Gateway to Elsewhere

Chapter 8

Tony had been standing. Now he sat down. He looked at Ghail. He said, changing the subject:

“What’s the matter, Ghail? You act as if I had bleeding gums or something equally repulsive. When you thought I was a djinn you didn’t act this way.”

Ghail said: “There’s nothing the matter.” Then she added pointedly, “Did you enjoy your breakfast this morning?”

“That roasted sheep wasn’t necessary,” admitted Tony. “The coffee and fruit would have been enough. Did you arrange it?”

“It was thought,” said Ghail coldly, “that since I had talked to you often I might know your likes and dislikes.”

“Hm…” said Tony. “You picked out those slaves—the two girls who were part of the present made by the Council?”

Her lips tensed. “I did. I hope they please you.”

“It evidently didn’t occur to you,” said Tony in gentle reproach, “that you could have included yourself in the gift. That is the only criticism I could offer.”

She stamped her foot.

“I am the personal property of the Queen!” she snapped. “The Queen is a prisoner of the djinn. I cannot be bought or given save of the Queen!”

“It would be nice,” Tony submitted, “if you could be persuaded.”

She turned her back on him and started for the door. Tony said: “By the way—when do I start for the djinn king’s court? And you said the safe-conduct includes my attendants. Do I tell Esir and Esim to pack up for a trip?”

“You do not!” Ghail said shortly. “You will have but one attendant. You will start before nightfall. The djinn will provide mounts and accommodation for you and one other only!”

“I suppose—”

“You will go,” Ghail said shortly, “because the djinn king invited you. I go as your pretended slave, but actually to take necessities to our captive Queen.”

Tony looked at her. He raised his eyebrows.

“The journey,” said Ghail haughtily, “will be made on the camels of the djinn, which are actually djinn in the form of camels. They travel like the wind. What would be four days’ journey by human travel will be accomplished in no more than three hours.”

“I was sure,” said Tony in some regret, “that somehow you would manage to make it unsatisfactory. All right! Thank you.”

He watched gloomily as she went out the door. Life, he reflected, had been a great deal more simple when he was a prisoner in a dungeon with a courtyard, instead of a general of armies he hadn’t seen yet and a prince who had to make journeys to the courts of nonhuman entities he hadn’t believed in before yesterday morning. At least, while he was a prisoner, Ghail had been around a lot, in a costume of limited area, and she’d been interested in him, if scornful. Now she seemed scornful of him and not interested. She rather resembled his conscience.

His conscience said sternly that though an untutored slave girl, reared in a highly unfavorable atmosphere, she at least showed a devotion to duty and a sense of moral values which Tony was not displaying. Only Heaven knew, said Tony’s conscience, what enormities he might commit at any time, now that he had ceased to heed his proper mentor—it was fortunate that this poor slave girl had a sense of duty!

To this Tony replied that Ghail’s sense of duty had led her to pick out two very attractive slave girls as presents for him, and since he was going off somewhere and didn’t know when he’d be back, he might as well call them in and have some music while he waited.

He stood up to pull the bell cord.

Then he saw a stirring down at floor level out of the corner of his eye. He whirled with something like a gasp. After the affair of the dungeon courtyard and the windowsill last night, he was becoming jumpy when bugs and frogs and other small objects moved in his neighborhood.

Two of the marble tiles of the floor were rising where they joined, as if something swelled beneath them. Tony stared, momentarily paralyzed. A green shoot appeared and grew. Leaves appeared at its tip as he watched. Branches spread out, and more leaves, and then a bud. The bud swelled. It opened into an enormous lush blossom of a violent magenta hue. And then the flower rearranged itself. It became a miniature head—and there was the beaming, sentimental face of Nasim the djinnee, wearing her explicitly minus-I.Q. expression of amiability.

“Sh-h-h-h!” said the face in the flower, coyly.

Tony gulped. “I’m sh-sh-h-h-shed,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I’m sorry about Es-Souk,” said the djinnee, beaming. “He’s so jealous! He can’t help it, poor thing! The king has put him in jail and it serves him right!”

Tony said: “Oh!”

“I felt that I had to tell you I was sorry,” said the djinnee, almost simpering. “You’re not angry with me?”

“Oh, no,” said Tony. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“That’s so good of you!” said Nasim. She regarded him with adoring, cowlike eyes from the flower bush. “I’ve been hiding in a crack as a little moth’s egg, waiting to tell you how sorry I am. But there’s been somebody around all the time.”

“Yes,” said Tony. “There has been.”

“Would you like me to take the form of a human woman?” asked Nasim hopefully—and giggling—“for a while?”

“You’d better wear some clo—” began Tony in apprehension. Then he said desperately, “Better not. Somebody might come in.”

Nasim beamed. “All right. But you’re going to our king’s court. I’ll see you there! I’ll be around!”

“I’m sure you will be,” said Tony dismally.

“I’m watching over you,” said Nasim beatifically. “Since I heard about what Es-Souk tried to do on my account, I made up my mind to watch over you night and day. And I will! Night and day!”

Tony stared at her, appalled. There was a small noise outside the door. Nasim said sentimentally:

“I hate to go like this, but somebody’s coming.” She beamed. “I’ll be a little grease spot on the floor. Mind, now,” she added archly, “don’t step on me!”

The flower and blossom and all the leaves and branches seemed to contract smoothly. Suddenly they were not. The marble floor tiles fell together with a clink.

A delicate tapping on the door. Esir and Esim poked their heads around the door frame. Their faces were hopeful, and at the same time distressed.

“Lord!” said Esir plaintively. “We hear that you go on a journey! Do we go too?”

Tony sighed.

“I’m afraid not,” he admitted. “Affairs of state, and all that. I’m taking only one attendant, and I’ve not choice of that one.”

“But, lord,” protested Esim, “we have just been given to you and we do not even know if we please you or not!”

They came into the room. They were young and shapely. They pleased him very much. They were openly eager for experimental evidence of this fact, and looked at him imploringly.

I like you both very much,” said Tony. “In fact—” He thought back along a lifetime in New York, spent on subways and in automats and over double-entry ledgers, with only one interlude pounding a typewriter in an army camp. “In fact, I think I could be perfectly happy here in Barkut but for one thing.”

They said anxiously: “Lord, what is it that keeps you from happiness?”

Tony sighed deeply. He said in deepest gloom: “Dammit, there’s no privacy!”