Djinn Rummy (28 page)

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 rather 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.

A long, silver-tipped round slid frictionlessly into the chamber of the Steyr-Mannlicher, and he folded down the bolt with the heel of his right hand. He centred the crosshairs of the sight, breathed fully in and half out, and . . .

Her again. God knows, he thought dispassionately as he squeezed the trigger, what they all see in her. Probably, he reflected as he ejected the spent case and chambered the next round, why they need me.

He raised the rifle and took aim. Deep breath in -

‘G'day, mate. How's she coming?'

Startled, Cupid jerked involuntarily and the shot went high. A portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which for some unaccountable reason hung over the sofa in Jane's living-room, glanced down and thought, ‘Gosh . . .'

‘You idiot,' Cupid hissed. ‘Now look what you've made me go and do.'

‘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 corn-flake 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?'

‘Presumably. You can't remember pressing anything marked FIRE, can you?'

‘Just my bloody luck,' grumbled the Controller. ‘We start World War Three, and I miss it. That's a real bummer, that is. It would have been something to tell my grandchildr . . .'

He tailed off as the inherent contradiction hit him. The other inhabitants of the bunker shrugged.

‘Never mind,' said the wireless operator. ‘We've got plenty more where that one came from. Now, try and remember what it was that you did, exactly.'

 

‘More wine,' breathed the carpet heavily. ‘Go on, let's finish off the bottle.'

The atomic bomb shook its warhead. Nuclear weapons aren't accustomed to intoxicating liquor, and it was starting to see double. All it wanted right now was to go home and sleep it off.

‘A brandy, then? Coffee? We could go back to my place and have a coffee.'

It occurred to the bomb that if it showed up back at the silo with its exhaust residues smelling of drink, it would have some explaining to do. It nodded, and lurched against the table for support. Suddenly it didn't feel too well.

‘Waiter,' said the carpet, ‘the bill, please.'

The waiter was there instantly, assuring the carpet that this one was on the house, and could it please take its friend somewhere else quickly, because . . .

The bomb hiccuped. Geiger counters on three continents
danced a tarantella. The waiter threw himself under the table and started to pray.

Cautiously, the bomb got up and promptly fell over. Fortunately for generations of cartographers yet unborn, it fell into the carpet, which lifted gracefully into the air and flew away.

Justin chose that particular moment to wake up.

He opened his eyes. Next to him, he noticed, there was a big black cylindrical thing, like a cross between a sea-lion and a fire extinguisher. There was stencilled writing on its side: THIS WAY UP and HANDLE LIKE EGGS and DANGER! The casing was warm.

The shop! He remembered about the shop. He glanced at his watch; Uncle would be home by now, and he'd be absolutely livid. He had to get back to the shop as quickly as possible.