We came to call it all ‘The Miniature World of the Decremental Ifrits’. Of course it was all set in the Arabian Middle Ages which is why the show had sought me out. They were tight packed shows. We once timed one at twenty-eight seconds, and it was more jammed full of incident than you can find on any one hour TV show. It was Arabian Nights stuff, yes, but it was from the ‘Other Book of the Arabian Nights’, which is referred to in the first or known book as a thousand times more magical. You could get anything you wanted to out of the Fresh-Water Ark-Shell Show, and we got some things that scared us silly. Three of the Ark-Shell voices that came to us unbidden we identified as the voices of the Three Magi.
One of the other kids, Joe Speranza, married his girl friend the other day, just before I left. She had moved in next door to him with her family; but that was only cover for a real fact. She was an Ifrit and not a human, and she was beautiful beyond compare.
We ourselves became characters in the Fresh-Water Ark-Shell Show. If you have never been in battles where the blood was bridle-deep on your horse; if you have never swam to the bottom of the ocean with a fish-soul in one ear; if you have never made and ridden on your own flying horse, then be quiet. You haven't lived.
Then, when I was sixteen years old, I built the ‘Almost-Anything’, and it did work. I went away in it.
Since I could go anywhere I wished, I went to Baghdad in Arabian Middle Ages. The ‘Arabian Middle Ages’ is my own term, but I know in the marrow of my bones what it means. It was the time when Harun al-Rashid was Caliph of Baghdad, and when the Ifrits in their full power were everywhere.
I had always had the idea that I might have Ifrit blood in me. I believed I had a hint of their special powers and had only to find out how to develop them. My hearing may have been acute enough to overhear conversations in the heavens, as the Ifrits are able to do, if only I could learn to focus in on those conversations properly. I overheard many conversations that I could not identify; and it was always fun to know what the kids at the most distant tables were saying (even when they whispered) in our high school hangouts.
I didn't have the full change-size powers of the Master Ifrits (they could make themselves as big as a mountain or as small as a mouse), but I could, by taking thought, add at least part of cubit to my stature. I could appear to be either the tallest or the shortest boy in my class, and I was really about medium. And people said I looked very boyish for a sixteen-year-old. Well, if you’re going to live for a thousand years or more (as the Ifrits do) you will naturally remain boyish longer than shorter-lived people so. And there's another similarity between me and the Ifrits: I am simple-minded too. If I was ever going to learn about the Ifrits, this was the place to do it.
I landed in the Moslem Year 191 which was the Christian Year 813. It would be known as the ‘Year of the Three Caliphs’ (“ — for reasons unknown,” as Ketti wrote in his Arabian History, “since there were only two Caliphs in that year.”). I had worked out a plot and a role for myself (really it was a plot I had heard several years before this on the Fresh-Water Ark-Shell Show). According to this plot, all the important Spies in the Universe would be in Baghdad of Earth for a crisis not yet specified. (I'd think of a good crisis; I'd think of a lot of good twists.) And I would be Master Spy Ali ben Raad the Son of Thunder. ‘Son of Thunder’ really was my name in a way, though I'm told that the original family name was ‘Dungersohn’ or ‘Son of a Dunghill’, rather than ‘Thundersohn’ or ‘Son of Thunder’.
When I came down I noticed several space craft drifting in the low sky and pretending to be invisible. But my Almost-Anything Machine had an Anti-Invisibility Viewer on it, so I could see what all the ships looked like. My ship was as good as any of them, and it made up in smallness what it lacked in size. I made it really invisible. And I instructed it in the whistle code that I would give when I wished it to reappear.
And then I was in Great Baghdad, and I met almost immediately many of the high persons I had most wanted to meet. I met the Boy-Caliph (he had been a boy for very many years) Harun al-Rashid, and we got along well from the first instant. Some persons mistook me for Harun (he was always masquerading as a thief or spy or clown or some such), and we did look very much alike.
Harun was like quicksilver, now here, now there. His voice was almost too boyish (‘with an Ifrit treble’). And the wave of happiness that overcame anyone who intersected his aura was probably artificial or alchemical. I could understand the rumor that he had the gift of personal invisibility. Later that day I would have evidence that the rumor was true.
I met Sindbad the Sailor. He was in disguise as Master-Spy and Master-Mariner Essindibad Copperbottom from Kentauron Mikron World. I had a great desire to live all Sindbad's voyages and adventures even if it meant ousting him from his own life. I met Alexander of Astrobe; Madame Jingo; Irene of Cos who was a great beauty and who smiled at me with her flirty eyes; Qabda the Fist; the Golden Tom-Cat; people like that. Some of them had been on the Fresh-Water Ark-Shell Show.
But more than any of these I had looked forward to meeting a nameless and undefined someone I had yearned for from my earliest years. This was the ‘Mysterious Slave Girl of Beauty Unequalled’. And I saw her suddenly as I went by a Slave Market. The Slave Market was amid the ‘Three Hundred Fountains of Baghdad’ (and it was amid three hundred other slave markets). The sight of the special Slave Girl hit me like hot thunder; but something else caught the corner of my eye at the same time. It was a fresh-water ark-shell lying on the edge of one of the three hundred fountains. I had carelessly come away without any ark shell, and it was very fortunate that I found this one. I put it in my pocket, and immediately I felt more competent to take care of any situation that might arise.
The auctioneer had just sold a mixed bunch of slave girls, and now he called to the magnificent one: “You come up alone. You should bring a good price.”
“That is just what I think, you wonderful man,” the magnificent Slave Girl said. The harmony of her voice thrilled the whole City of Baghdad in every brick and stick and stone of it. And I, I couldn't get my eyes full enough of her.
“I believe you are the most beautiful girl in the world,” I said to her, and my voice hopped up and down when I said it.
“That is just what I think, you wonderful man,” the Slave Girl said. I had never heard such a gifted conversationalist in my life.
The bidding went fast and reckless for her, but… Oh, oh, oh! I had come away with no money at all. I had yearned for her unknowingly all my life, and should I lose her now for the lack of a few gold pieces? Well, the bidding had quickly gone up to three thousand gold pieces for the girl.
“Oh, Oh, Oh!” I wailed. “I will have to get an enormous sum of money right now or lose you forever.”
“That is just what I think, you wonderful man,” the girl said. Oh, her beauty! Her smile! Her sparkling conversation!
“This is Azraq-Qamar, the Blue Moon,” the auctioneer was spieling. “She is the most beautiful girl offered for sale in Baghdad today. She is also the most talented. She is also the most good-natured. She is an excellent cook, and her specialty is camel-hump stuffed with roasted coneys. She is an excellent steed capable of carrying the heaviest man on her shoulders for three land-leagues in one hour's time; and (like the camel) she can go seven days without water. She can read and write, and also play the zither. She is also the most fun of any girl offered for sale in Baghdad today. Isn't all that true of you, Blue Moon?”
“That is just what I think, you wonderful man,” Blue Moon said.
“What will I do?” I asked the ark-shell as I took it from my pocket. “If I don't come up with more than three thousand gold pieces, I'll lose her forever. And I don't have even one gold piece.”
“Reach in your pocket again,” the ark-shell said. “I noticed something else in there with me.”
I reached in my pocket again, and I brought out a certified check from the First Royal Bank of Baghdad for four thousand pieces of gol
d.
“Four thousand pieces of gold!” I bid boldly, and nobody else raised my bid. The girl Azraq-Qamar or Blue Moon belonged to me. Baghdad was the town where one might buy such a transcendent dream, such an archetypal delight, for money. I was sixteen years old this day. And yet it was the first day in my life, in my real life. However could I have lived sixteen years, or even sixteen minutes, without the wonderful Azraq-Qamar, the Fabulous Blue Moon?
“I believe we should find somebody to marry us at once,” I said.
“That is just what I think, you wonderful man,” she said with her voice that was like golden bells. There was a press of people all going one way in the street. We were caught up in the relentless flow of the people. “Where is everybody going?” I asked a handsome and ample lady of the people.
“We are going to the wedding of the great Ali ben Raad the Son of Thunder and Master Spy; his wedding to the Slave Girl Azraq-Qamar or the Blue Moon whose Christian name is Cinderella. Oh, you two are the bridal couple. Make way everybody for the wonderful groom and bride!”
It was a big wedding in a big church. It wasn't a Moslem place, though the Caliph Harun al-Rashid was there. It was Christian of one of those Eastern Rites such as they have at Saint Malachy's in Chicago. A singer sang “Paper Dolly” in Arabic, and flute players played it on flutes. We were married in a blaze of happiness and ceremony, and then we went to our palace (‘One of the nine hundred smaller palaces on Palace Street, but very nice,’ as the rental man described it). And we enjoyed perfect bliss. For about thirty seconds we enjoyed perfect bliss. And then it seemed as though Azraq-Qamar was not quite well.
“You look a little run down, my dear,” I said to her with concern.
“That is just what I think, you wonderful man,” she told me.
“Perhaps you need a doctor,” I said.
“That is just what I think, you wonder — awk!” and my beloved wife Azraq-Qamar was dead.
And immediately there was a banging on the door.
I opened the door in sorrow and irritation. Why should strangers intrude on my moment of grief. And a gang of rough men pushed their way into the room.
“We have come to take the dead woman and bury her immediately,” the largest of the banging men, of the pushing-in men, said, “for such is the custom of this City. Dead persons must be buried immediately. They generate an unhealthiness in the living when they are left unburied.”
Oh, rue and woe! They took away Azraq-Qamar, the Blue Moon, the Pearl Beyond Price, they took her away to bury her. They left me in my misery. For about ten seconds they left me. Then there was another banging on my door. And, numb with unhappiness, I opened it again.
“We have come to take the husband of the dead woman and to bury him alive with her immediately,” said the largest of the second bunch of intruding men who pushed in now, “for such is the custom of this City. A man is not much good when he has been separated from his wife by death. So then let him be united with his wife again by death. There is wisdom in all these old laws.”
Bereavement, horror, desolation, and the sharp taste of terror in my mouth! They took me away from my little palace and they brought me to a mountain on the outskirts of town. They opened up the mountain, and they put me down in it beside my dead wife, for that was the place they had buried her in. And then they closed the mountain again.
“Do just what comes naturally to you,” one of the buriers shouted down to me. “Die! That's what will come naturally to you. Die, and all your worries will vanish. And you will be at everlasting peace with the one you love.”
But my worries did not vanish. They grew horribly. My sorrow and fear overwhelmed me. Oh the bleak hours that I spent there waiting for death in the darkness! (But I was later told that the interval was less than three minutes.)
Then a strange wave of happiness enveloped me. There was gladness, joy, delight! But they were somehow contrived. “Ah, so this what death is like,” I said to myself. “Not too bad, I suppose, and yet I expected something deeper. Who do I know who spreads such shallow joys about himself? I'm coming, Azraq-Qamar, my love! I will be with you in an instant, and then forevermore.”
Well, this was joyous death, wasn't it? What was wrong with it? What was misplaced? And whence was that almost too boyish giggling, a giggle in the ‘Ifrit Treble’? And who did I know whose aura brought such a joy-delight-gladness as to be almost mistaken for death itself by the shallow?
Then the cavern in the mountain, previously as black as bitumen before its first refining, was suddenly ablaze with light. And in the middle of that blaze was the Boy-Caliph Harun al-Rashid and a group of his more boyish and more intimate friends and hangers-on.
I covered my disappointment. Really, I'd rather have died than have lived again in the middle of this shrill laughter, such were my emotions. But I got hold of myself and spoke pleasantly:
“It is with overwhelming delight that I see you again,” I told the laughing Caliph. “It is with bottomless joy that I find myself once more in your presence. And yet there is a worm in the middle of this apple of delight. My beloved bride is still dead and cold; and not even a Caliph, but only God himself, could bring her back to life.”
The Great-Boy Caliph giggled: “In such small things as that, your Caliph is God. Turn her over, Ali ben Raad the Son of Thunder.”
So I turned my wife over onto her wonderful belly.
“Now, see the small winder up between her shoulder-blades,” the Caliph laughed. “Wind her up again, Ali, and she will be as good as ever. You were right, though, when you told her that she seemed a little bit run down.”
“How could you have known what I told her when we were alone?” I asked the Jokester Caliph as I began to wind my wife up again.
“Oh. I was there. I was there all the time that you two were together. I always make myself invisible and watch my friends when they are newly married. In anybody except a Caliph, who has certain rights, there would be something a little bit sneaky about this. But I love to watch people. It is one of the great enjoyments of my life.”
My wife began to stir back to life.
“You are looking better, Dear Blue Moon,” I said.
“That is just what I think, you wonderful man,” my wife spoke softly, and I realized again what an extraordinary person she was. I caressed her. Several of the hangers-on of the Caliph took out flutes and began to play and sing, so I thought, “Paper Dolly.” It had become our song. But then I realized that they were not singing ‘Paper’ (‘Waraq’) ‘Dolly’, but ‘Alloy of mercury, copper, iron, chasab, safih, and gold’ (‘Warraq’) ‘Dolly’. I translated their correct version in my mind as “Amalgamated Metal Dolly.” I love that song yet.
“I'm enchanted with myself when I pull funny tricks like this one,” the Boy-Caliph chortled. “Oh, that was rolling-in-the-aisles funny when they told you that you had to be buried alive with your dead wife because that is the custom of the City!” Harun choked over his own laughter. “It is the custom of the City, of course, for foreign persons who are in Baghdad. You have no idea how foreign men in Baghdad carry on when their wives die and they find themselves buried alive with them. I have revels of fun just watching them.
“Well, my friend, shall I have them take your ‘wife’ back to the novelty dealers’ warehouse? She's a popular party item. She's about as cute as a mechanical effigy can be. And one spoken line, if it's a good line, is enough for any female person to speak. We'll just have them cart her off… unless, that is, you want to keep her for some reason.”
“Of course I want to keep her!” I almost ranted. “She is my wife! She is the light of my life, she is the blood of my liver, she is the sap of my tree! She's perfect.”
“That is just what I think, you wonderful man,” my wife spoke with that eerie charm that almost drove me out of my mind.
“Everyone to his own taste,” the Boy-Caliph said. “Some of the fellows like inflatable silk-fabric dolls life-sized and in living color. If y
ou really mean to keep her, we can have her programmed to speak several other sentences.”
“No, no, no, not programmed. Any addition to her or subtraction from her might spoil her perfection. And any change would have to be natural and not programmed.”
“Oh, you could have her to be inhabited by a spirit of some sort or other, Ali, but it's usually pretty trashy spirits you get when you open the door and let them move into a mechanism. Dine with me at midnight, Son of Thunder. I’ve got a couple of other practical jokes going on right now, and I must rush here and there to be at the climax of each of them.”
I realized then, somewhat tardily, that I had just lived through the ‘Fourth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor’; but I had lived through a version of it that was much better than the original. In its accepted version it had been the only one of the ‘Voyages’ to have an unhappy ending: the Wife of Sindbad died irrevocably and could not be brought back to life. But my version was wonderful, though slightly spoiled by the intrusion of the Boy-Caliph, and the original was not at all wonderful.
“I shouldn't doubt that I myself am the original Sindbad and that the accepted version is that of an interloper Sindbad,” I said when I thought about it. “But is there any way on God's Green Earth to say who is the true Sindbad and who is the false?”
We were out from the mountain that had also been our grave. We were away from that dismal site, and were once more walking in the dazzling streets of Baghdad Mirage. My wife pulled me to a stop in front of a Goat-Skin-Goods shop. We went in, and she brought a piece of parchment and a stylus. Then she began to write, swiftly and beautifully, on the parchment:
“I am programmed to say only one silly sentence, Great-Heart, and sometimes one silly variation of it. But what those rubes who assembled me don't know is that I taught myself to write and I can write any damned thing I please. Yes, I am a spirit who came to live in this mechanical body (having no other home); but I am not one of those trashy spirits that the Caliph referred to. He travels with the wrong kind of spirits.
Sindbad, The Thirteenth Voyage Page 8