“A useful talent,” I said. “Their poetry then could depict those alien ways of life more accurately than any other poet had done.”

“No doubt,” said Mimdad. “But they never sought to make capital or renown of their peculiar power. They used it only for sport—and their favorite sport was love. The physical act of making love.”

“Dio me varda! They liked making love to horses and such? Why, our slave must have the blood of a poet in his veins!”

“No, no, no. Majnun and Laila made love only to each other. Consider, Marco. What need had they of anyone or anything else?”

“Hm … yes,” I mused.

“Imagine the variety of experiences available to them. She could become the male and he the female. Or she could be Laila and he could mount her as a lion. Or he could be Majnun and she a delicate qazèl. Or they could both be other people entirely. Or they could both be dewy children, or both men, or both women, or one an adult and the other a child. Or both of them freaks of grotesque configuration.”

“Gèsu …”

“When they tired of making human love, however various or capricious, they could sample the even more different pleasures that must be known to beasts and serpents and the demon jinn and the fair peri. They could be two birds, doing it in midair, or two butterflies, doing it within the embrace of a fragrant flower.”

“What a pleasant thought.”

“Or they could even take the form of hermaphrodite humans, and both Majnun and Laila could be simultaneously al-fa‘il and al-mafa’ul to each other. The possibilities would have been infinite, and they must have tried every one, for that was their lifelong occupation—except when they were momentarily sated, and paused to write a poem or two.”

“And you hope to emulate them.”

“I? Oh, no, I am old, and long past all venereal yearning. Also, an adept must not do al-kimia for his own advantage. I hope to make the philter and its power accessible to all men and women.”

“How do you know it was a philter they employed? Suppose it was a spell or a poem they recited before each change.”

“In that case, I am confounded. I cannot write a poem, or even recite one with any eloquence. Please do not make discouraging suggestions, Marco. A philter I can concoct, with liquids and powders and incantations.”

It sounded to me a slim hope, seeking the power in a philter because a philter was all he could make. But I asked, “Well? Have you had any success?”

“Some, yes. Back home in Mosul. One of my wives died after trying one of my preparations, but she died with a blissful smile on her lips. A variant of that preparation gave another of my wives an eminently vivid dream. In her sleep she began fondling and pawing and even clawing at her private parts, and that was a good many years ago, and she has not left off yet, for she has never awakened from that dream. She lives now in a cloth-walled room at Mosul’s House of Delusion, and every time I travel there to inquire of her condition, my hakim colleague there tells me she is still interminably performing her interminable self-arousal. I wish I could know what she is dreaming.”

“Gesu. You call that success?”

“Any experiment is a success when one learns something from it. So I have since deleted the heavy metallic salts from my recipe, having concluded that those are what cause the deep coma or death. Now I lean to the postulates of Anaxagoras, and employ only organic and homoeomeric ingredients. Yohimbinum, cantharis, the phalloid mushroom, things like that. Oysters pulv., Nux v., Onosm., Pip. nig., Squilla … There is no longer any danger of the subjects’ not awakening.”

“I rejoice to hear it. And now?”

“Well, there was a childless couple, who had given up all hope of a family. They now have four or five fine boys, and I think they never counted the number of girl progeny.”

“That does sound like success of a sort.”

“Of a sort, yes. But all the children are human. And normal. They must have been conceived in the ordinary way.”

“I see what you mean.”

“And those were my last volunteers to try the philter. I think the hakim of that House of Delusion has perhaps been spreading gossip around Mosul, in violation of the physicians’ oath. So my chief difficulty is not in making new variants of the philter, it is the finding of test subjects. I am too old for the purpose, and my two remaining wives would refuse, anyway, to join me in the experiments. As you must appreciate, it is best to try the philter on a man and a woman at the same time. Preferably a young and vital man and woman.”

“Yes, clearly. A Majnun and a Laila, so to speak.”

There was a long silence.

Then he said quietly, shyly, tentatively, hopefully, “Marco, do you perchance have access to a complaisant Laila?”

The beauty of danger.

4

THE danger of beauty.

“I suggest you leave your knife out here,” said Shimon, as I came through his shop. “That Domm female is in a vile humor today. But perhaps you would like one of the others this time? Now that the camp is starting to break up, I suppose your party too will soon be gone. Now at the last, perhaps you would like a change? A girl other than the Domm?”

No, I wanted Chiv for the playing of Laila to my Majnun. However, considering the unpredictable nature of that play, I did take the Jew’s advice and left my squeeze knife on his counter. I also left there a small stack of dirhams, to pay for however long I might stay, and avert his interrupting us to say my time was up. Then I went on into Chiv’s room, saying as I entered:

“I have something for you, my girl.”

“I have something for you, too,” she said. She was sitting naked on the hindora, and she was making the bed sway slightly on its ropes as she rubbed oil onto her round dark-brown breasts and her flat dark-brown belly to make them shine. “Or I will have something, before too long.”

“Another knife?” I asked idly, starting to undress.

“No. Have you lost the other already? It appears that you have. No, this will be something you cannot disown so easily. I am going to have a baby.”

I stopped moving, standing stockstill and probably looking silly, for I was half out of my pai-jamah and standing like a stork on one leg. “What do you mean, I cannot disown? Why tell me?”

“Whom else should I tell?”

“Why not that Hunzuk mountain man? To mention just one other.”

“I would, if it were another’s doing. It is not.”

I had weathered the first astonishment by now and was again in command of my faculties. I resumed my undressing, but not so eagerly as before, and I said reasonably, “I have been coming here for only three months or so. How could you possibly know?”

“I know. I am a Romni juvel. We of the Romm have ways of knowing such things.”

“Then you also ought to know how to prevent such things.”

“I do. I usually insert beforehand a plug made of sea salt moistened with walnut oil. If I neglected the precaution, it was because I was overwhelmed by your vyadhi, your impetuous desire.”

“Do not blame me, or flatter me, whichever you think will win me over. I do not want any dark-brown offspring.”

“Oh?” was all she said to that, but she narrowed her eyes as she regarded me.

“Anyway, I refuse to believe you, Chiv. I see absolutely no change in your body. It is still very nice and trim.”

“It is, yes, and my occupation depends on my keeping it that way. Not deformed by pregnancy and useless for surata. So why do you not believe me?”

“I think you are only pretending. To keep me by you. Or to make me take you along when I leave Buzai Gumbad.”

Quietly, “You are so desirable.”

“I am at least not a simpleton. I am surprised that you would think me gullible by such an old and common woman’s trick.”

Quietly, “Common woman, is it?”