Free Djinn Rummy by Tom Holt Page A

and diving, pulling a few scams. Made a film, would you believe. Boy, that was some experience.’
    â€˜Yeah?’
    â€˜Yeah. Spooky stuff to be around, film. You hold it up to the light and you’re ready to swear blind there’s guys trapped inside the stuff.’
    Kiss shook his head. ‘I think it’s just science, Philly,’ he said. ‘You know, mortal stuff.’
    â€˜I suppose so. ‘ Philly Nine folded his hands over the cloth bag. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘nice to see you again, don’t let me keep you.’
    The carpet continued to hover. ‘What’ve you got in the bag there, Philly?’
    â€˜Wildflower seeds,’ Philly Nine replied. ‘I’m doing my bit for the Green movement. Nothing to interest you.’
    â€˜Wildflowers?’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    Kiss raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s not like you, Philly,’ he observed quietly. ‘You were always, how can I put this, an evil genie.’
    â€˜It’s very kind of you to say so, Kiss, my old chum.’
    â€˜My pleasure.’ There was a moment of silence, disturbed only by the faint sighing of the interstellar winds. ‘So why the change of direction?’
    â€˜Nah,’ Philly answered. ‘Me, I’m consistent, always have been. And if I were you, I’d go and fly your doormat someplace else.’

    â€˜Think I’ll just hang around here for a minute, if it’s all the same to you.’
    â€˜Suit yourself.’ Philly Nine stuffed the cloth bag ostentatiously up one sleeve, and folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’m in no hurry. All as broad as it’s long, as far as I’m concerned.’
    â€˜Good waves, up here,’ Kiss said; and, by way of illustration, he let the carpet slip on the spacewinds. A long, slow ripple snaked its way down the length of the carpet. Kiss began to hum:
    â€˜If everybody had a carpet
Across the galaxy
Then everybody would be floatin’
Like Ursa Minor B . . .’
    â€˜Cut it out,’ Philly urged. ‘You know as well as I do you never did like carpeting. Made you space-sick just going out on the ionosphere. What exactly are you doing here, Kiss?’
    Kiss smiled. ‘Stopping you,’ he replied. ‘Gosh, from here you can see the big pimple on Orion’s nose. Fancy a peppermint? ’
    â€˜I see.’ Inside his sleeves, Philly’s fists clenched. ‘And why would you want to stop me, Kiss? I never did you any harm.’
    â€˜Never said you did, Philly. Always the best of pals, you and me. ‘
    â€˜Quite.’
    â€˜What have you got in the bag, Philly?’
    Philly Nine smiled; and white lightning snapped out of his eyes, slamming into Kiss with traumatic force and sending him and his carpet spiralling away into emptiness.
Philly grinned and took out the bag. A tiny pinch of his fingernails and the knot loosened easily.
    He turned the bag over, let go of the neck and shook it . . . . . . and found himself inside a bubble, bobbing jauntily with the starbreeze. Above him, Kiss looped his Wilton, waved, and ducked behind the Moon.
    â€˜Bastard!’ Philly yelled. On the floor of the bubble, seeds had landed. He rolled his left fist into a ball and smashed it into the wall of the bubble . . .
    . . . which stretched.
    Philly Nine noticed with some misgivings the rapidly thickening carpet of flowers round his ankles. They had already stripped the shoes off his feet (and Philly’s shoes were rather special, even by genie standards; hand-stitched gryphonhide uppers, phoenixdown insocks and monomolecular polysteel soles; the gussets arc-welded in the hottest part of a supernova; the heel reinforced with the enamel from the teeth of a fully-grown snowdragon, the third hardest material in Creation. Imelda Marcos in her wildest dreams never imagined shoes like these . . .)
    â€˜Hey,’ he yelled, ‘let me out of