The telephone gave an angry, restless buzz. Percy Coyle was awake at once. The phone stood on a small cradle on a nightstand beside his bed, and it only went off once every few years. It was a direct line to the President of the United States.

“Percy, sorry to wake you.” the President said. “But the boys in SAC are telling me we have something that wasn’t there before. Sounds like it might be in your province.”

The President was half Negro and that both delighted and amazed Percy. Such a thing had been entirely unthinkable when he had entered the service. “Thank you, sir.” He sat up in bed and swung his feet down to the carpeted floor. He didn’t have to worry about disturbing a spouse; Percy lived alone. “I’ll be right in. And as I’ve mentioned when we were introduced, Sir, there’s no need for you to call me yourself. I’m just another soldier after all.”

Percy could hear President smile. “It’s tradition, Percy, and my pleasure. Give my best to Big Blue.”

“Will do, Sir,” Percy said as he disconnected. It was a newer tradition, to be sure. Hayes never came and knocked on Percy’s door, and he’d helped that President twice.

Percy could already sense that Big Blue was in the dark room with him, likely seated in the high-backed chair in the southeast corner of the large bedroom that was his favorite. Percy knew it even before he saw the faint glow of the being’s large yellow eyes.

#

“It’s satellite,” the DIA man explained. “Or maybe a space station. It’s quite sizable.” Percy was in the back of a long limousine, part of a motorcade speeding to the nearest airfield. The spinning lights of their police escort gave a surreal impression to the scene, but Percy supposed that was him showing his age. The Defense Intelligence Agency man was clearly intimidated by Code Name: Big Blue, who reclined beside Percy, taking no part in the debriefing, because of course, he knew all of this already.

“The UFO appeared just three hours ago, in a geosynchronous orbit over the Southeastern United States, specifically the southeast. Florida would be the most exact positioning we could give at this time.”

“Any communication from it yet?” Percy asked.

The DIA man smirked. “It hasn’t stopped, actually. One individual, American by his speech, we guess about 30 years old, but he refuses to use a video channel of any kind, although we have to assume he has the means. Here’s a transcript of what’s been broadcast to us.”

Percy shook his head. “Are other people seeing this?” he asked. “On their televisions or their computers? Or their telephones, their smart telephones?”

“No sir.” the DIA man replied. “His beef--well, he has many beeves it seems, but his main beef seems to be with the United States Government. He called the FBI offices in Miami and was transferred to us when we put the UFO and what he was saying together. He’s been saying all this into their phone lines.”

“Boy, he does go on,” Percy remarked as he fanned the pages he’d been handed.

“He is claiming that if we do not comply with his demands, he’ll begin tungsten rod bombardment of the Eastern Seaboard.” He looked up sheepishly. “Ae you familiar with this sort of weapon?”

“It’s got ‘bombardment’ in the name I assume it’s a kind of missile or nuclear bomb or some such? Launched from space?” Percy could see from the man’s expression that this description was wrong, and the man was aching to explain, but there wasn’t time for such indulgences. “I get it; he has a powerful weapon, and he’ll kill a lot of people if he fires it.” The DIA man nodded. “Okay, what else have we been doing so far?”

“Mostly we’ve been stalling him, but frankly, I’m not sure why he hasn’t done what he’s threatened because we’ve given him nothing concrete yet.” As he spoke the limo jumped as it passed over the tracks of the sliding gate to Langley Field. “We suspect he may not have the weapons he claims.”

Percy shook his head. “No, he has the weapon. They always have the weapon. But he certainly missed something.” Percy was quiet for a heartbeat, then said: “He can’t get down.”

Big Blue smiled from beneath his oversized wraparound sunglasses. “HE CANNOT GET DOWN!” he echoed in his vast, rumbling voice. Then he laughed so ferociously the limo shook. Percy was long accustomed to such outbursts, but his heart went out to the DIA man as he turned sheet white.

“Okay just get me on the telephone with this one,” Percy said, relieved. He hated flying. “No need to fly anywhere. I’ll talk him down.”

“We can do that on the plane,” the DNI man said. He started to say ‘The President wants you nearby,’ but was drowned out as Big Blue said the same words along with him, only far, far more loudly and with tremendous mirth.

#

“Good morning, sir,” Percy said into the microphone. He was on a plane headed to an undisclosed location where the President and his family had been taken, presumably far away from the East Coast. This had become routine: a credible Code Name: Blue threat emerged, and Percy found himself shuttled to close proximity to the President as a safety measure. It was believed that Percy couldn’t be killed, and, therefore, any location he was at became that much safer, although Percy himself thought this an absurd interpretation of the circumstances. “My name is Percy Coyle, and I am a captain in the United States Army.”

“You’re not the President!” the enraged man in orbit high above Florida replied. His southern accent was pronounced, and his fury caused the speaker to crackle.

Percy was undaunted. “That’s true, sir, but we believe that this development falls under my expertise. Just a few questions and if I’m wrong, well, I’m sure whoever follows after me will be more agreeable to your terms.” The angry man in the satellite started to interrupt but choked on his words when Percy said: “So, was the djinn you found in a lamp or a bottle?”

The transcript would show seventeen seconds of silence before the man answered, hesitantly, “It was a genie. It was in a bottle.”

“That’s interesting. We haven’t seen a bottle in almost 50 years. Mine was in a bottle also. Was yours blue?”

“No he wasn’t blue.” was the reply. “Red. Red like fire.”

The DIA man flipped through a binder filled with laminated images and illustrations, but Percy waved him off. He knew what red meant, knew as well as anyone alive did. “Okay, that’s one angry djinni you have there. You might call it a genie, and that’s fine, but they prefer djinn, and manners are important to these beings. Now, is the red djinni still with you?”

“No, he left. What was your name again?”

“I’m Percy Coyle. I work for the federal government.”

“How come I never heard of you?”

“What I do is top secret,” Percy said. “All of this sort of thing, this magic business, is top secret. I do have to ask, are you a Christian?”

“Yessir, I am.”

“Okay, that’s fine. Jinn were created by God from smokeless fire, whereas He created us from mud and earth. You’ve committed no great sin and dealing with such a being, but I do recommend bringing it up at your next confession. I’m not one to judge, but it seems like you may have acted a bit selfishly.”

“I don’t go to church much anymore,” the voice replied.

All of this was very encouraging to Percy, but it was far too early to feel confident. The demands had stopped, and the man hadn’t once mentioned firing a tungsten rod barrage. Percy felt he’d connected enough to move on to more personal questions. “Maybe I can know your name, now, sir? We are part of a very exclusive club, after all.”

“I’m Timothy Dauterive. I’m from Sarasota County.”

“Thank you, Timothy. I’ve been to Florida, it's great country, especially on the Gulf side.” Beside Percy, the DIA man punched Timothy’s name into a computer and data began spewing out of the printer.

“Thank you,” Timothy said, clearly perplexed by the direction the conversation was taking.

“So why a satellite?” Percy asked.

Seven seconds of silence. “It was the genie’s idea, I guess,” Timothy confessed. “I just wanted to change things, make America better, and he said I was going about it wrong.”

“He said if you wish for one thing to be the way you want it, then wish is gone, but if you wish for a way to make things the way you want them, you can change whatever you want to change. Does that sound about right?”

“Yeah, he said something like that. This space station here, I can, I don’t know, hold the whole world hostage. He said no one else had anything like it. I’d be the man in charge.”

“Yup, I see how that makes sense. Did that take all three wishes? The space station?”

Eleven seconds of silence. “It did. One to make it, one to put the weapons on it…”

“And one to get up there,” Percy said. “It’s not your fault, Thomas. The red ones, they are angry, and that anger makes them, well, duplicitous isn’t too strong a word.” He snuck a quick glance at Blue, who didn’t like anyone insulting any breed of djinn. Blue didn’t return the glance, seemingly absorbed in the dials and switches of the onboard radar station of the C-130, much to the consternation of a naval officer standing nearby, but of course, no one asked the hulking djinni to stop touching things.

“Now you say you’re a Christian so I need you to understand this: djinn are not devils or demons, so you haven’t committed a mortal sin in dealing with one of these fellows. But please understand that like devils these red djinnis have a powerful dislike for mortals. Well, to be honest, it is the dislike that makes them red, but you couldn’t know that; this isn’t a thing they teach in school or church.” Percy was starting to enjoy this. He’d favored a Southern accent in his youth but had learned to disguise it when he’d enrolled in The Army of the Potomac and had done so ever since, even when he’d met the southern Presidents, like Carter or the second Johnson, the one from Texas. This Timothy character was so unabashedly Southern that Percy felt the old words and patterns returning as they spoke.

“Was yours red?” Timothy asked.

“No, Timothy I was fortunate. I got a blue one. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but he didn’t mistreat me in any way.” As far as I know, Percy thought but did not confess. “I’m of a mind, Timothy, that believes you want to get down from there. Back to Earth.”

Timothy began to rage again, but only at about 20% of his peak. “I’m not giving this place up until they do what I ask.”

“I understand how you feel,” Percy said. “But you do want to get back here, back to solid ground.” Percy paused for a moment. “Do you have gravity in that place?”

“No,” Timothy replied, putting great frustration into the syllable. “My boots stick to the floor, with Velcro, it’s called? You know the stuff? Sounds like I’m tearing my pants every step. Mostly I float around. It’s not bad.” he added without much conviction.

“Okay, now how about food? Water?” Percy paused, silently exploring how to best serve delicacy with his next question, and then went with “Facilities?”

“Yes! Of course this thing has a toilet!” Timothy replied. Big Blue laughed. “Who the hell is that?” Timothy shouted, rage suddenly at nearing 80% of peak.

Percy sighed. “That’s Blue. I don’t know his actual name, these beings are careful about their names. He’s why I asked if the red was still with you. Blue is the jinn I found. He stuck around, and he helps me sometimes.” This wasn’t entirely true. In their long association, Blue had provided exactly one service: convincing every important federal personage since President Lincoln’s Secretary of War that what Percy Coyle had to say was gospel truth, and Blue accomplished that simply by being there. An almost ten feet tall, blue-skinned, yellow-eyed, black-bearded being with a lower body that often trailed away into a swirling funnel of blue smoke was a difficult sight to dismiss.

“Blue is my partner in our work.” Percy continued. “I was born in 1844, in Virginia, as I’ve said. When the South rose up, I left my home and went north, to fight for the Union. This may put you and me at odds, I suppose, but I never shot anyone so I certainly didn’t serve with any distinction. I was under General Tucker when I found the bottle. We were tearing up railroad tracks in Maryland, and there it was, buried in the ground under the rails. A blue bottle with silver, I don’t know, filigree I guess all over it. It looked expensive, and when I picked it up it felt like it was made of clay instead of glass, and there was something inside of it. It was heavy.”

“Mine too!” Timothy replied. “It was in this house. The lady who owned it had died and we were going to demo the place and…”

Percy let him run on. The finding of the object was always tedious. It was more interesting when the wish had been made on a penny tossed in a well or even an errant ladybug, practices which rarely but occasionally sent work his way. Djinn Percy could understand, at least somewhat. They were oddball creatures with a strange relationship with the laws of the physical world, but they were beings with a will and intelligence. Sure, they often willfully warped the meaning of the gifts they bestowed, but you could attribute the results to the thought process of a living being. Those other means of having a wish granted, however, and the idea that they could ever work at all, flabbergasted him.

Timothy finally got around to discussing the red and Percy tuned in.

“There he was, this giant red fellow, with red and yellow hair like that crazy TV chef? Asking what I wanted, saying it could be anything. So first, I said, ‘OK, let’s get rid of all these Cubans, Mexicans, Haitians, all these illegals cluttering up our country.’ And he was like, ‘Sure but they’ll be new ones here next week…”

Percy put his hand over the microphone and turned to the DIA man. “Can you get him down safely?” he whispered. “Like, with a rocket or something?”

The DIA man shrugged and swiped a number into his phone.

Percy leaned back in his own seat and waited for Timothy to run out of story. Eventually, his turn to talk would come.

To Be Concluded