Djinn Rummy

ONE

67,811 pints today please, milkman. Rule one in the licensed victualling trade: Know Your Clientele. Ignore it, and you might as well keep the doors locked.

Mr D. Jones had been in the business for a very long time, and he had long since learned everything there is to know about running a hotel, bar and bistro catering exclusively for drowned sailors.

It is, in fact, fairly straightforward. Good plain food; never under any circumstances allow the bar to run dry; strong tea with lashings of milk and sugar. And, of course, ensure that all tables are secured to the floor with half-inch carriage bolts.

He glanced up through the glass roof. Light never quite made it down as far as The Locker, but the water overhead was turning the precise shade of muggy dark olive that implied daybreak. Time to roll up the shutters, take the towels off the pumps and start a new day.

D. Jones folded the scrap of paper, pushed it into the bottle and rammed home the cork. Then he opened Number Six airlock.

A message in a bottle.

Having decided to kill herself, Jane went into the nearest chemist’s shop.

“I’d like a large bottle of aspirins, please,” she said to the man behind the counter. He looked at her. In fact, as far as Jane was concerned, he made an unnecessarily thorough job of it, as if he was planning on doing an autopsy without the tedious business of cutting her up first.

“Aspirins?” he asked, making it sound as if she’d asked for the elixir of eternal youth.

“Aspirins,” Jane replied. “Please. And could you hurry it up? I’m on my lunch break.”

The man, who was white-haired and very tall, sniffed. “Any particular sort?” he asked. “Or just aspirins?”

“Just aspirins.”

The man smiled. “Not sure we’ve got any of those in stock, just aspirins. I’ll have to look out the back. Don’t go away.”

Before Jane could say anything, the man had darted away into the stockroom. She felt a strong inclination to make her escape while he was gone, but the voice of logic inside her head dissuaded her. Come off it, girl, it said, you’ve made up your mind to commit suicide and you’re afraid something bad might happen to you? In a chemist’s?

The man reappeared.

“You’re in luck,” he said, extending a hand containing a big brown bottle. “Just the one left. Directions on the label, that’ll be two pounds seventy.”

It was, Jane couldn’t help observing, a very old bottle. It had cobwebs on it. She’d read somewhere that out-of-date medicines could be very bad for you.

“Thanks,” she said. “Just what I wanted. Keep the change.”

Now then; where? Did it matter? Anywhere she could be sure of a little bit of peace and quiet. Her flat. No, not her flat; they wouldn’t find her for days (who would they be, she wondered) and by then she probably wouldn’t be very nice… A hotel? She looked in her purse, which contained three pounds and seventeen pence, and no cheque book or credit card. She’d left them at home, on the basis that you can’t take it with you. This, she muttered to herself, is getting tiresome.

A railway station. Yes. She was, after all, about to embark on a very long journey.

There was a station; and the station had one of those waiting rooms that make you decide to wait on the platform instead. Guaranteed privacy. She sat down, opened her bag and took out the bottle.

Note. Should she write a note? It was traditional, yes, but when you looked at it objectively, what the hell was the point? She had no family or other human associates to whom she owed an explanation; what made her think that the coroner was going to be interested in her tawdry little problems? They have a hard life, coroners; long hours, calls out in the middle of the night, constant association with lawyers, policemen and dead bodies. Boredom would probably be the last straw; and besides, she didn’t have a pen with her, and a suicide note written in eyebrow pencil smacked of undue frivolity.

Goodbye, cruel world. She unscrewed the bottle…

WHOOSH!

“Thank goodness for that,” said the genie. “For a moment there I was beginning to get worried.”

He hung in the air like a cloud of gun-smoke on a still, bright day; and as each second passed he became more substantial and more brain-wrenchingly incredible. There was a tinkle as the bottle hit the concrete floor and disintegrated into small, sharp brown fragments.

“You’d think,” he went on, “I’d have had more sense, particularly in my line of business. First thing they teach you in genie school, if a strange man comes up to you, offers you sweets and asks you to get into his bottle, walk away, or better still, rip his head off and swallow it.” He sighed, and the effort made his component molecules sway in the air. “Fourteen years this Tuesday fortnight I’ve been in that sodding bottle, and the sanitary arrangements left something to be desired, I’m telling you.”

He was no longer transparent; scarcely translucent. A shaft of light nudging its way through the dusty window hit the back of his head and, knowing what was good for it, refracted violently.

Genies are designed to be useful rather than ornamental, and this one was a masterpiece of the genre. There was enough ivory in its tusks to make cue balls for all the snooker tables in Europe.

“Who are you?” Jane said.

The genie frowned. “Are you serious?” it demanded. “Or just extremely sceptical?”

“You’re a genie?”

“Hole in one.”

“A real genie?”

The genie clicked its tongue. “No,” it replied. “I’m a fake, you can tell by the lack of hallmarks. Of course I’m a real genie. What do you want, a certificate of authenticity?”

“What…?” Jane felt her vocabulary clot. On the one hand, she had made up her mind to put an end to her pointless life, the existence of genies wasn’t really germane to the various issues that had influenced her in making that decision, and time was getting on. If she didn’t get a move on, she’d arrive in Heaven too late for dinner. On the other hand…

“Admit it,” she said, “you’re my imagination, aren’t you? I’ve taken the pills and I’m hallucinating.”

“Thank you very much,” replied the genie, offended. “Do I look like a hallucination?”

Jane considered. “Frankly,” she said, “yes.”

The genie considered this. “Fair enough,” it replied. “Maybe that wasn’t the most intelligent rhetorical question I’ve ever posed. Do I take it, by the way, that you were planning on eating the pills?”

Jane nodded.

“Headache? Sore throat?”

“Bad dose of life,” Jane replied. “Fortunately, the remedy is available over the counter without a prescription.”

The genie shook its head. “Bad attitude you’ve got there, if I may make so bold,” it said. “There’s lots of things worse than life, believe you me.”

“Oh yes? Such as?”

“Such as death, for one,” the genie replied, “spending a lot of time in bottles coming in close behind to clinch silver. Mind if I sit down, by the way? Cramp.” Like a closely packed swarm of bees it drifted down and hovered an inch or so above the bench opposite Jane. “Mug’s game, death is. All that standing about in queues and filling in forms. Compared to death, life is just a bowl of cherries.”

“Ah,” Jane replied, with a strong trace of ice in her voice, “I wasn’t planning on dying, I was planning on being reincarnated. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mister Clever.”

The genie nodded. “Don’t get me wrong,” it said, “there’s nothing bad about reincarnation per se, it’s basically a very good system, cost-effective and ecologically friendly. It’s just that, until they iron out the technical glitches…”

Jane frowned. “I don’t think you’re a genie at all,” she said. “I think you’re actually the imaginary friend I had when I was five, only grown-up. You’re just as irritating as he was, and you’ve got the same knack of poking your finger in your ear and wiggling it about when you’re talking.”

“Do I do that?” The genie looked at its hand. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Have you seen the length of my claws? How come I don’t lacerate my eardrums?”

Jane shrugged. “That’s your problem, surely. Look if you really are a genie and you’ve been sent to make me change my mind—”

“Sent? Who by?”

“Search me. Is there anybody who sends genies, or do they just turn up? No, forget it, no offence but I’m really not interested. It’s been lovely meeting you, really it has, but it’s time I wasn’t here.”

“Sure?”

“Positive.” Jane looked at the floor. “I take it,” she said, “the bottle was empty. Apart from you, of course.”

The genie nodded; or at least, it shimmered up and then down again, like an indecisive smoke signal. “You want some aspirins, I take it?”

“Please.”

“Your wish is my—”

“Hold it.”

“Shit.” An expression of disgust flitted across the genie’s face. “I thought you’d say that,” it muttered. “Perceptive, aren’t I?”

Jane leant forward, her chin cupped in her hand. “My wish is your command?”

The genie winced. “Bloody marvellous,” it said. “Humans, all they’re interested in is one thing. My mother was right, it’s wishes, wishes, wishes all the time with you people. Makes me sick.”

“Three wishes?”

“Absolutely correct. Still, since you’re absolutely dead set on killing yourself, there really isn’t much point, is there? Unless you want a hand getting the job done, that is.” The genie grinned toothily. “In which case,” it said, “absolutely delighted to oblige. Fourteen years in an empty bottle, one thing you do get is decidedly peckish.”

Jane shook her head. “That,” she said, “was before I had three wishes from a genuine genie. You’ve got to admit, it alters things.”

“Up to a point,” the genie said. “I mean, we’re talking parameters of the possible here. There are very strict rules about what we are and are not allowed to do for clients.”

“I’ll bet.”

“So strict,” the genie went on, shimmering persuasively, “as to make the wishes virtually worthless, in my opinion. Not worth the hassle. Forget all about it if I were you.”

“I think I’ll give them a try, thanks all the same.”

“Gosh, there’s a train just coming in, if you’re quick you could jump under it and—”

“Three wishes,” Jane said firmly. “Agreed?”

The genie sighed. “In which case,” it said, “you’d better have one of these.”

There was a rustle of pages, and a book appeared in Jane’s lap. She picked it up and squinted at the spine:

“Demeaning, I call it,” the genie muttered. “I mean, owner, for God’s sake. Makes me sound like a blasted lawn-mower.”

“Gentle giant my arse,” the genie interrupted. “Well, giant maybe, but gentle…”

Jane read on for a while, and then closed the book. “Three wishes,” she said.

“That’s right. You saw the bit about the "Wish By" date, by the way? Very important, that.”

“Very well,” Jane went on, “I’ll have the first one now, please.”

“Fire away.”

“I’d like,” Jane said, “another twelve million wishes.”

The genie’s head jerked upright. “Now just a cotton-picking minute,” it complained, “that’s not fair. There’s no way…”

“Why not?” Jane smirked. “Completely legitimate request, according to this book.”

“Rubbish. Like I said, there are strict rules.”

Jane nodded. “I agree,” she said. “Here they are on page four, paragraph two, three lines up from the bottom. Want to have a look?”

“I know the rules, thank you,” said the genie icily.

“As follows,” Jane continued. “One, no wishes that change the very fabric of reality. Well, that’s OK, if I can have three wishes I can have three billion, it’s all the same in principle.”

“Matter of opinion,” grunted the genie.

“Two,” Jane said firmly, “no wishes beyond the genie’s power to fulfil. Obviously no worries on that score.”

“I’ve got a bad back, mind,” the genie interjected. “Gives me one hell of a lot of jip in the winter months, my back does.”

“And finally,” Jane said, “rule three, all wishes to be used within three hundred years of first acquiring the genie.” Jane glanced at her watch. “By my reckoning that gives me till half past twelve on the sixteenth of June 2295. Agreed?”

“Twenty past twelve, I make it.”

“Then twenty past twelve it shall be.” Jane closed the book. “Nothing in there that says I can’t wish for more wishes. And if with my next wish I wish for another nine trillion and four wishes, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Is there?”

The genie scowled. “I think this is probably something of a grey area, interpretation-wise,” it said. “However, as a gesture of goodwill, would you accept six wishes in full and final settlement?”

“No.”

“You’re not a lawyer by any chance, are you?”

“That’s a horrible thing to say about anybody.”

“True.” The genie scratched the back of its head, and for a few moments bright sunlight seeped through the gashes made by its claws in the glittering air. “All right then, tell you what I’ll do. All the wishes you want for three years, how about that?”

Jane shook her head. “For life,” she replied. “But I promise I won’t wish for anything too yuk, provided there’s not an emergency or something.”

“God, you drive a hard bargain.”

“I know.”

“Can I go now?” The genie lifted its arm and sniffed. “I mean, I’ll be there as soon as you call, word of honour, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d just spare me a few minutes. You know, to freshen up, brush my teeth, that sort of thing. I won’t be long.”

“That’s all right.” Jane considered. “What’s your name, by the way?”

The genie looked embarrassed; that is, the million billion minuscule points of light of which it was composed flickered red, one after the other, all in the space of a fraction of a second. “Just call me Genie,” it said quickly. “That’s what everybody else does, and it’s much—”

“Name.”

The genie dimmed. “Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits III,” it mumbled.

“Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits?”

"Fraid so.” The genie nodded stroboscopically. “Commercial sponsorship, you see. Pays for all the running repairs, plus a twice-yearly check-up and insurance. People call me Goochie for short. If they dare,” it added. “And even then, never more than twice. Myself, I prefer the acronym. It’s more me.”

“Kick?”

“Kiss,” Kiss replied. “The C is soft as in coelacanth, certain and celery. Like I said, though, just plain Genie does me absolutely fine.”

“With the light brown hair, huh?”

Kiss sighed and gathered together his photons with all the dignity he could muster. “All things considered, I was a fool to leave the bottle. Be seeing you.”

He said; and vanished.

Much to Jane’s surprise, he came back twenty minutes later.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

“Thank you,” Kiss replied. “Nice place you’ve got here, by the way.”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “You like it?” she said. “Personally, I think it’s a dump.”

“Objectively speaking, it probably is. Sure beats an aspirin bottle, though.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jane replied. “Milk and sugar?”

Kiss shook his head — he was, Jane noticed, considerably more together than he had been; the gaps between the little points of light and shadow that comprised him were much smaller, and unless he stood with his back to the window you’d almost imagine he was solid. “A slice of lemon, if you’ve got it.”

“Sorry.” Jane frowned. “Hey, who’s doing the wishes around here, anyway?”

Let there be lemon; and there was lemon. She handed him his cup (it was disconcerting to say the least to push one of her grandmother’s Crown Derby teacups into a glistening dust cloud, but there was no crash) and bade him sit down. He repeated the hovering manoeuvre she’d witnessed before.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” she said.

Kiss’s eyebrows flickered sceptically. “You usually lay out the best china just for yourself, do you?” he enquired.

“I don’t remember giving you my address,” Jane replied.

Kiss snorted. “Give me some credit,” he said huffily. “I am, or was, one of the marshals of the hosts of heaven, rider of the tempest, companion of the cherubim. Looking someone up in the phone book is scarcely taxing my powers to the limit.”

“So how did you find out my name?”

“You write your name inside your handbag; evidently a throw-back to your schooldays. Rather endearing, I thought. Mind if I smoke?”

Jane frowned. “Actually,” she said, “I’m allergic to tobacco.”

“Who said anything about tobacco?”

Jane shrugged. “Please yourself.”

A second or so later she became aware of the most delicious perfume; attar of roses or something like that. Two hundred quid for a tiny bottle sort of thing. She nodded approval.

“Actually,” said the genie, “it’s woodbines. Well, this is all very pleasant. So far, anyway.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Jane replied. She pushed her hair backup out of her eyes, and put on a serious face. “I think it’s time we did a little basic ground-work, don’t you?”

The genie looked at her. “Ground-work? You mean ploughing or something?”

“I mean,” Jane replied, “I want you to tell me something about yourself. You see, I haven’t got the faintest idea what a genie is, or where they come from, anything like that. Except that they come in bottles and grant you three wishes,” she added lamely.

“I see.” Kiss scratched the bridge of his nose. “That’s a bit like saying all you know about America is Eggs Benedict and the date of Groundhog Day. Not enough, in other words.”

“That’s what I’d assumed.”

“Right, then,” the genie said. “Now, where shall I start?”

Genies (Kiss explained) are fallen angels. That is to say, in the beginning they were created out of the Mind of God, to do the things for which angels are necessary. All I can say about that is, He’s got one hell of a warped imagination.

Most genies got to be genies by backing the wrong side in the civil war between the archangel Michael and Lucifer, Son of the Morning. Not me, though; I was on the right side in that lot, albeit in the Pay Corps. As I remember, I spent the duration of the war either playing cards or wandering around with a clipboard trying to keep out of the way of the officers. Which suited me fine, by the way. Never saw a thunderbolt thrown in anger, and I play a really mean game of djinn rummy.

No, my departure from Heaven was the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding about a lorry-load of black market stardust somehow going missing en route to HQ from King Solomon’s Mines. I was, of course, framed, but would they believe me? Would they hell.

Well, after that I bummed around for a bit, doing the things genies generally do — You don’t? Well, all sorts of things, really: raising storms, necromancy, digging up pots of gold at the ends of rainbows, riding the moon, changing princes into frogs, a few real estate deals, anything to pass the time and put a few dinars in your pocket. It’s a good life if you like that sort of thing, though you do tend to end up mixing with heroes and grand viziers and a lot of other lowlifes, and you’re really only ever as good as your last job. Particularly these days, with all the science and stuff. In fact, quite a few of the lads I used to hang out with have packed in the road and settled down as lift operators. No, not lift attendants, lift operators. You don’t seriously think lifts go up and down all day with just a bit of wire and a few pulleys, do you?

And the movies, of course; special effects. You’ve heard of George Lucas, I take it? Now that’s one genie who really did make the big time.

Anyway, there I was, just sort of pottering about, minding my own business; and then, wham! Lamp time. It happens to all of us sooner or later, of course, it’s genetic programming or something, like lemmings. Doesn’t stop you feeling a right idiot when the stopper goes down, though.

Well, I was out of circulation for, what, five hundred years, five and a bit, and then — Sorry? Look, do I have to, because it really is very embarrassing? All right, if you insist.

I was at this party (Kiss said, cringing slightly) and there was this djinn, right? Tall, slim, blonde, pair of fangs on her like a sabre-tooth tiger; I mean, we’re talking serious chemistry here and, besides, I may have been drinking. Alcohol has a bad effect on my metabolism, it has to be admitted. All I have to do is sniff a bottle of cough medicine and somebody has to take me home in a wheelbarrow.

Anyway, there we were and one thing led to another, and she said, “Your place or mine?” and the next thing I remember was waking up in this lamp thing with a splitting headache and the lid coming off and me being shot out like someone had just shot a hole through the cabin wall at fifty thousand feet; and there’s this magician type in a big pointy hat staring at me and saying, “Hold on a minute, you’re not the usual fiend, what’s become of Mabel?”

Mabel, needless to say, was the looker with the luxury dentures, and she’d lured me back to her lamp, done a runner and left me there. I tried explaining, but it didn’t do any good. “Never mind, you’ll just have to do instead,” was all the sympathy and understanding I got out of him, the bastard.

Now here’s a word of advice, from someone who’s been there; if ever you get yourself indentured to a black magician, try to make sure it’s not a black magician who’s into the financial services stuff. It’s bad enough as it is with the hurtling backwards and forwards through time and space, I-hear-and-obey-oh-mastering twenty-four hours a day, doing evil and getting yourself thoroughly disliked all the time. When you’ve got all that, plus you have to play snakes and ladders with the international currency markets, it can get to be a serious drag. You can imagine the sort of thing I mean: go sink a few of So-and-so’s ships so I can mount a hostile takeover of his company. Oh look, the Samarkandi dirham’s risen in early trading, go and raze their walls to the ground and eat their finance minister. I mean, where’s the self-respect in that?

(At which point Jane interrupted to say it sounded awful. Kiss nodded sadly.

“It was,” he said. “And you know what the worst part of it was? All this inside information floating around and me without a dinar to my name. A few lousy coppers in the right place and I could have been taken seriously rich, you know? As it was…”

“I see,” Jane said coldly. “Do please go on.”)

Anyway (said Kiss) eventually the Securities Commission caught up and it was a case of into the sack and off to the Bosphorus for him, and bloody good riddance too. Not, however, much fun for me, because I was in the lamp at the time. And in the lamp I stayed. For five hundred years, with nothing to do except play I Spy. Something, I need hardly tell you, beginning with L.

Just when I was starting to go lamp-crazy, though, off comes the lid and there’s this bloke in a sort of fawn safari suit peering in at me and saying something about typical thirteenth-century Bokhara ware, probably indicative of developing commercial links with the Ummayads. That’s right, a blasted archaeologist. There are times when you don’t know when you’re well off.

You’ll never guess what his three wishes were. Well, if you know anything about archaeology, maybe you can. As I understand it, in order to become an archaeologist you have to spend your youth stuck in some dusty old library reading books about bits of broken pot. You don’t have time for going to parties, or girls. By the time you do have time, it’s generally too late — unless, that is, you suddenly find yourself with a virtually omnipotent spiritual assistant and three wishes.

Anyway, after that I needed a year at the bottom of a disused mine-shaft just to recover and get over the embarrassment; after which I got a job as a clerk in a shipping office. It was the least exciting thing I could think of. I was right.

And then, just when I was thinking about what I was going to do next and how much fun I could have with superhuman powers and absolutely no social conscience, I got stuck in the bottle you so kindly extracted me from. No, I’m not prepared to go into details; and if you want any co-operation at all from me in the course of what promises to be a long and interesting working relationship, you’ll respect my privacy on that one. OK?

“Superhuman powers?” Jane queried.

Kiss nodded. “Pretty superhuman,” he replied, “and I don’t have to dash into the nearest phone box and change first, either. Although,” he added, “all that stuff was a front. He didn’t need to change at all, it was just part of the act.”

Jane’s eyes widened. “You mean Superman—?”

“No names,” Kiss replied, “no pack drill. But it’s true, there’s more of us about than people think. We’ve sort of rehabilitated ourselves in the community, if you like to look at it that way.”

“I see.” Jane was staring out of the window. “You know,” she said, “I’m so confused about all of this that I almost believe in you. Am I going mad, do you think?”

Kiss paused before answering. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?” he said. “Seems to me that you’re that much ahead of the game, so don’t knock it. That reminds me. The suicide thing. Why?”

Jane shook her head. “We’d better respect each other’s privacy,” she said. “Fair enough?”

“Your wish, etcetera. Right,” said the genie, “what’s it to be? Shall we kick off with the wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, get that out of the way before the banks close?”

“That’s possible, is it?”

“Piece of duff.” Kiss yawned and picked a stray morsel of fluff out of his hair. It turned into a two-headed snake, burst into flames and vanished. “Swiss francs are what we usually recommend, although gold bullion has a lot going for it. Up to you, really.”

Jane shook her head. “Later,” she said. “Let’s just have a look at this book and see what it has to say.”

She opened the manual.

“Gosh,” Jane said.

“You’re probably way ahead of me,” Kiss was saying, “but just in case you were tempted to, don’t look down. Or at least, not straight down. Vertigo is one of the things I can’t do anything about, oddly enough.”

Below them, on Nevsky Prospekt, the traffic roared; so far below them that all Jane could see was one continuous stream of white light and another of red. Further away, the absurd spire of the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul loomed up into the night sky, like a spear aimed at the moon…

“For God’s sake look where you’re going. We nearly flew straight into that pointy thing.”

“Sorry,” Kiss replied. “I’m a touch out of practice at flying two up. It’s a bit like riding a motorbike with a sidecar, really, you have to remember to compensate—”

“Look,” Jane interrupted, as they flashed past the Admiralty Tower with at least six thousandths of an inch to spare, “where the hell are we?”

“St Petersburg.”

“St Petersburg?”

Kiss shrugged — under the circumstances, an act of carelessness verging on criminal recklessness. “You said take me somewhere foreign,” he said, as Jane hauled herself back up between the base of his wings. “St Petersburg’s foreign. Can’t get much more foreign than St Petersburg, if you ask me. That down there, by the way, is the Prospekt Stachek, and that impressive-looking thing with the crinkly walls is in fact a processed meat plant, would you believe. Designed by Rubanchik and Barutchev in 1929—”

“Put me down.”

“As you wish. Anywhere in particular?”

“Yes. The ground. Quickly!”

The ground selected by Kiss for a landing strip turned out to be a pelican crossing on the Ulitsa Zodchevo Rossi, much to the chagrin of the driver of a lorry-load of Brussels sprouts who was just about to drive over it. For the record, the lightning-fast swerve by which he managed to avoid running Jane and her invisible companion over was witnessed by no less a person than the acting secretary of the local bus-driver’s co-operative, who offered him a job as soon as he was released from hospital.

“No offence,” Kiss said, as they crossed the road, “but you’re a lousy passenger. You may think that screaming Oh God, we’re going to die! and grabbing hold of my left wing just when I’m doing the tricky part of the landing process is being helpful, but in actual fact…”

Jane sat down on the steps of a building and closed her eyes. “I think,” she said, “I’ll take the train back, if it’s all the same to you.”

Kiss was offended. “I’d just like to remind you,” he said, “that if you’d had your way, you’d have killed yourself by now. When it comes to a total disregard for the value of human life, I think you’re the one who’s into melanistic kettle spotting.”

Jane looked up at him angrily. “To recap,” she said. “Any wish I like, so long as it’s physically possible?”

“That’s right. OUCH!”

“Thank you.”

“There was no call,” Kiss said, rubbing the place on the side of his head where he had just thumped himself very hard, “for that. If you’re not happy about something, all you have to do is say. Remember that, and we’ll get on just fine.”

Jane got to her feet. “Now then,” she said. “Yes, I’m convinced. You are a genie, and you exist. I think I’d like to go home. Slowly.”

“Your wish is my—”

“And peacefully. Straight and level. You think you can manage that?”

“I’ll give it,” Kiss replied, “my best shot.”

“Is that it?”

Kiss made no reply; he just took off his pinny, folded it neatly and put it back behind the door. Then he started the washing-up.

“And these little bits of grey grisly stuff,” Jane went on. “You’re sure they’re really necessary?”

“Quails” guts Marengo,” Kiss replied. “Where I come from, that’s about as haut as cuisine can get. Fried in butter, or served as a crudité with a simple green salad…”

Jane put down her fork and folded her arms. “No thanks,” she said. “Just take it away and bring me a boiled egg. A hen’s egg,” she added quickly; but not quickly enough.

“To hear is to obey,” Kiss explained smugly. “Come on, eat it up before it hatches.”

Jane shook her head; and a moment later there as a faint tapping sound, like Ginger Rogers trapped inside a fireproof vault. A hairline crack appeared in the side of the egg.

“People think,” Kiss said, removing the plate, “that these little chaps became extinct because of severe climactic changes at the close of the Cretaceous period. Truth is, nothing stupid enough to taste that good in an omelette deserves to survive. Oh look, here he comes. Whoosa pretty boy, then?”

A small, scaly head with three tiny bumps on its skull poked out through the shell and blinked moistly. Kiss clicked his tongue at it fondly a few times, and then vanished. When he reappeared, he was carrying a plastic tray and a styrofoam cup with a straw.

“More your style,” he said contemptuously. “Still, it’s early days yet. Next week we’ll start you on ammonite cocktails and honey-roast mammoth.”

“Want to bet?”

“Your wish is my—”

“Oh, shut up.”

“For pity’s sake,” Jane croaked, rolling over and peering at her clock. “It’s half past three in the morning.”

Over the end of the bed, a cloud of photons glistened cheerfully. “Up bright and early, you said,” Kiss replied. “Here, catch hold.”

To her disgust, Jane received a tray with a plate on it. On the plate was a hedgehog, curled up in a nest of dry leaves. There were cubes of cheese and pineapple impaled on its spikes. It was, Jane noted with relief, asleep rather than dead.

“You did say you wanted your breakfast still in its bed,” Kiss explained, “so I didn’t wake it up. Besides, hedgehogs are usually flambéed at the table, so if you’ll pass me that box of matches…”

“Are you being stupid on purpose, or are you just—?”

“There’s no need to be rude.”

“Right,” Jane said. “Today we’re going to set the world to rights.”

Kiss looked up from the sink. “Fine,” he said. “Is that before or after I do the washing-up?”

Jane blinked. “I was being facetious,” she replied. “Were you?”

“No,” the genie answered, squeezing the entire contents of the washing-up liquid bottle into the sink and turning both taps to full power. “I’m never facetious where wishes are concerned, it’s part of being a pro. You want the world set to rights, I’m your sprite.”

“I see.” Jane sat down and drank some tea. It was quite unlike any other tea she had ever tasted, while at the same time being unmistakably tea. She found out later that this was because Kiss made tea by uprooting a tea plant and dumping it in the pressure cooker for half an hour. “And how do you propose going about it?”

“Easy.” The words easy, no worries, piece of cake had come to ring loud warning bells in Jane’s mind; it usually meant that the genie was contemplating doing something so extreme as to boil the brain. “The way I see it, all the misery and unhappiness in the world today is caused by governments, people like that. Just give me five minutes to get this baked-on grease off this grill-pan and I’ll nip out and deal with them.”

“Deal with?”

Kiss made an unambiguous gesture with his forefinger and his throat. “They’ve got it coming,” he said cheerfully. “It’ll be a pleasure.”

Jane spilt her tea. “One,” she said, “you’ll do no such thing.”

“Oh, come on…”

“Two,” she continued, “I thought there were rules about that sort of thing. I mean, what you can and can’t do.”

Kiss shook his head. “There are,” he replied. “But topping a few politicians is entirely legitimate. It’s only impossible things that I’m not supposed to do; you know, things that’d bend the nature of physics. There’s nothing in the book of rules about criminal irresponsibility.”

“An.”

“I take it you’re not keen on the idea?”

“I have to admit,” Jane replied, “I’d prefer a more organic approach.”

The genie’s massive brow wrinkled over. “What, you mean bury them alive? Can do, just say the—”

“No.”

“All right, then, how about bury them alive in compost? You can’t get more organic than compost.”

“I meant,” Jane said firmly, “something a bit more constructive. Something that doesn’t involve lots of people getting killed.”

The genie stared for a moment, then started to laugh. “Set the world to rights and nobody gets killed? Hey, lady, where have you been all your life?”

Few compilers of folk-tale anthologies have recorded the fact, but all genies, regardless of the terms of their indenture or the nature of their employment, have an indefeasible right to one night off a week. Kiss had explained this to Jane in great detail, and had even taken the trouble of marking the whole of the relevant page of the manual in extra-fluorescent yellow marker pen.

Where, then, do genies go on their night off? There is, of course, only one place: Saheed’s, in downtown Samarkand (turn left opposite the dye works till you come to a corrugated iron door, knock four times and ask for Ali). There, the stressed-out supernatural entity can relax, unwind and talk over the past week with other genies over a nice glass of cool goat’s milk. Or so the theory runs. In practice, Ali the proprietor has had to have an annexe built into another dimension, because the fights on Quiz Nights threaten to upset the Earth’s placement on its axis.

“It’s amazing, it really is,” Kiss maintained, swilling the contents of his glass round to revive the head. “The woman is completely weird. What exactly she wants out of life is beyond me entirely.”

His companion nodded sympathetically. “Europeans,” he grunted. “No more idea than next door’s cat, the lot of them. I remember once, I was in this oiling can over France way, and—”

“Three weeks I’ve been with her now,” Kiss continued, absent-mindedly finishing off his companion’s peanuts, “and what have we done? Go on, guess. You’ll never guess what we’ve done.”

“Probably not.”

“Nothing.” Kiss scowled. “Absolutely bugger-all. Not proper genie stuff, anyway. It’s all been ironing and shampooing the carpets and would you mind just running a duster over the sitting-room table? The score so far: ruby eyes of gods stolen, nil. Spirits of the dead raised, nil. Tail-feathers of firebirds plucked, nil. Hairs from the beard of the Great Chain abstracted, nil. Ankle-socks paired, fourteen. Potatoes peeled, thirty-two. Any more of this and I’m going to appeal to the Tribunal, because it really isn’t on. Have another?”

His companion glanced at his wrist (genies don’t need watches but are nevertheless creatures of habit). “Since you’re offering,” he replied. “Just the one, mind, because I’ve got wealth beyond the dreams of avarice to fetch tomorrow, and you’ve got to keep a clear head for these fiddly little jobs.”

Kiss nodded and went to the bar.

“Two large djinns and tonic,” he said, “ice and lemon in one.”

The bottle on the counter rocked backwards and forwards as if nodding, unstoppered itself and poured liquor into two glasses. Please note: customers who find they’ve left their money at home when dining at Saheed’s don’t just get away with doing the washing-up.

“Sounds like you’ve got yourself a right little ray of sunshine,” his companion observed, as Kiss brought back the drinks. “What was that bit you said about further wishes?”

Kiss explained, again. His companion shook his head.

“I’m not sure about that,” he said, “not sure at all. You should get the union rep to have a look at that for you. I mean, there must be something wrong with it, or else we’d all be in the smelly.”

“Lousy precedent,” Kiss agreed.

“Diabolical. They could take it up as a test case.”

“You reckon?”

“Worth a try.” His companion emptied his glass, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his sixth arm, and stood up. “Well, be seeing you. Don’t steal any glass eyes.”

“Mind how you go,” Kiss replied absently. His companion withdrew, and a few moments later there was a brief outburst of muffled swearing as he discovered that while he’d been inside, some practical jokers had nailed his carpet to the carpet-park floor. (For the record, he arrived back home six hours late, soaking wet and frozen stiff, having had to make the return flight on a borrowed bar towel.)

Kiss lingered on until closing time, playing the video games in a desultory manner and beating the Dragon King of the South three times running at pool. It wasn’t just that he was in no hurry to go home; there was something else troubling him, and he needed the noise and smashed-crockery sounds of his own kind about him in order to concentrate his mind. There was, he felt, something very odd going on, and in some way he couldn’t work out he was involved in it, indirectly and at several removes. Whatever it was, it remained shadowy and obscure, with the result that he was too preoccupied to notice that he had just beaten the Dragon King a fourth time; which is to pushing one’s luck as closing one’s eyes and taking both hands off the wheel is to motorway driving. Not very long afterwards, he was rescued in the nick of time by the bouncer and deposited outside among the dustbins, where he passed a quiet night dreaming of jacket potatoes.

“What’s it like,” Jane demanded, “being a genie?”

They were digesting a leisurely picnic, a hundred feet or so up in the air directly above a spectacularly active volcano in the back lots of Hawaii. The venue had been Kiss’s suggestion; it would save them having to take the empty fruit-juice cartons and boiled-egg shells home with them, he’d argued, if they could simply drop them into the most spectacular waste-disposal system on the planet. They were sitting on Kiss’s own personal flying carpet (a three-ply Wilton Sportster with Hydra-Shock jute backing and a go-faster Paisley recurring motif) and Jane had just finished off the cold chicken.

“Dodgy,” Kiss replied, after some thought. “You never really know where you are. I mean,” he continued, jettisoning an empty Perrier bottle, which liquefied twelve feet above the meniscus of the lava, “potentially it’s a really great lifestyle, if you can hack it and stay out of trouble. You’ve got eternal life and eternal youth, there’s practically nothing this side of Ursa Major that can attack you without coming a very poor second, you can fly, you can materialise pretty well anything you like so long as it actually exists somewhere in the cosmos, and best of all you have absolutely no moral constraints whatsoever. I guess the nearest you could come in human terms would be a seven-foot-tall, extremely muscular movie star with a good agent and an even better lawyer. That’s when the times are good, of course,” he added.

“And when they’re not?”

Kiss shook his head. “Bottles,” he said. “Also lamps. Very bad news, both of them. I knew a genie once, in fact, got mixed up with one of those raffia-covered Chianti bottles made into a lamp. Poor bugger didn’t know whether he was coming or going.”

“Confusing?”

“Just plain nasty,” Kiss replied. “Take another mate of mine, Big Nick. I told him at the time — this was some years ago, mind — Nick, I said, stripping the lead off the Vatican roof is going to land you in very real grief, you mark my words. He didn’t, of course, and look at him now.”

Jane squinted. “I’ve heard of him, have I?”

Kiss nodded gloomily. “I expect so. Big chap, white beard, red dressing-gown, reindeer, sack — thought you’d probably come across him.”

Jane’s eyes widened. “He’s a genie?”

“There’s more of us about,” Kiss said, “than people realise.”

“And it’s a punishment? All the delivering presents and happy smiling faces…”

“You try it and see how you enjoy it. I’m telling you, twelve thousand years in an oil-lamp would be paradise in comparison.” Kiss shuddered reflexively. “And if that wasn’t bad enough, the other three hundred and sixty-four days each year it’s not just a bottle the poor sod’s banged up in, it’s one of those paperweights; you know, the sort you shake and it snows? I think you’d have to have a pretty warped mind to come up with something like that.”

Jane agreed.

“And it’s getting worse, you know,” Kiss went on. “Generally, that is. In the business. Admittedly in my young days there were more of the bad guys about — sorcerers and mages and the like — but at least they hadn’t invented the unbreakable plastic bottle or the child-proof bottle-top. Makes my blood run cold, that does.”

Jane tried to imagine what it was like, being a genie, and found that she couldn’t. Hardly surprising, she decided, but a trifle disappointing nevertheless. She dropped a paper plate over the side and watched it drift down and blossom, first into fire, then fine white ash, then nothing at all.

“And what about you?” Kiss said. “Since we’re obviously into a heavyweight experience-swapping trip, how about you telling me why the suicide thing? I have this feeling that it’s something I ought to know, purely on a business level.”

Jane sighed. “Why not?” she said. “I expect you could find out if you wanted to.”

“No problem,” Kiss agreed. “I could read your thoughts, for a start.”

“Could you?”

The genie nodded. “It’s frowned upon, of course,” he added. “Not quite the done thing and so forth, especially within the parameters of the model genie/mortal relationship. But entirely feasible.”

“Hang on,” Jane objected. “What happened to no moral constraints whatsoever?”

“It’s not moral constraints, just peer group machismo. And we’re drifting away from the subject rather, aren’t we?”

“I suppose we are. Go on, then. Guess.”

“Guess why you wanted to kill yourself?”

“Mphm.”

Kiss frowned, and changed himself into a tree. Trees, as is well known, spend their entire lives trying to decide what they’re going to do next, and therefore possess tremendous powers of concentration. It’s only the lack of an effective central nervous system that keeps them from sweeping the board at chess tournaments.

“Unrequited love,” he said. “Close?”

Jane scowled. “Spot on,” she replied. “Is it that obvious?”

“No,” replied the genie, with a hint of smugness. “In fact, you’ve concealed it terribly well. I have the advantage, however, of superhuman intelligence. Not,” he added, “that I use it much. Gives me a headache.”

“Me too.”

Kiss changed back into his customary shape: a nine-foot-tall clown, complete with red nose and a woolly ginger wig. “Tell me about it,” he said.

“Nothing to tell, really.” Jane leaned over and stared at the seething flames below until her eyes hurt. “His name was Vince, and he had the desk opposite mine at the Bank. In his spare time he played a lot of volleyball, his favourite food was pizza and he was saving up for one of those overland adventure holidays where you cross some desert or other in an open-topped truck. What I ever saw in him I can’t for the life of me imagine, but there it is.”

Kiss nodded. “It’s the same with us and bottles,” he said. “Only, of course, we eventually get out of the bottles, even if it does mean waiting till they biodegrade. As I understand it, your lot don’t have that guarantee.”

“I don’t know.” Jane sniffed. “If you ask me, it’s all a case of misunderstood biology. In fact, as an example of a very big hammer to crack a very small nut, it’s hard to beat.”

Kiss rolled over on to his back and materialised a bottle of cold milk. He took a long pull, wiped the top of the bottle on the palm of his hand and offered it to Jane, who declined it.

“If you like,” he said, “we can see what we can do about this Vince character. If you really want me to, that is.”

Jane shook her head. “I don’t honestly think it’s something you can interfere with,” she replied. “I thought you were only allowed to do the possible.”

Kiss shrugged. “There would have to be an element of compromise,” he replied, “and certainly you can’t compel one mortal to love another. On the other hand, you can suggest to a mortal that he act affectionately towards another mortal if he doesn’t want his ears ripped off and shoved up his nose. That’d be no bother whatsoever.”

“No, thank you.”

“Sure? The more I think about it, the more I warm to the—”

“Really,” Jane said. “No thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” The genie yawned. “So, what exactly do you want? I don’t want to seem pushy or anything, but it’s time you made your mind up about that. Most people have a shopping-list ready formulated before the cork’s out of the bottleneck.”

“Well, I don’t,” Jane said. “Apart from the immediate things, I mean, like not having to clean the kitchen floor or go to work. Grand ambitions really aren’t my style.”

“They don’t have to be all that grand,” Kiss suggested. “In fact, something modest but time-consuming would suit me down to the ground. A complete collection of Bing Crosby records, for example; or better still, a determination on your part to have lunch in all the wine-bars in the Southern Hemisphere. I could handle that, if you could.”

Jane removed the straw from a fruit-juice carton and chewed it thoughtfully. “Really,” she said, “I suppose I ought to make the world a better place. Eliminate nuclear weapons, irrigate the deserts of Northern Africa, that sort of—”

“Oh dear, not again,” Kiss sighed. “Sorry, but if I see one more North African desert, I shall probably be sick.”

“Oh.” Jane looked startled. “You mean you already…?”

“We all have,” Kiss sighed, “at one time or another. One of humanity’s more predictable requests, I’m afraid. Exactly as predictable, in fact, as causing famine, pestilence and floods, which is Mankind’s other great preoccupation. That’s why we have the Concurrency Agreement. It was worked out by the Union, what, three thousand years ago, and just as well, in my opinion.”

Jane demanded footnotes.

“Simple,” Kiss explained. “Suppose you have, say, fifty genies. You can bet your life that at any one time twenty-five of them are going to be indentured to do-gooders, let-the-deserts-bloom types; and the other twenty-five will be working for psychotic maniacs. We just set off one against the other, and things remain exactly as they are. Saves a lot of aggravation in the long run, and of course it gives your lot something to do into the bargain. Flag days, jumble sales, fighting wars, that sort of thing.”

“I see. How very depressing.”

“It is, rather. So, if you want me to convert the Nullarbor plain into a swaying forest of Brussels sprouts, just say the word, but you mustn’t count on them staying there for more than a fiftieth of a second, if that. The rules are very strict.”

“Fine. I think I’d like to go home now, please.”

“Your wish is my—”

“Do you have to keep saying that?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”