by Tom Holt
The genie stared for a moment, then started to laugh. “Set the world to rights and nobody gets killed? Hey, lady, where have you been all your life?”
Few compilers of folk-tale anthologies have recorded the fact, but all genies, regardless of the terms of their indenture or the nature of their employment, have an indefeasible right to one night off a week. Kiss had explained this to Jane in great detail, and had even taken the trouble of marking the whole of the relevant page of the manual in extra-fluorescent yellow marker pen.
Where, then, do genies go on their night off? There is, of course, only one place: Saheed’s, in downtown Samarkand (turn left opposite the dye works till you come to a corrugated iron door, knock four times and ask for Ali). There, the stressed-out supernatural entity can relax, unwind and talk over the past week with other genies over a nice glass of cool goat’s milk. Or so the theory runs. In practice, Ali the proprietor has had to have an annexe built into another dimension, because the fights on Quiz Nights threaten to upset the Earth’s placement on its axis.
“It’s amazing, it really is,” Kiss maintained, swilling the contents of his glass round to revive the head. “The woman is completely weird. What exactly she wants out of life is beyond me entirely.”
His companion nodded sympathetically. “Europeans,” he grunted. “No more idea than next door’s cat, the lot of them. I remember once, I was in this oiling can over France way, and—”
“Three weeks I’ve been with her now,” Kiss continued, absent-mindedly finishing off his companion’s peanuts, “and what have we done? Go on, guess. You’ll never guess what we’ve done.”
“Probably not.”
“Nothing.” Kiss scowled. “Absolutely bugger-all. Not proper genie stuff, anyway. It’s all been ironing and shampooing the carpets and would you mind just running a duster over the sitting-room table? The score so far: ruby eyes of gods stolen, nil. Spirits of the dead raised, nil. Tail-feathers of firebirds plucked, nil. Hairs from the beard of the Great Chain abstracted, nil. Ankle-socks paired, fourteen. Potatoes peeled, thirty-two. Any more of this and I’m going to appeal to the Tribunal, because it really isn’t on. Have another?”
His companion glanced at his wrist (genies don’t need watches but are nevertheless creatures of habit). “Since you’re offering,” he replied. “Just the one, mind, because I’ve got wealth beyond the dreams of avarice to fetch tomorrow, and you’ve got to keep a clear head for these fiddly little jobs.”
Kiss nodded and went to the bar.
“Two large djinns and tonic,” he said, “ice and lemon in one.”
The bottle on the counter rocked backwards and forwards as if nodding, unstoppered itself and poured liquor into two glasses. Please note: customers who find they’ve left their money at home when dining at Saheed’s don’t just get away with doing the washing-up.
“Sounds like you’ve got yourself a right little ray of sunshine,” his companion observed, as Kiss brought back the drinks. “What was that bit you said about further wishes?”
Kiss explained, again. His companion shook his head.
“I’m not sure about that,” he said, “not sure at all. You should get the union rep to have a look at that for you. I mean, there must be something wrong with it, or else we’d all be in the smelly.”
“Lousy precedent,” Kiss agreed.
“Diabolical. They could take it up as a test case.”
“You reckon?”
“Worth a try.” His companion emptied his glass, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his sixth arm, and stood up. “Well, be seeing you. Don’t steal any glass eyes.”
“Mind how you go,” Kiss replied absently. His companion withdrew, and a few moments later there was a brief outburst of muffled swearing as he discovered that while he’d been inside, some practical jokers had nailed his carpet to the carpet-park floor. (For the record, he arrived back home six hours late, soaking wet and frozen stiff, having had to make the return flight on a borrowed bar towel.)
Kiss lingered on until closing time, playing the video games in a desultory manner and beating the Dragon King of the South three times running at pool. It wasn’t just that he was in no hurry to go home; there was something else troubling him, and he needed the noise and smashed-crockery sounds of his own kind about him in order to concentrate his mind. There was, he felt, something very odd going on, and in some way he couldn’t work out he was involved in it, indirectly and at several removes. Whatever it was, it remained shadowy and obscure, with the result that he was too preoccupied to notice that he had just beaten the Dragon King a fourth time; which is to pushing one’s luck as closing one’s eyes and taking both hands off the wheel is to motorway driving. Not very long afterwards, he was rescued in the nick of time by the bouncer and deposited outside among the dustbins, where he passed a quiet night dreaming of jacket potatoes.
“What’s it like,” Jane demanded, “being a genie?”
They were digesting a leisurely picnic, a hundred feet or so up in the air directly above a spectacularly active volcano in the back lots of Hawaii. The venue had been Kiss’s suggestion; it would save them having to take the empty fruit-juice cartons and boiled-egg shells home with them, he’d argued, if they could simply drop them into the most spectacular waste-disposal system on the planet. They were sitting on Kiss’s own personal flying carpet (a three-ply Wilton Sportster with Hydra-Shock jute backing and a go-faster Paisley recurring motif) and Jane had just finished off the cold chicken.
“Dodgy,” Kiss replied, after some thought. “You never really know where you are. I mean,” he continued, jettisoning an empty Perrier bottle, which liquefied twelve feet above the meniscus of the lava, “potentially it’s a really great lifestyle, if you can hack it and stay out of trouble. You’ve got eternal life and eternal youth, there’s practically nothing this side of Ursa Major that can attack you without coming a very poor second, you can fly, you can materialise pretty well anything you like so long as it actually exists somewhere in the cosmos, and best of all you have absolutely no moral constraints whatsoever. I guess the nearest you could come in human terms would be a seven-foot-tall, extremely muscular movie star with a good agent and an even better lawyer. That’s when the times are good, of course,” he added.
“And when they’re not?”
Kiss shook his head. “Bottles,” he said. “Also lamps. Very bad news, both of them. I knew a genie once, in fact, got mixed up with one of those raffia-covered Chianti bottles made into a lamp. Poor bugger didn’t know whether he was coming or going.”
“Confusing?”
“Just plain nasty,” Kiss replied. “Take another mate of mine, Big Nick. I told him at the time — this was some years ago, mind — Nick, I said, stripping the lead off the Vatican roof is going to land you in very real grief, you mark my words. He didn’t, of course, and look at him now.”
Jane squinted. “I’ve heard of him, have I?”
Kiss nodded gloomily. “I expect so. Big chap, white beard, red dressing-gown, reindeer, sack — thought you’d probably come across him.”
Jane’s eyes widened. “He’s a genie?”
“There’s more of us about,” Kiss said, “than people realise.”
“And it’s a punishment? All the delivering presents and happy smiling faces…”
“You try it and see how you enjoy it. I’m telling you, twelve thousand years in an oil-lamp would be paradise in comparison.” Kiss shuddered reflexively. “And if that wasn’t bad enough, the other three hundred and sixty-four days each year it’s not just a bottle the poor sod’s banged up in, it’s one of those paperweights; you know, the sort you shake and it snows? I think you’d have to have a pretty warped mind to come up with something like that.”
Jane agreed.
“And it’s getting worse, you know,” Kiss went on. “Generally, that is. In the business. Admittedly in my young days there were more of the bad guys about — sorcerers and mages and the like — but at least they hadn’t inv
ented the unbreakable plastic bottle or the child-proof bottle-top. Makes my blood run cold, that does.”
Jane tried to imagine what it was like, being a genie, and found that she couldn’t. Hardly surprising, she decided, but a trifle disappointing nevertheless. She dropped a paper plate over the side and watched it drift down and blossom, first into fire, then fine white ash, then nothing at all.
“And what about you?” Kiss said. “Since we’re obviously into a heavyweight experience-swapping trip, how about you telling me why the suicide thing? I have this feeling that it’s something I ought to know, purely on a business level.”
Jane sighed. “Why not?” she said. “I expect you could find out if you wanted to.”
“No problem,” Kiss agreed. “I could read your thoughts, for a start.”
“Could you?”
The genie nodded. “It’s frowned upon, of course,” he added. “Not quite the done thing and so forth, especially within the parameters of the model genie/mortal relationship. But entirely feasible.”
“Hang on,” Jane objected. “What happened to no moral constraints whatsoever?”
“It’s not moral constraints, just peer group machismo. And we’re drifting away from the subject rather, aren’t we?”
“I suppose we are. Go on, then. Guess.”
“Guess why you wanted to kill yourself?”
“Mphm.”
Kiss frowned, and changed himself into a tree. Trees, as is well known, spend their entire lives trying to decide what they’re going to do next, and therefore possess tremendous powers of concentration. It’s only the lack of an effective central nervous system that keeps them from sweeping the board at chess tournaments.
“Unrequited love,” he said. “Close?”
Jane scowled. “Spot on,” she replied. “Is it that obvious?”
“No,” replied the genie, with a hint of smugness. “In fact, you’ve concealed it terribly well. I have the advantage, however, of superhuman intelligence. Not,” he added, “that I use it much. Gives me a headache.”
“Me too.”
Kiss changed back into his customary shape: a nine-foot-tall clown, complete with red nose and a woolly ginger wig. “Tell me about it,” he said.
“Nothing to tell, really.” Jane leaned over and stared at the seething flames below until her eyes hurt. “His name was Vince, and he had the desk opposite mine at the Bank. In his spare time he played a lot of volleyball, his favourite food was pizza and he was saving up for one of those overland adventure holidays where you cross some desert or other in an open-topped truck. What I ever saw in him I can’t for the life of me imagine, but there it is.”
Kiss nodded. “It’s the same with us and bottles,” he said. “Only, of course, we eventually get out of the bottles, even if it does mean waiting till they biodegrade. As I understand it, your lot don’t have that guarantee.”
“I don’t know.” Jane sniffed. “If you ask me, it’s all a case of misunderstood biology. In fact, as an example of a very big hammer to crack a very small nut, it’s hard to beat.”
Kiss rolled over on to his back and materialised a bottle of cold milk. He took a long pull, wiped the top of the bottle on the palm of his hand and offered it to Jane, who declined it.
“If you like,” he said, “we can see what we can do about this Vince character. If you really want me to, that is.”
Jane shook her head. “I don’t honestly think it’s something you can interfere with,” she replied. “I thought you were only allowed to do the possible.”
Kiss shrugged. “There would have to be an element of compromise,” he replied, “and certainly you can’t compel one mortal to love another. On the other hand, you can suggest to a mortal that he act affectionately towards another mortal if he doesn’t want his ears ripped off and shoved up his nose. That’d be no bother whatsoever.”
“No, thank you.”
“Sure? The more I think about it, the more I warm to the—”
“Really,” Jane said. “No thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” The genie yawned. “So, what exactly do you want? I don’t want to seem pushy or anything, but it’s time you made your mind up about that. Most people have a shopping-list ready formulated before the cork’s out of the bottleneck.”
“Well, I don’t,” Jane said. “Apart from the immediate things, I mean, like not having to clean the kitchen floor or go to work. Grand ambitions really aren’t my style.”
“They don’t have to be all that grand,” Kiss suggested. “In fact, something modest but time-consuming would suit me down to the ground. A complete collection of Bing Crosby records, for example; or better still, a determination on your part to have lunch in all the wine-bars in the Southern Hemisphere. I could handle that, if you could.”
Jane removed the straw from a fruit-juice carton and chewed it thoughtfully. “Really,” she said, “I suppose I ought to make the world a better place. Eliminate nuclear weapons, irrigate the deserts of Northern Africa, that sort of—”
“Oh dear, not again,” Kiss sighed. “Sorry, but if I see one more North African desert, I shall probably be sick.”
“Oh.” Jane looked startled. “You mean you already…?”
“We all have,” Kiss sighed, “at one time or another. One of humanity’s more predictable requests, I’m afraid. Exactly as predictable, in fact, as causing famine, pestilence and floods, which is Mankind’s other great preoccupation. That’s why we have the Concurrency Agreement. It was worked out by the Union, what, three thousand years ago, and just as well, in my opinion.”
Jane demanded footnotes.
“Simple,” Kiss explained. “Suppose you have, say, fifty genies. You can bet your life that at any one time twenty-five of them are going to be indentured to do-gooders, let-the-deserts-bloom types; and the other twenty-five will be working for psychotic maniacs. We just set off one against the other, and things remain exactly as they are. Saves a lot of aggravation in the long run, and of course it gives your lot something to do into the bargain. Flag days, jumble sales, fighting wars, that sort of thing.”
“I see. How very depressing.”
“It is, rather. So, if you want me to convert the Nullarbor plain into a swaying forest of Brussels sprouts, just say the word, but you mustn’t count on them staying there for more than a fiftieth of a second, if that. The rules are very strict.”
“Fine. I think I’d like to go home now, please.”
“Your wish is my—”
“Do you have to keep saying that?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
TWO
A hot-air balloon bobbing uncertainly over a desert landscape.
Inside the balloon, a man and a girl, surveying the view with binoculars. There’s nothing to be seen except sand and, in the far distance, huge rocky outcrops. No signs of life whatsoever. That suits the man and the girl perfectly.
The girl stoops down and picks up a metal cylinder, like a steel thermos flask. She opens it and rolls into the palm of her hand a single seed, no bigger than a grape pip. It sits, heavy for its size, in the soft skin of her hand. It looks, if anything that small and inert can manage such a feat, smug.
“Well?” asks the man. He has to shout because of the roaring of the wind, but his shout is so full of awe that it sounds like an extremely loud whisper; as if he was talking to a very deaf person in a cathedral.
“Here’s as good a place as any,” replies the girl. “Let’s go for it.”
She leans over the side and reels for a second at the sight of so much nothing between her and the ground; then she deliberately opens her palm and lets the seed fall.
The seed falls…
And hits the ground.
WHUMP!
Was it a seed, or was it a bomb? Difficult to tell; there’s a mushroom-shaped cloud standing up from the desert floor…
But that’s not smoke or dust, that’s foliage; a huge, thick stem supporting a giant bud — which bursts into a hot-f
lame-yellow flower with a raging red centre. The flower lifts towards the sun — you expect it to roar and shake its head like a lion — and the plant raises its two broad, leathery leaves like wings; and even up in the balloon, a thousand feet overhead, that’s a threatening sight.
“Christ,” shouts the man, “look at that thing grow!”
Look indeed; the plant is twenty feet high and still growing. Fissures run along the desert floor, marking the swift passage of the roots underground like lighting forking across a black sky.
“That,” the girl agreed, “is one hell of a primrose.”
“Sorry?”
“I said that’s one hell of a—”
“Speak up, I can’t quite hear what you’re—”
“I SAID, THAT’S ONE HELL OF A PRIMROSE.”
“Yes.”
No longer growing; instead, consolidating. The stem swells, to support the weight of the flower. The petals fan out, snatching photons out of the air like a spider’s web. Hot chlorophyll pumps through the swelling veins. The roots tear into the dead ground like miners” drills. And stop.
“Hey up,” says the man, “I think it’s on its way.”
The primrose is rocking and bouncing up and down, for all the world as if it’s on a trampoline. Now it’s swaying backwards and forwards, using all the leverage of its already phenomenal bulk to rip its roots free. In this particular part of the desert, nothing has stirred the ground since the seas evaporated and the wind ground down the rock and stamped it flat as a car park and hard as tarmac; fifty million years or thereabouts of patient landscaping, contouring, making good. A few more millennia, God might be saying, and we’ll have a decent tennis court. Unless, of course, some bugger of a psychotic giant primula comes along and starts carving it up…
With a crack like bones breaking and much spraying of sand into the air, the roots come free; and for a few seconds they grope frantically in empty air until they touch ground, and — like a monster spider with wings and a huge yellow wind-up gramophone on its back, the plant begins to shuffle, on tip-root, sideways across the sand towards the distant shade of the outcrops.