The six councilors smoked and coughed and made other elderly noises. Tony opened his mouth to speak, and again the slave girl forestalled him.
In his home land, said Ghail truculently, Tony was of a rank second to none. This was her interpretation of his attempt to explain that nobody in America was of higher rank than even he was, as a citizen. He was a prince, Ghail elaborated, journeying in quest of adventure and to see the peoples of the earth—an activity considered highly appropriate in princes. His people had so subdued the djinn that they, though only humans, rode in the air with ease and safety, and spake to each other privately though a thousand miles apart, and traveled in personal vehicles with the power of forty and fifty and a hundred horses, and were mightier in war than any other people under the sun.
These statements also Tony had made in the course of his language lessons. He had thought Ghail impressed, then, and she was not an easy person to awe; and now she repeated them parrot-like, with a belligerent air, as if daring anybody to question them. In short, she said, Tony was a very dangerous person. On the side of Barkut he would be dangerous to the djinn. On the side of the djinn —and the king of the djinn had already tried to allure him by the charms of a djinnee —he would be dangerous to Barkut. Therefore he should either be secured as an ally of Barkut, or else executed immediately before he could set out to help the djinn.
Tony said feebly, “But—”
“Did you not tell me that you were in the greatest of all wars?” Ghail demanded. “In which millions of humans were killed? Did you not say that your nation ended the war by destroying cities instantly, in flame hotter than the hottest fire?”
Tony had unquestionably mentioned atomic bombs. He had also said that he was in the war. He had not mentioned that he spent it at a typewriter—because, of course, Ghail would not know what a typewriter was.
“So you,” said the slave girl firmly, “will swear by the beard of the Prophet to lead the armies of Barkut to victory over the djinn —or else—”
* * *
Ultimately he swore, gloomily and at length, on a book with a binding of marvelously ornamented richness. It was a Koran, and he had never read it and did not believe its contents. More, he did not know what sort of beard the Prophet had affected, so it could not be said that there was a meeting of minds, and possibly the contract was not really valid. But he felt an obligation, nevertheless.
Late that night, unable to sleep, it recurred. The ancient men of the Council of Regents of Barkut had given him their confidence out of the direness of their need. The slave girl Ghail counted on him, because there was no one else to turn to. The danger to Barkut from the djinn, he gathered, was extreme. The plant lasf was a partial protection against the djinn, but bullets merely stung them, and lasf grew constantly more difficult to come by, and the djinn grew bolder and bolder as the humans in Barkut ran into the technological difficulties inherent in a shortage of lasf. Four years ago, the king of the local djinn had, in person, kidnapped the authentic queen of Barkut and now held her prisoner. Hence the empty throne and the Council of Regents. For some reason not clear to Tony, the ruler of Barkut could not actually be injured by a djinn, though her subjects were not so fortunate. Therefore the Queen’s only sufferings were imprisonment and the ardent courtship of the djinn king. Still…