Murray Leinster - Gateway to Elsewhere

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.”

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.