“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?”