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you?’
    The man says nothing; instead, he grabs for the third flask and hugs it to him. As the girl reaches for it, he backs away; forgetting that backing space in the basket of a balloon is strictly limited. Safe backing space, anyway.
    â€˜AAAaaaaaaah!’ he remarks.
    As he hits the ground (at which point, his troubles are definitively over) the flask is jolted out of his hand and flies wide, landing on a rock and smashing to pieces. A tiny, tiny seed, no bigger than a grain of salt, falls on to the flat stone -
    WHUMP!
    - which explodes into gravel as the third and finest
achievement of Operation Urban Renewal springs into instantaneous life. Its roots plough through the compacted sand like a torpedo through water as the single grotesque pod, the like of which hasn’t been seen on earth since Hieronymus Bosch’s window-box was destroyed by the Inquisition, splits and falls away, revealing a flower -
    - You have to call it a flower, because botany is a naïve, trusting science which never for one moment imagined that anything like this could happen. A terrible, hideous flower, with jowls and warts and fangs and a big, purple lolling tongue -
    - which tilts backwards towards the sun, and spits.
    This is Viola Aeschrotata , the Hammerhead Pansy; proof, if any were needed, that the business of Creation is best left to the professionals. With a ghastly sucking noise, it ups roots and lurches at a terrific pace towards the other two flowers -
    - who stop dead in their tracks, waggle their stamens and stare. A few seconds before, they had been marching grimly towards each other, with the express intention of pulling each other’s leaves off. Now they exchange frightened glances, corolla to corolla. Jesus Christ, they are saying, what the fuck is that ?
    Pull yourself together, for crying out loud, empathises the Primrose. So long as we stick together, the two of us can have it for breakfast. What are you, a flower or a mouse?
    But the Forget-Me-Not is backing away, its blossoms peeping out from behind its leaves. The hell with that, it broadcasts, have you seen the hairs on that thing? You want to be a hero, chum, be my guest. I’m -
    With a lightning flurry of roots, the Pansy springs; and the Forget-Me-Not discovers, rather too late, just how
incredibly quickly it can cover the ground on its enormous scaffolding of roots. There is a sickening plopping noise as, by sheer bulk, it crushes the Forget-Me-Not into the ground. The flower cranes on its stem and darts forward; the petals close; the carcase of the Forget-Me-Not shudders convulsively, and slumps.
    In the balloon, the girl nods her head in unbounded satisfaction; and then, just to be on the safe side, has a good long pull on the hot-air burner.
    For the Primrose, the desert is suddenly a very big, very open, very lonely place. The Pansy rises to the tips of its roots, swaying slightly; there is sap all round the bell of its flower.
    OK. There is an infinity of magnificently pointless bravado in the vibes thrown out by the Primrose, as it rocks back on its roots and crouches, in a floral version of the classic knife-fighter’s stance. Come on, weed, make my day.
    No responding vibes from the Pansy; nothing at all. It emanates a vast negative aura, like a lawn-mower or a watering-canful of DDT. Every hair on the Primrose’s leaves is standing on end.
    Look. We can talk about this. The world’s big enough for the two of us.
    We’re on the same side, you and me. Wildflowers united can never be uprooted.
    Il faut cultiver notre jardin .
    But from the Pansy, nothing. And now it has begun to move; slowly, rootlet by rootlet, dragging up vast moraines of sand and dust as it comes . . .
    Sod you, then, the Primrose snarls, as its leaves pucker in horror. Go climb a trellis.
    Ten or twelve seconds later, when it’s all over, the Pansy
swivels its flower and looks around, until it is satisfied that there’s nothing else alive within