It is a good night: fun, raucous, a few fights, nothing much, until the beer runs out and the steam they brew appears, and the police arrive in a blaze of threats and noise and flashing lights. Jericho doesn’t know what it is that they want – nothing, it seems – but there’s shouting and lining people up until, just as suddenly, they leave. Everyone sinks into despondency, the steam they’re drinking is evil stuff, made of bad thoughts; fights begin, the old people grumbling that it wasn’t like this when the Australians were here. Even Young Albert is praising the order of colonial times, until Presley says, no, they were no good, remember, they called us bois, the elders and the chiefs, and they took what they wanted, bastard Australians, and now they’re trying to get back, still bullying us and taking our trees.

He lies down on the ground and goes to sleep, but before he does, he opens his eyes, squints at Jericho. ‘You go to your house now,’ he says. ‘Go with Young Albert.’ He chuckles, a dark, ominous chuckle – Jericho has never heard its like – and closes his eyes.

Jericho walks down the road with Young Albert, who stops a truck that drops him in town. He limps back to Laedi’s feeling sick. The steam is burning a hole in his gut. The road up the hill to the house is steep; he thinks he won’t make it before the diarrhoea strikes. Lights shine on the dark water of the harbour, and the sight of them brings him a faint memory of starry nights he’s known in another existence, lived mainly on canvas.

The house is quiet. Laedi is still at the official reception. There’s no one there except for an old lady in the kitchen. She gives Jericho a yam. ‘Good for watershit,’ she says.

THE NEXT MORNING YOUNG ALBERT AND NAPO ARE AT THE GUARD post outside Laedi’s house. They’ve come to talk business. Jericho’s head aches. He makes coffee, real coffee, and they look doubtfully into their cups, spoon in the sugar. ‘Bisnis’, they say. The guesthouse. The chiefs. Young Albert has his business plan out on the table.

Jericho looks at the rows of figures. ‘It won’t work,’ he says, as blunt as that, and Young Albert fixes him with an unblinking gaze. Napo leans across, and in a low voice says something that Jericho cannot understand, though he sees – he thinks he sees – disdain in those watchful eyes.

Young Albert nods, then tells him again that the chiefs said he would return, this time adding that now there will be prosperity on the mountain, they will have money for blankets and lamps. Now they will grow cash crops like vanilla; the price of coffee will go up, and they will install a radio phone. Young Albert smiles a wide smile. ‘We finish with peanuts now,’ he says. ‘Peanuts are no good. Big work, small money.’ There is a buzzing sound in Jericho’s ears, as if his head is full of night insects. He says nothing. There is nothing he can say.