They scrambled on to his back. A moment later, the stairway was empty.
Along time ago, when God created the world — A feature common to all building sites is the presence of many, many long pieces of timber with nails stuck in them. Nobody knows where they come from, or what they’re designed to achieve. What they actually do is — wait until the grass has grown up round them and then spring out on passing builders, preferably when they’re carrying precarious loads of fragile objects. When the building is completed they are sometimes ritually burned, but as often as not they stay, forgotten and untouched.
It was just such a piece of timber, undisturbed since the Fourth Day (on which He dug out the footings and poured the concrete) that Philly Nine was using to batter Kiss about the head. Given the origin of the thing, it was not surprising that the bent, rusty nails were in fact made from extruded amethyst. This didn’t stop them hurting.
Kiss wasn’t taking this lying down. More sort of crouched on one knee, cleverly managing to ward off most of the blows from his body with his head, and groping with his left hand for a large chunk of rock (Malta) he’d noticed out of the corner of his eye a while back.
“Hey, you!”
Philly paused, club upraised, and looked round.
“You talking to me, chum?” he said to the Dragon King of the South-East, who was hovering sheepishly over his left shoulder.
The King shook his head vigorously. In Wisconsin, they thought the result was snow.
“Didn’t say a word, mate, straight up,” he said, smiling meekly.
“I thought you just spoke to me.”
“Nah. Try the sheila between me shoulder-blades.”
“What she… oh, her. What does she want?”
“Hey!”
Philly glanced down, lowering the club a degree or so. “Do I know you?” he asked. “Not that it matters much, but if we are acquainted, I shall send a wreath to your funeral. That’s,” he added, “always assuming they find enough of you to fill a coffin. Being realistic, though, a doggy bag might be more suitable.”
“Oh, shut up, Jane replied. “And put down that silly stick before you put someone’s eye out.”
Philly frowned and lashed out with the club. What with residual particles of self-doubt and guilt, combined with extreme irritation at not being able to make much impression on Kiss’s head with one of the nastiest blunt instruments in the cosmos, he had just about reached the stopper of his bottle (genies don’t have tethers), with the result that his sense of chivalry was down there with the Polly Peck shares. Fortunately, the King’s nose came between Jane and the plank.
“Missed,” Jane called out. “You want to saw that thing in half.”
“Do I? Why’s that?”
“Then you’d have two short planks. Company for you.”
“Very droll.” He tried the reverse sweep, but this time the King ducked and suffered no more than a slight scratch to his right ear from one of the nails. With a sigh, Philly swept round on his heel and belted Kiss again, knocking him back off his feet.
“Missed again,” said Jane smugly.
“Third time lucky.” Philly swung the plank, feinting high and then changing tack in mid-blow. The resulting impact missed Asaf’s head by a few thousandths of an inch and found its mark on the King’s back.
“Fair go, mate,” the King squealed. “What harm have I ever done you?”
“Call it pre-emptive revenge,” Philly replied. “In the meantime, could you try and hold still? It’s harder than it looks, swatting something that small.”
Jane bristled and turned to Asaf, giving him what used to be known as an old-fashioned look.
“Well?” she said. “Don’t just sit there. Do something.”
The bomb was confused.
It was dizzy, sick, miles and miles off-course and beginning to see spots in front if its eyes. Furthermore, it had the feeling that running away from an amorous carpet wasn’t really the sort of thing self-respecting atomic bombs are supposed to do.
It slowed down and activated its rear-view sensors. The carpet was nowhere to be seen.
Bombs are nothing if not logical. This goes with the territory. A fat lot of good an emotional, sensitive, caring bomb would be to anybody. Probably cry all over its own fuse.
The logical argument was this:
* I do not want to be chased about any more by this frigging carpet.
* If I go off, everything within five hundred miles will be turned into little grey wisps of curly ash.
* Including the carpet.
It sniggered, and armed itself.
“What,” Asaf asked, “did you have in mind?” By way of reply, Jane just looked at him. “Right,” he said, “fine. Just leave it to me.”
Kiss, meanwhile, had dragged himself back up to cloud level, having collected on the way a massive charge of static electricity which someone had left lying about in the bottom of a cloud he’d passed through. Observing that Philly was preoccupied with trying to brain the Dragon King with his oversize telegraph pole, he took the opportunity to connect his new plaything up to the inside of Philly’s knee.
The results were quite entertaining.
Doctors, he recalled, as he watched Philly soar steadily upwards, use a similar technique to test their patients’ reflexes. Nothing wrong with Philly’s reflexes, as far as he could make out.
He waited where he was for a moment or so, on the off chance that gravity might have something to say about Philly’s movements. He counted to twelve. Probably safe to assume that gravity knew when to leave well alone.
“Hello,” he said.
“Where the hell were you?” Jane replied.
“I—” He checked himself. Oh woman, he murmured to himself, in our hours of ease uncertain, coy and hard to please; when pain and anguish rack the brow, an even greater nuisance thou. “Sorry,” he said.
“And you just sat there,” Jane continued, “while that great oaf tried to hit me.”
“Yes.”
“And you call yourself a genie!”
“I tend to exaggerate.”
“Aren’t you going after him?”
“No.”
“You mean you’re afraid.”
“Naturally. I do also have a nuclear missile to see to, but that’s only a flimsy excuse. Really it’s because I’m a coward.”
“You haven’t heard the last of this.”
“I should think not. Excuse me. “Bye.”
“I haven’t finished with you yet!” Jane called after him, as he dwindled away into a tiny dot on the horizon. “Honestly!” she summarised.
Beside her, Asaf made a vague oh-well-never-mind noise. “Any how,” he said, “that’s sorted that out. Can we go home now, please?”
Jane looked around and noticed, as if for the first time, that she was sitting between the wings of a dragon thousands of feet above the surface of the earth. “Gosh, yes,” she said. “Let’s do that right away.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Well, go on, then. It’s your stupid dragon.”
“Sorry, yes. Now then, I wish—”
As he said the words, he chanced to look up; and the terms of his wish changed slightly. In its amended form, which he didn’t actually vocalise, it consisted of, I wish the other genie, the one who got hit by the electric shock and jumped up miles into the air, wasn’t coming back.
Unfortunately, as the Dragon King hastened to point out to him, that one was asking a bit too much.
“Here, bomb,” Kiss called. “Here, nice bomb. Bommybommybommybommy.”
No reply. And no sign of the poxy thing, as far as the eye (even his) could see. How do you attract bombs, exactly? Bomb-nip? Raffle an empty uranium canister?
“Oo vewwy naughty bomb,” He experimented. “Oo come here this minute, or else no…”
He paused. What do bombs like best?
He squirmed. No prizes for guessing what bombs like best.
“If you don’t come here this very minute,” he essayed, “the nasty Peace Movement will get you.”