‘Oh, what a bloody idiotic thing to do, what on earth was she thinking,’ Ron said. ‘Broken hip—for an old person that’s the beginning of the end.’

THIS PART

BIRD’S EYE

Bird’s eye

Five steps ahead? They flatter me.

It is a little-publicised burden of being an evil genius that we are never happy. Some of us dislike being called evil. I am the other: I object to being called a genius. Their thinking me evil represents a failure of their courage, which is no news. But I cannot stand them calling me a genius. I am blunter than I used to be, duller than I think I am, and less calculating than they take me for. For them to think that of me is a failure of compassion. It is lonely up here.

Ask me what is inside their heads, and all I can do is echo my legal adviser: I don’t fucking know. Bluebird is what it is, and these people are what they are. Up here in the sky, I can only take them as I find them: on the wrong side of history, worth one good look before they go. Ronald is out for the count, and here goes Norma, and oh boy, is he right about a woman’s hips being the beginning of the end.

First the hips, then the entire race. Twenty years from now, these will be the lost Australian Incas. And they don’t have a clue. Except for Gordon, who knows maybe too much about being on the wrong side of unseen forces. Yet what does he do? His sincere belief that the world is turning to shit has paralysed him, turned him into history’s limp bystander. He’s going down big time, and yet he’s still going to separate his rubbish and walk rather than drive, he’s still going to feel bad about not seeing his mother more often, he’s still going to fight for his doomed Lodge because, you know, why can’t you do the right thing inside your little helpless man-sized soul?

And I love him for that.

And so does Kelly, so does Ben, so does Lou, so does Sam, so do his cronies. They can’t help it.

But to love Gordon is not to know him, and to inhabit his days is to get no closer to what I must know.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

Alas, he won’t tell me, and loving him is an obstacle to knowing him.

As Norma might say, Enough about me; now what do you think of me?

I must change my avatar. I am no scavenging seagull, no predatory hawk, no death-loving vulture. Certainly I am no ugly wicked witch—all this (indicating the work I have had done) did not come for nothing!

To know Gordon, I must know them. I must stop trying to influence events and instead observe and record. I must remove my emotions. I must spy into their souls. I must venture boldly into foreign lands. I must be the mechanical eye in the cerulean Bluebird sky.