“Chemically?” queried the Queen. Ghail stood still, looking strangely at Tony.
“Of course,” said Tony. “I had you draw me a picture of the lasf -leaf. Remember? And I recognized it. We have that plant in my country. We call it hogweed, or ragweed. It’s a pest to some humans.”
The Queen listened. Tony drank more coffee.
“Ragweed,” he said. “Sneezing. You anoint your weapons with it. The djinns run away. Sometimes they sneeze. And I’d drunk some of the stuff the other day and that night Es-Souk tried to strangle me, and I coughed. And he sneezed. That’s ragweed, all right! The pollen is worst of all. It hits some human people too. You see?”
The Queen said brightly: “I fear not, Lord Toni.”
“Ragweed; sneezing; hay fever,” explained Tony. “The djinns are subject to hay fever. It’s an allergy. A racial trait. Ragweed, which doesn’t bother most humans, is deadly poison to them. Like DDT to bugs. It’s so strong a poison that merely its odor sets them crazy. You people have been wasting the stuff. You’ve swabbed guns and bullets with it. It dried, and by the time you got to where you were going to fight the djinn, most of it was gone. They ran away from the dried, dusty remains that by pure accident stuck to your weapons. You see? That night in my bedroom I had the stuff on my breath. When I coughed, Es-Souk got a whiff of it. And I figured that if so little of it would chase him, the real stuff tossed down his throat would really go to town. And it did!”
He looked hopefully at them. But he knew no Arabic word for “allergy” or “hay fever” or “pollen,” or for “radioactive” or “fissionable” or “atomic.” Even the English word “ragweed” in an Arabic context did not seem to mean lasf to the Queen or Ghail. To the two of them, he seemed to be speaking quite sincerely about matters so erudite as to be beyond their understanding. And at that it would have taken him a week to clarify the word “allergy.” They would never have understood DDT. The Queen dismissed the explanation.
“Doubtless it is clear to you, Lord Toni,” she observed, “but we poor women find it too involved. You speak of the magics and arts of your own nation. What shall you do now?”
Tony blinked. Then he remembered his anger.
“I’m going to see the king,” he said indignantly. “He arranged that business of Es-Souk’s escape, dammit! He expected to get me killed, with himself in the clear! I’m going to give him the devil! And if he acts up,” he added truculently, “I’ll blow on my cigarette lighter! That will hardly set him off, but it’ll scare him green!”