Slaves of Sleep - Chapter Seven - A True Frog of a Windmill

This is a very important private audience, so aside from the three companies of marid guards, Queen Ramus' audience hall is empty except for Her Majesty, Palmer-Tiger and a chained Zongri, who our hero notes is the biggest, scariest ifrit in the room.  Ramus demands to know whether her human prisoner is the one Zongri hit with "so untimely a sentence," but Zongri has trouble confirming if this is his victim.  See, he cursed a bespectacled weakling, "A very owl of a scarecrow" ...uh, right.  Yes, a shrimp "with his head stuffed with books and his heart so much sawdust," okay, that's a bit more sensible.  Might have wanted to use that instead of the owl-scarecrow comparison.

But since Palmer is currently inhabiting the body of a veritable bear of a combine harvester, Zongri doesn't quite recognize him.  Ramus yells at him to look harder or whatever and insults his poor vision, and Zongri gets sassy, saying that while he's currently in shackles, if nothing else his time spent in a copper jar has taught him patience.

"And I can wait until you visit me in my own realm, the Barbosi Isles, where I would have been even now if your cursed ships were not so glutted with cargoes for the weaklings I find here.  How am I supposed to know what has transpired in the ages since I left?

I dunno, how did you learn about Islam a thousand years after getting sealed away by an ancient Hebrew king?

How was I to know that the jest of Eternal Wakefulness, once so marvelous, would bring any danger here?  How was I to know that soft living and slaves had reduced my race to the point of putty?  My magic beyond my power?  And if I have done this thing, what of that?"

It was just a prank, bro.

"What of that?" bellowed Ramus in a fury.  "You witless son of chattering monkeys, can you not see the desolation which would spread if all humans in our world would come to know TRUTH?  Quick now, stop blabbing your ignorance and closely look upon the prisoner.  We must know!"

Yeah, this whole Curse/Jest of Eternal Wakefulness is a bit confusing.

If it's meant to be something terrible... well, how?  I guess it's awfully confusing to the victim, who finds themself in a new place every time they try to get some shuteye, and I suppose that could be dangerous if the you in the Genie World is an acrobat while in the Human World you're acrophobic, but that's a rather random and indirect way of harming someone, isn't it?  Plus it looks like the Genie World persona will end up putting increasing influence over the Human World mind while it's borrowing the body, until it's submerged entirely.  Which sort of undermines the "eternal" part of the curse, doesn't it?  And that's not even getting into Masters of Sleep.

There is a way this enchantment could be horrible, even fatal - it is after all a curse of eternal wakefulness.  The human body needs sleep.  The brain needs to turn off for a few hours and recover from what you did to it all day.  But with this curse, there's no escape - you might have a horrible nine-to-five minimum wage job in one world, you lay down to shut your eyes, and the next thing you know you're living the life of a genie's slave in another world.  So how many nights could you go without rest before your life fell to pieces?  How many days without rest would it take before you lost your mind?

Except that doesn't seem to be happening to Palmer, does it?  He shows no sign of fatigue despite being mentally "awake" for over a day now.  All his disorientation comes from suddenly being placed in a world of fantasy, not from being forced to continue functioning without rest.  So again, how exactly is this a punishment?

If anything, Zongri has done Palmer a favor, because now he, as Ramus said, knows the "TRUTH," and (in theory) his scholarly knowledge but meek demeanor is being complemented by a powerful personality with a lot of experience when it comes to action sequences.  This "curse" is about as inconvenient as that imp in Zelda games who tries to halve your magical power but ends up doubling your mana bar.

But back to this chapter.  Zongri, if it means he'll be released from Ramus' custody, is willing to admit that alright, this human is indeed "Jan Palmer, victim of the Eternal Wakefulness and long may he roast in hell!"  Ramus tells him to lift the curse, Zongri tells her to just kill him, but Ramus counters that Tiger's exploits have earned him a reprieve from such a fate, and adds that Zongri won't go free until he undoes his magic.  This very much upsets the prisoner, but Ramus points out that while she agreed to release him, "I had not stated all my conditions."  If you ever find yourself dealing with a jinni, make sure to get everything in writing before you agree to a deal.

So that's the situation - Ramus would much rather execute the nefarious Zongri than the rascally but heroic Tiger, but is willing to let the rival ifrit go if he lifts the Curse, and maybe explains how he managed it.  Zongri, with an executioner's encouragement, starts talking about the legendary Seal of Sulayman, a mere replica of which was still powerful enough to keep him bottled away for millennia.  The actual seal was lost by Sulayman, but when Ramus keeps up the pressure, Zongri dramatically reveals that, duh dun duhn, he now possesses the original Seal of Sulayman!

He jerked the ring from his finger.  "Look!  I searched but a day to find it.  Sulayman got it back and I knew how to find his tomb.  It lay in the miserable dust which remained to him and I took it up and put it on and all the secrets of the two worlds will be mine!  All the land will yield to me.  Earth will disgorge all her buried treasures, walls will fall at my bidding!  Look well and be as stone!"

Huh.  In The Alhambra's "Legend of the Enchanted Soldier," Solomon's magic ring somehow ended up in Spain before being chanced upon by a student, who used it to incompletely pilfer a treasure vault and ultimately... well, the ring's fate isn't recounted.  But I think if the student had made a pilgrimage to Solomon's tomb, wherever that may be, the story would have mentioned it.  Also, how did Zongri know that Sulayman got his ring back after losing it?  Probably the same way he converted to Islam while in his bucket.

Oh yeah, sorcery and all that.  That big moose of a butter churn Zongri tells everyone to turn to stone, but nothing happens, even when he waves the magic ring above his hand and repeats the command.  Ramus laughs that Zongri messed up - when Solomon wore it, the ring gave him all of its wisdom, and lost its power over humans, and because an ifrit has now worn it, Zongri has "destroyed its power there."  Which is to say, here?  Wherever.  At any rate, it's now "as powerful as a doorknob!"

Thing about doorknobs, though: they're not good at turning people to stone, but they can, if installed correctly, open doors.  Zongri warns that even if his new magical fashion accessory can't petrify people (and ifrits), it's got other powers, and tells all the marid soldiers to keep their distance.  The guards comply, though I'm not certain it's because of the magic ring, the narration says they "were so hypnotized by the strength of the man that they did as he ordered."  I mean, these ugly little jinn are pretty used to doing whatever an ifrit tells them to.  At any rate, Zongri shouts "See!  I strike off my own chains!" and sure enough his shackles fall to the floor around his feet.  With this ancient magical artifact, Zongri has become a master of unlocking.

But before he can go any further, Zongri gets hit by a lion.  See, as the guards stood back from the bellowing prisoner, Palmer was left unattended and sweating, "then, suddenly, felt lightheaded."  In the space of a sentence our protagonist goes from a stunned Palmer to a grinning Tiger, who ducks out of Zongri's sight and unpins the chains securing one of the lions to Ramus' throne.  And while the marid flunkies are affected by Zongri's command, this kitty don't give a damn.  So the lion pounces on Zongri, then Tiger pounces on the lion, resulting in a "mad tumble of Ifrit and human and jungle king" that lasts until some marids grab the lion's chain and secure the beast.

I'm not entirely sure why Tiger did this.  I mean, I know what his objective was, I'm just mystified why he chose this way to go about it instead of... well, doing what he'll do later.

When both the lion and Zongri are secured, Ramus gloats a little and orders a guard to take the magic ring from the prisoner.  But to everyone's surprise (except for one person, and you can probably guess who), Zongri doesn't seem to have the original Seal of Sulayman anymore.  Zongri demands that Ramus have all her guards searched, and though the queen is insulted, she agrees to have all her troopers inspected for the ring, then their officers, and even the commanding major.  Still the ring doesn't turn up, so Zongri leaps upon Palmer, or I should say Tiger, who willingly lets the ifrit pat him down (none-too-gently).  Zongri eventually gives up and punches Tiger to the floor before he's pulled off him.

Zongri is convinced that Tiger is a thief, while Tiger counters that he saw Zongri swallow the ring, honest.  Ramus orders the rival ifrit thrown into the deepest, darkest dungeon she has until Zongri agrees to hand it over...

Wait, this is stupid.  Either Ramus is right and the Seal of Sulayman has no power any more, in which case this is a lot of fuss over a curio, or she's wrong, in which case she's hoping that Zongri will, after being locked in a room by himself, surrender something that would allow him to escape from any prison.  You know, once he barfs the ring up or fishes it out of the cell's bucket.

Maybe Ramus inherited her position after her husband got whacked by a rival kingdom and isn't actually any good at ruling.  Anyway, Zongri swears horrible revenge on Tiger, but doesn't resist when the guards take him away - he's happy to go to any place he doesn't have to look at the filthy thief.  But before he leaves, Zongri drops the bombshell that there's no way to undo the Curse of Eternal Wakefulness, for "Who including God can destroy knowledge once given or separate personalities once fused."  No question mark, so it's a rhetorical... statement?  Also, there are ways to destroy knowledge and personalities, and we'll see some next book.  They're just too evil for even the ifrit to come up with.

Tiger asks Her Majesty what's to be done with him, and she muses that she can't afford to let him go free, but he's done too much for her realm to be executed, so it's back to the tower for him until they find a better option.  And the narration points out that our main character is still Tiger at this point, even though in past action sequences, Palmer took over the minute the excitement stopped.  I don't think this is quite what Zongri meant when he talked about fusing personalities, it seems like Palmer is fading away in favor of Tiger.  "Eternal" Wakefulness my ass.

It's now well past nightfall, so Tiger makes a big show of yawning and acting tired even while quietly searching the room for observation ports.  He eventually takes off his shirt and pants in preparation for bed, but keeps his "floppy-topped seaboots" on as he snuffs out all the candles, something I'm sure any spies won't find suspicious in the slightest.  Then he crawls into bed, still wearing his boots.

And then, secure, he reached into the floppy top of the right one and pulled forth a thing which weighed at least a pound.  Even in the darkness the Seal of Sulayman blazed and crackled.

And I'm especially sure no observers are going to take an interest in the canopy bed lighting up from the inside with eldritch energies.

So, that was a productive chapter.  We learned a teensie bit more about Palmer's curse, which will get elaborated upon in two chapters, though like I said it's nothing you shouldn't be able to guess by now.  Our villain made a reappearance and was easily bamboozled by our hero, showing that he's nothing to be worried about.  And the protagonist just gained a magical "I Win" button he can abuse for the rest of the story, putting an end to any tension in the Genie World segments.

But since we've made so much progress in the Genie World, we ought to pop back to the Human World and check on the veritable mouse of a mannequin who's still stuck in jail for a crime he didn't commit, but may get committed for.


Back to Chapter Six

Forward to Chapter Eight

Slaves of Sleep - Chapter Six - Palmer Putters Around and Talks With an Astrologer

This chapter is called "Zongri" even though the bulk of this section concerns Palmer making a discovery and wondering some more about his condition.  But I guess "Palmer Putters Around and Talks With an Astrologer" isn't a very compelling title for anything.

The "strongroom" Palmer-Tiger is locked into turns out to be at the top of a tower, and is more a decadently-decorated bedroom than a proper prison.  Alabaster floor under thick woolen rugs, golden tapestries on the walls depicting great battles, a plush bed as big as a courtyard, a silver staircase leading to the roof, and so on.  Amusingly, Palmer is just as jaded by this point as we are, and "had seen too much of late to be so very amazed with the furnishings of the place or at the fact that it was very strange to be imprisoned in such splendor."  It's nice of Hubbard to admit that people can in fact get bored of gold and diamonds, though this just raises the question of why he felt the need to so heavily rely on the stuff to make things in his stories fancy.

Palmer checks out the roof in case there's a ladder or something, but no, there's no escape.  There is, however, an array of antique astronomical instruments, which are of course crafted in gold and diamond and mother-of-pearl and sigh.  Palmer is an experienced sailor and knows how to use an astrolabe, so hooray, he's found a way to contribute while being carried along by Tiger's passions and personality.  I guess Tiger never learned how to navigate despite his long history of naval exploits.  Good thing he didn't, though, because otherwise what exactly would Palmer bring to this scene?

Anyway, Palmer is surprised that such an ancient instrument is decorated with a modern star map, measures the sun's position on this and compares it to that, and is rather surprised to learn that, according to the doohickey, "It was his own Today, the Today of the earth!"  So he hasn't been transported centuries into the past, despite finding himself in a medieval society whose cutting-edge weapons are inaccurate muskets.  "This place was heir to the glories of yesterday and yet was astoundingly very much in today!"  Which is to say, it's culturally and technologically stagnant, but stylish about it.  Y'know, just like insert location name here.

Having determined that it is in fact Now, Palmer turns these sophisticated stargazing instruments to their secondary purpose - peeping.  He aims a telescope low and scans the great city of Tarbutón to "possibly ferret out any modern touches."

Frenchman, Irishman, Jew and Hindu.

Wait, Hindu is more of a religious identity than a nationality, isn't it?

Englishman, Russian, Chinaman and Greek.

And how exactly can you tell whether someone's English or Russian just by watching them through a telescope? 

Nubian, Indian, Carib and Spaniard.

So we have Hindus and Indians.  Huh.

White man, brown man, yellow man, black man.  Every nationality was there,

I'm not sure whether the red man should be offended or relieved at being overlooked here.

strangely clothed but unmistakable of face.  Pulling carts, sorting bales, buying food and running errands.  Loafing and sweating and gossiping and weeping.  Laughing, drinking and swearing and dancing.  Millions of them!  Women sunbathing upon flat roofs.

Ahh, so that's why these telescopes so readily swiveled away from the stars.

Unsuspected women soaking in rays aside, it's a lively town featuring a great mix of cultures, so Palmer can spot the domes of mosques and steeples of churches and towers of pagodas, as well as... wait, why isn't everyone in this world  Muslim?  It is after all ruled by jinn straight from Middle Eastern folklore, and even an ifrit whose spent thousands of years in a copper jar knows the good news about Muhammad.  And since the guy who stuffed that ifrit in that jar did so thanks to some tangible supernatural powers, that would be a pretty strong argument to follow his religion, wouldn't it?  I can understand Christians and Jews getting a pass as per Islam's tolerance of other Abrahamic faiths, but what about these Eastern religions?  For that matter, why isn't Palmer having a crisis of faith right now?  He's getting slapped in the face with a lot of evidence that he may have bet on the wrong horse.

Whatever, let's advance the plot.  Palmer's gaze falls upon a particularly large temple perched atop a hill, where a procession of ifrit priests escorts a naval officer's coffin, followed by a whopping hundred human women in white robes, spreading petals along the route.  And Palmer is astonished to find that "there in the midst of those beauties was Alice Hall!"

So, like, are everyone's Genie World counterparts located roughly in the same region as they are in the world of humans?  So everyone in Tarbutón has a counterpart in Seattle?  Wait, no, we just talked about how diverse this city is, and while America is pretty multicultural I'm not sure Seattle is that multicultural.  Then I guess Palmer keeps getting extremely lucky to spot the doppelgangers of the few people he knows.

Anyway, Palmer shouts "Alice!" like there's a chance she can hear him from three miles away, and then a voice behind him says "You called?"  It's a positively ancient ifrit astrologer, fangless and gray-haired, who politely expresses his hope that "the fate you found was not too unkind."  His name is... not given, come on Hubbard.  But since he answered Palmer's outburst, let's call him Alice.

Palmer and the royal astrologer spend a page making measurements while the old jinn jots down data and makes his predictions.  The results make Alice break into a sweat and stare uncomfortably at the human - either he's wrong and he'll be the laughingstock of the court, like the time he predicted a noble would be nice to a girl he instead ended up killing, or some human is about to do "awful things in a land of the Jinn."  Alice also talks about how lucky Palmer is to not have to live for a hundred thousand years, but when Palmer presses him on the issue, the astrologer reveals that he doesn't know the specifics about when Palmer will kick it.

"There is no certainty.  I shall not alarm you.  You may die.  You might not die.  But what does it matter.  If you do, it is you who will lose.  If you do not, the lives of many Jinn will pay the toll.  But I am old.  Why should I care about these things.  Ahhhhhhh, dear," he sighed, rising.  "And now I must go down all those stairs again and give my report to the queen."

So there, dramatic tension secured.  Palmer might die, or he might do something incredible and ruin or claim the lives of lots of jinn. 

Alice the Royal Astrologer also reveals that Palmer isn't in just any room, but one of Queen Ramus' bedrooms.  As soon as the old ifrit leaves, Tiger's immediate response is to start bouncing on the royal bed like an eight-year-old.

"Not bad," said Tiger.

"Stop!" cried Jan.

"Oh, boy.  All we need is some dancing girls and a keg and what a time we'd have!"

"How can I think of such a thing at a time like this?"

"Hell's bells, why not?  A short life and a hot one and let the devil have a break.  It's not every day he gets such a recruit as Tiger."

"Blasphemy from me?"

And so on.  It's another page and a half before our protagonist hops off the bed, so feel free to assume that he's jumping up and down while having this conversation.

But yeah, Palmer's talking to himself again, which is to say he's whining while Tiger is in control of his body.  Tiger expresses his religious views, i.e. "Who am I to be bowed by anything?", and boasts about his vices, his love of women, and particularly one girl at the forbidden Temple of Rani.  When Tiger starts speculating over what he'd do "for the likes of that sweet mouth, but for the slimness of that ankle..." well, whatever gets your motor running, dude.  As long as she's into it too.

Anyway, it seems that, in another one of those cosmic coincidences, Tiger has his eye on the same girl as Palmer, though the latter insists that "She is sacred!" and cuts off Tiger mid-lusty rant.  Tiger admits that alright, maybe he does love the girl, but "What could be more sacred than to burn the joss of desire before that cupid's bow of a mouth?"  He's not going to love her platonically, he's going to get physical about it, and if Palmer disagrees he can try to stop him.

So Palmer jumps off the bed - finally - and whirls around as if to confront someone, though since he's the only one in the room he ends up looking a bit stupid.  He reflects on the past day or so and realizes that, "like the camel that stuck his head in the tent," and there's the camel comparison again, he's losing control of Tiger's impulses by degrees, so soon "he who contained the Tiger would be contained by the Tiger."  Even now he can feel Tiger laughing at him, and Palmer dreads the thought of such a chaotic hedonist taking control.  That is to say, taking control of the body Palmer inhabits in the World of Genies, or Tiger's body in other words.  It's not like we've seen Tiger try to take over Palmer's body back in Seattle.  Really, Tiger should be angrier about this noodly twerp coming in from nowhere, taking control of his body, and temporarily forcing him to miss out on glorious pranking opportunities.

The body first and then... then the heart?  Who had the Tiger been?

An audacious but accomplished sailor and general ne'er-do-well.  Didn't you notice all those bit characters coming up to talk about how Tiger saved them during the Battle of This or That?

How had he become submerged at all?

Zongri's Curse of Eternal Wakefulness.  Geez, Palmer, try to keep up!

Happily, even if our protagonist has forgotten how he ended up here, he's about to get a reminder.  A guard opens the door and demands the prisoner's presence in Queen Ramus' audience hall, and Tiger follows him down, all the while musing about how funny it would be if a marid guard tripped into the guy in front of him and sent the formation toppling forward like dominoes.  Tiger has a very unsophisticated sense of humor, you might have noticed.

And then, when Palmer reaches the audience hall, he's stunned to find an ifrit he recognizes, an ifrit glaring hatefully at him, an ifrit who is none other than the dreaded Zongri!  And since he appears two sentences before the end of the chapter, that's decent justification for naming the segment after him, isn't it?

Tune in next time when we recap the plot and get introduced to the story's game-changing magical doodad.


Back to Chapter Five, part two

Chapter Seven

Slaves of Sleep - Chapter Five, part two - Mostly Tiger

So Palmer, or maybe Tiger, is in the custody of an ifrit named Boli in the fantastical port city of... I think it's Tarbuton?  I had to consult the map on the inside cover, it's not like a character is nice enough to wave an arm and say "Behold!  The great port city of Whatever!"

But about this city - it's huge, sprawling miles from the coast to a nearby plain, filled with taverns and apartments and nautical buildings, the architecture favoring "immense scrolls and swoops and towers," resulting in a skyline of "distorted curves and garish, mismatched colors."  Lovely.  Palmer finds it all bewildering, from the illegible-but-still-legible writing on the signs of businesses, to the weird seafood being sold on the streets, such as big-headed fish with winking eyelids (eww) which the author claims so resemble sheep that Palmer wonders if they taste like mutton.  So enjoy the mental image of schools of mutant sea creatures that resemble hairless bovids, swimming through the inky depths of the ocean, winking at you as they pass.

And if the fish aren't weird enough, there's also the matter of who's buying them.  Palmer passes by a shrieking, filthy old shrew who reacts to the prices going up by a whole "damin" by grabbing a sheep-fish and swinging it around like a flail, nearly hitting the four marid guards escorting Palmer through the streets.  The fish peddler calls her Daphne, but Palmer is astonished because she looks just like his Aunt Ethel!  Amazing!  Not the fact that Palmer isn't the only one with a counterpart in this world, but that in such a huge city, he managed to bump into the doppelganger of one of the very few people he knows.

Daphne-Aunt Ethel doesn't recognize Tiger-Palmer, so that encounter ends with our protagonist getting marched along toward his meeting with the queen.  And... well, you'd think Palmer would have a lingering reaction to that meeting with the double of his aunt, wouldn't you?  But instead he decides to get mopey over all those pranks he before setting foot in the city, which is convenient, because he suddenly sees another opportunity for fun at another's expense.  Tiger realizes that if he took one step just right, he could trip up one of the servants carrying Boli's salon chair and dump the ifrit into a puddle of horse water.

What a bed for M'Lord Boli that hoof-churned muck would be!  Just a slightly longer step and...

"I won't!" yelled Jan.

M'Lord turned around in astonishment.  "What was that?"

"Nothing," said the miserable Jan.

Oh hey, someone noticed Palmer acting weird.  But outburst aside, Palmer does manage to resist temptation, it just takes all his willpower to behave like a non-douchey human being.  Which I take to mean that while currently inhabiting Tiger's body, at best Palmer can try to act as Tiger's impulse control, while at worst he's watching helplessly while Tiger does crazy stuff.  Hence why I think he's more Tiger than Palmer at this point, despite the narration referring to him as "Jan" for now.

Having successfully quashed his darker desires, Palmer takes a moment to notice the distribution of wealth in this city - all the store owners are richly-dressed ifrits, the guards and minor authority figures are all marids, while humans are stuck as servants at best or slaves at worst.  But before Palmer can get properly indignant about race-based income inequality, he's distracted by random strangers calling out "It's Tiger!" or getting all weepy when they see him surrounded by guards, and then he's even further distracted as he approaches the queen's palace, a mountain-sized structure with a huge fountain up front, an even huger set of stairs to the entrance, and an even huger-er golden dome on the top.  The narration also informs us that "The balconies were evidently masses of precious stones - or else they were all one fire."

So which do you find more fantastical, the notion of a building decorated with endless flames, or the prospect of Hubbard using such a fantastic effect as decoration rather than slathering something with shiny rocks?

But no, we can't just walk into the palace and have our scene with the queen already, Hubbard decides to stick in one last random encounter first.  A ferocious-looking ifrit who carries himself like a naval officer (it's in the walk and how he wears his sword) spots Tiger and wonders what in "the Seven Swirls of the Seven Saffron Devils" his old buddy has gotten himself into... I mean yes, it's another half-baked mythological or religious reference Hubbard is using to spice up his story without putting in any serious effort at worldbuilding, but at least it's not as generic as woods devils and woods nymphs, right?  Anyway, Officer Whoever complains that Tiger was supposed to come see him if he got into any trouble, and gripes that it weren't for a "confounded law" that keeps puny humans from holding naval ranks, Tiger wouldn't "revolt" so much.  Not sure how it would affect his thirst for pranks, but we can only hope.

Eventually Boli is able to get the procession moving, and now we get to enter the palace.  It's impractically huge, its entrance flanked by fifty-foot silver statues of "beasts," its main hall big enough for a frigate to dock in, a main chamber larger than any other building in the city, and at the centerpiece a throne rising thirty feet above the floor, "hung with tassels of gold and set with diamonds."  But not illusory flames.  So I guess those balconies were studded with ordinary gemstones.  Hmm.  Kind of a letdown.

Oh, we should probably introduce Her Royal Majesty.

She was taller than these other Ifrits.  Taller and uglier.  Her arms were matted with black hair which set strangely against the soft silk of her white robe.  Her hairy face was a horror, her lips spread apart by upper and lower fangs like tusks.  On either side of her jeweled crown were black, pointed ears like funnels.  Her nose was mostly nostril.  Her eyes were as big as stewpans and in them held a flickering, leaping flame which scorched Jan to his very soul.

So a tusked, bat-faced gorilla in a fine dress, gotcha.

Palmer looks down to avert his eyes from the scary gaze of... well, it'll take a few pages for her name to actually appear in the story, but this is Queen Ramus the Magnificent.  Anyway, this turns out to be a bad idea, because it means Tiger can see Boli's sedan bearers, or more accurately "their heels."  And before Palmer can react, Tiger "oh, quite accidentally" snags the scabbard of one of the guards so that it trips up one of the people carrying Boli's chair, and then the ifrit is sent sprawling forward towards the pair of enormous lions, "as large as camels," chained to... why camels, Hubbard?  Because this is your take on Arabian Nights or whatever?  So that's the first animal that comes to Palmer's mind when he's trying to judge the size of these big cats, and not, say a grizzly bear, or bison, or anything?

Anyway, Boli rolls towards the lions chained to either side of Ramus' throne, so we get a page of action or whatever as the guards mill about in confusion, "But Tiger!" leaps into action and slaps one lion's nose and yanks on the other's tongue, so they jerk back "in astonishment at such audacity" rather than having the normal reaction to such japes, i.e. crushing Tiger's neck in their jaws.  Then Tiger prattles on and on as he apologizes to Her Royal Highness and dusts off Boli, who is so shaken up by events that he can hardly speak.  Tiger blames Boli's stammering on the "gas" the lions must've breathed into him.  I have no idea either.

Fortunately there's that letter from Captain Whossname to clear things up, which a courtier passes up to the queen, who reads it and goes from the verge of laughter to a black rage.  She asks if the prisoner has spoken to anyone, and when Boli admits that Tiger talked with "a fish peddler's wife," the queen sends guards to take the shrew to the dungeon and then dismisses the "miserable milksop" who couldn't follow a simple order.  Exit Boli, who is nearly blown out of the audience hall by the queen's thunderous rant.

"I ought to have his head," snarled the queen.  "I, Ramus the Magnificent, to be served in such a chuckleheaded fashion!"

And there's our belated not-quite-an-introduction to this character, the most important person in this city.  At least she's better off than Captain Tombo, who went two chapters between appearing and earning his name.

Ramus orders the prisoner to be moved to the palace's left wing and held incommunicado, and she also sends a general to retrieve "that vile troublemaker Zongri!"  The general is surprised to learn that the ruler of the Barbossi Isles is back after vanishing for thousands of years, but the queen's spymaster steps forward and reveals that "this Zongri but yesterday arrived here in Tarbutón."  Oh hey, there's our belated introduction to the city.

But that's it for this chapter.  Our protagonist is once again being locked in a room somewhere, but at least he got to make other people miserable with some physical comedy.  Tune in next time for a lull in the story in which Palmer does something that Tiger can't.


Back to Chapter Five, part one

Forward to Chapter Six 

Slaves of Sleep - Chapter Five, part one - The Palmer or the Tiger?

Palmer reluctantly opens his eyes to find that yep, once again he's been transported to another man's body in a world of sailing ships and hideous marids, one of which is standing outside his cell with a spear "so sharp it tapered to nothingness rather than a point."  Don't you hate it when that happens?

But something's different this time.

"Now I'm for it," moaned Jan.

And he startled himself.

"Now I'll get the galleys."

He blinked and said it over again.  "Now I'll get the galleys."

Well, what galleys?  And how did he know there would be any galleys in the neighborhood?  Further, what reason did he have to think that galleys would be in use?

Yes, our main character isn't acting quite in accordance with his earlier behavior, and suddenly, mysteriously, knows things.  This has of course happened many times over the course of our journey through the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, but in this case the cause is something in the story, rather than the shortcomings of the story's writer.

So when Palmer sits up from his slumber he mutters stuff like "Let'm flog.  Let'm string me up by the thumbs.  But I'll see 'em all in hell before I'll haul an oar," and he calls the marid guard a "one-eyed farmer" in a dangerously dismissive tone to use when talking to such a brutish jinni, all while Palmer wonders whether he's delirious.  When the marid concludes that "Tiger"'s talk from the night before was all a big lie, Palmer acts more like Palmer as he insists he wasn't drunk and has no idea what this Isle of Fire he almost ran into was.  He's genuinely surprised when the marid talks about some of Tiger's escapades with Admiral Tyronin, even moreso when Palmer rolls back a pant leg to see burns and old scars from a battleaxe, proof that his flesh at least remembers what his mind does not.

The marid suggests it's a good thing that Palmer-Tiger is getting transferred to another ship, because the other crewmen of this vessel are still none too pleased with him for driving them onto that reef last night.  Sure enough, when more marids escort the prisoner topside, all the ship's humans are growling and glaring at Palmer.  Then there's several paragraphs of boat stuff.

Look, I'm sorry if you're into this sort of thing and want to know how the ship's lateen was set up on its mizzen and all that, but I'm not interested and none of this is relevant to the plot.  There's plenty of hot nautical action in the next book, but in this one we're about to get back to terra firma.  So I'll just say that the vessel Palmer finds himself on is an old ship from the early age of sail, with brass cannons and a flag of a golden bird on a scarlet backdrop.  The other ships in the harbor they're docked at are a diverse bunch, all captained by ifrits with marid soldiers and human crewmen.  So this probably isn't a port on Earth, is what we should take away from this.

The weird thing - well, the weird thing in addition to Palmer being in a world ruled by jinn - is that he somehow knows the names of most of the ships and sailors in this port, and grumbles to himself about probably getting assigned the Pinchoti, "the worst puller of the lot."

A werewolf, in his human identity, must often feel the beast stirring uneasily within him, threatening to spring forth uncalled.

Depends on the nature of the curse, I believe.  In some stories the poor schmuck is oblivious to his condition and blacks out during full moons, in others he's pretty wolfish no matter what the moon's doing.

More and more, as time went along, did Jan experience just that sensation, except that, in his case, it was more like that Malay demon, the were-tiger.

What, the harimau jadian?  According to Wikipedia that's a case of someone using sorcery to transform into a murder-kitty so he can better defend his plantation at night, or punish those who wronged him... which come to think of it may end up being a better comparison to Palmer's situation than the lycanthropy Hubbard's talking about.

Scholar that he was, he knew considerable [sic] about lycanthropy

Heh, yeah.  And "Arabianologists" at respectable universities have accumulated considerable evidence proving that civilizations of genies existed at one point in history.

but never in his life had he thought to experience such a thing, even in a reasonable way,

What is a reasonable way to experience any variety of therianthropy?  Do you make a weekend of it, put in a security deposit beforehand, check with your doctor to make sure you're in the right physical condition to transform into a were-beast?  Are there retreats you can go to?

but now, certainly, things were happening to him which he could not begin to discount.

I dunno, you could probably write all this off as an extremely vivid dream.

Were-Tiger was certainly the only name for it.

Mmm, not quite.  This will become clear as the story progresses.

He was vaguely conscious of latent wells of knowledge within him, of information which he could almost - but not quite - bring to the surface of his brain.  It was as though he had always known these things but was suffering, at the moment, a slight lapse of memory.

If only some visionary scientist-philosopher-spiritualist could come up with some sort of treatment that would allow people like Palmer to unlock their latent potential, for very reasonable rates.

Now, the narration says "wells of knowledge," but it forgot to mention the puddles of dickery.  Because Palmer notices a man working on a sail, and suddenly knows that the guy's called Lacy, and he's an unlikable coward.  And Palmer, who is not one for pranks, let alone normal jokes, suddenly notices that one of the marid guards has slung his musket on his back in just the right way for Palmer to pull the trigger and send a bullet whizzing right under poor Lacy, terrifying the man.

"Marvelous," chortled Tiger.

"No!  My God, no!" gasped the appalled Jan.

Nobody turns to him and stares at Palmer like a madman, so I'm not sure whether he's saying this aloud like the Gollum/Sméagol conversations from the Lord of the Rings movies.  On the other hand, no one reacts when Palmer covers his eyes with his hands so he can't see the object of temptation, so it could be that marids and sailors have a high tolerance for weirdness.

At any rate, Palmer - or perhaps Tiger - just can't resist, and quickly reaches out to pull the trigger of the guard's matchlock musket, and I guess when you have one of those you always keep a match going, even when you're carrying the gun on your back.  The musket jumps from the recoil and bonks a marid in the face, the bullet goes through the sail two feet away from poor Lacy, the sailor freaks out and ends up swinging from a rope fifty feet over the deck, all the other crewmen start laughing, the first mate starts bellowing, and a good time is had by all some.

The ifrit bosun, a Mr. Malek, starts roaring at Palmer and is about to bash his face in with the butt of a musket, but the human crew starts sticking up for him, insisting it was one of the stupid marids who misfired while playing with his weapon.  The ship's captain, finally given the name of Captain Tombo - a good Middle Eastern name, Tombo - puts an end to the disruption, and passes Palmer-Tiger-Whoever off to Boli, "a portly and foppish Ifrit who fanned the air before him with a perfumed handkerchief to fend off the odor of sailors."  And since this guy is ugly and kind of effeminate, it'll be okay to torment him.

Captain Tombo hands Tiger into Boli's custody and advises caution, since the guy has quite a reputation.  Boli agrees that this is a case that ought to go directly to the crown, then he and his guards and their prisoner start to load up in a little boat to take them across the harbor.  The human crew of the ship, their earlier animosity forgotten, give little encouragements like "Give'em hell, Tiger," and our protagonist grins back at them.  But Palmer is also feeling "things stirring inside him and was too frightened to think the matter through, afraid lest he discover another awful plot within him."  Yes, he's not quite out of dickery to perform this day.

To summarize nearly three pages of this chapter: while offering to assist M'Lord Boli as he boards the little boat, and while crying "Don't pull her in, you fools!", Tiger does something to make the boat capsize, something about a barge going under the ship's stage in the wrong way or whatever.  The important thing is that Boli ends up nearly drowned and Tiger gets to none-too-gently revive him with "artificial respiration" that nearly breaks the jinni's ribs.  It's... funny, I guess, and very satisfying.  This minor character we just met sure got taken down a notch, didn't he?  It could only be better if Tiger smeared spaghetti sauce all over his face in front of Boli's favorite actresses.

So all the human sailors, and even Captain Tombo, are quite happy to see a drenched fop.  Boli is furious, and rants that all of Tiger's heroic feats, like the rescue of Admiral Tyronin from the Isle of Fire or his actions during the Battle of Barankeet, none of that will save him from whatever charges are against him now.  Yes, Tiger is going before "the queen herself," a revelation that makes Palmer gulp and nervously fumble for glasses that are not on his nose.  But since this is such a long chapter, we'll have to meet Her Majesty next time.

You may notice I'm starting to refer to our protagonist more and more as Tiger instead of Palmer.  That's because, well, Tiger's really the hero of this story.  We had our one chapter with Palmer in Tiger's world, but from here on out, Palmer will have less and less influence on Tiger, to the point where even the narration will refer to the protagonist as Tiger instead of Jan.  Hubbard will try to say towards the end of the book that the personalities are mixing together to make a more balanced individual, but you'll have to judge for yourself whether or not that's true.

So I hope you enjoyed the novelty of an atypical Hubbard protagonist, because from here on out it's pretty much business as usual.


Back to Chapter Four

Forward to Chapter Five, part two

Slaves of Sleep - Chapter Four - And Then Back to Prison

I'm not sure why the previous chapter ended when it did, because we go from Palmer being led into the depths of the ship to Palmer in the ship's brig.  If you're looking for a dramatic cliffhanger moment to end the chapter with, it'd be better to stick the first two pages of this segment with the previous chapter, so Chapter Four would start with Palmer waking up in his cell back in Seattle.

Also, I would have tried to keep Palmer's characterization consistent.  When he's finally locked in the brig he gets up and paces, going "round and round his small cell like a white rat spinning about a pole," so... why on earth would you...  Anyway, Palmer's terrified at his situation, but the narration tries to assure us that "He could stand a beating, perhaps, and even face a flogging without really cracking," except this flies in the face of the meek, weak Palmer we've seen developed over the first few chapters of this story, and specifically how Palmer shrieked from the first bite of the lash last time.

But anyway, "this situation was the stuff of which madness was made," who is this Tiger guy, if Palmer is now in Tiger's place where has Tiger gone, et cetera.  Palmer tries to convince himself that he's really still in his jail cell instead of a ship's brig, except he can hear all the sounds of a boat "hissing" through the water and "the sing" of the wind in the rigging - though there's no mention of the ship's motion making it quite different from a police station, oddly enough.  There's also the matter of Palmer's guard, a Marid with a twisted back, single cyclopean eye, and hoofed feet.  Now, according to Wikipedia, marids are in some traditions actually the strongest kind of jinn, even moreso than ifrits, but Hubbard must have been consulting a proper Arabianologist because in this setting the marids serve as the ifrits' flunkies.

Being on the verge of a mental breakdown is exhausting, so Palmer eventually collapses in his cot.

It was all too much.  And at last Jan dozed, drifting more deeply into slumber.

To no avail.

He had no more than shut his eyes when he was startled by the slam of iron-barred doors and the rattle of dishes which immediately followed.  Voices were hollow in the concrete hall and Jan sat up.  He looked carefully all around him.

It was no Marid at the door but a blue-coated policeman engaged in shoving a tray of food under the door. 

And that's where I would have started this chapter.  Now, you might argue that having Palmer go between the worlds of waking and sleep in the middle of a chapter helps show how seamless the transition is for him, except this is the only time Hubbard does this - for the rest of the book he likes the chapter and world transitions to go hand in hand.  So... yeah, I'd have done it differently, that's the point I'm trying to make.

Palmer actually spends some time elated that he's in a perfectly normal jail cell and tries to convince himself that the stuff on the boat was just a bad dream, until Diver Mullins reminds him that he's in for murder, forcing Palmer to accept that genies are in fact real.  Mullins spends a good fat paragraph waxing philosophical as he tries to cheer Palmer up - most people don't have the luxury of knowing how they're going to die, but Palmer's certain to be hanged, so he doesn't have to worry - but it's not terribly effective for some reason.  Then there's about a page of Mullins chatting with other prisoners about his "hophead" cellmate, but it's not very interesting so I'm just going to fast-forward to when Miss Hall shows up.

Other prisoners start calling out "Hiyah, Babe" and other incantations meant to get a female to remove her clothing and bend over, yet Alice Hall proves immune to their charms and arrives at Palmer's cell, "with a twinge of pity upon her lovely face as she stood taking off her gloves and studying Jan just as though she were about to begin an operation to change his luck."  Though if she is about to perform an operation, she ought to be putting the gloves on, and should properly snap them into place for dramatic effect.

Hall's not alone, and a jailer soon admits ol' Mr. Green the perfectly honest business executive, as well as a Mr. Shannon, Bering Steam's chief legal guy, who is plump and tries very hard to sound reassuring, so we know he's faking it.  Also he hopes to become a senator someday, and since we all know politicians are bad, he must be too.  And he has no real chin or nose, so his mouth looks like a shark's!  That's animal symbolism on top of all the other stuff!  God, I hate this guy already and all he's done is greet Palmer with a "Well, well, well my boy" while wondering "What are they doing to you?"

Palmer's not thrilled to see these dudes, and would rather have some quality time with Hall.  By which he means he daydreams about her having a "sit on that small stool and hear his flood of grief and then give him very sound advice in return.  Didn't her brave face have a tinge of pity in it?"

Yes, the previous "tinge of pity" description took place on the same page as this one.  I'm just not sure whether Hubbard is intentionally repeating himself or once again couldn't be bothered to look over his first draft to see if he gave any redundant information.

Green complains about all the negative publicity Palmer has dumped on the company, and has a newspaper with the headline "MILLIONAIRE SHIPOWNER SLAYS PROFESSOR," which is a bit unprofessional since Palmer hasn't been convicted of anything, only accused.  But journalists are bad guys too, we must remember.  Anyway, Shannon is here to get Palmer out of the slammer, and wants him to give them his version of last night's events, hence Miss Hall's presence.

We're spared actually seeing Palmer re-tell the story, we're just told he did so.  Now we're also told that he "Very wisely" doesn't mention everything that happened between him falling asleep last night and waking up this morning, and while I'll agree that adding "when I fall asleep I become someone else in a world of genies" on top of a story about how "an evil ifrit murdered a guy and left me to take to blame" wouldn't do Palmer any favors, I'm curious why he thinks sticking to his original account of what happened to Frobish is the best course of action in this situation.  The book doesn't explain his reasoning, and I doubt it's a matter of integrity since Palmer is willing to lie by omission about the sleep thing, so I dunno.

His story goes over about as well as can be expected, with Shannon delicately suggesting that Palmer "modify" his account when he gives it to the judge before assuring him that he'll put in a plea and get something figured out.  Green steps out to confer with the lawyer, leaving Palmer and Hall to have some alone time, provided they ignore Diver Mullins, who is politely sitting quietly in the corner of the cell.

Miss Hall seems surprised at Palmer when he declares "They don't believe me," and she gains "The shadow of a smile" when he insists that he wouldn't lie.  He starts to tell her about his weird not-dream, can't manage to get the words out, and the conversation somehow gets worse and Hall gets angry.  She concludes that there's nothing she can do for him at this point.

"But you were saying something," pleaded Jan.  "If you know anything that might help me..."

"Help you!  Nobody can help you!  Nobody will ever be able to solve your problems but yourself.  I've worked with your company long enough to know that you know nothing about it and care less.  You keep yourself locked up in your room, scared to death by an aunt, a secretary and the head of your father's firm.  You let Nathaniel Green do what he pleases with accounts - but why am I talking this way?  It can do you no good now.  I should have spoken months ago.  Maybe I was hoping you'd wake up by yourself and find out that you were a man instead of an infant.

Now if that sentence had come before Palmer's encounter with the jinni and dream weirdness, I'd have groaned at Hubbard's heavyhanded foreshadowing.  But since it's coming right after Palmer's first jump between worlds, even though it's more or less spoiling the story's conclusion, I think it works better.  I guess the dramatic irony of Hall's statement is balancing out the foreshadowing part of it.

Well, I say foreshadowing, but... we'll get to that later.  Suffice to say that things won't be quite as simple as Palmer's dream experiences as Tiger teaching him how to stand up to his domineering aunt.

But you haven't now, unless a miracle happens, you'll never have the chance.  There!  I've said it."

And that concludes Palmer's interaction with the cute girl he's hoping to impress.  It probably could have gone better.

Shannon and Green return, and the lawyer advises Palmer to plead self-defense in the case of the bisected occultist, but Palmer refuses to lie.  Green hides a smile when Shannon agrees to give Palmer's account to the judge, but he was probably just thinking of a funny video he saw on YouTube, and we shouldn't read too much into it.  And then they're gone, leaving us with two pages of Palmer talking with his cellmate, who is savvy enough to recognize that "the dame" is madly in love with him and would be all over Palmer if he just stopped being such a weenie, while those other two are a real "pack of wolves" who have Palmer right where they want him.

This all started just after breakfast, and nothing worth mentioning happens for the rest of the day.  At seven that evening, Miss Hall returns to let Palmer know that, shockingly enough, Shannon the lawyer has been unable to get bail for him, so it's another night in the slammer for our protagonist.  But she does have a care package for him, something that "Aunt Ethel... er... sent" for him.

Palmer thanks her for- wait, no, he just takes the goods and stares at his love interest until she breaks the silence by hoping he's not too uncomfortable, and it's only after she says she ought to get going that Palmer remembers his manners.

"Th-thank you for the package from Aunt Ethel and th-thank you for coming."

"I have to pass the jail to get home anyway," said Alice. "Good night."

"It's not like I'm giving you this stuff because I like you or anything, b-baka."

When Hall leaves, Mullins urges Palmer to open the box of goodies.  Palmer's barely interested since he expects Aunt Ethel just sent him his flannel pajamas, but is surprised to find it full of candies and toiletries and books and a new shirt and even "Houdini's textbook," presumably on escapology.  Poor, dumb Palmer has to have Mullins explain that Miss Hall was the one who packed it, not his evil auntie.  And man, she really has to be dedicated to the man she thinks Palmer could become if she's willing to support him after he's stuck in prison, stubbornly insisting that it was a genie who murdered that guy whose blood he was covered in, with a murder weapon covered in Palmer's fingerprints.  A lesser woman would have written Palmer off as a lost cause by now.

And that's it for this chapter, and Palmer's first real day in the slammer.  As the night goes on, he's forced to confront the fact that "there was a chance... the barest, barest chance... that he might be elsewhere the instant he closed his eyes."  Palmer tries to stay awake and stave off becoming that Tiger guy again, but as a time-traveling hedgehog once said, it's no use.

And by midnight he lost the fight.

He went down into the abyss of sleep, awakened instantly by the howl of winches and the cannonading of sails and then the grinding roar of chain racing through a hawsepipe.  He opened his eyes.

Well, this chapter ends with Palmer opening his eyes, but the next one begins with "Jan Palmer was afraid to open his eyes" for a paragraph before he lifts one eyelid to peek around.  I guess the upside of doing the dream transitions before a chapter break is that there's less chance of simple, easily-caught and corrected continuity errors such as this.

Seriously, Hubbard, learn to proofread.  Oh, that's right, you're dead.  Sorry for bothering you.


Back to Chapter Three

Forward to Chapter Five part one

Slaves of Sleep - Chapter Three - From Prison to Brig

Last time, on Dragonball Z, our heroes flexed and grunted for twenty minutes accompanied by cutaways to other characters remarking how powerful they were becoming.  Meanwhile in Slaves of Sleep, Jan Palmer endured a joyless family dinner, struck out with a cute stenographer, was rudely awakened by an occultist who broke into his home to break into a jar, and then learned that genies were a thing when an unbound ifrit expressed his gratitude by nearly bisecting his rescuer before cursing Palmer with "Eternal Wakefulness," leaving Palmer to be arrested for murder.

The narration insists that Palmer is just too stunned by these recent developments to protest as he's brought to a police station and led to a cell, but given the amount of backbone he's shown so far, I'm skeptical he'd offer much resistance even if he hadn't just seen a magical creature kill someone in front of him.  At any rate, Palmer isn't freaking out or anything, he's found a comfortable depression to sink into.

Seeing the cell and the cellmate and believing it was a cell and a cellmate were two entirely different things.  Jan sat down on a bunk and looked woodenly straight ahead.  He was in that frame of mind where men behold disaster to every side but are so thoroughly drenched with it that they begin to discount it.  It was even a somewhat solacing frame of mind.  Nothing worse than this could possibly happen.  Unlucky Fate had opened the bag and pulled out everything at once and so, by lucid reason, it was impossible for said Unlucky Fate to have any further stock still hidden.

Well, we've got a personified Fate again, though since this story predates Mission Earth I guess it's more accurate to say that this could be the genesis of Hubbard's melodramatic musings about an incarnation of predestination.  Also, the narration notes that the police station is crowded due to a "gang of counterfeiters," so that's familiar too.  Presumably they'll only be briefly detained before being executed.

The next three pages are all Palmer interacting with his cellmate, who goes through some distinct phases.  First there's the "That's my bunk" bit where he bullies Palmer into taking the drooping, stinking, pallet without any blankets.  Then there's the "What'd they baste you wit'?" bit where Palmer gets to explain that he's in for murder, only he didn't really do it, in fact it was a genie who picked up a sword and killed that man.  This talk of an "Igpit" confuses Palmer's cellmate, until he concludes the new guy is a "sniffer" like he used to be, and so the other prisoner decides to be a mentor of sorts.  He introduces himself as Diver Mullins, a pale, weaselly fellow who was arrested with $800 of another man's money in his pocket, and the narration tells us "There was no mistaking the evil in that face," we know he's a real bad guy.

Did Hubbard think that a handsome villain would confuse readers?  Thinking back, the only baddie who wasn't obviously weaselly or hideously deformed or just plain ol' ugly was Madison.

Mullins repeatedly proclaims that he doesn't doubt Palmer's story for a moment, but advises that our protagonist come up with something that will go over better with the judge.  But Palmer's too tired to really listen.  He thinks back on his encounter with Zongri and is "almost certain" that the jinni was speaking in Arabic, which Palmer doesn't know, but he was somehow still able to understand.  Then Palmer decides that "Perhaps it wasn't really Arabic," so... well, Hubbard, why'd you bring it up?  With this pointless train of thought abandoned, Palmer wonders about that curse of "Eternal Wakefulness," but isn't able to make much progress before nodding off.

The thing which happened immediately thereafter was the turning point in the life of Jan Palmer, for one - even beyond the effect of the murder.

I think it'd make more sense to bundle this with the murder, and just say that Palmer's life was turned upside down when that jinni escaped from its copper jar.

He went to sleep but he didn't go to sleep.

Don't groan, this sentence works, like going to the bathroom but not going to the bathroom.

He had a sensation of dropping straight down.  Heretofore he had been aware, in common with all men, of a delicious period of semi-wakefulness preceding and succeeding slumber.  But from that period he had always gone into a deep sleep (so far as he knew) or had come fully awake.  Now he felt as though the world had been obscured by a veil which no more than dropped than it was ripped startlingly aside.

Yes, Palmer is about to be confronted with the terrifying truth about the nature of reality.  You think you live in a world bound by rationality and science, but in fact...

A hail rang hysterically in his ears, "Breakers two points off the sta'b'd b-o-o-o-o-w!  B-r-r-reakers two points off the sta'd'b bow!  Captain, for the love of God, we're on the rocks!"

...you're really in a third-rate fantasy story, specifically on a boat, because the author was a sailor and wants you to know it.

Palmer has just enough time to realize he's holding a ship's helm before the boat crashes into a reef with an impact that "rocketed him all the way across the quarterdeck, from binnacle to scupper."  Sleepy crewmen stumble out of the fo'c's'le, sails are deployed so the ship "picked up a bone and scudded back into the safety of the sea," someone yells "Lively now," and I'm sure somewhere there's a reader whose soul is singing as the author paints a picture of an experienced crew working the properly-described rigging while an officer bellows authentic orders, but that reader isn't me.

Once the crisis is over and the ship is safely sailing through the night, its captain comes for the helmsman caught asleep at the wheel.  Said captain is an ifrit, huge and fanged with eyes of flame, and he keeps talking about some troublemaker named Tiger being responsible for it, even though it's Palmer he's kicking around.  How odd.

This gross dereliction of duty means that only a taste of the "cat" is a suitable punishment, and for an extra bit of sadism the condemned is sent to fetch it.  Oddly enough, Palmer goes along with this, even though he has to get directions to where the flail is stored, making other crewmen ask "Tiger" if he's ill.  The narration informs us that Palmer's head is still "roaring and spinning," probably so we'll conclude that he's so befuddled that he can't protest as he's ordered to retrieve something which will shortly be shredding the flesh of his back.  But again, I'm skeptical that Palmer would be capable of standing up for himself even in less confusing circumstances.

Palmer eventually finds the flail in a room amidst muskets and cutlasses, and though it's called a cat o' nine tails this one has twelve, and is so heavily-studded with brass that Palmer can barely carry it back to the captain.  He willingly removes his shirt, willingly bends over a rail, shrieks in agony after the first hit, and then Palmer is properly motivated to drop to his knees and beg forgiveness, stammering that he has no idea where he is and as far as he knows he just got here.  So either the threat of horrible pain wasn't quite enough to get Palmer to stand up for himself and he changed his mind after getting a taste of the lash, or else the blow from the flail knocked his backbone into working condition.

The jinni captain is quite astonished to find "Tiger, of all men, beggin' for mercy and lying in the bargain," before sending him below for a proper inspection - maybe getting thrown to the deck when the ship ran aground did something to Tiger's head.  Palmer lets himself in the captain's quarters and takes a moment to collect himself, only to be shocked again when he looks into the room's mirror.

Yes, now that he made a closer examination, it was himself.  But what a difference there was!  He, Jan Palmer, was a thin-faced, anemic fellow, but this brute who was staring back at him was bold of visage, brawny of arm, tall and... yes, he had to admit it, not bad at all to look upon.  

It's not gay if you think your reflection looks good, even if you don't fully recognize it.

But the knife scar which ran from the lobe of his ear diagonally to his jawbone... where had that come from?  He felt of it and peered more closely at it.  He didn't really object to it because it didn't mar his looks but, in truth, rather gave him an air.

Puzzled, he looked down at himself.  His blue pants encased very muscular and shapely legs.  His bare chest was matted with blond hair.  He looked back at his image as though it might solve the riddle for him.

At least he kept his pants on.

The captain, who will get a proper name two chapters from now, be patient, is flabbergasted that Tiger had the temerity to let himself into his quarters, though that might prove that there is something wrong with him.  He inspects the sailor's skull, threatens a terrible punishment if this is all a trick, and again is astonished when "Tiger" flinches back in fear.  Palmer tries to explain that the last thing he knew he was sleeping in a cell in Seattle, Washington, a port the captain has never heard of.  But when Palmer gets to the part of his story where a ifrit burst out of a copper jar, the captain realizes that Palmer is talking about Earth, and when Palmer mentions the name Zongri, the captain is astonished to hear that the old heretic has been freed.  And when Palmer says he got cursed with Eternal Wakefulness, the captain rants about Zongri's foolishness and how carelessly inflicting such a curse is just "like him."

So unlike in the "real" world, Palmer actually finds a sympathetic ear in this one.  Cap'n Nameless for the Moment gets Palmer to swear to keep these details to himself, and has him put in the brig under guard by a reliable marid - we'll get to those later too.  And so the chapter ends with our hero, once again, being escorted to a cell.

You can probably guess what that Curse of Eternal Wakefulness does by now, and if not don't worry, the book will explain it... eventually.  If you do have a guess of what this curse has done to Palmer, you won't be too shocked next chapter when we go back to Seattle.


Back to Chapter Two

Forward to Chapter Four

Slaves of Sleep - Chapter Two - A Big Genie Did It and Ran Away

The first sentence of the chapter does a great job of summing up our main character's existence: "Each evening, when the household was assembled at the dining table, Jan Palmer had the feeling that the entire table's attention was devoted to seeing whether or not he would choke on his next mouthful."  It's so darkly humorous and bluntly honest that I want to put a little gold sticker next to it.

We get about a page describing the difference between the former and current heads of the Palmer household.  Daddy Palmer bantered away with his family and guests before retiring to his study for the night, while Baby Palmer doesn't come close to filling his father's chair and presides over a silent meal, since he doesn't make conversation and everyone else keeps quiet as though "they all had secrets which they were fearful of giving away to each other."

And we also learn a bit about Palmer's economic situation.  The Bering Steamship Company isn't making much money, for reasons Palmer can't explain since he doesn't bother to look at its finances, while his share of its earnings mostly goes to his Aunt Ethel to cover "household expenses."  Green, the company's general manager, once again pesters Palmer to get some letters written this very evening, while also reminding him how things would be so much easier for everyone if he'd just give Green his power of attorney.  Palmer still doesn't agree to the latter, but is happy to work on the former.

It's not that Palmer loves to sit down at his desk and correspond all night long, he's much too important and rich to write letters by hand.  No, he rushes back to his room to take a quick shower because he's got a thing for Green's stenographer, a dame named Alice Hall who comes by a few nights each week to help Palmer handle the company paperwork.  Palmer is drawn to her not simply because she's pretty, but because she doesn't look down on him or make him nervous just by being around.  Which isn't to say that he didn't forget to breathe right the first time he met her.

Her large blue eyes were as impersonal as the turquoise orbs of the idol by the wall.  She was interested, it seemed, in nothing but doing her immediate job.  Still, there was something about her; something unseen but felt as the traveler can sense the violence of a slumbering volcano under his feet.  Her age was near Jan's own and she had arrived at the estate without leaving anything unlearned behind her.  There was almost something resentful about her, but that too was never displayed.

Er, right.  Not sure I'd be drawn to someone I think could explode on me at any moment and sear the flesh from my bones, or someone I suspected of well-hidden resentment, but to each his own.  Well, I say hidden, but Ms. Hall's true feelings towards Palmer come through as they talk about an upcoming conference.  Palmer's instinctive response is that he's much too busy to attend.

"I didn't think you would," she said unexpectedly.

"Uh?"

"I said I was sure you wouldn't.  They asked you but Mr. Green will go instead."

"He would want me to go," said Jan.  "He... he knows much more about it than I."

"You're right."

Jan detected, to his intense dismay, something like pity in her voice.  Pity or contempt; they were brothers anyway.

So for two hours Palmer and Hall - mostly Hall - craft letters until she finishes and gets up to go home and properly transcribe everything.  Palmer asks if she'd like to stick around for tea, or maybe he could drive her home, but Hall declines his offers and exits the scene, leaving Palmer to get mad at himself for making her think he's nothing but "a weak mouse, holed up in a cluttered room," before realizing that she's entirely right in doing so and sinking into both a deep chair and a deep depression.  Sometimes it's tough being a weenie.  If only there was some way to get Palmer to man up and take control of his life, some fantastical experience that could drastically and rapidly transform his character from that of a zero into a Hubbard Action Hero...

Palmer broods in his chair until the clock rings "two bells," because boats are awesome and Hubbard is going to cram as much nautical stuff into this story as he can get away with.  Eventually our protagonist falls asleep, only to suddenly wake some time later, "aware of a wrong somewhere near him."  Despite not wanting to, he turns on a lamp and beholds an open window as well as Professor Frobish, carving at the lead seal of that copper jar with a knife.

Frobish's eyes were hot and his face drawn.  There was danger in his voice.  "I had to do this.  I've been half crazy for hours thinking about it.  I am going to open this copper jar and if you try to stop me..."  The knife glittered in his fingers.

If this surprises you, then you've obviously never played any sort of role-playing game.  Since a character's Intelligence statistic dictates how many skill points they earn each level, it only stands to reason that an academic would have ranks in stealth and other intrusion skills in addition to their class-relevant skills.  You can only sink so much in Knowledge: Arabianology per level, y'know?

Frobish tries to reassure Palmer that his honor is secure, since after all it's Frobish doing to seal-breaking, while Second Cousin Greg was trying to protect Palmer from harm.  But Palmer is hit by "a sudden spasm of outrage."  He already takes so much crap from everyone, but now this loony mystic has broken into his one sanctum to break into the thing Palmer swore would never be opened?  This will not do.

All his repressed frustrations come to the fore, and Palmer advances on the knife-wielding scientist, even causing Frobish to back away.  Frobish babbles stuff like "This research is bigger than either you or me," while Palmer promises that if Frobish leaves now he'll let the incident pass, otherwise... well, Palmer doesn't go so far as to make a threat, he just whines that "This is my house and that jar is mine" and tries to snatch it away-

And Frobish floors him with one blow to the chin.  Welp.

Before the wimp fight can escalate further, it's interrupted by a sound like escaping steam as black fumes billow out of the ruptured seal of the copper jar, gathering against the room's ceiling while growing darker and heavier, moving as though with breath, until

Something hard flashed at the top of it and then began two spiked horns, swiftly accompanied by two gleaming eyes the size of meat platters.  Two long tusks, polished and sharp, squared the awful cavern of a mouth.  Swiftly then the smoke became a body girt with a blazing belt, two arms tipped by clawed fingers, two legs like trees ending in hoofs, split-toed and as large across as an elephant's foot.  The thing was covered with shaggy hair except for the face and the tail which lashed back and forth now in agitation.

It's odd how Arabian art and text leaves out the thick hair covering ifrits' bodies, but maybe Hubbard was consulting an Arabianologist when he wrote this description.

The thing knelt and flung up its hands and cried, "There is no God but Allah, the All Merciful and Compassionate.  Spare me!"

Jan was frozen.  The fumes were still heavy about him but now there penetrated a wild animal smell which made his man's soul lurch within him in memory of days an eon gone.

Hmm, do the Palmers have some Middle Eastern ancestry?  'cause a European having an ancestral fear of genies would make as much sense as a Chinese having an instinctive distrust of domovoi.

Frobish, recovered now and seeing that the thing was wholly on the defensive, straightened up.

"There is no God but Allah.  And Sulayman is the lord of the earth!"

Now in the intro I wondered just how thoroughly Hubbard researched the subject of jinn and infrits, but I'm pretty confident that he at least read one story from One Thousand and One Nights, because this part is remarkably similar to "The Fisherman and the Jinni:"

But presently there came forth from the jar a smoke which spired heavenwards into æther (whereat he again marvelled with mighty marvel), and which trailed along earth's surface till presently, having reached its full height, the thick vapour condensed, and became an Ifrit, huge of bulk, whose crest touched the clouds while his feet were on the ground. His head was as a dome, his hands like pitchforks, his legs long as masts and his mouth big as a cave; his teeth were like large stones, his nostrils ewers, his eyes two lamps and his look was fierce and lowering. Now when the fisherman saw the Ifrit his side muscles quivered, his teeth chattered, his spittle dried up and he became blind about what to do. Upon this the Ifrit looked at him and cried, "There is no god but the God, and Sulayman is the prophet of God;" presently adding, "O Apostle of Allah, slay me not; never again will I gainsay thee in word nor sin against thee in deed."

But let's not call this plagiarism.  Maybe an homage, or perhaps this is just the script any jinn goes through after being freed from a jar after many centuries.

Frobish boldly states that "We care less than nothing about Allah, and Sulayman has been dead these many centuries."  Now that the genie has been freed, he expects goodies in return.  But the ifrit only laughs when he hears that Soloman/Sulayman is dead and gone, and introduces himself as Zongri, "king of the Ifrits of the Barbossi Isles."  He's had a lot of time to think about what'd he do if he were freed, you see, and decides to share it with Frobish.

"Mortal man, the first five hundred years I vowed that the man who let me free would have all the riches in the world.  But no man freed me.  The next five hundred years I vowed that the man who let me out would have life everlasting even as I.  But no man let me out.  I waited then for a long, long time and then, at long last, I fell into a fury at my captivity and I vowed - you are sure you wish to know, mortal man?"

"Yes!"

"Then know that I vowed that the one who let me free would meet with instant death!"

Well that's gratitude for ya. And also strikingly similar to what the genie in the aforementioned story said about his own imprisonment.

[...] "There I abode an hundred years, during which I said in my heart, 'Whoso shall release me, him will I enrich for ever and ever.' But the full century went by and, when no one set me free, I entered upon the second five score saying, 'Whoso shall release me, for him I will open the hoards of the earth.' Still no one set me free, and thus four hundred years passed away. Then quoth I, 'Whoso shall release me, for him will I fulfill three wishes.' Yet no one set me free. Thereupon I waxed wroth with exceeding wrath and said to myself, 'Whoso shall release me from this time forth, him will I slay and I will give him choice of what death he will die;' and now, as thou hast released me, I give thee full choice of deaths."

I mean, there's differences - the classic ifrit promises wealth twice, never gets around to offering immortality, and at least gives his would-be victim a choice of which death he's won.  But still.

Frobish is none too pleased to hear this, and points out that it was Palmer and his stupid oath that kept Zongri imprisoned, while if it weren't for Frobish the jinn would still be stuck in a jar.  But the ifrit refuses to go back on his word, snatches the professor when he tries to run, grabs one of the Malaysian kris, and... huh.  Okay, so a kris is a knife, a stabbing weapon more or less.  Kris were occasionally used in executions, but to stab the condemned a few times under the ribs so they'd quickly bleed out.  But Hubbard thinks of the weapon as a "great executioner's blade" capable of cleaving Frobish's corpse until it's "Split from crown to waist."  Maybe he consulted an Arabianologist on that too.

Palmer is understandably startled by this development, and when the ifrit gets him in its clutches, he asks - well, tells - well, "said" - to be let go.  When Zongri asks why, Palmer says that he wasn't the one who freed the genie, and it'd be awfully illogical for the genie to "kill a man for letting you free and then kill another for... for not letting you free."  Zongri considers this before agreeing, then asks if Palmer is "Mohammedan."

The ifrit's imprisonment couldn't have been that bad if he had a little radio or TV or whatever in that jar to let him know about the rise of Islam between his capture and release.

Since Palmer isn't aligned with Sulayman or Zongri's enemies, the ifrit decides not to kill him - well, that and the fact that he made no vow to do so.  But he does decide to hit Palmer with a sentence, that of "Eternal Wakefulness."  And then, with a great rush of noise, Zongri disappears for Mount Kaf.

And this leaves Palmer standing in a room with a nearly-bisected corpse and the bloody knife greatsword that did the deed.  Which Palmer proceeds to handle "with some wild thought of trying to bring the man back to life," moving the weapon off the corpse and shaking Frobish's shoulder before realizing this probably isn't going to wake him up.  Then he decides that he might want some company after all, but as soon as he puts his hand on the door, it opens to admit "Two prowler car man," and all the ancillary characters save for Miss Hall.  Apparently the foremost are cops, because they immediately arrest Palmer with the comment that "It's open and shut."

Yes, Thompson apparently heard voices in Palmer's study, didn't investigate but immediately sent for law enforcement, and didn't notice the voice of the third person in the room but did hear "the sound of the knife and then silence."  So it was a knife.  That nearly cut a man in half.  While being wielded by a being so enormous that Zongri had to walk on his knees to fit in the room.  Huh.

Anyway, Palmer tries to babble an explanation about the jar and Frobish breaking in through the window, but the cops tell him to save it for the sergeant, while Aunt Ethel is quick to sob and ask why her "poor boy" did such a horrible act, and Green starts pacing and ranting about the negative publicity this is going to cause.  Sure enough, a whole swarm of reporters shows up, and Aunt Ethel is eager to talk to them about the awful crime and how thankless Palmer is for committing it after all she's done for him.  What's left of Frobish eventually gets hauled off in an ambulance while Palmer gets to take a ride in a police car.

It goes without saying that nobody will wonder how a meek little thing like Palmer was able to cleave through most of Frobish, while using a knife of all things.  This may be a better story than most of Hubbard's offerings, but that doesn't mean it won't require a good amount of stupidity to function.


Back to Chapter One

Forward to Chapter Three