Gateway to Elsewhere

a boat of steel with fire in its innards. This was a repetition of Tony’s description of the somewhat decrepit steamer from Suez to Suakim. And these things, Ghail said firmly, she had believed to be lies from a more than usually stupid djinn. But since Tony was no djinn but a human, who was inexplicably sought after by the local djinn king, she believed them absolutely.

The six councilors smoked and coughed and made other elderly noises. Tony opened his mouth to speak, and again the slave girl forestalled him.

In his home land, said Ghail truculently, Tony was of a rank second to none. This was her interpretation of his attempt to explain that nobody in America was of higher rank than even he was, as a citizen. He was a prince, Ghail elaborated, journeying in quest of adventure and to see the peoples of the earth—an activity considered highly appropriate in princes. His people had so subdued the djinn that they, though only humans, rode in the air with ease and safety, and spake to each other privately though a thousand miles apart, and traveled in personal vehicles with the power of forty and fifty and a hundred horses, and were mightier in war than any other people under the sun.

These statements also Tony had made in the course of his language lessons. He had thought Ghail impressed, then, and she was not an easy person to awe; and now she repeated them parrot-like, with a belligerent air, as if daring anybody to question them. In short, she said, Tony was a very dangerous person. On the side of Barkut he would be dangerous to the djinn. On the side of the djinn—and the king of the djinn had already tried to allure him by the charms of a djinnee—he would be dangerous to Barkut. Therefore he should either be secured as an ally of Barkut, or else executed immediately before he could set out to help the djinn.

Tony said feebly, “But—”

“Did you not tell me that you were in the greatest of all wars?” Ghail demanded. “In which millions of humans were killed? Did you not say that your nation ended the war by destroying cities instantly, in flame hotter than the hottest fire?”

Tony had unquestionably mentioned atomic bombs. He had also said that he was in the war. He had not mentioned that he spent it at a typewriter—because, of course, Ghail would not know what a typewriter was.

“So you,” said the slave girl firmly, “will swear by the beard of the Prophet to lead the armies of Barkut to victory over the djinn—or else—”

* * *

Ultimately he swore, gloomily and at length, on a book with a binding of marvelously ornamented richness. It was a Koran, and he had never read it and did not believe its contents. More, he did not know what sort of beard the Prophet had affected, so it could not be said that there was a meeting of minds, and possibly the contract was not really valid. But he felt an obligation, nevertheless.

Late that night, unable to sleep, it recurred. The ancient men of the Council of Regents of Barkut had given him their confidence out of the direness of their need. The slave girl Ghail counted on him, because there was no one else to turn to. The danger to Barkut from the djinn, he gathered, was extreme. The plant lasf was a partial protection against the djinn, but bullets merely stung them, and lasf grew constantly more difficult to come by, and the djinn grew bolder and bolder as the humans in Barkut ran into the technological difficulties inherent in a shortage of lasf. Four years ago, the king of the local djinn had, in person, kidnapped the authentic queen of Barkut and now held her prisoner. Hence the empty throne and the Council of Regents. For some reason not clear to Tony, the ruler of Barkut could not actually be injured by a djinn, though her subjects were not so fortunate. Therefore the Queen’s only sufferings were imprisonment and the ardent courtship of the djinn king. Still…

Lying wakeful in bed in the royal suite of the palace, Tony surveyed this statement of the situation with distrust. It sounded naive and improbable, like something out of the Arabian Nights. It was. Like all the events stemming from his purchase of a ten-dirhim piece in an antique shop on West 45th Street, New York, it was so preposterous that he pinched himself for assurance that his present surroundings were real.

They were. The pinch hurt like the devil. He rubbed it, scowling. Then he heard a thud on the windowsill of his bedroom. He got out of bed, suspicious. He went to the window. Nothing. It looked out upon a small garden, there to please the occupants of this suite. There were grass and shrubbery and small trees and a fountain playing in the starlight. It smelled inviting. Beyond lay the palace, and beyond that the city, and beyond that the oasis and the desert. And somewhere—somewhere unguessable—lay the dominions and the stronghold of the djinn beyond the desert.

His conscience wrung its hands. In the fix he was in, to be thinking about djinns and captive queens and such lunatic items! How about those fine plans for an import-export business between Barkut and New York? What had he learned about the commercial products of Barkut? What was the possible market for American goods? If he went, with no more than he now knew, to an established firm in New York to get them to take up the matter, what information could he give them that would justify them in offering him an executive position? Why, if he’d only confined his attention to proper subjects like exports and imports instead of trying to rouse the romantic interest of a long-legged slave girl, nobody would ever have thought of asking him to lead an army.

Rubbing his leg where it hurt, he gazed out into the garden and rudely thrust his conscience aside. That garden looked romantic in the starlight. He wouldn’t mind being out there right now with Ghail…

Something stirred on the windowsill almost beside his hand. He started, and in starting dislodged one of the soft silken cushions that were everywhere about this place. It fell to the floor. He saw a tiny dark shape on the sill, like a frog. He groped for a shoe to swat it with, and it jumped smartly into the room. It was a frog. He could tell by the way it jumped… but it landed on the cushion with a whacking, smacking “thud” such as no frog should make. It sounded like a couple of hundred pounds of steel mashing a pillow flat and banging against the floor beneath. The pillow, in fact, burst under the impact. Stray particles of stuffing flew here and there. The frog disappeared within. From the interior of the burst cushion came explosive swearing in a deep bass voice.

Then the split silken covering inflated and burst anew, and a swirling luminous mist congealed into a solid shape, and Tony found himself staring at an essentially human form. It had the most muscle-bound arms and shoulders he had ever seen, however, and a chest like a wine cask, and a wrestler’s knotty legs. Its head and face were of normal size; but it took no effort whatever to realize that the features were those of a djinn. The slanting, feral eyes, the white tusks projecting slightly from between the lips, the pointed ears—it was a djinn, all right, and a djinn in a terrible temper.

“Mortal!” it roared. “You are that strange prince who came across the desert!”

Tony swallowed.

The creature revealed additional inches of tusk.

“You are that creature, that mere human, who ensnared the love of Nasim, the jewel among djinnees!” It pounded its chest, which resounded like a tympany. “Know, mortal, that I am Es-Souk, her betrothed! I have come to tear you limb from limb!”

Tony’s conscience said acidly that it had told him so. He was not aware of any other mental process. He simply stared, open-mouthed. And the djinn leaped on him with incredible agility.

* * *

Sinewy, irresistible powerful hands seized his throat. They tightened, and then relaxed as the djinn said gloatingly:

“You shall die slowly!”

Then the hands tightened again, bit by bit.

Tony had not lately taken any systematic exercise greater than that of punching buttons in an automat restaurant. It was hardly adequate preparation for a knock-down, drag-out with a djinn.