Ten Thousand Wishes?

“Superhuman abilities are beyond human, more than human,” said Habib after he had made more coffee for both of them. They were sitting at the little white-enameled iron table on Simon’s tiny patio outside his bedroom window. Habib had already put four sugars into his coffee and sipped at the resulting oversweet liquid with satisfaction.

Simon drank his black, as always. “Well, yeah. How does that help?” he asked.

“What else in this world is beyond human, more than human?” Habib responded. He gestured at himself. “Djinn and other beings from non-terrestrial planes. You humans are folk of earth, we djinn are folk of fire, houris are of heaven, et cetera.”

“Et cetera?” Simon repeated.

“Hm, mm,” said Habib, taking another sip. “I consulted with some of my fellow djinn and a few other personages it is better not to name. I believe I can reach into another universe -- that may or may not really exist -- and pull out for you a different sort of essence. Such as your much-favored Superman. He is after all, not a man of Earth but of Krypton. And what does Krypton mean? That which is hidden.” Habib nodded exactly as if what he had said actually made sense.

“Those are just words,” said Simon weakly.

“And words are a kind of magic, too,” said Habib. “So let us consider what sort of superpowers you would like to have.”

“Well, Superman’s powers....” Simon trailed off. The whole discussion had turned unreal and seemingly childish. He felt like a nine-year-old suddenly, remembering when he had discussed the superpowers of imaginary characters with his friends during elementary school recess. Could Superman do this? Could he pick up Thor’s hammer? Could Spiderman beat Batman? Did Catwoman really run across rooftops in high heels?

Habib held up a forefinger. “And what is Superman’s most important superpower, the one without which he is not really Superman?”

“Huh,” said Simon. “Well, his strength -- no, it’s his invulnerability.” He did know his comic book characters, lots of others were strong or could fly but only someone like Superman could take a bath in the Sun..

“Yes, he is the paragon of invulnerability, almost nothing can harm him. It defines him, he is the ultimate outsider, outside even the pain and fear of death that everyone else faces.” He took another sip of coffee. “It must give the writers of his adventures fits trying to think up challenges for him.”

“Which is why a lot of stories focus on his emotional crises,” said Simon. “Batman is the physical one in stories because his defining characteristic is psychological, the vengeance he pursues.”

Habib looked at him. “You don’t want to be Batman?”

Simon shook his head. “Not really. I don’t think I have that kind of intensity. Blue Beetle, the Ted Kord Blue Beetle, or his clone Nite-Owl from the Watchmen, would be more my speed.” He grinned. “Those gadgets would be lots of fun.”

“Fun,” said Habib with no inflection or apparent judgement. “That is your objective?”

Simon didn’t say anything for a moment. “I suppose it is,” he finally admitted. “I mean, doing good and helping people would be nice, catching bad guys. But if it weren’t fun, why do it?”

“Why indeed?” said Habib.

They both looked around at the wide, beautiful world around them. The pleasure of a late morning in early April surrounded them. Birds twittered in the trees, bees hummed about the flowers. The sun had come out and the greenery gleamed with a green grandiosity, as if the color had just been invented for that particular moment.

Down the hill on the shore of the little lake behind Mrs. Dumphries’s property sat the Indian Summer Folly, a gazebo-like structure with covered patios on all sides and a small enclosed room made mostly of windows. A terracotta brick walkway lined with roses led down from the back of the hotel. It mostly got used for parties, barbecues and such in the fall when the weather turned warm, pleasant and dry, hence the name.

Simon found himself smiling and noticed that Habib was smiling, too. “What do you like to do, Habib?” he asked suddenly.

The expression that crossed the djinni’s face couldn’t be matched in Simon’s memory with any face he had ever seen before. A surprised longing, like a glimpse of bright hope in a night of despair--Simon did not know how to characterize what Habib had revealed.

“What do I like to do?” asked Habib. “I’m not sure I have an answer to that question. You are unlike any master I have ever served, do you know that, Simon? No one, not one in three millennia, has asked me so many startling questions.”

Simon grinned, embarrassed though he could not have said why. “What does that make? Two of them?”

“Even so,” said Habib. “You are one in ten thousand, Simon, one in a multitude.” He lifted his coffee cup as if to make a toast.

Simon kept grinning, he didn’t know what else to do. He lifted his cup and gestured with it. “Habib, I don’t know many djinn,” his grin got wider, “you’re the only one, but I am sure that you are remarkable among your people for wisdom, patience and humility.”

They sipped coffee. “See, that is what I mean, Simon. I’ve never heard of another master since Suleyman the Great who treated a djinni with such respect and courtesy as you show to me.” Habib shook his head as if in wonder.

“Isn’t he the one who enslaved all of you?”

“Yes, but he respected us. He let us write our own terms of servitude which we did willingly since our other choice was destruction.”

“Seems an odd sort of respect,” said Simon.

“Oh, but he knew that to destroy us, he would have been destroyed himself and also much of civilization at the time. We would have wrecked what we could and slain tens of thousands of tens of thousands.”

Simon swallowed too much coffee at once and coughed to clear his airway. It wasn’t so much what Habib had said but the calm emphasis he had given the numbers; it spoke of a calculated savagery that Simon had a hard time matching to the urbane appearance of his magical servant. Besides, Simon was good with numbers, he’d instantly multiplied and got hundreds of millions. How many people had been on the Earth three thousand years ago?

Habib finished his coffee and asked, “Do you want a noon meal? Or more coffee?”

Simon shook his head and held out his cup as Habib collected cups, saucers, spoons and sugar bowls on a gleaming lacquered tray Simon did not remember owning.

“There is a world somewhere in Chance that is very like this world, broadly. Except it has another star in its sky -- a dwarf companion of Kurash the Lifegiver, the Sun. They have named it variously but most commonly it is called Prometheus after the Greek Titan who is said to have given fire to humanity.” Habib carried his tray into the apartment and on into the little kitchenette and Simon followed.

Putting the used dishes in the sink, Habib continued. “The Promethean orbit is highly elliptical and at an angle to the plane of the Zodiac so that when it is at its nearest to the Sun, it is far enough from any of the planets not to present ordinary dangers of heat or radiation.” Habib ran hot water, of which there was always plenty in the hotel, squirted a little soap and quickly scrubbed, rinsed and put the dishes in the drainer.

Simon glanced around, Nader had emerged from his room.

Smiling, Habib greeted the other tenant in what Simon had to assume was Farsi since he understood not a syllable of it. Scowling, Nader replied in the same language then hurried past the little kitchenette alcove, down the hall toward the stairs up to the dining room above.

“What did you say to him?” asked Simon.

“That he would be late to pick up his girlfriend because he spent too much time in front of the mirror convincing himself that he was a handsome fellow,” said Habib.

“Ouch,” said Simon. “He does seem fond of himself, doesn’t he?”

“It is a vice of the overly good-looking that they are pleased to look at their own image. In my youth, I suffered from the same malady.” Habib spoke with a perfectly straight face.

“Not me,” said Simon. “I figure I’m lucky that mirrors survive me looking into them.”

Habib snorted. “You are neither handsome nor ugly, Simon. Your height and smiling eyes save you from being overly average in appearance.”

“Thanks, I guess,” said Simon, still smiling.

“We were talking about powers,” said Habib. “Superman has speed, strength, flight and invulnerability but the early character had much less of each.”

“Uh-huh,” said Simon. “The old mantra used to be, ‘faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound and nothing less than a bursting shell can penetrate his skin.’ They left that last one out of the TV show.”

“Even that is a tall order,” said Habib. “How about ‘faster than a cheetah, more powerful than an elephant, able to leap over houses and nothing less than a powerful rifle can do more than scratch his skin?’”

“My skin? Wow!” Simon wanted to laugh out loud.

“Add some vision and hearing abilities and you could be mistaken for Superman on a dark night and a galloping horse.” Habib’s eyes twinkled; Simon didn’t get the joke but he did laugh.

“Are those the powers you’re going to give me?” asked Simon.

“That’s what I’m aiming for, but this is not rocket science,” said Habib.

Simon looked puzzled.

“In rocket science, the equations work out the same way every time, so you can hit what you aim at. This is magic, the equations have only three answers; ‘can’, ‘cannot’ and ‘oops!’.”
Simon slowly grinned. “I know what I mean when I say ‘oops’, what do you mean when you say ‘oops’?” he quoted from a classic Bill Cosby routine.

“Exactly,” said Habib. “Getting back to what I was saying before Nader walked through, the other Earth, the one with two suns, the smaller sun makes magic possible on that world. Magic for ordinary people, unpredictable magic in that it grants what you would call superpowers to random people on that world when its eccentric orbit brings it near the Earth.”

“Huh,” said Simon.

“But that’s not important right now,” said Habib.

“And don’t call me Shirley,” said Simon, grinning again.

Habib frowned at him then apparently got the joke and shook his head. “The important thing is that I can get superpowers for you in this world, by reaching into that one with my own magic. But since part of the process is random, we can’t know for sure exactly what powers you will get.”

“Oh,” said Simon.

Habib stood. “Let us go down to the Folly by the lake before I work my magic. Because if you think about it, the powers you want are a pretty fair description of the Hulk, too.”

“Huh,” said Simon. He stood. “It’s going to be cold and damp down there this time of year. And it may rain on us.”

“The djinn never get rained on unless they permit it,” said Habib. “Wear a jacket.”

Simon took time to put on a rainproof windbreaker and followed Habib down the path toward the Folly. The rain didn’t seem to be able to make up its mind where it had returned or finished for the day. Heavy clouds crowded the mountains to the east but blue sky poked holes in the overcast over the ocean to the west. A few drops stained the maroon of the jacket dark purple where they landed.

With hardly any wind, the chill coming off the lake felt like wading through a waist-high refrigerator but Simon rode bicycles in winter gales, he hardly noticed. True to the fiery nature of djinn, Habib seemed to ignore the cold completely.

The cabin of the Folly was locked and the benches under the wooden patio covers were wet and covered in debris that had accumulated since their last cleaning months ago. Simon and Habib stood in the lee of the little building, looking through the layers of windows at the little lake. Partly man-made, the lake covered about seventy acres and at its lower end merged into a slough that emptied into the White River which emptied into the Puyallup that flowed near the University and into Commencement Bay.

Out of the wind, out of the rain, it was almost warm and Simon took his hands out of his pockets. He stood almost a head taller than Habib but he did not loom over the djinni. Habib’s dignified attitude protected him from being cast into shadow by anyone merely human. Many things amused Simon and he smiled at this, too.

“Just another day in Paradise,” he said, gesturing at the rainscape.

“Indeed,” said Habib, nodding without visible irony.

“Speaking of which,” said Simon, “I read up on those houris you mentioned.”

Habib frowned. “I guess you are human after all. But we can think about that later, I am ready to do this thing now.”

“Here?” said Simon. He wiped a finger across one of the bolted down steel-and-timber trestle tables, it came away grimy. “The place is a mess.”

“I could conjure chairs for us,” Habib offered. “Clean, dry ones.”

“I can stand,” said Simon. “But we’re visible here from the hotel.”

Habib shook his head. “Not if I don’t wish us to be.”

A sheet of rain blew between them and the larger building and Simon turned around at the noise. He couldn’t see the hotel and of course, no one there could see anyone in the Folly.

“But I am willing and able to stand, as well, Simon.” He rubbed his palms together thoughtfully, staring at the window. “I shall do this thing,” he said.

The hair on Simon’s neck and arms stood up and he turned again to face Habib. The smaller man’s face seemed lit by some inner light and his green eyes had darkened almost to black.

Habib’s voice seemed deeper, more resonant as he spoke, like a special effect in a movie. “I reach through the worlds by my magic,” he said. “I claim for my master a piece of the Star of Power.” He made a sudden gesture and pulled back his closed fist then opened it, showing his palm and a glistening, pulsing, dark glow there.

Simon gasped and almost took a step back. Things poofing in and out were one kind of magic, this was something different.

“Only touch it, Simon,” said Habib, “and you will have your wish.”