He stamped into the palace, too angry to be scared any longer. There is a certain indignation of the naive and the imaginative which practical men and politicians never understand. The innocent common citizen who believes in hair tonics and television commercials and the capitalist system, believes most firmly of all that justice and decency are going to triumph. He will endure with infinite patience as long as that belief is not challenged. But let him see injustice fortifying itself for a permanent reign; let him see deceit become frankly self-confident; then he explodes! More tyrants and dictators have been overthrown for trying to make their regimes permanent than for all their crimes. In all that had gone before, Tony had been less active than acted-upon. But now he was furious.
He found the fifteen-foot captain of his personal guard of honor. He said harshly to that cat-eyed giant:
“Captain! You will take a message immediately to your king! Say to him that as his guest, I request a favor of the highest importance! I wish a proclamation to be made everywhere within the palace saying that I, your king’s guest, have been insulted by one Es-Souk, who after attempting to assassinate me while I slept, fled in terror when I grappled with him. The proclamation is to say that I had intended to ask the king to pardon him so that he could accept my challenge, and that now I have demanded of the king that I still be allowed to do battle with Es-Souk unless he is afraid to fight me. The king, therefore, grants safe-conduct to Es-Souk to an appointed place of single combat, and that the king commands his presence there because of the disgrace to all the djinn folk if one of them is too much of a coward to fight a single man. And you will tell the king that if Es-Souk is afraid to fight me—as I believe—then I demand that some other djinn take his place unless all djinns are afraid of me!”
The guard-captain towered over Tony, more than twice his height. For the honorable post of official guardian of the king’s guest’s safety, he had chosen a form neatly combining impressiveness and ferocity. He looked remarkably like an oversized black leopard walking on his hind legs and wearing a green-and-gold velvet uniform. Now his cat-eyes glared down into Tony’s. But Tony, staring up, stared him down.
“Incidentally,” snarled Tony, “you can tell the king that I’m quite aware that I’m being insulting, and that nobody will blame him if I get killed in single combat of this sort!”
“Lord,” purred the djinn captain of the guard, “I shall give the king your message.”
He saluted and walked with feline grace toward the nearest doorway. There, however, he was momentarily stalled, because some other djinn assigned to being a part of the palace had grown bored with the design of his part of the structure, and had changed the door sizes. The captain of the guard had to stoop and crawl through a doorway to go on his errand.
Tony paced up and down, growing angrier by the second. He had never fancied himself as a fighting man, and he did not fancy himself as one now. He simply felt the consuming fury of a man who feels that somebody is trying to make a sucker out of him. He fairly steamed with fury.
His valet, Abdul, watched him with wide eyes. He saw Tony muttering to himself, white with the anger which filled him. He said unhappily:
“Lord—”
Tony whirled on him.
“What is it?” he demanded savagely.
“You are very angry,” said Abdul. “And—lord, created beings do not grow angry when they are afraid. You are not afraid.”
“Is that all?” demanded Tony.
Abdul squirmed as if embarrassed. As if embarrassed, too, his whole body rippled in the beginning of a transformation into something else. He repressed it and returned to the appearance of a short, stout, swaggering djinn with a turban. But he was not swaggering now.
“It appears, lord,” he said apologetically, “that you know you can destroy Es-Souk, or whatever other champion appears to do battle with you.”
Tony glared at him. He thought he could, but he was not sure. His line of reasoning was tenuous, but he believed it enough, certainly, to risk his life on it. Yet he could not have managed that belief, at all, without his hot anger at the clumsily smart trick the djinn king had so obviously contrived. It was not fair. It was too smart. And it was complacent. The complacency may have been the most enraging part of the whole thing.
“I am quite willing,” said Tony, strangling with fury, “to take on the whole damned djinn nation, beginning now, and including your fellow-djinns who happen to be the floors and walls of this room!”
Abdul said tentatively:
“Lord, we djinn are the most powerful of created beings. Therefore we can only have as our ruler the most powerful of created beings. Any less—any whom we could destroy—it would be beneath our dignity to obey.”
Tony turned his back. He paced up and down. There was a pause. Then:
“I take a great risk,” said Abdul plaintively. “Lord, will you permit me to obey you?”
“No!” snapped Tony. “Go to the devil! Get out!”
Abdul sighed. Mournfully, but elegantly, he turned into a large mass of black, inky liquid which sank in funeral fashion to the floor and flowed toward the doorway. But it did not open the door—it went out through the crack underneath. Tony was alone.
He looked at the cigarette lighter in his hand. He touched his three separate pockets where phials of lasf—one almost empty, now—reposed. He reflected with savage satisfaction that it was not likely that he could be killed without some mangling, and that at least one of the bottles of lasf was practically sure to be smashed. And Tony’s information on lasf was confined to about three sentences from Ghail, and one experience. And the picture of the leaf the Queen had drawn. That was all he knew. But he could extend his knowledge of a common phenomenon in the United States and guess that the Barkutian use of lasf was woefully inefficient. With a cigarette lighter he could do better.
The door opened again. The commander of the guard of honor was back. He saluted profoundly.
“Lord,” he purred. “The king has made the proclamation you requested. He has appointed a place for the combat. He has given Es-Souk safe-conduct, and Es-Souk has appeared from hiding in the form of a rug on the audience-chamber floor and prepares himself for battle.”
“Very well,” snapped Tony, “I’ll go there at once. If he isn’t afraid, he’ll follow immediately.”
The djinn captain saluted again, with enormous formality, and withdrew for the second time.
Something stirred on the floor. A cockroach waggled its feelers imploringly, turned into an explosively expanding mistiness, and condensed again as Abdul.
“Lord!” said the stout djinn imploringly. “Hear me but a moment! The walls of this palace hear and report to the king! I asked to obey you. The king will know. If you do not accept me and protect me, I am lost!”
Tony shrugged.
“Unless,” he said skeptically, “this is more of your king’s conniving!”
“I swear by the beard of the Prophet!” panted Abdul. “Truly, lord, I can be most useful! Protect me, lord, and you will have the fleetest horse, the swiftest hound… I will carry you to the place of combat! I will bring you the fairest women! I will steal chickens—”
“Hm…” said Tony. “I suspect I did talk too fast. Where is this place of combat, anyhow?”
“I know, lord! I will take you there—”