Nation

are cannon up there.”
    “Well, all right, yes,” muttered Daphne, stumbling over her own anger. “They’re just for show.” The rage flamed up again. “But those guns aren’t! Put them down!”
    His Excellency nodded at the men, who put their muskets, very carefully but also very quickly, down on the sand. Milo had just walked onto the beach to see what the fuss was about, and he tended to loom.
    “And the flag!” said Daphne.
    “Just hold on to it, Evans, if you would be so kind,” said His Excellency. “Look, dear, we mean no harm to these, er”—he glanced up at Milo—“ nice people, but we must back up our claim to the Mothering Sunday Islands. We hold that they are just an extension of the Bank Holiday Monday Islands—”
    “Who’s we? You?”
    “Well, ultimately the king—”
    “He can’t have this one!” Daphne screamed. “He doesn’t need it! He can’t have it! He hasn’t finished with Canada yet!”
    “Dear, I think the privations of your time on this island may have affected you in some way—” His Excellency began.
    Daphne took a step backward. “Privations? There is nowhere I would rather have been than here! I’ve helped babies to be born! I killed a man—”
    “The one whose leg you sawed off?” asked her father, mystified.
    “What? Him? No, he’s doing very well,” said Daphne, waving a hand dismissively. “The one I killed was a murderer. And I’ve made beer. Really good beer! Father, you must listen right now. It’s very important that you understand right now . This is the other end of the world, Father, it really is. This is the beginning. This…is the place where you might grant God absolution.”
    She hadn’t meant it to come out. He stood there, stunned.
    She added: “I’m sorry. You and Grandmother were shouting so loud that night and I couldn’t help overhearing,” and, since there was no point in being deceitful at a time like this, she also added, “Especially since I was trying hard to.”
    He looked up at her, his face gray. “What is so special about this place?” he asked.
    “There’s a cave. It’s got wonderful carvings in it. It’s ancient. It may be more than a hundred thousand years old.”
    “Cavemen,” said His Excellency calmly.
    “I think there are star maps on the ceiling. They invented…well—practically everything. They sailed all over the world when we huddled around our fires. I can prove it, I think.” Daphne took her father’s hand. “There’s still some oil in the lamps,” she said. “Let me show you. Not you! ” she added as the guards sprang to attention. “ You will stay here. And no one is to take over anyone’s country while we’re gone, is that understood?”
    The men looked at His Excellency, who shrugged vaguely, a man who had been thoroughly daughtered.
    “Whatever she says, of course,” he said.
    His daughter took his hand and said, “Come and see.”
    They started off up the path but were not out of earshot when Pilu walked up to the soldiers and said, “Would you like some beer?”
    “Don’t let them drink it until they have spat in it and sung ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ sixteen times” was the order from on high, followed by, “and tell them we need lamp oil.”
     
    The first thing her father said when he saw the gods was “My goodness!” Then, after staring at things with his mouth open, he managed to say, “Incredible! All this belongs in a museum!”
    She couldn’t let him get away with that one, and she said, “Yes, I know. That’s why it is, in fact, in one.”
    “And who will look at it down here?”
    “Anyone who wants to come and see, Papa. And that will mean every scientist in the world.”
    “It’s a long way from anywhere important, though,” His Excellency observed, running his fingers over the stone globe.
    “No, Papa. This is the important place. It’s everywhere else that is a long way away. Anyway, that wouldn’t matter to the Royal Society. They would swim up here in lead boots!”
    “ Down here, dear, I think,” said her father.
    Daphne pushed the globe. It rolled a little way and the continents danced. But now the world was turned upside down. “It’s a planet , Papa. Up and down are just ways of looking at it. I’m sure people here won’t object to copies being made for all the big museums. But don’t take this place away from them. It’s theirs .”
    “I think people will say it belongs to the world.”
    “And they will be thinking