Eremiah, or rather Baldwin Rufus, was no longer from Bougainville with a mining company to fight, but a boy from a village like Milton’s, on the plain under the mountain, where the plantations were making their stealthy march. Milton knew nothing of mining companies and had never been to Bougainville; the fight was too serious to fake. But he knew the humiliations of his own people, the old men who watched their sons work on the labour line. When he heard the story about the plantation manager found dead beside the bottle, he rejoiced, improving on a man who (in Milton’s version) called himself ‘king’, not in memory of Martin Luther King, but in praise of his own reign. Dead on the floor! Perfect! What better stage for a rebellion, for the smouldering workers, who were young enough and educated enough to know the difference between a regent and a Baptist preacher. Let them take over the plantation. What better place to raise the bird of paradise flag. An autonomous republic! A republic of intellectuals! Why not? The first of the federated states of Melanesia! From Popondetta, Baldwin Rufus could march on Moresby, over the Kokoda Track, gathering recruits, arriving on the eve of self-government to find the town in turmoil, rising up against the new shape given to it by a new government in Australia. The offices would empty. The university would stand firm. The docks would come to a standstill. Logs would be placed over the airport runway.

So Milton was in Moresby looking for signs of revolt, and there weren’t any. Hohola was quiet. Many of the women and children had gone back to their villages, or to camp out of town, safe from marauding Highlanders who, in fact, stayed in the settlements playing cards. There weren’t even any drunks around. The pubs and hotels had been closed for three days and squads of police were patrolling the streets. The university was calm: no leaders practising their rhetoric there. No crowds gathering. No students reading aloud from Marx or Malcolm X. Oh well, he said to Laedi, if there wasn’t material out there on the streets, imagination would have to serve in its place – which, for art, he supposed, was right. But he still had one ear cocked to the audience that had once cheered him in Melbourne. And that posed a problem. Would they believe a novel if it was too fanciful? The real place had to be somewhere on the page, or no one would believe and take notice. On the other hand, he couldn’t have those Melbourne bastards thinking the place had lain down and taken it, whatever it was that Australia dished out. Bugger that. In fact, he said to Laedi, bugger art. Maybe you have to be in Africa, where there are coups and massacres.

Laedi told him to take a shower. Bili said there was no way she was going to live in Africa.