Beyond the Gate of Worlds

by Robert Silverberg

  She said, “Poor Michael. I’ve upset you terribly, haven’t I?”

  “Upset me? How have you possibly upset me?”

  “You know.”

  “No. No, really.”

  His legs were leaden. The sun was hammering the top of his brain through the parasol, through his wide-brimmed topee, through his skull itself. He could not imagine how he would find the strength to walk all the way back to town with her.

  “I’ve been very mischievous,” she said.

  “Have you?”

  He wished he were a million miles away.

  “By visiting the prince in his palace that night.”

  “Please, Selima.”

  “I saw you, you know. Early in the morning, when I was leaving. You ducked out of sight, but not quite fast enough. ’ ’

  “Selima—”

  “I couldn’t help myself. Going there, I mean. I wanted to see what his palace looked like. I wanted to get to know him a little better. He’s very nice, you know. No, nice isn’t quite the word. He’s shrewd, and part of being shrewd is knowing how to seem nice. I don’t really think he’s nice at all. He’s quite sophisticated—quite subtle.”

  She was flaying him, inch by inch. Another word out of her and he’d drop the parasol and run.

  “The thing is, Michael, he enjoys pretending to be some sort of a primitive, a barbarian, a jungle prince. But it’s only a pretense. And why shouldn’t it be? These are ancient kingdoms here in Africa. This isn’t any jungle land with tigers sleeping behind every palm tree. They’ve got laws and culture, they Ve got courts, they have a university. And they’ve had centuries to develop a real aristocracy. They’re just as complicated and cunning as we are. Maybe more so. I was glad to get to know the man behind the facade, a little. He was fascinating, in his way, but—” She smiled brightly. “But I have to tell you, Michael: he’s not my type at all.”

  That startled him, and awakened sudden new hope.

  Perhaps he never actually touched her, Michael told himself. Perhaps they had simply talked all night. Played little sly verbal games of one-upmanship, teasing each other, vying with each other to be sly and cruel and playful. Showing each other how complicated and cunning they could really be. Demonstrating the virtues of hundreds of years of aristocratic inbreeding. Perhaps they were too well-bred to think of doing anything so commonplace as—as—

  “What is your type, then?” he asked, willy-nilly.

  “I prefer men who are a little shy. Men who can sometimes be foolish, even.” There was unanticipated softness in her voice, conveying a sincerity that Michael prayed was real. “I hate the kind who are always calculating, calculating, calculating. There’s something very appealing to me about English men, I have to tell you, precisely because they don *t seem so dark and devious inside—not that I’ve met very many of them before this trip, you understand, but—oh, Michael, Michael, you’re terribly angry with me, I know, but you shouldn’t be! What happened between me and the prince was nothing. Nothing! And now that he’ll be preoccupied with the funeral, perhaps there’ll be a chance for you and me to get to know each other a little better—to slip off, for a day, let’s say, while all the others are busy with the pomp and circumstance.

  She gave him a melting look. He thought for one astounded moment that she actually might mean what she was telling him.

  “They’re going to assassinate him,” he suddenly heard his own voice saying, “right at the funeral.” “What?”

  “It’s all set up.” The words came rolling from him spontaneously, unstoppably, like the flow of a river.

  “His stepmother, the old king’s young wife—she’s going to slip him a cup of poisoned wine, or something, during one of the funeral rituals. What she wants is to make her stupid brother king in the prince’s place, and rule the country as the power behind the throne.

  Selima made a little gasping sound and stepped away from him, out from under the shelter of the parasol. She stood staring at him as though he had been transformed in the last moment or two into a hippopotamus, or a rock, or a tree.

  It took her a little while to find her voice.

  “Are you serious? How do you know?”

  “Sir Anthony told me.”

  “Sir Anthony?”

  “He’s behind it. He and the Russian and Prince Itz-coati. Once the prince is out of the way, they’re going to invite the King of Mali to step in and take over.”

  Her gaze grew very hard. Her silence was inscrutable, painfully so.

  Then, totally regaining her composure with what must have been an extraordinary act of inner discipline, she said, “I think this is all very unlikely.”

  She might have been responding to a statement that snow would soon begin falling in the streets of Timbuctoo .

  “You think so?”

  “Why should Sir Anthony support this assassination? England has nothing to gain from destabilizing West Africa. England is a minor power still struggling to establish its plausibility in the world as an independent state. Why should it risk angering a powerful African empire like Songhay by meddling in its internal affairs? ’ ’

  Michael let the slight to his country pass unchal-

  Lenged, possibly because it seemed less like a slight to him than a statement of the mere reality. He searched instead for some reason of state that would make what he had asserted seem sensible.

  After a moment he said, “Mali and Songhay together would be far more powerful than either one alone. If England plays an instrumental role in delivering the throne of Songhay up to Mali, England will surely be given a preferential role by the Mansa of Mali in future West African trade.”

  Selima nodded. “Perhaps.”

  “And the Russians—you know how they feel about the Ottoman Empire. Your people are closely allied with Songhay and don’t get along well with Mali. A coup d’etat here would virtually eliminate Hirkey as a commercial force in West Africa.”

  “Very likely.”

  She was so cool, so terribly calm.

  “As for the Aztec role in this—” Michael shook his head. “God knows. But the Mexicans are always scheming around in things. Maybe they see some way of hurting Peru. There’s a lot of sea trade, you know, between Mali and Peru—it’s an amazingly short hop across the ocean from West Africa to Peru’s eastern provinces—and the Mexicans may believe they could divert some of that trade to themselves by winning the Mansa’s favor by helping him gain possession of—”

  He faltered to a halt. Something was happening. Her expression was starting to change. Her fagade of detached skepticism was visibly collapsing, slowly but irreversibly, like a brick wall undermined by a great earthquake.

  “Yes. Yes, I see. There are substantial reasons for such a scheme. And so they will kill the prince,” Selima said.

  “Have him killed, rather.”

  “It’s the same thing! The very same thing!”

  Her eyes began to glisten. She drew even further back from him and turned her head away, and he realized that she was trying to conceal tears from him. But she couldn’t hide the sobs that racked her.

  He suspected that she was one who cried very rarely, if at all. Seeing her weep now in this uncontrollable way plunged him into an abyss of dejection.

  She was making no attempt to hide her love of the prince from him. That was the only explanation for these tears.

  ‘‘Selima—please, Selima— ’ ’

  He felt useless.

  He realized, also, that he had destroyed himself.

  He had committed this monstrous breach of security, he saw now, purely in the hope of insinuating himself into her confidence, to bind her to him in a union that proceeded from shared possession of an immense secret. He had taken her words at face value when she had told him that the prince was nothing to her.

  That had been a serious error. He had thought he was making a declaration of love; but all he had done was to reveal a state secret to England’s ancient enemy.

  H
e waited, feeling huge and clumsy and impossibly naive.

  Then, abruptly, her sobbing stopped and she looked toward him, a little puffy-eyed now, but otherwise as inscrutable as before.

  “I’m not going to say anything about this to anyone.”

  “What?”

  “Not to him, not to my father, not to anyone.”

  He was mystified. As usual.

  “But—Selima—”

  “I told you. The prince is nothing to me. And this is only a crazy rumor. How do I know it’s true? How do you know it’s true?”

  “Sir Anthony—”

  “Sir Anthony! Sir Anthony! For all I know, he’s floated this whole thing simply to ensnare my father in some enormous embarrassment. I tell my father there’s going to be an assassination and my father tells the prince, as he’d feel obliged to do. And then the prince arrests and expels the ambassadors of England and Russia and Mexico? But where’s the proof? There isn’t any. It’s all a Turkish invention, they say. A scandal. My ' father is sent home in disgrace. His career is shattered. Songhay breaks off diplomatic relations with the Empire. No, no, don’t you see, I can’t say a thing.”

  “But the prince—”

  “His stepmother hates him. If he’s idiotic enough to let her hand him a cup of something without having it nested, he deserves to be poisoned. What is that to me? He’s only a savage. Hold the parasol closer, Michael, and let’s get back to town. Oh, this heat! This unending heat! Do you think it’ll ever rain here?” Her face now showed no sign of tears at all. Wearily Michael lowered the parasol. Selima utterly baffled him. She was an exhausting person. His head was aching. For a shilling he’d be glad to resign his post and take up sheep farming somewhere in the north of England. It was getting very obvious to him and probably to everyone else that he had no serious future in the diplomatic corps.

  Little Father, emerging from the tunnel that led from the Emir’s palace to his own, found Ali Pasha waiting

  in the little colonnaded gallery known as the Promenade of Askia Mohammed. The prince was surprised to see a string charm of braided black, red, and yellow cords dangling around the vizier's neck. Ali Pasha had never been one for wearing grigri before; but no doubt the imminent death of the Emir was unsettling everyone, even a piece of tough leather like Ali Pasha.

  The vizier offered a grand salaam. “Your royal father, may Allah embrace him, sir—”

  “My royal father is still breathing, thank you. It looks now as if he’ll last until morning.” Little Father glanced around, a little wildly, peering into the courtyard of his palace. “Somehow we’ve left too much for the last minute. The Lady Serene Glory is arranging for the washing of the body. It’s too late to do anything about that, but we can supply the graveclothes, at least. Get the very finest white silks; the royal burial shroud should be something out of the Thousand and One Nights; and I want rubies in the turban. Actual rubies, no damned imitations. And after that I want you to set up the procession to the Great Mosque—I’ll be one of the pallbearers, of course, and we’ll ask the Mansa of Mali to be another—he’s arrived by now, hasn’t he?—and let’s have the King of Benin as the third one, and for the fourth, well, either the Asante of Ghana or the Grand Fon of Dahomey, whichever one shows up here first. The important thing is that all four of the pallbearers should be kings, because Serene Glory wants to push her brother forward to be one, and I can’t allow that. She won’t be able to argue precedence for him if the pallbearers are all kings, when all he is is a provincial cadi. Behind the bier we’ll have the overseas ambassadors marching five abreast—put the TYirk and the Russian in the front row, the Maori too, and the Aztec and the Inca on the outside edges to keep them as far apart as we can, and the order of importance after that is up to you, only be sure that little countries like England and the Teutonic States don’t wind up too close to the major powers, and that the various vassal nations like China and Korea and Ind are in the back. Now, as far as the decorations on the barge that’ll be taking my father downriver to the burial place at Gao—”

  “Little Father,” the Vizier said, as the prince paused for breath, “the Turkish woman is waiting upstairs.” Little Father gave him a startled look.

  “I don’t remember asking her to come here.”

  “She didn’t say you had. But she asked for an urgent audience, and I thought—” Ali Pasha favored Little Father with an obscenely knowing smile. “It seemed reasonable to admit her.”

  “She knows that my father is dying, and that I’m tremendously busy?”

  “I told her what was taking place, Majesty,” said Ali Pasha unctuously.

  “Don’t call me Majesty yet!”

  “A thousand pardons, Little Father. But she is aware of the nature of the crisis, no question of that. Nevertheless, she insisted on—”

  “Oh, damn. Damn! But I suppose I can give her two or three minutes. Stop smiling like that, damn you! I’ll feed you to the lions if you don’t! What do you think I am, a mountain of lechery? This is a busy moment. When I say two or three minutes, two or three minutes is what I mean ’ ’

  Selima was pacing about on the porch where she and Little Father had spent their night of love. No filmy robes today, no seductively visible breasts bobbing about beneath, this time. She was dressed simply, in European clothes. She seemed all business.

  “The Emir is in his last hours,” Little Father said. “The whole funeral has to be arranged very quickly.” “I won’t take up much of your time, then.” Her tone was cool. There was a distinct edge on it. Perhaps he had been too brusque with her. That night on the porch had been a wonderful one, after all. She said, “I just have one question. Is there some sort of ritual at a royal funeral where you’re given a cup of wine to drink?” “You know that the Koran doesn’t permit the drinking of—”

  “Yes, yes, I know that. A cup oi something, then.” Little Father studied her carefully. “This is anthropological research? The sort of thing the golden-haired woman from England came here to do? Why does this matter to you, Selima?”

  “Never mind that. It matters.”

  He sighed. She seemed so gentle and retiring, until she opened her mouth.

  “There’s a cup ceremony, yes. It isn’t wine or anything else alcoholic. It’s an aromatic potion, brewed from various spices and honeys and such, very disagreeably sweet, my father once told me. Drinking it symbolizes the passage of royal power from one generation to the next.”

  “And who is supposed to hand you the cup?”

  “May I ask why at this particularly hectic time you need to know these details?”

  “Please,” she said.

  There was an odd urgency in her voice.

  “The former queen, the mother of the heir of the throne, is the one who hands the new Emir the cup.”

  “But your mother is dead. Therefore your stepmother Serene Glory will hand it to you. ’ ’

  “That’s correct.” Littie Father glanced at his watch. “Selima, you don’t seem to understand. I need to finish working out the funeral arrangements and then get back to my father’s bedside before he dies. If you don’t mind—”

  “There’s going to be poison in the cup.”

  “This is no time for romantic fantasies.”

  “This isn’t a fantasy. She’s going to slip you a cup of poison, and you won’t be able to tell that the poison is there because what you drink is so heavily spiced anyway. And when you keel over in the mosque her brother’s going to leap forward in the moment of general shock and tell everyone that he’s in charge.”

  The day had been one long disorderly swirl. But suddenly now the world stood still, as though there had been an unscheduled eclipse of the sun. For a moment he had difficulty simply seeing her.

  “What are you saying, Selima?”

  “Do you want me to repeat it all, or is that just something you’re saying as a manner of speaking because you’re so astonished?”

  He could see and think again. He examined her closely
. She was unreadable, as she usually was. Now that the first shock of her bland statement was past, this all was starting to seem to him like fantastic nonsense; and yet, and yet, it certainly wasn’t beyond Serene Glory’s capabilities to have hatched such a scheme.

  How, though, could the Turkish girl possibly know anything about it? How did she even know about the ritual of the cup?

  “If we were in bed together right now,” he said, “and you were in my arms and right on the edge of the big moment, and I stopped moving and asked you right then and there what proof you had of this story, I’d probably believe whatever you told me. I think people tend to be honest at such moments. Even you would speak the truth. But we have no time for that now. The kingship will change hands in a few hours, and I’m exceedingly busy. I need you to cast away all of your fondness for manipulative amusements and give me straight answers.”

  Her dark eyes flared. “I should simply have let them poison you.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “What you just said was insufferable.”

  “If I was too blunt, I ask you to forgive me. I’m under great strain today and if what you’ve told me is any sort of joke, I don’t need it. If this isn’t a joke, you damned well can’t withhold any of the details.”

  “I’ve given you the details.”

  “Not all. W'ho’d you hear all this from?”

  She sighed and placed one wrist across the other. “Michael. The tall Englishman.”

  “That adolescent?”

  “He’s a little on the innocent side, especially for a diplomat, yes. But I don’t think he’s as big a fool as he’s been letting himself appear lately. He heard it from Sir Anthony.”

  “So this is an English plot?”

  “English and Russian and Mexican.”

  “All three.” Little Father digested that. “What’s the purpose of assassinating me?”

  “To make Serene Glory’s brother Emir of Songhay.” “And serve as their puppet, I suppose?”

  Selima shook her head. “Serene Glory and her brother are only the ignorant instruments of their real plan. They’ll simply be brushed aside when the time comes. What the plotters are really intending to do, in the confusion following your death, is ask the Mansa of Mali to seize control of Songhay. They’ll put the support of their countries behind him.”