For the record, nobody has yet been able to work out exactly what Avarice dreams about, on the rare occasions when it sleeps. It all depends, the experts say, on how late it stayed up the night before, how comfortable the mattress is, and whether it ate a substantial amount of cheese immediately before going to bed.

One of the many advantages that genies have over mere mortals is that they need no sleep. This is one of the few things that makes it possible for a genie to wait on a human being hand, foot and finger without something inside its head snapping. Eventually the mortal will go to sleep, giving the genie eight or so clear hours in which to recuperate and catch up on its social life.

Kiss had got into the habit of spending these few precious hours each day down at the gym, working out. When genies work out, by the way, they don’t bother with weights, rowing machines and permanently stationary bicycles. What they exercise is their true potential.

When his bleeper went, therefore, Kiss was in the middle of a simulated battle with thirty thousand blood-crazed snow-dragons. To make it interesting, and spin the exercise out for more than six minutes, he had both arms and one leg tied behind his back, and he was blindfolded and chained to the wall. This made it difficult for him to reach the telephone.

“Yes,” he snapped into the receiver, deflecting a ravening hologram with his toes as he did so. “What is it now?”

“I think you should get back here as quick as you can,” said Jane’s voice at the end of the line. “Something rather serious has cropped up.”

“Really?” Kiss tried to keep the weary scorn out of his voice, but not very hard. “Let me guess. Your eyebrow pencil’s broken and you want me to sharpen it. There’s a very small spider in the bath. You can’t find the top of the ketchup bottle…”

“The ice-caps have melted and nine-tenths of the Earth’s surface is under water. Can you spare a few minutes, or shall I try to find an emergency plumber?”

“I’m on — get off me, you stupid bird — no, not you. I’m on my way.”

Grunting something under his breath about one damn thing after another, he shook himself free of his adamantine chains, swatted the remaining six thousand dragons with the back of his hand and pulled on his trousers over his leotards.

“Don’t switch anything off,” he called out to the attendant. “This won’t take a minute.”

I don’t know, he muttered as he raced across the night sky.

Never a moment’s peace, he complained, as he grabbed a mop and a bucket out of the empty air.

It’s not much to ask, an hour or so at the end of the day just to unwind a bit and relax, he said to himself, as he stopped off at the South Pole to fill the bucket with ice. But no, apparently not. A genie’s work is never done.

He sighed, shrugged his shoulders and pulled out a handful of small hairs from the back of his neck.

Kiss, save the world. Kiss, thwart the diabolical plans of that crazed megalomaniac wizard over there. Kiss, empty the ashtrays and do the washing-up. I dunno. Women!

He rolled the hairs between his palms, spat on them and threw them up into the air. For a moment they hung between the earth and the stars; then they fell and, as they did so, changed into so many full-sized replicas of himself, each with a mop and a bucket of ice. Each replica pulled out a handful of its own hair and repeated the process.

“Ready?” asked the original Kiss. The replicas nodded.

“What did your last servant die of?” they chorused. “That’s enough out of you lot. Get to it!”

In the Oval Office, Kowalski and the President faced each other over the big desk.

“To begin with, Viv,” said the President, “I was worried. For a moment there, I was beginning to think you’d maybe overreacted.”

Kowalski squirmed slightly, but not enough for the President to notice. “You did say—” he began.

“Sure.” The President smiled. “I should have had more faith in you and your guys. But next time—”

“I surely hope there won’t be a next time,” Kowalski said, with conviction.

“Me too,” agreed the President. “Still, it won’t have done the polls any harm. Nothing the voters like more, when the chips are down, than a little display of All-American true grit. And the way your guys handled the evacuations was first class.”

Kowalski nodded. What the President didn’t know, and with luck would never find out, was that the really big emergencies were the easy ones. For a really big emergency, like evacuating America, all he had to do was phone the insurance people and let them handle it. Which they had done.

“And the, uh, mopping-up operations afterwards,” the President continued. “I guess I take my hat off to you there, Viv.”

Kowalski’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t wearing a hat, Mr President.”

“I was speaking figuratively, Viv.”

“Ah.” Kowalski left the semi-smug expression on his face, but inside he was still confused. The insurance people hadn’t said anything about mopping up the floods. Leave it, they’d said, it’ll go down of its own accord in a year or two. If it’s still bad in eighteen months, send out a dove.

So who had done the business with the mops and the dry ice? He wished he knew.

Of course! How could he have been so stupid? The genie, of course, Philly whatever-his-name-was. Who else could it have been?

“No problem,” he said. “We’ve got guys on the payroll for every contingency, Mr President, like I keep saying.”

“That’s good to know, Viv.” The President smiled. “Just like magic, huh?”

“There you go again,” replied Kowalski uncomfortably. “You and your figurative speaking.”

Philly Nine sat on the peak of Everest and counted up to ten.

Don’t get mad, he told himself, get even.

You bastards are going to pay for this.

As for the details — well, they’d look after themselves. They always did. Sooner or later some other idiot of a human being would give him an opening, and he’d be back. What was forty years or so to an immortal?

Provided, of course, that no interfering little toe rag of a Force Twelve saw fit to stick his oar in, saving the planet with a twitch of his little finger before zooming away into the sunset. Some people, he reflected bitterly, don’t know the meaning of the word solidarity.

Yes, indeed. He broke off the summit of the mountain, brushed it clear of flags and ate it. Kiss would have to go, or he might as well stay in bed.

But how? Force Twelves can’t just be brushed lightly aside. Or even heavily aside, or aside with overwhelming force. It would be like trying to knock down a pterodactyl with a fly-swatter.

There are, however, ways and means. And of all the ways of killing a cat, Philly Nine reflected, drowning it in cream sure takes some beating.

There is a child.

His father was a brutal, sadistic bully; his mother a nymphomaniac married to a man (not the child’s father) many years older than herself, and crippled into the bargain.

Left to his own devices for most of his formative years, the child developed serious personality disorders at a very early age. By the time he turned thirteen, he was effectively past hope of cure.

Partly it was heredity, partly it was environment; partly, it was the child’s own basically vicious and perverted nature, which nobody ever took the slightest trouble to correct.

By the time he turned thirteen, the boy had developed a morbid fixation with shooting people. Because of his unusually privileged position, he’s able to indulge this ghastly obsession with total impunity.

Look at him. Fourteen years old, dressed from head to toe in camouflage gear, with a Stallonesque headband and pimples. He’s lying on his bed reading Soldier of Fortune magazine, and beside him on the duvet lies a state-of-the-art Macmillan sniper’s rifle, with a Bausch & Lomb 21X scope and integral flash suppressor. When he gets bored with doing nothing, he’ll go out into the street and start using it.