Djinn Rummy

ELEVEN

The reason why Kiss hadn’t shown up yet was that he’d bumped into an old friend.

“Why the hell,” said Philly Nine, picking himself up off a bank of low cloud, “don’t you look where you’re damn well… oh, it’s you.”

“Hello there,” Kiss replied. “How’s you?”

“Oh, mustn’t grumble. And you?”

“Persevering. Keeping busy?”

“Mooching about, you know. Nothing terribly exciting, but enough to keep me off the streets.”

“Ah, well. Is that a war I can see starting away down there?”

Philly turned and peered over his shoulder through the thin layer of cumulo-nimbus. “Where?” he asked.

“Sort of south-east. Look, you see that mountain range to your immediate right? Well, follow that down till you meet the river, and…”

“Got it,” Philly said. “Gosh, yes, it does look a bit like a war, doesn’t it? Tanks and planes and things.”

Kiss gave him a long, hard look. “One of yours, Philly?” he asked quietly.

“Gosh, what is it today, Thursday… Oh, that war. Yes, well, I may have had something to do with it.”

“You and your obsessive modesty.”

Philly shrugged. Far below, in the vast deserts of Mesopotamia, fleets of armoured personnel carriers speeding across the dunes threw up clouds of dust that blotted out the sun. “It’s only a little war,” Philly said.

“Small but perfectly formed?”

“One likes to keep one’s hand in.”

Kiss frowned. “Like I said, Philly, you’re too modest. Why do you do it exactly?”

“Why do I do what?”

“Start wars. I mean, is there some sort of annual award for the best war, like the Oscars or whatever? First of all I’d like to thank my megalomaniac fascist dictator, that sort of thing?”

Philly smiled, a little sadly. “It’s what I do,” he replied.

“You’re very good at it. Have they started shooting yet?”

Philly glanced at his watch and shook his head. “Two abortive peace initiatives to go yet,” he answered. “Give it another couple of hours, we might be in business. Things are so damn slow these days.”

Kiss fingered his chin thoughtfully. “This war,” he said. “Going to lead to anything, is it?”

“I do my best,” Philly replied. “If you don’t do your best, why bother to do anything at all?”

“I see. So it might be the start of something, well, big?”

“Fingers crossed.”

“Civilisation as we know it? Goodbye, Planet Earth?” Philly smiled. “Great oaks and little acorns, old son,” he said cheerfully. “You never know.”

“Fine.” Kiss took a step forward. “I hate to have to say this, but—”

“But you can’t allow it?” Philly grinned at him. “If I were you, I’d consider all aspects of the matter rather than relying on a snap judgement.”

“All aspects of global thermonuclear war are easily considered, Philly, and I don’t hold with them. Cut it out, now.”

“Think,” Philly replied. “Supposing the world is destroyed, right?”

“With you so far.”

“Well.” Philly Nine folded his arms. “In that case, there’s no way you’d have to marry that girl. Off the hook, you’d be, and absolutely nothing anybody could do about it. Just consider that for a moment, will you?”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Now you’ll tell me,” Philly went on, “that I’m contemplating something of a hammer-and-nut situation here. On the other hand, I can think of one hell of a lot of married men who’d say this was a classic case of omelettes and eggs. No disrespect intended, Kiss, old son, and I’m sure she’s a charming girl, but when you actually stop and think it through…”

Kiss froze, his lips parted to speak in contradiction. Deep inside him, in the cubby-hole in his soul where his true identity lived (knee-deep in washing up and dirty laundry, overflowing ashtrays and discarded styrofoam pizza trays) a little voice piped up and said, You know, he’s got a point there, over.

Balls, replied the rest of him. This is the temptation of the foul fiend. Rule One, don’t listen to foul fiends. Any pillock knows that, over.

Yes, but think about it, will you? Not having to stop being a genie. To thine own self be true. Love means not being allowed to take your socks off in the living room. You would do well to consider all the pertinent aspects of the matter before committing yourself to any course of action, over.

Bugger off, over.

Yes, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Over and out.

“I hear what you say,” Kiss said, “But no thanks, all the same. I reckon that if I can’t sort out my domestic problems without conniving at Armageddon it’d be a pretty poor show — and besides, I live here. And you know what a drag it is finding somewhere decent to live these days. Carbon-based life forms don’t grow on trees, you know.”

“Suit yourself, then,” Philly replied, and hit him with a thunderbolt.

“G’day.”

Asaf spun on his heel, missed his footing on the wet deck and sprawled against the mast, barking his shin.

“You again,” he snapped. “I thought I’d seen the last of you.”

The Dragon King, hovering in a cloud of purple smoke, looked offended. “Lighten up, cobber,” he replied. “I’m a dragon, remember? And dragons don’t bludge on their mates. She’ll be right, you’ll see.”

“What the hell are you talking about, you insufferable reptile?”

“Look, mate.” The Dragon King contracted his formidable eyebrows, until he looked for all the world like a bejewelled privet hedge. “No offence, but I reckon I’ve had about enough of your whingeing for one adventure, thank you very much.” He nodded towards the sky. “That sheila,” he continued. “She’s on her way.”

Asaf blinked. “The rich one?” he asked.

The King nodded. “Too right,” he replied. “In fact, she should be along any minute now. So let’s have a bit less of The complaints, right?”

“Right.” Asaf frowned. “You’re sure about that?” he queried. “I mean, we are in the middle of the sea. I don’t really see where she’s going to…

WHOOSH.

The carpet zagged down like a turbocharged pigeon, braked in mid-air and hovered. God knows how it managed it, but it somehow gave the impression that it had an invisible meter, and that it was running.

Jane opened her eyes. If the truth be told, she wasn’t one hundred per cent taken with what she saw.

She appeared to have come to rest half-way through a dragon; in fact she was wearing the bloody thing round her neck, like a horse collar.

Now that, she said to herself, really is uncalled for. God knows, I’ve tried to be reasonable throughout this whole nightmarish business, nobody can say I haven’t given it my best shot, but this really is…

The dragon was floating about ten feet above the deck of the ship; as was the carpet, which appeared to have come to rest half in and half out of the dragon’s right shoulder. Seen close to, the dragon looked as solid as a Welsh full-back, but Jane couldn’t feel anything there. Probably, she decided, just as well.

The dragon’s head pivoted slowly on its long, elegant neck and turned towards her.

“G’day,” it said. “Asaf, this is Jane. Jane, Asaf.”

Jane glanced down and saw that there was indeed a human being on the deck of the ship — a youngish man with a mop of black hair and a prominent nose, wearing a green anorak. He seemed to be staring at her in, well, disbelief.

“You’re joking,” he said.

The dragon appeared disconcerted at this. “No, mate, straight up. Get stuck in.” It winked a round blue eye.

“No way,” the man said angrily. “If you think I’ve come all this way…”

“Don’t you come the raw prawn with me, mate,” the dragon replied irritably. “Jeez, what’s a bloke got to do before you’re satisfied?” He scowled, and mouthed the words Loads of money… The man shook his head.

“Money,” he said firmly, “isn’t everything. Look, is there some sort of ombudsman I can take this up with, because—”

“Excuse me,” said Jane.

“Ombudsman!” growled the dragon. “You take the flamin’ biscuit, you do. When I think of some of the stringy old dogs—”

“Yes, but just look, will you? There’s absolutely no way—”

“Excuse me.”

“Scheherezade,” continued the dragon, “had a face on her that’d curdle milk. You don’t know when you’re well-off, mate.”

“I am definitely going to complain to someone and when I’ve finished with you, you’ll be lucky to get a job swimming round and round in a small glass bowl—”

“Excuse me,” said Jane, “but I think your ship is sinking.”

“You keep out of this,” snapped Asaf. “Now then, I don’t propose wasting any more breath on you. I shall be seeking legal advice on this, and—”

“Stone the crows, mate, she’s right. Hey, there’s water coming up through the—”

“Don’t change the subject. My brother happens to be an accountant and I reckon we’re looking at breach of contract, breach of statutory duty, trespass to the person and a bloody great claim in respect of pain, suffering, inconvenience, loss of earnings…”

“Bugger me, she’s about to split. You want to get out of there quick, I’m telling you…”

“…false imprisonment, failure to report an accident, fraud, dangerous flying…”

“Look…”

The ship sank.

Funny, the way some ships just go under all of a sudden. Others hang around for days, leaning over on one side and allowing the survivors plenty of time to choose their eight gramophone records from the ship’s library. This one, however, just went glop! and fell through the surface of the water like a lead weight.

Sinbad the Sailor watched her go down from the comfort of the one lifeboat, and shrugged. On the one hand she had been his ship, in which he had crossed all the oceans of the world, and inevitably a part of his soul went down with her. On the other hand, he had just renewed his insurance.

The cramped living quarters, he thought. The smell of stale bilge water. The rats. The ship’s biscuits, some of which were hard enough to polish diamonds with. The crew.

As he watched the last few bubbles rise and fade, therefore, his feelings were mixed. About 40 per cent happiness, and the remaining 60 per cent pure unalloyed pleasure.

Kiss picked himself up off the clouds and snarled.

To every cloud, the wiseacres say, a silver lining. Be that as it may; this one, as far as Kiss could judge, was lined with big lumpy chunks of rock, half-bricks and the like. In his list of My All-Time Favourite Things To Land On, it didn’t score highly compared with, say, feather mattresses or trampoline cushions. It was also soggy and full of water vapour.

All in all he was working up a pretty good head of aggression. And the healthiest way to vent off the perfectly natural and wholesome aggression which lies buried in all of us is, of course, to thump somebody. Ask any psychiatrist.

Fortunately, he didn’t have far to look for someone to thump. Not far, and upwards.

Philly Nine looked down nervously. There was something about Kiss’s demeanour, and the way the cloud he was lying on was turning into fizzing steam, that made him feel uncomfortable and uncertain about his immediate future. He decided to try diplomacy.

“Now then,” he said pleasantly, “you don’t want to be late for your date, do you?”

“Yes.”

“But think,” Philly reasoned, “of that sweet little girl of yours, counting every second before you come swooping down to rescue her. Think of the grateful smile on her face, the words of praise, the—”

“Are we thinking of the same person?”

“What about your honour as a genie? Her wish is your command, remember.”

“When I catch you,” Kiss replied calmly, “I’m going to rip your lungs out.”

“If you catch me,” Philly replied, and fled.

“Excuse me,” said Jane.

Asaf glanced up from the piece of driftwood he was clinging to and frowned. “What?” he said.

“I said excuse me.”

The sea, fishermen say, is a cruel playfellow. Actually they tend to express themselves in earthier, more basic terms, but that’s the gist of it. For his part, Asaf had never really come to terms with the being-surrounded-on-all-sides-by-water aspect of fishing, despite his best endeavours, and consequently wasn’t really in the mood to make new friends. His tone, therefore, was abrupt.

“Piss off,” he said.

“Be like that,” Jane replied equably. “All I was going to say was, if you wanted a lift to dry land, I can take you as far as the coast. Probably,” she added, for she was a realist.

Asaf glowered up at the carpet, hovering about three feet over the waves. “I don’t believe in you,” he growled. “Go away.”

“Don’t believe in me?”

“You heard me. You’re some sort of fatuous mythical practical joke, like everything else that’s been happening to me lately. On the other hand, I do believe in this piece of driftwood. It’s not much, but right now it’s all I’ve got. Sling your hook.”

“HELP!” observed Justin.

Asaf lifted his head; suddenly, he was interested. By force of circumstance he was rapidly becoming attuned to the finer nuances of adventures, and it occurred to him that not many false visions of magic carpets have shit-scared young men clinging to them yelling “HELP!” A nice touch, he had to admit. Either that, or it wasn’t a mirage after all.

“Your friend,” he said.

Jane looked round. “Oh, him,” she said. “Yes?”

“Is he real?”

“I think so.”

“Ask him.”

Jane shrugged. “Excuse me,” she said.

“HELP!”

“Yes, but are you real? I mean, do you exist? Only the gentleman down there in the water…

“HELP HELP HELP!”

Jane nodded and turned back again. “I would take that as a Yes,” she said.

“I see.” A small wave partially dislodged Asaf’s grip on the driftwood and he floundered for a moment. “That puts rather a different complexion on it, don’t you think?”

“Sorry?”

“I wasn’t,” Asaf replied, “talking to you.”

“Oh.”

The Dragon King, who had drifted back into existence a few inches above the wave-tops, wiped his mouth on the back of his paw and nodded. “Too right, mate,” he said. “Sorry, forgetting me manners. You fancy a cold one?”

“Not now.” Asaf gave him a cold stare. “Look, for once be straight with me. Are those two for real?”

“You bet your life.”

“That,” Asaf replied, “is what I’m rather hoping I won’t have to do.”

“Yes,” said the King, “they’re real. And by the way,” he added in a whisper, “that’s her.”

“We’ll discuss that later. Now, how do I get on that thing without it tipping over?”

“She’ll be right mate, no worries. Just take a jump at it, and…”

Splash.

“Thanks,” said Asaf.

“That’s all right,” Jane replied, preoccupied. She was wondering how the hell she’d managed to get the carpet to swoop low over where Asaf had landed in the water and scoop him up with its front hem. Pretty snazzy rug-handling, by any standards. And she couldn’t remember what it was that she’d done.

Asaf cleared his throat diffidently. “You said something,” he mumbled, “about dry land.”

“Yes.”

“Well, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble…”

“It’d be a pleasure,” Jane replied. “Any dry land in particular?”

Like a blue crack in the firmament, a long streak of lightning snaked its way across the sky and earthed itself savagely in Kiss’s neck, hurling him seven miles through the air. There was a loathsome smell of singed flesh.

Thirty-fifteen.

Roaring with pain and fury, Kiss reached up into the air and grabbed a handful of cloud. As soon as it touched his hand the water vapour froze, until the genie was clutching the hardest, most fearsome snowball in history. He whirled round three times and let fly. On the other side of the horizon, hidden from sight by the curvature of the earth, someone howled.

Thirty-all

“You as well?” Jane said.

Asaf was about to express surprise, but thought better of it. Think about it logically, he told himself. Perfectly normal seeming young woman and wimp, floating about on carpet above the Indian Ocean. Reasonable to assume that they were in the same sort of fix as he was.

“Me as well,” he replied. “I’ve got this confounded bloody nuisance of a Dragon King who’s giving me three wishes.”

“I’ve got a genie,” Jane said, making it sound like some sort of horrible illness. “Wretched, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely. My name’s Asaf, by the way?”

“Jane. Pleased to meet you.”

Asaf settled himself rather more comfortably on the carpet. “There I was,” he said, “minding my own business…”

“I was about to kill myself, when this Thing jumped out of a bottle…”

“…Dragged me half-way across the bloody continent…”

“…His wish was my command, he said.”

“Really? Mine keeps saying that.”

Jane nodded. “I think they all do. Not that it means anything.”

“Quite the opposite, in my experience,” Asaf agreed. “So how long have you had yours?”

Jane frowned. “I’m not quite sure,” she said, “but it feels like absolutely for ever.”

Asaf shuddered. “I know the feeling. And they’re so damned smug about it, too.”

“Mine was supposed to rescue me,” Jane said, with a glint of anger in her voice. “The one time I actually asked him to do something useful, and where is he?”

“To hear is to obey, I don’t think,” Asaf agreed. “Just who the hell do they think they are, anyway?”

Jane glanced at him sideways. A fellow sufferer, she thought. Nice to know I’m not the only one.

“So yours has been mucking you about, has he?” she asked.

“Don’t ask.”

“We could start a victims’ support group.”

Asaf thought for a moment. “Pretty limited membership,” he said.

“Well, there’s you, me and him for a start.”

“Him? Oh yes, him.”

Jane looked round at Justin, who had folded a corner of the carpet over his head and was lying very still. “Are you all right in there?” she asked.

“Help,” Justin replied. “I want to go home.”

“I think he’s eligible for membership,” Asaf said. “How did he get involved?”

“From what I can gather, it’s his uncle’s carpet.”

“Ah.” Asaf wrinkled his brow. “Sorcerer’s apprentice, you mean?”

Jane shrugged. “I think he was just minding the store.”

“Typical.”

The mountain hung in the air for a moment, 800 feet above the ground. Then it fell.

For a fraction of a second before it hit the ground, there was a shrill scream of agony and rage. Then silence, except for the sound of Philly Nine brushing granite dust off his sleeves.

Deuce.

The dust settled. Birds began to sing again. The inhabitants of the nearby village poked their heads out of their windows, wondering why there was now a mountain in the middle of what had previously been a flat alluvial plain.

And then there was a faint humming sound a long way under the surface of the earth. It could conceivably have been a high-speed drill, or someone digging extremely fast with his bare hands.

Kiss broke through the surface like a missile launched from a submarine and soared into the air, spitting out boulders as he went. As he passed the mountain’s peak, he stuck out a hand and grabbed. The mountain lifted.

“Look, granddad,” said a child in the village. “You can see it from the window. A great big mountain, just like I said.”

Granddad, woken from his afternoon nap and not best pleased, rubbed his eyes and looked blearily through the window. “Where?” he asked.

“Oh,” said the child. “It was there a minute ago.”

“Hello, Bruce,” said one of Saheed’s regulars. “I thought you’d be out looking after your customer.”

The Dragon King of the South-East sneered into his glass. “Got fed up with the whingeing little blighter and left him to get on with it,” he replied. “I’ve done my bit. If the stupid bloody wowser can’t find his own way to the happy ending from there, he doesn’t deserve it. Fancy another?”

“Why not?”

“Mind you,” continued the King, clamping his offside rear talon firmly around the brass rail, “I won’t say it was easy. Took some doing, though I say so meself.”

“I bet.”

“There comes a time, mind,” the King went on, “when a bloke’s just got to turn round and walk away. You carry on spoon-feeding these bludgers and the next thing you know, you can’t call your life your own.”

“Wretched, isn’t it?”

The King nodded. “Anyway,” he said, “there we go. And it wasn’t all crook, ’cos I was able to do a mate a favour along the way.”

“You don’t say.”

The King grinned and nodded. “Yeah. That sheila that Kiss was having so much strife with. Reckon I’ve offloaded her on me mark. Two birds with one stone, eh?”

“Clever.”

The King looked contentedly at the side elevation of his glass. “Reckon so,” he said. “Reckon he owes me a couple of cool ones next time he’s in.”

“You reckon?”

“Yup.”

Advantage — The voice hesitated. Being an ethereal spirit, with no real existence within any conventionally recognised dimension, it had no hands with which to turn the pages of the book of rules, and it couldn’t quite remember the precise wording of Rule 74. A tricky one, in any event. A grey area.

In the red corner: let your mind’s eye drift to a barren plateau in the very centre of the desperately bleak Nullarbor Plain, to where a huge basalt outcrop has suddenly appeared from nowhere. While the seismologists stare at each other in blank amazement, and the cartographers draw lots to see whose turn it is to go flogging out there to draw pictures of the bloody thing, a relatively tiny form whimpers and struggles directly underneath it, pinned to the deck like a butterfly to a board. That’s Kiss.

In the blue corner: the equally godforsaken north-east corner of Iceland has suddenly sprouted a new and exceptionally virulent volcano, which is pumping out red-hot lava with the frantic enthusiasm of a Japanese factory on the Emperor’s birthday. Up to his neck in the lava outflow is Philly Nine.

Advantage — Excuse me…

YES?

Is it possible to have a draw?

SORRY?

A draw. Like, when both sides are hopelessly stalemated and it’s obvious nobody’s going to win. Is that allowed?

I DON’T KNOW, replied God. I’D HAVE TO LOOK THAT ONE UP.

Could you? Only I think the sooner I give a decision, the happier they’ll be. It can’t be much fun for either of them.

HAVE YOU TRIED TOSSING A COIN?

The voice hesitated. On the one hand, what the big guy says, goes. On the other hand, there’s such a thing as professional integrity: being able to face your reflection in the shaving mirror each morning, although of course in the voice’s case that was pretty much a non-starter anyway.

Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d rather we went for an outright decision on this one. Or at least a draw. If that’s all right by…

YOU’RE THE EXPERT. DO WHATEVER YOU THINK IS RIGHT.

OK, fine. In that case…

JUST GIVE ME FIVE MINUTES, IF IT’S ALL THE SAME TO YOU.

Sure. Um-why?

BECAUSE IF I’M QUICK I SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET PRETTY GOOD ODDS ON A DRAW THANKS FOR THE TIP.

Question, thought the voice. What sort of an idiot would take a bet from God? Answer: an idiot who didn’t want to spend the next five million years at the bottom of the burning fiery pit, I suppose.

Um… You’re welcome.

Like a bat out of hell following a spurious short-cut, the carpet raced through the sky over Stoke-on-Trent.

“Where can I drop you?” Jane asked.

Asaf looked down. The hell with it, he said to himself, I’ve come this far.

“Wherever suits you,” he replied. “I’m pretty much at a loose end at the moment, as it happens.”

“Ah,” said Jane. She bit her lip. “Fancy a quick coffee?” she added.

Asaf considered the position and decided that, all things considered, what he hated doing most of all in all the world was deep-sea fishing.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

“What do you mean,” Kiss demanded angrily, “she’s gone?”

Sinbad the Sailor shrugged. “I suppose she got tired of hanging about waiting for you to rescue her,” he replied. “I mean, no disrespect, but you did take your time.”

“I got held up,” replied the genie stiffly, “saving the world.”

“It can be a right bummer, saving the world,” Sinbad said, “especially when nobody thanks you for it.”

“You’re telling me.” The genie sighed, letting his eyes drift out across the broad ocean. “There are times, you know, when I really wish I was still in the bottle.”

“Well, quite. You know where you are in a bottle.”

“Peaceful.”

“Nobody to tell you what to do.”

“No telephone.”

Sinbad hesitated for a moment. “Not your old-fashioned style bottles, anyway. No Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

“And no bloody women,” Kiss added. “Here, you haven’t got such a things as a bottle handy, have you?”

“Afraid not.” He blinked and looked away. “Sorry to change the subject,” he went on, “but about this saving the world thing you were doing.”

“Yes?”

Sinbad paused again, wondering how to put it tactfully. “If you’ve saved the world,” he said cautiously, “presumably it doesn’t matter that the whole of this sea is swarming with bloody great big nuclear submarines.”

Kiss wrinkled his brow. “Oh, shit,” he said, “the war. I knew I’d forgotten something.”

At the bottom of the sea, far below the parts where the divers go, even further down than the gloomy bits where the light never reaches and you get the fish that look like three-dimensional coat hangers, there is a doorway. And a car park. And a garden, with benches and lanterns. And a big sign, with fairy lights:

it says; and in smaller letters:

and then, going back to the bigger type:

The eponymous Mr Jones was quietly changing the barrels in the cellar, reflecting on the recession and how improved computerised weather forecasting was eating the heart out of the deep-sea licensed victualling business, when he became aware of an unfamiliar noise far away overhead. He stopped what he was doing and listened.

A humming noise. Like possibly engines.

A grin fastened itself to his peculiar, barnacle-encrusted face, and he ran up the cellar steps to the bar.

“Sharon,” he yelled, “Yvonne! Defrost the pizzas! We’ve got customers.”

Women, Kiss reflected as he soared Exocet-like through the darkening sky. I have had it up to here with bloody women.

And not just women, he conceded, as he swerved to avoid an airliner. Human beings generally. In fact, I’m sick to the back teeth of all the damned creepy-crawlies that hang around this poxy little dimension. Come to think of it, for two pins I’d wash my hands of the whole lot of them.

The thought had scarcely crossed his mind when he became aware of something tiny and sharp, folded into the palm of his left hand. Inspection confirmed his instinctive guess. Two pins…

“Shove it, Philly,” he snarled at the clouds above him. “I’ll deal with you later.”

Ah yes, the war.

No names, no pack drill. We will call the opposing parties A and B.

Army A had occupied all Europe as far east as the Bosphorus, only to find themselves stuck in a traffic jam that reached from Tashkent to Samarkand. Army B had swept up through Central Asia in the time-honoured manner and had broken through as far as Baghdad before realising they’d forgotten to switch off the gas and having to go back.

Fleet A and Fleet B were both pottering about in the Mediterranean, trying to keep out of each other’s way until somebody had the courtesy to tell them what the hell was going on, exactly.

Air Force A was scrambled, on red alert, absolutely set and ready to go as soon as the rain subsided a bit. Air Force B was engaged in frantic high-level negotiations with the finance company which had repossessed its entire complement of fighter-bombers.

In other words, stalemate; at least as far as the conventional forces were concerned. Not, of course, that conventional forces count for very much these days — In the bunker, with half a mile of rock and concrete between themselves and the surface, the Strategic First Strike Command Units of both sides were locked in a desperate struggle with forces which, they now realised, were rather beyond their abilities to manipulate.

“Look,” said the controller at SFSCU/A, “it’s perfectly simple. A child could understand it. If you press this one here, while at the same time pressing this one and this one…”

The senior technical officer shook his head. “That’s the automatic failsafe, you idiot,” he said. “I reckon it’s got to be the little red button here. If you look at the manual…”

“All right, let’s look at the goddamn manual. Congratulations! You have just purchased—”

“I think you can skip that bit.”

“Right, here we are. To commence War press START followed by C and E. The word READY? should then appear on the monitor—”

“There isn’t a button marked START, for God’s sake.”

“It must be the little red one here—”

“No, look at the diagram, that’s just for when you want to set the timer…”

“Actually, I think that’s only for the Model 2693. What we’ve got is the Model 8537…”

“You could try giving it a bloody good thump. You’d be amazed how often that works.”

“How about ringing the other side? They’d probably know how to make the bloody thing work.”

“Well, actually, I think they’ve got the Model 9317, which has a double-disk RAM drive, so…”

“I wonder what this button here does?”

WHOOSH!

Lightning, they say, never strikes twice. This was true before the introduction of free collective bargaining. Nowadays, lightning tends to work to rule.

Cupid, however, is resigned to the fact that he often has to do the job on the same target several times. This doesn’t bother him particularly, since he charges the same fee for a repeat and there’s usually less preparatory work the second time around. In the final analysis, so long as he shoots somebody and gets paid for it, he isn’t too bothered.

A long, silver-tipped round slid frictionlessly into the chamber of the Steyr-Mannlicher, and he folded down the bolt with the heel of his right hand. He centred the crosshairs of the sight, breathed fully in and half out, and…

Her again. God knows, he thought dispassionately as he squeezed the trigger, what they all see in her. Probably, he reflected as he ejected the spent case and chambered the next round, why they need me.

He raised the rifle and took aim. Deep breath in — “G’day, mate. How’s she coming?”

Startled, Cupid jerked involuntarily and the shot went high. A portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which for some unaccountable reason hung over the sofa in Jane’s living-room, glanced down and thought, “Gosh…”

“You idiot,” Cupid hissed. “Now look what you’ve made me go and do.”

“Jeez, sorry, mate,” whispered the Dragon King. “I only stopped by to see how you were making out. Didn’t mean to make you jump.”

“Shut up and stay still,” Cupid snarled. He chambered the third round and tried to recover his composure.

“Always wanted to watch a top-flight pro like yourself at work,” the King continued. “I think it’s marvellous, the way you fellers—”

Cupid forced himself to relax. “Look,” he said, “if you don’t shut up and keep still, the next one’s for you. You got that?”

Since the only female in sight was Jane, the King froze as effectively as if he’d been carved from stone. Cupid closed his eyes, counted to five, and raised the rifle to his cheek.

Deep breath in. Centre the crosshairs. Half breath out, and — steady…

Bang.

“SWITCH THAT BLOODY THING OFF!”

The King looked suitably mortified. “Sorry, chum, I really am, only they make me carry this damn bleeper thing, it’s in case anybody needs to call me in a—”

Cupid breathed out through his nose. “Thanks to you,” he said, “and a freak ricochet, the microwave is now hopelessly in love with the sink unit, which in turn is besotted with the electric kettle. I hope you’re satisfied.”

“I’ve switched it off now. Sorry.”

“You haven’t got a digital watch that bleeps, have you?”

“No.”

“Ticklish throat? Feel a sneeze coming on?”

“Nope.”

“Splendid. Now, since I happen to have one shot left, perhaps we can get on with it.”

Chamber the round. Lift the rifle. Centre the crosshairs. Deep breath in. Half breath out. Cuddle the trigger, and — “Nice one!” exclaimed the King. “Right up the—”

“I was aiming,” Cupid sighed, “for the heart. But it doesn’t actually matter all that much, not in the long run.”

“That’s all right then,” said the King happily. “Now, will you take a cheque?”

What Cupid didn’t realise was that one of his shots — the one that nailed Abe Lincoln, for what it’s worth — rebounded off the edge of the frame and ended its journey in the carpet. The carpet.

Carpets, especially the sentient, magical variety, are no fools. The specimen in question had been dozing quietly in front of the fire, resting after an unusually taxing day, when it became aware that someone was shooting at it. It did what any sensible item of soft furnishing would have done in the circumstances, and got the hell out of there.

For the record, it still had Justin on it. The negative Gs generated in the descent from 40,000 feet had knocked him out cold, and Jane and Asaf had been too wrapped up in each other to pay him any mind.

The carpet, then, zoomed off into the empyrean and kept going. As it flew, however, it found itself reflecting on its life so far, with particular reference to its solitary nature and the lack, to date, of sympathetic female companionship.

(We use the term female in this context for convenience only. Technically, what the carpet was longing for was companionship of the inverse-weft variety; but for all practical purposes, it amounts to the same thing.)

It was just beginning to feel sad and moody when something whizzed past its hem, leaving behind a blurred memory of a sleek cylindrical body and a tantalising whiff of perfume.

“Cor!” thought the carpet. “That was a bit of all right.” It did a double flip and followed the object’s vapour trail. What it was in fact following was an M43 ballistic missile with a 700-megaton warhead, launched after half an hour of frantic debate in the B-team bunker when the assistant scientific officer rested his coffee cup on the instrument panel.

The carpet sped on through the sky, established visual contact and fell hopelessly in love.

“Hi,” it said, swooping down parallel with the missile and shooting its hems. “My name’s Vince. What’s a gorgeous metallic tube like you doing in a place like this?”

The missile made no reply, but there was a twinkling of LED readouts on its console that might be equated with a fluttering of eyelashes.

“Like the tail-fins,” the carpet persevered. “They suit you.”

The rocket slowed down, ever so slightly. A product of ninth-generation missile technology, the M43 is officially classed as semi-intelligent, presumably so that it feels at home in the company of military personnel. It’s intelligent enough, at least, to recognise a basic chat-up line when it hears one. When you’re an instrument of mass destruction, however, you don’t tend to get many offers. Public executioners, lawyers and people who work for the Revenue tend to have the same problem.

The rocket bleeped.

“Say,” said the carpet, as suavely as a piece of knotted wool can manage. “How about you and me grabbing a bite to eat somewhere? I happen to know this little place…”

The other nuclear missile, fired by Side A, shot over Kiss’s head, neatly parting his hair with its slipstream.

Pausing only to use profane language, the genie hurried after it, caught it with his left hand and disarmed it with his right. He did so deftly, confidently and with the minimum of fuss, because the very worst epitaph the Planet Earth could wish for would be “Butterfingers!”

Having programmed it to carry on into a harmless orbit, he sat down on a sunbeam and recovered from the retrospective shakes. A sense of humour was one thing but this time, in his opinion, Philly Nine had gone too far.

“Want to make something of it?” Philly demanded, materialising directly over his left shoulder.

“Oh, come on,” Kiss replied wearily. “We’ve been here already, remember? Beating the shit out of each other with mountains, chasing about across the sky, all that crap. I’m really not in the mood.”

“Tough,” replied Philly Nine. “Because I am.”

Kiss frowned. “You are, are you?”

Philly nodded. “Because,” he amplified, “you’re starting to get on my nerves. Nothing personal, you understand.”

With exaggerated effort, Kiss stood up. “Has it occurred to you,” he said, “that since we’re both Force Twelve genies, there’s absolutely no way either of us can beat the other?”

“Yes. I don’t care.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

Kiss scratched his head. “You wouldn’t prefer to settle this by reference to some sort of game of chance, thereby introducing a potentially decisive random element?”

“Not really. Two reasons. One, you’d cheat. Two, I want to bash your head in, and drawing lots would deprive me of the opportunity.”

“I wouldn’t cheat.”

“Says you.”

“When have I ever cheated at anything?”

“Hah! Can you spare half an hour?”

“I resent that.”

“You were supposed to.”

The light bulb beloved of cartoonists lit up in Kiss’s head. “It’s no good trying to provoke me,” he said. “Sticks and stones may break my bones…”

“Good, I’d like to try that.”

“You know what your trouble is, Philly? You’re unregenerate.”

“That’s probably the nicest thing anybody’s ever said about me.”

“It needn’t be drawing lots, you know. We could try cutting a pack of cards, or throwing dice. Or snakes and ladders. Best of five games. Wouldn’t that be more fun than scurrying round trying to nut each other with granite outcrops?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Positive.”

Kiss grinned. Blessed, he’d read on the back of a cornflake packet once, are the peacemakers, and he’d done his best. That, he felt, qualified him for the moral high ground; and the nice thing about the moral high ground was being able to chuck rocks off it on to the heads of the unregenerate bastards down below.

“In that case…” he said.

“You’re not going to believe it,” muttered a technician in Bunker A, “but one of our missiles has gone off.”

“What?” The Controller swivelled round in his chair. “And I missed it?”

“Presumably. You can’t remember pressing anything marked FIRE, can you?”

“Just my bloody luck,” grumbled the Controller. “We start World War Three, and I miss it. That’s a real bummer, that is. It would have been something to tell my grandchildr…”

He tailed off as the inherent contradiction hit him. The other inhabitants of the bunker shrugged.

“Never mind,” said the wireless operator. “We’ve got plenty more where that one came from. Now, try and remember what it was that you did, exactly.”

“More wine,” breathed the carpet heavily. “Go on, let’s finish off the bottle.”

The atomic bomb shook its warhead. Nuclear weapons aren’t accustomed to intoxicating liquor, and it was starting to see double. All it wanted right now was to go home and sleep it off.

“A brandy, then? Coffee? We could go back to my place and have a coffee.”

It occurred to the bomb that if it showed up back at the silo with its exhaust residues smelling of drink, it would have some explaining to do. It nodded, and lurched against the table for support. Suddenly it didn’t feel too well.

“Waiter,” said the carpet, “the bill, please.”

The waiter was there instantly, assuring the carpet that this one was on the house, and could it please take its friend somewhere else quickly, because…

The bomb hiccupped. Geiger counters on three continents danced a tarantella. The waiter threw himself under the table and started to pray.

Cautiously, the bomb got up and promptly fell over. Fortunately for generations of cartographers yet unborn, it fell into the carpet, which lifted gracefully into the air and flew away.

Justin chose that particular moment to wake up.

He opened his eyes. Next to him, he noticed, there was a big black cylindrical thing, like a cross between a sea-lion and a fire extinguisher. There was stencilled writing on its side: THIS WAY UP and HANDLE LIKE EGGS and DANGER! The casing was warm.

The shop! He remembered about the shop. He glanced at his watch; Uncle would be home by now, and he’d be absolutely livid. He had to get back to the shop as quickly as possible.

“Excuse me,” he said.

The carpet frowned at him; that is to say, some of the more intricate woven motifs seemed to crowd more closely together.

“Not now,” it hissed. “Can’t you see I’ve got company?”

“We’ve got to get back to the shop,” Julian said. “Now.”

“That’s all right,” the carpet replied in a loud whisper. “That’s exactly where we’re going right now. Be there in about five minutes.”

Julian breathed a sigh of relief and snuggled up closer to the warm flank of the ICBM, which had started to tick.

“That’s all right, then,” he said.