“Tea,” said Jane.
“Thanks.”
“Drink it while it’s hot.”
You heard the lady.
Vince smiled broadly and drank. A fraction of a second later most of the tea had turned into a fine mist, sprayed all over the room.
“Oh dear,” said Jane. “Something go down the wrong way?”
By way of response Vince choked, gasped and made a peculiar gurgling noise in the back of his throat. He was still smiling, but only because some paranormal force had grabbed control of his jaw muscles and frozen them.
“Perhaps,” Jane continued sweetly, “it’s because I put five teaspoonfuls of salt in it instead of sugar. When you’ve finished retching, you can leave.”
Strewth, whispered the voice in the back of Vince’s brain with horrified admiration, she really is a tough cookie, your girlfriend.
Vince stood up slowly, wiped tea off his face, closed his mouth tightly and pinched his nose hard between thumb and forefinger. Then he blew.
PLOP!
Kiss hit the floor like a sack of potatoes, rolled and came to rest against the opposite wall. He was dripping wet and shaking.
“Well,” Vince said, scrambling for the door, “been nice seeing you again, Jane. All the best to you and your… All the best. Bye.”
The door closed behind him.
EIGHT
Philly Nine sighed. He was having a hard time.
The brimstone had been a complete washout. Literally — it had started raining just as he was lugging the crates of the stuff off the lorry, and industrial spec brimstone is water-soluble.
The frogs had been an absolute nightmare. They’d just sat there. No sooner had he shooed one consignment of, say, five thousand out of the delivery pond than the previous batch had hopped back in and sat down, resolutely croaking and wobbling their chins at him. Magically generated flash floods dispersed them for a while, but their homing instinct was such that at least ninety-five per cent of them were back home within the hour. They way they got through pondweed was nobody’s business.
“Sign here,” the Frenchman said. “And here. And here. Thanks, monsieur. It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”
Philly nodded sombrely, and waved as the convoy of trucks raffled away into the distance. If you stretched the definition to breaking point, a worldwide chain of Provençal Fried Frogs’ Legs bars might be taken to constitute a plague, but it probably wasn’t going to bring the world to its knees; not, at least, in the short term.
What, he asked himself wretchedly, next? His own fault, he reflected, for letting himself be carried away by the gothic splendour of the language. If he’d been content to settle for a nice straightforward plague of, say, plague, the entire human race would by now be coming out in suppurating boils, and he’d be home and dry. As it was… He took out the crumpled envelope on which he’d jotted down his notes.
x Locusts
x Sulphur
x Brimstone
x Frogs
Hail
Giant ants
Burning pitch
Never usually a quitter, Philly sighed, folded the envelope and put it away. Was there, he asked himself, really any point in going on?
And then he remembered.
The brochure. The smiling face. The slogan, “We’re here to help you.”
“Of course!” he said aloud, and his face broke into a silly grin. Virtually the only useful thing they teach you at Genie Schooclass="underline" don’t bother learning the Knowledge itself, so long as you know where to go to look it up. He took out his diary and thumbed through the business cards wedged in the inside flap until he found the right one.
THE GENIE ADVISORY SERVICE
Central office: the Djinn Palace, Street of the Lamp-Makers, Samarkand 9
Have you got a problem? Bring it to us!
Your wish is our command!
GAS headquarters had only recently relocated to an imposing suite of purpose-blown bottles in a crate round the back of Number 56, Street of the Lamp-Makers, and there were the inevitable settling-in problems associated with the migration of any large enterprise. For example, the phones weren’t working yet, only twenty per cent of the staff knew where the toilets were, and all the files had been sent to a hurricane lamp in the Orkneys by mistake, along with most of the typewriters and the coffee machine. Apart from that, it was business as usual.
After five minutes in the waiting room reading a back number of the National Demonological, Philly was greeted by a small, round genie who extended a tiny, moist paw and introduced himself as “GAS 364, your Personal Business Adviser”. GAS 364 chivvied him into a small cell with two deep armchairs, a vase of flowers and a large framed print of Picasso’s Guernica, offered him coffee, and asked what the problem was.
Philly explained.
“Right,” said GAS 364, “got you. The old, old story.”
“It is?”
GAS 364 nodded. “Bitten off more than we can chew,” he said, smiling. “Trying to swoop before we can glide. It’s basically a time management/resources allocation problem.”
“Ah. Is that serious?”
“Depends.” GAS 364 waggled his hands. “There’s a lot of variables. How your operation is structured, for example, lateral as against vertical command groups, properly demarcated zones of responsibility, incentive-related leadership packages, that sort of thing.”
“Gosh,” Philly said. “Actually, there’s only me.”
GAS 364 rubbed his various chins. “Sole practitioner, huh?” he said. “Now that means a whole different subgroup of potential dysfunction hotspots. The left hand not knowing whether the right hand’s been left holding the baby. And, of course, carrying the can.” He shook his head. “You know,” he said, “if only you’d come to see us earlier, a lot of this could well have been avoided. But there we are.”
“Are we?”
GAS 364 spread his hands in an eloquent gesture. “Are we indeed?” he said. “Like we always say, you can’t destroy the world without breaking eggs.”
Philly’s brow clouded for a moment. “Eggs,” he said. “You’re thinking of the giant ants?”
“Let’s stay off the specifics for the time being,” GAS 364 replied, glancing at his watch, “and zoom in on the generals. Which means, first things first, software.”
“Software?”
“Mortals,” GAS 364 translated. “As opposed to hardware, meaning us. It’s basically a question of approach, you see. You sole practitioners, you simply have no idea of how to delegate.”
“Delegate? Delegate the annihilation of the human race?”
GAS 364 nodded. “The only way,” he said. “Think about it. Sure, you’re a Force Twelve, rippling muscles, big turban, the works. But at the end of the day, when pitch comes to shove, there’s just you. Just you,” the genie repeated, “to open the mail, answer the telephones and wipe out all sentient life-forms on the Planet Earth. Result: you’re overstretched. Which means,” he went on, leaning back and folding his hands behind his head, “when the van arrives with the crates of frogs, you can’t cope. As we’ve seen.”
Philly nodded. “So?”
“So,” GAS 364 replied, “let somebody else do the donkey work for you. Get the software to do the actual extermination stuff, while you maintain a general supervisory and administrative role, which is what you’re supremely qualified for. It’s as simple as that.”
Philly, who had just begun to feel he was dimly glimpsing what the small genie was driving at, scowled. “Please explain,” he said.
GAS 364 beamed at him. “Easy,” he said. “Start a war.”
“Hello,” Jane said.
Kiss got up slowly and started wringing out his wet clothes. “Hello,” he replied.
“He’s gone.”
“Has he?”
“Yes. You’re all wet.”
“Yes.”
“Just as well,” Jane said, “that you can’t catch colds.”