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the kitchen floor or go to work. Grand ambitions really aren’t my style.’
    â€˜They don’t have to be all that grand,’ Kiss suggested. ‘In fact, something modest but time-consuming would suit me down to the ground. A complete collection of
Bing Crosby records, for example; or better still, a determination on your part to have lunch in all the wine-bars in the Southern Hemisphere. I could handle that, if you could.’
    Jane removed the straw from a fruit-juice carton and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘I suppose I ought to make the world a better place. Eliminate nuclear weapons, irrigate the deserts of Northern Africa, that sort of -’
    â€˜Oh dear, not again ,’ Kiss sighed. ‘Sorry, but if I see one more North African desert, I shall probably be sick.’
    â€˜Oh. ‘ Jane looked startled. ‘You mean you already . . . ?’
    â€˜We all have,’ Kiss sighed, ‘at one time or another. One of humanity’s more predictable requests, I’m afraid. Exactly as predictable, in fact, as causing famine, pestilence and floods, which is Mankind’s other great preoccupation. That’s why we have the Concurrency Agreement. It was worked out by the Union, what, three thousand years ago, and just as well, in my opinion.’
    Jane demanded footnotes.
    â€˜Simple,’ Kiss explained. ‘Suppose you have, say, fifty genies. You can bet your life that at any one time twenty-five of them are going to be indentured to do-gooders, let-the-deserts-bloom types; and the other twenty-five will be working for psychotic maniacs. We just set off one against the other, and things remain exactly as they are. Saves a lot of aggravation in the long run, and of course it gives your lot something to do into the bargain. Flag days, jumble sales, fighting wars, that sort of thing.’
    â€˜I see. How very depressing.’
    â€˜It is, rather. So, if you want me to convert the Nullarbor plain into a swaying forest of Brussels sprouts, just say the word, but you mustn’t count on them staying there for
more than a fiftieth of a second, if that. The rules are very strict.’
    â€˜Fine. I think I’d like to go home now, please.’
    â€˜Your wish is my -’
    â€˜Do you have to keep saying that?’
    â€˜Unfortunately, yes.’

CHAPTER TWO
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    A hot-air balloon bobbing uncertainly over a desert landscape.
    Inside the balloon, a man and a girl, surveying the view with binoculars. There’s nothing to be seen except sand and, in the far distance, huge rocky outcrops. No signs of life whatsoever. That suits the man and the girl perfectly.
    The girl stoops down and picks up a metal cylinder, like a steel thermos flask. She opens it and rolls into the palm of her hand a single seed, no bigger than a grape pip. It sits, heavy for its size, in the soft skin of her hand. It looks, if anything that small and inert can manage such a feat, smug.
    â€˜Well?’ asks the man. He has to shout because of the roaring of the wind, but his shout is so full of awe that it sounds like an extremely loud whisper; as if he was talking to a very deaf person in a cathedral.
    â€˜Here’s as good a place as any,’ replies the girl. ‘Let’s go for it.’
    She leans over the side and reels for a second at the sight of so much nothing between her and the ground; then she deliberately opens her palm and lets the seed fall.

    The seed falls . . .
    And hits the ground.
    WHUMP!
    Was it a seed, or was it a bomb? Difficult to tell; there’s a mushroom-shaped cloud standing up from the desert floor . . .
    But that’s not smoke or dust, that’s foliage; a huge, thick stem supporting a giant bud -
    - which bursts into a hot-flame-yellow flower with a raging red centre. The flower lifts towards the sun - you expect it to roar and shake its head like a lion - and the plant raises its two broad,