A dirt track led along the coast, north from Georgetown toward Comfortless Cove. That had been the main landing site for the original telegraph cables, and was set to fulfill the same role when fiber optic arrived. Kane followed the path and soon the buildings were behind him and he was in a world without shade. Huge pyramids of rust-red ash appeared from slopes of black cinders. Sometimes these cones appeared solid, other times you could see the surface formed of loose fragments of clinker. Black lava welled from fissures in the paler rock, looking as if it had set just yesterday. Occasional plant life broke through: low, plump prickly pear cacti and a tough grass, flattened by the wind. Then even the cactus plants dwindled and the ground resembled crushed charcoal again. But one growth survived. In the morning glare, the antennae shone so bright they appeared liquid, ascending out of the fire-blasted scene.

After twenty minutes Kane saw a sign: COMFORTLESS COVE.

Black teeth of rock encircled a pristine beach. This was the sheltered side of the island, and the sea was comparatively calm. Only the rocks preserved a moment of violence, and you could see where the lava had plunged into the water. The sea spray looked like steam. The spiky black spines contrasted vividly with the white sand, like a dream and a nightmare refusing to blend. Kane walked across the sand. When it became soft underfoot, he took his shoes off and felt the warm seawater ooze between his toes. He continued until it lapped at his ankles; then he turned around and looked for the cables.

The original nineteenth-century landing point remained only in occasional stumps of cable markers rusted to blankness. But they gave him a start. This was where they’d been dragged ashore. From here, you could see they’d followed the winding path of the ash beds between the impermeable basalt slabs, eventually connecting with the telegraph company office in Georgetown. The fiber-optic project to come had even fewer traces: a sign announcing planned commencement, some preparatory clearance of rocks. But soon this would once again be the gateway for two continents’ worth of voices. It was a patch of ground that occupied the dreams of men and women many miles away, but they would never set foot here. Rory had set foot here. Kane saw him in a long line of imperial servants sweating amid the hallucinatory landscape, feeling their connection to civilization stretched to breaking point.

The fiber-optic cables would come ashore and run along the rocks to a new landing station in Georgetown. But a top-secret offshoot would intercept them a mile offshore and run beneath the seabed, surfacing in a GCHQ processing center due to be built near the US base.