Nevertheless he was here now, he might as well make himself useful.

He rolled up his sleeves, materialised a whistle and a pair of white gloves, took his stand on a small wisp of cloud a few feet over the seething mass of bombs, and started to direct the traffic out of orbit in the general direction of Ursa Major. It took him about half an hour, during the course of which his ankles were lightly singed by overheating rocket motors and a Class 93 ran over his foot. Apart from that, it was a doddle.

That left just the one bomb, presently sleeping it off on a mattress improvised out of priceless Turkestan rugs in Justin’s uncle’s shop. Kiss didn’t know about that one, of course. Nobody can know everything.

Right, he said to himself, done that. That was more of the easy bit. It was time he got on with the job in hand.

“So there you are,” said Philly Nine, whooshing into existence a foot or so above his head. “Pretty long phone call, if you ask me.”

“I got held up,” Kiss admitted, “but I’m back now.”

“Good. Shall we get on with it, then?”

“Only too pleased. Oh, by the way, I got rid of all those missiles.”

Philly looked at him. “Oh,” he said. “You did, did you?”

Kiss nodded. “They were cluttering the place up a bit,” he said, “so I shooed them away. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Plenty more where those came from, I expect,” Philly replied. “Production lines probably working double time right this very minute. Honestly, Kiss old thing, you are naive.”

In his time, which was roughly coeval with the Universe, Kiss had been called a wide selection of things, but this was a new one. “You think so?” he said.

Philly nodded. “You honestly think you can save the world by getting rid of a few bombs? Dream on, chum, dream on. All they’ll do is build some more. Idiots they may be, but what they lack in basic survival instinct they make up for in dogged persistence. And of course,” he added, “I shall be there to offer whatever assistance they require.”

“Will you now?”

“I confidently predict that I will be.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Leonardo da Vinci, had he been there, would have wept.

So would Shakespeare, and Goethe, and Tolstoy. And Beethoven and Mozart and Jelly Roll Morton, and Sophocles and Flaubert and Rubens and Molière and Wordsworth and Brahms and Petrarch and Diaghilev and Jane Austen and Tintoretto and probably Virgil, Buddy Holly and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

All these people laboured, in their separate ways, to entertain and amuse the human race. But what the human race really wants to watch, in the final analysis, is a good, dirty fight.

Ernest Hemingway, on the other hand, would have loved it. Sir Thomas Malory would have been taking notes. Homer would have been sitting somewhere on a balcony wearing a straw hat and saying, “Ah yes, but you should have seen Hercules back in ’86, he had a copybook cover drive off the back foot that would have put these young whippersnappers to shame.” Chaucer would have missed the fight itself, since he’d have been tearing round the deserted streets trying to find an open betting shop.

It was a good fight, by any standards. Most fighters are inhibited by the fear that, unless they exercise at least some degree of circumspection, they may end up getting permanently damaged. Since Kiss and Philly Nine had no such worries, they were able to give their full attention to trying to beat the crap out of the opposing party.

Genies, for whom poetry inevitably begins with the words “There was a young lady of…” and in whose world-view painting is something involving scaffolding, long brushes, ladders and being indentured to someone whose windowsills need doing, are connoisseurs of the fight beautiful, and as far as they’re concerned the Marquess of Queensberry is a pub in Camden Passage. For the first time ever, Saheed’s was deserted, except for a small knot of spectators peering out through the skylight.

“Strewth,” observed the Dragon King of the South-East. “I never thought that was even possible.”

“Well, now you know,” replied a Force Six who had money invested. “Wouldn’t like to try it myself, mind.”

“You could do yourself an injury,” agreed a Force Three, who had the binoculars.

“Anybody know,” asked a small Force Two, whose view was obstructed by about ten larger genies and a few cardboard boxes, “what the fight is about, exactly?”

There was a thoughtful silence.

“Good and evil?” suggested the Six.

“All violence is a symptom of the underlying malaise in carbon-based society,” said the Three.

“They do that,” agreed the Two. “They lurk in among the rubber trees and jump out on people with big curly knives.”

“You what?”

“And in Sumatra and parts of Burma, too. I think it’s something to do with the heat.”

A large chunk of rock, part of a mountain that had been pressed into service as a knuckleduster, hurtled down from the sky. The genies ducked.

“It’s all right,” said the Three, looking up. “Landed on Daras. Are they allowed to use weapons? I thought this was strictly a bare-knuckle job.”

“You want to go up there and remind them, be my guest.”

“Fight fair, yer rotten bludger!” shouted the Dragon King. The others looked at him.

“Yes, well,” he said, shamefaced. “I mean, fair crack of the whip, lads. One of them is trying to save the world.”

“So?”

“Would you mind moving your bloody great elbow? You’re blocking my view.”

“I think,” said a tall, thin Force Eight, “it’s something to do with a girl.”

“What is?”

“The fight. I think it’s about some girl or other.”

“Surely not?”

“It’s as good a reason as any. I mean, the fight’s got to be about something. All fights are about something.”

“Oh.”

The fight was getting bogged down. It had, in fact, reached something of a stalemate.

“All right,” suggested Philly Nine, “try this. You let go of my throat, and then if I simultaneously take my teeth out of your left ankle…”

“I don’t think that’ll work,” Kiss mumbled after a moment’s thought. “All that’ll happen is we’ll fall over.”

Philly, who was turning purple, clicked his tongue. “Well,” he said, “we’d better think of something, unless we want to stay locked together like this for ever and ever.”

“Agreed. The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

“How about if—?”

Whatever Philly’s suggestion was, it never got a hearing; because before he could make it both genies were knocked spinning by a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile.

“Shit,” gasped Philly, who’d been winded, “what the hell was that?”

Kiss floundered his way out of the soft cloud-bank into which he had fortuitously tumbled. “Don’t ask me,” he replied. “It was long and metallic and—”

He broke off and ducked as a large and colourful carpet, flapping its edges frantically like a manta ray in a hurry, shot past, calling out, “Stop! I didn’t mean it!” at the top of a voice which Kiss only heard in the back of his brain. The two genies dusted themselves off and floated level with each other.

“One of yours?” Kiss asked.

“Never seen it before in my life.”

“Well, it’s solved one problem for us.”

“True. Shall we carry on, then?”

“Might as well.”

“Where were we, exactly?”

“Hmm.” Kiss stroked his chin. “Well, as I recall, you had me in a scissor lock and were trying to bite my leg off, and I—”

“Not a scissor lock,” Philly interrupted. “More of a Polynesian death-grip, surely?”

“No, you’re wrong there. Isn’t that the one where the left knee comes up under the opponent’s armpit?”

“You’re thinking of the Mandalay wrench.”

“No, that’s the one where—”

This time the bomb hit Kiss in the small of the back, catapulting him neatly into orbit. Philly had the presence of mind to duck, only to be swatted flying by the bunch of roses the carpet was frenziedly waving. He had just recovered his balance from that when a tall, thin apprentice carpet salesman landed around his neck, jarring his spinal column and sending him spiralling towards the ground. He couldn’t have been more than ten feet off the ground, and travelling at a fair pace, when he managed to break the spin and pull out of it.