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By Root 612 0

were very strong here. I found three grubby tumblers, and while I poured we heard the sound of Marcus coughing, clearing his throat and spitting, then the rush of water from a tap. He reappeared with a brimming beaker in his free hand, manoeuvring awkwardly with his stick around the obstacles, and I wondered what kind of safety risk he must be, handling chemicals. I took the beaker and slopped a little water into Anna’s and my drinks. Marcus pivoted himself down into his throne and shook his head at the water, gulping at the Scotch neat. The glow from the lamp at his elbow picked out his Adam’s apple, working like a piston in his corded throat as he swallowed greedily. His eyes seemed enlarged in his skull, the lowered lids more hooded.

‘What can I do for you?’

‘It’s the same thing as we came about last time,’ I said. ‘We’ve been to Lord Howe Island.’

His eyes snapped open. ‘Have you now?’

‘Yes. We know, Marcus.’

‘Know? Know what?’

‘About the eggs …’

He made a baffled face. ‘Eggs?’

I shook my head impatiently. ‘Yes, about you stealing rare eggs from the breeding grounds.’

He just stared at me, impassive, and I thought, well, if we’re going to play poker.

‘And about other things.’

I reached into my jacket pocket and brought out the phasmid, taped to a piece of card, and got up and put it in his lap without a word.

He blinked with shock when he realised what it was.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘It was in Luce’s chalk bag, on Balls Pyramid.’

‘You’ve been on Balls Pyramid?’

‘Yes. And we’ve talked to Bob Kelso and Damien. They’ve told us everything.’

‘Ah, then you do know.’ He stared sadly at the remains of the insect. ‘You do know.’

He sucked in a deep breath and said, ‘You mustn’t blame them. It was all my fault. They only wanted to protect me. If only I’d told my friends that there could be no eggs this time, or else told Luce about it, as I told the others. But I was ashamed, you see. Shame.’ He gave a bitter smile. ‘It was the very first thing Adam and Eve experienced after the Fall, remember? After they’d tasted of the fruit of knowledge. The original human emotion. I could tell the others about the eggs, and persuade them it was all right—I could even persuade myself—but I couldn’t tell Luce. She was like my original self, long ago, before the compromises. Her faith in me was quite terrifying, you see. So she didn’t understand, and that was how the tragedy happened.’

‘Didn’t understand what? That you were a crook?’

‘Oh, Josh, really. The eggs were nothing. Those grey ternlets and Kermadec petrels are probably doomed anyway. They started their decline when we showed up on the scene, two hundred years ago. Don’t you get it yet? Didn’t Luce teach you anything? We are a curse, a plague upon the earth; we’re too many, too greedy and too smart. And we don’t want to die. We just don’t want to die. Which was why Luce had to. That’s what this was all about.’

Now he’d lost me. He saw the puzzlement on our faces and said, ‘The phasmids.’

I shook my head, and he said, ‘Didn’t Damien tell you about the phasmids?’

‘You wanted to sell them too,’ I guessed.

He smiled. ‘Well, they certainly were a very desirable commodity—the rarest insect, the rarest invertebrate indeed, on the planet. Worth a great deal of money. My friend on the yacht was beside himself when he heard about it. The irony is that it was Luce who told him. She was chatting to him at the party, thinking he was just a pleasant, ignorant American visitor, interested in our native wildlife, and she mentioned the phasmid, and how there was a chance it still survived on Balls Pyramid. He tackled me about it soon after, insistent, very insistent, that we check it out, and I let slip that we were doing just that. I’m afraid I didn’t realise quite how ruthless a businessman he was. I had to do a lot of hard thinking, and was up half the night making preparations. And to make matters worse, Luce must have overheard something that evening, because she spoke to Damien later, and he was convinced she suspected that the rest of us were involved in something she