Tony looked out a window at their escort. Ten-footdjinnson twenty-foot camels. Bearded, mustachioed, tusked and pointed-eared monstrosities, with spears as tall as their camels, with monstrous scimitars as tall as Tony himself, with garments of silk and velvet and garnished with gigantic precious stones which gleamed even in the moonlight. A hundred of them, no less, keeping close formation about the beast on which Tony and Ghail the slave girl rode.
In the moonlight, thedjinnguard looked bored. It probably was boring, Tony reflected abstractedly, to be plodding at a mere forty miles an hour over endless sand, on the back of an acquaintance metamorphosized into a camel who would presently expect you to change places with him. This kind of exchange was taking place with some regularity. At least camels and their riders dropped out of formation and fell behind, and presently new camels and new riders came hurrying up from the rear to resume the place that had been vacated.
A lurching of the camel threw Ghail against him. She was veiled, now, and swathed in all the drapery of a woman dressed for travel or the street. She was singularly remote, too. Back at Barkut"s city gate, she had climbed the ladder to the camel cabin-at the height of a second-story window-with an air of extreme aloofness, ignoring the demoniacdjinnguardsmen waiting about. Tony had been unable to match her dignity as he scrambled up and joined her in the small, close coupe. The guard had formed up about them and they had gone sweeping away into the desert darkness, leaving the city"s faint and twinkling light behind. Ghail had spoken no word then, and she did not speak now. The silence was burdensome. A moment later the camel lurched again. Tony was thrown almost into her lap.
"I"m sorry," he said politely. "Bad road, this."
"There is no road," said Ghail composedly. "We have reached the foothills of the mountains, and thedjinn are not used to walking. They wished to carry us in whirlwinds, but in your name I declined."
"I suppose," agreed Tony, "we"d have gotten dizzy."
He fell silent again. Another monstrous lurch, and Ghail landed almost exactly on his knee. He helped her back into her own place again and said: "Look here! We"d better have some system about this! I know you disapprove of me thoroughly, but in default of safety-belts I"d better put my arm around you."
The camel seemed to stumble and Tony grabbed. They were suddenly upright again, and his arm was firmly around her and she made no protest.
"I don"t disapprove of you especially," she said with some primness, "but all men are alike."
"The observation is remarkably original," he told her. "I suppose you are also prepared to tell me that I do not respect you?"
She turned her head. Her lips were close to his ear. She whispered fiercely: "The camel is adjinn! It"s listening!"
"True," said Tony. "d.a.m.n! No privacy even here!"
He stared gloomily out at the moonlit foothills which now had arisen from the desert and seemed to lead on through deeply shadowed moonlight toward mountains which also were alternately shadowed and shining ahead. He suddenly felt a soft hand groping for his. It pressed his fingers meaningfully. He squeezed back, encouraged beyond expectation. But the hand was s.n.a.t.c.hed away.
Soft warm breath on his neck. A furious whisper in his ear: "Iwanted to tell you something! Here islasf.In tiny gla.s.s phials you can break in case of need. Then no djinnwill come near you. It is for your protection!"
Tony put out his hand again. One very small smooth gla.s.s object, the size of his thumb or smaller. He put it away. He reached again. Another. A third. He put them in separate pockets to avoid the danger of breaking them against each other. He put his lips to her ear.
"Thanks. Have you some for yourself?"
"Of course! And some for the Queen, to protect her when you lead our armies to her rescue-when you are ready to destroy thedjinn.Now you had better talk, since you have begun!"
He leaned back, as well as he could considering the violent and erratic movements of thedjinncamel"s gait. He suddenly began to feel better. After all, qualified privacy on adjinn"sback might have its points.
"Hm. . . ." he said aloud. "In my country thedjinnhave been subdued so long-they"re kept on reservations-that humans don"t bother about them any more. I"ve even forgotten the stuff one learns about them in first grade at school. It seems extraordinary to me that they can change their size so much.
Their shape, yes. In my country even human women can do remarkable things to their shapes with girdles and falsies. You"d hardly believe! And of course they change their coloring. But size, absolute size, no. . .
Ghail stirred uneasily. But she spoke as primly as before.
"Djinnsare elastic," she said. "With the same amount of substance they can be as large as a whirlwind.
Or as small as a grain of sand, though no one could possibly pick them up-for always they weigh the same."
"You mean," asked Tony, with interest, "that adjinnin the shape of a bug or-hm-a moth"s egg, weighs as much as when he or she is a camel and that sort of thing?"
Ghail caught hold of his right hand, and held it firmly. "That is it, yes," she said shortly.
"Then that," said Tony blithely, "explains why the bench in the courtyard turned over. Adjinnbeetle was climbing on it. It explains a lot of things."
Ghail held his left hand. She ground her teeth. "Thanks," said Tony. "Since we don"t get thrown around so much this ride is much more fun, isn"t it?"
Ghail turned her head and whispered in his ear, strangling with fury: "As soon as you have destroyed thedjinnI am going to kill you!"
Tony beamed in the darkness inside the small cabin on top of the lurching camel. Ghail held his hands, muttering fiercely. His arm was about her shoulders. The combination made the b.u.mping and swaying and unholy undulations of the beast not at all annoying-to Tony.
"There"s another thing I"d like to ask about," he said cheerfully. "When you were teaching me to speak your language, you wore a very sensible hot-weather costume. I mean, there wasn"t too much of it.
About like the bathing suits girls wear back at home. And you very properly didn"t seem embarra.s.sed.
But that was only when you thought I was adjinn.As soon as you found out I wasn"t, you got all bothered. In fact, you blushed in the most unlikely places. . . . Why?"
She said through clenched teeth: "Djinnsare not human. I would not be embarra.s.sed before a cat, either. Or a slave. But a man, yes!"
"Yet Esir and Esim-"
"They would have been embarra.s.sed too, before they were given to you and were your slaves." Her voice quivered with fury. "I am dressed as I am because I travel with you."
Then she hissed into his ear: "When this is over I will see that you are boiled in oil! You will be fed to dogs! You will be torn into little pieces-"
Tony"s ear tingled pleasantly. He continued to beam in the darkness as the twenty-foot camel which was actually adjinnwent swaying and lurching through the night.
It had been two hours" journey across the desert proper-a caravan might make forty miles a day if pressed, but this camel made that much in an hour-and it was another hour before thedjinnking"s court appeared to be nearing. The evidence of approach was fairly obvious. The troop ofdjinnguards approached a narrow pa.s.s between precipitous cliffs. It was guarded by two colossal shapes with flaming eyes. They stood forty feet high, in gleaming armor, and they carried battle-axes whose blades were more than a man-height wide, with shafts the size of palm trees. They challenged in voices like thunder. The cavalcade halted. A guttural voice gave a countersign. The gigantic guards drew back. Tony watched with interest.
"Very impressive," he said judicially. "But actually, you tell me these are simplydjinnwho have extended themselves-decompressed themselves, you might say-to reach those rather excessive dimensions. At that size they"re not much more substantial than so much fog, are they? How can they handle such axes?"
"The axes," said Ghail shortly, "are a part of themselves.Djinnscan take the appearance of a chest of coins or jewels, which seem like many objects. But to pull away one coin or jewel would be to pull away a part of thedjinn.You could not. The axes are a part of their form. So are their garments and the ornaments they wear."
"Hm," said Tony, "I see."
The cavalcade went on. The pa.s.s through the mountains grew more narrow and more straight. The cliffs above it grew steeper, until the giant camels with their giant riders rode in utter darkness with only a ribbon of star-studded sky above them. Then the pa.s.s turned, and widened a little and narrowed again.
The entrance to the farther and still narrower part of the pa.s.s was completely closed by something only bright starlight enabled Tony to believe he saw. It was the head of a dragon with closed eyes, seemingly dozing. It completely filled the pa.s.s. Great nostrils the size of subway tunnels gave out leisurely puffs of smoke the size of subway trains.
The caravan moved up to it and halted. The leader of the guard bellowed. The great eyes of the dragon"s head opened. Each was as large-so Tony estimated-as one of Macy"s plate-gla.s.s windows. They looked balefully down at thedjinntrooper.
He bellowed again. The nostrils puffed. Then the gigantic mouth opened. It looked rather like the raising of a drawbridge for the pa.s.sage of a tow of coal barges. It gaped wide. Flames played luridly, far down the exposed throat.
The caravan moved smartly into the wide-held jaws. It went comfortably down into the flame-lined maw- And suddenly the low-hanging moon shone brightly on a wide valley with the palace of thedjinnking in the distance. It was huge. It was ablaze with lights. And the pa.s.sageway to it was lined with giants whose feet, only, were visible. Legs thicker than the thickest tree trunks rose overhead. Bellies protruded rather like fleshy stratoc.u.muli, hundreds of feet above the camels of the caravan. The heads of the giants were invisible. Tony felt very small. To rea.s.sure himself he said amiably to Ghail: "It must be a fairly calm night. If not, expanded as they are, even a light breeze would make these giants wobble all over the place like captive balloons."
Ghail put Tony"s right hand firmly in front of him. She released it. She took his left arm and removed it firmly from her shoulders.
"We are almost there," she said shortly. "You will ask that I be taken to our Queen in her prison, that she may have the solace of a human woman to weep with her in her captivity."
There was sudden uneasiness, even anxiety, in her voice. In fact, it wavered a little. And Tony knew why she was frightened. She traveled as his slave. Here, among thedjinn- "I"ll do that," he told her almost remorsefully. "I"ve been pretty much of a beast, haven"t I? But I"ll see that you"re toddled off to your Queen while I see the king and listen to his offers of bribes."
She adjusted her veil and swathing robes.
"You will not see him tonight!" she said bitterly. "You will be shown to your apartment, and there he will send refreshments and entertainment to beguile you so that you will wish alliance with him instead of Barkut! There will be wine, anddjinneesin the form of women, and everything that is disreputable to appeal to a man!"
Tony managed to look shocked. Actually, it sounded interesting.
"You mean thatdjinnare as immoral as all that?"
"Of course!" she said more bitterly still. "They are stupid! They are unbelievably stupid! So of course they are immoral! And if they were not stupid, and probably if they were not immoral, we humans would have no chance against them at all! And it is because men are so stupid that they are so immoral, and-and-"
Suddenly, she was crying. And Tony patted her shoulder comfortingly, and took aside her veil and wiped her eyes. And as suddenly she was not crying at all, but looking at him very strangely.
"What-what do you think of me now?" she asked in a small voice.
"My dear," said Tony with a sigh, "I think you are probably the most intelligent girl I ever met in my life."
The caravan halted before the intricately sculptured gateway of thedjinnking"s palace, and there was no more time for even semiprivate conversation.
Tony descended from the camel in a very stately fashion. To the gorgeously robeddjinnchamberlain who greeted him in the king"s name, he relayed Ghail"s request-that she be allowed to share the captivity of the Queen of Barkut during his visit. Shortly, Ghail went away behind adjinneewho was at the moment some twelve feet tall, of a greenish complexion, and wearing a necklace of diamonds each one of which was a good deal larger than a baseball. Tony chatted amiably with the chamberlain who greeted him as a prince and a general of Barkut.
"A most comfortable journey!" said Tony, as a procession formed up to escort him to his quarters.
"Your camels, in particular, arouse my admiration!"
He swaggered in exactly the manner of the solitary general he had come in contact with in the greatest war of the human race.
"Admirable!" he repeated in that general"s very tones. "The one who carried me is a very pearl among camels!" The camel he had ridden turned its head. It looked at him sentimentally. It sighed gustily. It giggled.
Nasim.
Chapter 10.
Tony was, he admitted regretfully, disappointed. He"d marched to his a.s.signed quarters in the palace between long lines ofdjinncourtiers, who should have dazzled him with their silks, satins, jewels, and furs.
But once a slight noise behind him made him turn his head, and he discovered that the courtiers he had just pa.s.sed were sneaking away hastily, and he strongly suspected that they were running around ahead of him to a.s.sume new forms-including new costumes and jewels-and stand in line again. And, since in a.s.suming a new form they also provided themselves with the costumes and ornaments that went with it, he remained undazzled even by ropes of pearls as big as hen"s eggs, and rubies as big as grapefruit, and so on and on. Jewels of that sort, he was able to remark to his alert and highly suspicious conscience, were in rather bad taste. If you tried to pull one off-though that would be bad taste too-it would be like trying to take away somebody"s nose or ear. The jewels were, in fact, not marketable commodities.
They were in effect paste, and therefore showed a lamentable lack of imagination.
His conscience bitterly reminded him of Ghail"s forecasts of libidinous entertainment waiting to refresh him after his journey. Tony brightened. He was more than a little tired, but he had often wondered-as who has not?-whether what the censors cut was one-half so lurid as the stuff they pa.s.sed.
There was a guard of honor in the anteroom before his suite. Tony went through the motions of inspecting it.
Twelve-foot giants looked down at him through yellow cat"s-eyes with airs of truculence. The commander of the guard grandly asked for the countersign for Tony"s personal guard for the night. Tony thought of Ghail.
"The word," he said, "is "Solitude.""
Then he went to look at his bedroom.
Like the rest of his lodging it was on a scale of lavishness to be found only in three-million-dollar-budget motion pictures. His bed had apparently been carved from a tremendous limpet-sh.e.l.l; the walls were iridescent; the furniture was onyx and gold; his quarters in the palace in Barkut were practically sub-minimal housing by comparison-yet he could not find a thrill in it. Ghail had spoiled everything by that unfortunate comment on the ability ofdjinnsto take any form they wished, including chests of coins and jewels. It spoiled things for him. It spoiled even the effect of the utterly lavish, super-tremendous banquet hall to which he was presently taken for refreshment.
He was very hopeful as the affair began, but he fell into gentle melancholy as thedjinnsgave him the works. They intended, evidently, to give him the sort of evening that would be a True Believer"s dream.
And from their standpoint it was undoubtedly total entertainment without even the sky as a limit. But Tony derived only a morbid pleasure from the anguished moans of his conscience as the floor show progressed. To a citizen of the United States, accustomed to a nineteen-dollar radio for music, TV girl-shows and the Radio City Music Hall as seen from a dollar-forty seat, practically any bathing beach in summer, and an occasional burlesque show over in New Jersey, the thing was pathetic.
A normal male inhabitant of Barkut might have been ravished-in several senses-by the crystal bowl of wine which was big enough for several girls to swim in, and by the girls who did swim in it. But Tony had seen colored movies of an All-American girls" swimming meet. An unsophisticated Arab might have been enchanted by thedjinneeswho wore human forms and practically nothing else and who sang l.u.s.tily and danced enthusiastically for Tony"s benefit. But he had seen precision dancers both in person and on the stage. Also, thesedjinneesmisguidedly strove for beauty after Arab notions, and in consequence were markedly steatopygian, which is to say, bell-bottomed. So that when bydjinnstandards the performance was at its hottest, Tony was moved to homesickness. There is an art in doing the b.u.mps. There is a definite technique to the striptease. And thedjinnees,willing workers as they were, didn"t have it.
Tony"s conscience screamed shrilly at the beginning, when he failed to rise and depart amid blushes. But as he sat, a sad and lonely and a disappointed figure, immune to the lavish immorality of thedjinns,his conscience was amazed. It had been prepared for the battle of its existence, and was girded for it. But antibodies to vice had been generated in Tony"s system-so he a.s.sured his conscience-by the various forms of entertainment pa.s.sed by boards of censorship in the United States. He was unaffected by the temptations of thedjinnsbecause-via technicolor-he had been tempted by professionals against whom thedjinneessimply did not stand up. In fact, Tony a.s.sured his conscience regretfully, it seemed that where djinneeswere concerned, he simply couldn"t take yes for an answer.
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 haven"t 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.
"h.e.l.lo, 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 wants 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 a.s.sociated 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. "And he wants you to watch. I feel sorry for poor Es-Souk! He couldn"t help being jealous of me! And also the king"s terribly anxious to find out how to make you his friend instead of a general for Barkut."
"Do you know," said Tony, "I"d give a lot to know why he"s so anxious!"
Nasim beamed at him; just a plump little whirlwind three and a half feet tall, spinning in the middle of Tony"s bedroom, which itself looked something like the foyer of a super-plushy hotel at thirty-five dollars a day without bath. She looked, Tony reflected dismally, rather cute for a whirlwind. A bit on the chubby side, to be sure, but anybody who cared for whirlwinds would appreciate Nasim. Such a person would be eager to have her for a pet. Still- "I"m going to whisper in your ear," said Nasim coyly. "And I"ll have to take human form to get close enough."