Djinn Rummy Tom Holt

by Djinn Rummy (lit)

  ‘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:

  THE LOCKER

  it says; and in smaller letters:

  David Rutherford Jones,

  Licensed to sell wines, beers, spirits and tobacco for consumption

  on or off the premises

  and then, going back to the bigger type:

  LINERS WELCOME

  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 rat
her 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.