Djinn Rummy (10 page)

In an instant Kowalski was on his feet, dragging on his discarded uniform and gunbelt. Twenty minutes later, his helicopter landed on the White House lawn.

‘Hi there, Kowalski,' the President greeted him, yelling to make himself heard over the roar of the chopper engines. ‘Excuse my asking, but why are you wearing a dress?'

In clipped, concise military language Kowalski explained, and they went inside. In the relative peace of the Oval Office, the President explained. He didn't mince his words.

When he'd finished, Kowalski read back his notes and chewed his lip.

‘Gee, Mr President,' he said. ‘We never expected anything like
that
. Who do you think's responsible?'

The President shrugged. ‘No idea,' he replied. ‘Does it matter? The important thing is, what do we do? I assume you guys have something up your sleeves out there in the desert that'll zap these mothers into the middle of . . .'

He tailed off. Kowalski was shaking his head.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I guess we overlooked that possibility. You gotta admit,' he went on, countering the implied criticism in the Chief's eyes, ‘giant self-propelled carnivorous wildflowers terrorising Florida has got to be one of the longest shots of all. Besides,' he went on, ‘since you saw fit to trim the budget . . .'

‘OK.' The President made a small gesture with his hands, guillotining the recriminations stage of the conference. ‘So tell me, Viv. What have we got?'

Kowalski scowled and scratched his head. ‘Assuming,' he said, ‘that saturation bombing with all known weed-killers - you've tried that, yes, of course.' He grinned. ‘I'm afraid you're going to have to let us work on that one for a while,' he said.

‘But you do have a solution?'

‘No,' Kowalski admitted, ‘but I know somebody who might.'

 

The main reason why the world is still here is that genies have little or no initiative.

Command them to do something and they obey. It's not unknown for them sometimes to interpret their instructions with a degree of latitude - for example, if their instructions can be interpreted, however loosely, as a mandate to destroy the human race, and they happen to be psychotic Force Twelves with a personal grudge against mankind in general. Under such circumstances, they spring into action with all the vigour and energy of a supercharged volcano.

But without some tiny speck of mortal authority around which to build their pearls of malevolence, even the nastiest genies can do nothing. And, fortunately enough, mortals unhinged enough to give them that authority are few and far between.

 

In the most secret bunker of all, half a mile under the bleakest spot in all New Mexico, there is a door.

A big, thick steel door with a combination lock. For the unimaginative there is also a notice, in huge red letters, saying ‘DO NOT ENTER'.

Open the door and you find a flight of steps, going down. Just when exhaustion and the disorienting effect of
the darkness and the smell of must and stagnant water is about to get too much for you, the steps end and there is another door. It, too, is big, thick and made of steel. There is a notice, in big red letters, saying ‘AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY'.

Open that door and you find yourself in a small room, the size of the average hotel fitted wardrobe. The room is empty, apart from a chunky steel safe.

Inside the safe is a bottle.

WHOOSH!

Kowalski reared back, banged his head on the door and sat down hard. Suddenly the room was full of genie.

‘Hello,' said Philadelphia Machine and Tool Corporation IX, grinning unpleasantly. ‘Your wish is my command. What's it to be?'

Slowly, his eyes not leaving the apparition that surrounded him, Kowalski levered himself up off the floor with all the agility of a dropped fried egg climbing back into a frying pan. ‘Hi,' he replied. ‘Are you the genie?'

Philly Nine gave him a look.

‘Yeah,' Kowalski said, ‘I guess you must be. I'm -'

‘I know who you are,' Philly Nine replied. ‘What can I do for you? To hear,' he added, with a chuckle that belonged to some private joke Kowalski didn't even want to understand, ‘is to obey. Shoot.'

The soldier explained; and as he did so the genie nodded sympathetically. The expression in his fiery red eyes didn't for one instant betray the savage triumph pumping through his heart.

Had it ever occurred to Kowalski to wonder, he asked himself, why a genie should have
volunteered
to be indentured to a bottle? Why, when all other genies in the history of Creation would do anything - anything at all - to avoid
it, Philly Nine (a Force Twelve, no less) had deliberately and at his own request allowed himself to be bound to serve whoever removed the lid of this nasty, smelly glass container? Did the words
ulterior motive
have no place at all in this man's vocabulary?

‘I see,' he said, when Kowalski had finished speaking. ‘Nasty business. I take it,' he went on, choosing his words with the skill of a lawyer on a fraud charge, ‘you want me to do something about it?'

Kowalski nodded. ‘Positive,' he said.

‘And may I take it,' the genie purred, ‘that I have a certain degree of discretion in how I go about this? So long as I get the job done, of course?'

‘Naturally,' the soldier said. ‘This thing has sure got us licked. Anything you can do -'

‘Oh, I can think of a few ideas,' the genie said. Being a Force Twelve, one of the seven most powerful non-divine beings ever to pass through the Earth's atmosphere, he was just about able to keep a straight face. ‘A few tricks up my sleeve, that sort of thing. When would you like me to start?'

‘Immediately,' Kowalski replied. ‘If that's OK with you.'

A wide, slow smile crept like the first spill of lava from the cracks of Vesuvius across Philly Nine's large, handsome face. ‘No problem,' he said. ‘You just leave everything to me, and we'll see what can be done.'

Kowalski permitted himself a sigh of relief. Just for a moment back there, he'd been worried. ‘That's fine,' he said, ‘If there's anything you need . . .'

Philly hesitated. A few atomic bombs might, he felt, come in handy, particularly when it came to apportioning the blame afterwards. On the other hand, he had just been given carte blanche by a mortal - not just any mortal, he added with infinite smugness, but a duly accredited
representative of the government of the United States of America - and asking for a fistful of nukes might just lead to awkward questions being asked and tiresome restrictions placed on his mandate. After his carelessness in wiping out the mortals who had given him his original opportunity, which he had then squandered (to his infinite shame), he had managed against all probability to get a chance at getting his own back. Best not to risk blowing it just for a handful of fireworks.

‘Thanks for the offer,' he said therefore, ‘but I should be able to manage. Have a nice day, now.'

He vanished.

 

Tinkerbell, Grand Khan of the Hammerhead Pansies, lifted its flower and roared.

The echoes died away. Then, from every corner of the Everglades, came answering roars, howls, shrieks and trumpetings. To the east it could make out the long, shrill howl of the primroses, under the command of Feldkommandant Trixie. From the north came the dull thunder of the forget-me-nots, and the laboured snorting of their High Admiral, Zog.

Where the bloody hell
, Zog was asking,
are we
?

Tinkerbell twiddled its stamens in contempt. The forget-me-nots were, after all, an inferior species; and as soon as the job in hand was over, there was a place reserved for them somewhere near the bottom of the compost-heap of Creation. In the meantime, they might still conceivably be useful, if only as green mulch.

High overhead the F-111s continued their futile buzzing like so many demented mayflies; and, for those of them ill-advised enough to fly too low, with approximately the same life expectancy.

With a high wave of its right leaf, Tinkerbell motioned its column to proceed, and the mud churned around their thrashing roots. In the far distance, a reverberating
splat!
indicated that Zog had just tripped over its own tendrils.

Of all the seeds in Philly Nine's bag, only thirty-one primroses, twenty-six forget-me-nots and nineteen pansies had made it through the hole in the atmosphere safely to the ground; and at first Tinkerbell had wondered whether the forces at its disposal were going to be sufficient. As time passed, however, and each individual flower had started to grow and put forth flowers, it realised that its fears were unfounded. The three varieties had been designed to take root in the dry, barren dust of the cities. The rich, wet mud of the swamps was a thousand times more nutritious, and the plants had grown accordingly. Mud, however, is all very well, but for high-intensity carnivores it lacks a certain something. They were feeling, to put it mildly, decidedly peckish.

It was, therefore, fortuitous that the United States Third Armored Division should have chosen that moment to attack.

Ah!
Seventy-six telepathic vegetable intelligences simultaneously registered a giant surge of relief.
Lunch!

The army's battle plan was simple. Lay down an artillery barrage guaranteed to extinguish every trace of life in a thirty-square-mile area. Then another one. Then one more for luck. Then send in the tanks.

For the next ten hours it was noisy in that part of Florida, and visibility was poor because of the smoke. When the noise had subsided into a deadly silence, and the breeze had cleared away most of the smoke and fumes, there was nothing to be seen except desolation -

- and seventy-six enormous flowers towering over a nightmare scrapyard of twisted metal.

Better?
asked the primroses.

A bit
, replied the forget-me-nots, spreading well-fed roots among the debris that had once been a complete armoured division and burping.
But you know how it is. You quickly get tired of all this tinned food
.

 

With a sonic boom that shattered windows and played merry hell with television reception all over the state, Philly Nine flew over Miami, heading for the pall of smoke.

Swooping low, he turned a jaunty victory roll over the straggling column of refugees that clogged the interstate highway in both directions for as far as the eye could see. A ragged cheer broke out at ground level. The poor fools! If only they knew.

The wildflowers weren't hard to find; they were, by now, the tallest things in Florida. Spread out in a loose column, they were lurching at an alarming speed along the deserted tarmac of a ten-lane expressway. Huge lumps of asphalt came away each time their roots moved. Behind them the earth was a glistening muddy brown.

Philly Nine skirted round them in a wide circle, easily evading the outstretched tendrils of the forget-me-nots. As he flew, he hugged himself with joy. This was going to be fun!

He was, however, still in two minds. His original plan had been an unquenchable wave of fire that would shrivel up the flowers and then sweep irresistibly onwards, north-east, until the entire continent was reduced to ash. On mature reflection, however, he couldn't help feeling that that was a waste of the opportunity of an eternal lifetime. America is, after all, only one continent, surrounded on all
sides by oceans. As he studied the column of marauding flora weaving its grim course, he couldn't help reflecting that this lot would probably be more than capable of having the same net effect if left to their own devices. What he wanted was something a bit more universal in its application; something that wouldn't grind to a jarring halt as soon as it hit the beaches . . .

Philly Nine stopped dead in mid-air and slapped his forehead melodramatically with the heel of his hand. Of course! He'd been looking at this entirely the wrong way round.

He accelerated, heading due north. In a quarter of an hour he was over Alaska; at which point he slowed down, rubbed his hands together to get the circulation going and looked around for something to work with.

At the North Pole he alighted, materialised a roll of extra-strong mints, popped the whole tube into his mouth and chewed hard. Then he took a deep breath, and exhaled.

The ice began to melt.

 

A word, at this stage, about Insurance.

There are your big insurance companies: the ones who own pretty well everything, who take your money and then make you run round in small, frantic circles whenever you want to claim for burst pipes or a small dent in your offside front wing. Small fry.

There is Lloyds of London: the truly professional outfit who will insure pretty well any risk you choose to name so long as you're prepared to spend three times the value of whatever it is you're insuring on premiums. As is well known, Lloyd's is merely a syndicate of rich individuals who underwrite the risks with their own massive private fortunes. Slightly larger fry, but still pretty microscopic.

What about the real risks; the ones that have to be insured (because the consequences of something going wrong would be so drastic), but which are so colossal that no individual or corporation could possibly provide anything like the resources needed to underwrite them?

(Such risks as the sun failing to rise, summer being cancelled at short notice, gravity going on the blink again, the earth falling off its axis; or, indeed, severe melting of the ice-caps, leading to global flooding?)

To cover these risks there exists a syndicate of individuals who possess not mere wealth, but wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.

Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice? Sounds familiar? Suffice it to say that the registered office of this syndicate is a small, verdigrised copper lamp, presently located at the bottom of a locked trunk in an attic somewhere in the suburbs of Aleppo.