“You do now.”

And the barman, who was only a Force Three genie with a maximum internal service pressure of a mere nineteen tons to the square inch, suddenly found himself cuffing off rind and shovelling sliced bread into the toaster. As he brought the finished sandwich over to the table, Kiss could sense a certain degree of hostility in his manner.

After that, things had not improved. Jane’s request, expressed in a loud, clear voice, that he introduce her to some of his friends, instantaneously made him the most unpopular person in the house, and genies whom he had known since Belshazzar was in nappies suddenly found it difficult to remember who he was, or even see him. So unnerved was he by this that he allowed Jane to beat him in two consecutive games of pool; the third he only just managed to win, on the black, by conjuring up invisible spirits to stand in the pockets whenever it was Jane’s go.

“It is usually as busy as this?” she was asking.

Kiss nodded. “Why are you doing this to me, by the way?” he continued. “Was it something I said, or what?”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “I just thought it would be nice to see where you went on your night off. Part of getting to know each other better, that sort of thing.”

“I see. Well, thanks to you I’ve been banned for life, so from that point of view you’ve been wasting your time. This is what I used to do on my night off, and therefore of historical interest only.”

“Ah, well,” Jane replied, “it all helps to build up a general picture.”

Muttering something under his breath, Kiss returned to his goat’s milk, while Jane looked around her. Something about her general deportment suggested to Kiss that any minute now she’d be asking when the interesting people were going to arrive.

“Hi, doll,” said a voice seven feet or so above her head. “Want to dance?”

There is, of course, one in every bar: a nerd vain enough to believe that, contrary to all the teachings of experience, there is a woman somewhere who will one day say “Yes”; realistic enough to focus his search for such a paragon upon the crippled, half-witted and partially-sighted. Or, in this context, even mortals. Kiss knew him well; a harmless enough genie in other respects, a trifling Force Two, cursed for ever to dance attendance on a small jar used for taking samples from suspected drunk drivers. Wearily he rose to his feet and clenched his fists…

“How nice of you to ask,” Jane said. “I’d be delighted.”

The genie, whose name was Acme Better Mousetraps IV blinked twice. “You would?”

Jane nodded and smiled.

“Straight up?”

“Absolutely.”

“I can only do the valeta and the military two-step.”

“That’s all right, we can learn together.”

She stood up. Acme Better Mousetraps IV leaned forward, picked her up awkwardly by one arm, and placed her on the palm of his hand.

“Right,” he said, as the genie on the stage informed nobody in particular that they weren’t nothin’ but a hound dog. “And one-two-three-one-two-three…”

Kiss shrugged, lolled back in his chair and drained the last few drops of milk into his glass. There was an outside chance that the two of them would discover how much they had in common, form a mature and lasting relationship and leave him in peace, but he doubted it. In the meantime, he resolved, he would just sit here quietly and hope nobody noticed him.

“Kiss, my man, what’s the big idea?”

Kiss turned his head. “She insisted on coming,” he replied, as Amalgamated Caribbean Breweries IX sat down beside him and filled two glasses with milk. “Then, when Ambi asked her to dance, she accepted. I accept no responsibility whatsoever for anything that has ever happened ever. Is that clear?”

“Sure.” Acba sipped his milk and wiped his moustache. “You got yourself one crazy mistress there, man. Rather you than me.”

“Can’t fathom her out at all,” Kiss replied. “So far, all I’ve done is domestic chores and a little light transportation. She hasn’t breathed a word about wealth beyond the dreams of avarice yet.”

“No?” Acba raised an eyebrow. “Hey, that’s weird. Kind of spooky, you know?”

“Don’t I just. The only thing I can think of is, her mind’s on something else.”

“What?”

Kiss shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “Or cares, come to that? Let’s change the subject, shall we.”

“Why not?” Acba grinned. “Hey, it’s too bad you being tied up right now. There’s something really heavy going down, and you won’t get to have a piece of it.”

“Is that so?”

Acba nodded. “The word’s out,” he whispered, “for Force Nines and above, excellent package including benefits for hard-working, committed candidate with a total disregard for the value of human life. I’m gonna try and get me a slice of that, no question.”

Kiss sighed. “Sounds like it could be fun,” he agreed. “Any idea what it’s about?”

Acba shook his head. “Whatever it is, it’s serious men running it,” he said. “That’s all I know. Oh, and it’s something to do with the Environment.”

“Oh,” said Kiss. “That. In that case, it’s probably just cleaning something. You’re welcome to that. Let me know how it pans out.”

Acba nodded and stood up. “Stay loose,” he said.

“Chance’d be a fine thing.”

During this time Abmi and Jane had danced two waltzes, one quick-step and a tango, all to the accompaniment of Blue Suede Shoes. For his part, Abmi was beginning to have serious misgivings about infringing the rule against impossibles.

“Well, thanks,” he said, lowering Jane gingerly to floor level. “That was an experience, you know?”

“Oh. Have we finished dancing, then?”

Abmi smiled wanly. The tendons of his left arm were throbbing like wrenched harpstrings, and there were calluses all over his palm where Jane’s heels had galled him. “Hey,” he said, “have you any idea what the guys will do to me, monopolising the foxiest chick in the joint? No way,” he added, with perhaps a scruple more vehemence than the context could accommodate. “Ciao, baby, I gotta fly.” Which he did. In fact, for the record, he put a girdle round the earth in twenty-seven minutes thirteen seconds and hid inside a wardrobe until he was sure Jane hadn’t followed him.

Jane returned to Kiss’s table and sat down.

“I have enjoyed myself,” she said. “We must come here again.”

THREE

There was a queue.

You can tell of rationing. You can pontificate about the first day of the January sales. You can boast of your experiences in the line for day-of-performance tickets for Phantom of the Opera. But this was a queue to end all queues; so long that it projected sideways into several quite recherché dimensions, so crammed with repressed potential energy that it hovered on the brink of forming a black hole. It was, of course, an auditions queue; and nearly every genie in the Universe was in it.

When you have a queue comprising something in excess of 1046 supernatural beings who can flit through time and space with the reckless abandon of a Porsche with diplomatic plates hurrying to a meeting through the Rome rush-hour, queue-jumping ceases to be bad manners and becomes a challenge to the fundamental laws of physics. The Past became a frenzied jumble of genies bashing each other over the head and locking each other in cupboards so as to preclude their presence on the day in question; while a gigantic troll stood with folded arms in the doorway of the Future to keep back the stream of genies who reckoned they’d avoid the crush by fast-forwarding through Time. The Present was under the control of an only slightly less formidable young woman with glasses and a clipboard.

“Next,” she said.

At the back of the queue there was a hard core of genies who hadn’t the faintest idea what the audition was for, but who felt sure that they were right for the part. The general opinion was that God was staging Aladdin, with a strong minority faction holding to the view that Springsteen had been taken ill on the eve of the big open-air concert in Central Park, and a stand-in capable of imitating him down to the last chromosome was urgently required. Both versions, although speciously attractive, were wrong.