“You reckon?”

“Yup.”

Advantage — The voice hesitated. Being an ethereal spirit, with no real existence within any conventionally recognised dimension, it had no hands with which to turn the pages of the book of rules, and it couldn’t quite remember the precise wording of Rule 74. A tricky one, in any event. A grey area.

In the red corner: let your mind’s eye drift to a barren plateau in the very centre of the desperately bleak Nullarbor Plain, to where a huge basalt outcrop has suddenly appeared from nowhere. While the seismologists stare at each other in blank amazement, and the cartographers draw lots to see whose turn it is to go flogging out there to draw pictures of the bloody thing, a relatively tiny form whimpers and struggles directly underneath it, pinned to the deck like a butterfly to a board. That’s Kiss.

In the blue corner: the equally godforsaken north-east corner of Iceland has suddenly sprouted a new and exceptionally virulent volcano, which is pumping out red-hot lava with the frantic enthusiasm of a Japanese factory on the Emperor’s birthday. Up to his neck in the lava outflow is Philly Nine.

Advantage — Excuse me…

YES?

Is it possible to have a draw?

SORRY?

A draw. Like, when both sides are hopelessly stalemated and it’s obvious nobody’s going to win. Is that allowed?

I DON’T KNOW, replied God. I’D HAVE TO LOOK THAT ONE UP.

Could you? Only I think the sooner I give a decision, the happier they’ll be. It can’t be much fun for either of them.

HAVE YOU TRIED TOSSING A COIN?

The voice hesitated. On the one hand, what the big guy says, goes. On the other hand, there’s such a thing as professional integrity: being able to face your reflection in the shaving mirror each morning, although of course in the voice’s case that was pretty much a non-starter anyway.

Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d rather we went for an outright decision on this one. Or at least a draw. If that’s all right by…

YOU’RE THE EXPERT. DO WHATEVER YOU THINK IS RIGHT.

OK, fine. In that case…

JUST GIVE ME FIVE MINUTES, IF IT’S ALL THE SAME TO YOU.

Sure. Um-why?

BECAUSE IF I’M QUICK I SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET PRETTY GOOD ODDS ON A DRAW THANKS FOR THE TIP.

Question, thought the voice. What sort of an idiot would take a bet from God? Answer: an idiot who didn’t want to spend the next five million years at the bottom of the burning fiery pit, I suppose.

Um… You’re welcome.

Like a bat out of hell following a spurious short-cut, the carpet raced through the sky over Stoke-on-Trent.

“Where can I drop you?” Jane asked.

Asaf looked down. The hell with it, he said to himself, I’ve come this far.

“Wherever suits you,” he replied. “I’m pretty much at a loose end at the moment, as it happens.”

“Ah,” said Jane. She bit her lip. “Fancy a quick coffee?” she added.

Asaf considered the position and decided that, all things considered, what he hated doing most of all in all the world was deep-sea fishing.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

“What do you mean,” Kiss demanded angrily, “she’s gone?”

Sinbad the Sailor shrugged. “I suppose she got tired of hanging about waiting for you to rescue her,” he replied. “I mean, no disrespect, but you did take your time.”

“I got held up,” replied the genie stiffly, “saving the world.”

“It can be a right bummer, saving the world,” Sinbad said, “especially when nobody thanks you for it.”

“You’re telling me.” The genie sighed, letting his eyes drift out across the broad ocean. “There are times, you know, when I really wish I was still in the bottle.”

“Well, quite. You know where you are in a bottle.”

“Peaceful.”

“Nobody to tell you what to do.”

“No telephone.”

Sinbad hesitated for a moment. “Not your old-fashioned style bottles, anyway. No Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

“And no bloody women,” Kiss added. “Here, you haven’t got such a things as a bottle handy, have you?”

“Afraid not.” He blinked and looked away. “Sorry to change the subject,” he went on, “but about this saving the world thing you were doing.”

“Yes?”

Sinbad paused again, wondering how to put it tactfully. “If you’ve saved the world,” he said cautiously, “presumably it doesn’t matter that the whole of this sea is swarming with bloody great big nuclear submarines.”

Kiss wrinkled his brow. “Oh, shit,” he said, “the war. I knew I’d forgotten something.”

At the bottom of the sea, far below the parts where the divers go, even further down than the gloomy bits where the light never reaches and you get the fish that look like three-dimensional coat hangers, there is a doorway. And a car park. And a garden, with benches and lanterns. And a big sign, with fairy lights:

it says; and in smaller letters:

and then, going back to the bigger type:

The eponymous Mr Jones was quietly changing the barrels in the cellar, reflecting on the recession and how improved computerised weather forecasting was eating the heart out of the deep-sea licensed victualling business, when he became aware of an unfamiliar noise far away overhead. He stopped what he was doing and listened.

A humming noise. Like possibly engines.

A grin fastened itself to his peculiar, barnacle-encrusted face, and he ran up the cellar steps to the bar.

“Sharon,” he yelled, “Yvonne! Defrost the pizzas! We’ve got customers.”

Women, Kiss reflected as he soared Exocet-like through the darkening sky. I have had it up to here with bloody women.

And not just women, he conceded, as he swerved to avoid an airliner. Human beings generally. In fact, I’m sick to the back teeth of all the damned creepy-crawlies that hang around this poxy little dimension. Come to think of it, for two pins I’d wash my hands of the whole lot of them.

The thought had scarcely crossed his mind when he became aware of something tiny and sharp, folded into the palm of his left hand. Inspection confirmed his instinctive guess. Two pins…

“Shove it, Philly,” he snarled at the clouds above him. “I’ll deal with you later.”

Ah yes, the war.

No names, no pack drill. We will call the opposing parties A and B.

Army A had occupied all Europe as far east as the Bosphorus, only to find themselves stuck in a traffic jam that reached from Tashkent to Samarkand. Army B had swept up through Central Asia in the time-honoured manner and had broken through as far as Baghdad before realising they’d forgotten to switch off the gas and having to go back.

Fleet A and Fleet B were both pottering about in the Mediterranean, trying to keep out of each other’s way until somebody had the courtesy to tell them what the hell was going on, exactly.

Air Force A was scrambled, on red alert, absolutely set and ready to go as soon as the rain subsided a bit. Air Force B was engaged in frantic high-level negotiations with the finance company which had repossessed its entire complement of fighter-bombers.

In other words, stalemate; at least as far as the conventional forces were concerned. Not, of course, that conventional forces count for very much these days — In the bunker, with half a mile of rock and concrete between themselves and the surface, the Strategic First Strike Command Units of both sides were locked in a desperate struggle with forces which, they now realised, were rather beyond their abilities to manipulate.

“Look,” said the controller at SFSCU/A, “it’s perfectly simple. A child could understand it. If you press this one here, while at the same time pressing this one and this one…”