He was just struggling out from under a crate of some description which had fallen on him, soliloquising eloquently as he did so, when he noticed the light. A lovely great shaft of sunlight, slanting in through a now open hatch.

Told you, he muttered to himself. Told you it’d be a piece of cake.

“Now then,” Jane said, treading water, “the first thing I’d like you to do is kick with your feet.”

“Aaaaaaagh!”

“It’s all right, I’ve got hold of your neck, you can’t — oh, bother.” She kicked hard and managed to get Justin’s chin clear of the water. “Now if you’d have done what I told you—”

“Help!” Justin screamed. “Help help help heblublublublub…”

“You’re not trying, are you?” Jane said wearily. “Look, it’s really very simple, any child can do it. You just paddle with your feet, and let your body sort of float…”

Jane suddenly realised that she was in shadow, and glanced upwards. There, directly over her head, was the carpet.

“Your wish,” it said politely, “is my command.”

Jane scowled. “I thought I’d told you to clear off,” she said.

“I wasn’t,” the carpet replied, “talking to you.”

“What? Oh. Oh you mean him.”

“Help!”

“Yes,” said the carpet. “His wish, my command. So if you’d just shift over a bit, I can—”

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

Jane spluttered as a wave flipped a cupful of salt water into her open mouth. “You’ve changed your tune a bit, haven’t you?” she observed. “Not long ago it was all ‘Our state-of-the-art micro circuitry, designed to make life easy for you’.”

“That was different,” the carpet replied severely. “I was in user-friendly mode then. Now I can please myself.”

“Charming.”

“You’re welcome. Now, are you going to shift so that I can rescue my client, or are we going to hang about here all day chatting?”

“You’re just going to ignore me, then?”

The carpet shrugged; that is to say, it undulated from its front hem backwards. “That’s what you told me to do, remember? Do you people understand the concept of consistency?”

“Help help heglugluglug…”

Jane bit her tongue. “Tell you what I’ll do,” she said. “I’ll let you rescue him if you agree to rescue me too. Now you can’t say fairer than that, can you?”

The carpet hovered for a moment, thinking.

“I also,” Jane added, as casually as she could, “happen to know a Force Twelve genie, and I was thinking, if he got hold of one of those carpet-beater things, you know, the ones shaped like a tennis racket…”

“All right then, all aboard that’s coming aboard. I can take you as far as the ship.”

“Ship? What ship?” Then Jane remembered. “Oh,” she said. “That ship.”

That ship. The quaint old-fashioned one with the big square sails which they ought by rights to have crashed straight down on top of, if it hadn’t somehow moved a hundred yards sideways at the very last moment. She’d forgotten all about it.

“Well?”

“That,” Jane said, “will be just fine.”

The reason why Kiss hadn’t shown up yet was that he’d bumped into an old friend.

“Why the hell,” said Philly Nine, picking himself up off a bank of low cloud, “don’t you look where you’re damn well… oh, it’s you.”

“Hello there,” Kiss replied. “How’s you?”

“Oh, mustn’t grumble. And you?”

“Persevering. Keeping busy?”

“Mooching about, you know. Nothing terribly exciting, but enough to keep me off the streets.”

“Ah, well. Is that a war I can see starting away down there?”

Philly turned and peered over his shoulder through the thin layer of cumulo-nimbus. “Where?” he asked.

“Sort of south-east. Look, you see that mountain range to your immediate right? Well, follow that down till you meet the river, and…”

“Got it,” Philly said. “Gosh, yes, it does look a bit like a war, doesn’t it? Tanks and planes and things.”

Kiss gave him a long, hard look. “One of yours, Philly?” he asked quietly.

“Gosh, what is it today, Thursday… Oh, that war. Yes, well, I may have had something to do with it.”

“You and your obsessive modesty.”

Philly shrugged. Far below, in the vast deserts of Mesopotamia, fleets of armoured personnel carriers speeding across the dunes threw up clouds of dust that blotted out the sun. “It’s only a little war,” Philly said.

“Small but perfectly formed?”

“One likes to keep one’s hand in.”

Kiss frowned. “Like I said, Philly, you’re too modest. Why do you do it exactly?”

“Why do I do what?”

“Start wars. I mean, is there some sort of annual award for the best war, like the Oscars or whatever? First of all I’d like to thank my megalomaniac fascist dictator, that sort of thing?”

Philly smiled, a little sadly. “It’s what I do,” he replied.

“You’re very good at it. Have they started shooting yet?”

Philly glanced at his watch and shook his head. “Two abortive peace initiatives to go yet,” he answered. “Give it another couple of hours, we might be in business. Things are so damn slow these days.”

Kiss fingered his chin thoughtfully. “This war,” he said. “Going to lead to anything, is it?”

“I do my best,” Philly replied. “If you don’t do your best, why bother to do anything at all?”

“I see. So it might be the start of something, well, big?”

“Fingers crossed.”

“Civilisation as we know it? Goodbye, Planet Earth?” Philly smiled. “Great oaks and little acorns, old son,” he said cheerfully. “You never know.”

“Fine.” Kiss took a step forward. “I hate to have to say this, but—”

“But you can’t allow it?” Philly grinned at him. “If I were you, I’d consider all aspects of the matter rather than relying on a snap judgement.”

“All aspects of global thermonuclear war are easily considered, Philly, and I don’t hold with them. Cut it out, now.”

“Think,” Philly replied. “Supposing the world is destroyed, right?”

“With you so far.”

“Well.” Philly Nine folded his arms. “In that case, there’s no way you’d have to marry that girl. Off the hook, you’d be, and absolutely nothing anybody could do about it. Just consider that for a moment, will you?”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Now you’ll tell me,” Philly went on, “that I’m contemplating something of a hammer-and-nut situation here. On the other hand, I can think of one hell of a lot of married men who’d say this was a classic case of omelettes and eggs. No disrespect intended, Kiss, old son, and I’m sure she’s a charming girl, but when you actually stop and think it through…”

Kiss froze, his lips parted to speak in contradiction. Deep inside him, in the cubby-hole in his soul where his true identity lived (knee-deep in washing up and dirty laundry, overflowing ashtrays and discarded styrofoam pizza trays) a little voice piped up and said, You know, he’s got a point there, over.

Balls, replied the rest of him. This is the temptation of the foul fiend. Rule One, don’t listen to foul fiends. Any pillock knows that, over.

Yes, but think about it, will you? Not having to stop being a genie. To thine own self be true. Love means not being allowed to take your socks off in the living room. You would do well to consider all the pertinent aspects of the matter before committing yourself to any course of action, over.

Bugger off, over.

Yes, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Over and out.

“I hear what you say,” Kiss said, “But no thanks, all the same. I reckon that if I can’t sort out my domestic problems without conniving at Armageddon it’d be a pretty poor show — and besides, I live here. And you know what a drag it is finding somewhere decent to live these days. Carbon-based life forms don’t grow on trees, you know.”

“Suit yourself, then,” Philly replied, and hit him with a thunderbolt.