Gateway to Elsewhere by Leinster Murray

Author:Leinster, Murray [Leinster, Murray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, NewBook, Science Fiction
Amazon: B07TF687XK
Goodreads: 9120641
Publisher: Gateway
Published: 1954-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

By midnight he was yawning. At half-past midnight he could keep his eyes open only with difficulty. At one he went apologetically, and alone, to bed. His conscience could hardly believe it. And when at last it ventured upon those sternly virtuous commendations which, coming from a good conscience, are supposed to be the most precious things in life, Tony yawned again.

But no conscience is approving for more than the briefest of intervals. Tony’s almost instantly afterward observed that it was outrageous for him to think of sleeping in his clothes! He hadn’t drunk enough for that! He opened boredom-bleared eyes and looked wearily around the magnificence of his sleeping apartment, and regarded the bed which was surely large enough for more than one person. He had had his lesson. He saw nothing but seemingly insensate furniture. But he knew better. Benches might totter and fall at any instant. Floor tiles might crack. And he confessed, to his conscience, what may have been the true reason for his insensibility:

“I just feel,” he said drearily, “that I havent any privacy.”

And then he slept.

Came the dawn. And with the dawn came Nasim. It was so early that Tony had barely opened his eyes. He was thinking those more or less gloomy thoughts with which a man customarily greets a new day, when a small whirlwind some three and a half feet high came in through the doorway of his room. Atop it, Nasim’s beaming countenance glowed with excitement. Tony turned over and realized that he had slept fully dressed, including his shoes. He sat up wearily.

“Hello, Nasim. Thanks for the camel ride. That was you. wasn’t it?”

She giggled. “I asked to do it. I said it would be a privilege. It was!” Then she said, “That slave girl doesn’t like you! It’s terrible! A slave girl not liking her master! And you don’t like her either. You said she was intelligent. I’m glad I found out! I was going to make a study of her so I could take her form and fool you some day. It would have been a good joke on you! But now I won’t.”

For some reason, Tony’s hair tended to stand up all over his head. But he yawned.

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. It wouldn’t be amusing.” Then he asked, “How’d you get past the guards? Somebody told you the countersign?”

She giggled again. “I was a little centipede running along the floor. They didn’t see me. Anyhow, the king wents me to find out why you were bored last night. Were you—” she sighed and looked at him hopefully— “were you being true to me?”

Tony felt a sort of inward jolt. Nasim, in his mind, was associated with beetles and moth eggs and grease spots. Now centipedes, too.

“I guess that was a sort of—mm—by-product of something else, Nasim,” he said forlornly. “I just didn’t feel romantic last night. That’s all. Did the king say anything else about me?”

“He’s going to execute Es-Souk for trying to kill somebody he’s decided he wants to be friends with,” said Nasim virtuously.

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