‘I would, and I won’t agree to it,’ Goodwill said.

‘That is not your decision to make, cousin.’

‘With respect, cousin, you would not be here had I not told you what Ysbel and I found.’

‘And you would not be here if it were not for the hopper, which is under my command.’

Goodwill and Juniper were staring at each other, hackles bristling.

Ysbel said, ‘We’re all in this together. The Other Mother invited us here so that she could tell us our story. You need to tell it to your people; I need to tell it to mine.’

‘And if you make Ysbel your prisoner, you’ll have to explain yourself to the Other Mother,’ Goodwill told Juniper.

‘Only if she has won the battle,’ Juniper said. ‘If that was what it was.’

Ysbel had dropped the scorched carcass of the bot at her feet; now she kicked it across sand and vine strands towards Juniper, saying, ‘Do you want to gamble that she didn’t?’

In the end, they agreed that Ysbel and Goodwill would cross to the mainland in the company of the tall, impassive aide Stand Fast.

‘Find out everything you can,’ Juniper said, ‘and come straight back. And if you find the hopper, don’t think you can fly away. The pilot is staying here, with me.’

They waited until low tide before they set out. Swimming hard to get away from the shore of the island, drifting for a short while in a current that carried them in the direction of the river mouth, then striking out again, towing lumpy nets of coconuts behind them. They swam and rested, bobbing on their makeshift floats like otters, and swam and rested. Goodwill and Stand Fast, kicking frogwise, were surprisingly strong swimmers. Ysbel had to push herself to keep up. Sunlight scorched her scalp and face; saltwater stung her nostrils, parched her lips. She tried and failed not to think of antediluvian predators patrolling the blue depths beneath her.

For a long time the line of the coast, appearing and disappearing in the gentle swell, seemed to grow no nearer, but at last Ysbel’s feet touched bottom and she and Goodwill and Stand Fast waded out of the water onto a sand bank and sat there for a little while, looking across the sparkling blue sea towards the island. Ysbel’s trews and shirt shed every drop of water, and Goodwill’s and Stand Fast’s clothes soon dried in the hot sunlight, wrinkled and patched with salt stains. At last, Stand Fast remarked that they seemed to have swum hardly any distance at all, and stood up. ‘No time to laze about. We have work to do.’