A Logic Named Joe Part 4
Chapter 3.
Thebakhilcleared the harbor. The wind freshened, and she bent to the breeze and her forefoot cut into the swells. Tony smoked contentedly. He reflected that something like this untraceability was necessary for a journey to Barkut and other places not on topographic surveys. If the area about a gateway were ever searched for a person who had gone through it, that very search would change it, so that somehow it would cease to be identical in the two worlds, and so would cease to be a gateway. In ancient days, when news traveled slowly and searches for missing persons were unthought of, there must have been many gateways indeed. That would account for the wild fables which none believed, nowadays, but which were probably history in some world or other. There was probably a brisk trade between places where magic lamps were functional devices, and prosaic places like the world of Tony's youth. Now gateways were probably rare and trade almost nonexistent. But not quite. He had the proof of that!
So Tony grinned happily to himself in the starlight at thebakhil'sstern. He let his imagination run riot in pictures of white-walled cities under a brazen sky, and camel caravans in slow motion over fabled sands, and-to be honest about it-he meditated with some interest upon the possibility of l.u.s.trous-eyed slave girls whose sense of duty to their master might make them very interesting companions-if one happened to be their master.
When the sun rose he was still thinking about the sort of residence a successful young executive might set up in Barkut if that land were as uninhabited as the bald-headed man had suggested in theshishkebab restaurant. But about him there was no sign of any sort of civilization. Thebakhilglided smoothly over waves that were neither high nor negligible. The sea was of an improbable but fascinating color. The sky was lapis lazuli, and thebakhilwas sheer archaic clumsiness. The heavy, bending boom which carried her mainsail seemed about to crack with the burden of patched canvas and wind which strained it. The crew was as unsavory a gang of cutthroats as ever a director sought in vain for a motion picture. There was not a man who did not carry a knife in plain view, and few who had not been liberally scarred by the knives of others. The captain's face looked very like a rough sketch for a crossword puzzle blank.
None spoke a word to Tony. All glowered when he met their eyes. Thebakhilsailed on a course Tony could not determine, toward a destination he could not guess-except that it surely was not Barkut-and there was apparently no soul on board but himself who spoke English or had any feeling but that of murderous antipathy toward him.
He flipped the golden ten-dirhim piece and felt exceeding peace fill all his being. Crew members saw the glint of gold in the sunshine. If Tony moved from the rail and one of them could get behind him, the result would be final. If he dozed, he would wake in another world, but not very likely Barkut. His life hung upon the fact that he had a revolver, and that it might cost lives to kill him. He waited contentedly all through the baking-hot day for nightfall, quite well aware that with the darkness plans would take effect to abate the nuisance of his living presence.
Came the sunset. Glorious reds and golds. The surface of the sea looked like molten aureate metal. The whiskered villains of thebakhil'screw prostrated themselves in pious prayer unto Allah, and then began low-toned discussions over the most practical way of inserting some six or seven inches of steel into Tony's liver.
He beamed. He was alive. This was life and zest and adventure such as he had never known or dreamed of before. His conscience was despairingly silent. Tony would not have changed places with anyone on earth.
The sun sank below the horizon. Darkness seemed to flow over the world from the horizon on every hand. Obscurity blotted out the edge of the world, and shadows appeared and grew opaque upon the bakhil's deck, and Suhail, the great star, shone brightly in a dimming sky. Then it was night.
Men gathered forward. And Tony tossed overboard his twentieth cigarette of the day, and heard it hiss briefly as it touched the water. He moved briskly, silently.
The helmsman closed his eyes and sank to the deck. Darkness hid his sorrow. He had been the victim of a scientific gun-whipping learned by Tony in a neighborhood movie palace on Amsterdam Avenue, while watching Randolph Scott in the role of a frontier marshal. Tony re-pocketed the revolver, hauled the trailing small boat close under thebakhil'sstern; then he pushed the great tiller hard over. The lubberly bakhilcame heavily up into the wind and hung there. Its lateen sail flapped crazily. The ship careened, the ma.s.sive boom swung over and increased its heel, and then thebakhilseemed simply to shiver irresolutely, dead in the water, all way gone.
Tony slipped over the stern into the small boat. He took to the oars as a displeased outcry arose on deck. He pulled off into the darkness. He had no idea where he might be, save that he was roughly twenty hours slow sail from Suakim. He might be anywhere along the African eastern coast, or along either of two sh.o.r.es of Arabia. The essential thing was to get away from thebakhilwhere his murder was at the moment being loudly promised.
He got away. When some sort of order seemed to be restored on the ship, he ceased his rowing and m.u.f.fled his oars. Then he went back to work, pulling st.u.r.dily up-wind. Thebakhilhad somewhat less than the sailing properties of an ordinary washtub. Pulling upwind from her, he might progress faster to windward by manpower than she could by sail. Certainly, once he was lost in the darkness she would never find him again.
She did not. After half an hour, Tony Gregg-clad in soft felt hat, highly polished brown shoes, and a camel's-hair topcoat belted in the back-curled himself up on the bottom-boards of the little boat and went contentedly to sleep. His last conscious thought was a mild wonderment that even this landing-boat had a pervading aroma of fish, pearl oysters, goat hides, bilge water, kerosene, and the unwashed humanity that occupied it recently.
b.u.mpings awakened him. The boat's keel thumped on a sandy bottom. He opened his eyes and saw a colossal, amiably stupid face gazing open-mouthed down at him. He knew immediately that it was an illusion, because it was five feet from ear to ear and definitely on the misty side-a countenance formed in vapor. He closed his eyes resolutely and told himself to wake up. When he opened them again there was naturally nothing in sight but very blue, very clear sky above the gunwale. But the boat b.u.mped again.
Tony sat up and saw a sandy sh.o.r.e and a sandy beach and a sandy stretch of pure barrenness beyond.
There was no surf. Fairly gentle waves b.u.mped the small boat, and b.u.mped it again, and gradually edged it toward the strand on which the swells broke in half-hearted foaming.
There was just one really curious feature about the world he saw. That oddity was a minor, dark-colored whirlwind-actually a sand devil-which wavered its way along the beach a hundred yards away. It looked-the thought was fanciful-rather like the picture of adjinncoming out of a bottle that had been in a copy of theArabian NightsTony had owned as a small boy. He noted the resemblance, but of course thought no more of it. For one thing, there was no bottle. For another, this small whirlwind traveled in a wholly natural fashion. It went a couple of hundred yards further and then seemed to stop, spinning in a meditative fashion.
Tony sat at ease until the boat finally grounded. Then he seized the moment of a receding wave to step overside and walk smartly ash.o.r.e without wetting more than the soles of his low-cut shoes. Safely on land, he was-and almost infinitely alone. There was sea on the one hand, and sand on the other. That was all. There was not even a sea bird flapping over the waves. Only the whirling sand devil remained to break stillness. It was rather peculiar that it was so dark, when whirling above such white sand. It looked rather like smoke.
He flipped the ten-dirhim piece. He marched valiantly along the sh.o.r.e in obedience to its decision. He covered half a mile. The whirlwind persisted. It moved inland. It grew taller, as if to keep him in view.
Odd . . .
Then three men on camels came over the crest of a sand dune and halted, regarding him. He waved to them. They came toward him, shading their eyes to search for possible companions beyond and behind him. But he was patently alone. They gobbled in low tones at one another.
They came closer and dismounted and regarded him, with cat-in-canary-cage smiles. They were whiskered, they were dirty, and they were almost certainly verminous. One, short and fat, fingered a scimitar suggestively. The other two carried spears. The small whirlwind moved restlessly, half a mile away. The three men ignored it.
Tony flipped the ten-dirhim piece. It glittered goldenly in the sunshine. The expressions of the trio changed from merely ominous greed to resolution. The short man with the scimitar swaggered up to Tony. The two others watched with glittering eyes. The short man said something that probably meant "Gimme!" Tony flipped the ten-dirhim piece. The man with the scimitar scowled and grabbed. Tony swung. Hard, to the whiskers. He felt a certain naive pride when the whiskered man went flat on his back, wheezing in astonishment. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the scimitar and said sternly to the others: "I'm on my way to Barkut. But I'll be glad to pay you-"
The other two men came for him at a run. They had very practical spears, which they carried in an accustomed manner. They made for him from two sides, one from the right and one from the left. A scimitar is not a weapon for use against spear. Moreover, Tony found it necessary to keep his foot on the wriggling, wheezing fat man to keep him still. These were desert Arabs-Bedouin-to whom the possession of goods is a sign of luck but by no means of inviolate personal ownership. If somebody has something they want and they can with reasonable safety take it, they do so, rejoicing.
Tony learned this fact later. At the moment he was only aware that they meant definitely to kill him for the ten-dirhim piece whose glint in the sunshine had roused their cupidity. They were remote from all law or other reasons for restraint. The spearmen plunged for him, eyes intent. Tony thought, in one masterpiece of irrelevant reflection, of the moment when he had begun this journey by flipping a coin. But still he would not have changed places with anybody in the world.
He took action. It was pure instinct. The scimitar in his hand had a good deal of the feel of a slightly heavy tennis racquet. It even balanced like a racquet. The left-hand spearman was nearest.
Tony swung the scimitar as for a neat back-hand return-volley stroke. The head of the spear sprang off.
Quickly he turned and with the scimitar served a fast though imaginary ball straight over the net. He followed through. The second spearman got in the way. Tony still followed through. He saw his victim with unforgettable clarity-pure, bearded villainy with one eye and a sword-split nose. Then the scimitar landed. The result was colorful-mostly red-and unquestionably lethal. Tony wanted to be sick, and to avoid it he turned on his two remaining foes. The short fat man was on his feet now, still wheezing. The spearman looked dazed. They ran. Tony chased them with his reddened scimitar. They headed at first straight for the whirlwind, but then swerved around it, almost warily; just as it obligingly started to get out of their way. They vanished over sand hills.
Tony stopped, panting. He went back to the scene of the conflict. He carefully did not look at the man he'd hit with the scimitar. There were three camels, still kneeling. Tony wanted to get away from there.
He tethered two of them to the third, and mounted that one. Nothing happened. He kicked it.
The camel, offensively chewing a reeking cud, got up hind-end first, and Tony nearly fell off. Then it resignedly began to move in some indefinite direction. The other two camels followed docilely. The whirlwind moved companionably along with them-never very near, but never quite out of sight. At times it was a mile away and of respectable size. Sometimes it was only a couple of hundred yards off, and not more than twenty or thirty feet high. But it followed persistently, rather like an interested stray dog following a man whose smell fascinates it.
Hours later-many hours later-a white-walled city appeared in the distance. Date groves surrounded it. There were minarets within the wall, and a lacy structure comparable for beauty of design to the Taj Mahal-only the Taj Mahal is a tomb. A camel caravan moved unhurriedly away from its gates, bound for some place of mystery on beyond.
The whirlwind fell behind, as if bashful. It stretched upward and upward-again as if to keep Tony in sight-until it was merely the most tenuous of mistinesses. That was when he was almost at the edge of the oasis. Then it vanished suddenly, as if it had collapsed.
Tony Gregg rode up to the nearest city gate and slid down his camel's off foreleg, which stank. Soldiers in turbans and slippers and carrying flintlock muskets looked at him in lively suspicion. He essayed to speak. They essayed to speak. Then they all stared. Presently two of them took him gingerly by the arm and led him through the city streets.
The smells and sights and sounds he encountered were those of a dream city-though the smells were not altogether those of a pretty dream. There were flat-topped houses and veiled women and proud camels and bearded men. There were barred, narrow windows and metal-studded doors, and projecting upper stories to the houses which leaned out above the narrow streets and nearly blotted out the sky.
The two soldiers led Tony, thrilled and satisfied, into a dark doorway. They released him. They stepped back. There was a conclusiveclang.And Tony saw that the doorway was completely filled by a grille of very solid and very heavy grim iron bars, through which he and the soldiers blinked at each other. He was in a prison. He was in a partially open-air dungeon. He was, in fact, in the clink.
This was the manner of his arrival in Barkut.
Chapter 4.
Three weeks later, in mid-morning, Tony sat comfortably in the shady part of the courtyard and looked more or less dreamily at the slave girl Ghail's legs. She had nice legs, and rather a lot of them was on display. They were slim, as a girl's legs ought to be, and they tapered nicely to the knee, and then they flared just the right amount at just the right place below them, and went down to very nice ankles, and below them to small bare feet-very dusty at the moment-one of which tapped ominously on the floor of the courtyard. He was still kept behind a locked iron grate, technically imprisoned, and his conscience had had a swell time pointing out to him how completely irresponsible and harebrained and half-witted all his actions had been. He was, however, unworried except over the reaction that tapping foot might presage.
At first, of course, he'd been totally unable to speak Arabic, and n.o.body in Barkut seemed to be able to speak English. He'd tried to communicate from his original prison cell with the help of a dog-eared guide book he'd picked up second-hand in Suez. The vocabulary it offered, however, was limited. It gave the phrases for complaining that prices were too high, that the food was overripe, and that the speaker wanted to go back to his hotel. But in Barkut Tony had been charged nothing, the food was good if monotonous-though fresh ripe dates had been a revelation to him-and he was in jail and had no hotel.
After two days of this unsatisfactory conversation, he'd been moved to a convenient cell-and-courtyard in the palace. He'd been inspected by various whiskered people he thought were officials, and then the slave girl Ghail had appeared and resolutely set to work to teach him to talk.
That was the way she undoubtedly looked at it. Tony was presumably an adult male, but he babbled only a few Arabic words, and those with a vile accent. The slave girl had settled down to the job with something like a scowl. She had an imperial carriage, which Tony recalled vaguely could be credited to the carriage of burdens on her head as a child. She was long-legged and lissome and had an air of firm competence, and he knew she was a slave girl because married women and the marriageable daughters of citizens walked the streets-if at all-only when swathed in voluminous robes and with veils which complied with the strictest of Moslem traditions. This girl Ghail was not swathed to speak of, and she was not veiled at all, and she was distinctly pretty and very far from shapeless. And she regarded Tony with a scowling disparagement which made him work earnestly to learn to carry on a conversation.
Matters had progressed nicely in three weeks, and Tony found himself possessed of a talent for languages. But now she tapped her foot ominously on the floor of his comfortable prison. She said, in measured calm: "Now, just what do you mean by that?"
Tony spoke apologetically. But he was pleased with the fluency he displayed in the Arabic she had taught him.
"I wanted to know."
"And just why did you want to know the name of my owner and the value in money that is placed upon me?" demanded the girl.
"Sooner or later," explained Tony, trying hard to be convincing, "I shall be questioned by the rulers of this place. I think that is why you have been set to teach me the language. When I am questioned and can explain myself, I shall become high in favor, and rich. It was my thought that then-Allah permitting-I would purchase you from your owner."
The slave girl's foot tapped more forbiddingly still.
"And for what purpose," she demanded icily, "would you wish to purchase me?"
Tony looked at her in pained astonishment. His conscience mentioned acidly that this conversation was not only improper but indiscreet. A brisk young executive would never . . . To which Tony replied that he wouldn't have much fun, then. When his conscience began a heated rejoinder, he cut it short.
"Truly," said Tony in false piety, "somebody has undoubtedly said that the desires of a man's heart are many, but that if there is not one woman more desirable than all else, he is not human."
His Arabic was still sketchy, but he put it over. The girl's eyes, however, instead of warming, burned angrily. "You are human?" she demanded.
"All too human," admitted Tony, "what else?"
She stood up in queenly indignation. She smiled-but painfully and with contempt, like someone speaking to a half-wit or worse.
"You came across the desert from the sea," she said tolerantly, "riding one camel and leading two others.
But an hour before your coming, one of the watchers on the city wall had seen adjinnin the desert. When you came, so stupid that you could not even speak the language of humans, do you think we did not know you for what you are-adjinn?"
"Adjinn,"said Tony blankly. The word was one of the very few-alcohol was another-which would be the same in Arabic and English. "Do you mean those creatures of the Thousand and One Nights?"
"Of history, yes." Ghail's tone was bitingly scornful. "And if we had doubted, within the hour there came a Bedouin to the city gate, a one-eyed man with a sword-slit nose, who told us of your taking the form of a bale of rich silk, torn open upon the beach of the sea. When he and his companions alighted from their camels to gather up the wealth, you changed instantly to the likeness of a young man strangely garbed and ran swiftly to their camels and flogged them away faster than the men could follow. The man demanded his camels, and they were those you brought to the gates of the city. So they were yielded to him. Do you deny now that you are of thedjinn?"
Tony swallowed, hard. A one-eyed man with sword-slit nose? That was the man he had killed, back at the seash.o.r.e! He'd been trying hard to forget the encounter, though if he'd ever had to pick out anybody on looks alone to be worked over with a scimitar, that man would have been the one. But-he could not have come and demanded the camels! It was not possible! Tony had left him an exceedingly messy object on the sand, and had chased his two companions with the scimitar as much in horror of his first dead man as out of any sort of anger. He swallowed again, very pale.
"You could not speak our human language." Ghail was tolerant, and scornful, and amused. "So I taught it to you. We hoped to make a bargain with you, because some of youdjinnare willing to be traitors to your race. Perhaps you are ready to make such a bargain. But it is insolence for one of thedjinnto think of purchasing a human slave!"
Even Tony's conscience was stunned, now.
"L-look!" he said desperately. "In my world,djinnsare only fables! What do they look like?"
"When the watcher on the city wall saw you on the desert, you had the form of a whirlwind. Why not? Is not that the way in which you travel?"
Tony swallowed yet again. His conscience had made a quick recovery. Now it began to say something piously satisfied about now look what a jam he'd gotten himself to, actually thinking romantic thoughts about an idiot girl who believed in imaginary creatures likedjinnsandefreets!But Tony shut it up. He saw implications of the theory of multiple worlds that he hadn't realized before. What is true in one world is not necessarily true in another. What is false in one world, also, is not invariably false in another. Actually, if there are enough worlds, anything must be true somewhere. Anything!
And he remembered-and flinched at remembering-his impression of a huge, vaporous, open-mouthed face which had been looking down at him in the small boat when he waked on the sh.o.r.e.
He remembered the sand devil, the whirlwind, which had looked like dark smoke in spite of the fact that it was whirling over white sand. It had kept pace with him as he went to meet the Bedouin and their attempt to kill him. It had hovered interestedly near during that encounter. And it had wavered hopefully after him all the way across the desert to this city.
He gulped audibly. The inference was crazy-but if this was a world in whichdjinnswere real, then craziness was sense. And then something else occurred to him.
"How long after my arrival did the one-eyed man come to claim the camels?" he demanded.
The slave girl shrugged. "One hour. No more. That was why we were sure."
"And the camels were stolen by the seash.o.r.e."
"You stole them! They were stolen by the sea."
"I traveled some hours by camel," said Tony grimly. "He must have followed their footprints in the sand-if he knew where to demand them. So he traveled as far on foot as I did on camel-back-if he tells the truth! But it took me five hours to reach the city from the sea on camel-back. Yet he made the journey on foot in only one hour more. How fast does the one-eyed man walk? As fast as a camel, even trailing?"
The girl Ghail stared at him. Her face went blank. It was a five-hour journey from the sea to the city. She knew it as well as Tony. That was by camel. On foot it would take a man ten hours or better. If the one-eyed man had trailed the camels, he could not possibly have arrived so soon. Not possibly.
"A whirlwind followed me all the way," said Tony, swallowing. "And-I killed a one-eyed man with a slit nose as he and two companions tried to rob me. Somehow, I think that the one-eyed man who got the three camels sometimes doubles as a whirlwind."
His conscience was strickenly silent. But Ghail knitted her brows and stamped her bare feet and snapped a number of Arabic words she had never taught Tony. They crackled. They sparked. They seemed to have blue fire around the edges.
"The misbegotten!" she cried furiously: "The accursed of Allah! From his own mouth came the proof that he lied! And we saw it not!Hewas thedjinn!He has made mock of the wisdom of men! How he will laugh, and all his fellows!"
She turned upon Tony. "And you-you are as stupid as thedjinn!Why did you never ask about your camels?" She paused suspiciously. "But-were they camels? Perhaps they also weredjinn!Perhaps it is all a trick! You may be anotherdjinn!This might be-"
Tony threw up his hands. "In my world," he said helplessly,"djinnare fables."
"Your world?" snapped the girl. "How many worlds did Allah make? And ifdjinnare fables, why is the throne of Barkut empty?"
"On the coins?" asked Tony as helplessly as before.
She stamped her foot once more. "On the coins and in the palace! What sort of fool are you? You say you are human? Will you drink of thelasfplant?"
She fairly blazed scorn at him; scorn and vexation and at least the beginning of bewilderment. Tony tried to placate her.
"Iflasfis not something spelled backwards with added vitamins, and if other humans drink it, I have no objection at all!"
She jumped to her feet and hurried to the barred gateway of the courtyard adjoining his cell. She spoke imperiously through the bars. Even a slave girl can be imperious to other slaves, on occasion. And there was always somebody pa.s.sing that barred gateway, with full freedom to look in. Tony had chafed at the fact-and been reproached by his conscience for chafing-when Ghail first began her daily lessons in Arabic. Lately he had become resigned. But he still wished stubbornly that things were different.
She came back with a polished bra.s.s goblet containing a liquid. She tasted it carefully, as if its contents might be doubtful, and then offered it to Tony.
"This islasf,"she said sternly. "It is poisonous to thedjinns.If you drink, it will be of your own will."
Tony drank it. From the expression on her face, it seemed to be an action of extraordinary importance.
He was tempted to make a flourish, but made a face instead. It was not wholly bad. It had a faintly reminiscent flavor, as of something he had drunk before. It tasted a little like some of the herb teas his maiden aunt had dosed him with as a child. From experience he knew that the flavor would last. He would keep tasting it all day, and it ought to be good for something or other, but he could not guess what.
He handed back the goblet.
"I wouldn't say," he remarked, "that it would be a popular soft drink back home, but I have tasted some almost as bad."