Murray Leinster - Gateway to Elsewhere

The Queen said brightly: “I fear not, Lord Toni.”

“Ragweed; sneezing; hay fever,” explained Tony. “The djinns are subject to hay fever. It’s an allergy. A racial trait. Ragweed, which doesn’t bother most humans, is deadly poison to them. Like DDT to bugs. It’s so strong a poison that merely its odor sets them crazy. You people have been wasting the stuff. You’ve swabbed guns and bullets with it. It dried, and by the time you got to where you were going to fight the djinn, most of it was gone. They ran away from the dried, dusty remains that by pure accident stuck to your weapons. You see? That night in my bedroom I had the stuff on my breath. When I coughed, Es-Souk got a whiff of it. And I figured that if so little of it would chase him, the real stuff tossed down his throat would really go to town. And it did!”

He looked hopefully at them. But he knew no Arabic word for “allergy” or “hay fever” or “pollen,” or for “radioactive” or “fissionable” or “atomic.” Even the English word “ragweed” in an Arabic context did not seem to mean lasf to the Queen or Ghail. To the two of them, he seemed to be speaking quite sincerely about matters so erudite as to be beyond their understanding. And at that it would have taken him a week to clarify the word “allergy.” They would never have understood DDT. The Queen dismissed the explanation.

“Doubtless it is clear to you, Lord Toni,” she observed, “but we poor women find it too involved. You speak of the magics and arts of your own nation. What shall you do now?”

Tony blinked. Then he remembered his anger.

“I’m going to see the king,” he said indignantly. “He arranged that business of Es-Souk’s escape, dammit! He expected to get me killed, with himself in the clear! I’m going to give him the devil! And if he acts up,” he added truculently, “I’ll blow on my cigarette lighter! That will hardly set him off, but it’ll scare him green!”

The Queen looked hard at Tony. Then she exchanged an astonished glance with Ghail.

“Have you looked out the door?” she asked softly.

Tony looked, and grew uncomfortable. “Do they have autograph hunters here, too?”

Ghail said firmly, “I do not know whether you are as stupid as you pretend, but certainly you had better go out and speak to those djinns! They are impressed enough now!”

“Impressed?”

Ghail said exasperatedly, “Get up! Go out! Let them bow down to you! Then, if you wish, you can go to see the king!” But as he stood up with a bewildered expression, she said softly, “You are very wonderful!”

“What?” He looked incredulous, and then turned swiftly to the Queen. “Oh, yes! Ghail tells me, Majesty, that she is your personal slave and can’t be sold or given without your consent. I’d—er—like to have a business conversation with you sooner or later.”

Ghail stamped her foot. “Get—out!”

Tony looked incredulous again. He went reluctantly out of the door.

A bull elephant charged toward him from fifty feet away. Tony took one look and reached for his cigarette case. Then the elephant changed smoothly into some thousands of billiard balls in red, green, blue, black and pink, which swept onward in a clacking tide of bewildering intricate motions upon and against each other. The balls shrank as they rolled. Then, suddenly, they jerked to a halt and into the rotund, turbaned, swaggering form of Abdul in one instant.

“Majesty!” said Abdul, beaming. “Your people are gladdened by the sight of you! Will you deign to accept their allegiance now, or will you make a more formal ceremony?”

Tony said:

“Don’t talk nonsense! Look here! I was invited to this place to see the king! He tried to get me killed! I’m not pleased with him! If I’ve got to have an interview with him, I want to get it over with! Then I’ll go back to Barkut so the truce will be ended, and come back and start tearing things up. I’ve a sort of obligation—”

“Majesty!” protested Abdul. “You would endanger your so-precious life by entering his presence? What would become of me if by treachery—”

Tony scowled. “I’d like to see him try something!” he said sourly. “How about showing me the way?”

He wasn’t bluffing. The event of an hour or so ago, plus innumerable other oddities, had created in him a sort of fanatic disbelief in common sense. It suddenly occurred to him that his conscience hadn’t said one word to him since the fight with Es-Souk. It did not seem possible that his maiden aunt’s acid creation had ceased to exist—but still—

He winced.

His conscience was snarling bitingly that it was still on deck; but that his activities were so illimitably remote from sanity that they had no moral aspect at all. But, said his conscience—and it seemed to raise its voice—when it came to trying to make a business deal for the ownership of a poor slave girl whose morals were demonstrably so much superior to his own—

Tony straightened up. He felt better with his conscience nagging at him. More natural.

He marched toward the palace. Abdul scuttled around before him and swaggered, waving his arms imperiously for the clearing of a way. There was a swarming of djinns to be close to the point of his passage. It was a singular experience for Tony to walk through the mob in a lane cleared for him as if by magic, and to feel upon himself the respectful, avid starings of so many eyes. There were animals’ faces and human faces and faces that were far from either. There were birds and reptiles and quaint assemblages of unrelated parts into forms which—like Abdul’s chimaera—had probably been dreamed up by their wearers of the moment. There were also three djinnees, side by side, still in the same female human forms they had worn the night before. They were an odd illustration of the female fondness of fashion, because the night before their forms had included the gauzy draperies of Arab dancing girls. Now that was changed. Nasim’s part in the victory over Es-Souk had been seen and noted. The three djinnees paid her tribute as a leader of fashion. Beaming at Tony as he passed, they displayed the new style Nasim had set among the lady djinn: They were, exclusively, pink skin.

Tony and Abdul walked through the palace. There were places where there was no longer a roof. The roof-members were out in the prison-meadow where they had waited for Tony to speak to them. There were places where there were no walls. There was one spot where even all flooring had vanished, and Tony saw with some astonishment that beneath the very fabric of the royal palace of the djinn, there was sparse grass and sandy soil, as if this particular part of the palace had not even been in existence for very many days.

Abdul made a dignified flourish before the chasm. He leaped agilely outward into emptiness in what might have been a graceful swan dive—and unfolded himself as a portable suspension bridge that neatly spanned the gap. Tony walked across. He did not quite turn in time to see the process by which Abdul returned to his more normal form.

“Majesty,” said Abdul blandly, “have you made your plans as yet?”

“Eh? Plans? Hm—not yet,” said Tony.

“I am the first of your servants and subjects, Majesty,” Abdul told him piously. “I beg you to trust in me for a time—at least until you find a better!”

Tony said impatiently:

“All right. But why do you call me Maj—”

He stopped. As he spoke, he had passed through a doorway. It was but one of dozens he had allowed Abdul to lead him through. But this was different. He had come unannounced and unwittingly into the audience hall of the King of the Djinns. It was a colossal hall, some sixty feet high and perhaps six hundred feet long. Its walls blazed with all the phony grandeur the djinn assigned to wall-duty could imagine. It was very magnificent indeed.