Djinn Rummy (35 page)

‘I think they like things to look nice. After all, they're the ones who spend all their time at home, so I suppose it's -'

‘Balls,' said Kiss, with grandeur. ‘I mean, can you tell me without looking what colour your trousers are?'

‘As a matter of fact, I can. They're a sort of pale beige, with a faint -'

‘All right, then, all right. Can you tell me what colour your bathroom curtains are? Go on, you can't.'

‘True, but since I'm a river-spirit I don't actually have a bathroom. The rest of my place is done out in blues, greens and browns, and that's in the lease.'

Kiss scowled. ‘You know what I mean,' he said. ‘All women care about is fripperies. Stupid, pointless things which -'

‘And I suppose,' interrupted the river spirit, ‘that we devote all our time to higher issues. Like darts.'

‘Applied ballistic research,' someone broke in. ‘Very important study.'

‘Betting on horse-races.'

‘Advanced probability mathematics.'

‘Combined with equestrian genetics.'

‘And meteorology, don't forget. Depending whether the going is hard or soft.'

‘I thought that was flying rocks and stuff.'

‘Look,' Kiss broke in, ‘all right, we may not exactly cram each something minute with sixty seconds of whatsit, but in our case it doesn't matter. Only matters if you're gonna die some day. Ruddy women, now, they're all going to go to their graves and nothing to show for it except a load of soft furnishings. Absolutely futile, if you ask me.'

The river spirit shrugged. ‘So?' he said. ‘What of it? Mortals are mortals and we're us.' He grinned. ‘Vive la difference,' he added.

‘Yeah, well . . .'

‘Fancy a game of dominoes?'

‘Now you're talking.'

 

After leaving Saheed's, Kiss wandered slowly up through the clouds and perched for a moment between the upper and the lower air. It was just after sunrise, and the big red splodge was beginning to give way to the first blue notes of a new day. From where he sat, Kiss could see the whole of the daylight side of the planet. He shaded his eyes with his hand and had a good look; something, he realised, that he hadn't done for a long time.

There was a lot to look at. All over the surface, and particularly in the yellow sandy bits, the armies who had failed to get to the war on time were slouching listlessly at home, trying to remember as they did so what the hell all the fuss had been about. There now, Kiss told himself, if it hadn't been for me . . .

So? What of it? Mortals are mortals and we're us. If ever they do blow up this planet, we can just move to another one. Who gives at toss, anyway?

As he watched, the Earth turned. Night retreated to the right and advanced to the left. One step forwards, balanced for ever by one step back. How it ought to be, of
course. Except that if you got together say a hundred genies, and by dint of some miracle you persuaded them all to work together, you could get them to haul another star in from another solar system and so position it that it could be day on both sides of the planet simultaneously. Sure, you'd have to make some adjustments to the mechanism, so that the seas didn't dry up and that sort of thing; but it could be done. All manner of things could be done.

Probably just as well, Kiss told himself, that they aren't.

On an impulse, he spread his arms wide and drifted down to the surface. He wasn't aiming for anywhere in particular, and he ended up hovering a few feet above the water, somewhere in the middle of the sea.

There was nothing except water for miles in every direction; nothing to be seen except the regiments of waves, marching in perfect formation in accordance with the orders of the moon. Nothing, except a tiny speck, so small that he couldn't even tell how far away it was.

For genies, though, thinking is doing, and without a conscious decision he found himself hovering directly over the speck, which turned out to be the neck of a floating bottle.

That rings a bell.

Mortals, Kiss recalled, when cast away on desert islands, sometimes write messages and put them in bottles, in the hope that somehow, at some time, somebody will find them and do something: notify the next of kin, or the coastguard, or more likely the insurance company. And although it might be considered a futile gesture to launch so tiny and frail a communication into so much savagely indifferent water, you had to admit it showed a bit of class. A random particle of optimism fired blindly into infinity in the hope of hitting the bull, of achieving something
worthwhile. The fact of death and the promise of hope; between the two of them mortals had a rough time of it, and they coped remarkably well.

Through the opaque green glass, Kiss could see a scrap of paper neatly folded and tucked in underneath the cork. His heart unaccountably high, he dived and picked the bottle out of the water as neatly as a Japanese fisherman's cormorant. Pop went the cork (not whoosh, this time) and he unfolded the message, which said:

‘Marvellous,' said Kiss disgustedly; and he was reflecting bitterly on the nature of anticlimax when an idea struck him.

A message in a bottle. Yes, why not?

Without giving himself time to think, he jumped down through the neck of the bottle and dragged the cork in tight after him. Then he leaned back, smiling contentedly, waiting to see what would happen next.