Djinn Rummy by Tom Holt Page A

feet.’
    The King, by now rather flustered, took this for a specification, made the necessary modifications, lost his footing and fell over.
    â€˜Next,’ said the skinny man. The Dragon King got up and silently left the room.
    â€˜Hey, Cynthia,’ the bald man called out, ‘are there many more of these deadbeats out there?’
    â€˜Quite a few, Mr Fornaldarsen,’ the girl with the clipboard replied.
    â€˜Any of them look any good to you?’
    â€˜No, Mr Fornaldarsen.’
    â€˜OK, send ’em home.’ The bald man glanced down. ‘Except,’ he added quickly, ‘for this one. Recommendation from Zip Kortright.’ He checked the name. ‘Guy by the name of - goddamn stupid names these jerks have - Philadelphia Machinery and Tool Corporation the Ninth. Is he out there?’
    â€˜I’ll just check for you, Mr Fornaldarsen.’
    The door closed. After a moment, the three men looked at each other.

    â€˜Waste of time,’ said the freckled man. ‘Told you it would be.’
    â€˜We’ll see this Philadelphia guy,’ replied the skinny man. ‘You never know your luck. Never known Kortright send up a complete turkey.’
    The door opened - to be precise, it was virtually blown open by the noise of 10 46 genies all protesting at once - and a tall, slim figure walked in, sat in the chair and crossed her legs.
    There was silence.
    â€˜Hey,’ said the bald man, ‘it’s a girl.’
    â€˜Correct,’ said Philadelphia Machine and Tool Corporation IX. ‘You see? Putting your lenses in this morning has already paid dividends.’
    â€˜What’s Korty thinking of, sending us a girl?’ snarled the skinny man. ‘We don’t need a girl, we need a guy.’
    The girl parted her lips and smiled.
    â€˜On the other hand,’ mumbled the bald man, ‘have we actually thought this through? I mean, now I think of it I can see where, if we were to make the hero a girl . . .’
    â€˜It’d beef up the middle,’ agreed the freckled man. ‘There’s that goddamn flat spot between the fight with the chainsaws and the bit where he blows up the Golden Gate Bridge. If we made him a girl, we could put in a bit with her and her kids, you know, mom stuff . . .’
    â€˜Like Cagney and Lacey,’ agreed the skinny man.
    â€˜Excuse me,’ said the girl.
    The three men looked at her.
    â€˜Could one of you gentlemen possibly tell me what the film’s about?’
    â€˜Hey,’ objected the bald man, ‘what’s that got to do with you?’
    â€˜Well, now,’ the girl said, flicking a few microns of cigar
ash off her knee, ‘if I don’t know what the film’s about, how do I know whether I want to be in it?’
    There was stunned silence; and the genie, who could after all read minds, watched with amused pleasure as the idea began to take shape in all three brains simultaneously.
    She wants to know if it’s the sort of film she’d like to be in.
    If we want her, she might not accept.
    She must be good.
    The bald man cleared his throat. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘it’s like this. There’s this guy -’
    â€˜Or girl,’ interrupted the skinny man.
    â€˜Or girl, yeah, and she’s got this brother who was killed in Viet Nam -’
    â€˜Big flashback sequence,’ explained the freckled man. ‘All the footage they couldn’t use in Full Metal Jacket .’
    â€˜Only,’ the bald man went on, ‘really he wasn’t, OK, it was just a dream, and in fact he’s hiding out from the Mob -’
    â€˜Columbian drug barons.’
    â€˜Whatever, and then it turns out that in fact his girl -’
    â€˜Her guy -’
    â€˜Is working for the CIA, and is actually responsible for a string of serial killings -’
    â€˜He turns out,’ elucidated the skinny man, ‘to be a robot, but that’s much