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.

I am no evil genius. I am but a humble drone.

CRICKET

Cricket

What Benjamin Grimes couldn’t tell anyone, more than he couldn’t tell them how often he wanked or who he thought about while he did (seven to eleven times a week, Japan Ned, Tonsure Man, occasionally Dog’s wife Sally, briefly the six-time state champ and back to Japan Ned), was that he still believed he would play cricket for Australia.