Gateway to Elsewhere

Chapter 7

Tony was wakened by the firing of cannon. His heart sank. An attack of some sort upon the city of Barkut? His conscience expressed bitter satisfaction at the possible impending consequences of his misdeeds, all done against his conscience’s advice. But Tony listened to the cannon-shots. They were fired at regular intervals. Which might mean a salute, or might mean something of a ceremonial nature, but certainly didn’t mean guns being aimed and fired as fast as they bore on their targets.

He got out of bed and dressed. He had folded his trousers carefully and put them under the mattress of his bed. The result would not have satisfied him in New York, but here it was the nearest approach to a crease in his pants he’d had since his arrival. He put them on. He felt better. He began to tuck in his shirt tails.

The door opened. His breakfast, evidently. Two dark-skinned slaves carried a gigantic silver platter on which was piled the better part of a roasted sheep. Fruit. Coffee. Bread, which was in thin, flexible, doughy sheets more suited for the wrapping of packages than the making of breakfast toast. With the two male slaves came two slave girls in garments quite appropriate for indoors in a hot climate. They were gauzy and not extensive. One of the girls carried some kind of musical instrument. They smiled warmly upon Tony as he finished tucking in his shirt.

“Your breakfast, lord,” said one of them brightly. “The City rejoices in your victory.”

“Victory?” said Tony. “What victory?”

“The defeat, lord,” said the prettier of the two slave girls, “of the djinn who was sent to slay you who are the hope of Barkut. The cannons fire and the people dance in the streets. There will be decorations and fireworks.”

Tony’s conscience was skeptical. He shared its view. But the cannon boomed, nevertheless. Tony’s neck was sore this morning, and he had cold chills down his back at odd moments. Breaking the djinn’s fingers had been a sound Army trick, but this Es-Souk had immediately afterward swelled to the size of at least a hippopotamus, and as soon as he stopped roaring he’d have tackled Tony again, and then there’d have been nothing but a blot left of Tony. Tony still didn’t know what had made Es-Souk sneeze or flee in such palpable bellowing terror. Tony’s conscience said, with something of the bite of vitriol, that the djinn had doubtless sneezed from an incipient cold, and that these two slave girls weren’t any too well protected against draughts, either.

He regarded them interestedly as the great silver platter came to rest on folding legs, convenient to his bedside. The two male slaves bowed deeply and departed. The booming of cannon continued. The two girls stayed.

“Hm…” said Tony. “You two—”

“We serve you, lord,” said the girl with the musical instrument. She seemed quite happy about it. “I play and Esim dances, or she plays and I dance, and both of us carve your meat and pour your sherbet and serve you in all ways.”

Tony regarded them again. Slave girls. Unveiled. Very sketchily attired. Very pretty. A charming idea of hospitality. Ghail had nicer legs, but—

His conscience snarled at him.

“So the cannon fire because of my victory!” he observed, reaching out for coffee.

One of them passed it to him, reverently.

“Aye, lord,” she said brightly. “Never before in the history of Barkut has a man defeated a djinn in single combat. Were they not so stupid, we had been their subjects long ago.”

He drank the coffee. So nobody before had ever defeated a djinn in single combat? In that case, maybe some sort of celebration was in order. But he gloomily wished he knew how he’d done it. He scowled.

“You seem sad, lord,” said the one called Esir, anxiously. “Esim has made a song of your victory. Would you wish that she sing to cheer you?”

Tony grunted. His conscience observed warningly that he did not know anything about the local domestic habits. Perhaps, despite the veils and swathing robes women wore in the streets, it was an old Arabic custom to provide strictly musical entertainment with breakfast in a guest’s bedroom.

“You two are slaves?” he asked, as one of them anticipated his reach for an orange and swiftly halved it for him and handed it to him with a tiny golden spoon for him to eat it with.

“Aye, lord. Your slaves,” said the two in unison, beaming.

Tony strangled on his first spoonful of orange pulp. They pounded his back anxiously. He coughed and blinked at them.

“You mean—”

“You came to Barkut without attendant, lord,” said Esir, happily, “and it was not fitting. So the Council gave us to you, with horses and other slaves, that you might be suitably served. And all of us, your slaves, wished to kneel to you immediately, but Ghail the slave girl said that you had told her you did not wish to be disturbed last night, and therefore we only waited your summons—which did not come.”

Tony absorbed the statement. It required considerable absorbing. He opened his mouth, and they hung upon his impending words, and he closed it without saying anything. So, Ghail had kept him from having these two girls to dance and sing for him last night, eh? His conscience said something half-hearted about Ghail doubtless having his best interests at heart, but it had said too much in the past about her nonchalantly displayed bare legs. He did not heed it.

“Tonight,” said Tony with decision, “things will be different.”

They gave him the brightest and most joyous of smiles.

“And may we watch, lord,” said Esim hopefully, “when you slay the other djinns who will doubtless be sent to murder you tonight?

Tony choked again. That was something he had been trying not to think about. The people of Barkut were, apparently, rather casual about djinns in spite of the long-continued war and the captivity of their official ruler. On the two occasions when djinns had turned up to Tony’s knowledge, the people had not run away, but had come howling with rage to attack them. Flintlock muskets had bellowed after the djinnee Nasim as she fled in the form of a whirlwind. Palace guards had been spoiling for a fight and were actually breaking down the door of Tony’s apartment when he opened it for them after Es-Souk’s departure. These people would put up a battle, and were not averse to it. But still they said that no one man had ever before conquered a djinn in single combat.

It was something that needed to be looked into. And then Tony had an idea. Rather strangely, he had altogether failed to use his ten-dirhim piece for guidance since his arrival in the city of Barkut itself. The reason was simply that he hadn’t needed it to decide anything. He’d been quite content with things as they were. Even imprisonment in the dungeon-and-courtyard had not been bad. He’d been busy learning Arabic, with Ghail around to look at appreciatively—

But now the djinns were after his neck. Now he needed to know what to do.

He finished his breakfast and stood up. The two girls brought him a golden basin and water to wash his hands. They watched his every movement with a breathless absorption which was almost childlike and was certainly flattering. Dismissing them, he patted one on her bare shoulder. She made a little movement as if cuddling against his hand while she smiled at him. He patted the other—

They went out the door, smiling worshipfully back at him. He found himself whistling as he dug in his pocket for the ten-dirhim piece. He regarded it affectionately. When he was a brisk young executive with a residence in Barkut suitably staffed with male and female slaves, it would all be due to this coin! And now this coin would give him some needed advice.

He flipped it. He flipped it again. And again and again.

Half an hour later, when Ghail came into his apartment—and he noted disapprovingly that she was wearing more clothes than ever—he was sunk in abysmal gloom. The ten-dirhim piece was no longer informative. It turned up heads and tails completely at random. It contradicted itself. It had no longer any special quality at all. It was at home. It was in its own world. The attraction; the gravitation; the singular force which prevented the indiscriminate mixing-up of objects of different worlds by causing coincidences which kept them at home—that force was gone. Because the coin was back where it belonged and was no longer endowed with any property urging its return.

Ghail regarded Tony with an enigmatic expression.

“Greeting, lord,” she said in a tone which had all the earmarks of suitable slave-girl humility, but somehow was not humble at all, “there is news of great moment.”

Tony felt inclined to groan. Among other things, he foresaw that he would be in for a bad time with his conscience presently.

“What is the news?” he asked drearily.

“The King of djinns has sent an embassy,” Ghail told him. “He offers greetings to the prince beyond the farthest sea. He admires your prowess and desires to look upon the champion who defeated Es-Souk in single combat. He has punished Es-Souk for attempting to slay a human in a merely private quarrel. He offers a truce, safe conduct, and an escort of his private guard.”

Tony’s conscience said indignantly that when an important message like this was at hand, Tony should be ashamed to be looking at Ghail and mooning about how much better looking she was in less costume.

“What should I do?” asked Tony. “As I recall it, I pledged myself to destroy him, the other day. Yesterday, in fact. Do I tell him I’m in conference?”

Ghail shook her head frigidly.

“You should accept,” she told him with no cordiality at all. “If you refused, he would think you were afraid.”

“To be honest about it,” said Tony, “I am. Have you any idea how I chased that djinn away last night?”

She looked at him in amazement.

“I haven’t either,” said Tony. “He was strangling me, so I broke a couple of his fingers and he let go, howling. Then he swelled up to the size of a gigantosaurus, bellowing, while I coughed my head off. He was just about to come for me again when he started to sneeze, and he went into a panic and flew out the window like his tail was on fire. I haven’t the least idea why.”

The slave girl looked at him strangely.

“He sneezed? But lasf sometimes causes that! Not always, but sometimes. Had you lasf?”

“Not unless it was on my breath—which isn’t unlikely,” Tony said gloomily. “It’s foul stuff and the aroma lingers on. I had a drink of it yesterday. You gave it to me.”

“Lasf is poisonous to the djinn but not to human beings,” said Ghail with some reserve. “We anoint our weapons and bullets with it before we go out to fight the djinn. It is very poisonous to them. They run away. Sometimes they sneeze. But lasf is very rare. The djinn pay the Bedouin of the desert to uproot and destroy it wherever they find it.”

“Like DDT,” said Tony morbidly, “with bugs hiring rabbits to sabotage the whole business.” He had to use English words where he did not know the Arabic equivalents. She listened, uncomprehending. “Never mind. If you don’t know how I did it, nobody knows, so that’s that. So—I have to visit this djinn king, eh? If it’s under safe-conduct, I suppose I’m safe from further strangling until I get back?”

“Oh, yes,” said Ghail. “You and your attendants are safe until you return. Of course you will be offered bribes to betray us, and persuasion, and he may try to frighten you, and”—her voice grew suddenly angry—“he will have his djinnees try to beguile you. He does not want you to lead our armies against him.”

“I’ll try to resist the bribes and the beguilings, too,” said Tony. Then he shuddered. “If what I had yesterday was a fair sample… Tell me, where do I get this reputation as a general?”

Ghail said coldly: “I told the Council about the war you were in. Also, that djinnee in the courtyard may have been listening for days. One way or another, it would get back to the djinns.”