The senior technical officer shook his head. “That’s the automatic failsafe, you idiot,” he said. “I reckon it’s got to be the little red button here. If you look at the manual…”

“All right, let’s look at the goddamn manual. Congratulations! You have just purchased—”

“I think you can skip that bit.”

“Right, here we are. To commence War press START followed by C and E. The word READY? should then appear on the monitor—”

“There isn’t a button marked START, for God’s sake.”

“It must be the little red one here—”

“No, look at the diagram, that’s just for when you want to set the timer…”

“Actually, I think that’s only for the Model 2693. What we’ve got is the Model 8537…”

“You could try giving it a bloody good thump. You’d be amazed how often that works.”

“How about ringing the other side? They’d probably know how to make the bloody thing work.”

“Well, actually, I think they’ve got the Model 9317, which has a double-disk RAM drive, so…”

“I wonder what this button here does?”

WHOOSH!

Lightning, they say, never strikes twice. This was true before the introduction of free collective bargaining. Nowadays, lightning tends to work to rule.

Cupid, however, is resigned to the fact that he often has to do the job on the same target several times. This doesn’t bother him particularly, since he charges the same fee for a repeat and there’s usually less preparatory work the second time around. In the final analysis, so long as he shoots somebody and gets paid for it, he isn’t too bothered.

A long, silver-tipped round slid frictionlessly into the chamber of the Steyr-Mannlicher, and he folded down the bolt with the heel of his right hand. He centred the crosshairs of the sight, breathed fully in and half out, and…

Her again. God knows, he thought dispassionately as he squeezed the trigger, what they all see in her. Probably, he reflected as he ejected the spent case and chambered the next round, why they need me.

He raised the rifle and took aim. Deep breath in — “G’day, mate. How’s she coming?”

Startled, Cupid jerked involuntarily and the shot went high. A portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which for some unaccountable reason hung over the sofa in Jane’s living-room, glanced down and thought, “Gosh…”

“You idiot,” Cupid hissed. “Now look what you’ve made me go and do.”

“Jeez, sorry, mate,” whispered the Dragon King. “I only stopped by to see how you were making out. Didn’t mean to make you jump.”

“Shut up and stay still,” Cupid snarled. He chambered the third round and tried to recover his composure.

“Always wanted to watch a top-flight pro like yourself at work,” the King continued. “I think it’s marvellous, the way you fellers—”

Cupid forced himself to relax. “Look,” he said, “if you don’t shut up and keep still, the next one’s for you. You got that?”

Since the only female in sight was Jane, the King froze as effectively as if he’d been carved from stone. Cupid closed his eyes, counted to five, and raised the rifle to his cheek.

Deep breath in. Centre the crosshairs. Half breath out, and — steady…

Bang.

“SWITCH THAT BLOODY THING OFF!”

The King looked suitably mortified. “Sorry, chum, I really am, only they make me carry this damn bleeper thing, it’s in case anybody needs to call me in a—”

Cupid breathed out through his nose. “Thanks to you,” he said, “and a freak ricochet, the microwave is now hopelessly in love with the sink unit, which in turn is besotted with the electric kettle. I hope you’re satisfied.”

“I’ve switched it off now. Sorry.”

“You haven’t got a digital watch that bleeps, have you?”

“No.”

“Ticklish throat? Feel a sneeze coming on?”

“Nope.”

“Splendid. Now, since I happen to have one shot left, perhaps we can get on with it.”

Chamber the round. Lift the rifle. Centre the crosshairs. Deep breath in. Half breath out. Cuddle the trigger, and — “Nice one!” exclaimed the King. “Right up the—”

“I was aiming,” Cupid sighed, “for the heart. But it doesn’t actually matter all that much, not in the long run.”

“That’s all right then,” said the King happily. “Now, will you take a cheque?”

What Cupid didn’t realise was that one of his shots — the one that nailed Abe Lincoln, for what it’s worth — rebounded off the edge of the frame and ended its journey in the carpet. The carpet.

Carpets, especially the sentient, magical variety, are no fools. The specimen in question had been dozing quietly in front of the fire, resting after an unusually taxing day, when it became aware that someone was shooting at it. It did what any sensible item of soft furnishing would have done in the circumstances, and got the hell out of there.

For the record, it still had Justin on it. The negative Gs generated in the descent from 40,000 feet had knocked him out cold, and Jane and Asaf had been too wrapped up in each other to pay him any mind.

The carpet, then, zoomed off into the empyrean and kept going. As it flew, however, it found itself reflecting on its life so far, with particular reference to its solitary nature and the lack, to date, of sympathetic female companionship.

(We use the term female in this context for convenience only. Technically, what the carpet was longing for was companionship of the inverse-weft variety; but for all practical purposes, it amounts to the same thing.)

It was just beginning to feel sad and moody when something whizzed past its hem, leaving behind a blurred memory of a sleek cylindrical body and a tantalising whiff of perfume.

“Cor!” thought the carpet. “That was a bit of all right.” It did a double flip and followed the object’s vapour trail. What it was in fact following was an M43 ballistic missile with a 700-megaton warhead, launched after half an hour of frantic debate in the B-team bunker when the assistant scientific officer rested his coffee cup on the instrument panel.

The carpet sped on through the sky, established visual contact and fell hopelessly in love.

“Hi,” it said, swooping down parallel with the missile and shooting its hems. “My name’s Vince. What’s a gorgeous metallic tube like you doing in a place like this?”

The missile made no reply, but there was a twinkling of LED readouts on its console that might be equated with a fluttering of eyelashes.

“Like the tail-fins,” the carpet persevered. “They suit you.”

The rocket slowed down, ever so slightly. A product of ninth-generation missile technology, the M43 is officially classed as semi-intelligent, presumably so that it feels at home in the company of military personnel. It’s intelligent enough, at least, to recognise a basic chat-up line when it hears one. When you’re an instrument of mass destruction, however, you don’t tend to get many offers. Public executioners, lawyers and people who work for the Revenue tend to have the same problem.

The rocket bleeped.

“Say,” said the carpet, as suavely as a piece of knotted wool can manage. “How about you and me grabbing a bite to eat somewhere? I happen to know this little place…”

The other nuclear missile, fired by Side A, shot over Kiss’s head, neatly parting his hair with its slipstream.

Pausing only to use profane language, the genie hurried after it, caught it with his left hand and disarmed it with his right. He did so deftly, confidently and with the minimum of fuss, because the very worst epitaph the Planet Earth could wish for would be “Butterfingers!”

Having programmed it to carry on into a harmless orbit, he sat down on a sunbeam and recovered from the retrospective shakes. A sense of humour was one thing but this time, in his opinion, Philly Nine had gone too far.

“Want to make something of it?” Philly demanded, materialising directly over his left shoulder.