Gateway to Elsewhere

by Murray Leinster

  Tony raised his eyebrows. “I have a glass phial in my pocket,” he observed. “Can you change the design of that?”

  “It is a human object, lord,” said Abdul with an air of contempt.

  Tony grinned. During the night—during his sleep—his conscience had reached some highly moral conclusions which he was inclined to accept. One was that djinn were different in kind from humans, but they were not for that reason akin to the angels. Tony went right along with this decision, recalling the floor show of the night before. More, they were but matter, said his conscience firmly—unstable matter, perhaps, with probably some Uranium 235 somewhere in their constitutions, and in the United States the Atomic Energy Commission would take action against them on the ground of national security. But they were not spirits.

  They were material. Grossly material. They knew only what they saw, felt, smelled, and heard. They were limited to the senses humans had. Tony had referred to the glass phials in his pocket. Abdul plainly knew nothing about them and could not mystically determine their contents, or he would have been scared to death. They contained lasf. So it was not impossible to keep a secret from a djinn. It was not impossible to fool them. It might not be impossible to bluff them.

  These were encouraging thoughts. Djinns were creatures, and therefore had limitations. They changed massive architectural features of the djinn king’s palace overnight, but they could not—it was a reasonable inference—change the form of a human artifact. Therefore it was probable that the things they could change were of the same kind of matter as themselves.

  Tony’s guide opened a door. It should have given upon a passageway of snowy white. Its walls should have been of ivory, perhaps mastodon tusks, most intricately carved in not very original designs. Instead, beyond the door Tony found a corridor which was an unusually lavish aquarium. It had walls of crystal with unlikely tropical fish swimming behind them. The fish wore golden collars and were equipped with pearl-studded underwater castles to suffer ennui in.

  Which was a clue. It occurred to Tony that he had not yet seen one trace of a civilization which could be termed djinnian, as opposed to human. Everything he had seen was merely an elaboration, a magnification, an over-lavish complication, of the designs and possessions of men. Humans wore clothes, so the djinn wore garments made after human patterns only more lavish and improbable. Humans had palaces, so the djinn king had a palace which out-palaced anything mere humans could contrive. But the riches of the djinn were unstable, their lavishness had no meaning, and they had no originality at all. In his home world, Tony reflected, djinns would only really fit in Hollywood.

  He cheered up enormously. In his pocket he had three phials of lasf. If his opinion was correct, the palace was constructed of the same material as the dragon in the narrow pass, the two colossi before that, and the row of giants on the final lap to the palace gateway. If he uncorked one of the phials, it was probable that the walls about him would begin to sneeze and flee away in the form of whirlwinds—one whirlwind for each unit of the edifice. The djinn palace had an exact analogy in the living structures of the army ants of Central America, which cling together to form a shelter and a palace—complete with roof, walls, floors, and passageways—for the army-ant queen whenever she feels in the mood to lay some eggs. But the djinn were not sexless like the army ants. Nasim’s romantic impulses seemed proof enough of that. And besides—well—the djinnees who had danced for him last night had displayed an enthusiasm which simply wasn’t all synthetic. They had something more than a theoretic knowledge of what it was all about. What they had lacked was art.

  * * *

  It was with an increasing feeling of competence, then, that Tony strode off to answer Ghail’s summons. He began to anticipate his audience with the king of the djinn with less aversion. And somehow, the atomic-bomb aspect of the djinn tended to fade away. Ghail had never mentioned anything of the kind. Humans, apparently, did not know that djinn were fissionable. So it was unlikely that they could be set off by accident. But it was still hard to imagine getting romantic with an atomic bomb, even if it wasn’t fused.

  More doorways. They passed through parts of the palace with which Tony was naturally unfamiliar, and whose features as of today he could not compare with yesterday’s. Then they reached a quite small, quite inconspicuous doorway, and the djinn Abdul stopped before it and bowed low again.

  “The residence of the Queen of Barkut, lord,” he said blandly.

  Tony stepped out-of-doors, onto a sort of dry meadow with patches of parched grass here and there. The sun shone brightly. He heard a bird singing rather monotonously, and he assured himself that no djinn was making that noise! A hundred-odd yards away there was a clump of trees and among the trees a small group of mud-walled houses which were plainly human buildings, not too expertly made, with completely human implements about them.

  Tony advanced. Someone waved to him, and he felt his heart pound ridiculously faster. But as he drew nearer yet, he saw that it wasn’t Ghail. It was a stout, motherly woman with her gown tucked up to reveal sturdy, sun-browned calves. She seemed to have been working in a garden. He saw a neatly hoed patch of melons, and a field of onions and other vegetables. The woman beamed at Tony and said:

  “The Queen is in there. You are the Lord Toni?”

  Tony nodded. Abdul looked oddly uncomfortable.

  “When you go back to Barkut,” said the woman, “do try to get them to send us some sweets! We haven’t had any sweets for months!” Then she said tolerantly to Abdul: “Not that you don’t try, of course.”

  Abdul wriggled unhappily. “I will wait here, lord,” he said sadly. “It is not fitting for a djinn, of the most powerful of created beings, to be made mock of by a mere human. Perhaps I will go back and wait by the door.”

  Ghail came out of the largest building—it would have no more than two or three rooms, and was of a single story—and regarded Tony with a deliberately icy air. She said:

  “Greetings, lord.”

  Just then the motherly woman said comfortingly to the short stout djinn:

  “Oh, don’t go away, Abdul! I’ll watch your magic tricks for a while—if they’re good ones.”

  Abdul wavered. Tony grinned at Ghail. He said critically:

  “Of the two of us, you look most like you had a hang-over. Have you been crying?”

  “With my Queen,” said Ghail with dignity, “over the sadness of her captivity.”

  Then a pleasant slender sun-browned woman came out beside Ghail and nodded in a friendly fashion to Tony. He gaped at her. She had the comfortable air of an unmarried woman who is quite content to be unmarried. Which is not in the least like a queen. The palace of the djinn king loomed up on all sides, but here in the center things were different. These houses did not look like a dungeon, to be sure. Here was a meadow half a mile this way by half a mile that, with these buildings and gardens in the center so that it looked like a small farm. The contrast between these structures and the magnificence of the palace was odd enough. The atmosphere of reasonably complete contentment was stranger still. The Queen looked as if she were having a perfectly comfortable time here, and was as well-satisfied as anybody ought to be.

  “This,” said Ghail stiltedly, “is the Lord Toni.”

  Chapter 12

  The Queen smiled. There was flour on her hands, as if she had been cooking something.

  “Have you breakfasted, Lord Toni?” she asked.

  “Well—no,” admitted Tony.

  “Then come in,” said the Queen, “and we will talk while you do.”

  They entered a small room, an almost bare room, a peasant’s general-purpose room which had the shining neatness of a house with no man in it to mess it up. But this had not the fussy preciosity of too many possessions. There was a small fire burning on a raised hearth, giving off a distinctly acrid smell which yet was not unpleasant.

  “You will have coffee,” said the Queen, “and whatever else we can find. We are a little straitened
for food today, because so much went for your meal last night.”

  Tony had been dazed, but this was a jolt which showed in his expression. The Queen laughed.

  “The djinns have their own foods,” she explained. “But no human being can eat of their dainties. When I was first made prisoner the king used to raid caravans to get food for me, but it was very tedious! So now I have my own garden, and someone—I think it was Abdul—stole chickens for me. When you came as a guest they asked me for food for you, and I gave it. Of course. You probably did not notice, but no matter what you pointed to in all the dishes they paraded before you, you actually got—” she chuckled—“no more than flesh of chicken, and eggs, and cheese and dates and salad! That was all I had for you.”

  Tony said: “Majesty, I think I ought to make some appropriate speech. But I don’t know what to say!”

  She busied herself at the fireplace, and Ghail went quickly to help. The two of them gave Tony his coffee, and a melon, and eggs. It went very well.

  “You are going to defeat the djinns, Ghail tells me,” the Queen said practically. “She assures me you will destroy them to the last small djinnling. I hope not.”

  Tony goggled at her. “But—”

  “Oh, I know!” said the Queen. “I am their prisoner, and so on. But in their way they’re rather cute.” Tony stared.

  “I’ve lived among them four years,” the Queen said briskly. “I’ve had them around all the time. They’re a little bit like men, and a good deal more like children, and quite a lot like kittens. I suppose you’d say that I’ve made pets of them. Of course they won’t let me go home, but it isn’t bad.”

  Tony chewed and swallowed, and then said carefully: “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”

  The Queen shrugged. “They’re terribly vain, like men. If possible, more so. You can do anything with a djinn if you flatter him. They’re terrible show-offs, like children. My maid outside can wind Abdul around her little finger any time. He loves to show off his transformations, and she watches him. The other djinns won’t. And they’re like kittens because they’re so completely selfish. But that’s very much like men and children, too.”

  Tony said in astonishment:

  “But they’re a menace to Barkut—”

  “Of course!” the Queen conceded impatiently. “They’re dangerous to Barkut in the same way that a troop of—say—wild apes would be dangerous to a village near where they lived. They steal, and they destroy, and they probably kill people now and then. But it’s because they can’t understand people and people can’t understand them.”

  “There’s a war—” began Tony.

  “Oh, the war!” The Queen dismissed it scornfully. “That’s what all wars are about! Misunderstandings! Marriages are too, probably. Men are so absurd! That’s why I have to stay a prisoner.”

  Ghail said warningly: “Majesty!”

  The Queen regarded Ghail with impatience.

  “My dear, you cannot deny that I am patriotic! I have no children, so I can be patriotic! But for the same reason I haven’t any particular prejudice against the djinns. Do you remember how I used to adore horses? I’ve come to like the djinns as well, that’s all. I admit that it seems terribly silly to me that I have to stay here because the djinn king’s vanity is involved in holding me prisoner! If I were to escape and go back to Barkut, he’d feel that he had to attack it furiously to recapture me. So I can’t go home until he’s conquered. So I simply want the Lord Toni to realize that as far as I am concerned—”

  Ghail said again: “Majesty!”

  Tony looked sharply at Ghail and at the Queen. Ghail was young and very desirable. The Queen was less young and contentedly undesirous. She laughed frankly.

  “Very well, Ghail!” And to Tony she said: “I think that even as a captive queen, though, I can amend my council’s orders to say that it will not be necessary to exterminate the djinns completely! I should think, in fact, that if they were suitably subdued, a few tame ones kept around the palace would be quite pleasant. They’d be excellent for the prestige of the throne of Barkut, too!”

  Tony said painfully: “Majesty—”

  “It’s really too bad you came to Barkut at all,” the Queen said, though with no unfriendliness. “Humans and djinns alike believe that if anybody can bring about a human victory, you can. So the humans won’t consent to a compromise until they’ve tried for conquest. And if they would, the djinns would be sure they knew they couldn’t win, and they wouldn’t compromise until they’d tried for conquest. It’s so silly! We really could get along without fighting, if we tried! I’ve been working on the djinn king. He was willing to come to a compromise, but—male vanity again!—only on condition that the Queen of Barkut married him. And that seemed to be out of the question.”

  “It was out of the question!” snapped Ghail, her eyes angry.

  “I was wearing him down,” protested the Queen. “After all, if he had his harem of djinnees, a private agreement that his marriage to a human queen would be a form and not a fact—”

  “Absolutely out of the question!” repeated Ghail, her color high. “Absolutely!”

  The Queen sighed.

  “I know it is, my dear… and it’s too late now, anyhow. The Lord Toni has come. The humans think he’s going to lead them to victory. The djinns are sure that if he can’t, the war goes to them.” She looked at Tony, frowning. “Of course you’ve got to win, Lord Toni! Of course! Humans as the slaves of djinns would be in a terrible state! It would be like enslaved by apes or—children! And apes make nice pets—I had one once—and children are doubtless very well, but apes or children or djinns would be horrible masters! But the djinns are so amusing—”

  “I’m getting a trifle confused,” admitted Tony.

  The Queen nodded kindly.

  “I know,” she said condescendingly. “You men only really talk to each other. You don’t often see things straight. If you only talked to women more… about things that really matter, that is—”

  “May Allah forbid!” said Tony grimly. “I’ve never yet talked to a woman who didn’t try to make me apologize for being a man, or any who’d have bothered to talk to me if I hadn’t been! You are a queen, Majesty, and you’re giving me what I take to be rather complicated instructions. I’m only a man. So whatever I do—because I’m a man—you will explain should have been done differently. No man can ever do anything exactly the way a woman would like him to, but whatever he does, women will make the best of it. So I’m not going to try to do whatever it is you’re trying to command. I’m going to handle this my way!”

  He spoke hotly, through a natural association of their viewpoint with that of his conscience. Which had reason behind it, at that. But at the same time, he wondered rather desperately what his own way would be.

  The Queen regarded him complacently.

  “I know. Men are like that.” Then she added, “I think you and Ghail will be very happy.”

  Ghail turned crimson. She stamped her foot furiously. “Majesty—” she cried. “You go too far—”

  There was a small-sized uproar outside. The voice of the stout woman, in alarm:

  “Abdul! Abdul! You can’t do things like that!”

  Tony plunged to the door. At the foot of the wall which was the djinn king’s palace, almost a quarter of a mile away, there was a twelve-foot soldier-djinn who by his gestures had just communicated some message of importance. In the stretch between the wall and the farmhouse, a charging rhinoceros raced at top speed. It plunged toward the small group of buildings. Fifty yards away it seemed to stumble, crash, and in mid-air turned into a round ball with spiral red-and-white stripes which made a dizzying spectacle as it rolled. It was five feet in diameter. It checked abruptly two yards from the Queen’s door and there abruptly wrinkled itself, changed color, and collapsed into the short, fat, swaggering djinn with a turban who was Tony’s guide to this place, who was Nasim’s friend Abdul, and who had awaited a summons to duty as a val
et in the form of a cockroach atop the window hangings of Tony’s bedroom.

  He bowed profoundly.

  “Lord,” he said, “there is a message from the king. Es-Souk, who was to have been executed today for your amusement, has escaped from his prison. He undoubtedly seeks you, lord, to attempt your murder before his own death, since he cannot live under the king’s displeasure.”

  Tony felt himself growing just a little pale. He remembered fingers closing on his throat, and an elephant-sized monster in his bedroom in the palace at Barkut, beating its breast before falling upon him to demolish him utterly.

  That—irrelevantly—suggested the only possible source of action. Tony gulped and said:

  “Thank you, Abdul. Tell the king I am very much obliged for the warning. But tell him not to worry about it. I won’t need any extra guards. I’ll handle Es-Souk. In fact, I’ll help hunt for him as soon as I’ve—as soon as I’ve refilled my cigarette lighter.”

  Chapter 13

  He went back into the house. His knees felt queer. He fumbled in his pockets. He brought out the lighter, and then brought out one of the small glass phials Ghail had given him in the camel cabin on the way across the desert—one of those containing lasf.

  Ghail looked pale, too.

  “What are you going to do?” she demanded. Her voice trembled.

  “Attend to Es-Souk, I hope,” said Tony, with quite unnatural calm. To the Queen he said: “Your Majesty, if you have any pet djinns around at the moment, you’d better chase them out. I’m opening up a phial of lasf.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve got an idea.” said Tony. “It doesn’t make sense, but nothing makes much sense any more. I’m going to take advantage of what I think is a generally occurring allergic reaction among djinns.” The words “allergic reaction” had no Arabic equivalent, so he had to use the English ones, and to Ghail and the Queen of Barkut they sounded remarkably learned and mysterious. “And just to make sure, I’d appreciate it enormously if you’d draw me a picture of the leaf of the lasf plant.”