“Want to bet?”

“Your wish is my—”

“Oh, shut up.”

“For pity’s sake,” Jane croaked, rolling over and peering at her clock. “It’s half past three in the morning.”

Over the end of the bed, a cloud of photons glistened cheerfully. “Up bright and early, you said,” Kiss replied. “Here, catch hold.”

To her disgust, Jane received a tray with a plate on it. On the plate was a hedgehog, curled up in a nest of dry leaves. There were cubes of cheese and pineapple impaled on its spikes. It was, Jane noted with relief, asleep rather than dead.

“You did say you wanted your breakfast still in its bed,” Kiss explained, “so I didn’t wake it up. Besides, hedgehogs are usually flambéed at the table, so if you’ll pass me that box of matches…”

“Are you being stupid on purpose, or are you just—?”

“There’s no need to be rude.”

“Right,” Jane said. “Today we’re going to set the world to rights.”

Kiss looked up from the sink. “Fine,” he said. “Is that before or after I do the washing-up?”

Jane blinked. “I was being facetious,” she replied. “Were you?”

“No,” the genie answered, squeezing the entire contents of the washing-up liquid bottle into the sink and turning both taps to full power. “I’m never facetious where wishes are concerned, it’s part of being a pro. You want the world set to rights, I’m your sprite.”

“I see.” Jane sat down and drank some tea. It was quite unlike any other tea she had ever tasted, while at the same time being unmistakably tea. She found out later that this was because Kiss made tea by uprooting a tea plant and dumping it in the pressure cooker for half an hour. “And how do you propose going about it?”

“Easy.” The words easy, no worries, piece of cake had come to ring loud warning bells in Jane’s mind; it usually meant that the genie was contemplating doing something so extreme as to boil the brain. “The way I see it, all the misery and unhappiness in the world today is caused by governments, people like that. Just give me five minutes to get this baked-on grease off this grill-pan and I’ll nip out and deal with them.”

“Deal with?”

Kiss made an unambiguous gesture with his forefinger and his throat. “They’ve got it coming,” he said cheerfully. “It’ll be a pleasure.”

Jane spilt her tea. “One,” she said, “you’ll do no such thing.”

“Oh, come on…”

“Two,” she continued, “I thought there were rules about that sort of thing. I mean, what you can and can’t do.”

Kiss shook his head. “There are,” he replied. “But topping a few politicians is entirely legitimate. It’s only impossible things that I’m not supposed to do; you know, things that’d bend the nature of physics. There’s nothing in the book of rules about criminal irresponsibility.”

“An.”

“I take it you’re not keen on the idea?”

“I have to admit,” Jane replied, “I’d prefer a more organic approach.”

The genie’s massive brow wrinkled over. “What, you mean bury them alive? Can do, just say the—”

“No.”

“All right, then, how about bury them alive in compost? You can’t get more organic than compost.”

“I meant,” Jane said firmly, “something a bit more constructive. Something that doesn’t involve lots of people getting killed.”

The genie stared for a moment, then started to laugh. “Set the world to rights and nobody gets killed? Hey, lady, where have you been all your life?”

Few compilers of folk-tale anthologies have recorded the fact, but all genies, regardless of the terms of their indenture or the nature of their employment, have an indefeasible right to one night off a week. Kiss had explained this to Jane in great detail, and had even taken the trouble of marking the whole of the relevant page of the manual in extra-fluorescent yellow marker pen.

Where, then, do genies go on their night off? There is, of course, only one place: Saheed’s, in downtown Samarkand (turn left opposite the dye works till you come to a corrugated iron door, knock four times and ask for Ali). There, the stressed-out supernatural entity can relax, unwind and talk over the past week with other genies over a nice glass of cool goat’s milk. Or so the theory runs. In practice, Ali the proprietor has had to have an annexe built into another dimension, because the fights on Quiz Nights threaten to upset the Earth’s placement on its axis.

“It’s amazing, it really is,” Kiss maintained, swilling the contents of his glass round to revive the head. “The woman is completely weird. What exactly she wants out of life is beyond me entirely.”

His companion nodded sympathetically. “Europeans,” he grunted. “No more idea than next door’s cat, the lot of them. I remember once, I was in this oiling can over France way, and—”

“Three weeks I’ve been with her now,” Kiss continued, absent-mindedly finishing off his companion’s peanuts, “and what have we done? Go on, guess. You’ll never guess what we’ve done.”

“Probably not.”

“Nothing.” Kiss scowled. “Absolutely bugger-all. Not proper genie stuff, anyway. It’s all been ironing and shampooing the carpets and would you mind just running a duster over the sitting-room table? The score so far: ruby eyes of gods stolen, nil. Spirits of the dead raised, nil. Tail-feathers of firebirds plucked, nil. Hairs from the beard of the Great Chain abstracted, nil. Ankle-socks paired, fourteen. Potatoes peeled, thirty-two. Any more of this and I’m going to appeal to the Tribunal, because it really isn’t on. Have another?”

His companion glanced at his wrist (genies don’t need watches but are nevertheless creatures of habit). “Since you’re offering,” he replied. “Just the one, mind, because I’ve got wealth beyond the dreams of avarice to fetch tomorrow, and you’ve got to keep a clear head for these fiddly little jobs.”

Kiss nodded and went to the bar.

“Two large djinns and tonic,” he said, “ice and lemon in one.”

The bottle on the counter rocked backwards and forwards as if nodding, unstoppered itself and poured liquor into two glasses. Please note: customers who find they’ve left their money at home when dining at Saheed’s don’t just get away with doing the washing-up.

“Sounds like you’ve got yourself a right little ray of sunshine,” his companion observed, as Kiss brought back the drinks. “What was that bit you said about further wishes?”

Kiss explained, again. His companion shook his head.

“I’m not sure about that,” he said, “not sure at all. You should get the union rep to have a look at that for you. I mean, there must be something wrong with it, or else we’d all be in the smelly.”

“Lousy precedent,” Kiss agreed.

“Diabolical. They could take it up as a test case.”

“You reckon?”

“Worth a try.” His companion emptied his glass, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his sixth arm, and stood up. “Well, be seeing you. Don’t steal any glass eyes.”

“Mind how you go,” Kiss replied absently. His companion withdrew, and a few moments later there was a brief outburst of muffled swearing as he discovered that while he’d been inside, some practical jokers had nailed his carpet to the carpet-park floor. (For the record, he arrived back home six hours late, soaking wet and frozen stiff, having had to make the return flight on a borrowed bar towel.)

Kiss lingered on until closing time, playing the video games in a desultory manner and beating the Dragon King of the South three times running at pool. It wasn’t just that he was in no hurry to go home; there was something else troubling him, and he needed the noise and smashed-crockery sounds of his own kind about him in order to concentrate his mind. There was, he felt, something very odd going on, and in some way he couldn’t work out he was involved in it, indirectly and at several removes. Whatever it was, it remained shadowy and obscure, with the result that he was too preoccupied to notice that he had just beaten the Dragon King a fourth time; which is to pushing one’s luck as closing one’s eyes and taking both hands off the wheel is to motorway driving. Not very long afterwards, he was rescued in the nick of time by the bouncer and deposited outside among the dustbins, where he passed a quiet night dreaming of jacket potatoes.