Tony was, he admitted regretfully, disappointed. He’d marched to his assigned quarters in the palace between long lines of djinn courtiers, 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 passed were sneaking away hastily, and he strongly suspected that they were running around ahead of him to assume new forms—including new costumes and jewels—and stand in line again. And, since in assuming 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 passed.
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-shell; 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 of djinns to 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 the djinns gave 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 the djinnees who wore human forms and practically nothing else and who sang lustily and danced enthusiastically for Tony’s benefit. But he had seen precision dancers both in person and on the stage. Also, these djinnees misguidedly strove for beauty after Arab notions, and in consequence were markedly steatopygian, which is to say, bell-bottomed. So that when by djinn standards the performance was at its hottest, Tony was moved to homesickness. There is an art in doing the bumps. There is a definite technique to the striptease. And the djinnees, 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 the djinns, 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 assured his conscience—by the various forms of entertainment passed by boards of censorship in the United States. He was unaffected by the temptations of the djinns because—via technicolor—he had been tempted by professionals against whom the djinnees simply did not stand up. In fact, Tony assured his conscience regretfully, it seemed that where djinnees were 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.
“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 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 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. “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.”
The whirlwind enlarged a little. Tony watched in alarm as a human figure began to show pinkly through the mist which was Nasim as a whirlwind. He grew apprehensive. He called anxiously:
“Clothes, Nasim!”
His cry came almost too late, but not quite. The very last of the mist which was her whirlwind form materialized about her as a Mother Hubbard wrapper of absolute shapelessness. Then she beamed at him breathlessly.
“I always forget, don’t I?”
Even in human form, Nasim was chubby. Her eyes were not the elongated animal eyes of male djinns, though, and apparently she had remembered with some care not to have her ears pointed. But Nasim, naturally, could not imagine an expression which was not intellectually kaput. She came coyly and sat down on the bed close to Tony. The bed yielded surprisingly under her weight, which gave Tony something to think about.
“I’m going to whisper,” she said archly. She bent close—
Ghail, whispering in his ear on camel-back last night, had provided a very pleasant sensation; but somehow Nasim was different.
“The king wants you for a friend because of the way your nation destroys cities in war,” she whispered. “In just a bit of a second, in flames hotter than the hottest fire.” She drew back and beamed at him. “Now, isn’t that nice of me?” she demanded aloud. “Listen again!”
She bent over. Tony listened, trying to think what meaning atomic bombs could possibly have to a king of the djinn.
“When Es-Souk is executed, it will be like that,” the coy voice whispered. “They’ll explode poor Es-Souk, and he will be just a terrible explosion hotter than the hottest flame. And I told the king that you told the slave girl your country keeps djinn on reservations. So the king knows that your country must explode djinns to destroy your enemies’ cities, and he’s afraid you’ll tell the people of Barkut how to do it too.”
Tony’s flesh crawled. It was not altogether the discovery that when a djinn was executed he exploded. Any creature which could change its size from that of a grain of sand to a whirlwind… such a creature could not be ordinary matter. Not flesh and blood with sex-hormones and mineral salts to taste. It would have to be something different. A mixture of loosely knit neutrons and electrons and positrons and so on—Tony’s knowledge of nuclear physics came from the Sunday supplements—and even that was startling enough, but not horrifying. The thing that made Tony’s flesh crawl was that every djinn and djinnee must be in effect an atomic bomb. Which could be set off. They’d avoid it if possible, of course. The djinn king was scared to death of the bare idea. But no human could feel comfortable sitting on a large bed with an atomic bomb next to him. Especially, perhaps, when the bomb was wearing nothing but a Mother Hubbard wrapper and felt romantic.
Tony got up hastily. Nasim looked reproachfully at him.
“That’s not nice!” she pouted. “I tell you nice things and you jump up! Now you sit right back down here and whisper something nice to me!”
Tony shivered. He racked his brains for a suitable thing to say which would be romantic enough and yet not commit him. He bent over.
“You know other djinns are listening.” he said, dry-throated. “So, of course…” Then he swallowed and went on: “I’m going to ask the king for Es-Souk’s life. I don’t want him to die on my account. I”—he gulped audibly—“I can fight my own battles.” Against atomic bombs, too! his conscience added acidly.
Nasim looked at him in disappointment. “I suppose that’s noble of you,” she said plaintively, “but it isn’t very romantic! You aren’t nice to me! You get angry when I forget about wearing clothes, and—”
“I said only last night that you were a pearl among camels, didn’t I?” demanded Tony harassedly. “After all, you don’t want to rouse the beast in me, do you?”
She giggled, and he added desperately: “—In public?”
“Well…” she said forgivingly, “I hadn’t thought of that. I understand now. I’ll think of something. And I guess I’ll go now.”
She got up and trailed toward the door, a dumpy, rotund little figure in a wrapper that dragged lopsidedly on the floor behind her. At the door she stopped and giggled again.
“You saying something about a beast just reminded me,” she said brightly. “That slave girl you brought with you sent a message. She said that if you can spare time from your beastly amusements, the Queen of Barkut wants to talk to you.”
Tony tensed all over.
“How the hell do I ring for somebody to guide me around this place?” he demanded feverishly. “She and Ghail are waiting!”
“Anybody’ll show you,” said Nasim. “Just ask your servants.”
“I haven’t any servants,” said Tony agitatedly. “Only those guards outside.”
“Oh, yes, you’ve got servants,” Nasim insisted. “The king told them not to intrude on you but to be on hand if you wanted them. I’m sure he appointed a friend of mine to be your valet. Abdul! Abdul! Where are you?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw an infinitesimal stirring up near the ceiling. He spun to face it. A cockroach—quite a large cockroach—appeared on top of the drapes by a window. It waggled its feelers at them.
“Hello, Abdul!” said Nasim. “The great prince who is the king’s guest wants to see the Queen of Barkut in her dungeon. Will you take him there?”
A sudden, geyserlike stream of water spouted out from where the cockroach stood. Hard and powerful, like a three-inch jet from a fire hose. It arched across the room, hit the farther side and splashed loudly, ran down the wall to the floor, and there suddenly jetted upward again in a waterspout which, in turn, solidified into a swaggering short stout djinn with a purple turban.
He bowed to the ground before Tony.
“This way, lord,” he said profoundly, “to the Queen of Barkut.”
Glassy-eyed, Tony followed him out of the door.