“England?”
“That’s the ticket.”
Asaf frowned. “But that’s crazy.”
“That’s where she lives, chum. The jam tart with the…”
“Fine.” Asaf drew in a deep breath and counted up to ten. “And this ship…”
“Hitched a lift with an old cobber of mine, actually,” said the King. “A really bonzer old bastard, do anything for you. Knows these seas like the back of his hand.”
Something horrible seemed to slide down the back of Asaf’s neck, only on the inside. “Please,” he said, raising a hand feebly, “reassure me. Tell me we haven’t hitched a lift with Sinbad the Sailor.”
“You know Simbo?”
“Heard of him,” Asaf muttered. “But—”
“Simbo and me,” the King went on, “we go way back. Me and old Simbo…”
Asaf lay back on the deck and covered his face with the edge of a redundant sail. “I think I’d like to go to sleep now,” he said. “And if I don’t wake up, never mind.”
“But—”
“Look!” Asaf sat bolt upright, and stabbed the King in the left pectoral with his forefinger. The scales, he noticed in passing, were harder than his fingernail. “This time last week,” he said, “I was content. Not happy, but content. I had a sleazy little hovel with a hole in the roof, my own poxy little business that wasn’t going anywhere, fish three times a day, some grubby old clothes, several people I hadn’t borrowed money off yet. I was content. And then you turn up, with your bloody three wishes—”
“Steady on, mate…”
“I will not steady on!” Asaf shouted. “Take me home again, now. And that’s a wish.”
The King sighed, filling the hold with damp green steam. “I know what it is,” he said, “you’re hungry. A bit of good honest tucker inside you and you’ll be as right as—”
“NOW!”
“Sorry.”
“What?”
“No can do,” replied the King awkwardly. “It’s a bit late for all that now, mate. You should have thought about it before you came.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Asaf growled. “You got me here, you get me out. And while we’re on the subject, what the fuck was all that stuff with that damn bottle?”
“How about,” said the King — he was disappearing, fading into the pale sunlight that streaked down into the hold through an unfastened hatch — “a nice egg and tomato sarny? Or I can do you pilchards.”
“But…”
The King had gone, leaving behind him a few airborne sparkles and a memory of the word “sarny”. Overhead, the unsecured hatch slammed shut, and Asaf heard the sound of bolts shooting home. He sat for a moment, speechless with rage and confusion. Then he shrugged, folded the corner of sail into a pillow and lay down.
“I hate pilchards!” he shouted, and closed his eyes.
And here’s the latest, warbled the television, on the nuclear tests story. And we’re taking you live to our man on Pineapple Atoll. Danny, can you hear me?
Philly Nine grinned, propped his feet on the footstool and used the handset to turn up the volume.
Loud and clear, Bob, chirruped the reporter, who had replaced the studio set on the screen. Behind him there was a view of blue skies and coconut palms. And the latest seems to be that we now have confirmation of the existence of the giant ants. The giant ants have, in fact, been sighted. By me. I saw them.
The reporter seized up and stood, gazing into the camera lens. After a gentle prompt from the studio, he continued.
So far, he said, we’ve sighted sixteen of the giant ants. They’re big, like twenty fret tall at the shoulder, and they’re making a real mess of the landscape, I can tell you. Also, attempts to deal with them by way of aerial dusting with ant powder and dive-bomb attacks with kettles of boiling water have proved basically futile. A spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund who chained himself to the leg of one ant in protest against these culling attempts has been eaten, but otherwise there are no reports of casualties.
It was the studio’s turn to say something, but nothing was said. The reporter, by now smiling disconcertingly, continued.
More importantly, the diplomatic exchanges over how these ants came to mutate so drastically is really beginning to hot up. I think all the superpowers are now in agreement that the mutation was caused by clandestine nuclear weapons tests, although I should add that there haven’t been any seismic readings to confirm this theory. Where everyone seems to disagree is over who actually did the test. In fact, everybody is accusing everybody else, and the situation really is beginning to get a bit fraught. In fact, we could be looking at the end of the multilateral disarmament initiative here, so for anybody out there with a redundant coal-cellar, the message is, start taking bookings now, because…
As the screen hurriedly reverted to the studio set, Philly Nine lay back in his chair, closed his eyes and smiled.
I did that, he told himself smugly, with my little hatchet.
WHOOOOOOSH!
The carpet streaked across the sky like a flat, embroidered meteor, skimming off satellite dishes and the older pattern of weather-vane as it went by sheer force of air displacement. The wonderful aerial view available over its side was wasted on Jane, who was lying flat on her face clinging on to two clenched handfuls of carpet. Justin had blacked out.
“Where to, lady?”
Jane looked up, received an eyeful of fast-moving air and ducked down again. However, she saw enough in the fraction of a second’s viewing time she had before the air-blast sandpapered her eyeballs to confirm to herself that there was nobody else on the damn rug but herself and the wimp. The voice was, therefore, entirely her imagination.
“No, I’m not. I’m your automatic pilot for what I hope will prove to be a relaxing and pleasurable flight to the destination of your choice.”
“Bugger off.”
“Pardon me?”
“I said bugger off,” Jane barked over the howling of the turbulence. “I know you’re just a hallucination inside my head, and I’m not standing for it. Go on, hop it, before I set my subconscious on to you.”
There was a pause. If it’s possible for a pause to sound hurt, it did.
“You’re the boss,” said the voice (and for some reason, it didn’t have to shout; it was as clear as a bell over the background noise). “However, I feel I should point out that I’m not in any way a figment of your imagination. If it helps you to relate better, you can call me George.”
Jane set her jaw firmly. She refused absolutely to be drawn into conversation with her own unbalanced mind sitting on a flying rug doing close on Mach One at just above rooftop level over Croydon. Especially a part of her own unbalanced mind called George. Never lower your standards for anyone, as her mother used to say.
“To explain,” George continued. “The rectangular object you took to be a book is in fact a state-of-the-art carpet navigation system, compatible with all leading designs of magic floor coverings. Once installed on the carpet of your choice, the system automatically activates the carpet’s propulsion and guidance systems, and receives directional input direct from your brainwave patterns by telepathic interfacing, made possible by our revolutionary fifth-generation textile chip technology. You said get me out of here fast, so…”
“I did?”
“You thought it,” George corrected itself. “And that’s good enough for me. Your wish is my—”
“NO!” Jane howled. “Not another one!”
“Pardon me?”
“Look.” In her wrath, Jane knelt upright, oblivious to the enormous volume of nothing directly below. “I have had it up to here with bloody genies, all right? My wish is not your bloody command. To hear is not to obey, O mistress. Got that?”
“We copy.”
“Good. Now get me down off this bloody contraption, fast as you like.”
George said nothing. The carpet continued flying straight and level, only appreciably faster. Had Jane been in the mood, she could have glanced down and seen an Alp, real close.