“Very impressive,” he said judicially. “But actually, you tell me these are simply djinn who 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. Djinns can 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 the djinn. 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 pass 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 pass turned, and widened a little and narrowed again. The entrance to the farther and still narrower part of the pass 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 pass. 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-glass windows. They looked balefully down at the djinn trooper.
He bellowed again. The nostrils puffed. Then the gigantic mouth opened. It looked rather like the raising of a drawbridge for the passage 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 the djinn king in the distance. It was huge. It was ablaze with lights. And the passageway 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 stratocumuli, hundreds of feet above the camels of the caravan. The heads of the giants were invisible. Tony felt very small. To reassure himself he said amiably to Ghaiclass="underline"
“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 the djinn—
“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, and djinnees in 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 that djinn are 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 the djinn king’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 robed djinn chamberlain 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 a djinnee who 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 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.