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final submission please.’
    ‘I’d like to be left alone.’
    ‘Are you sure?’ Sophie opens the file with a sigh and picks up a pencil. ‘I could refrain from prescribing auxiliary measures, I suppose.’
    ‘That would be helpful.’
    ‘On one condition,’ says Sophie. She looks up, pencil poised. ‘From now on you’ll stay out of trouble.’
    ‘I’ll try.’
    ‘No, Frau Holl. You will do more than try. This is an official warning. Give me your word.’
    Mia raises an eyebrow, then raises her hand.
    ‘There’s no need to worry,’ she says.

Pointed Horns: Part I
     
    WE’RE GOING TO switch tenses for a while. Mia finds it painful to think of her brother in the past tense, but the rest of us will be fine.
    ‘There’s no need to worry,’ said Moritz.
    ‘You smell funny,’ said Mia.
    ‘I smell
good
. I smell human.’
    ‘Your future partner might not think so.’
    ‘Let me tell you a secret. So far my future partners have found me pretty hot.’ He grabbed her hand. ‘Come on.’
    ‘Moritz! Can’t you see?’ she protested. ‘The path ends
here
!’
    ‘It always has done!’
    There followed a tug of war, with Moritz grabbing Mia and dragging her along with both hands until she came of her own accord. Ducking under low-hanging branches, they tramped through the undergrowth. The path belonged to them. Beside the river was a little clearing shaded by trees. Moritz called it ‘our cathedral’. A place of prayer, he liked to say. By prayer, he meant talking, saying nothing and fishing. Mia didn’t approve of raising the stakes: she liked talking to her brother without it being a religion.
    Moritz pulled some fishing line from his bag and snapped a branch from a tree. In no time he had sat down on the grass and cast his line; Mia was still unfolding a tissue to sit on. For a while they watched the water flowing by incessantly while the river remained exactly the same.
    ‘Claudia?’ enquired Mia.
    ‘That was her name.’
    ‘Well?’
    ‘Lovely girl – an expert at deep-throating. You know what that is?’
    Mia held up a hand to stop him. ‘I don’t want to know, thank you. You must be running out of immunologically compatible partners. How many have you got left?’
    ‘Oh, 3.4 million or thereabouts. The Central Partnership Agency is the world’s biggest brothel keeper – the crooked guardian of the gates to paradise.’
    Still holding his makeshift fishing rod in one hand, Moritz stretched out his arms and put on a saccharine voice: ‘Step forward, please. Major histocompatibility complex class B11. Slim hips, brown hair, twenty-four years of age, perfect health. Premium goods.’
    ‘Who’s next, then?’
    ‘Kristine. An absolute dream girl.’
    ‘Promise you’ll take her seriously.’
    ‘Doesn’t it go without saying?’ Moritz grinned. ‘Seriousness is the first rule of pleasure. Anyway, how are you getting on with your sixteen-legged microbes?’
    ‘Microbes don’t have legs.’ Mia poked him in the ribs. ‘Actually, we’re making good progress. Once I’ve—’
    ‘Look out!’
    Mia stiffened as her brother dropped his rod and grabbed her by the shoulders. There was rustling from the undergrowth on the opposite bank.
    ‘Over there!’ shouted Moritz in mock panic. ‘A great big bacteria with pointed horns!’
    ‘Don’t be an idiot!’ Mia laughed and wiped her brow. ‘It was only a deer.’
    ‘Precisely.’
    ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever understand what you want from life.’
    ‘That reminds me … Want to hear something? It’s especially for you.’
    Moritz reached for his hygiene mask, which was hanging around his neck, and placed it on his head like an Alice band; then he picked up his rod.
    ‘In my dreams,’ he intoned, ‘I see a city made for living, where the houses have rusty antennae like spiky hair. Where owls live in the beams of tumbledown attics. Where loud music and twisting ciphers of smoke rise from the upper floors of dilapidated factories,