A roar like an approaching freight train filled the room. With a clap of thunder and another burst of smoke, Razorback appeared in the same spot from which he had vanished. His arms were full of papers and computer disks. Floating above the physical impedimenta were numbers and words that seemed to be printed in white on the air. Froister guessed that Razorback had also taken all the data that was currently running through the computers at IRS headquarters. The youth was admirably thorough.
At a signal from Froister, Razorback laid his armload at DeNovo’s feet. When he set it down, the containment spell around it vanished, and the papers scattered in every direction. Razorback dived for a handful, but they swirled out of his reach. The floating numbers whirled away and popped like soap bubbles.
“Smooth move, kid,” the businessman snarled.
“Hey, up yours, mmm-mother,” the young genie strained out in a monotone. His face was sweating, and hate burned at the back of his eyes though his expression stayed blank. He stood erect. With his arms folded, he nodded his chin, and the papers gathered themselves together in neat heaps.
“Very nice,” Froister said, approvingly. The loose data was gone for good, but if DeNovo didn’t have it, neither did the IRS.
Razorback seemed to shake himself all over like a dog, and his eyes returned to normal. Morales came over to peer at him. He judged that his soldier was unharmed, if confused, and turned back to Froister, his posture a study in nonchalance.
“Okay, so what? We’re your robot messenger boys now whether we like it or not. What’s in this deal for us?”
Froister had to admire his gumption in asking, after witnessing such a demonstration of power over will. You just couldn’t faze today’s young. He blamed television for taking all the awe out of life.
“Power, just as I promised,” Froister said. “I didn’t say you wouldn’t like being djinni. Not at all. There’s plenty of scope for your creativity. I’ll show you more.” He turned to Razorback, pointed the finger again. “The second wish.” Razorback straightened up and folded his arms. “Revenge against the IRS employee who came after Mr. DeNovo. Bring him here. You shall be the agent of that revenge.”
“It will be as the mother commands,” Razorback said. Undoubtedly he still felt embarrassment about providing an upside-down floorshow, but the order to be the instrument of vengeance seemed to appeal to his slow-working brain. His eyes slitted like a feral hunting cat’s.
“You know, the command doesn’t specifically require Razorback to leave the room,” Bannion said, standing holding up a display rack with his shoulder. “It’s an opportunity for the others to see the workings of a really powerful wish firsthand. Don’t you go, son. Make him come here.” Bannion pointed to the floor.
“Oh, okay.” Eyes showed signs of enlightenment, when shown even the simplest alternative. The youth straightened up, flexed his shoulders, and squeezed his eyes hard closed. There was a lightning-like flash, followed by the sound of a heavy weight hitting the floor. When everyone’s eyes had recovered, they saw a man kneeling in front of Razorback with his arm outstretched, shoving a videotape forward. He wore an open-necked sport shirt and a pair of beige twill trousers, crisply pressed. His rimless spectacles hung over one ear, as if they had been blown off during the magical tornado.
“That’s him,” DeNovo said, walking over. He took the tape out of the dazed man’s fingers. “Look at that: Bambi. I bet you like the part where his mother gets killed, right?”
“Where am I?” the man asked, blinking up at the crowd of men. He recognized DeNovo, and scrambled to get to his feet. Froister nodded to Razorback, who appeared next to the man and pushed him back to his knees. “Mr. DeNovo, what is this?”
“Judgment day,” the businessman crowed. He bent and grabbed a handful of the agent’s shirtfront. “You creep, you kept me waiting in your office for six hours, then you turned my whole life inside out just because of a lousy two-line error on my tax return. You made me crawl back to beg for time, when you sat on my files. You made me waste months finding every damned little receipt I ever got, and then you still disallowed all of my deductions. Confess that you did it out of spite.”
“What?” the man said, straightening up on his knees. Razorback pushed him down again with a single fingertip. “But, Mr. DeNovo, you claimed twenty thousand dollars on advertising expenses, and you’re a government contractor!”
“It was advertising, all right,” DeNovo said. “I spent plenty on greasing palms so they’d look at my contracts at all, you bum.”
“But that’s not an allowable deduction,” the man argued. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, and started to explain. “Under section 47.002b. of the Uniform Tax Code …”
DeNovo clapped his hands over his ears. “Don’t start spouting regulations at me again,” he shouted. “I’ve had it up to here with tax codes.” He turned to Razorback and tilted his head back at the hapless agent. “Toss ’im.”
“Wait a minute!” the agent cried, holding up his hands to protect himself. “I’m only doing my job!”
“Yeah, so you said,” DeNovo growled. He shot out a hand. “Okay. Don’t kill him. I just want him to feel humiliated, the way I did when he went after my family.”
“With pleasure, mother,” the young genie said, showing his teeth. He thought for a moment, then starting whirling in place. Smoke seeped from beneath his feet in a gray-green haze that thickened, turning the air murky. It swallowed up the struggling agent, whose voice faded into silence when the smoke rose above his head.
“Hey, what is this?” the agent cried. “Why are you doing this…?”
Men, cloud, and all disappeared with a loud bang! When it cleared, the young genie was standing alone with his arms folded.
“Where is he?” Froister asked.
“I threw him into next Tuesday, my mother,” Razorback said, then his face returned to its normal expression, a fierce, vacant grin. “I didn’t know you could see the days like that. Way cool. I also took his suit. He’s stark buck naked.”
“Well done,” DeNovo said, stepping up to shake the youth’s hand. “Good job. I can see you’re really one of us.” Razorback glanced at the man’s hand warily, then clasped it with pleasure.
Froister turned to the rest of the crowd. “You see, you can enjoy doing service to others.” He made certain they heard the emphasis. Most of them found the cruelty appealing. They would serve more willingly if they were allowed to exercise their bent.
“For those of you who were not with us for our first meeting, let me explain our aim. The membership of the DDEG unionized four hundred years ago because we were getting a raw deal. Rub, three wishes, spend the next years in a small enclosed space because your former master couldn’t get anything else out of you but he doesn’t want anyone else to get the power. He dies, and your lamp gets passed on to the next owner. Rub, three wishes, etcetera, etcetera. Or the lamp gets tossed on a trash heap, sold to a shop, or thrown in the river as a useless old bit of junk.” The young djinni looked worried at the prospect of spending hundreds of years on a shelf. “Our aim is to break the thrall of the lamp, but keep the power it gives us.”
Morales got so angry parts of him dissolved into smoke. He stuck an angry forefinger up under Froister’s chin. “You mean you initiated us so we’re stuck sitting in lamps forever like you, without telling us?”
“I told you the benefits. You accepted freely. You can live nearly forever. You have access to tremendous power. All you have to do is trust one another to make use of it. You’re already employing the peripheral benefits.” Some of the young members looked puzzled at his words, so he translated. “I’ve heard about all the robberies. You’re already having a good time.”
“There’s safes we can’t get into, man,” one youth said. “I bounced off the one in Tiffany’s a hundred times already.”
“That’s under the Guardian Angels’ protection,” Gurgin growled. “Damned nuisances.”
Froister waved everyone q
uiet. “To answer your question, Mr. Morales, we are now all in the same boat together. We have to break out, and we need to use magic to do it. The slow way is to accrue morsels of loose power which the guild gets every time one of you grants a series of wishes. You ought to start right away. We need all the help we can get. You’re going to supply the strong arms, we the experience. In exchange for your aid, we offer you your own absolute power in the future. You’ll be granting wishes for yourself, anywhere, anytime. But, I’ll be honest: it will take years.”
There was a chorus of protest.
“That’s too long,” Morales said. “What’s the fast way?”
“There are two fast ways,” Froister said. “There are groups in this city that have the firepower to free us from the lamps, at the same time allowing us to retain the magical ability.”
Every face in the room turned greedy. “How? Who?”
Froister held up a hand. “Ah, but first we need to learn cooperation. These people are not helpless. They’re good.”
“How good?” Razorback asked. “I can take anybody.”
“No, dear boy, good in the sense of pure. Honest. Genuine. Truthful. Helpful. And all of those other tedious virtues.” The others groaned in disgust. “I’m asking you to cooperate with me in blatant self-interest. I can see to it that you work together, whether you want to or not, threateningly, but you’ll be that much more effective if you are doing it of your own free will.”
“We got the power, but we can’t use it right now unless someone wishes on us,” Speed said.
“Right.”
“These other dudes can separate one from the other.”
“Just like an egg,” Froister said.
“Then let us at ’em. Who are they?”
“Fairy godmothers.” The name took a moment to register, then the entire group burst into hysterical laughter.
“You crazy,” said Razorback.
“Not at all. Would you have believed a week ago that there were genies living in the city of Chicago? Would you have believed that you would become one?”
The laughter died away, as each of the boys looked at each other and at the bracelets on their wrists.
“I guess not,” said Speed.
“You wouldn’t have,” Froister said absolutely. “They are an organization just like this one. A legitimate merger is proposed between our parent groups, the DDEG and the FGU, or Fairy Godmothers Union. They have so far balked at accepting our proposal, for reasons I can’t imagine,” he said, pitching his voice over the snickers from the crowd of young djinni, “since I intend to exploit them for our mutual benefit.”
“Right! So they’re supposed to grant our wish to get out of the lamps?” Morales asked.
“No,” Gurgin said, speaking up in his ponderous way. “They can’t do that, unless she—or he, there are male fairy godparents—is there to grant your specific wish. They have rules, too.”
“So where do they keep the extra magic?” asked the tequila drinker.
Froister nodded to Timbulo, who stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Each one has a certain measure of extra credit, so to speak. They call them ‘brownie points.’” There was more derisive laughter. The secretary snarled at them, and they quieted down. “Just like ours, the union accumulates a certain pool of this loose power. As an affiliate organization, after a merger, we would have access to it. But they are so far unwilling to agree to the merger. They cannot be forced to give the power points up to us, so we have to convince them that we ought to have them, or trick it out of them. That’s method two.”
“Well, we can do that!” Morales said. “Let’s just wish ’em here, and start working on ’em. We’ll convince ’em.”
“Can’t do that,” Gurgin said, lowering his brows ponderously.
“Sure we can,” said the chief of the Riverside Jackals, Mario Lewis. He was a tall, lean man with very dark skin. A pale streak down his cheek from his left eye to his jaw showed the track of a knife scar. His short hair was hidden under a colorful pillbox hat. He pointed at Razorback. “That dude brought the IRS man so easy. Let me do it. Come on. These folks can’t be so tough.” The others started to clamor agreement.
Froister sighed. “I suppose you’ll never believe me until you try it. Go ahead.” He turned to his associates. “Who had Mr. Lewis?”
Bannion stepped forward. “I did. The first wish: bring us a fairy godmother working in the city of Chicago.”
“Piece of cake,” Mario said, as his arms snapped up into the crossed position on his chest. He blinked his eyes hard.
Everyone in the room felt the outgoing rush of energy, but it all boiled back on him in an instant. Mario’s narrow body seemed to be even thinner as it compressed in the middle of a seiche of power, until he was fifteen feet tall and only a couple of inches around. Every piece of metal, including the beams and conduit in the walls, let out a dissonant BOOOOIIIINNNNGGGG! Dozens of lamps fell to the floor and smashed. The membership ducked for cover to avoid shards of flying glass.
The magic receded. Mario sprang back into shape in the center of an area cleared of anything else solid. The gang leader stood there with his arms still raised, vibrating like a metronome. He shook his head to clear it.
“Do you see now why it won’t be so easy?” Froister said, patiently. “Our magics are basically incompatible. They’re on the other side. You’ll have to bring them here physically, one at a time, in person. We need to get a list of the members. That is why I need a volunteer to act as our delegate to the Fairy Godmothers Union. We are trying to start a legitimate merger, you know. We’re entitled to send an observer. Only someone with a good memory,” he cautioned.
A few of the youths nudged one another until Speed stepped forward.
“I’ll do it,” he said, nervously wiping his nose on his jacket sleeve.
“Good. They meet at the Assembly Hall on Glenwood every other Saturday. Your job is to attend their meetings, memorize as many faces as possible at the meeting, and get a membership list.” He turned to Bannion. “By the way, I’d like my shop back the way I had it.”
“Naturally. The second wish: clear up this mess!” the redheaded man said in his soft, lilting voice. Mario gave a sigh, took a deep breath, and crossed his arms. Thick gray smoke swept out from around his feet and filled the room. Froister heard the reassuring tinkling sounds of glass reconstructing itself into bulbs and lampshades and bases. Thank the powers that be for the magic, he said to himself. Otherwise my insurance rates would be sky-high.
The smoke cleared and the lamps were back together. Each of the young genies rushed to his particular standard to make certain it was all right.
“The rest of you,” Froister called, “look out for more apprentices. The more we have, the more of our own accrual magic we have, and the faster we will be able to look on a lamp as a piece of useful bric-a-brac and not as a second home.”
“Aren’t we going to do no wishes for ourselves?” an independent young genie asked, clearly disappointed. “We want some of those rewards now!”
Froister’s gesture made them free of the whole room. “If you can work out how to trust one another, go ahead and make wishes! Experiment with one another. One day you’ll be in charge of your own fates, and you should know what you can do with your abilities. Think of it! You could have a new car. You could give your girlfriends nose jobs. You could have your own chain of pizza restaurants, if only you could bring yourselves to cooperate.”
All the gang members looked around for a lamp to rub. The potential rubbees sprang to protect theirs. At first the group separated into the gangs and the independents, but then it divided further as they found their lamps were not all on the same side of the room. Mario Lewis vaporized to try and make a wish on one of the Backyard Wolves, who turned into a fume and hung over the body of the lamp, repelling the intruder. Lewis rebounded, turning solid on the way. He staggered backward, almost hitting one of his own men, who was under siege from a couple of indep
endents who had designs on his chair-mounted reading lamp. There was a scuffle, during which knives and razors were drawn. Someone yelped as another jumped at him with a homemade shank. He made his midsection into a gas cloud just in time to keep from being skewered. Another youth saw him do that, and tried it himself, vaporizing an arm to duck through another’s guard and punch him in the face. Soon they learned to solidify parts of their bodies and leave the rest in gaseous form.
Froister and the others watched the byplay with interest.
“They’re deadly fighters,” Gurgin said, folding his massive arms over his chest. “What an army they’d make.”
“Too unruly,” McClaherty said. He had been a sergeant in the Marine Corps. “You’d have them falling out of rank all over the place.”
“But there’s a specific style to it,” Froister said, pointing. “See how they all react the same way to a knife thrust toward the face: jerk back, duck under, lunge. Most interesting.” The senior members enjoyed the scuffle until someone pulled a gun.
“Too bad. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.” Froister vanished and appeared in the midst of the fray so quickly no one saw how he got there. He rubbed the nearest lamp.
“That’s enough! Bring me every designated weapon in this room!” With a crash, a boom, and a roiling puff of smoke that left them all coughing, the djinn complied.
“Very dirty,” Froister admonished the young djinn, a thin-faced white boy named Sid Mayer. “You’d better quit smoking.”
“Shut up. You sound like my mama,” the boy said, backing into the crowd. Froister surveyed the surprising mountain of hardware on the floor at his feet.
“It’s a wonder you can all walk,” he said. “You don’t need these things to use your power. You need to learn to cooperate. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it! Cooperate!”
Everyone eyed the person next to him, and the outcry was universal. “With them?”
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