According to the ancient proverb, the worst words a general can ever utter are, “I never expected that.”

In consequence, the military pride themselves on having anticipated every possible contingency. There are huge underground bunkers beneath the floor of the Arizona Desert staffed by teams of dedicated men and women whose sole purpose in life is to dream up the Weirdest Possible scenario, and make plans to meet it.

Some of these scenarii are very weird indeed.

Witness, to name but a few, the elite Special Boot Squadron (the task-force poised to counter an attempt by a hostile power to subvert democracy by gluing the soles of everybody’s shoes to the floor while they sleep); the Royal Cleanjackets (the crack special force permanently on yellow alert for the day when alien commandos infiltrate all the major dry-cleaning chains across the Free World); not to mention Operation Dessert Storm (the fast response unit designed to deal out instantaneous retribution in the event of low-level bombing of non-military targets with custard).

The heavy burden of co-ordinating these various forces lay, at the time in question, on the broad shoulders of Major-General Vivian Kowalski: officer commanding, Camp Nemo. When the day arrived that was to be remembered ever after as the Pearl Harbor of weirdness, Kowalski had just returned from a tour of inspection of the Heliotrope Berets (the hair-trigger-trained haute couture force whose centre of operations is a tastefully decorated concrete bunker directly under the Givenchy salon, Paris). As a result he was feeling rather jaded.

It was good, he decided, to be back.

Returning to his spartan quarters, he removed the HB uniform he had worn for the tour (sage cotton jacquard battledress by Saint Laurent, worn over Dior raspberry silk chemise with matching culottes), lay down on his bunk and covered his face with his hands. It had been a long, hard day.

The telephone rang. The red telephone.

In an instant Kowalski was on his feet, dragging on his discarded uniform and gunbelt. Twenty minutes later, his helicopter landed on the White House lawn.

“Hi there, Kowalski,” the President greeted him, yelling to make himself heard over the roar of the chopper engines. “Excuse my asking, but why are you wearing a dress?”

In clipped, concise military language Kowalski explained, and they went inside. In the relative peace of the Oval Office, the President explained. He didn’t mince his words.

When he’d finished, Kowalski read back his notes and chewed his lip.

“Gee, Mr President,” he said. “We never expected anything like that. Who do you think’s responsible?”

The President shrugged. “No idea,” he replied. “Does it matter? The important thing is, what do we do? I assume you guys have something up your sleeves out there in the desert that’ll zap these mothers into the middle of…”

He tailed off. Kowalski was shaking his head.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess we overlooked that possibility. You gotta admit,” he went on, countering the implied criticism in the Chiefs eyes, “giant self-propelled carnivorous wildflowers terrorising Florida has got to be one of the longest shots of all. Besides,” he went on, “since you saw fit to trim the budget…”

“OK.” The President made a small gesture with his hands, guillotining the recriminations stage of the conference. “So tell me, Viv. What have we got?”

Kowalski scowled and scratched his head. “Assuming,” he said, “that saturation bombing with all known weedkillers — you’ve tried that, yes, of course.” He grinned. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to let us work on that one for a while,” he said.

“But you do have a solution?”

“No,” Kowalski admitted, “but I know somebody who might.”

The main reason why the world is still here is that genies have little or no initiative.

Command them to do something and they obey. It’s not unknown for them sometimes to interpret their instructions with a degree of latitude — for example, if their instructions can be interpreted, however loosely, as a mandate to destroy the human race, and they happen to be psychotic Force Twelves with a personal grudge against mankind in general. Under such circumstances, they spring into action with all the vigour and energy of a supercharged volcano.

But without some tiny speck of mortal authority around which to build their pearls of malevolence, even the nastiest genies can do nothing. And, fortunately enough, mortals unhinged enough to give them that authority, are few and far between.

In the most secret bunker of all, half a mile under the bleakest spot in all New Mexico, there is a door.

A big, thick steel door with a combination lock. For the unimaginative there is also a notice, in huge red letters, saying “DO NOT ENTER”.

Open the door and you find a flight of steps, going down. Just when exhaustion and the disorienting effect of the darkness and the smell of must and stagnant water is about to get too much for you, the steps end and there is another door. It, too, is big, thick and made of steel. There is a notice, in big red letters, saying “AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY”.

Open that door and you find yourself in a small room, the size of the average hotel fitted wardrobe. The room is empty, apart from a chunky steel safe.

Inside the safe is a bottle.

WHOOSH!

Kowalski reared back, banged his head on the door and sat down hard. Suddenly the room was full of genie.

“Hello,” said Philadelphia Machine and Tool Corporation IX, grinning unpleasantly. “Your wish is my command. What’s it to be?”

Slowly, his eyes not leaving the apparition that surrounded him, Kowalski levered himself up off the floor with all the agility of a dropped fried egg climbing back into a frying pan. “Hi,” he replied. “Are you the genie?”

Philly Nine gave him a look.

“Yeah,” Kowalski said, “I guess you must be. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” Philly Nine replied. “What can I do for you? To hear,” he added, with a chuckle that belonged to some private joke Kowalski didn’t even want even to understand, “is to obey. Shoot.”

The soldier explained; and as he did so the genie nodded sympathetically. The expression in his fiery red eyes didn’t for one instant betray the savage triumph pumping through his heart.

Had it ever occurred to Kowalski to wonder, he asked himself, why a genie should have volunteered to be indentured to a bottle? Why, when all other genies in the history of Creation would do anything — anything at all — to avoid it, Philly Nine (a Force Twelve, no less) had deliberately and at his own request allowed himself to be bound to serve whoever removed the lid of this nasty, smelly glass container? Did the words ulterior motive have no place at all in this man’s vocabulary?

“I see,” he said, when Kowalski had finished speaking. “Nasty business. I take it,” he went on, choosing his words with the skill of a lawyer on a fraud charge, “you want me to do something about it?”

Kowalski nodded. “Positive,” he said.

“And may I take it,” the genie purred, “that I have a certain degree of discretion in how I go about this? So long as I get the job done, of course?”

“Naturally,” the soldier said. “This thing has sure got us licked. Anything you can do—”

“Oh, I can think of a few ideas,” the genie said. Being a Force Twelve, one of the seven most powerful non-divine beings ever to pass through the Earth’s atmosphere, he was just about able to keep a straight face. “A few tricks up my sleeve, that sort of thing. When would you like me to start?”

“Immediately,” Kowalski replied. “If that’s OK with you.”

A wide, slow smile crept like the first spill of lava from the cracks of Vesuvius across Philly Nine’s large, handsome face. “No problem,” he said. “You just leave everything to me, and we’ll see what can be done.”