“Right,” said Nick. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Con replied. “Here, I’m not so sure this is a very brilliant idea…

“Shuttup.” Nick rubbed his eyes and said the shape-changing spell aloud. It worked. “Your turn,” he said.

“I still think—”

“Get on with it.”

“All right.” Con mumbled the magic words; and he too changed shape. The carpet braked smoothly and began its descent.

“Here, Con,” Nick whispered. “Remind me. Which one am I supposed to be?”

Con shrugged. “I’ve forgotten,” he admitted. “Let’s have a look at you.”

“Well?”

Con rubbed his chin. “I think,” he said after a while, “you’re the tall one. Wossisname.”

“I see. So you’re…?”

“The other one.”

“Fine. I’m glad we’ve got that sorted out.”

The carpet came to rest. The two genies climbed off and paid the fare, and then looked round. Nobody about. Probably just as well. What they were doing was, of course, unethical and probably highly illegal by genie standards. On the other hand, virtually everything genies do is.

“Here goes.”

“Break a leg.” Con extended a slightly unsteady arm and rang Jane’s doorbell.

“What do you mean,” Nick asked, “break a leg?”

“It’s something mortals say,” Con replied as the porch light came on. “Something to do with good luck.”

“It’s not good luck breaking a leg,” Nick said doubtfully. “Not if you’re a mortal, that is. Takes weeks to mend, a mortal leg does.”

“It’s just an expression.”

“Bloody silly one, if you ask me.”

The door opened and Jane stood in the doorway. She was wearing a pink winceyette dressing-gown and fluffy slippers.

“Ah,” said Nick, as smoothly as he could (but another half of pasteurised would, he realised, have been a wise precaution), “good evening, um, miss. My name’s Robert Redford and this is my friend Tom Cruise. Our car’s broken down and we were wondering if we could borrow your phone.”

Jane frowned. “It’s two o’clock in the morning,” she said.

If Nick was fazed for a moment, he didn’t show it. “Exactly what I was saying to Mr Cruise,” he replied. “Face it, Tom, I told him, chances of there being a garage open at this time of night are practically nil, so we’d better phone the breakdown service. And then, would you believe it, neither of us had any change. So we thought…”

In the background, the carpet lifted smoothly into the air, waggled its seams and glided away. “You’d better come in,” Jane said.

“Thanks.”

Jane shut the door. “You’re genies, aren’t you?” she said.

“An.”

“It’s the carpet,” Jane said over her shoulder, leading the way through into the living-room. “It’s a dead giveaway, that. Also,” she added wearily, “you obviously haven’t seen Mr Redford for quite some time. Not that he hasn’t worn quite well, but…”

Con took a deep breath. “Hey,” he said, “is this guy really a genie? Gosh, isn’t that.”

“And so are you,” Jane sighed. “You’re still wearing your slippers.”

The soi-disant Tom Cruise glanced down at his feet, which were encased in curly-toed gold slippers with jewels stuck to the uppers. “Damn,” he said.

“Sit down,” said Jane.

Nick smiled feebly. “Listen, Miss,” he said, “this has all been a big mistake, and…”

“Sit down.”

They sat down.

“And take those silly faces off, for heaven’s sake.”

They changed back into their proper shapes.

“Sorry,” Nick said.

“And so you should be.” Jane folded her arms and gave them each a look that would have made a woolly mammoth feel at home. “Men!” she added.

“I’m sorry?”

“Typical male idea of a joke,” Jane went on. “Oh gosh, Kiss is getting married, let’s go and play a joke on him. Puerile.”

“An.”

“Posing as extremely handsome film actors, you said to yourselves, let’s make some excuse to get in to her flat, so that when he comes round the next morning he’ll jump to the wrong conclusion, get madly jealous and they’ll have a row. How utterly childish!”

Nick swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said, “I see that now. How silly of me.”

“Me too,” Con mumbled. “Won’t be doing anything like this again ma hurry, you can bet your life.”

Jane glowered at them. “Actually,” she said, “you’re closer to the truth there than you think. Stay there.”

She swept out, and came back a few seconds later with two tomato ketchup bottles and a saucepan. “It’s just as well,” she said, “that I was planning on making a bolognese anyway.”

She emptied the bottles into the saucepan, put them down on a coffee table, and snapped her fingers. “Right,” she commanded. “In you get.”

The two genies stared at each other.

“You can’t be…”

“You heard me. Come on, jump to it.”

Quickly, the two genies assessed their position. On the one hand, Jane had invoked no magic spell or charm sufficient to force them into the bottles. They didn’t have to go. They would be perfectly within their rights to stay exactly where they were and simply explain, calmly and rationally, exactly what they thought they were playing at.

WHOOSH!

Jane nodded and screwed down the lids. Then she put the bottles away in the kitchen cupboard and went back to bed.

Start a war.

Using hail, giant ants and burning pitch. Piece of cake.

The atmosphere was electric.

Around the packed arena, a hundred thousand spectators watched dry-mouthed as the synthesized fanfare sounded, the gates opened and — the teams appeared!

They had said it couldn’t happen, not in our lifetimes. The political, cultural and ideological gulf was too great, they said. They’d been wrong.

As the teams ran on to the field, one man sat back in his seat in the President’s box and swelled with pride like an overfed bullfrog. Rightly so; he had devoted the last three years of his life to making this moment possible. He had dreamed the impossible dream, and it had become a reality.

The first ever international sporting event between the pathologically hostile Latin American states of San Miguel and Las Monedas. The symbolic resolution of a feud that threatened the peace of the whole world. Here, in the Stadio Ricardo Nixon, San Miguel City, the differences of these two bitter rivals would be fought out, not with tanks and bombs but the click of heels, the swirl of petticoats, the snap of castanets. The great Tango Showdown between the San Miguel Tigers and the Las Monedas Centurions was about to begin.

Secretary General Kropatchek sighed with pure pleasure. One small two-step for a man, he reflected, a giant entrechat for Mankind.

The contestants lined up, magnificent in their gaudy splendour. Nervously, the orchestra tuned their instruments for the last time. One false note, they knew, could even now lead directly to Armageddon. The Master of Ceremonies took the field — just for today, he had dispensed with the curule chair and his customary robes, and was dressed in a simple purple tuxedo — and read a brief prayer before shouting, “Ariba!” and standing well back. The contest began.

In the clear blue sky, a small black speck appeared, too small to notice.

Accounts of what happened next vary, naturally. If you believe the San Miguel version, a Starfighter of the Las Monedas air force swooped down low over the arena, discharged a drop-tank of napalm on to the dead centre of the specially installed dance-floor, and roared away. The Las Monedians, of course, say that it was a San Miguel MiG that dropped the incendiary device. The truth will probably never be known. The truth, in circumstances like these, is generally irrelevant anyway.

What did matter was the sudden explosion of activity in the President’s box. As the flames roared up to the sky from the middle of the stadium, the delegates from the two countries flew at each others’ throats and started throwing punches, plates of vol-au-vents and souvenir programmes. Their aides, meanwhile, were yelling into their radio handsets, demanding punitive air strikes and massive retribution. Secretary General Kropatchek managed to escape to safety, but only by stunning a passing waiter, snatching his tray and edging out backwards handing out canapés.