‘You think so?’ Judd fixed him with a sharp eye. He leaned forward. ‘And could such a man destroy a signal box and ransack its contents and conspire to wreck a train?’

Alasdair leaned back warily—he would master this damned chair; it would not be master of him! ‘If driven to it, no doubt. And who, precisely, do you believe they are, the fellows perpetrating these outrages?’

Judd spread both hands, palms up. ‘A well-organised, funded and ruthless gang who will stop at nothing to disrupt the bill … Or one opium-addled malefactor with a grudge. Who can say?’

Alasdair got impatiently to his feet. ‘But it is ludicrous! Does the public vote for or against Federation because a signal box is destroyed, a railway line incapacitated?’

‘The act is an end in itself,’ said Judd patiently. ‘Destruction, fear, chaos—it is its own objective. A civilised and democratic vote on a question of nationhood is anathema to such men. The outcome of the vote is irrelevant; it is the process itself they wish to destroy.’ And the very calmness of his voice as he outlined this dystopian vision was chilling. One might be discussing railway timetables.

Alasdair gazed out of the window at the kitchen orderlies and the currawongs. He snorted derisively so that Judd should be in no doubt as to his opinion. But his thoughts went to revolutionaries in Riga and Moscow who threw bombs at the Czar, who blew up railway lines, who destroyed telegraph lines—their aim was to change the regime and, presumably, once this was achieved, they wished to create a new regime in its place. Or was that not the aim? Was it simply destruction? And were these men now come to New South Wales?

He turned back to the old man. ‘But this is not Russia, Judd, and Englishmen do not do such things.’

‘We are not in England.’

Alasdair dismissed this. ‘It amounts to the same thing.’ He resumed his seat. He wished Judd gone. ‘We are a nation that decides its fate in parliamentary debate, in gatherings of men in municipal halls.’

Judd shifted again, closing and opening his fist, spreading the fingers each time as though they were stiff. ‘Feelings are running high, Dunlevy.’