“That’ll have to do,” Drake said. He turned to Sharon. “You first, honey. And get to the State Department as fast as you can when you get to Washington. Remember, don’t waste a second!” He kissed her suddenly. Wait for me, darling. It will only be a year.”
“I’ll wait,” Sharon said. She smiled mistily. “If you don’t show up I’m coming back to get you. And remember, I’m a gal who keeps her word. I never told a story in my life.”
“That’s right,” Drake said. “But—” He stopped abruptly and stared at her, a smile breaking on his face. A dozen facts fitted suddenly together in his mind forming a complete and definite pattern. He started to laugh. “The hell you didn’t!” he said. You’re the greatest story-teller of all time. Why, hell, honey, you’re Scheherazade!”
Sharon stared at him in bewilderment.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Nothing could be more obvious,” Drake grinned. “You certainly remember the story of Scheherazade, the heroine of the Arabian Nights? The beautiful damsel who bewitched the Caliph of Bagdad with her highly imaginative stories and saved her own life by so doing.”
“But,” Sharon protested, blushing, “I never told him anything like the stories in the Arabian Nights! Those stories are terrible. I mean,” she added hastily, “I’ve been told they’re terrible.”
“Maybe you didn’t tell them,” Drake said, “but you certainly got credit for them. In old Arabic the name of the story teller was ‘Sharzard.’ That’s close enough to ‘Sharon Ward’ to make the entire thing fit perfectly.”
Ali Baba interrupted irritably.
“Come, we must hurry.”
“That’s right,” Drake said. He grinned at Sharon. “So long, honey. Remember, you’re going to wait for me.”
Humai led the girl to a small bench on which a delicate, coiled apparatus was set He made minute adjustments on several dials and then clamped a filament wire to Sharon’s left wrist.
“You will feel nothing,” he said gently.
“Goodbye, darling,” Sharon cried.
Drake kissed her quickly.
“A year isn’t so long,” he murmured. “And,” he grinned, stepping back from her, “you’ll have something better to do than tell stories when we get married.”
“Well,” Sharon said, dropping her eyes, “naturally.”
Drake was watching her, memorizing each of her lovely features, the curved arch of her eyebrows, the way her hair fell in waves to her shoulders, when suddenly her body seemed to shimmer, her features blurred faintly as if he were looking at her through a screen — and then she was gone!
He stepped forward involuntarily, a shocked, lost feeling in his heart.
“You are next,” Humai said.
Drake clasped Ali Baba’s hand tightly.
“Why don’t you come too? You’d be only a year beyond me. I’d wait and watch for you.”
“No, my friend,” Ali Baba smiled. Humai fastened the filament to Drake’s wrist.
“I’m sorry,” Drake said.
“So am I,” Ali Baba said, shaking his head. “We have been good comrades.”
Drake was thinking how stupid he had been in not realizing before the relationship between Sharon Ward and the Scheherazade whom most scholars considered a mythical character. He realized that the story of Ali Baba and his forty thieves would be told and retold in Bagdad and gradually take its place in the legends of the Thousand and One Nights.
If he had known that before, he wouldn’t have allowed Ali Baba and his men to blunder into the trap in the Caliph’s palace; for the story of that betrayal he had read in college. But it did no good to think of such things now.
But he did think of one other thing. “Ali Baba,” he said suddenly. “You will not be with us very long.”
“Yes, my comrade?”
“Speak quickly,” Humai said.
“Ali Baba,” Drake said, “will you promise to do me one more favor?”
“Name it, comrade, and by the sacred name of Allah, it shall be done.”
“Those poor wretches on the wheel that operates your cavern gate deserve mercy. Will you release them when you return to your cave?”
Ali Baba frowned.
“But—”
“You promised,” Drake cried.
Ali Baba shook his head disgustedly.
“All right, all right,” he said moodily. “But it is a hard thing you ask, for I have been thinking these last few hours of the exact spoke to which I would chain Tana, the foul ingrate who betrayed us. But,” he shrugged disgustedly, “as you say, I have given my promise. It shall be done.”
“Thanks, Comrade,” Drake said. “You’ll feel better yourself about — He felt a slight shiver shake his body. “Goodbye,” he said anxiously. “I think—”
His consciousness faded in a roaring spiral of darkness that seemed to pluck him upward with incredible speed and power...
When Sharon regained consciousness she was in Washington, D.C., and to her intense relief, in the twentieth century. She went directly to her apartment, where she got rid of the clothes she had worn in the Caliph’s harem; then bathed and dressed she took a cab for the State Department...
The three men at the table listened to her story, carefully, with thoughtfully pursed lips, frowns on their faces.
When she had finished, the man in the center, a tall, gray-haired gentleman, with a shrewd lined face, glanced briefly at his two companions and then turned back to her, smiling.
“Miss Ward,” he said, “we owe you a debt of thanks. From what you have told us we will be able to make the necessary preparations to check any attempt the Axis might make to invade South America.
“We should have seen the way the wind was blowing ourselves,” he continued, with a wry smile; “but sometimes even the most obvious facts are overlooked.”
“I feel relieved that it’s out of my hands,” Sharon said. “Drake — Mr. Masterson insisted that I come to you immediately.”
“He was right,” the gray haired man assured her. He paused and then frowned. “But where is Mr. Masterson now? He is one of our most able young men and there’s a number of jobs we could use him on.”
Sharon faltered.
“I really can’t tell you,” she said, because I don’t know. But he won’t be back to Washington for another year.”
“I see, Miss Ward. I realize, of course, that he must have been out of the country to gather this information.” He shook his head admiringly. “These young men have a spirit of adventure that I respect tremendously. Why this whole thing is just like something from the Arabian Nights.”
Sharon smiled.
“Isn’t it, though?” she said.
She left the offices of the State Department, feeling relieved and fairly happy. But she wondered what the devil she was going to do for a whole year...
World Beyond Belief
First published in Fantastic Adventures, August 1943.
Chapter I
Oscar Doodle arrived at his modestly furnished apartment every evening at six o’clock and by six ten he would be resting in his favorite chair sipping a glass of light sherry and reading the evening papers.
The sherry was brought to him by his Filipino houseboy, Chico, Oscar’s one extravagance.
This particular evening was no exception to the inevitable pattern. He was seated comfortably enjoying his sherry and Chico was busy in the small kitchen, preparing dinner.
Oscar Doodle was not a remarkable man. In fact if anyone was interested in making a catalogue of the prosaic, colorless, unimportant people in the country, Oscar’s name would be certain of inclusion. He had never made Who’s Who; he would have been, however, a candidate for Who Cares?