, your letters began to mix the two forms—as presumably, like all in our land, you began to master the modern mode yourself. Indeed, I noticed that as more and more words crept into your letters and as the signs for ready-made ideas became fewer and fewer, the letters themselves became rarer. And as our correspondence fell away, I wondered if you were, after all, a man more comfortable with abstract ideas and physical things than you were with the vagaries of perlocution and illocution.) But I also knew you might come as the grimmest accuser with listed reasons as to exactly why you had stopped writing. Really, I hoped you would be my mirror, once I had gazed at you long enough to discover how you felt toward me, I would, among the endless ambiguities of my own actions over the years, learn who it was I had at last become.