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the day the message arrived from
     Tokyo, very clearly. His mother had grabbed his hands and danced around their tiny apartment, chanting, ‘We’re going to the
     island of butterflies.’
    And Prabir had pictured the green-and-black insects by the millions, carpeting the ground in place of grass, nesting in the
     trees in place of leaves.
    A month after the coup, Prabir received a message from Eleanor. He closed the door to his hut and lay on his hammock with
     his notepad beside him, turning down the volume until he was certain that no one outside could hear. Themessage was video, as usual, but this time Eleanor hadn’t roamed the city with the camera, or even prowled her own apartment
     cornering her irritated teenage children. She simply sat in her office and spoke. Prabir felt guilty that he’d never been
     able to repay her in kind for the tours of New York, but if he’d owned up to having a suitable camera at his disposal it would
     have been impossible to justify the pure text messages that concealed his true age.
    Eleanor said, ‘Prabir, I’m worried about you. I understand that you don’t want to interrupt your work – and I know how difficult
     and expensive it would be to charter a boat now – but I still hope you’ll reconsider. Will you hear me out?
    ‘I’ve been looking at the latest State Department report on the crisis.’ A URL came through on the data track, and the software
     automatically attempted to open it, but the ground station in Sumatra through which Prabir was connected to the wider world
     was blocking the site. ‘Kopasus troops are being flown in to Ambon; I’m sure you know the kind of things they’ve been doing
     in Aceh and Irian Jaya. And you’re in a typical hiding place for an ABRMS base; I know you’re there with official permission,
     but if you’re relying on bureaucrats in Jakarta to dig up the relevant file and instruct the army to stay out of your way
     … I think that might be a bit too optimistic.’
    Eleanor hunched towards the camera unhappily. ‘This isn’t going to blow over in a month or two; even if the President is restored
     to office, there’s almost nothing the government could do now to put things right. For the past sixty years, people in the
     provinces have tolerated rule from Jakarta so long as there was some token respect for the customary power structures, and
     some token spending on things like health and education in return for all the timber, fishing and mineral rights being handed
     over to the cartels. But after fifteen years of austerity programmes – with every spare rupiah going to subsidise the cost
     of living in the major cities, to stave off riots – the imbalance has become impossible to ignore. Forgetreligious and ethnic differences; the provinces have been bled dry, and they’re not going to put up with it any longer.’
    There was more in the same vein. Prabir listened to it all with a mixture of unease and annoyance. His parents had decided
     that the safest thing to do was stay put, attract no attention, and ride out the storm. Teranesia had no strategic importance,
     so neither side had reason to come here. Who was Eleanor to think she knew better, from twenty thousand kilometres away?
    Still, it was clear that she was genuinely worried about him, and Prabir didn’t like to see her upset. He’d send back a confident,
     up-beat reply that would put her mind at ease … without casting doubt on her conclusions, or questioning her expertise.
    Prabir pressed one foot against the wall of the hut and rocked the hammock gently while he composed his reply. He began by
     mentioning the garden, and how well it was doing, though in truth it was full of starchy native tubers that would probably
     taste like cardboard. ‘Rajendra is weeding it diligently every day. He’s such a good boy!’ He dictated the words to the notepad
     and it converted them into text; he’d almost patched the software to add random typing errors, but