Djinn Rummy Read Online Free PDF

lots of Hawaii. The venue had been Kiss’s suggestion; it would save them having to take the empty fruit-juice cartons and boiled-egg shells home with them, he’d argued, if they could simply drop them into the most spectacular waste-disposal system on the planet. They were sitting on Kiss’s own personal flying carpet (a three-ply Wilton Sportster with Hydra-Shock jute backing and a go-faster Paisley recurring motif) and Jane had just finished off the cold chicken.
    â€˜Dodgy,’ Kiss replied, after some thought. ‘You never really know where you are. I mean,’ he continued, jettisoning an empty Perrier bottle, which liquefied twelve feet above the meniscus of the lava, ‘potentially it’s a really great lifestyle, if you can hack it and stay out of trouble. You’ve got eternal life and eternal youth, there’s practically nothing this side of Ursa Major that can attack you
without coming a very poor second, you can fly, you can materialise pretty well anything you like so long as it actually exists somewhere in the cosmos, and best of all you have absolutely no moral constraints whatsoever. I guess the nearest you could come in human terms would be a seven-foot-tall, extremely muscular movie star with a good agent and an even better lawyer. That’s when the times are good, of course,’ he added.
    â€˜And when they’re not?’
    Kiss shook his head. ‘Bottles,’ he said. ‘Also lamps. Very bad news, both of them. I knew a genie once, in fact, got mixed up with one of those raffia-covered Chianti bottles made into a lamp. Poor bugger didn’t know whether he was coming or going.’
    â€˜Confusing?’
    â€˜Just plain nasty,’ Kiss replied. ‘Take another mate of mine, Big Nick. I told him at the time - this was some years ago, mind - Nick, I said, stripping the lead off the Vatican roof is going to land you in very real grief, you mark my words. He didn’t, of course, and look at him now.’
    Jane squinted. ‘I’ve heard of him, have I?’
    Kiss nodded gloomily. ‘I expect so. Big chap, white beard, red dressing-gown, reindeer, sack - thought you’d probably come across him.’
    Jane’s eyes widened. ‘He’s a genie ?’
    â€˜There’s more of us about,’ Kiss said, ‘than people realise.’
    â€˜And it’s a punishment? All the delivering presents and happy smiling faces . . .’
    â€˜You try it and see how you enjoy it. I’m telling you, twelve thousand years in an oil-lamp would be paradise in comparison.’ Kiss shuddered reflexively. ‘And if that wasn’t
bad enough, the other three hundred and sixty-four days each year it’s not just a bottle the poor sod’s banged up in, it’s one of those paperweights; you know, the sort you shake and it snows? I think you’d have to have a pretty warped mind to come up with something like that.’
    Jane agreed.
    â€˜And it’s getting worse, you know,’ Kiss went on. ‘Generally, that is. In the business. Admittedly in my young days there were more of the bad guys about - sorcerers and mages and the like - but at least they hadn’t invented the unbreakable plastic bottle or the child-proof bottle-top. Makes my blood run cold, that does.’
    Jane tried to imagine what it was like, being a genie, and found that she couldn’t. Hardly surprising, she decided, but a trifle disappointing nevertheless. She dropped a paper plate over the side and watched it drift down and blossom, first into fire, then fine white ash, then nothing at all.
    â€˜And what about you?’ Kiss said. ‘Since we’re obviously into a heavyweight experience-swapping trip, how about you telling me why the suicide thing? I have this feeling that it’s something I ought to know, purely on a business level.’
    Jane sighed. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I expect you could find out if