Gateway to Elsewhere

by Murray Leinster

  “As long as you wear that form strictly in private,” said Tony. “For the admiration of nobody but Nasim, and as long as you keep Nasim from bothering me, it’s all right. Why don’t you get married tonight?”

  “To hear is to obey, Majesty!”

  “You can use the palace I won’t be sleeping in, for a honeymoon cottage,” said Tony enthusiastically. “If you like, I’ll bring the Queen and her court out for the wedding!”

  “Your Majesty is too good!” protested Abdul ecstatically.

  “Then it’s settled—” Tony paused apprehensively. “You’ll see that Nasim wears clothes while she’s in human form?”

  “Yes, Majesty,” Abdul beamed. “May I ask about your Majesty’s plans for this evening?”

  “There’s a banquet,” said Tony, frowning, “and your wedding. And—the negotiations. If the negotiations are successful, I shall be engaged to be married and my plans are none of your business.”

  “It is unthinkable,” Abdul assured him, “that your Majesty’s desires should be opposed by any creature under the sky! But in such an impossible event—”

  “Music—” said Tony glumly. “And in that case my plans are even less of your business! But remember, Barkut is off-limits for djinns!”

  Abdul bowed to the ground.

  * * *

  Tony went back into the city. It was very pleasant to have all the people smile at him joyously. It was not too uncomfortable to have the men bow to him, at once respectfully and with the joy of human beings who feel a share in the feat of another human who has become King of the Djinns. It wasn’t bad having large, lustrous eyes look warmly at him over traditional Moslem women’s veils. And there was a melancholy satisfaction in going back to his old quarters in the palace—though he had occupied them only one night—to find Esir and Esim waiting for him in the most incredible excitement. They kissed him soundly.

  “Indeed, lord—Your Majesty,” said Esir, laughing, “you cannot protest, because by custom any slave may kiss her master when he performs a feat so that she gives thanks to Allah that she belongs to him and no other! King of the Djinns, no less! Tell me, are the djinnees beautiful?”

  “Do you think you will prefer them to us?” asked Esim anxiously. “Indeed, lord—Your Majesty, we heard the news but an hour since, and we are fearful that you will not wish to keep us!”

  Tony looked at them with a gloomy satisfaction.

  “Things could be worse,” he said. “For a little while I cannot tell you my plans, but whatever they turn out to be, I will bear you in mind. Oh, definitely I will bear you in mind! Nil desperandum will be my motto.”

  A tentative knock came at the door. They untangled themselves reluctantly from his embrace. It was a male slave.

  “Majesty, the Queen of Barkut begs your attendance in the throne room.”

  “Coming up,” said Tony with a sigh. To the two girls he said in comforting dejection, “I’m afraid I’ll be right back.”

  He followed the slave to the great throne room he had seen once before, with the decrepit Council of Regency in session. The black marble floor was the same, and the brass zodiacal signs sunk into it. It occurred to Tony that life would be wearing in a house of which all interior and exterior features were subject to change without notice. There would be other disadvantages, too.

  The great throne was occupied, now. The Queen sat on it. Soldiers in baggy trousers, wearing slippers and carrying flintlock guns, regarded Tony with the affection of men who have expected to fight a losing battle against the djinns, and now find that they can stay comfortably at home with their families. The courtiers of Barkut regarded him with no less approval. The Queen sat composed and non-committal on her throne.

  “Majesty,” said the Queen sedately, as Tony came to a stop before her, “we wish to offer you the thanks of the humans of Barkut for our liberation, and for the liberation of the nation from the fear of the djinns. We wish to express our admiration and our affection. We wish to ask if there is anything which it is in our power to do, which will add to your satisfaction or happiness.”

  Tony looked uneasily around. He did not see Ghail.

  “I told you today, in the letter,” he said awkwardly, “that if by any means I could secure the freedom of the slave girl Ghail, that I would wish to do that. If you will make her no longer a slave—”

  The Queen nodded toward a side door. It opened. Two male slaves escorted Ghail to the dais before the throne. She was very pale. The Queen addressed her gently:

  “His Majesty the King of the Djinns has asked your freedom as the price of his aid to us. He desires also to marry you.”

  Ghail’s lips moved a little, but she did not look at Tony.

  “Majesty,” said the Queen, to him, “we can refuse you nothing. I make the slave girl Ghail free on one condition. If she does not marry you, she becomes again a slave. You would not impose that condition, but we can do no less!”

  “But dammit—” began Tony indignantly.

  “I—I can have no choice,” said Ghail almost inaudibly. “I—I will marry him.”

  But she looked bitterly resigned. Tony bent over to her. She turned her face away. He whispered urgently:

  “Damn it! Go through with it! I’ll divorce you before we leave this hall. As I understand it, all that’s necessary is for me to say ‘I divorce you’ three times and the trick’s done!”

  She jerked her head about to look at him, her eyes wide. Then she flushed.

  “Your hands?” said the Queen briskly. “The cadi is here. He will marry you now. At once. Immediately.”

  A venerable figure pushed his way forward. The ceremony began. Ghail was very quiet, but her voice was firm. The formula was strange to Tony, and he did not know when it was finished.

  But suddenly it was—and the Queen was laughing delightedly!

  “Now, then! Majesty, the people of Barkut have been told only since my return that I am not their real queen! When I was kidnapped by the King of the Djinns he believed me the queen, and Ghail yonder was but a child. I am actually Ghail’s aunt, and it seemed best to pose as the ruler of Barkut lest I be strangled and Ghail herself kidnapped and subjected to the djinn king’s demands. A child might have been frightened into obedience. I—was otherwise.

  “And so, while I posed as a captive Queen, Ghail remained among her people in disguise, learning the duties of queenship and also coming to know her people as few rulers do. The Council of Regency took its commands from her. And now that the King of the Djinns is also our friend and moreover a human being, it is right and fitting and proper that she return to her throne. And the kingdom of the djinns and the human kingdom of Barkut is now one nation, and there is now no reason for battle or anything but peace and joy.”

  Cannon began to boom outside. There was uproar. The audience hall itself filled with noise. And as Tony stood utterly stupefied, the erstwhile Queen stood up and beckoned to Ghail. And Ghail held Tony’s hand fast and pulled him after her as she mounted to her throne. She pulled him firmly down beside her on it. It was a close fit, though not quite as close as the fit in the camel cabin, and it felt very pleasant.

  The noise still continued. Presently Tony, still dazed, whispered into Ghail’s ear:

  “But—you didn’t have to do it this way! If you were willing to marry me, why didn’t you just tell me so?”

  Ghail smiled composedly down at the cheering people in the throne room. She said fiercely under her breath:

  “We’d have been engaged, and it might have been weeks before we got married! And do you think I’d trust you another night in any djinn palace with all those hussies trying to gain your favors since you’re their king? Or do you think I’d trust you with Esir and Esim either?”

  Tony said feebly:

  “Oh-h-h…” and then he said, “I—I’ll have to send them word I won’t be home tonight.”

  Then he cheered up as the celebration began.

  Chapter 20

  It was late. Th
e royal bridal party had graciously attended the djinn wedding of Nasim and Abdul in the palace outside the city walls. They had returned. Cannon still boomed. There were bonfires in the streets, and dancing, and joy was being expressed in all possible fashions, including the indecorous.

  But in the royal palace of Barkut the last chamberlain bowed out, the last slave-in-waiting departed, and Tony closed the door firmly. He said:

  “Er—Ghail, did I remember to send word to Esir and Esim that I wouldn’t be home tonight?”

  “Whether you did or not,” Ghail told him, “I did!”

  He took out his cigarette case. He snapped it open. He began to prowl about the bridal chamber, blowing on the wick. A faint but perceptible aroma of lasf became noticeable. Ghail watched him, uncomprehending and embarrassed.

  “Why do you do that, Tony?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s a sort of custom in my country,” said Tony awkwardly. “We don’t use lasf, of course. We use something else. It keeps away flies and mosquitoes. But I’m using this to keep away djinns.”

  * * *

  It was again night. Tony Gregg got out of a taxicab on lower East Broadway, in the Syrian quarter of New York, and paid off the driver. He helped a very pretty girl to the sidewalk and led her into a shishkebab restaurant.

  The slick-haired proprietor grinned at him as he came to take his order.

  “I remember you!” he said. “Mr. Emurian wanted to buy that gold piece you had! He offered you two thousan’ bucks. Ain’t that right?”

  “That’s right,” said Tony. “Have you seen him lately?”

  “Oh, sure,” said the proprietor. “He comes in most every night… hey! Here he comes now!”

  The girl with Tony had listened, frowning in attention to the difficult English words. She looked up sharply as the bald-headed man with the impeccably tailored clothes entered. He spoke pleasantly to the proprietor, glanced at Tony, and then came quickly to his table.

  “Good evening!” he said warmly, twinkling through his eyeglasses. “I have hoped to find you again! I cabled my friend in Ispahan, and he is willing to pay you three thousand dollars for your coin!”

  Tony reached in his pocket. He put down two gold pieces.

  “Here are two of them,” he said. “Send them to your friend as gifts. I had rather hoped to see you again, too.” He slipped into the Arabic he had learned from Ghail. “This is my wife.” To Ghail he explained, “This is Mr. Emurian. You have heard me speak of him.”

  “Oh, yes!” said Ghail. She smiled sweetly. “Tony is so grateful to you. And I also.”

  “Yes,” said Tony. “I went to Barkut, you see. Met my wife there. In a sense, all due to you. And she wanted to see my world, so we came back here. I’ve a rather interesting business proposition for you. I’d like to have your friend make some contact with us in Barkut and establish a branch of his business there. It would be useful to have a regular commercial contact with this world and with the United States.”

  The bald-headed Mr. Emurian sat down slowly, his face a study.

  “You say that you went to Barkut?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Tony briskly. “Hm… maybe I’d better sketch it out.”

  He gave the spectacled man a brief, hasty, and necessarily improbable account of what had happened to him since their last meeting in this same restaurant.

  “The djinns,” he concluded, “have some bad qualities, but their main trouble was that they could be anything they wanted, so they never learned how to make anything. I came back to get designs and pictures of all sorts of stuff. Not only statues and fashions and architecture—though I want those—but industrial products, and”—he paused—“the machines that make them. After all, a djinn can turn himself into a drill press as well as a beetle or a whirlwind, once he knows what a drill press is like. As a drill press he can turn out all sorts of stuff—including another drill press. And that manner of working would be congenial to them, too. They’ll like being pieces of machinery and turning out things the humans can’t make and are delighted to buy from them. Barkut ought to become a rather thriving industrial community before long.”

  Mr. Emurian simply stared, batting his eyes slowly from time to time.

  “I’d like to have your friend set up a branch of his business in Barkut,” said Tony earnestly. “And—well—I’d like a great deal to get an agent here in the United States, forwarding samples of new products, technical magazines, and above all pictures of everything under the sun. You could get them to Ispahan to be brought into Barkut by whatever route your friend discovers—if you’d take the agency. Could I interest you?”

  Mr. Emurian said: “Yes. Indeed you interest me. Oh, indeed yes!”

  “You work out the details,” said Tony. “I’m staying at the Waldorf with my wife. I brought back quite a sum in gold, and can arrange for you to draw on it. You make your plans and get your friend to arrange to get in touch with me when he finds a way to Barkut. I’ll have him watched for there, and he can locate me easily enough!”

  “Indeed he can!” said Ghail proudly. “My husband is His Most Illustrious Majesty, the Great in Single Combat, the Destroyer of Evil, the Protector of the Poor, the Nobly Forgiving and Compassionate, the King of Djinns and Men, Tony Gregg.”

  “Yes,” said Tony abstractedly, “he can find me.”

  Mr. Emurian turned over the two golden coins Tony had put on the table. And suddenly his fingers trembled a little. On one side was an inscription in conventionalized Arabic script. It said that the coin was a ten-dirhim piece of Barkut. The other side showed a rather elaborate throne. But it was not empty. It was occupied by two people. One—the girl—was in some native dress of considerable grandeur, and Mr. Emurian looked twice at her. The dark-eyed, proudly smiling girl beside Tony in the shishkebab restaurant had plainly been the model for that figure. But he looked three times, and four, and five, at the male figure on the coin. That half of the design was a young man in a soft hat and a belted-in-the-back topcoat, with undoubtedly highly polished brown shoes. It was, in fact, Tony Gregg.

  “I—will be most happy to be your American agent,” said Mr. Emurian. “Er—Your Majesty!”

  * * *

  It was later. Much later. Tony was in his pajamas in their hotel suite.

  “It’s funny,” said Tony thoughtfully, as Ghail looked out a window at the lighted ways and skyscrapers of New York. “It’s funny that my conscience doesn’t seem to bother me any more. You remember I told you about it?”

  He was sipping a final highball. Ghail stared almost affrightedly at the incredible panorama before her—a city ten miles long, with millions of bright lights, with mechanisms moving swiftly along its streets, with moving electric signs everywhere and even floating overhead to the sound of motors.

  “I know, Tony,” said Ghail, not turning around.

  “Maybe it’s dead,” said Tony humorously. “It used to bother me a lot.”

  Then his conscience spoke. Startlingly. It said smugly that it was very well satisfied with Tony, and that he could be sure that his contentment was the result of its approval. He was very normally married, he was so far reasonably faithful to his wife—though he had turned around twice, today, to look at nylon-stockinged legs—and he had become a thriving young executive.

  Tony denied it indignantly. But he was! said his conscience complacently. He was the executive head of the joint kingdom of djinns and men of Barkut, and he was arranging for the gradual introduction of an American standard of civilization. Eventually there would be electric refrigerators, nylon stockings, fertilizer, radio, and bubble gum in Barkut. It would be the result of Tony’s executive action. And he was young. So he was a young executive. So his conscience was pleased with him, and he should feel the greatest happiness possible to man, because of his conscience’s approval. “Not dead,” said Tony grimly, “but merely sleeping.”

  Ghail turned from the window.

  “Tony,” she said, just a little bit unhappy, “I’m homesic
k! This world of yours is so big! So tremendous! There are so many people! I will stay here if you wish it—”

  “I think,” said Tony, “we can start back day after tomorrow. All right?”

  She smiled at him, warmly. He put down his glass and stood up. He put his arms around her.

  “But there’s one thing,” he observed comfortably, “that you can’t beat this world for! Ten million people all around you may be daunting, but there’s one thing we’ve got here that we can never be sure of in Barkut! Here, my dear, we’ve got privacy!”

  He reached up and turned off the light.

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