A genie can become a human.

Think about it. Never to be able to fly again; never to uproot mountains or conjure up storms, change shape, travel through time, work magic. To forswear eternal life, and accept the inevitably of old age and death. To throw away divinity and embrace mortality, and all for love.

A hiding to nothing, in fact.

But the option exists; and it’s a basic rule of life in an infinite universe that if something is possible, no matter how dangerous, unpleasant or downright idiotic it might be, sooner or later some fool will do it. Because it’s there.

Or because they have no choice.

While we’re on the subject of genies, consider this. Given that genies are by temperament cruel, arbitrary, uncaring, destructive and deeply interested in wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, isn’t it inevitable that at least some of them should end up in the legal profession?

The offices of Messrs Fretten and Swindall are on the fifth floor of a large Chianti bottle with a hole drilled in the side and a bulb stuck in the neck, somewhere in the fashionable suburbs of Baghdad. This is no dog-and-stick operation over a chemist’s shop in the High Street; even the receptionist is a Force Nine genie, with the power to harness the winds, raise the dead from their graves and convince callers that Mr Fretten really is on the other line and will call them back as soon as he’s free.

(A staggering achievement, considering that Mr Fretten has been imprisoned in an empty gin bottle on a back shelf of the golf-club bar ever since Jesus Christ was a teenager; but there it is. There are at least two callers who have been holding for six hundred years.)

Hoping very much that wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice meant just that, Kiss made an appointment and took a strong easterly trade wind to Baghdad. Having given his coat to the receptionist, handed over a bottomless purse by way of a payment on account and read the March 1453 edition of the National Geographic from cover to cover, he was ushered into Mr Swindall’s office and permitted to sit down.

“It’s like this,” he said. He explained.

“You’re stuffed,” said Mr Swindall, a big, fat bald Force Twelve with six chins. “Completely shafted. He’s got you on the sharp end of a very long pointy stick and there’s bog all you can do about it. Forty thousand years in a Tizer bottle will seem like paradise compared to what you’re about to go through.”

“Oh.”

Mr Swindall grinned. “As neat a piece of buggeration as I’ve ever been privileged to hear about,” he went on. “You’ve got to hand it to this friend of yours, he really knows how to insert the red-hot poker. If he came in here tomorrow I’d offer him a job like a shot.”

“I see.” Kiss frowned. “I thought you’re supposed to be on my side,” he said.

Mr Swindall nodded. “Oh, I am,” he said. “One hundred and twelve per cent. But face facts, you’re dead in the water this time. Won’t do yourself any favours by burying your head in the sand.” Mr Swindall rubbed his hands together. “Now then, first things first. You’d better make a will.”

“Had I?”

“Absolutely.” The lawyer nodded, setting his chins swinging. “After all, now that you’re going to snuff it — pretty damn soon by our standards — it’s imperative that you set your affairs in order. In fact, you’re going to need some pretty high-level tax planning advice while you’re at it, because there’ll be none of this beyond-the-dreams-of-avarice stuff once you’re one of Them.” A slight cloud of worry crossed Mr Swindall’s shiny face. “You did pay in advance, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all right, then. Next you’ll be needing somewhere to live, so I’ll just give you a copy of our house buyer’s special offer package; and it’ll be some time before you get used to not being invulnerable any more, so we’ll put your name down for a couple of personal injury actions in advance. It’s a good scheme, this one; it means you can start paying for the lawyers’ fees before you have the accident. Ah, yes,” said Mr Swindall, rubbing his hands together and grinning like a hyena, “we’ll be able to provide you with a full range of legal services before you’re very much older, you mark my words.”

“I see. Thank you very much.”

“Don’t mention it. Oh yes, and of course there’ll be the divorce as well…”

“The div…”

Mr Swindall smiled sadly. “You don’t think it’ll last, do you? Be realistic, please. Ninety-nine-point-seven per cent of marriages between supernaturals and mortals don’t last out the year, so if I were you I’d put a deposit down now while you’ve still got a few bob in your pocket. Much easier that way.”

Kiss raised his hand. “Just a minute,” he said. “Before we get completely carried away…”

“We are also,” Mr Swindall interrupted quickly, “authorised by the Divine Law Society to conduct investment business, so if you’ll just fill in this simple questionnaire…”

“Before,” Kiss insisted, “we get completely carried away, what’s the procedure for doing this…?”

“The renunciation of eternal life?” Mr Swindall opened a drawer and pulled out a thick sheaf of forms. “Piece of cake. You just fill these out, in quadruplicate, and take them with the prescribed fee to the offices of the Supreme Court between 9.15 and 9.25 on the first Wednesday in any month, and six months later you’ll have to attend a short hearing in front of the District Seraph…”

It took Mr Swindall twenty-seven minutes to describe the procedure.

“It’s as simple as that,” he concluded. “And if you run into any problems along the way, just give me a shout and I’ll put you back on the right lines. Now, where were we? Oh, yes. For a mere thirty per cent commission, I can put you on to some very nice unit trusts which ought…”

“The forms, please.”

“You don’t want to hear about the breathtaking new equities portfolio we’re putting together for a select few specially favoured clients?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Mr Swindall frowned. “Oh well, sod you, then. The receptionist will give you the final bill on your way out.”

Organising a plague of locusts, even if you’re a Force Twelve genie, is several light years away from a doddle, as anyone who’s ever organised anything will readily appreciate.

First, catch your locusts. Actually producing nine hundred million locusts wasn’t a problem. Let there be locusts! And there were locusts.

A plague of locusts. The phrase trips easily off the tongue. But consider this. The average locust needs a certain amount of food each day, or it dies. Nine hundred million locusts, gathered together in one spot awaiting distribution in plague form, need nine hundred million times that amount. Neglect to provide nine hundred million packed lunches, and before very long you’ll have a plague of nine hundred million dead locusts; untidy, but no real long-term threat to humanity.

Another point to bear in mind is that locusts are in practice nothing more than the sports model of the basic production grasshopper; and grasshoppers hop. Up to six feet, when the mood takes them. Trying to keep nine hundred million of the little tinkers together long enough to organise properly structured devastation parties is, in consequence, not a job for the faint-hearted. Furthermore, they chirp. They stridulate. The sound they produce is extremely similar in pitch, frequency and tone to the sound of fingernails on a blackboard. Nine hundred million locusts stridulating simultaneously takes noise pollution into a whole new dimension.

Half an hour into the plague, Philly Nine was beginning to wish he’d gone with the flow and specified a plague of frogs instead.

The final straw was the huge flock of ibises which suddenly appeared, hovering in the air just out of genie stone-throwing range and darting in whenever Philly’s back was turned to gorge themselves on the biggest free lunch in ibis history. The few who overdid it to such an extent that they were unable to get off the ground again met with appropriate retribution; but there were plenty more where they came from.