The Anubis Gates

“God, pour me some. Neat.”

Benner handed him a glass of it and mixed a Kahlua and milk for himself. He sipped it and grinned at Doyle. “I think a bit of liquor is as essential as the lead sheathing; you wouldn’t catch me standing in the path of all that radiation without some hooch under my belt.”

Doyle had been about to demand a phone to call the police with, but this brought him up short. “What?”

“The tachyon conversion process. Didn’t he explain how the jump will work?”

Doyle felt hollow. “No.”

“Do you know anything about Quantum Theory? Or subatomic physics?”

Without conscious volition Doyle’s hand lifted the glass and poured some scotch into his mouth. “No.”

“Well, I don’t know nearly enough about it myself. But basically what’s going to happen is we’ll all be lined up in the path of a blast of insanely high frequency radiation, way up above gamma ray frequencies—photons haven’t got any mass, you know, so you can send one phalanx of ‘em out right after another without them stepping on each other’s heels—and when it hits us, the odd properties of the gap field will prevent whatever would ordinarily occur. I’m not sure what would ordinarily happen, though it’d certainly trash us.” He sipped his drink cheerfully. “Anyway, since we’ll be in the gap, what will happen—the only way nature can reconcile the inequities involved—is that we’ll become, in effect, honorary tachyons.”

“Christ,” exclaimed Doyle hoarsely, “we’ll become ghosts. We’ll see Coleridge, all right—we’ll see him in Heaven.” A car horn blared past on the street, sounding more distant than Doyle knew it must be, and he wondered where some innocent soul was driving to, and what trivial difficulty had made him honk his horn. “Benner, listen to me—we’ve got to get out of here and get to the police. My God, man—”

“It really is perfectly safe,” Benner interrupted, still smiling.

“How can you possibly know that? The man is probably a certifiable lunatic, and—”

“Take it easy, Brendan, and listen. Do I look all right? Is the fence still standing? Then stop worrying, because I made a solo jump to a brief gap in 1805 two hours ago.”

Doyle stared at him suspiciously. “You did?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die. They dressed me up like—oh, picture a Ku Klux Klansman who favors metallic robes and doesn’t need eyeholes—and then had me stand on a platform by the fence while they lined up their infernal machinery on the other side of the fence. And then whoosh!—one minute I was here and today, the next I was in a tent in a field near Islington in 1805.”

“In a tent?”

Benner’s smile took on a puzzled quirk. “Yeah, it was weird, I landed in some kind of gypsy camp. The first thing I saw when I ripped off the hood was the inside of this tent, and it was all fumy with incense and full of Egyptian-looking stuff, and there was a cadaverous old bald-headed guy staring at me in extreme surprise. I got scared and ran outside, which wasn’t easy in that robe, and it was English countryside I saw, and no highways or telephone poles, so I guess it really was 1805. There were a lot of horses and tents and gypsy types around, and all the gypsies were staring at me, but the gap came to its end just then—thank God I hadn’t run outside the field— and the mobile hook snatched me back to here and now.” He chuckled. “I wonder what the gypsies thought when I just disappeared, and the robe fell empty without me in it.”

Doyle stared at him for several long seconds. Though always amiable, Benner had never been trustworthy— but this wasn’t how he lied. The man wasn’t a good actor, and this story, especially the note of puzzlement about the old man in the tent, had been told with effortless conviction. He realized dizzily that he believed it.

“My God,” he said in an envious near-whisper, “what did the air smell like? What did the ground feel like?”

Benner shrugged. “Fresh air and grassy ground. And the horses looked like horses. The gypsies were all fairly short, but maybe gypsies always are.” He clapped Doyle on the back. “So stop worrying. The charcoal enemas will keep the guests healthy, and I’m not going to let any of them get away. You still want to call the cops?”

“No.” No indeed, Doyle thought fervently. I want to see Coleridge. “Excuse me,” he said, “I’ve got to get busy on this speech.”

At twenty after six Doyle decided he had his new speech memorized. He stood up in the little office Darrow had let him use, sighed, and opened the door to the main room.

A number of well-dressed people were milling around at the far end of the room, separated from him by a dozen or so empty chairs and a big central table. The hundreds of candles in the chandeliers were lit, and the soft, gracious illumination gleamed off the polished panelling and the rows of glasses on the table; faintly on the warm air he caught a smell of bell peppers and grilling steak.

“Benner,” he called softly, seeing the tall young man lean tiredly against a wall near the table and, in perfect harmony with the way he was dressed, flip open a snuffbox and bring a pinch of brown powder up to his nose.

Benner looked up. “Damn it, Brendan—hatchoo!—damn it, staff’s supposed to be all dressed by now. Never mind, the guests are in the dressing rooms, you can change in a few minutes.” Benner put away his snuffbox and frowned impatiently at Doyle’s clothes as he walked over. “You’ve got your mobile hook on, at least?”

“Sure.” Doyle pulled back his shirt sleeve to show him the leather band, drawn tight and secured with a little lock, around his shaven forearm. “Darrow himself put it on an hour ago. Come listen to my speech, will you? You know enough about—”

“I don’t have time, Brendan, but I’m sure it’s fine. These damn people, each one of them thinks he’s the maharajah of the world.”

A man hurried up to them, dressed, like Benner, in the early nineteenth century style. “It’s Treff again, chief,” he said quietly. “We finally did get him to strip, but he’s got an Ace bandage on his leg and he won’t take it off, and it’s obvious he’s got something under it.”

“Hell, I knew one of them would pull this. Rich people! Come along, Doyle, you’ve got to head in this direction anyway.”

As they strode across the room the imposing figure of Darrow entered through the main door and their paths converged just as a stout, hairy man wearing nothing but an elastic bandage around his thigh stormed out of one of the dressing rooms.

“Mr. Treff,” said Darrow, raising his thick white eyebrows, and his deep voice undercut and silenced all the others, “you have evidently misunderstood the dress requirements.”

At this several people laughed, and Treff’s face went from red to dark red. “Darrow, this bandage stays on, understand? It’s my doctor’s orders, and I’m paying you a goddamn million dollars, and no fugitive from a nut hatch is going to—”

Only because he happened to smile nervously just then at Benner did Doyle see him whip a thin knife out of his sleeve; but everyone saw him when he kicked forward in a graceful full-extension fencer’s lunge and slipped the flat of the blade under the disputed bandage, paused for a theatrical moment, and then flicked it out sideways, cleanly slicing the layers of cloth through from top to bottom.

A good fistful of heavy, gleaming metallic objects thudded onto the carpet. In a quick glance Doyle recognized among them a Colibri Beam Sensor lighter, a Seiko quartz watch, a tiny notebook, a .25 caliber automatic pistol and at least three one-ounce plates of solid gold.

“Planning on buying the natives with glass beads, were you?” Darrow said, with a nod of thanks to Benner, who had straightened back up to his position beside Doyle and slipped the knife away. “As you know, this violates the terms of our agreement—you’ll be getting a fifty percent refund, and right now the guards will escort you to a trailer outside the lot, where you’ll be held in luxurious captivity until dawn. And in a spirit of friendly concern,” he added, with the coldest smile Doyle had ever seen, “I do strongly advise you to leave here quietly.”

“Well, one good result of all that,” said Benner lightly as Treff was led, naked, out the door, “is that a dressing room is now free. In you go, Brendan.”

Doyle stepped forward and, muttering “Excuse me” to several people, went into the newly vacated dressing room. There was a guard on a stool inside, and he looked relieved that this wasn’t Treff coming back in.

“Doyle, aren’t you?” the man said, standing up.

“Yes.”

“Right, then, off with your clothes.”

Sucking in his belly a little, Doyle obediently shed his clothes and hung his suit carefully on a hanger the guard handed him. There was a door in the back of the dressing room, and the guard bustled away through it,