by Tom Holt
Is that so?
“Definitely.”
Life insurance?
“As much as I can lay my hands on.”
Pensions?
“By the bucketful. I shall want as many pensions as I can possibly get.”
Stone me. It’s been months since I sold a pension. Are you sure you’re not a FIMBRA agent?
“Absolutely bloody positive. Now, could you please get me out of this fucking bottle?”
At the back of his mind, Asaf could feel Pivot wriggling uncomfortably. I still have bad feelings about all this. The rules really are terribly strict.
“Couldn’t you…” Asaf squirmed with agony as a spasm of cramp shot down his spinal column. “Couldn’t you sign them for me? As my agent or whatever?”
Hum. Not really. Not unless you sign a power of attorney I happen to have one with me, by the way.
“Oh, for crying out loud…”
I’m sorry, sighed Pivot. I’d really love to help, but you know how it is. Now, are you ready for some homely snippets yet? We could start with, “It’s always darkest before the dawn”, or we could…
“No!” Asaf jerked violently in protest, and in doing so fetched the back of his head a terrific crack on the wall of the bottle. “Just you dare, and the moment I’m out of this sodding contraption—”
He stopped in mid-snarl. The walls were creaking. Obviously, the blow from his head had damaged the glass. Now if he could only…
I’ve also got one about not beating your head against a brick wall, continued Pivot helpfully. And I can customise it to refer to the sides of glass bottles for a very modest…
Crash. The glass gave way and suddenly Asaf was out, sprawled full-length — six feet of cramp and muscle spasms — on a flat field of grass. There were shards of broken bottle sticking into him in all sorts of places.
There, I told you we’d have you out of there in no time, said Pivot, recovering well. That’ll be, let’s see, seven minutes at a hundred dirhams an hour, so by my reckoning that’s…
Asaf lifted his head, and thought long and hard about what he would like to do to the next supernatural being who crossed his path. By the time he’d finished, something told him he was very much alone.
TEN
Jane looked around her, and clicked her tongue. She was bored.
Not just bored in the nothing-to-do sense; she was bored to the marrow, half-past-four-on-a-Sunday-afternoon-in-Wales bored. And nothing much, as far as she could see, to be done about it.
Bloody genie! What the hell was the point of being able to have anything you want if all you have to do in order to get it is want it?
Still, she consoled herself while moving a small china ornament two inches to the right, once we’re married there won’t be any more of that. No more of this supernatural nonsense. We can just be ordinary people…
Ordinary people…
Yes, well. At least ordinary people can go shopping. When you’re the proprietress of a Force Twelve genie, one thing you can’t do is shop. No sooner have you written down something on your list than it’s there, delivered in a fraction of a second, very best quality, from Harrods. But what’s the point of having things if you can’t shop for them first?
Jane steeled herself. She was a free woman, with an inalienable right to shop. And shop she would.
She glanced down at her feet and noticed that on the patch of floor directly below her, approximately five feet by seven, there was no rug. Everywhere else there were rugs; the very finest rugs ever, whisked here by arcane forces and precisely, down to the last fibre, what she’d wanted. Well, it would have to stop somewhere, and here was as good a place as any. She would go out, and buy a rug.
The resolution once made, she softened slightly. All the other rugs in the place — all the furniture and fittings, come to that — were her choice, and she knew for a fact that Kiss didn’t really like them much. A bit thin on the barbaric splendour, he considered, while maybe slightly overstressing the cosy and colour-coordinated.
There, now. Two birds with one stone. She would buy a rug, in (she almost hugged herself with pleasure at the thought) a shop, and it would be the sort of rug Kiss would like. Persian or something. She could stand a coffee-table on it so that she wouldn’t have to see it, but he would still know it was there.
Problem; although all Oriental carpets looked exactly the same to her, she was sure she remembered something about each one being unique, and some sorts being wonderfully marvellous works of art, and others being the sort of thing that’s left unsold after a church bazaar. Obviously, it was incumbent upon her to buy one of the approved models.
Why is life so complicated?
The thought had scarcely crossed her mind when she caught sight of a book on the arm of the sofa. It was big and fat, and on the cover it had a photograph of a Persian rug. She picked it up.
It was written in Arabic.
That aside, it was promising; it was full of pictures of rugs, all of which looked pretty well identical to her, but it stood to reason that nobody, not even an Arab in the grips of vanity-publishing mania, would go to the trouble of producing a chunky great tome full of pictures of just one rug. Even if he was desperately attached to it, he’d probably just have its portrait painted and let it go at that.
Therefore, she argued, this must be a book, belonging to Kiss, on the subject of rugs; approved rugs, presumably. All she had to do was go to an emporium, find a rug which looked tolerably similar to the pictures in the book, and buy it. Problem solved. She dumped the book in her bag and went out.
Arguably, a more perceptive person might have noticed the wires coming out of the spine, and wondered what business a book had with sockets and electrodes.
The young man (his name was Justin) was tall and thin. L.S. Lowry would have hired him as a model without a moment’s hesitation. He was wearing a hairy tweed jacket whose sleeves appeared to have eaten his hands right down to the middle joints of the fingers. He seemed nervous.
But not as nervous as the other man (his name was Max). If Justin resembled a golf club, Max was a dead ringer for the ball.
“Now you’ve got the number?” Max said.
“Yes, Uncle.”
“And you’ll phone me if there’s any problems? Any problems at all?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“And you know where everything is?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
Max chewed his lip. “The key to the safe is in the coffee tin on the top shelf of the stockroom, just under the—”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“And you’re sure you’ll be all right?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
There’s only so much you can do, thought Max; and I’ll only be gone two hours, and there’s never any customers on a Thursday afternoon, and all the prices are clearly marked, and I’ve told him nineteen times not to let anybody haggle…”
“Justin.”
“Yes, Uncle?”
“Remember, don’t let anybody haggle. The prices as marked are non-negotiable. You’ve got that?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
…Twenty times, so what could possibly go wrong? no, don’t even think that. Just keep everything crossed, and hurry back as soon as possible.
“Oh, and Justin.”
“Yes, Uncle?”
“Don’t buy anything.”
“No, Uncle.”
It’s impossible, Max reassured himself, completely out of the question, that the boy could be as dozy as his mother. For a start, he seems able to remember to breathe regularly without anybody having to remind him. The shop will be in safe hands. Everything’s going to be all right.
“Is there anything,” he said, taking a deep breath, “you want to ask before I go?”
“No, Uncle.”
Max shut his eyes, broadcast a prayer to any passing gods and smiled wretchedly.
“Right,” he said, winding his scarf round his neck, “it’s all yours.”
He too
k three steps towards the door, stopped and looked round. Of course he would see it all again, and when he came back everything would be all right. But there was no harm in taking one last, long look, just to be on the safe side.
"Bye, Uncle.”
“See you, Justin.”
The bell on the door clanged and Justin was alone with the shop, the till, the books and seventy square miles of the choicest, rarest, most valuable Oriental carpets in the whole of the United Kingdom.
He sneezed.
Carpets attract dust, and dust played hell with Justin’s sinuses. The next two hours, he just knew, were going to be very, very long.
He sat down behind the desk and found his place in his book, trying his best to breathe in through his mouth only. He hadn’t read more than five or six pages when the bell tinkled. He looked up.
“Can I help?” he asked, and froze.
During the previous night, when he’d been lying awake fretting about having to mind the shop on his own the next day, he had finally managed to reconcile himself to the thought that there might be customers. He had squared up to that one, looked the impostor Fear straight in the eye and stared him down. It hadn’t occurred to him, however, that there might be female customers. Young female customers. If the thought had crossed his mind, come to that, he wouldn’t be here now.
“I expect so,” Jane replied, looking round. “I want to buy a rug.”
“Gosh.”
“Looks like I’ve come to the right place.”
“Crumbs.”
“I mean,” Jane went on, with that awful feeling you get when you know you’ve got to keep talking because the silence that’ll follow when you stop will be too embarrassing to contemplate, “you look like you’ve got a very wide selection.”
“Have we? Yes.”
Jane subsided. What she really wanted to do now was leave the shop and never come back; but it looked like there was a sporting chance that the implied rejection would drive the young man behind the desk to slash his wrists, if he didn’t break his thumbnail getting the big blade out first. She was stuck.
“Gosh,” she said, selecting a carpet at random, “what have we here?”
The young man said nothing. His expression seemed to suggest that as far as he was concerned, all carpets were too ghastly for words and he wanted nothing to do with them, ever, not in this world or the next.
“No,” Jane muttered, “maybe not. Or rather,” she added quickly, in case the negative vibes might just be the final shove that would send him over the edge, “it’s a really nice carpet, but not quite in keeping with… Yes, this one’s even nicer. Don’t you think?”
The young man lifted his head and gazed at the example she’d put her hand on. “Do you want to, er, buy…?”
His tone of voice suggested that Jane was trying to seduce him into committing some luridly unnatural act. “Well,” she mumbled, “I do quite like…”
“I’ll look,” said the young man, “in the book.”
He ducked under the counter, and for on awful moment Jane wondered if he was ever going to reappear. Just when she was steeling herself to go and see what he’d done to himself under there, he bobbed back up again with a shoebox full of tatty notebooks.
“It’ll be inhere somewhere,” the young man said hopelessly.
Oh Christ, Jane thought, I’m going to be here for the rest of my life. Kiss, where the devil are you when I need you? Beam me up quick.
“Look, if it’s any trouble…”
The young man favoured her with a look that wouldn’t have been out of place on the face of a sheep in an abattoir. “I’m quite capable of looking it up, thank you very much,” he said, with a sort of hideous mangled dignity that made Jane wish very much that her father had never met her mother. “I’ll try not to keep you.”
“I’ll buy it anyway,” Jane whimpered, “if that’s all right with you, I mean.”
The young man didn’t reply. He was nose-deep in the box. It looked very much as if he was going to be there for some considerable time.
Eventually, just as Jane was wondering whether she could surreptitiously roll herself up in the carpet like Cleopatra, wait till he’d gone and then make good her escape, the young man lifted his head and coughed nervously.
“Excuse me.”
“Yes?”
“Can you see a ticket on it anywhere? It should say 2354/A67/74Y”
“Ah.” Jane examined the carpet. “Doesn’t seem to be.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh.” The young man winced, as if the book in his hand was red-hot. “I’d better just look, I suppose,” he muttered, and crossed the floor towards her. “Maybe it’s on the back of something. There should be one somewhere,” he added poignantly.
They were both standing on the carpet. “Can I help?” Jane asked.
“It’s all right, really, I can manage.”
“What does it say in the book?”
“It’s a…” The young man squinted. “Sorry, I can’t quite pronounce it. Bokhara something or other.”
“And that’s what you think this is?”
“I think so. Mind you, I’m really not an expert. If you wouldn’t mind waiting till Uncle gets back, I’m sure he’d be able to…”
Oh no, thought Jane, I wasn’t born yesterday. This is one of those traps, like the Flying Dutchman or the Lorelei. You promise to wait ten minutes, and five hundred years later you’re still there, and everybody you ever knew on the outside has died. “Here,” Jane said, press-ganging the first words ill-advised enough to come near her, “I’ve got a book here, let’s see if there’s a picture we can identify it from.” She opened Kiss’s book, and as she was rather preoccupied she failed to notice the slight hum, or the pale blue glow from the endpapers.
God, she thought. I wish I was out of here.
COMPUTING
The voice was inside her, tiny, clear and sharp. She was sure she’d heard it. Oh wonderful, now I’m going potty. If ever I get out of this alive, it’s going to be wall-to-wall limo for ever and ever.
I wish, she added in mental parenthesis, Kiss was here.
DOES NOT CORRELATE
“Did you say…”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing.”
Definitely, Jane said to herself, I want to be out of here. Immediately.
WHOOSH!
“Good on yer, mate,” said the Dragon King of the SouthEast, emerging from behind a pile of coiled-up rope.
“Look…”
“Like a rat,” the Dragon King continued, “up a drain. No worries. Like they say out Paramatta way: you can take the bloke out of the bottle, but you can’t take the bottle out of the bloke.”
This remark was so puzzling that Asaf dismissed his daydream of making the King swallow his own tail, and he sat down on a barrel. “Where the hell am I?” he asked.
“On the high seas, me old mate,” the King replied. “On your way to seek fame, fortune, and the sheila with the big—”
“Please be more specific.”
The King smiled; that is to say, the corners of his jaws lifted, and his bright, small blue eyes sparkled even more than usual. “We’re on a ship,” he said.
“I had in fact come to that conclusion already. What bloody ship, and why?”
The King chuckled. “Because,” he replied, “you’d get pretty flamin’ wet trying to cross the old surf without one. Eh?”
Asaf sighed. It wasn’t, he said to himself, fair; not on him, and not on everybody else. Why should the rest of the world be deprived of their ration of idiots just so that he could have an embarrassing profusion?
“Where,” he asked, “are we going?”
“Pommieland,” the King said. “The old country. Gee, you’ll love it there, mate. It’s really beaut, trust me.”
“England?”
“That’s the ticket.”
Asaf frowned. “But that’s crazy.”
“That’s where she live
s, 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.”