on his heel and marched on down the sidewalk.
“You shouldn’ t let that fat lug bluff you like that,” Kalvin
advised. “Stand up to him.”
“What makes you think he was bluffing?” I said, resum-
ing my journey, taking care to swerve around the other
Pervects crowding the path.’ ‘Besides, there’s also the minor
detail that he was big enough to squash me like a bug.”
“He raised a good point, though,” the Djin continued
as if I hadn’t spoken. “Just where are we going, anyway?”
“Down the street.”
“I meant, ‘what’s our destination?’ I thought you said
the phone book was no help.”
Despite its millions of inhabitants, the Pervish phone book
we found had turned out to have less than a dozen pages.
Apparently unlisted phone numbers were very big in this
dimension, just one more indication of the social nature of
the citizens. Of course, leafing vainly through it, it had
occurred to me that Aahz had been with me off-dimension
for so long that it was doubtful he would have been in the
book even if it contained a full listing.
“I repeat, we’re going down the street,” I repeated.
“Beyond that, I don’t know where we’re going. Is that what
you wanted to hear?”
“Then why are we moving at all?” the Djin pressed.
MYTH-NOMERS AND IM-PERVECTIONS 27
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait until we decided on a course
of action before we started moving?”
I dodged around a slow-moving couple.
“I think better when I’m walking. Besides, I don’t want
to draw unnecessary attention to us by lurking suspiciously
in alleys while I come up with a plan.”